even for me

If God is incarnate in ordinary life then we should see God, first of all, within ordinary life.  Too often, even though we know this theoretically, practically we still look for God in the extraordinary... do you want to see a vision?  Get up and watch the sun rise."  


Ronald Rolheiser, This Holy Longing: The Search for a Christian Spirituality


I was ready for a vision.  So, for Easter morning, I took my boys to their first sunrise service.  We drove in the dark to Warren Wilson college.  We huddled on a bench in a beautiful garden.  We participated in the joyful, thoughtful, interactive program that my friend Leah lead out in.


I read Rolheiser's words on the bulletin's that were passed out.  I watched the sky turn warm and pink.  I heard the morning birds chirping to each other.  I felt the two cozy bodies of my boys pressed close on either side of me.  I smelled roses and wet grass.  I chanted "Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!" over and over with every one around me.  My heart swelled with contentment and pleasure.


Then we were called to stand in a circle and break the communion bread together and partake.  And I froze.  For two months I have been been gluten free.  No sandwiches.  No donuts.  No wheat pasta.  No more hives or migraines or arthritis or allergies or sluggishness.  YEAH!  But I never considered that the "no's" included participating in communion.  The circle suddenly felt exclusive of someone like me.  How would I unobtrusively take a pass?


Leah held up the round loaf of bread.  She repeated those beautiful words from scripture.  "This is My body, broken for you...." and she tore the loaf in half.  She handed one half to the people on either side of her, to tear off a piece and pass it on.  And then, as an after thought, she added "oh - the students made this communion loaf gluten free."


And in that moment, it seemed very symbolic to me.  "This is My body, broken....yes, even for you."


³⁸ And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Not life altering choices, or ground shaking doubts or gluten intolerence....  neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. ³⁹ No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Romans 8:38, 39

easter

Last week we were in the least fun stage of buying a new car.  The finance part.  Putting on paper every detail about our work and history.  Signing our lives away.  The finance man scanned through the file.  "Wait.  You are a hospice chaplain?  Oh wow.  You guys are really incredible.  The work you do is so important."  He welled up.  Turns out, both his mother and father spent their last months in a good hospice program.  And he was sold on it.  When we left, he shook Steve's hand hard, and gave me a big hug.  "You kids keep up the good work."


Two days ago I walked in to a CVS pharmacy to buy shampoo.  The cashier glanced at my name tag as he rang up my purchase.  "Hey! Four Seasons hospice!  You people are the best.  You took care of my grandmother when she was dying three years ago. "  


"I'm new with the group." I told him.  "but I'm so glad she was well cared for."


"She was."  He responded.  "Thank you so much for everything."


I really like where I work, and who I work with.  And, as the new kid on the block, I owe so much to the ones who went before me.  Because of them, I am enjoying an identity I did not earn.  I receive accolades I didn't work for.  I'm grateful to be one of them, and inspired to follow in their footsteps.  


And then it hit me.  That's Easter in a nutshell.  


Because of God's sacrifice, I am enjoying an identity I did not earn.  I receive Grace I don't deserve.  I look forward to a future I couldn't acquire.  I owe everything to the One who loved me That Much.  I'm so grateful!  And inspired to follow in Those footsteps.


² We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith.  Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne. ³ Think of all the hostility he endured from sinful people; then you won’t become weary and give up.  Hebrew 12:2,3

where else?

She is petite and frail.  She is taking her medicine and enduring her treatments.  Anything for a little more time.  Anything to get feeling better.  And then she falls, walking to the bathroom. Breaks her hip and wrist.  She loses all the ground she  has gained.  Time is running out.


89 years old.  She looks up at me from her bed.  Big, brown eyes.  "I keep praying and praying.  For good things.  To get better.  To hang in til my son can come back.  To not have to take so much medicine.  Why isn't God answering any of my prayers?"


She just looks at me. My inner theologian wants to discuss our misunderstandings of prayer.  The teacher in me is jumping to reframe her questions  As a pastor, I want to recall all the Bible stories where God came through in dark times.  But first the chaplain has to hear the pain of those words.  The loneliness. The helplessness.   "It really hurts to not feel heard by the God you love, doesn't it?  To not understand where God is in this.  I am so sorry."  I hold her hand tightly and our eyes well up.


Later, at the end of the visit, I ask if there is anything I can do for her. "Pray for me before you go?" she asks.


I think about the story of the disciples in John 6.   
⁶⁶ At this point many of his followers turned away and deserted him. ⁶⁷ Then Jesus turned to the Twelve and asked, “Are you also going to leave?”
 ⁶⁸ Simon Peter replied, “Lord, to whom would we go? You have the words that give eternal life.”

Sometimes that's all faith is.  A little kicking.  A lot of doubt.  Some unanswered questions.  And then a surrender again to the only Hope we have.  

Where else are we going to go?

pain

"Make friends with pain, and you will never be alone."  Ken Chlouber, Colorado miner and creator of the Leadville Trail 100.


As my friend Barbara and I are in the last stretch of training for our upcoming half marathon, this quote is timely.  Our training runs are getting longer and longer.  9, 10, 11....This Sunday we will do 12.  And with each new mile, come a new batch of aches and pains.  We limp and stretch and take ibuprofen and band aid our blisters and limp some more.  "Embrace the pain",  I hear.  I'm not quite convinced.


An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor is one of those books I want to read a hundred times.  Her chapter, The Practice of Feeling Pain is powerful and inspiring to me as a chaplain, a runner and a human.


Pain makes theologians of us all.  If you have spend even one night in real physical pain, then you know what that can do to your faith in God, not to mention your faith in your own ability to manage your life.

I think about my patients who endure such pain.  Every nursing report includes the doses of tylenol, morphine, roxanol or ativan.  Every visit from each team member includes questions or indicators of pain.   But, despite all this, most patients struggle through, finding meaning and bits of joy in their remaining days.  I think of Clarence who postponed his med times so he could have a clearer mind to talk with his family.  I remember Emily, whose pain superceeded the meds.  She just squeezed my hand tightly.  I see families regrouping after a loved one dies.  They leave hospice to refashion their lives.  There is no medicine for their pain.


So, reluctant as I may be, I am going to learn from pain.  My pain, their pain, your pain.  It's an unavoidable teacher. With invaluable lessons for me. 


There will always be people who run from every kind of pain and suffering, just as there will always be religions that promise to put them to sleep.  For those willing to stay awake, pain remains a reliable altar in the world, a place to discover that a life can be as full of meaning as it is of hurt.  The two have never canceled each other out and I doubt they ever will, at least not until each of us- or all of us together - find a way through. Barbara Brown Taylor.

peacocks

I drove almost a mile up a gravel road, to the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere.  I walked up the steps to the porch of a trailer that had been home to my patient for 65 years.  And then, among the chickens, the rusted cars, the sheds and dilapidated fence I saw this amazing bird.

I've seen peacocks before.  They belong in a movie.  Their creativity and color is outrageous.  You could easily blame it on an overzealous special effects team.

Or a zoo.  Where people pay money and expect to gawk in wonder at rare and wonderful animals.

Or the lawn of the Biltmore Estate.  With all that opulence and grandeur, the regal peacock would feel right at home.

But here?  In the back woods, among dogs and chickens?  No crowds or photographers or lines.  Just one awestruck chaplain on a porch, smiling at the incongruity, enjoying the show, marveling at the colors and design.  WOW.

Every time I read Aaron Niequist's blog, I find a quote I just have to adopt.  Here's the latest...

“. . all the beauty of the world, the beauty that calls our admiration, our gratitude, our worth-ship at the earthly level, is meant as a set of hints, of conspiratorial whispers, of clues and suggestions and flickers of light, all nudging us into believing that behind the beautiful world is not random chance but the loving God.”  N.T. Wright, For All God’s Worth

tobacco

I'm about as against tobacco as a human can get.  But this story, from a darling ninety year old, almost made me soft on the stuff.

One of ten children, Anna was the dependable one.  Her daddy taught her to drive when she was eight years old.  He needed someone to bring him the truck in the middle of the day when he had worked his way to the far sides of the Florida citrus fields.  Anna flooded the engine twice and ran off the road into a ditch.  But daddy got a mule and pulled the truck out.  By the end of the day, eight year old Anna could drive.


The summer Anna turned thirteen, Granddaddy from Georgia asked for help.  He needed hands in his tobacco fields.  Anna and her two sisters took a bus to GA and began long days of stringin' tobacco in the hot and humid fields.


Granddaddy also got some help from a neighbor family with eleven children.  They sent two of their boys over.  On their first morning of work, the boys joined in to help the girls catch up for lunch.  One of the boys, Roy, was a fourteen year old with "the sweetest smile you ever saw on a handsome face."  Roy would hand Anna leaves of tobacco and she would hand them to her sister.  Every once in a while Anna would grab for some leaves and all she would get was Roy's empty hand.  He thought this was hilarious. 


And that was the summer.  By fall, Anna was back in Florida.  During the week she stayed with her two sisters in a boarding house and worked every day at a citrus plant.   On weekends she would drive the girls thirty miles to be home with their parents and to help on their strawberry farm.


Roy wrote letters.  He was working in a meat factory.  He hated it.  "If I knew I could get a job near you, I would be there in a second."  He told her.


Thirteen year old Anna tucked the letter in her pocket and went to find her boss.  "I know a man who needs a job.  We lost our driver and we need this man to drive all three of us to the city each week or all three of us girls will quit." Anna fibbed.  The boss didn't want to lose three hard workers.  He pondered the dilemma and then told her that he had a worker leaving on Friday.  "If your friend can be here by Monday, I will train him."


Then thirteen year old Anna talked to the lady who ran their boarding house.  "Do you have any available rooms?" she asked.  There were no rooms available, but Mrs. Waldon's house was recommended three blocks away.


By night fall Anna had secured a job and a room for Roy.  She mailed the news the next morning.


For the next twenty-five years Anna and Roy worked at the citrus plant all week, the strawberry farm on the weekends and the tobacco fields in the summers.   In 1938, after three years of dating, sixteen year old Anna put on her best gray dress and married Roy.  In a tiny chapel, surrounded by the tobacco fields they had met in.  And they lived happily ever after.  At least for the next 70 years.....

feet and faith

I am having a hard time putting down Christopher McDougall's book Born To Run.  Besides the interesting stories of ultra runners,  I was fascinated by his description of the human foot.  At one point he talks about  the "high tensile web of 26 bones, thirty three joints, twelve rubbery tendons and eighteen muscles, all stretching and flexing like an earthquake resistant suspension bridge."  McDougall quotes Leonardo da Vinci who considered the human foot, with its fantastic weight-suspension system comprising one quarter of all the bones in the human body, "a masterpiece of engineering and a work of art."  The rest of the book awes you with what our feet are capable of doing.  And in a strange way this helped me get through a long week of hospice.


I am still adjusting to the fact that every week I stare at death with someone whose time is almost up.  Sometimes a history of illness, pain and loss of independence make them eager to go.  Some are fighting it with all they have left.  And almost everyone, in the process of dying, wants to talk about what happens next.  They recite the Bible verses that talk about their heavenly home.  They share their pastor's certainty that they will immediately reunite with grandma and grandpa.  They list their good deeds that will ensure them a promotion in reincarnation.  Or they emphatically tell me "When it's over, it's over."


This week it hit me.  People know what they believe.  They've got the proof and the tradition down. But when they face imminent death, people wonder whether they believe what they believe.  It is one thing to have 10 Bible verse about eternal life in Heaven memorized in your dog eared Bible.  It is another to really believe that you are going to actually be there in your very near future.  Streets of gold and angels sound lovely, but it's hard to feel confident about exchanging your spouse and your favorite pink fleece blanket for them.  Of course grace is amazing.  But after 80 years in a dog-eat-dog word, are you able to really trust that it's sufficient?


This week I stood at enough of these doorways, to join in some wonderings.  I've had too much arrogance kicked out of me to think that my particular tribe has all the answers.  I've learned too much about God from a wide variety of people.  Through journey and questions I have amassed a few beliefs that inspire and make sense to me.  I know what I believe.  But do I really believe what I believe?


That is where the foot comes in.  In those moments where there are more questions than answers, I think about my foot.  I look down at my "masterpieces of engineering and works of art."  Somehow those intricate feet were designed.  A design that lets me jump with my boys, run with my friends and tiptoe to hug my honey. With no help or even comprehension from me, my feet are incredible.  That is calming to me.   Because if Someone put that much thought and skill into my feet, maybe my future will be just as awesome.


Faith is the confidence that what we hope for will actually happen; it gives us assurance about things we cannot see.  Hebrews 11:1