Sondra Willobee

The Question

     On January 11, I was at a dinner party with some writing friends. Having eagerly awaited this post-holiday gathering, we swapped stories of writing projects and family fun. But midway through the meal, talk turned to events of the previous week.

     News had been bleak.

     On January 6, the anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol. On January 7, the death of Renee Good in Minneapolis. On January 8, the shooting of two people by a border patrol agent in Portland, Oregon. 

     Since the party, in another incident in Minneapolis, ICE officers broke down the door of a home, dragged a man out, refusing to allow him to get dressed or to retrieve his papers, and took him to a remote location for questioning. The interrogator said, "Where are your papers?" and the man answered, "They wouldn't let me get them."

     He was a U.S. citizen.

     On January 24, Alex Pretti was killed by federal agents in Minneapolis. Ten shots were fired.

     Ten.

     This thought wakes me in the night: If I go to a protest in my community, will I get shot? I imagine bullets flying and protestors crumpled on the ground. Several years ago, Ed and I gave our children copies of our will and burial instructions. We'd always assumed that the highest risk for mutual demise was a car accident or doing something stupid in a canoe.

     Not being shot in our own streets.

     These horrors are happening in a nation that was once a beacon for democratic movements around the world.

     One of my friends at the party, someone I treasure for her calm strength and fierce commitment to justice, asked us with anguish in her voice, "What should we do?"

     She had our attention.

     Clearing her throat, she stood up and read a poem, "Building the World We Believe In" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer.  

     Of course she read us a poem. We're writers. 

     My friend's anguished question reminded me of an incident in the third chapter of the gospel of Luke which took place, as Luke tells us, "in the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee." Luke wants us to understand the political situation in Jesus's homeland when Jesus and his cousin, John the Baptist, began their work. Judea was an occupied territory under the iron fist of Rome. Taxes were high, and many people lived on the edge of starvation. Roman rulers demonstrated their tight control by taking holy objects from the Temple in Jerusalem and locking them up in the Roman fort. When Jewish priests wanted to use the objects in worship, they had to get them from the Roman guard.

     Resenting this heavy oppression, the Jewish population was restive, especially the fiercely independent region of Galilee from which John and Jesus came. Nationalistic leaders would arise, each claiming to be the Messiah, and were summarily crucified. Armed revolutionaries known as Zealots amassed their weapons. Soldiers patrolled the streets.

 

The Ax

     It was under such conditions that "the word of God came to John in the wilderness" and John began to preach. "Repent," he said. Disaster was coming. "Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

     Yikes.

     The ax is lying at the root of the trees.

     With the ever-increasing concentration of power in the executive branch of our government, and the growing threat of armed conflict in our streets, it feels like an ax lies at the root of our democracy.  

     Perhaps John, being a prophet, foresaw what would happen in his country over the next thirty years. How rival revolutionary factions would prey on the populace they feigned to protect. How Roman legions would finally come in, lay siege to Jerusalem, and reduce the temple to rubble, as Jesus had predicted, "Not one stone will be left upon another." Perhaps the crowd of people listening to John by the Jordan River saw this foreknowledge in his fiery eyes. 

     "What then should we do?" they asked him.

 

What John Said

     For someone who saw the big political picture, and who would be executed by Herod for telling the king something he didn't want to hear, John's answer to their question was curiously particular.

     "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none," John said. "Whoever has food must do likewise." John told tax collectors in the crowd not to collect more than what was due. Tax collectors were notorious for getting rich by fleecing their fellow citizens.  

     Soldiers, too, came to John saying, "And we, what should we do?"

     "Do not extort money from anyone by threats or false accusations, and be satisfied with your wages."

     John's advice was specific to each of their situations. If you have the means to alleviate someone else's suffering, do it. Especially basic needs like food and clothing. The very poor always suffer most when political situations go from bad to worse. And, even if everyone else in your workplace is winking at unethical behavior, don't you do it. If your position gives you power over others, don't enrich yourself with threats of violence or lies.

     John named the wrongs in which each kind of person was likely to participate, and how their positions enabled them to do good or harm. John summarized his exhortations with the phrase, "bear fruits worthy of repentance." To repent means to change your attitude and actions. Doing good in tangible ways is the best evidence of a changed heart.

     What would John the Baptist say to me, a privileged white woman living in the 21st century in the United States of America? A depressed, recently-concussed, conflict-averse grandmother who lives in a beautiful, three-bedroom home overlooking a stand of cherry trees and oaks, who receives both a pension and Social Security, whose refrigerator is always stocked with good food, blueberries for my granola, even in the winter, calcium-enriched lactose-free milk, chicken for cacciatore, and other fresh meat.

 

What Would John Say to Me?

     What would John say to me?

     Share.

     Give it away.

     John would point me to the food pantry at Farley Hill Elementary School in Pinckney, the clothing closet and social service agency Faith in Action in Chelsea, and the worldwide disaster relief ministries of the United Methodist Church. John would send me to help repair the home of a disabled veteran in the U.P. or to join a tableful of churchgoers who are dividing rice into meal pouches for refugees overseas.  

     He might tell me to ask my clergy colleagues in Minneapolis how we can help with food or rent or legal aid for the families whose neighborhoods are under siege.

     I think Jesus would nod approval. "Whatever you did for any of the least of these my brothers and sisters," Jesus said, "you did it for me." An early Christian leader echoed the theme for his community a few decades later. "How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?" 

     And, helping someone else is a great antidote to despair.

     What else would John say to me?

     We have other things besides wealth at our disposal. John might encourage us to inventory our talents, skills, abilities, inclinations, gifts and position. Can you cook, fix, organize, befriend, sew, speak, encourage, pray? What does your position equip you to do? In my case, John might say, "Sondra, keep writing and teaching." Even when I'm discouraged. I'm inspired by my friend Max, who at 85, still practices his saxophone daily. Sometimes he plays for us at church. And our spirits rise.

     We cannot fix everything. Much is out of our control. But we can do what is ours to do. To keep working, to keep heeding our callings, to keep making our art – all of these are acts of resistance in dark times.

     And, doing something is also a great antidote to despair.

     Share and work.

     What else?

     Besides wealth and ability, another of our privileges is to live in a democracy where we still have a modicum of political power. We do not (yet) live in an occupied territory ruled with an iron fist by an emperor and his client governors and kings. We have some choices.

     What then should we do?

     Even when John the Baptist and Jesus faced extreme oppression, neither of them told their followers to take up arms. In fact, Jesus said the opposite. "Love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you." When the temple guard came to arrest Jesus, and Peter pulled out a sword and cut off the ear of the slave of the high priest, Jesus told Peter, "Put away your sword."

     No violence.

     Instead, we 21st century citizens of the U.S.A. should exercise our constitutional rights to the fullest. Speak. Assemble. Vote. Support political leaders who protect democracy and who champion "the least of these." Some of us are called to face down our fears and protest in the streets.

     When I prayed about protesting, this is the answer I received: "I'm not asking you to go. But if you decide to go, I will be with you."

     Okay.

     Another way I choose to speak is by writing thank you letters to political leaders in both parties who exhibit courage under pressure. Like Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq alongside the military. When she released a video reminding soldiers of their training that they should not obey illegal orders, President Trump called her a traitor and sent the FBI to interrogate her. I wrote to thank her for her courage. Or, Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the first Republican senator to call for a full, joint state and federal investigation into the death of Alex Pretti. I thanked him, too.

     But, as I speak, I refuse to engage in political debate on social media. Facebook is an addictive, algorithm-driven platform whose only goal is to keep you reading. People post astoundingly mean things on social media. Things they would never say in person.

     It breaks my heart.

     All of this is so hard. So, here's a note on self-care. May we keep ourselves as healthy as possible in body, mind, and spirit so we can survive this debacle and celebrate when the tide turns. For me, that means getting on the treadmill until I can walk outside. Sometimes I limit my exposure to social media and the news. Put down my phone and read a poem instead. Dark chocolate helps, too.

     As I speak my truth, I'm determined to stay in relationship with the family members and friends with whom I disagree. Focus on what we have in common. Ask questions. Listen. With some of my beloveds, it may mean not discussing politics at all. How 'bout those Pistons? How are your kids? How do you keep deer from eating the arborvitae?

     Share. Work. Speak.

     Anything else?

     I have to pray daily for the grace to love my enemies, which in no way comes naturally to me. Because my mind whirls constantly with angry thoughts. President Trump and his supporters are terrorizing people, ignoring laws, and undermining democracy itself. Damn right I'm angry. I have to pray for grace not to hate, let alone to love my enemies as Jesus commanded.

     But love is not the same thing as being nice or having a warm, fuzzy feeling. Love is a decision to seek the good of another even when they hurt you or someone you love.  

     How the hell do you do that?

     In a 2015 interview with journalist Douglas Abrams, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his Holiness the Dalai Lama both repeatedly affirmed the need to have compassion and understanding for those who have hurt us or with whom we disagree. "We need unbiased love toward entire humanity, entire sentient beings, irrespective of what their attitude is toward us," the Dalai Lama said. "Enemies are still human brothers and sisters, so they also deserve our love, our respect, our affection. That's unbiased love. You might have to resist your enemies' actions, but you can love them as brothers and sisters." [i] 

     I'm no Dalai Lama.

     I can only trust that the One who commands us to love will also give us the grace to obey his command.

     Apparently, non-violent love is the way God chooses to change the world, a much slower process than I would prefer. I told my husband that I wanted God to get rid of ICE like God washed away Pharoah's army during the Exodus so the Israelite slaves could go free. My husband said God was doing that – with waves and waves of protestors.

     God inspires individual acts of faithfulness consistent with our gifts and position as we work together to build the world we believe in. My daughter, Laura, calls this "micro-activism." We lean into our strengths and passions for sustainable action. As we do, perhaps we'll hear whispers from those gone before us – abolitionists, suffragettes, labor unionists, civil rights workers and anti-war protestors – telling us we can make a difference if we persevere.

     This is how the Kingdom of God comes, Jesus said. It's like a seed growing secretly, or leaven in a loaf of bread.

     A friend who read an early draft of this blog told me she had a much-loved barn coat she needed to replace. "It was so old and sad," she told me, frayed at the collar and rubbed through in the sleeves. She ordered a new one, but it was too big. "I left the new coat hanging in the closet a while maybe because I was so excited it wasn't snug." After she read, "If you have two coats, give one away," she took a picture and posted it on Neighbors Helping Neighbors. "Who needs this coat?" she asked the community. "Let's get somebody warm!" Immediately, a man asked for it. She pinned lovely, handmade mittens to the lapel. "Isn't this how we change the world?" she asked me.

     Yes, my friend.

     So, make a short list of things you can do. Three to five items. Seven max. Pray about them. And do what you can.

     Share. Work. Speak. Love.

 

He's Got the Whole World In His Hands

     A year ago, I posted a blog with a photo of the American flag my husband and I were flying in front of our house. High winds have worn the flag thin in places, which seems an apt metaphor for the state of the nation. My husband decided to put up a different flag for a while – a whole earth flag. The design is simple – a photo of earth taken from space, a gleaming orb swirled with clouds and seas, shining on a dark blue background.

     The earth flag reminds me and passersby that God loves the whole world, not just people who think like me, and not just people in the U.S.A. "For God so loved the world," the gospel of John says. The flag also reminds me I am part of a network spanning the globe, a quietly-bold, centuries-old movement answering to God's authority alone. The Kingdom of God.

     Though I'm privileged to be a citizen of this country, I have no king but Jesus. When the values and practices of any government come into conflict with the values and practices of   God's kingdom, Christians say with the newly-brave disciples Peter and John, "We must obey God rather than any human authority."

     You can read their story in the third, fourth, and fifth chapters of Acts. The High Priest and other religious leaders ordered Peter and John not to talk about Jesus. They kept talking. They were summoned, questioned, jailed, and flogged. Yet they went home rejoicing that they were considered worthy to suffer dishonor for Jesus's sake. And they continued to speak with boldness the words God gave them.  

     Share. Work. Speak. Love.

     Though the times are evil, God still reigns. May that God, the God of all good graces, make us generous, gentle, loving, and strong.

 

Scripture: Luke 3:1-20

Playlist: "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands," traditional African-American spiritual.

 

[i] Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu with Douglas Abrams, The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World (New York: Avery, 2016), page 78.

     Every year when we put up our Christmas decorations, I unwrap the ceramic Madonna with a mixture of fondness and alarm. Why do I have such a complex reaction to this one piece of holiday décor?

     My mother-in-law gave her to me shortly after my husband and I were married. Dorothy and I competed for Ed's affection for years until we both settled down. There's that.

     And, while I do admire the delicate blue tint and gilt trim of Mary's mantle, I'm suspicious of the Grecian nose and the tiny, tucked rosebud mouth, the pinkish glow of her neck, the thin eyebrows arching over the perfect, painted eyelashes and the closed, downcast eyes.

     She's an ideal of feminine beauty drenched in religious sentiment. As if girls everywhere should aspire to be just like her.

     The feminist in me despises the portrayal of Mary handed down through the ages as meek, silent and submissive.

     There's that, too.

     But what worries me most right now is that this Mother of God is so white.

     Now I know that one of the blessings of the Holy Family is that people all around the world identify with them. We see Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as being like ourselves. One of my favorite modern Christmas carols puts it this way, "Some children see him lily white... Some children see him bronzed and brown... Some children see him almond-eyed... Some children see him dark as they."

     To me, that's at least part of what the Incarnation means – because the Son of God took human form, we are able to imagine ourselves as being made in the image of God. Whoever we are. All races, genders, identities.

     But I also know that dominant cultures often insist there is only one way to imagine divine likeness. Women cannot be Catholic priests because the first disciples were men. Black people are inferior because, of course, Jesus was White.

     Which he wasn't.

     The historical Jesus was a brown-skinned Jew.

     This ceramic Madonna I unwrap every December makes me wonder how many of our assumptions are relics passed down from our ancestors that we would do well to discard. Sentiment may blind us to their danger.

     My parents, from whom I received many good gifts, were devout Christians. But good people can be racist. My mother and father shared a mistrust of Black people held by their parents and by many small-town-bred Northern Whites. When Detroit burned in 1967, my parents believed that the problem was the people who were looting and burning, and not the systemic inequities that had made Black folk so angry and desperate.

     I don't mean to suggest that I've put inherited racism behind me.

     I haven't.

     What are some of the racist assumptions I inherited from my forebears? That Black men are to be feared. That the well-being of people of color does not matter as much as my well-being. That Black and Brown people should serve White people.

     I don't like to admit this. It's painful to own our racism. When a racist thought rises in my mind or a bigoted behavior asserts itself, I ask Where did that come from? But I know.

     Racism is bred deep.

     And, as a White person, I continue to reap benefits from economic and governmental systems that codify racist assumptions into law.

     Some liturgical scholars say we should approach the season of Advent as a mini-Lent, a time of repentance in which we set aside the mindsets and behaviors that prevent us from receiving Christ. A blessing prayer for the Advent wreath begins, "Christ came to bring us salvation and has promised to come again. Let us pray that we may always be ready to welcome him."

     The people respond, "Come, Lord Jesus."  

     The leader continues, "That the light of Christ may penetrate the darkness of sin."

     "Come, Lord Jesus," the people say.

     I have mixed feelings about the counsel of the liturgical scholars. Party poopers. I like the joyous festivities of December. Winter is cold, dark and long. Who needs two Lents? We have little enough joy as it is.

     But perhaps their counsel is intended to help us receive more joy. When we release the meanness in our hearts, joy can move in to the cleared space. And whenever we repent of our sin, we increase the joy of those who suffer because of our sin.

     So, when a racist thought or behavior rises in me, I name it, renounce it, and ask forgiveness. God meets repentance with forgiveness every time. Also, I pay attention to how racism manifests itself in public policy. I challenge it where I can.

     I do this because I'm a breed of Christian known as United Methodist -- one of the good gifts my parents gave me. The vows we say whenever we have a baptism include this question, "Do you accept the freedom and power God gives you to resist evil, injustice, and oppression in whatever forms they present themselves?"

     "Yes," we answer.

     It's slow, hard work with many setbacks. Especially in this time when bigotry is declaimed without shame in high places.

     The good news is that God comes, regardless. It wasn't a great moment in history when Jesus was born, either. God came in a displaced family warming themselves in a makeshift shelter. God came in a strong, brown woman fleeing Herod's thugs who sought to harm her child.

     God comes when kindly landowners in any Bethlehem welcome a stranger.   

     "That the Christmas season may fill us with peace and joy as we strive to follow the example of Jesus," the blessing prayer for the Advent wreath concludes. "May the light of these candles reflect the splendor of Christ."

     Yes.

     Come, Lord Jesus.

 

Scripture: Luke 2:7, Matthew 2:13-15. And John 1:5: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

Playlist: "Some Children See Him," lyrics by Wihla Hutson and music by Alfred Burt, 1951. Performed by artists such as Andy Williams and James Taylor.

Many of you know that November is my least favorite month. Damp. Cold. Gray. But now that I'm mostly healed from a concussion suffered in February, I feel as if I've been given my life back. I see so many things around me to enjoy. Thought I'd share a few with you. (Thank you, Cherie, for the simile in the second line.) May this Thanksgiving find you grateful, too. 

 

The pleasures of November:

Oak leaves with the gloss of cordovan leather

Gold coins of aspen under our feet

White silk of milkweed aloft in the wind

Turkey tail fungus and lichen swaddling a stump

Red berries in clusters above the swamp

Tamarack trees shining a late golden light

Black branches coated with the first snow

Your face like a lamp in the window.

 

Scripture: "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his steadfast love endures forever!" -- Psalm 118:1

Playlist: "Give Thanks," Henry Smith, Integrity's Hosanna Music, 1978.

     On February 9, I slipped on black ice in my driveway. My heels went out from under me, and I fell backwards. The back of my head hit the asphalt.

     Hard.

     When I tried to get up, the sky spun wildly. Violent vertigo. I crawled on my elbows through the snow into the house and called for my husband.

     The resulting concussion has not fully healed. The blow scrambled communication between my brain and my eyes. Physical therapists showed me exercises to restore balance, visual acuity, and orientation in space. It will be many more months before I regain my stamina and muscle tone.

     Some people who believe that "Everything happens for a reason" might say God was teaching me a lesson: "Slow down, Sondra. You're moving too fast." I don't agree. When I fell, I was not being schooled. Nor was I was being punished by a wrathful God for rebellion or sin.  

     Nor did I fall because I'm old. Or careless. People of all ages fell on that dangerous day, including my thirty-eight-year-old daughter. She had just shoveled her driveway and was walking back to the garage for salt. Down she went, bruising her knee. Casualties crowded emergency rooms and spiked the caseloads at physical therapy clinics.
     It was just bad luck that I slipped on the ice.

     But this extended recovery has been teaching me some things. Unasked-for lessons in patience, dependence, idolatry, gratitude, trust. Usually, I'm the one praying for others. During these past months, I've been humbled to realize just how much I am held in a network of care, undergirded by prayer.

 

     In the days immediately following the concussion, however, all I knew was the spinning, the swaying, the fog, the pain.

     I could not read, write, watch TV, or drive. Screen time of all kinds was strictly limited. During meals I had to hold my plate at eye level because looking down made me dizzy. Visits from family or friends were overwhelming. When I walked around the house, or even sat still in a chair, my head swam.

     Sometimes my eyes jumped uncontrollably, a condition called nystagmus.

     Eight months later, most of these symptoms have eased, allowing me to spend increasing minutes at the computer screen. I can take longer walks in the woods. I've gotten to see my grandchildren multiple times. Although when they take naps, so do I.  

     And, on Labor Day, for the first time since the accident, I went canoeing on a nearby lake in my solo boat. It was a gorgeous early autumn morning in Michigan with clear blue skies and mirror-still water.  As my husband and I paddled to the center of the lake, a black and white osprey circled overhead. Suddenly that magnificent bird tucked its wings against its sides, dove headfirst into the water, and rose again, empty talons dripping.

     I couldn't stop grinning.

 

     However, the vertigo that I experienced nearly every day for seven months is not entirely gone. When I'm fatigued, there it is again, my unwelcome companion. Sometimes it presents itself as feeling like I'm being pushed over to the right. Sometimes my head wobbles like one of those bobblehead dolls. Sometimes I sway. Sometimes it is a tight gyration in my brain.

     I wish it would go away completely.

     People have been telling me their concussion stories. When they do, I relive the shock of my own injury. One moment I was getting ready for a winter vacation with friends. The next moment I was flat on my back, the world spinning.

     Their stories frighten me. "My friend had a brain bleed at six months," one told me. "My recovery took more than a year," another said. "You will get better. Or you won't," a third counseled.

     Brain bleed? A year? Won't get better?!?

     I know they mean well. But still.

     And yet: though the stories frighten me, they also tell me I am not alone.  

 

     In the novel, The Monk Downstairs, the main character, Rebecca, finds it hard to manage full-time work, parenting, crises with her ex-husband, and care for her mother, who recently suffered a stroke. Rebecca has been late – repeatedly – to pick up her daughter from the Bee-Well Kindergarten Day Care. When Rebecca called to say that pick up would be late again, the reply of the woman who ran the place "was clipped short with a you're-a-bad-mother tone. Mary Martha was amusing herself nicely, she said, as if to underline the child's heroic adjustment to a life of appalling neglect."

     One day, however, the woman was "unprecedentedly warm." Rebecca's daughter must have shared the story of her grandmother's stroke, because the woman said that her own father had recently had a stroke, too.

     "This was offered almost casually, in the shorthand of the afflicted, and Rebecca suddenly glimpsed how vast it was, this secret society of domestic suffering into which she had been initiated. The revelation was a little disorienting. It made the world seems like a different place." *

     I experienced a similar revelation on the first Sunday of July when I greeted a young woman at the end of our pew at church. I'd only been back to worship for three weeks. Like many concussion sufferers, I was having a hard time with the loud music, the bright lights, the crowded aisles, and the multiple conversations.

     "I'm recovering from a concussion," I blurted out to her, trying to explain why I looked away from her face after a few minutes of conversation.

     "I understand," she said. "I have a seizure disorder."

     She told me she had her first seizure in 2021 while taking a final exam. "I don't remember the seizure," she said. "I woke up with people standing around me. I got the exam postponed for everyone, though." She smiled crookedly. "I took one for the team." After many tests, she was diagnosed with PNES, Psychotropic Non-Epileptic Seizure Disorder.

     Her last seizure was in January, she told me. She had to wait six months before she could drive again. "I got my driver's license back four days ago," she said. Another smile. Having trained to be a social worker, she is currently unemployed because of the January seizure.

     I told her about my slow recovery.

     "Learning to rest was a challenge," she said.

     "Yes," I said."You understand."

     I almost cried. It was such a relief to have someone who understood. I believe she was sent to me by God.

     Learning to rest. That's what I hope to write about next as my recovery allows – what having this concussion is teaching me about rest. How this period of time calls to mind the strictures and blessings of the biblical command to observe Sabbath. How when we rest, we allow our minds, bodies and hearts to be healed of what ails us, whether caused by illness, injury, or damage done us by the world.

     For you, it may be a different affliction that brought you some helpful, if unwelcome, lessons. I'd like to hear about your journey.

     Because, thank God, we are not alone.

 

Scripture: Isaiah 43:5.

Playlist: "How Firm a Foundation," anonymous hymn collected by John Rippon in his 1787 A Selection of Hymns, especially this line "Fear not, I am with thee, O be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid."

 

* The Monk Downstairs by Tim Farrington, Harper SanFranisco, 2002, pages 109 and 251.

 

     This past winter my husband and I sorted some things. I've had spasms of sorting and pitching throughout my adult life, but I began the process in earnest after my mother died in 2019. Closets. Boxes. Photos. Old files.

     Even though Mom had downsized to a one-room apartment, it was hard for my siblings and me to sort her things. I didn't want our kids to be stuck with stuff we should have thrown out years ago. 

     Swedes call the process of de-cluttering döstädning, which translates to "death cleaning." While the term sounds morbid, this tough-minded practice is designed to relieve families of the burden of going through piled-up possessions when loved ones die.

     The Book of Ecclesiastes says that there is a "time to keep and a time to throw away – a time for every purpose under heaven."

     During the Covid lockdown, many of my retired friends tackled long-delayed decluttering in their homes. I worried about the burgeoning landfills as all of us Baby Boomers filled dumpsters at the exact same time. Not to mention recycling bins and charitable collection agencies. When the Salvation Army in Brighton opened again after the lockdown, I waited in my car for forty minutes as fifteen cars peeled off in front of me. One by one. With practiced disinterest, workers heaved our bags and boxes into overflowing bins.         

     And I still have plenty of stuff in my house.

     In my office: Old writing projects. Memorabilia. Books yet to be culled. In the basement: Random pieces of lumber. Broken cubbies. Assorted camping gear.

     My husband and I own three different kinds of tents. The REI Kingdom 4 tent that replaced the North Face backpacking tents that replaced the four-person Eureka tent. Don't believe it when they tell you a four-person tent sleeps four people. Hogwash. The newest REI tent is just right for Ed and me. By ourselves. Unless we're "glamping" in the trailer we purchased in 2021 that has a full-size refrigerator and indoor bathroom.

     As young parents, Ed and I camped in the then-new Eureka tent at Acadia National Park with our daughter Laura when she was eighteen months old. We took the North Face tents canoe-camping on the Buffalo River in the Ozarks when the girls were fifteen and thirteen. That was the trip when our dog, Rascal, caused Ed and Barbara to flip, spilling all of our cookware into the river. (See blog #15, "Lost and Found.") Our family still talks about that adventure. 

     Nostalgia makes it hard to keep sorting. We have feelings about our things. 

     I added a one-word nudge to my daily to-do list: "Stuff."

     In February, Ed and I tackled a box in the basement containing the neoprene wetsuits we use for whitewater canoeing. These tight-fitting, full-size "Farmer John" wetsuits fasten with Velcro closures over the shoulders and open at the ankles with a six-inch zipper. Wetsuits retain body heat by holding a layer of warm water next to the skin.

     But they are snug.

     "There's only one way to find out if we should keep these," I said. After stripping to my underwear, I began pulling the wetsuit up my legs. The fit in the hips had been tight when we wore them last in 2012 on the Tellico River in Tennessee. One of the seams had begun to split. Now I could barely get the damn thing over my butt. I yanked and tugged. It was like trying to put two pounds of sausage into a one-pound casing. Ed looked over at me. "Looks like raccoons wrestling in there," he said.

     But he was having similar difficulties. We looked at each other and laughed.

     I helped him pull up his shoulder straps in the back.

     "Will there be a time when we want to paddle a whitewater river in cold weather?" he asked soberly. 

     "I don't think so," I said. And felt sad.  Even now, when we live just four miles from the fairly gentle Huron River, we don't often paddle in cold weather. Our early spring whitewater days appear to be over.

     Getting rid of things may mean saying goodbye to a season of our lives.

     Still, we have the memories. The family trips. Those days of joy on the water.

     Advocates of decluttering promise that newly-vacated spaces will grant an attendant peace of mind. They are right. When I get rid of something, I do feel lighter. The house seems roomier, and my spirits rise.  

     The process of sorting our stuff, however, raises larger questions: What legacy do we leave? Besides money, and a few tangible possessions, what do we want our children to receive? And, how can we ease their grief when that day comes?

     So, faced with such imponderables, I did what I do: I gave away our neoprene and wrote a poem. The poem was inspired by Thomas Lynch's most recent collection of poems, Bone Rosary. Lynch is an undertaker. I am a pastor. Like Lynch, I have often stood at the portal between life and death. 

 

A Note for My Daughters When That Day Comes

Cry if you like, sob, clutch sodden tissues,
or come dry-eyed to the church, I won't care.

Your grief may feel like a rip current along the shore  

of Lake Michigan, pulling on your ankles, not enough

to drown you, but enough to unsteady your feet.

Or maybe grief will arrive

like the little black flies that breed in May, humming, hovering,

two inches from your eyeballs as you walk through the woods.

You swat them away, but they come back, and later leave welts

under your hatband or in the tender creases of your skin.

Maybe you will hug

your own children hard and long until they protest, "Mom," eager

to get back to their toys or phones. You will sigh and rub the space between

their shoulder blades, letting them go, and return to the laundry, dishes,

dirty litterbox, or the infinite emails on your own screen.

Maybe, when you go

through my things as I went through my mother's, holding a book

that she once held, balancing the spine, or rubbing against my cheek

the satin of a half-slip that old women wear, you will wish like I did

that you'd said something different that one time, or nothing at all.

It's okay, I want to tell

you. It's okay. We all have things we regret. But know this: I had

a good life. I loved your father some fifty odd years, thanked God

for both of you when you were born, watched you grow up lovely

and strong, and blessed in turn the grandbabies you shared.

When spring came, I walked 
trails crowded with bluebells and knelt beside trillium in the soft loam.

I plied my paddle against the current under summer sun. Come autumn
I crumpled the leaves of sweetgum to smell the sharp resin. In winter

still walked in heavy clothes through the snow.

If sometimes I wandered

at night unsleeping, floorboards creaking under my feet, restless

with desire or remembered pain, what of it? We all carry the weight

of generations. My undone work will come to you, as my parents'

came to me, as invitation and burden, to accept or reject. This is who we are.

 

And if while I walked, it was worry for you

that kept me awake, forgive me. I should have trusted

that you could find your own way. But oh, my daughters, 

this, too, is love: to wander the hallway as moonlight falls

in bright bars through the window while your children mutter

and turn in their sleep. In time, grief will ease, this grief or

another. So, I hope you know only that you were loved.

Yes. You were loved.

 

Scripture: Ecclesiastes 3:1-8

Playlist: "Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)," Pete Seeger, 1962.

     Do you remember what happened in October, 2024, on social media? Strident political posts were replaced by something else – photos of dancing lights in the night sky.

     Aurora borealis.

     "Aurora" for Aurora, the Roman goddess of the dawn, and "borealis" for the Roman god of the north wind, Boreas. People across the United States—people who were not nature nerds, people who didn't usually go out of doors at night—were posting photos of the northern lights. Photos taken over rooftops, backyards, cornfields, lakes. Some posts came from as far south as Missouri and Texas.

     Our daughter, Laura, who lives in metro Grand Rapids, pulled into her driveway after a late evening meeting and just happened to look up. "The sky to the northeast looked different than usual," she told me. "I wondered why there was a colorful haze." Muted greens and pinks and white. Then she remembered. There was a chance to see the northern lights that night.

     She texted her husband and told him to come outside. He had put their kids to bed hours before. They stood in the driveway nearly half an hour, taking picture after picture. "You see more of the colors when you take pictures," she explained.

     After the display had faded, she looked up again. Stars! That's how big and bold and colorful the aurora borealis had been – it had masked the handful of stars she can usually see from her urban neighborhood. "I never expected to see the aurora here," she said.

     And this wasn't even the first aurora show of 2024. Some nighttime gazers in lower Michigan had seen the aurora borealis in May and August, too. I had missed those displays because I was too tired to stay up until the sky was truly dark.

     Did you see them?

     On a Thursday night in October, our daughter Barbara drove north from her house in metro Detroit to find darker skies in Tuscola County.  She pulled off the road by a farm field, fastened her cell phone to a tripod, and watched the spectacle unfold. At one point she saw huge swaths of multi-colored light all around her – 180 degrees of glory.  

     At another point, a single white beam shone down to the horizon like a spotlight from heaven. "Gave me butterflies in my stomach," she said.

     That same week my husband and I were camping near Petosky on the shores of Lake Michigan. While my husband was sleeping, I walked down to the beach hoping to see the Milky Way, something I never get to see from my downstate backyard.

     When I got to the beach, a chill wind pressed against my face. I zipped my jacket tight and looked south toward the lights of Petosky that rimmed the steel-gray water of Little Traverse Bay. Waves rippled beside me, catching enough ambient light to break in white curls on the shore. When I looked up, there it was – the Milky Way. A broad arch of bright stars spread above me.

     Then I swiveled my head to the north.

     Was that a pile of white clouds on the northern horizon? Huh. I thought the sky was supposed to be clear tonight. Then I heard voices on the dune above me and saw three people, two men and a woman, holding their phones up to the sky. I hurried over to them. "Are you seeing northern lights?" I asked.

     "Yes!" the woman said.

     "My phone won't work for them," I said. "It's too old."

     We introduced ourselves and the woman, Cathy, let me look at her phone, which had night mode. Wow! Green and red and blue and purple lights in wide vertical streaks over the lake. She texted me a few pictures.

     But that wasn't good enough for me. I went to the camper to get Ed's phone, quietly, so as not to wake him, hoping his phone had night mode. It did not, but when I got back to the beach, one of the men suggested I try the time-lapse setting. "You've got to hold the phone very still," he said, "and let the picture develop."

     And then I saw it for myself – blurry green and red lights pulsating on a phone in my own hands. It was incredible. I looked and looked. I said, "Holy cow" and "Amazing" and "Wow" and "Hallelujah" until I ran out of superlatives and simply laughed aloud.

     As the four of us stood there, the stars got brighter, and then there were streaks of white going up the sky. I was now seeing the northern lights with the naked eye! There were patches of scarlet, too, at the edges of the white pillars, and overhead. Cathy and I lay flat in the sand to look up. I couldn't believe it.

     After we stood up, Cathy let me look over her shoulder into her phone one more time and I saw turquoise and cerulean, amethyst and magenta, and stars peeking through the colored lights. I was breathing so hard it fogged my glasses. I had not expected to see the northern lights tonight – and here I was.

     After Cathy and the two men had left, complaining about the cold, I stood beside the water and sang the opening line from a song by Tom Fettke based on Psalm 8: "When I gaze into the night sky, and see the work of your fingers . . .. "  

     White streaks shimmered and danced beside the Big Dipper above me. The silvery surf glimmered not far from my feet. The steady cold wind. The low rumble of stones being rolled up on the beach.

    Entire verses from Psalm 8 thrummed through my head: "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established, what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?" 

     What are we puny humans, after all?

     And yet God cares for us.

     I bowed my head, pocketed the phone, and went back to the camper to join Ed in sleep.

     Now that Facebook knows I'm interested in astronomical phenomena, I get posts about aurora sightings on a regular basis – in the Upper Peninsula, Alaska, Norway, Iceland. I also get notifications about full moons, comets, and planets in alignment.

     Something interesting seems to be happening in the sky nearly every night. Even when I cannot see it, the glory of God is shining, somewhere, somehow, all of the time. Even when we, like children, are fast asleep, or when we, as adults, have lost our way.  
     Psalm 8 also says this: "You have set your glory above the heavens. From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise."

     I think of our grandchild, Skylar, asleep in her crib in her fleece pajamas. She lies on her back, arms spread wide, completely relaxed, her little snores mingling with the wave-like noises on the sound machine. The eye of the camera on her monitor, which transmits a video of her sleeping body to a screen downstairs, emits a soft green glow. Her parents, washing dishes in the kitchen or picking up toys in the family room, hear the sounds of the monitor as they go about their work. If she cries out, inconsolable, they will drop what they are doing, and go to her.

     Just so: The God who flung the bright colors of aurora borealis across the sky watches over us while we sleep. And comes to us in our distress.

     Sometimes, by chance or by design, by luck or by putting ourselves in the proper place at the proper time, we get to see the glory of God on full display. Sometimes, when we need it most, God sends aid.

    When this happens, may we pause and give thanks to whatever Power we name. May we be humble enough to praise.

     "O Lord our God," the song goes, "little children praise you perfectly, and so would we."

     And so would we.

 

Scripture: Psalm 8

Playlist: "The Majesty and Glory of Your Name," Linda Lee Johnson and Tom Fettke, 1979.

     It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I was deeply troubled when President Trump was re-elected. However, on the day after the election, I didn't binge on potato chips, I didn't get drunk, and I didn't run screaming into the yard, although I considered all of those things. Instead, in the tradition of essayist David James Duncan and poet Thomas Lynch, I wrote a rant.

     What is a rant? "To talk or say in a loud, wild, extravagant way; declaim violently; rave," Webster says. A rant is not reasonable. It is full of vitriol, bile, and barely-suppressed rage.

     In his memoir, My Story as Told by Water, David James Duncan composed several rants—long, complex, outraged paragraphs—on behalf of the rivers and forests of his native Oregon that had been polluted by paper mills and clearcut by loggers. Thomas Lynch wrote a curse-poem rant against his ex-wife, a masterpiece of invective that was wildly popular with audiences. Until the day Lynch's son was present for a reading, and Lynch considered what it might be like for the young man to hear this diatribe against his mother. Lynch resolved never to read the piece aloud again.

     Rants are serious business. A friend told me said that posting a rant publicly is "pressing the nuclear button."

     I considered not sharing my rant at all. I'm usually very careful with my speech. I've seen the damage words can do. And, on October 26, just before the election, I had posted a blog in which I had exhorted myself and others to refrain from finger-pointing, name-calling, and demonizing those with whom we disagree. I urged us to "eat of the fruit that makes for peace."

     But there is also the matter of speaking the truth as you see it.

     And, the intensity of emotions that I felt the day after the election—fear, frustration, disappointment, disgust, anger, bewilderment—seemed to demand some kind of response.          

     Because it felt like a curtain of darkness was falling over our nation.

     I had experienced some of the same emotions on January 6, 2021, when a violent mob broke through police lines and attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. The mob had come from a "Save America" rally organized by supporters of President Trump to challenge the results of the 2020 election.

     I felt angry at President Trump's repeated attempts to undermine the democratic process. I was afraid this riot was the start of a civil war.

     Two people died as a result of the attack. Ashli Babbitt, an Air Force veteran from Southern California, who was shot and killed by Capitol Police as she climbed through a broken window just outside the House chamber. Officer Brian Sicknick, a twelve-year veteran of the Capitol Police force, who died of injuries inflicted by rioters.

     One legislator, Illinois representative Adam Kinzinger, later told The Atlantic that as the mob invaded the House of Representatives on January 6, he "could feel a darkness descend over the Capitol." One of his friends in Congress, the Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin, heard the same report of descending darkness from members of the Capitol Police.

     I worry about what a second Trump administration will mean for our country. I fear a continued rollback of women's rights and an escalation of violence against LGBTQ persons and people of color. I fear a massive deportation of immigrants, some of whom are American citizens.

     Looming over these is my fear of what will happen to all of humanity if climate change goes unchecked in the richest nation in the world.

     Dread for the whole earth wakes me in the night.

     The park we visit every week, Hudson Mills, through which our beloved Huron River flows, still shows scars of a 2022 summer storm that was most likely intensified by climate change. Eroded banks. Re-routed trails. Mature oak trees snapped and twisted and thrown down like pick-up sticks. Weather watchers reported 60-75 mph winds and "gustnados"—small whirlwinds which form as an eddy in a thunderstorm outflow along the leading edge of a line of storms.  

     The trees in our own yard were spared.
     That time.

     I worry about how we are harming the earth, our only home, harm that will get worse in the next four years under President Trump, who backed us out of the Paris Climate Accord, and whose allies spent his first term trying to dismantle environmental protections for rivers, lakes, wetlands, and wilderness.

     And now Los Angeles is burning.

     This, too, is serious business.

     So, here it is.

     A rant from a conflict-averse, usually cautious and circumspect pastor. If nothing else, the rant can serve as a record of what the day after the election of 2024 felt like to one lover of the earth. And perhaps the second half of the essay can serve as a recipe for the days to come.

     Except for a few tweaks, and an addendum prompted by the fact that Epiphany and the anniversary of the Capitol attack fall on the same date, the rant is as I wrote it on Wednesday morning, November 6, 2024.

 

* * *

 

     When I imagine the worst for the years that are to come—my river permanently poisoned by PFAS—the oaks in my yard, already weakened by wilt, toppled by climate-change-driven high winds—the cattail swamps I admire daily dredged and developed because the MAGA Supreme Court has made federal wetland protections harder to enforce—the Lake Michigan shoreline I love soaked with Enbridge-ferried oil—the soil that produces the food I eat depleted and poisoned by overuse of fertilizers and chemicals while farmers cannot sell their grain to China anyway because tariffs have shut down the market—when we no longer have clean water to drink or fresh air to breathe or food to eat or trees that hold the earth together—when, after slowly watching the earth around me die in a thousand ways—I imagine saying to this generation of calculating, sycophantic Republican leaders and to the Christian pastors who disregarded Trump's flagrant immorality and told their congregations to vote for him, thereby re-electing a lying, lawless, brawl-loving narcissist, whose plan to deal with the ticking time bomb of climate change is to deny that it exists—I imagine saying I TOLD YOU SO.

     I imagine siting in my tree-strewn yard choking on foul air guarding my diminished larder and saying with perfect coldness to family members and friends and everyone else who voted for him I TOLD YOU SO. 

     You were warned that this would happen.

     You were warned about the increasing heat, the raging wildfires, the rising waters, and the increasing intensity of the storms.

     You were told by scientist after scientist around the world that this would happen.

     And it has.

     But I TOLD YOU SO is thin soup. To imagine saying I TOLD YOU SO over and over cannot sustain soul and body through the hard years that are to come.

     Better to stock my soup with the bone broth of kindness, simmered for long hours and stirred with hope. Better to stuff the pot with the earthy pulp of potatoes, the yellow coins of carrots, sweet chunks of parsnip, fibrous celery, translucent onion, crumbled bay leaf, and whole peppercorns, all of which, with the sevenfold gifts of the Holy Spirit—love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, kindness, and self-control— when stirred and simmered together and then scooped, steaming, into bowls, will fill the mouth with richness and nourish the soul.

     Better to get the stepstool and take the heavy ceramic bread bowl down from the top shelf, and bake a loaf of honey-whole wheat bread leavened with the yeast of faith that God is still at work in the world. Oh, the nutlike sweetness of the wheat germ! Oh, the feel of the dough as I knead it! So warm and pliable under my hands.

     The dough will rise in the oven under an old cotton tea towel that was once a calendar hanging on my mother-in-law's kitchen wall. 1968. Another dire year when our country seemed to be tearing itself apart. We survived that.

     If the kitchen is cold, the dough will rise slowly, but it will rise. I will punch down and shape the dough into loaves, folding the ends and hiding the crease on the bottom, and ease the loaves into pans. Then I will wait while the dough rises again. When the bread has been baked, the moist slices will fall away from the knife, we will slather them with butter, and take a huge bite.

     Soup and bread together on a bleak November day.

     This, too, can be imagined. And must be, if we are to be sustained through the years that are to come. We need strength of body and soul to save ourselves and the earth itself from the worst of ourselves.

     And if, when I bite on a peppercorn, the savage flavor momentarily causes me to wince, so be it. No man, however powerful, rules forever. The Trump presidency, too, will pass. Behold, all flesh is as the grass, the requiem says, and no one escapes. Only the word of God stands forever, and we will, each of us, be called to account.

     In the meantime, may we imagine a future in which all people, and not just the rich and the powerful, feast on abundance. May we eat and pray and work for the day when what we dream more nearly resembles a heavenly banquet, the restoration of paradise, the upside-down, wrong-righting coming of the kingdom of God.

 

* * *

 

Addendum – January 11, 2025 – Week of the Epiphany and the anniversary of the Capitol Attack

 

     In his eulogy for President Jimmy Carter, Vice-President Walter Mondale summarized their four years together with the credo they had used to guide the work of their administration: "We told the truth. We obeyed the law. We kept the peace."

     The contrast with President Trump could not be starker.

     I believe that the election and re-election of President Trump represent a frightened pushback against the progress our nation has made in the last fifty years toward civil rights, gender equality, and environmental protection. The same pushback has occurred in other countries around the world.

     Fearful elites inflame others to preserve their own power.

     In the Bible, the gospel writer Matthew tells how King Herod and the religious leaders in Jerusalem were afraid because the wisemen had told them that a "new king" had been born. Jesus. Who would welcome the outcast and bless the poor. Seeing this "new king" as a threat, Herod tried to get the wisemen to reveal the whereabouts of the baby. They did not. Herod was so incensed that he ordered the massacre of all children in Bethlehem under two years of age. Warned in a dream, Joseph and Mary took the child by night and fled to Egypt, where they stayed until King Herod died.

     Herod and his allies ultimately failed.

     Because, aided by God, Jesus escaped. And the second time the powers-that-be thought they'd killed him for sure, he rose from the dead.  

     Another gospel writer, John, testifies to the final outcome: "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it."

     God is not done with us yet.

     God gets the last word.

     If darkness is falling, shine a light.

 

Scriptures: Isaiah 40:1-8, Matthew 2:1-20, John 1:5.

Playlist: "Behold, all flesh is as the grass," A German Requiem, Johannes Brahms, 1868.

     In the summer of 2021, my husband and I joined our oldest daughter and her family for a vacation in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. During a day trip to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, we hiked down to Miner's Beach, baby Riley in a backpack and three-year-old Emmett skipping ahead of us along the path.

     When we got to the beach, Emmett went straight for the water. While he was throwing stones into the surf, a wave surged up, slapping him in the chest and legs. The look on his face was priceless.

     Pure outrage.

     Even in August, Lake Superior is cold.

     How Emmett felt when that wave hit him is how I sometimes feel about events in the world. I ask God: Why did you let this bad thing happen? Why is there so much suffering? Why do evil people get away with murder and good people die young?

     Outrage.

     I'm not alone in feeling this way. If you read the Psalms, you see that many of these ancient prayers express a complaint directly to God. "How long, O Lord?" they ask. "Don't you see what is happening to us?" Psalm 17 makes a case to God as if the speaker is addressing a court of law. "Hear a just cause, O Lord; attend to my cry."
     Biblical scholars call this kind of psalm a "lament." The Book of Psalms contains more than fifty psalms of lament, some spoken by individuals, some by a congregation. Lament psalms usually contain five elements: 1. Complaint 2. Plea 3. Confession of trust 4. Request for help 5. Praise.

     The 19th century poet Gerard Manley Hopkins seems to have channeled some of these psalms in what literary critics call his "terrible sonnets." In one sonnet Hopkins complained, "Comforter, where is your comforting?" In another, he wrote, "Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend / With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just. / Why do sinners' ways prosper? And why must / Disappointment all I endeavor end?"

     Pastor Katie Hays, who started a church for spiritual refugees in 2013, expressed the mood of the lament psalms in a less traditional way. When she reflected on the lives of her parishioners, most of whom had experienced abuse, and when she assessed the emotional toll that church planting had taken on her and her family, Hays said we need a new prayer. Recalling the trilogy coined by writer Anne Lamott -- Help, Thanks, Wow – Hays said the fourth basic prayer is What the f* *k?

     Hays confessed that WTF was the prayer she prayed most often.

     "I believe this to be a biblical prayer," Hays said. "Many of the Psalms can be summed up thusly, as a confused and angry servant of God wonders angrily when the promised relief will come."

     WTF is an expression of outrage – and bewilderment.

     Sometimes we voice prayers of lament when we watch a video that shows a flood of muddy water destroying a whole town. Sometimes we voice a psalm of lament when we hear about an eleven-year-old child killed at a funeral by an exploding walkie-talkie. Sometimes we add our voices to a chorus of lament at the state of political leadership in our country and around the world.

     Sometimes we don't even know we have been praying psalms of lament. Our faces don't show it. But in our hearts, we have held a long bitterness born of anger and disappointment at other people and at God. This shouldn't have happened. God shouldn't have let it happen.

     When suffering or injustice occurs, "This shouldn't have happened" is a profoundly ethical response. We say it precisely because God has shown us how the world ought to be.  When harm is taking place, when a bully is picking on a smaller kid, for example, or when someone is taking more than their fair share, we expect authority figures such as parents, teachers, police officers or judges to step in and stop it.

     So, we expect God to do the same thing on our behalf.

     God does love justice. The Bible is clear about that, too. "I, the Lord, love justice. I hate robbery and wrongdoing." (Isaiah 61:8) God shows particular concern for those who are poor and vulnerable. "Father of orphans and protector of widows is God," Psalm 68:5 says.
     We have a right to expect intervention from God.

     And yet, my own outrage may also be fueled by a faulty understanding of God's role in the world and God's relationship to human beings. God does not exist to make my life easier. And, God has given human beings free will. Though not all suffering is caused by human choices, much of it is. War, for example. Poverty. Greed.

     Even last autumn's flooding in the Southeast – what insurance companies would call an "act of God" – may have elements of human causality. Many scientists believe that the intensity of tropical storms has been increased by climate change. Climatologists have been warning us for years about the effects of rampant use of fossil fuels. They tell us to expect storms of increasing frequency, longer duration, and greater violence.

     We are free to do things that hurt ourselves, each other, and creation.

     WTF?

     God seems to love human freedom more than I do.

     Yet, if we are free to do harm, we are also free to do good, to be compassionate and courageous, to challenge wrongdoing when we see it. We can choose to protect people and the earth. "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect," Jesus said. Jesus did not mean perfection in the sense of never making a mistake. He meant being perfectly, completely, whole-heartedly committed to what God loves.
     To love justice is to love God.

     Perhaps the way that God prefers to intervene in human affairs is through us.

     May we accept the responsibility of this terrible freedom. May we believe in ourselves as much as God seems to believe in us.

     What suffering of human beings pulls on your heart? What desecration of creation makes your blood boil? What might you do about it?  

     John Wesley said "Do all the good you can, by all means you can, in all ways you can, in all places you can, at all times you can, to all people you can, as long as ever you can."
     Jimmy Carter, who helped build Habitat houses into his nineties, said something similar. "My faith demands that I do whatever I can, wherever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can with whatever I have to try to make a difference."

     Wow.

     Dulled by holiday fatigue and winter gloom, I'm not sure I can promise all that every day as long as I live. I'm not John Wesley or Jimmy Carter. But I can imagine doing one small thing today. A note to a grieving colleague whose good friend was killed by gun violence. An email to my senator asking if she voted to appropriate funds for a proposed mine that would deposit toxic waste next to Lake Superior and Porcupine Mountains State Park.

     What one thing can you do today to make the world better? I believe that when we commit ourselves to doing good, God gives us the strength to do it.

     May this be the way that the New Year begins: one small thing.

     Start there. Start now.

Scripture: Psalm 73

Playlist: "Do Something," Matthew West, Into the Light, Sparrow Records, 2012.

     Last Christmas, our six-year-old grandson, Emmett, stayed overnight at our house. He brought along his Toniebox, a music listening device for kids. This is how it works: Emmett places a plastic action figure from the Tonie collection on top of a cube-shaped speaker and the device then plays songs associated with that action figure. Like "Let It Go" sung by Elsa from Frozen. Or Peso's healing song from The Octonauts. Some Tonie figures allow you to download custom content onto a generic piece – a monster, superhero, fairy, or pirate.

     When we were cleaning up after Emmett had gone home, we found a pirate Tonie tangled in the sheets. I put the pirate figure in front of our Little People creche and took a photo. Then I sent it to our daughter and asked her to show the photo to Emmett so he would know that his lost Tonie had been found.

     Maybe you are feeling a little lost yourself this Christmas season. Maybe you're unsettled by political news, or missing someone you love. Maybe you feel out of place in your family or a friendship circle in which you used to feel safe. Maybe you've always felt like an outsider, looking in.

     At one of the churches where I was a pastor, we decorated the sanctuary for the Christmas season on the last Sunday of November. Children helped. They put red bows on the pews, hung ornaments on the tree, and placed the Holy Family inside the miniature stable on the altar. One child arranged the shepherds, sheep, donkey and cow in a precise circle outside the stable. Another child, a six-year-old literalist, insisted that the baby Jesus should not appear on the bed of straw until Christmas Eve. Following this logic, her older brother picked up the three wise men and moved them to the top of the organ, halfway across the sanctuary.    

     "What are you doing?" the six-year-old asked.

     "They come from the East," he said. "And they don't arrive until Epiphany. January Sixth." Even if he was a Sunday School show-off, his point was well-taken.

     The wise men were from really far outside the circle.

     Not only had they arrived late to the party, they weren't even Jews.

     According to Jewish law at the time of Jesus, righteous Jews were supposed to keep themselves completely separate from Gentiles. No touching, no socializing, no shared utensils. The laws had been established for good reasons: to protect their distinct identity as the Chosen People and to honor the holiness of God.

     But according to the gospel of Matthew, some dignitaries from the east, non-Jews, had seen an unusual star in the sky, consulted their astrological charts, and determined that the star heralded the birth of a great new king. They headed west to pay him homage.

     But nobody would have expected them to be there.

     Pastor Debbie Blue points out just how jarring their presence would have been to the family gathered inside. "They are popularly and familiarly known as the wise men or three kings," Blue says, "but they are more properly Magi: magic. They follow the stars. They conjure. They are really more Merlin than Arthur. Yet year after year they stand there at almost every manger scene all stiff and innocent and respectable as if they fit in, as if they've always been there, as if they're supposed to be there, as if they're not flaming pagans intruding on the birth scene of a little Jewish family."

     Blue puts it in modern idiom: "It would be like finding a big plastic Homer Simpson leaning over the baby Jesus on the Cathedral lawn."

     Anyone can be there.

     For the gospel writer Matthew, who tells the story of the Magi's visit, the presence of these wise men at the manger demonstrates that Jesus is for everyone, not just for his own people, the Jews. Perhaps Matthew was remembering words spoken by the Jewish prophet, Isaiah, "I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth." (Isaiah 49:6) The story of the Magi suggests that God's love moves in ever-widening circles, like when a stone is dropped into a pond, rippling out in wider and wider circles until it touches the whole earth.

     Legend has it that animals of all kinds gathered at midnight around the stable, made peaceable by the coming of Christ. Maybe a sparrowhawk flew over the wadi and perched on the roof. Or a lion stalked the perimeter, then eased its head down on massive paws. A black beetle skittered alongside the wall.

     All can come.

     May you find your place at the creche this Christmas. Everyone is welcome.

    Come.

 

Scripture: Matthew 2:1-12

Playlist: "We Three Kings" by John H. Hopkins, Jr., 1857.

     I sing alto in a modest, sixteen-voice choir at our church. We prepare an anthem and help lead worship three Sundays a month. But every autumn we also rehearse a major work for a community concert in December. This year it's Sunrise Mass by composer Ola Gjeilo.

     We will be joined at the concert by other vocalists – a high school ensemble, another church choir, and various itinerant vocalists whom directors have summoned to fill out the parts.

     We could use the help.

     Although our choir has six (!) altos, we need more sopranos, tenors, and basses. Sopranos provide the soaring high notes, tenors the lovely harmonies, and basses the strong foundation for choral music. My husband, Ed, and another man are the only two basses in our choir.
     And, truth be told, most of our voices are aging. I've lost the top of my range, my sight-reading has slowed, and I can't sustain long notes like I used to.

     Rehearsals have been a hard slog.    

     While Sunrise Mass promises to be sublime, Gjeilo (pronounced Yay-lo) asks a lot of his musicians. The opening movement, "The Spheres," has eight vocal parts, layering the voices in long, sustained notes with little support from the orchestra. That's right choral sports fans – the first thing the audience will hear is our voices, almost a cappella.

     In the second movement, "Sunrise," the string section plays its own sweet part while we vocalists struggle to find our entrances and maintain our own rhythm.
     The third movement, "The City," goes on for twenty-two pages, a full eleven minutes of accidentals and strange time changes while the string players saw their way through hundreds of fast-moving sixteenth-notes, bars and bars and bars of arpeggios. The orchestral score looks like someone dipped a paintbrush in black ink and flung it at the page.

     And, did I mention that the text is in Latin?

     But here's some good news: Our church choir participated in a community concert featuring this same piece eight years ago and the woman I sit next to in the alto row learned it then. You can see me leaning toward her during rehearsals to hear our part.
     Also, I had some random good luck – I was given a vocal score used by an alto the last time around. Her penciled notations remain on the pages of the score. She reminds me "In 3" when there is a time change over a page turn. "Stagger breath" lets me know someone else will hold the note while I breathe. "Same note" informs me that though they look different, A-flat and G-sharp are the same sound. She provides pronunciation aids for the unfamiliar Latin words.

     She helps keep me from stumbling as I move through the piece.

     Whoever you are, I thank you.

     This unknown alto is one of a whole host of kindly people whose instructions have shown others the way. Like canoe voyagers who notched blazes on trees to mark the portage from river to lake. Or hikers who piled cairns to show later travelers which trail to take down from the rocky outcrop on top of the mountain.  
     Or, those blessed folks who make YouTube videos telling you how to change the headlamp in your Subaru (harder than it looks) or how to tape and paint a drywall seam. Most of these YouTube gurus are not professionals – they're not in it to promote a product, they just get a kick out of showing you how it's done.

     God bless them.

     As we rehearse Gjeilo's mass, I am helped, too, by the conductor who marks the rhythm with his hands, by the rehearsal accompanist who pounds out our parts, and by the music itself, which, when we listen closely enough, will tell us how to sing it.

     I am surrounded by helpers.

     On the first day of November, the Christian church celebrated All Saints' Day, a day on which we remember not only famous saints like St. Peter and St. Paul and Mother Theresa, but also ordinary folk who have gone before us in faith.   

     It might seem odd to describe ordinary people as "saints," but that's exactly what the apostle Paul does in his Letter to the Ephesians. "To the saints who are in Ephesus and are faithful in Christ Jesus," he writes. We usually think of saints as spiritual superstars, but the way Paul uses the word, saints are regular people who, by their faithfulness, help others on their way.      

     In his memoir, The Sacred Journey, novelist Frederick Buechner says that on All Saints' Day, we should remember friends and family members and mentors, "all the foolish ones and wise ones, the shy ones and overbearing ones, the broken ones and whole ones, the despots and tosspots and crackpots of our lives…, by whom we were helped to whatever little we may have, or ever hope to have, of some kind of seedy sainthood of our own."

     On the night before the election, I was lying awake in my bed, legs tense and shoulders scrunched, full of dread about the future. Unable to quiet my mind any other way, I began to pray, over and over again, "Lord, have mercy on us." Then I began naming saints I have known and asked them to stand close by and help us through this.

     I named my mom, Mary Inwood Smith, my friend Barbara Lewis-Lakin, my mentor Juanita Ferguson, and one of my bishops, Judith Craig. As I breathed, and named a name with each breath, it seemed as if I could sense their presence around the room, just beyond a filmy veil, watching, sending their love. As I breathed and prayed, I felt a jolt of something like electricity flow through my body. Though it was still a long time before I fell asleep, my shoulders relaxed into the pillow, and my legs unclenched under the sheets.

     Who are your saints? Who would you name?

     This is my prayer in these dark days of November: May you be given help when you need it. May you be blessed by the presence of faithful ones, living and dead, who stand beside you and show you the way. May you know that you are not alone.

Scripture: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witness, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith." – Hebrews 12:1-2

Playlist: "For All the Saints," William W. How, 1864, to the tune of SINE NOMINE by Ralph Vaughn Williams, 1906.