Category: Faith

Looking for Advent

Looking for Advent

There’s nothing like getting the flu for Thanksgiving to get Advent off to a slow start. Until this weekend, I felt like the beginning of the holiday season had pretty much missed me.

But I’m getting caught up.

I spent Saturday evening at a holiday potluck party with old friends and their families at a church I used to attend, and it felt like a Thanksgiving do-over. There’s a big, red wreath on my door, and travel plans to see family at Christmas have been solidified.

And today it snowed all day, in pretty, big, wet flakes that covered every branch and limb. It’s beautiful – our first snow of the year.

Advent is about waiting, preparing. In the middle of the holiday bustle, it asks for quiet.

The quiet of falling snow. Of a cat curled up for a nap. Of a warm cup of tea. Of noticing. Of wondering.

How can joy come to fill us to overflowing if we haven’t first cleared space for it?

The flu didn’t leave me much choice about clearing space this year. Being sick will do that to me. Body and mind won’t let me do much more than rest. The normal stuff of life goes on pause and fades into the background as the simple rhythms of sleep and wake, food and water, come to the forefront.

Nothing makes me present like being sick. After forty-plus years, I’m still trying to absorb the lessons in that. How being mindful of my breathing becomes natural, when the rest of the time it’s nearly impossible. How anticipation no longer rules my thoughts, and frustration with all I may be missing out on doesn’t arise.

In the midst of those gifts, it’s also hard. As an extrovert, the isolation of illness can be depressing, especially when I’m feeling well enough not to be sleeping most of the time. And as a single, it can be scary to wonder who can help take care of you. I’m so grateful for the friends who checked on me and brought medicine and groceries. But there were times I would’ve given a lot to have someone to bring me a glass of water instead of having to find the wobbly energy to get it myself. And in the night, when my temperature was spiking, I couldn’t help but wonder when anyone would know if I lost consciousness. If a dangerous fever came while I was asleep, who would know? (I’m grateful for phone alarms and for apps like kitestring that will send a text to a contact if you don’t check in within a prearranged time.)

There’s something in Advent that’s about aloneness to me. The aloneness of John in the desert. The aloneness of the pregnant Mary with an unbelievable story. Aloneness did not last forever for either of them, but it was there for a time.

And so I’ve entered into Advent, forced to be quiet and alone and present, and looking for the lessons.

Work and Pray

Work and Pray

It’s been a hard week, and I don’t expect that to end anytime soon.

I live in the most diverse neighborhood in the country. I have friends and neighbors who are afraid for their lives and their families. I’m afraid for them, too. One friend who lives a few blocks from me said she wants to wrap our neighborhood up in bubble wrap, to protect them. There’s a lot I’d love to protect us all from right now.

And I come from Trump country. I worked for a Republican in the “Gingrich Revolution” over twenty years ago. I know that many family and old friends may have voted for Trump while still disgusted by his character and words. And I know that many of them felt this kind of fear eight years ago.

Fear doesn’t have to be rational to be real.

The outward expression of my faith has changed over the past decade and a half. It doesn’t look the way it used to in many ways. Following Jesus called me down different paths than many of my family and friends who also love and follow Jesus.

I trust him with that.

And I pray. I tell him my fears and doubts and hopes and wishes and loves. And I do my best to listen.

I pray, “Thy kingdom come and thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, even if I’m missing it altogether.” I pray, “I believe; help my unbelief!” I pray, “Father, forgive them – they don’t know what they are doing.” And sometimes, “Father, forgive them, even though they know exactly what they are doing.” I pray “Lord, have mercy!” and “Help!” a lot. And I breathe, “Thank you!”

As an only child and life-long single, who else would I talk to most of the time? I can’t ever remember not talking to Jesus. It seems he likes listening to my stuff, and he can handle my anger and doubts.

There are a lot of people talking about praying this week. And they’re not wrong – those of us who pray should be praying, for ourselves and others and for our leaders.

But we shouldn’t let our praying hold us back from doing.

Yes, everything is in God’s hands, but he’s seen fit to put a great many things in ours. Jesus prayed to sustain himself for the work. He prayed and did stuff. And he told us that after he was gone, we would do even greater things. Then he left, and now we are called “his body.”

We have a lot of his work to do. Proclaim good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind. Set the oppressed free (Luke 4:18).

For followers of Jesus, that’s our work. Whoever you voted for, this is your work.

Too many of our neighbors got a very clear message this week from white Christian America: we don’t want you. Just because that’s not what you believe or how you feel doesn’t mean that’s not the message we sent.

We’ve got a lot of work to do.

Stand with those being attacked – even if you think they’re wrong. Jesus did (John 8:1-11). Really listen to the disadvantaged, and be willing to let them change your mind (Matthew 15:21-28). Hang out with people who would never be comfortable in church. Speak up for those who are on the margins of your community. Look around – who’s missing? Find them (Luke 15).

Don’t just pray for them. Don’t just pray about it. Do the work.

Taking Another Way

Taking Another Way

I have not chosen the easy way.

Following Jesus to the place where I affirm and advocate for my transgender and gay and bisexual and lesbian and queer friends has been one of the most challenging and at times painful things I have ever done. It certainly hasn’t been a “feel-good” path.

And I am not where I am because I don’t really know the arguments against same-sex marriage. A member of my family literally wrote the book on those arguments, and I made them myself for many years. Sincerely, and with a desire to be both faithful and loving.

I am also not here because I think I’m smarter than the Scriptures. I’ve sought a good education in the Bible and theology – from a highly respected conservative seminary – and my respect for the gift God has given us in the Bible has only grown. So has my awareness of the assumptions we bring to it, and I want to do my best to engage what’s been given to us on its own terms rather than mine or anyone else’s.

I do believe I know things now I didn’t know before. I’ve met people, loved them, and lived life alongside them. I’ve realized that many things I once believed are only partial truths – there’s more. And I know there’s more than I know now. The more I learn, the more aware I become of how much I don’t know.

Life was simpler before, and easier. But also smaller.

There are many people I love on the path I chose to leave, and I know they don’t understand. The thirty year old me wouldn’t have understood either. I would’ve thought I understood – that this me was rebellious or at least deceived. That this me had to have lost the faith to stay faithful. There was no other explanation. Looking at where I am now, I would have thought I must have sacrificed truth to emotion.

I get it. I do. Which doesn’t mean it hurts any less to be judged in that way.

I wish those who do not agree or understand could trust my love for Jesus and my relationship with him. I wish they (you?) could continue to trust the work of God you’ve seen in my life all along, even if you can’t understand how it’s brought me here. I wish you could trust the fruit of the Spirit in me – the increasing love, joy, peace, faith. The shalom – wholeness and integration – that has blossomed. The way that as love has grown and expanded in me, fear has diminished.

I wish you could see, but I understand why you can’t.

Just know, it wasn’t the easy way.

Invitation and Calling

Invitation and Calling

A couple of months ago, at a friend’s ordination, the pastor giving the charge spoke of a “calling” as an invitation.

I’ve been mulling over that ever since.

It’s a very different view of calling than what I’ve had. As a kid growing up in the church, we were encouraged to “go forward” during the alter call if we felt “called” to be a preacher (boys only), Christian school teacher, missionary, or missionary teacher. Or we could just feel called to “ministry” more generally. I even knew a few girls who claimed a call to be a pastor’s wife (a second-degree “call” that never made a lot of sense to me).

Those calls were something meant to be obeyed. I remember stories about men called to preach when they were young who followed a different path in the business world, only to come to their latter years convinced they’d done the wrong thing and wasted their lives.

A call was a trump card – not to be argued with. The marching orders of the God who designed you for his purposes.

But what was that supposed to look like? Sound like? A voice calling in the night? A strong desire or interest? Some kind of inner sense or drawing?

I wasn’t sure. I knew my daddy had felt called to the mission field,  had surrendered himself to go anywhere, and when he found himself confined to the Lazyboy in our living room by ALS, Lou Gerhig’s Disease, he concluded that chair was his “anywhere” and shared Jesus with every person who came through the door until he died.

I knew there was a sign above the inside of our church door (and the same one hung over the inside of our front door at home): “You are now entering the mission field.”

I knew things didn’t always turn out the way you thought they would, and I didn’t know how a “call” fit into that.

I was probably 9 or 10 when I walked that aisle. I dedicated my life to be a missionary, or it may have been a missionary teacher. I didn’t hear a voice. Did I have a strong desire? I had been surrounded by missionaries my whole life. They were heroes. And I found other places and cultures fascinating.

And these were the options I knew.

I also loved Jesus and wanted others to know him. I still do. I don’t know if that constituted a call then or now, but I know it’s led me on a journey I never could have anticipated.

Loving Jesus led me to try to listen to and love others, and the world came to look like a very different place than it did when I was that girl walking that aisle.

I always thought a call was something so clear that any other choice could only be disobedience – rebellion. And I never felt that kind of call.

Instead, I had invitation after invitation. Invitations to explore the world, to study, to ask hard questions (of both God and myself), to love.

The invitations never felt like ultimatums. I had a choice, and God would be with me either way, would bless me and use me either way. But one of those options would be a path of lesser faith.

The safer path versus the scarier, riskier path – the one I didn’t know where might lead.

Slowly I learned to follow Jesus in those riskier paths. Have I gotten it wrong sometimes? I’m sure I have. I know I’ve failed the challenge at times. I’m still learning to trust.

Those invitations have led me to places I never thought I’d go, and brought me to choices so clear I’d nearly name them a “call.”

The old call was something to brace for more than to rejoice in.

The invitation of Jesus to step out in faith? Sometimes that means bracing, too – bracing for the disapproval of those who love me but don’t understand. The invitations I’ve heard have sounded a bit crazy at the time.

I’ve come to see them as the invitation of the one who said we’d be taught far more than he had time to teach us (or we were ready to hear). The invitation of the one who said we’d do far greater things than even he had done.

That’s a preposterous invitation. It calls out, promising far beyond what we can imagine. Like music barely heard, a beautiful song in harmonies strange to our ears, coaxing us further up and further in, where there’s always more.

It’s less an invitation down the aisle to the front than back out the door and into the world, where there are untold altars and opportunities to join in God’s joyful work in the world.

Inviting us to come dance with the one who is the endlessly knowable mystery of life and love.