Life

Life.

It's hot.

It's November, almost.

Political ads annoy me.

I have nothing to say.

My keyboard "O" keeps falling off.

Wonderful people grace my world.

I'm behind on homework.

Christians should tithe.

Tmrrw, cld.

Life.

Really?...

I just watched a commercial for a home healthcare business...a lovely brunette helps an elderly woman move around her apartment, vacuums, cooks, and sits and visits with her.  The tag line from the elderly woman is "It's just like having a friend."  Really?

I talked with my husband this morning about a church survey that shows that self-described "committed" churchgoers today attend worship twice a month.  Really?

Read an article in the NYTimes this morning on the popularity of "flock comedies"...a new genre of sitcom that the writer postulates is popular because of the extended time post-education and pre-children that is spent in "flocks" of friends.  He then describes parents who spend the same amount of time with their children as previous generations, but work full time.  What has to go is "friends."  So we watch TV to replace the friendships we no longer have time for.  Really?

Really. I can't help but think sometimes that it is time to reclaim our lives from this insane culture.  If we can demand healthy food options and green options as a culture, why can't we also demand sanity options.  Why do our elderly have to hire friends to care for them as they age?  Why do our lives revolve around every activity on Sunday but the one we claim is most important in our lives, or why do we let the rest of the weekend get so full that we feel we can do nothing on Sunday but "rest."  Why don't we have friends that actually can come to our homes?  Why, why, why?

My heart is a bit achy today.  I grieve youth who don't develop relationships with their peers at church because they are never there.  I grieve churches who flounder on Sunday mornings because attendance is sporadic.  I grieve community lost, disciplines not practiced, potential never reached.  I grieve the promise of abundant life that God holds out for us that we ignore because we are so distracted by demands that deplete us.

Is this the way we want to live?  Really?

Seasons...

I have spent much of my life in agricultural areas.  My husband is always pining for some big-city-life...but I am reminded again in this flat, farmland of the seasonal nature of life.

A rhythm exists here that you can't find in NYC...because you can't hurry nature.  Fields prepared in the spring hold the promise of new life...those seeds are planted...but no farmer can control whether they actually come up (despite the guarantee-to-grow on the seed packet).  The active growing season is exciting and requires hard work and daily investment in the field...though farmers tell you again that they are caregivers, not growers.  The life is still miraculous.

Now is harvest...seems pretty good this year.  Field after field transforms from busyness to fallow in about a day.  A plethora of farm workers and machines descend on the field for a short period of intense activity.  Then, nothing...quiet...sometimes regrowth...but regrowth that struggles and never really fulfills its potential.  Sometimes fields are plowed under....expanses of non-productive dirt resting under the harvest moon.

And then all is quiet.  For a full season, we rest.  Imagining for the next season happens.  Some preparation is inevitable.  Mostly rest.  Even if scurrying and planting and fertilizing was happening, nothing would grow.  It's not the right season.  Rest...pray...heal...imagine.  It's the season...

And then...resurrection...

What a gift.

Aging...

We are in McGehee, Arkansas, to celebrate the wedding of Natalie and Josh...eldest child of friends we made while Carl was serving his first church, and we were having first children and learning to be adults.  We were embraced in the arms of this tiny town in the Mississippi delta, nurtured and challenged, and then blessed as we moved into a different area of the world.
  
It's been a weird trip.  First, it's hard to believe any of us are old enough to have children ready to marry.  Natalie and Josh are about the age we were when we move to McGehee.  We are the age of those blessed saints that enveloped us with love.  Carl got a bit sloppy with the plane reservations, and instead of leaving at 8 am on Tuesday, we left at 8 pm...arriving in Little Rock at 1 am on Wednesday to rent a car and crash in a hotel.

I am not one to care what kind of car we drive.  POS cars (and if you don't know what that is, I'm not telling you on a blog...) have been par for the course and it really doesn't matter.  But at 1 am on Wednesday, I am standing in the airport parking lot looking at a wine-red Mercury Grand Marquis, feeling rather sick to my stomach and wondering if I have the spine to tell Carl he has to go back and get a different car.  I didn't tell him...but as I slid into the leather of the front seat...I know I aged 30 more  years.  The seats sit low...not helping the feeling I was some shrunken old lady tottering into the end stage of life...

Dinner tonight is with the young couple who are now pastor and wife of this lovely congregation.  They are the same age we were when we were here; we are the age of the stalwarts who kept the congregation functioning when we were the young couple.  My brain is completely rattled.

I am startlingly reminded of the march of time--the saints who came before, the saints who serve, the saints who will come after.  Natalie and Josh, Kenny and Sarah, you are blessed to be in this place that so often looks and feels God-forsaken, but provides the deepest care, feeding, and nurture of the soul--much like the rich delta land that encompasses it.  For those came before, who "raised" us...we are grateful and blessed and we lift you in prayers of gratitude every day.

And for those whose brains are rattling with mine...resisting the Grand Marquis while celebrating the ability to share the love we were given...well, all I can say is God is good...

Wayyyyy to Much

Problem:  Sadie Mae is out of dog food

Solution:  Go to the store to buy dog food.

Problem: The fish-based food she eats to control a skin condition caused probably by overbreeding (she       was an adoption for us...) is not available due to a manufacturing problem.

Solution:  Buy something else.

Problem:  Four aisles of choices...FOUR aisles...FOUR AISLES!!!

Solution: Sigh...

Problem:  Hungry people in the world.

Solution: Four aisles of dog food choices?

Problem:  Sin...

Solution:  Open for discussion...

Today, I'm walking CROP WALK to do a little something...I figure up and down four aisles will just about cover the three mile route...

Glee and God...

You know that any TV show that starts with the prayer, "Dear Grilled Cheesus" has to hold some true potential.  Jesus' image on the grilled cheese, questions raised about church and its relationship to GLTB persons, what is sacred, whether God exists...pretty heavy stuff for a pop culture show.

The joy, I suppose, is that the questions were raised.  The sadness was the only answers revealed were through pop culture songs--not that there's anything wrong with pop culture songs--but really?  we can only find secular music to express thoughts about who God is and how God works in our world?  I was actually eager to see which of the multitude of beautiful spirituals, deep hymns, gorgeous works of grief and hope, would be sung in the church.  What did we get?  Bridge Over Troubled Water...

It distresses me that while questions are asked, few will seriously consider church to seek answers.  Now, frankly, there are churches that I might walk into seeking answers--then walk out of disgusted.  But how hard is it to communicate that every church is different.  The argument that we can't get ourselves together to agree on things certainly is quoted ubiquitously when people don't want to go to church.  Why, when they hear one thing they don't agree with, do they claim we are all the same?

We have to stand up and speak the truth.  I really think it is our responsibility to talk about the existence of churches who seek answers in inclusive, humble ways--churches who welcome those seeking answers to difficult problems--churches who don't claim to be God, but seek to serve God--churches who seek to follow Jesus' example of loving neighbor and serving others.

But when judgmental/crazy/just-plain-stupid churches get the publicity (and they do because they are much more interesting in an hour show than inclusion/seeking/working-together-til-we-solve-the-issue-but-not-in-an-hour-churches), we sit silently--tacitly accepting and promoting the "wrongness" of the church.

Kurt's definition of human relationship as sacred at the end of the show holds some true appeal.  It's always compelling to define sacred in something you can touch and hold onto.  That is the fundamental power of sacraments--we can see and taste and feel the elements that point us to God.  But what happens if Kurt's father dies?  Does the sacred die too?  I think the relationship between Kurt and his father is, indeed, sacred, because it holds a connection to the divine.  It parallels/reflects what God has done with and for us--it is not sacred in its own existence between two humans.

We are God's children.  God "holds our hand."  And would Kurt have experienced the "sacred" as his father squeezed his hand if they had not had the "I accept you" conversation in the first season?  Would a human relationship maintain its sacred nature if violence or abuse was present?

But my point, if not lost in all the scattershot ways I responded to the episode, is this.  Thanks, Glee, for opening a conversation with the world.  We'll chuckle at "dear Grilled Cheeseus" and we'll think about the songs you chose to reflect faith.  But we'll answer the question not with the question "What if God was one of us?", but with the knowledge that God was one of us...God is one of us.  Step up, brothers and sisters, and speak the grace we know in Jesus Christ.