Put-and-Take Prayers

No; nothing to do with shooting pheasants.

My congregation's worship committee was also retreating this past week, and one of the ideas they brought back to our church was this: Beginning next week, we'll be placing a prayer request slip in every bulletin. People can fill out a prayer for themselves or others, in a completely anonymous manner. At the end of the service these slips will go into a basket. As people leave, they may take a prayer request out of the basket. If they do, their job, for the next week, becomes praying for that particular person or situation. And this is going to be an ongoing, all-hands-on-deck project from now on.

Another God thing happening in our parish. Someone upstairs must love us.

Like Buttah!

While I was communing with God and my fellow lay ministry students in Michigan's north woods, our church youth group was busy cooking up apple butter...actually, they helped with KP duty while adults with canning expertise actually made the stuff, in a big kettle in our church's back yard.

When I got to church this morning, I got the second-to-last pint of apple butter; it had all been sold, and the kids made $270 for confirmation camp; almost enough tuition for one camper.

They have been busy raising money since this summer, doing everything from making sloppy joes at our church yard sale to hosting an evening spaghetti dinner/talent show. In a couple of weeks they're going to be selling "deer camp care packages" filled with baked goods to sell to the army of hunters that descends upon our area every November.

This is just so cool.

I never got to confirmation camp when I was a kid -- my father, balking at the cost, said, "You don't really want to go there," which in my family was code language for "Fuggetabout it." But I made up for this deficit in my spiritual formation in college, where I got involved in Lutheran Student Movement; one day early in my freshman career I'd seen a poster advertising a regional LSM retreat...thought, "That sounds interesting"...and wound up traipsing with gee-tar and bedroll almost a half mile to The Other Lutheran Student Parish. (I was in the LCMS at the time, so this was very daring behavior...ah, if they only knew it was just the beginning...) I wasn't sure what sort of reception I'd get -- but five minutes after showing up I felt as if I'd met a bunch of long-lost siblings. I had a swell time; kept going back; brought some of my other LCMS friends with me. My experiences at these retreats were so important in my spiritual formation; they played an important role in my learning to speak freely about my faith, in examining social issues from a Christian justice perspective, and in making me comfortable doing worship "front and center"; at LSM retreats I cut my eyeteeth leading small groups and helping write informal liturgies. Even when I felt the most estranged from the Christian faith, many years later, I looked back at those days with a certain discomforting wistfulness. (And in hindsight I think perhaps the Holy Spirit was messing with my head, in a good way, bringing up those happy memories despite my best attempts to shoo them away.)

Long story short, I think that youth ministry is important. I don't think that it is my particular charism, but I have nothing but respect for laypeople and pastors who work with teenagers and young adults. Any way that I can help the kids in my parish enjoy some of the same fellowship and spiritual support that I was blessed to experience in my younger years is time and money well spent, if you ask me.

And this apple butter is...mmmmm...delish. You'll have to take my word for it.

Apple butter 

Always Reforming

Today was Reformation Sunday at church -- the great annual Lutheran tribal gathering. The church was bedecked in red; the pews were packed; the air was redolent with aromas of various caloric potluck dishes warming up in the kitchen; we sang "A Mighty Fortress" and "The Church's One Foundation"; the tradition lives on for another year.

But more importantly for our congregation, this Sunday was Confirmation Sunday. This is a new thing for us, and perhaps for readers as well; at least when I was a kid, confirmations happened around the Easter season. But we have found that, at our church, we can get junior-high and high school kids involved in religious education if we put them through what amounts to a two-week theological bootcamp and a week of church camp in the summertime...this after easing them through the door with an afterschool program where kids hang out afternoon a week with the pastor, engage in Godtalk, play music, and on occasion go on pastoral-care rounds and help out with various churchly tasks.

This morning eight nervous white-robed confirmands sat in the front row. One of them had been so desperate to attend confirmation class that he intially fibbed about his age so he could get in. (We would have let him in anyway, but it's a great story.) Another, a girl with minimal evident adult support for her faith journey, who got involved with our church through her friends, was recently baptized, and when she was her adolescent peers from confirmation class stood up for her as sponsors. (Which I suspect is probably against "the rules," or falling under the dreaded category of "But we've never done it that way before." But our response as a congregation was happy wonderment -- imagine a bunch of teenagers, unprodded by adult authority figures, being the Church for their friend.)

We followed the liturgy for the Affirmation of Baptism. Each kid was asked the traditional question: "Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil and all his empty promises?" A series of quiet responses: "I do." "Do you believe in God the Father?" The entire congregation then joined in, response after response, to affirm the articles of the Creed.

Finally it was time for each kid to be confirmed. As he or she knelt at the altar, our pastor invited parents and godparents to join him in the laying on of hands. And when it came time for our newly baptized, sans-adults teenager to be confirmed, all the rest of her class, her friends/peers/sponsors, stood up in unison, returned to the altar and laid their hands on her.

What should the Church look like? I think at its best it looks a lot like this.

Lutherans like to describe ourselves as catholic, evangelical and reforming. We're catholic because we affirm the witness of the Apostles, the formative theologians and the ecumenical councils of the early Church, and the praxis of worship as has been handed down to us from those times. We are evangelical because our primary goal in being the Church is to proclaim the very good news of God's unconditional, no-strings-attached Yes! to a loving relationship with humankind, personified by Jesus Christ, God With Us. And we are reforming because, whenever some aspect of our life together impedes that message of God's love and grace, we believe that it's our job to make a change. That's the ideal. That's what we strive for.

I am happy and blessed to be a part of a faith community that takes this always- reforming ethos seriously; that tries its darnedest to erase the lines, whatever they may be, that work to keep people outside our church family.

After the service, I was talking with our pastor -- we were both grinning from ear to ear -- about what a great congregation we have, and he said, "I go to these pastoral conferences where other pastors talk about the problems they have keeping their congregations going, and when they ask me why ours is always bucking the trend, I tell them it's because we've made the decision to stop fighting about stuff; about who's 'in' and who's 'out.'"

When the Son sets us free, we are free indeed. Thanks be to God!

Luther Rose, stained glass David Hetland  

Clicks For Cures

Breast cancer has always been one of those issues that, for me, was something of an abstraction, even though statistically speaking I'm at a somewhat higher risk than average for developing it. Until Melissa Etheridge was diagnosed. Because we're about the same age. And seeing her on the Grammies, while she was undergoing chemo, hit it home: That could be me.

The Breast Cancer Site , one of the sister sites to The Hunger Site , is currently running a campaign to raise money for mammograms for poor/urban/minority women. Those of you familiar with these "donate by click" websites know that all you have to do is click a button on the website, and a small amount of money will be donated by the site underwriters to the cause in question. This isn't a joke; it's the real deal. And this month, every click on The Breast Cancer Site counts triple for fundraising. (You can only click once a day per computer.) So -- g'head. Click it.

I know it's easy to roll one's eyes at these "no pain" fundraising programs. It's not costing us anything, other than a couple minutes of our time; the contributions are miniscule; the websites are junked up with a lot of fundraising bling-bling, feeding the bottomless maw of our aquisitiveness. There's just nothing noble, or sacrificial, in it.

That may be true. But I look at it this way: If I opened my back door one day to find an emaciated child holding out a plate -- I'd feed her, wouldn't I? If I were confronted by a poor woman without health insurance who needed just a couple of bucks to finally get the money to get a mammogram -- I'd dig into my jacket pocket and give her enough money to make up the difference, wouldn't I? It's the same principle. If you know that you can help someone by doing something, even if the something is a dinky little insignificant thing -- you do it. It's a no-brainer.

So -- head over to The Breast Cancer Site and click the button to help fund a mammogram. And check out all those other websites that promote health and literacy and concern for the environment, and give them a click too.

 

More Service Stuff

I'm getting ready for my retreat tomorrow...getting packed (strange how much stuff I wind up packing for a retreat), packing two brownbag meals -- the Chik being on the economy lodging plan -- making sure I have all my assignments done. (I tried the Luther Seminary Communion bread recipe, and it didn't come out right either -- I think there's some sort of bad mojo going on with my baking capabilities -- so I wound up going to Plan C, supermarket pita bread. Sigh.)

I'm not going to write up my entire service here, because most of it is out of the hymnal, but here are the parts I tweaked:

The Confession: We confess that we have not loved you with our whole hearts, nor have we loved those whom you love. We confess that we forget "the least of these" among us. We confess that we take comfort in our prejudices, our complacency and our silence when you call us to mend the broken places in our world and to speak the liberating prophetic word, in your name and to your glory. Hear us, O God, for your mercy is great.

I chose Psalm 33 for the Psalm reading. I picked three short Scripture readings -- still, a somewhat heavy load for a Compline service, but it's my liturgy, so there: Isaiah 61:10-11; Hebrews 13:20-21; Matthew 14:14-16.

And you've read my benediction, in the post below.

Every time I read through my work I see things I want to change, but I am resisting the impulse. We'll see how it plays in Peoria (or, more accurately, out in the woods of northern Michigan).

Work of the People, Indeed!

I've just spent all evening working on the Friday-night service I was assigned for this weekend's retreat.

I've got to tell you -- this is hard. I used to be on my student parish worship committee back in my university days, and helped with a few home-grown liturgies, but this is the first one since my spiritual meanderings took me away, and then back, to the Church.

Our weekend is focused on justice. I wanted to address that...but I also wanted to do it in the context of the Compline, which to me doesn't exactly lend itself to the sort of revved-up prophetic words we're going to be hearing and discussing. But I somehow pulled it together, kind of. We'll see. This time tomorrow I might be Googling "Purpose-Driven Devotionals" or some such thing. (Just kidding.)

Anyway, here's my benediction, which I found elsewhere on the Internet:

A Franciscan Benediction
May God bless us with discomfort,
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
So that we may live deep within our hearts.

May God bless us with anger,
At injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people,
So that we may work for justice, freedom, and peace.

May God bless us with tears,
To shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation, and war,
So that we may reach out our hands to comfort them and turn their pain to joy.

And may God bless us with enough foolishness,
To believe that we can make a difference in this world,
So that we can do what others claim cannot be done.

The Write Stuff

Shameless promotion alert! If you scroll down the ol' sidebar, you will see an ad for A Light Blazes in the Darkness. This anthology of Advent essays, including a couple of my own, is a collaborative effort of the RevGalBlogPals webring, of which I'm a member. Not to pressure you into buying our book or anything, but all proceeds go toward Gulf Coast hurricane relief.

And if you're sitting there thinking, "Hmmm...I wonder if I could write a devotional" -- plans are in the works for a follow-up devotional book for the long "green and growing" season after Pentecost. If you might be interested in writing for our new book -- remember, there are a LOT of days in Ordinary Time -- send an e-mail to ordinarytimebook@hotmail.com for more information.

I believe very strongly that the intentional communities we form online are an exciting "new thing" that the Holy Spirit is working in our society. This endeavor is a good read, a wonderful way to introduce others to "holy blogdom," and you'll be helping out people who need it. So journey through Advent with us!

Theses I Will Ponder Now

Since I am going to be busier than Martin Luther in an indulgence-kicking contest this coming weekend, I thought I'd pass this challenge along now: A new inductee into our RevGalBlogPals webring, Jan of A Church For Starving Artists , asks us to name 95 Ways in Which the Church Needs to Change in 2005.

What a great question.

And I'm sure there are many great answers out there.

Feel free to share your ideas here. I'll help get you started .

"In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

1. The Church needs to reaffirm that Jesus Christ -- not itself as an institution, nor its current or potential members, nor particular ideologies -- is at the very center of its life and mission, its reason for being and its goal, and redirect its energies accordingly, actively listening and responding to Jesus' directive to "Follow me."

2. As a sign of unity within the Body of Christ, in the interest of justice and equity, and as a prophetic message to the dominant culture, the Church needs to affirm full inclusion of all the faithful in the active life of the Church, including leadership positions, and vigorously repudiate bigotry in all its forms both within and without.

3. The Church must reclaim the Reformation's emphasis on educating the laity in the Christian faith, and must create a culture in which religious formation is seen by clergy and laity alike as a lifelong endeavor -- an endeavor which will bring challenge and growth and, yes, at times discomfort.

4. The Church must reclaim the wisdom of its great saints in teaching, promoting and supporting spiritual disciplines that assist all in the Body in their individual and collective faith walks.

5. The Church must reclaim its calling as a nurturer of the fine arts, and encourage excellence and creativity offered to God's glory in service to the people of God and the rest of humanity.

6. The Church must affirm that both religion and science are in the business of telling the truth, and as such are allies, not enemies; and must strongly oppose attempts to create false dichotomies between spiritual truth and scientific truth.

Okay...now you only have 80-something theses to come up with. Have at it!

Question Time

I have written homework for this weekend's lay ministry retreat. Part of the retreat will be spent in class with our synodical bishop, talking about justice in the Church. To prepare for that, we've all been asked to write responses to these two questions:

What is your understanding of justice?

In what areas should the church be responsive to injustice?

Hmmm. Hmmm.

I know what I'm writing.

In the meantime...discuss amongst yourselves.

St. James of Jerusalem, Bishop and Martyr

James of Jerusalem’s feast day tends not to be a major red-letter day on the Lutheran calendar. Martin Luther had, as they say, issues with the emphasis on good works in the Epistle of James (thought to have been, if not actually written by James, then written for him); Luther’s friend Phil Melancthon had to do some major convincing to get Luther to consider that James’ and Paul’s respective viewpoints on grace and works were perhaps complementary and not contradictory, and even then I don’t think Marty really bought it.

So, anyway, perhaps it’s not surprising that I didn’t give St. James the blog-nod on his special day, this past Sunday. (That and my preoccupation with pancakes.) But in thinking about him, I’ve decided to take another look.

James is widely identified as Jesus’ brother – which, depending upon your theological point of view, may mean anything from biological brother to stepbrother to cousin. If this is true, then he was among those family members who didn’t get Jesus; who at one point even decided that Jesus was off his rocker, and came in an entourage to fetch him back home, presumably before he further shamed the family and got into more trouble. Yet James was one of those to whom the resurrected Jesus appeared. He became a leader of the nascent Christian movement, along with apostles Peter and John. James and Paul had a dust-up about the propriety of Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians eating together, which apparently was resolved when Paul successfully argued his case, and James and the others finally gave their blessing to Paul’s ministry. James was known throughout the early Church for his goodness, hence the moniker “James the Just,” and his piety; even his detractors among the Pharisees gave him good-behavior points for his observance of the Law. (Although James nonetheless wound up being martyred for his faith.)

As I’ve been thinking about James, and what his life may have to say to us centuries later, one of the things that comes to mind is grace...and the freedom to be wrong. How would you like to be, not only one of the many who’d gotten it wrong about Jesus, but one who was also Jesus’ own flesh and blood? I wonder how often, after Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearance to James, that James replayed the details of their life together, and the events of their last few years of apparent estrangement, thinking of all the times that he’d been dismissive of or disgusted with or ashamed of his brother. How many times do you think he pounded himself in the head? D’oh! I know that’s what I would have done. But what went on during that reunion of brothers that transformed and empowered James to become one of the great leaders of the early Church? And how did that experience of being wrong in a really big way inform James’ later experience of coming to the realization that the Holy Spirit might be moving the young Church in an unexpected, broadly inclusive direction, and having the courage to publicly change his mind?

James reminds us that we don’t always get it right. And that, thank God, we don’t have to. Jesus keeps showing up nonetheless, pulling us back on our feet and setting us in a right direction. That’s really good news. Thank you, James of Jerusalem, for reminding us of that.

St. James of Jerusalem, Bishop and Martyr 

In-a-Gadda-Da-Pita, Baby

This is what happens when little grade-school nerds grow up: One of my jobs at my retreat this weekend is bringing the Communion bread. So, around 6:00 p.m. last night, I get this brilliant idea: I'll make it myself! And then I get an even more brilliant idea: I'll make pita bread! I've never made pita bread before, but that's just a minor complication in an excellent kitchen adventure.

I get out my trusty old friend Uprisings: The Whole Grain Baker's Book, an artifact from my crunchy-granola college days. I make a sponge with two teaspoons of yeast, a cup of warm water, a tablespoon of honey and a cup of whole wheat flour. I let that sit for awhile, then stir it down and add about 3 and a quarter more cups of flour, a tablespoon and a half of oil and a half-teaspoon of salt. I knead that for awhile, then let it sit for awhile, then punch it down, roll it into about 5 balls, roll the balls into flat circles with a rolling pin and let the circles rise for about 45 minutes.

Now comes the tricky part. Pita bread has to be baked in a really, really, really hot oven, or the pockets don't pop. My recipe calls for 500 degrees -- the hottest temperature my oven is capable of. I don't think I've ever cranked up the oven to 500 degrees before. But I do it, placing a flat pan on the lowest rack to preheat.

The moment of truth: The oven light goes off and I quickly slip two dough rounds onto my preheated pan. I watch through the oven window: Yes! They're puffing up! Whoo-hoo! Another kitchen first for moi! I imagine myself pulling a Martha Stewart, smugly explaining to my admiring friends, "Oh, they look like they're a lot of work, but they're really quite easy and fast to make."

When the rounds come out of the oven I tap them on top. They sound promisingly hollow. But then I slice into one -- What has it got in its pocketses? -- and find...solid bread. I mean...it's a decent whole-wheat bread. But it's just...bread. Darn.

A serving of humility to go with my complex carbohydrates.

If anyone out there has ever managed to pop a pocket in your pitas, let me know how you did that. In the meantime, I think I need to go to Plan B...boughten bread.

Strange breadfellows 

Tough Love

"We Christians are really lucky," exclaimed a pastor of my acquaintance, preaching on this text one Sunday. "Our Jewish friends have 613 -- 613 -- commandments to follow, and we only have two!"

The joke, of course, was on us. Because, as the pastor explained, the two we have, that we've been given in today's Gospel reading, are the basis for Judaism's 613 mitzvot; they are the why to their what.

What does it look like, do you think, when someone loves God with all her heart...all her soul...all her mind...all her strength? What does it look like when someone loves his neighbors, looks out for his neighbors, helps his neighbors, in exactly the same way that he takes care of himself?

I have to tell you, I don't know what it would look like if I did those things, because I don't. Not all the time. Every great once in awhile I will experience perhaps a flash, a fleeting moment, where those things may be the case, but the very act of noting that introduces an element of inward-turning that effectively ends that moment.

Just two commandments: Love God with your whole heart. Love other people the way you love yourself. How difficult can that be?

Shema, stained glass, Temple Valley Beth Shalom, Encino, CA 

Jesus Washing His Disciples' Feet, Tiffany, Montclair UCC 

Diary of a Delinquent Churchgoer

I stayed home from church today.

It was the one Sunday this month that we weren't doing anything special at our parish, and/or where I didn't have a job to do front and center. My mother -- for whom getting ready for church on Sunday mornings is equivalent to preparing for an ascent up K2; that's what happens to you when you hit your 80's -- wasn't keen on going to church today. I'm headed on retreat this coming weekend, which means a double-dose of church. The aching Gordian knot in my upper back, which only goes away on weekends, was still in the process of loosening up Saturday night. And I wanted pancakes.

So that is what we did...stayed in bed until 8:00 a.m. Then we had pancakes. They were very good. Then I prayed the Morning Prayer, and noted with irony the first appointed Psalm ("I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go the house of the Lord'..."), and the Old Testament lesson, from the Book of Haggai, talking about the complacent and irreligious lolling around in their own houses while the house of the Lord lies in ruins. Yeah, I get it.

But sometimes -- sigh -- you just need to loll.

LC's Friday Five

What was the last CD you purchased?
"Guard Us Sleeping," by the Brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist

Did you like it?
Yes.

Is it the kind of music you would call your favorite?
Let's say it's on my short list.

What was the first album (CD for you youngsters) you ever owned?
The Beatles' classic "Revolver," which an extremely indulgent maiden aunt (who otherwise wouldn't have known the Fab Four from Fab detergent)bought me for Christmas one year when I was about 13, because she knew I liked the Beatles. (This was back in the day, kids, when grocery stores had bins of LP records; that's where she'd found my album.)

And what was your favorite cut from that recording?
I'm not sure I had a favorite...I remember enjoying all the musical experimentation -- George's sitar music, the electronic monkeying-around on "Tomorrow Never Knows."

Friday Botanical Blogging

A very Maxfield Parrish moment outside our satellite office this morning at about 8:00 as the sun was still rising. This tree is across the street from our building; it's absolutely gorgeous.

We are expecting wind, rain and even snow showers this weekend, meaning a soggy end to most of our autumn color. Ah, well -- it was lovely while it lasted.

Fleeting autumn beauty 

Is Dis a Movement?...

Folks who know me know that I frequently pound on my bully pulpit about Lutherans' lack of emphasis on adult spiritual formation. ("There she goes again!...") Well...yesterday my heart was cheered, perusing the Fisher's Net website for continuing education, to find an upcoming online book discussion of Lisa Dahill's Truly Present: Practicing Prayer in the Liturgy . You bet I've signed up for this. Check it out.

The Feast of St. Luke, Evangelist

For that beloved physician
All praise, whose Gospel shows
The healer of the nations,
The one who shares our woes.
Your wine and oil, O Savior,
Upon our spirits pour,
And with true balm of Gilead
Anoint us evermore. -- Horatio Bolton Nelson, "By All Your Saints in Warfare"

Almighty God, you inspired your servant Luke the physician to reveal in his Gospel the love and healing power of your Son. Give your Church the same love and power to heal, to the glory of your name; through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.

St. Luke, Edward Burne-Jones, Lanercost Priory, 1877 

Bugged By the Common Cup?

Not really, according to this study .

The Apples of My Eye

Inspired by a post on Feminary about gleaning fruit, I took Mom and the dog on a leaf-peeping/apple-hunting excursion around our county yesterday afternoon...sampling wild apples growing along the side of the road. It has been a fantastic growing season for all kinds of fruit, and even the neglected "volunteer" roadside trees -- perhaps the products of a farmer's or schoolkid's discarded core lobbed over the fence many years ago -- are bent over with apples. Some of the trees were next to farm fields, or even at the edge of wooded areas; one tree grew in front of a long-abandoned township hall building. When we got home we had a little tasting party, and some of these were very good...the little ones you see in the photo below were especially tasty. I would hope that some of our financially hurting families in the area -- and there are many -- might avail themselves of some of this free bounty.

Blessed are you, our Sovereign God, Creator of the Universe, who brings forth fruit from the earth.

A different kind of road apple

What Bible is He Reading?...

What we're trying to show really is that following Christ is normal, balanced, intelligent, fun, family-centered, which is what it's supposed to be. -- Luis Palau, interviewed at his Evangelism Festival at the National Mall, as broadcast on Religion and Ethics Newsweekly on PBS.

Lord, have mercy.

"Jesus Rejected at Nazareth," Alexandre Bida 

In God's Treasury

Adam, the first human being, was created as a single person to show forth the greatness of the Ruler who is beyond all rulers, the Blessed Holy One. For if a human ruler mints many coins from one mold, they all carry the same image, they all look the same. But the Blessed Holy One shaped all human beings in the Divine Image, as Adam was…And yet not one of them resembles another. (Sanhedrin 38a)

Well, here I was, all ready to wax eloquent (or at least wax) on Sunday's Gospel lesson. And then I found this .

There's really not a lot to add to Rabbi Waskow's essay. As freed, forgiven, called people of God, we know who we are, and we know Whose we are, as Jesus reminds his interrogators in the Gospel text. The question we can now ask ourselves, the one we can live into from now on, is: How can we, "minted" in God's image and redeemed by Christ, gratefully and lovingly respond to God's tremendous investment in us?


A denarius (photo from Ancient Greek and Roman Coins) 

Hey Sister, Go Sister, Soul Sister, Go Sister

Teresa of Avila is something of an unknown quantity in most Lutheran circles...but today is her commemoration day.

A plaster saint she ain't: A rambunctious teenager...a reluctant convent student who wound up running away from home back to the convent...a reformer who sought to bring discipline, purpose and equity back to a religious order that had become a class-stratified ecclesiastical Cinderella story, with nuns from rich families living a sort of nonstop debutante ball all day while their poorer sisters were kept segregated and marginalized...a teacher and spiritual director...an intellectual and mystic whose spiritual experiences and ideas often got her on the wrong side of the powers that be...a Doctor of the Church (posthumously, of course)...an individual crazy in love with Christ...and a tough broad with a sense of humor, who according to one story could even get away with back-sassing the Lord himself. (Teresa, on the lam from her latest tussle with the church authorities, falls off her ride. As she's sprawled in the road, cartoon stars spinning around her head, bemoaning her circumstances, she experiences Christ telling her, "This is what happens to my friends." Teresa to Christ: "That's why you have so few of them.") A right-on woman, in other words; someone good to know.

Almighty God, we praise you for the women and men you have sent to call the Church to its tasks and renew its life, such as your servant Teresa. Raise up in our own day teachers and prophets inspired by your Spirit, whose voices will give strength to your Church and proclaim the reality of your Reign; through your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

St. Teresa of Avila by Janet McKenzie  

My Saturday Ten

As many of you know from reading about my Five Idiosyncrasies, I am an out-and-proud procrastinator, so it will probably not surprise you that I am a day late with this week's RevGal Friday Five, and a week late with the last Friday Five. Well, now you will learn much more about me than you probably thought you would. Or that you really would ever want to. Anyhow...for the next several paragraphs, it's all about me:

What is your earliest memory of church?
I remember dangling my little Mary-Janed feet from a pew of Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, in the neighborhood where I grew up -- a quaint old brick church, still standing but, sadly, unused and looking the worse for wear these days -- enjoying the sung liturgy and fascinated by the large painting of Jesus the Good Shepherd up at the front of the sanctuary; a kind, welcoming Jesus, with a Scripture verse in German,in gold Fraktur print at the bottom.

How old were you when you first took Communion?
Fourteen, and newly confirmed, with smarting earlobes from my newly pierced ears -- my confirmation present from the 'rents -- terrified that the wafer would lodge on my upper palate and I wouldn't be able to swallow it.

What is your favorite Bible verse/passage?
The entire Gospel of John, particularly Jesus' farewell discourse.

What verse/passage nicks you uncomfortably?
The sermons and parables in the Gospel of Matthew, where Jesus is setting the bar really, really, really high in terms of our loving and forgiving the people around us. Gulp.

What's your favorite hymn or praise song? (Please tell me it's not "Shine, Jesus, Shine." Some of our members will cry.)Don't worry; that's not it. (Oy veh.) No, it's really Earth and All Stars...the lines about the "loud boiling test tubes" and "loud building workers" and "loud praying members" choke me up every time.

Just kidding.

You know, it really depends on what day it is; I hate being pinned down to just one hymn. Holy, Holy, Holy, Beautiful Savior , O Sacred Head Now Wounded , At the Name of Jesus , "All Creatures of Our God and King" and Immortal, Invisible, God only Wise are on the short list, though...I mean, relatively speaking, since it's obviously not a short short list. Oh -- and I can't forget A Mighty Fortress -- which I've found to be a comforting, empowering hymn at times when I am feeling particularly beaten up and disheartened over The Troubles in the Church; an appropriation that I'm sure would send some of the folks on the other side into foaming fits of righteous apoplexy.

The weather in your location:
A lovely, breezy fall day, about 60 degrees, sunshine alternating with overcast skies and a few sprinkles. Autumn has been very slow in coming here because of unseasonably warm temperatures, but the leaves around my house seem to have colored up, as we say, overnight.

Where you are typing this?
From my mother's chair in our living room. My mother, in turn, is in what we refer to as the dog's chair (picture Frasier's dad's battered La-Z-Boy, and you have some idea of the condition of this piece of furniture), because the dog wants her there with him. He's quite insistent about this; he herds her there until she sits down and then whines until she picks him up and puts him next to her. Good thing he's a Maltese and not, say, a Great Dane.

Where you might like to be sitting if you could be anywhere? Oh, let's see...I'd like to be sitting in the Phoenix Cafe, in a quiet, mostly tourist-free downtown Beulah, Michigan, with a mug of their delicious locally roasted Fair Trade coffee and one of their fantastic ginger scones, grooving to some jazz. (Actually, I'm sitting here with my own cup of Fair Trade coffee, grooving to some jazz, so I'm halfway there.) Or maybe I'd like to be sitting on a bench taking a breather while walking down one of the area Rail Trails.

A chore you have to do this weekend: Getting my blood drawn for my six-month cholesterol test, mowing the lawn and washing outside windows. Two down, one to go.

Something delightful you will do or would like to do this weekend:
I haven't reached my leaf-peeping quotient yet this year; I'd like to just ride around and do that. Maybe tomorrow.

Friday Botanical Blogging

Along the road on my walking route 


Asters along the road 


More local color 

"No Hands But Ours..."

Blogfriends Annie and *Christopher have been thinking and praying about our grace-ful response, as people of God, to the disasters that have been buffeting the planet. They have challenged their readers, in the Anglican Communion and beyond, to pray and to work on behalf of all who are suffering. Here is their letter:

Dear brothers and sisters in Christ,

Fasting, almsgiving, and prayer have a long foundation in the Christian tradition stemming from our Jewish matrix. This triple counsel calls us to share signs of tangible grace with one another, reminding each of us to live in such a way that our very lives declare “God is gracious and bountiful, generous and merciful.”

Our holiness is found in loving our neighbor as ourselves. Many saints past knew this. Fasting was not simply a matter of individual piety, but a matter of personal responsibility to sisters and brothers with whom we are intertwined. And so we find St. Catherine of Sienna fasting and giving her meals away to the hungry. We find Desert Elders selling their woven wares to purchase food not for themselves, but for those without sustenance.

In the last few weeks, a series of natural disasters have ravaged the earth, striking brothers and sisters far and near. Some leaders within the Christian community have taken this as a sign of God’s wrath, singling out one or another sort and condition of human being for blame. Others are speaking up about taking care of our own first.

Rather than seeking to lay blame, to raise dividing walls for deciding who is our neighbor, or to get caught up in speculation about the end of days, we choose to discern in the signs of the times, that now is always the time for solidarity with those who are suffering. The signs of the times call us to live graciously as our Heavenly Father is gracious toward us.

To this end, we pledge to be signs of God’s generosity through fasting, prayer, and almsgiving in solidarity in a particular way with our brothers and sisters: To begin each day with the Lord’s Prayer, remembering that the Bread of Heaven at Holy Eucharist is intricately tied to striving so that all shall have daily bread; to abstain from a meal or simplify our eating habits each day; and to give the cost of this meal or savings from simplified eating to Episcopal Relief and Development or equivalent relief organizations for the work of disaster relief amongst our sisters and brothers both far and near.

At a time when our Communion is impaired by conflict and many search far and wide for signs of God’s tangible grace, we invite you to join us in the work of Christ, living into our Baptismal Covenant as we seek to serve Christ in all peoples, loving our neighbor as ourselves.


lux Christi vobis,
*Christopher and Annie

To all my fellow Lutherans, and to others of good will, reading this blog: I challenge you, as I have challenged myself, to join in this effort. I know that many of us are laboring under tight budgets, anxiety about our jobs and life commitments, and other stressors that often make us feel disempowered and overwhelmed; that tend to turn us inward. Yet Christ's "Follow me" is a call to follow him into the heart of the world's suffering and want. But he also promises to stand by us, to walk with us, and to give us his peace -- a peace that helps us "give until it hurts" with joy and gratitude and compassion.

So please feel free to copy this letter and issue your own challenge on your weblog, and/or link to this post, and/or copy the artwork. Please share this message with other online friends and favorite websites; pass it along to your faith community. Please share information about how to contribute to your church's relief agency, and other agencies helping disaster survivors. And please share your experiences as you undertake the suggested disciplines, as an encouragement to others.

Not only do I thank you for taking this letter, and my own postscript, to heart, but I thank God for you; because I know that, through this amazing online community, through your hands becoming Christ's hands in the world, God's love and mercy will be made real for many. Soli Deo gloria!


 

Giving Peace a Chance

Good news: My online friend and I have resolved our conflict. I'm glad not to be sad about this anymore.