Letters to My Dear Sophia: When You Go to the Waters

This is the first in a series of posts that I hope to make, entitled "Letters to My Dear Sophia," which I intend as a compilation both for my daughter when she grows up, but for you as you raise your children, and think about yourselves in the oft-parental relationship to your heavenly parent. My intent is that, through reading these letters to my daughter and the intense love I have poured into them, you might hear an echo of the kind of love and hope that God has for all of us.

Letters to My Dear Sophia: When You Go to the Waters

Today is your baptism day, and you are three months and one week old today. The last three months have been a whirlwind of getting to know you (even though I knew you as you knit in my womb), of helping you learn to understand the world a little more each day, and today marks the beginning of a completely new adventure in which you learn to see a totally new world from the one you were born into. Ordinarily, I would have had you baptized as soon as possible, but I had to find a weekend that would work for the people that I most wanted to support you in your baptismal promise, my dear friend Rusty, a fellow minister and his wonderful wife Lynette, who I know will be a powerful influence in your life of faith, as well as my parents, who so shaped me into the woman I am today. Because baptism is not just about you and me and your father, but about you and the God that I will teach you about and help you come to know and love, and about all the people who will be your teachers and guides throughout your life: your church community, the body, and about a whole new world.

A few weekends ago, I attended your new church's baptism orientation, the point of which is to get some basic education about what baptism is (as a minister, I think I have this down pretty well) and to get to know a few other families whose babies are also going to be baptized into this fellowship of believers. Your pastors, Bradley and Javen, asked us why we wanted to have you baptized. As I sat there, I realized that I had no way of giving a complete answer in a timely manner. I rattled off something about community and being held up in hope during difficult times in your life, but that's such a pale explanation compared to all the things in my heart for you right now.

Although you only gently cooed during your baptism, one of the things that I love about baptism is when the babies give one of those wonderful full throated cries at the sudden discomfort of having his or her little head drenched with what I imagine is relatively cold water. Not that I take pleasure in the discomfort of babies--though probably some who know me well would accuse me of that--but that it's so perfectly fitting for the occasion. After all, what is more appropriate than an ear-splitting scream upon the day of your death? That's really what this is, you know. This baptism that we have so casually, calmly signed you up for is your death, the big one, the one in which we, your mom and dad and grandparents and godparents, say on your behalf that we promise you will die, have died, and are dying to the old world, the old way of things. Not just your old self, but to all the old things. The old world that you were born into, full of old sorrow and old despair and old hopelessness and helplessness and decay and chaos.

You will learn more about this guy as you get older, but there was once a theologian named Martin Luther, and he talked a lot about how as Christians we live in two worlds at the same time. We live in this physical world, where we're subject to all the suffering and evil that exists in it because of the stain of death here, but at the same time, those of us who have been baptized into God's world, the new world, simultaneously inhabit the world that is what God intended it to be at the very beginning, and what God promises it will be again. How is this possible? It's because of the miracle of Christ's love for us, and God's presence through the Holy Spirit in your life and in all those around you. When that water was poured on your head, the Holy Spirit came with it, to make a bridge connecting you to this world, now, and that world that is coming, the "not yet."

So what I wish for you, my precious little one, is that you have a death. You have a death to all those things which would try to make you selfish and hard and closed off, and that you subsequently have a life, one made richer by understanding both suffering and joy, tears and laughter, death and resurrection. I want you to have a life full of trying and struggling, and sometimes failing, so that you can better taste the sweetness of victory. I want you to have a life that sometimes breaks your heart, though it breaks my heart to think of you in pain, so that because of who you know you are in your friend Jesus, you may fully understand healing, and that your heart may be made softer, more open to the pain around you, so that you may pour that love which has healed you onto those around you. On this day of your baptism, I wish for you to love fully, joyfully, and hopefully, and to learn what it means to be loved so much that somebody would die for you, as Jesus did, and as I would for you. I want you to have all shame about the failures you will have, the bruises you will earn, and the pain you will suffer to be washed away in those waters to be replaced by the understanding of just how precious you really are. I hope that you will learn to follow Christ passionately, and pursue that which you have been called to be and do as a child of God and a sister of Christ, because you know that your hands do make a difference in bringing about that not yet realm.

Mostly, though, I hope your old eyes die, to be replaced by eyes which see not that which is, but that which can be. That you learn to experience the renewal and every-day births that come in the midst of all the bad stuff. I will never forget that you are the baby that came to me so, so soon after having said goodbye to another baby, and because of that you are special. You are my life-baby, my daughter who came to me as if blown in by the storm that broke my heart, who healed my grief and showed me that there really is new life. I hope your heart doesn't have to be broken like mine has in order to understand this, but that in your baptism you will stare with new eyes at all your little disappointments and losses and learn to see where God's hand was doing a new thing.

Today you went to the waters of baptism, and came out a new child, and this is my prayer for you: that your eyes always see the beauty of that new world. Welcome to your new life, little one. I'll do my best to help you live fully in it.

How does prayer work, anyway?

"He was praying in a certain place, and after he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples." He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend, and you go to him at midnight and say to him, "Friend, lend me three loaves of bread; for a friend of mine has arrived, and I have nothing to set before him.' And he answers from within, "Do not bother me; the door has already been locked, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot get up and give you anything.' I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, at least because of his persistence he will get up and give him whatever he needs. "So I say to you, Ask, and it will be given you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for a fish, will give a snake instead of a fish? Or if the child asks for an egg, will give a scorpion? 13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" -Luke 11: 1-13

First of all, I want to offer a shameless plug for my pastor Lois Pallmeyer, who preached on this text this morning. I highly encourage you to check it out because it's a beautiful piece of writing, and even though I'm about to offer my perspective, there's something to listening to those who are older and wiser than me. Here it is.

Secondly, I must apologize for my long absence. It turns out that pregnancy is kind of hard, and so is having a newborn. Baby "S" was born on June 26th after 16 hours of labor, and she is perfect. If you'd like to be spammed with baby pictures, take a look at my instagram.

Now, onto the matter at hand... 

After church today my husband and I were talking about how prayer works, and he said, "Well, the answer is obvious, isn't it? We don't know." You've got to admire his comfort with ambiguity. Unfortunately, most of us aren't totally content with that answer, especially when everything is going to hell and you find yourself thinking, "Okay, God, was THIS in your plan!?" It makes prayer feel pretty futile, and even worse, can lead us to question God's motives, as if God is some kind of devious puppet master pulling the strings in our lives until we pray to appease God's mighty wrath. So what's the point of prayer, anyway? Is it indeed to "ask so the door will be opened?", it to change God's mind as in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, where Abraham bargains with God over whether or not to let the city stand? (Genesis 18) Is it just a meaningless practice that gives us spiritual discipline? There is no place in the Bible that I know of where somebody conclusively explains exactly how prayer works. We are told to do it ("pray without ceasing") and we are told how to do it as in the text above. We are told it is important, and we see lots of other people in the Bible doing it, even at risk of bodily harm (Daniel). So how does it work?

Well, like P, I don't rightly know. This is what prayer is for me, and maybe in hearing a little of my experience you can get a sense of what prayer might be for you, and how it might shape your faith walk. I think I've mentioned in passing that my parish internship was pretty trying. I've not been super transparent there, and one of these days I will share what I have written about it. In the interest of brevity, I will say that in retrospect I consider it to have been abusive, and it took me some time to recover from it. My final year in seminary was spent coming out of the fog of depression and trauma that the internship caused. Because the internship was a requirement for my degree and for candidacy as an ordained minister, I had to jump through several hoops because of my not-great committee evaluations. After doing everything faithfully and trying my best to heal and learn whatever I needed to learn from the experience, I again met with my candidacy committee, who told me that I was not ready to be approved for ordained ministry and deferred me. I was totally stunned by this and my well laid plans were now starting to fall apart in front of me. One day I was sitting at my desk doing homework and worrying about what to do with this situation, being angry at myself and angry at God, a song came on my playlist:




The chorus is what struck me in that moment.

I have no choice
But to cry out for You
Please help, cause I'm helpless now
You hear my prayer
When my whole world comes unglued
I know You can fix it, but I don't know how
I don't know how

That was exactly how I felt. My plans, my life, what I had hoped for had all come totally unglued and there I was sitting at my desk feeling too many feelings and not knowing what to do next, and I turned that song up and listened to it on repeat over and over while sobbing. That was my prayer at the moment: "Please help, I'm helpless now." It was a moment of complete surrender for me. I had spent the previous weeks flailing around trying to fix things or salvage something, and I had spent the previous year flailing around trying to contort myself to fit into what that congregation wanted from me instead of just being the (fantastic) minister I am, and it had broken me. So I cried and let go of all that trying. That was my prayer. It was simple, it was desperate, and most importantly it was genuine. It was the Spirit interceding on my behalf with "groans too deep for words." (Romans 8:26)

I wish I could say that that moment at my desk was some kind of revelation in the moment, but it wasn't. I cried, as I had done before and would do again, and I turned off "repeat" on iTunes, and then continued with my homework. But what was revelatory was the sense that God was with me. That Jason Gray had had a moment of desperation and others had too, and I know in that moment that that song was the voice of God telling me I was not alone. That incident stuck with me throughout the next year as I took my first wobbling baby steps toward living into my call authentically. Somehow all the right people, from the chaplain and pastor who mentored me in Michigan over the summer before my CPE residency to my supervisors and the peers in my group had showed up in my life and stood with me and walked by my side as I rediscovered who God had created me to be.

So had God heard my prayer and changed what had been in store for me because I asked? I somehow don't think so. I had already been accepted to the residency program, and we were already set to go to Michigan for the summer. I don't like the idea of God manipulating other people's lives to suit my prayers. What I do know is that God showed up for me in my hour of desperation. God was present for me when that song came on and a wash of anguish and grief poured out of me as it hadn't before, pleading for help from the bottom of my soul. God showed up for me in the call from my pastor the following week, and God showed up for me in the kind words of my peers at seminary, and friends who let me rant and rave and offered words of solidarity and encouragement. Mostly, God showed up and changed me. Something about that moment of vulnerability led me to more moments of vulnerability where I learned and grew and made room in my self for all that I needed to be a chaplain and a better pastor. It also gave me new determination: a sense that God WAS with me guiding me, and had been with me, and that even the experience of being mistreated wouldn't be wasted in his hands. It helped me defy the voices that discouraged me, and embrace the minister that God had created me to be.

In my life, I have experienced some challenges and losses, and although I'm not much for formal "prayer time" in my day, I do keep an ongoing dialogue with God. It's usually a little sarcastic, because I think I'm often the wayward, reluctant disciple that God has to let faceplant from time to time in order to remember to stay close and learn the lessons that need to be learned. And in the course of that prayer life, I have come not to see prayer as a time to ask for wishes, but as a time to let it all hang out. To be who I am to God, who God knows I am already, and in doing so be assured that I am loved, wanted, and that God is working with, in, and through me, even in the grief, frustrations, even in the (often extreme) stubbornness. So for me, asking and having the door opened is more about receiving God than things; knocking is about having the door to God's kingdom fly open now and then; and seeking is about finding that God was really there all along. God does answer prayers, but as P pointed out, we don't really know how it works. But we do know that something happens and the Spirit is alive and present for us in our weakness and in our joy. My prayer for you is that you fully experience the mystery of God in your prayer life and beyond it today and every day.

Three Stories

This is the story of Keiji Nakazawa, author of the Japanese comic series Barefoot Gen.

In 1945, a young Japanese boy named Keiji was on his way to school at about eight in the morning when he bent down to pick something up off the ground. Suddenly, an atomic explosion rocked the city of Hiroshima to its very foundation. The simple action of bending down had saved him, as a concrete wall had shielded him from the blast and the majority of the fallout. All around him was devastation: his neighbors and friends burned to death, everything he had ever known alight as far as he could see. Keiji searched for his family, and unfortunately found that his father and brother had died immediately. His mother and infant sister died of radiation poisoning a few days later.

Confused and disoriented, Keiji joined with other survivors of the blast trying to stay alive. One day about a year later, Keiji headed down to the river in search of supplies, and saw something very strange. Although the reports had said that the city would be radioactive for 70 years and nothing would grow, Keiji spotted green popping up along the river. Blades of grass, fresh with morning dew dotted the landscape up and down the banks of the river. Somehow, despite all odds, new life bloomed again.

Ground zero along the banks of the Ota River, Hiroshima, Japan, 2008.

This is a story my friend Rusty told me.

In 2012, a group of seminary students landed in Haiti to begin their J-term learning experience. They left Port au Prince that morning and made it to their hotel in Jacmel on the southern coast. The group decided to get drinks to unwind from the travel, but soon after, the earth began to move, and the city crumbled around them. Most of them had been outdoors, but as they stood staring at the remains of the building that they had just been inside, the terrible truth of what had happened set in. Some of the students on the trip from another seminary had died with the thousands of others in the city.

With most of their belongings lost and no way to leave the city, the group headed to the camp where everyone else had been sent. It was a surreal scene, with people wailing for their dead or frantically searching for loved ones. The group had little food or water between them, but they hunkered down in hope of rescue.

As night fell, my friend remembers the camp coming alive, not with wailing but suddenly with song. Songs of worship, songs of praise, songs of God's grace and love rising from the destruction all around them. As one group's song would fade, another would begin. All night, a song of victory in defeat.

The bar where Rusty and his classmates stood moments earlier in Haiti, 2012.

This is my story.

My husband and I were on our way back from a friend's wedding in Hawaii when the spotting started. Ten weeks along, we had been filled with such hope, such excitement about this first child of ours. I had spotted before and had still seen a strong heartbeat just three weeks earlier, but the exhaustion of the trip and the increasing bleeding shook us.

When we arrived home from our red eye flight, the first thing we did was call the doctor. There they did an exam and could not find a heartbeat. They sent us to radiology for an ultrasound, where a kind woman told us that unfortunately, the baby had stopped growing two weeks ago. There was nothing that could be done.

One doesn't understand agony until their heart breaks open at the words “I'm so sorry.” The words sound so empty when your whole future has been destroyed. As P leaned over me and my heart poured out my eyes, all I could see ahead was the why, the what happened, and the how can we go on? And yet months later, I am here again, with hope for a child growing inside me, for a family, for birthdays and kissed owies and skills taught, and so many giggles to come. And there is life here.

Baby P (due June 2016), stubbornly refusing to roll over, December 2015.

This is both an old and a new story.

I tell you these stories not because I want to make you sad, but because you, too, have lived through destruction. You have lived through the disorientation, the confusion of who you are and who God is and what we do when all hope is lost. In the last chapter of Luke, the disciples on the road to Emmaus tell Jesus (who they don't recognize) that “they had hoped Jesus would be the one to redeem Israel.” I think this is the saddest part of the whole Bible, and encompasses so much loss, sorrow, and emptiness. We had hoped.

And yet God was revealed in the breaking of the bread to those disciples. And yet God freed Israel. And yet Christ healed the blind. And yet our Savior rose from the dead. And yet.

We find our lives in ashes from time to time, and today I tell these stories so that you remember that your story is part of a larger narrative: the story of God, of humanity, of all creation. And those stories tell us that the audacity of hope is often as simple as grass growing, a song rising from the rubble of a broken city, the embrace of your best friend while you stand stunned and lost in grief, or an empty tomb.

You are not alone. Amen.

Sunrise at Riviera Maya, Mexico, new every morning.

A plea for peace.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God." -Matthew 5:9

The first time I remembered a mass shooting, I was in 8th grade. I don't remember how I heard, but I remember a pall being cast over the entire school as we sat there in classrooms much like the ones at Columbine High School, and wondered if one of our classmates could pull out a gun and kill us as easily. This was a national tragedy, senseless and horrible. We talked about violent video games and Marilyn Manson and how those things had influenced the young men responsible, and yet there was an odd silence about the most obvious culprit: the access that two high school boys had to guns. Schools began installing metal detectors and checking bags for guns, and despite the depth of tragedy, nothing changed. Four months later, twelve more people were killed by a disturbed man with a gun. Next was a shooting that killed seven at a concert, but it didn't stop. In fact, year after year more and more lives were lost to this epidemic, and we watched in horror, and silence. When a madman murdered 26 people, 20 of whom were elementary school children at Sandy Hook, we railed against the tragedy of mental illness, further stigmatizing a community of mostly silent sufferers. And nothing changed. When Christians praying in church were murdered, we were outraged... at racism. Yet the rights of citizens to purchase firearms almost totally unrestricted remained unchallenged. And last week, a disturbed man with easy access to weapons walked onto campus and killed nine people and injured nine more before taking his own life. It was the 264th mass shooting this year.

Today, you and I are now more likely to die by gun violence than in a car accident. If you are a woman like me, you're twice as likely. Some are calling it a mental illness crisis, or a race issue. Those things may be factors, but in the end what it is is a hostage situation, with the very vocal minority of gun lobbyists and conspiracy theorists holding the entirety of the United States hostage to the very real possibility of death by firearms. To me, this is yet another example of human greed and selfishness and the forces of evil railing against the kingdom of God. Because while I am unlikely to be killed by gun violence given my situation, there is no peace for me, or you, while our brothers and sisters suffer death and the their loved ones are destroyed by grief.

It's easy to say that this is a political issue and not a church or faith issue. After all, it's not good churchgoing people perpetuating these mass shootings, or faith communities suffering. Except when it is. But it goes far beyond whether or not we as people of faith are affected by these tragedies directly: it goes to the heart of who we are called to be as people of faith. As a Christian, it is my belief that the suffering of others is my responsibility. Jesus took on our suffering in order to redeem us by his death and resurrection, and left his disciples and those of us who call ourselves Little Christs to continue this mission of bringing God's reign of peace to earth. Brothers and sisters, we are failing. We are failing phenomenally to relieve this pain and suffering. We are failing to speak out against the voices that say that their "freedom" (whatever that means) is worth the innocent deaths of even one man, woman, or child. No personal freedom is worth another's life, my friends. We are called as Christians to lay down our lives, not to horde weapons and ensure easy access to devices intended only for death for our own greedy ends or paranoid delusions.

The minority of gun owners against stricter background checks and other safeguards against these horrific shootings would say that restricting access to these weapons would make it too easy for a tyrannical government to come to power, and they argue that any comprehensive registration program would be the first step toward the government taking their guns. This is insane rhetoric, defying all attempts at logic and reason, ignoring the stability of our government and historical and global precedent, and deploying slippery slope arguments that essentially amounts to welcoming John Wayne Gacy into your house to protect you from the Boogeyman. And this small group paired with a gigantic, wealthy lobby is leaving our citizens bereft of loved ones taken too soon and living in terror that they could be next. Nowhere is safe: not a mall, beach, theater, or church. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said: “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless. Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.” This means that ultimately any stance that places unrestricted access to guns above human life is not just anti-life but anti-Christ, because Christ called us not to kill but to die. Are we to continue uselessly grieving tragedy after tragedy, or will we lay down our apathy and desire to look anywhere but at the pain and do something to foster life, hope, and true freedom, the kind that comes when my brother or sister is safe, and fed, and clothed, and well?

I was giving some thought to what could be done about this, and it occurred to me that the government does not easily change when money is involved. So money needs to become involved. The worker's rights movement worked not because people hopped on facebook and voiced their concern while clutching their pearls: it worked because money talks. We need to unionize against guns. We need to divest from organizations that support gun manufacture or is in any way related to the NRA like these 34 companies. We need to threaten organizations with boycott if they do not denounce the NRA and write to our senators, governors, and congresspeople to pass firmer background check laws and more stringently enforced waiting periods, to close loopholes on internet or gun show sales, and to demand that selling a gun without the proper checks and waiting period become a felony with high fines and jail time. If we want to make a difference, we need to think like a lobbyist, and use the strength of our wallets and our votes to press for this change.

It is a false assumption to think that posting sad pictures of grieving family members and shaking our heads about gun violence is enough. To quote President Obama: "Thoughts and prayers are not enough." Only getting these guns out of the hands of those who would use them to hurt will be enough to show how broken we are by this tragedy and those that came before. We are a people given a mission and vocation to comfort the grieving, not look the other way. We are a people whose vocation is the usher wholeness, wellness, and peace onto this earth, and yet we stand by and complacently, comfortably even, remain hostage to weapons and pathetic background checks with three day limitations and stores who would rather earn a few dollars than save a few lives. If you, like me, are fed up with the voice of unreasonableness and the worship of the almighty dollar over love of our fellow humans, please share this post. Especially if you are a responsible gun owner who understands the value of proper licensing and rigorous background checks. Talk to your pastors, your political representatives, and take action. We cannot be held hostage any longer.

Healing Through Hurts

This blog post was originally written for the Working with Spirit Blog, which is maintained by the chaplain department at the University of Minnesota Medical Center.

My husband and I recently suffered a family loss. It was difficult, of course, as these things always are, but as a chaplain I am lucky enough to be surrounded by people who are loving, understanding, and patient with grief. I was able to take some time to heal and when I came back I found myself nervous. Grief has a funny way of popping up when we least expect it, and I had found myself getting teary at the strangest things because of it. As a spiritual and emotional caregiver, one of the things we are always conscious of is transference, or conflating your patient's pain with your own. This is problematic both for the patients and the caregivers for obvious reasons, so it figures that within three weeks of returning to work I found myself sitting across the room from a patient who had just gone through almost the same thing I had.

Ordinarily, I would never disclose such a fresh loss to a patient, but this patient's pain was so raw, and she looked at me and asked if her grief was normal. She said her friends and family didn't understand, but I did. I did because I had found myself somewhere further along in my healing process, but with a fresh enough memory that I knew that, if not normal, she seemed to be experiencing something similar to what I had experienced. So I did it. I told her of my loss. It's a frightening thing to wonder if you're doing the right thing or not, and to have that moment of pause. She looked at me and burst into tears, and my heart pounded because I was thinking, “Oh boy, now she's crying for both of us and that's not what I wanted!” I told her I'm doing fine and don't want this to be about me, and she interrupted me and sobbed: “It feels so good knowing somebody else understands!” She said she was sorry for my loss, and she thanked me. She thanked me for sharing my pain, my wound, and I felt a gentle warmth, like perhaps my hurt was not completely without purpose after all.

We can hardly live without collecting bumps and bruises along the way. To open the heart is to risk it: to fall in love is to risk rejection, to have a child is to risk all the pain of rebellion and the fears of loss or estrangement, and even learning a new skill risks failure and raising all of those hard questions about ourselves we don't want to face. Probably none of us make it to adulthood without some kind of loss, trauma, insecurity, or hurt, and we bring that story, that self with us when we walk into a patient room and listen to their story, their hurt. Whether it's physical illness, or emotional/spiritual turmoil, these things touch us. They remind of us those things in us, and they sometimes cut a little too close to the bone for comfort. At the same time, those old scars and even some of the fresher wounds create an opportunity for connection. It's not professional or advised to walk around with our hearts on our sleeves all the time, but neither can we close our hearts to the hurts we encounter as we journey with our patients.

Henri Nouwen writes: “The great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there.” How can we be healers if we can't get in touch with the experiences of our illnesses, struggles, grief, and rough edges? How can you understand how to hope against all hope, to hope even when the prognosis is grim, to find something to hold to as you take your dying breath, if never you have walked that valley of the shadow of death in some small way? We can't, and it's silly to try because we bring those things with us every step of the way. We all have hearts able to be, as theologian Parker Palmer says, not just broken, but broken open in order to hold the broken hearted before us and walk with them toward healing.

This visit with the woman whose loss was so close to my own reminded me of this simple caregiving strategy, which bears so much healing fruit, and that is to care from your broken heart. Take care of your heart, of course, but don't be afraid to be truly touched by the wounds of another. My own personal life philosophy is that it is in our weakness that we are made strong, and so I invite and encourage you to be weak. Be open to really listening to the many hurts you encounter in these walls today. Let your hurts and scars and the victory of having carried on be a beacon of hope to those who have not yet learned they can survive their hurts. And know that in baring your heart in this beautiful, holy vulnerability you invite healing for them, and for you.

The New Purpose Driven Life

I've been thinking a lot lately about purpose. I'm in a transition period right now, having finished my residency and beginning to do work as a staff chaplain on a casual basis at the same hospital, while also waiting to see what will unfold at another hospital, and as always, waiting for call to a parish. Waiting waiting waiting waiting! This much waiting could drive a person crazy, and I'll admit that it's not the easiest thing to do. With my husband wondering what will become of my formerly very regular paychecks, and finding myself with large chunks of time away from work, there is a sense of "when will my life begin?" (I may or may not have been watching Tangled this weekend...)

This job search and creation and discernment process has been going on for months now, but today I had what one might consider a moment of zen about it. It happened while I was home doing errands, cleaning my house, hanging out with the dog, and chatting periodically with my husband throughout. A year ago, this day would have made me anxious as hell. I would have been lonely, texting people to hang out, filling every second with something in order to give myself a sense of purpose. And I did keep busy, but I also had plenty of moments not filled with Things or Plans or Goings On, and really, I was all right. I was actually content.

Three years ago, I was stuck in a small town and having a hard time feeling like my existence made much of a difference in the world. Every moment I was not doing something or speaking to someone made me want to cry because I just felt so directionless. My purpose, which as a student and volunteer and worker had always been so external, had all been shifted and turned upside down, leaving me mostly with me, and that's scary. Because when the purpose is only external, any threats or changes to that threatens who I am. Today I realized that I have learned to carry my purpose around with me, and it's something much broader just than my work as a minister or my role as a wife or friend or whatever. My purpose is, quite simply as Christ says: "Love one another as I have loved you.

Today, that purpose meant spending an hour mating loose socks from the bottom of the closet, and sorting out all the shirts and boxers with holes in them, and carefully putting the clothes P wears most on the top of the various piles so he has easy access to them. I could have organized my half of the closet and left his a disaster, because let's be honest it will be a disaster again pretty soon. But it was a service done out of love, the same as the love it takes to become covered in impossible to remove white hairballs from brushing our husky, or the love that compels me to show up and bear the stories of people struggling with drugs, alcohol, trauma, illness, and death. It's Christ's love, given so freely to me, that defines who I am and gives purpose to every breath.

Because of that, we don't have to doubt so much when our roles aren't clearly defined, or when life is shifting underneath us like sand. We can carry forward knowing grace and hope and new life are within us re-creating us and molding us more closely into God's image. We don't have to be measured by our doing, but by God's. My sage advice for today is to not fear the what ifs and I don't knows and what nows, but to breathe in the love of God that surpasses all understanding and rest in it, knowing your life and work and parenting and friendships and house cleaning and errands and unemployment and everything else are all defined by how beloved you are, making your purpose in any and every situation as simple as being overtaken by grace and so that it flows into the world through you.

An open letter to the ELCA

Grace and peace to you in the name of Christ Jesus our Redeemer and Head!

            This letter has been a long time in coming from me. Not because I am an innately wave-making person, but because I feel I am doing a disservice to my fellow leaders in God’s church by not speaking up on this matter. For a little background, I grew up in a Congregationalist tradition, where church leaders rose up from within the people based on their gifts in leadership. As such, I came late into the ELCA and brought with me a healthy skepticism toward the institution and the office of ordained ministers. When I search the Bible, I find very little about a church body appointing leaders, and read much more about all of us together participating in Christ’s church in our own unique ways (1 Corinthians 12:12). The best explanation I heard in seminary came from Dr. Steven Paulson who, when pressed, said that it is a matter of protection—to assure that the church is served well, and that the sacraments cannot be misused. I struggled with this explanation for a long time, but after considering my own less than stellar church experiences came to accept that although this process of candidacy and ordination is not perfect, it does provide some measure of control over what happens in our church.

            I will back up again and say that I came to ministry rather reluctantly. Although I have now fully embraced my vocation as a minister, I felt for a long time that God should send somebody else. My brother speaks so much better than me, can’t he do it? I don’t like those Ninevites! Send somebody else. Ultimately, God’s call won over my reservations and I found myself in seminary and diving into ministry whole heartedly. Internship was challenging, but I learned to love parish work, from preaching to confirmation and even (I know!) public speaking engagements in the community! But alas, during my time in seminary I found myself, as young people do, enamored with another young person who had just recently joined the University of Minnesota as faculty. It quickly became apparent that we were called to be together, and we became engaged around the same time he was beginning the arduous process to gain tenure. Because of his excellence in his field, this turned out to be quite straight forward for him and in no time he received a nice little plaque declaring that he could never be fired from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. My plans for going where the Spirit willed were upended. As anybody facing a geographical restriction knows, this is not an easy issue to deal with. In academics they call it the “two body problem” and one that universities go to great lengths to work with. In the ELCA, it is called an unwillingness to be open to the call of the church.

            Luckily for me, I happen to have a degree in psychology and an interest in a variety of different ministries, and so I found myself applying to a chaplain residency at the University of Minnesota Medical Center, and soon I was working there sharing the gospel through mostly one on one visits. My first clinical assignment was to a neurological-surgical intensive care unit where I ministered to families in crisis with counseling, comfort, blessing services, baptisms, and more. I worked not only with patients, but also ministering to staff who might not have any connection to a faith community. I witnessed beautiful, sacramental moments where Christ became flesh in and among us. And yet, when a patient asked for communion I had to go talk to one of the other ELCA ministers who had, regardless of their desire for it, put in their “time” as parish ministers before going onto their actual vocations here at Fairview. This didn’t bother me much, because ministry on an ICU does feel quite different from a parish, but all the while I was seeing a paucity of openings within the Twin Cities for a first-call, inexperienced young minister wondering if I would ever be welcomed into the office to which I feel so strongly called.

Before long, I switched assignments to behavioral health, which includes people suffering from chemical dependency and mental illness. These folks are housed together on locked units and stay from a few days to several months. As chaplain on behavioral units, I led weekly spirituality groups on topics such as hope, healing from shame, being the hero of your own story, and finding forgiveness. I “preached” daily to those who did not feel God’s love in their lives. I wrote services to remember baptism, to celebrate joyous moments, and to grieve loved ones who had died. My patients referred to me as “my pastor” and one gentlemen in particularly called me “woman of God.” Patients who I had helped in particularly poignant ways would chat me up and tell others to talk to me. “She’s cool, even if you’re not into that God stuff,” I heard my drug addicted patients say. Because of the length of these patients’ stays, we formed, every few weeks, a new community which would be together for some time. Sometimes small groups would want to listen to hymns or Christian popular songs with me. Sometimes we would gather to pray. Sometimes after my groups (which are interfaith and inclusive to all religions), groups of patients would form prayer groups of their own. And yet we say this is not part of the office of the ordained. I have become increasingly frustrated as I look at my gifts and skills, and the difficulty of finding a parish call which suits them, and see an endless wait.

Ordination is important. It is important not just because of being allowed into the “club” with the ability to preside at the Lord’s Supper, but because of the authority that it represents. We non-ordained ministers of Word and Sacrament (just the one, it seems) serve God’s church in ways different from, but on the whole quite the same as, congregations. The office of ordination gives us authority from a church body that has recognized our education, our insight, our gifts, and our ability to gather the people together. To be barred from this office because of a misfortune of geography or because we possess different skills and passions than those who thrive in the parish is disappointing. It is disappointing both to those of us who are left out, but mostly it is disappointing to those in need because it limits the ways in which the world can be served by those who are called.

I bring this up not only because I personally would stand to benefit if the ELCA would begin to officially recognize this work as part of the work of the church, but because I think it is woefully detrimental to our parishes to give ministers called to chaplaincy or other specialized work no choice but to spend time in a parish when their skills and gifts cannot be fully utilized there. It is unfair both to the pastors who must waste their time doing so, and it is particularly unfair to the churches who would receive such leaders. The church faces an enormously high burnout rate among its leaders, and to pastor a congregation is to be preacher, counselor, building manager, on-call chaplain and more. Who would want a pastor bringing less than their whole heart to this work? What minister would want to lie to a church about his or her devotion simply in order to be ordained? If we consider ourselves a church that truly recognizes the priesthood of all believers, with the office of ordination as the officially sanctioned position that recognizes outstanding, educated, creative, and passionate leaders serving our church (which I define not as congregations but as all those professing Christ risen), why are we limiting how those leaders function by insisting on time spent in one particular context?

I do not have my stole, but I am a pastor to those that I serve. I never refer to myself this way, but my patients begin to recognize my “invisible stole” the moment I sit down with them to hear their story. I work with people who may have never been seen for more than their illness, addiction, or failures, and I am privileged get to love them with my whole heart, and that loving is significant to them because I bring the authority of an office with me which represents something bigger than me. When I love a patient and show them care and listen to them and pray with them, they experience more than my love, but God’s. If that is not the ministry of Word and Sacrament, I don’t know what is. Just because our table is a therapy room does not mean we are not a community of believers and humans gathered in the name of Christ. It’s time that this organization begin to recognize that the church begins in the world—in classrooms, in firehouses, in hospitals, in parks, in libraries, prisons, malls and shelters! The church begins in the world and gathers in the parish, and those of us who minister to those who have not yet made it into congregations (or are barred by their circumstances at the moment) are also called to this office and should be given the same authority and responsibility as those whose calls are in the gathering places known as churches.

I ask you to consider a resolution to recognize chaplaincy and community-based ministry as part of the office of ordination and remove the three to five year requirement of parish ministry for ordination. Our world is full of so much need, and there are people bursting at the seams to usher in God’s kingdom in innovative, non-traditional ways. We have been seeing for years that the model of the church is changing, declining, becoming obsolete to the younger generations (et cetera), so isn’t it about time we think about making some changes ourselves so that we can best serve God’s amazing, beautiful, broken world? We who don’t fit the traditional model have so much to offer to this church and to these people, so please help us find a way to do that which includes us in the roster of ordained ministers of the ELCA.

Peace and blessings in the name of Christ,

Gwen