It Increases Your Faith Value

In the movie Steel Magnolias, which came out in theaters in 1990 or maybe 1989, the character Truvy Jones (Dolly Parton) says: "Smile! It increases your face value!" Probably many of us have been told, or seen at one time or another, the church-sign variant: "Smile! It increases your faith value!"

When I started intentionally to smile more often, it was for cosmetic reasons.

Having graduated from divinity school with an M.Div. degree, I enrolled in a year of postgraduate study at a Lutheran seminary for required courses in Lutheran history, worship leadership, polity, and practices. In the second half of the year, I noticed that, at just-turned-42, the way my face was structured would lead to deep grooves from the outer edges of my mouth down my chin, twin rivers of life's baggage.

My mouth at rest naturally has a slight downturn at the ends. It requires a bit of muscle movement to counteract that. It occurred to me that I could perhaps slow down the formation of those grooves if I were to be more mindful of holding my mouth at intentionally neutral. (Never mind the whole issue of: "You've got to hold your mouth right" to perform, successfully, some minor annoying action such as getting the remote to work, unlocking a door, or opening a can.)

In the spring of 2009 - ten years ago, wow - I chose to be intentional about frowning less. Of late, because my poor-vision eyes have done quite a bit of hard ocular labor all my life, it's wise to take care not to strain them. Just recently, I've chosen to spend much less time browsing social media on my phone, for example. And part of what prompted that decision? Was the realization that I was squinting and frowning automatically when doing much of that stuff on my phone.

What's shifted in the last decade? It seems that what started as wanting to increase my face value has been a seed that, having fallen to the ground, has taken root and is beginning to put forth a few little green shoots toward increasing my faith value.

It turns out that all the jocular, well-meaning advice about smiling, and looking at the big picture, and remembering to breathe ... have all moved me in the direction of more closeness with God.

Imagine what could happen if you and I choose to be intentional about our own face values.

Bouncing Ducks

On the last Sunday of my first call, rubber duckies flew.

Allow me to unpack that sentence a bit. In August of 2011, I began serving as an associate in a church; in late September 2011, I was ordained as a minister of Word and Sacrament in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, in the North Carolina Synod. Synod is a Greek word meaning "journeying along the way together," syn- (as in "synagogue") + hodos, the way, the journey, the path. "Together along the journey." North Carolina is one of 65 synods in the ELCA.

As a candidate, I would not be ordained until a congregation had extended a call. That is, a congregation, following procedures, had to invite me to be a pastor, to be together along the journey with those people of God, after which I could be ordained.

I am 5 feet 1 inch tall; the bishop was 6 feet 8 (probably still is). The pictures are entertaining.

I began serving in the congregation in mid-August of 2011. Certain parts of the service were not mine to lead until I was ordained, in late September, when the bishop was able to preside. Almost exactly two years later, after the senior pastor had retired, my journey with this community came to an end.

I shared stories about rubber duckies. As planned together with the interim senior pastor and the ushers, at the close of the sermon, I tossed the duckies, one at a time, into the congregation. My dad snagged one, which he keeps on the kitchen counter. And -- this is a priceless memory -- when I turned to make sure members of the choir got some duckies, a tall alto in the back row, widowed during our time together, and a woman with whom I share a birthday ... she put her arm straight up and grabbed the duckie.

Does she still have it? I do not know. But I still have that memory.

What brought it to the forefront? A snippet in a nature documentary showing a mother duck nudging her babies from the nest. Each duckling in turn plummets to earth, lands, bounces a bit, and regains its feet.*

One of the truths I had to learn for myself as a mom is that babies bounce. The collective wisdom of the great cloud of witnesses knows that, and had used that truth to comfort the hubs and me when we were new parents. Even so ... when our toddling first-born bit his tongue and it bled, I had to soothe myself to soothe him. With the second-born, we just checked to make sure it wasn't the ears or a main artery. As our ducklings plummet to earth, and bounce, we watch and pray and try to remember to keep breathing.

How astonishingly complex and limitlessly wise (say that three times, quickly or even at all) is the Creator of the Cosmos, who knows that we bounce, and that we are to watch and pray and breathe. And who in God's infinite wisdom and creativity endowed Peter Ganine, a sculptor, to patent his sculpture of a duck in the 1940s and then "reproduce it as a floating toy."**

Never may I cease to wonder at the infinite complexity of the cosmos and my place within it, connected with everyone and everything else. I commend to you the poem "The Journey" by the late Mary Oliver.

*Planet Earth, David Attenborough.
**"Rubber Ducks," Wikipedia.

The Air We Breathe

So the air-conditioning unit died on Tuesday. We knew that death was inevitable, as it tends to be for all of us. And we were spared the slow, lingering passage fraught with questions and true hope and false hope: the thing simply stopped producing cool air on a Tuesday, and when I arrived home that evening from a gathering and was chatting with a neighbor, we were greeted by my husband opening the windows in the front room.

Of course we have become those people, the ones whose HVAC unit dies right around Memorial Day and the first or second heat wave of late spring. To be fair, the home's previous owners had a large dog who enjoyed the back yard a lot, which meant that the dog might have relieved itself on the HVAC unit a time or two; and when we bought the house, the appraiser and buyer's agent both told us that the unit was x number of years old. And we knew all that. And the repairman is supposed to be coming by in a couple of days. 

The air conditioning going out during a heat wave has prompted as many counting of blessings as it has the moaning and groaning. First, the latter: it's stuffy in the house. The dogs and cat are miserable. (We've been putting ice cubes in their water bowls and monitoring their hydration.) It's so much harder to fall asleep. Some of us, uh, glow more freely. 

The blessings: We have a new, first-hand appreciation for why the pace of life was markedly slower in the South before air conditioning became common: in homes, in cars, in offices, in houses of worship. It's too hot to cook and, If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen have become much more vivid realizations. (M. did not make a stir-fry as planned on Saturday.)

"Our air conditioning is out" might possibly excuse my frizzy hair, at least part way. I do try to tame it before I leave the house, but this temporary reality is a handy backup. (Hey! What if we just ... nah.)

We have a new appreciation for the backyard porch. After about 8 o'clock in the evening, if the heat eases a little, it's cooler and not nearly as stuffy, and a good place to watch the sun subside and lightning bugs come out. 

Our household contains three small portable fans and a ceiling fan. We are absolutely using them. And the pets have learned where the nexus of air is and where they can sprawl on the floor.

And the big, first-world one: Paying the repairman his estimate will put a dent in our budget, for sure. But we can pay it, even though it means a more watchful eye on the checkbook for a spell. For some of my neighbors, if the HVAC unit died, they would simply be living without central air conditioning, and then central heating, for quite some time because that money was simply not to be found, and the budget was much too lean to allow for quick payment. With patience, maybe a few dollars at a time, they would get there. And some of my neighbors simply don't run the air conditioning or the heat much at all, to keep the power bill down and the lights on. 

That porch I mentioned: it looks out on a fenced back yard full of older trees, and ivy that we keep an eye on, and shade, and birdsong, and a chipmunk family, and our immediate neighbors have similar lots and yards. We live in a little area of single-family postwar houses, surrounded by larger, wealthier sections, and our home is our oasis. We do not live in an apartment surrounded by asphalt that shimmers and half-melts in summer. 

Inside the house, the air is a little stuffy, and we perspire more, and our fans stir the air, and in the cool of the morning and the cool of the evening we can enjoy the back yard. 

And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, "Where are you?" (Genesis 3:8-10, RSV.)

God continues to grant to those in my household the cool of the day, every day so far, and reminds my heart that even when we hide from God's presence, God knows where we are and what we are up to. And God continues to invite us to number our blessings and find them too many to count.

The More Things Change

Or, plus ca change, if you prefer the saying in its original language. It loses something if I'm not able to add the French accent marks. 

Never have I been able to swallow yogurt. From the container, as a food by itself, that is. Been cooking and baking with it for years. But the gag reflex against food that my evolutionary instincts tell me is spoiled - that's been a pretty strong reflex pretty much all my life. 

I have no idea if I was ever fed yogurt as a baby or toddler, although I suspect that it was not in my parents' grocery budget. I don't remember it being in the refrigerator, and I know that my mom has told me over the years that she likewise has never been able to get the stuff down. So, probably not.

As a vegetarian in college (because, come on, who hasn't?), I tried it - no go. And this was, at the time anyway, a little hippie college with a famous work-study program and a working farm. The vegetable gardens provided food for the cafeteria, and once in a while there would be a steak night. And invariably I would give away my ticket for a serving of steak, because I was new to being a vegetarian and still being, well, more comfortable with unwavering boundaries about it.


Of course, I am consuming a cup of yogurt as I write this. So what's changed?

I have. 


Pretty sure yogurt itself hasn't changed much, though there is a shameful variety on the market shelf where we shop. This is a Greek yogurt (the brand name translates as "house," no kidding) in the sub-category of "triple zero."  It's not as ideal for overall health as the unflavored yogurt would be. "Small moves, Ellie."* 

I'm eating the yogurt because my husband has been eating the yogurt. My husband has been eating the yogurt because our longtime family physician has taken off the gloves about weight loss and heart health for him. He's been supportive on my journey with weight loss and heart health, and now we both are striving for better. 

We both are striving for better not only for our own physical health; we also are striving for being better stewards of our household (there's that Greek word again!), our little patch of land (God's 1/3-acre?), and to live in "the harmony of our totality."**

Maybe, in time, one or both of us will find ourselves consuming the plain yogurt.  And I am reasonably certain that God is now giving that slow loving smile of a parent who has seen the child ... finally ... reach her own conclusions about "I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food."***

Yes, I know that yogurt involves milk. "Small moves, Ellie."

*Contact. By Carl Sagan. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
**Evensong. By Gail Godwin. New York: Ballantine Books, 1999.
***Genesis 1:29, NRSV.

Have Not Our Weary Feet

Of course the last thing I wanted to do, after arriving home from work at 5:30 on a warm Tuesday, was to go anywhere and do anything. So why in God's name did I change my trousers, gather a few items, and drive into downtown for a local gathering?
In God's name is why.

The purpose of the gathering is not the point of this reflection. Except to say that the gathering was arranged hastily, as part of a national day of speaking and action, that most of the people present had learned about only that day or, at best, last Saturday. I think I heard something about it on Sunday evening, maybe.

And as it turned out, I was the only person present dressed in clericals: the black shirt and white collar, the colorful stole. I was not the only clergyperson present. We found one another, as we always do, knowing our tribe's scents, or aurae, or what have you. But most of the people at this gathering were female, and several of them thanked me for showing up, in clericals, representing, and saying to them: "Freedom is of God."

A local march-and-rally buddy who has one of those machines that makes buttons wasn't handing out many buttons that day (normally she asks $1 each, which I pay gladly), but she gave me one that reads, "God trusts women." This is a message that everyone needs to hear.

Afterward, as we stood in little clusters and visited, I had the privilege of conversation with a local minister of another Protestant denomination. He is, if I had to guess, maybe in his seventies. His wife and young-adult son were at the gathering as well. He learned about the gathering only that morning.

He listened and I spoke and I listened and he spoke.

He was gracious enough to affirm in me the authenticity of my lifelong, persistent invitation - urging, even - from God to "show up, stand up, speak up, speak out." We talked about hope, and about Rep. John Lewis (D-GA 5).

The title of today's reflection comes from "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing." It is a poem by James Weldon Johnson, a native (like me!) of Florida, although his experiences are nothing like mine. He wrote it in 1919 for a celebration of the birthday of Abraham Lincoln. His brother, John Rosamond Johnson, composed music for it. Since the 1930s, if not before, it is informally known as the "Negro National Anthem." It appears in hymnals, including the 1978 and 2006 hymnals of the ELCA.

The poem traces the journey - always toward freedom, toward life, toward hope - granted by God to any who find themselves in bondage, in death, without hope. It has strong echoes of the Exodus with Moses (not so incidentally, the nickname that slaves gave to Harriet Tubman).

Here is a link to the poem. https://poets.org/poem/lift-every-voice-and-sing

I urge you to read the poem. If you don't know the hymn, please find it and hear it. Even better, find it and sing it.

What happens in you and me when we hear voices from outside our own lived lives? Does not that grant us the kind of authentic freedom that God so deeply desires for each of God's beloved creations?

How You Take Your Tea

Coffee was available in my household of origin, but not for children, at least not straight up. Occasionally when I was a child, I'd be allowed a spoonful or two in a teacup of milk. Aren't we all?

By inclination, I might be more of a tea drinker. My timeline between and among coffee and tea is a rabbit hole for another time. How I take my tea, these days, whether caffeinated or not, is with a little honey and a splash of milk. 

Yes: I drink my tea with milk and honey.

That's a description that appears more than 30 times in Scriptures. Interestingly, almost all of the occasions are in Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Exodus: the history of the Hebrews, on their God-guided journey from slavery to freedom, from darkness to light, from individual to community. Invariably, it is as "the promise of the Lord," that they will dwell in a land of, or flowing with, milk and honey.

A couple of times we see it in the prophets, including Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as a past promise of the Lord. 

What does this mean, the land flowing with milk and honey? Sticky, as the tired joke goes. In the rich metaphorical poetry of scriptural Hebrew, it means something else. Jonathan Cohen, whose online profile describes him as "a poet, translator, essayist, and scholar of inter-American literature," provides a generally accepted "received definition" of it as a metaphor meaning God's blessings as well as the extraordinary fertility of the Promised Land. The original Hebrew verb zoov means to flow or to gush, and the Greek word zoe, meaning "life," is different from bios. Zoe means vitality, brim-fullnes. Dwelling in extravagantly fertile and abundant lands, in other words.

To this day, in some Jewish households, when a child is first taught to read and say the "aleph bet," the first two letters of Hebrew, the child gets a drop of honey on the tongue, that learning may be sweet.

What happens when you and I consume our tea, or toast, or anything of nourishment and sustenance as in a land flowing with milk and honey? Maybe it will serve as a reminder that God's promise to each of us is a promise of the journey from darkness to light.


*I am indebted to Jonathan Cohen, particularly to the following post:
https://www.uhmc.sunysb.edu/surgery/m&h.html

Beyond the Recipe

Years ago - in another lifetime, really - the hubs and I had a housewarming party. In preparing the food, I found real pleasure in trying four or five new recipes. None of them was especially innovative, although I remember my mother expressing some admiration that we would invite people over and serve dishes that were not tried and true, the never-fail pot roast or trusted chicken-and-stuffing casserole. 

In truth, that has been my mom's main compliment on my cooking or baking: that I was creative. I think her admiration stemmed from her own reality. She has consistently been a good cook in a very different sense. Frugal, steady, and armed with a boxful of recipes and a Better Homes & Gardens red-gingham-patterned cookbook, she has been a devoted home economist. 

When I was 15, though, and determined to learn to bake bread from scratch, she kept the mood upbeat and funny even as we wound up with bowls and baking sheets full of an exponential amount of dough. She dutifully ate the lentils and grilled asparagus that I served when living in my apartment. 

Yesterday evening, as I was trying a new recipe, all of this freedom came back to me. Why was I making something I had never attempted? Where was it born and nurtured, this bent that has provided more than 30 years of trying lemon-dill muffins (don't) and coconut macaroons with homemade Key lime curd (yes, do, really)? 

From a mom who, though this was not her path, walked it with me, encouraging me and letting me own my notable failures (pumpkin pie has a learning curve) as well as being aware of and celebrating progress. Come to think of it, it was Mom who tried a lemon-dill muffin and told me: Not so much.

That, perhaps, is what God does for us. Shine, preacher! In your place, and be content, William Wordsworth advises, and it is good theology. This is your path, dear child. Take a step. Take another step. Whoops, not there. Yes! Here. Find energy in the beauty around you. Let whatever wells up in you fill you with joy. 

Artisanal Pulpits

The other day, a dear one shared a thought with me about his memorial service for when it is time to have one. Mention was made of two people who had studied journalism and labored happily and with fulfillment in the writing life - and who both, in midlife or thereabouts - went to divinity school and, coming out the other side, now serve in ordained ministry. 

Not me. 

Wait. I'm really not describing me - these are two other women - but it's also my story. 

I have a theory. (As often I seem to.) Many people who labor in the craft of journalism describe it as a calling, usually with cynical humor about the low pay and the bomb it drops on one's social life; how they can be real friends mostly with others in journalism; but most of all, how they cannot imagine themselves doing anything else. Journalism is both an art and a craft. I speak here not of infotainment but of journalism, the craft of making and shaping something new and vital from the raw materials of fact and narrative. 

I learned that journalism is both an art and a craft, the artisanal life of journalism and narrative, from my father, now in his eighties. As a young adult, he seriously considered entering the path toward ordained ministry. His path led instead, by way of circumstance, to journalism and then to journalism education. 

How much of it is chance that I know of at least three women including me who have, in moving from the newsroom to the narthex, moved from one artisanal craft to another? From one form of narrative as relationship, legacy, and future ... to another? How much of it is God, the Divine Tour Guide, the kind of guide who keeps saying, "Ooh, look! Oh, over here. Hey, this is a lot like that other thing we saw earlier!"

Once again, God is relationship. Once again, God is connection. Once again, God keeps inviting you and me to marvel, as God marvels, at paths and journeys and narratives and callings. 

The Intersection of Fear and Hope

Ten years ago, give or take a few months, I began a sermon on a passage from Isaiah with: "We live in a time of fearful hearts." It went on from there, as sermons tend to do. It has begun to occur to me recently that the starter might have, quite unintentionally, been one of those thoughts that operates on kairos as well as chronos.

Let Madeleine L'Engle explain better: "Kairos. Real time. God's time. That time which breaks through chronos with a shock of joy, that time we do not recognize while we experience it, but only afterwards, because kairos has nothing to do with chronological time."*


She explains that in Greek, at least in the Greek spoken in and around the first century of the Common Era, there are two words for time. [Kaire is, or was, also the basic greeting, translating as "Hail."]

At any rate (backing out of that extremely interesting rabbit hole), why is it that "We live in a time of fearful hearts" is so, uh... timeless?

Where history, theology, and sociology braid - choose your continent, era, and forms of government. This is, perhaps, an infinitely repeating pattern. And yet. (Or, if you prefer, "And at the same time.")

Where is the hope? Where is what Carl Sagan called "a candle in the dark" in one of his book titles?**

Is it possible that the intersection of fear and hope is also the intersection of us and God? That would be my reading of the map. Though I am notorious in my family for lacking an internal geographical compass, I trust this map reading.

And then how do I live in the intersection, maybe even in the (ahem) cross-walk? How does any of us? How do our hearts accommodate fear and hope, not antagonistically but intertwined, which they seem to be evolutionarily - which for me also means how the Creator of the Universes made us?

We do as Mister Rogers said that his mother always told him when he learned of something frightening: Look for the helpers.

There is in my family of origin a small myth about me at age 3 or 4: that my father, teasingly, asked me an existential question: "Why are we here?" And that in reply, without hesitation, I said, "To help others." (I know, I know.) The myth continues. My father asked a follow-up question, as good reporters will: "Then why are the others here?" Deft at a press conference as only toddlers can be, I answered, "To be helped!"

That'll preach. The older I get, the more strongly my theopraxis (my practice of God) is rooted in relational community. Back when I began that sermon (Isaiah 43 or 55, maybe), I was just beginning my year of congregational internship. A year later, at the approval interview at the synod office, one of the interview committee remarked on what he saw and heard in my essay answers and face-to-face answers about a "theology of community."

All of which is to say that that seems to  be how I find myself living in the intersection of fear and hope.

*Quoted material taken from Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. By Madeleine L'Engle. New York: Crown Publishing Group, 2001.

**The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark. By Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan. New York: Random House (reprint), 1997.

The Intersection of Fear and Hope

The wolf, the sheep, and the cabbages

It might have been when I was 10 years old, when I first encountered this little challenge in a book. A farmer must cross a river in his small boat, transporting a wolf, a sheep, and a basket of cabbages. It's never occurred to me until just now to wonder at the kind of farmer who would have that transport challenge, or just why someone who farms sheep and cabbage would want to be anywhere near a wolf. But that might be akin to wondering why someone would be buying 64 watermelons, say. This is a problem designed to encourage thinking and creativity. To stretch the brain. To make, perhaps, new neural pathways.

The challenge is that the farmer can fit only himself and one other item or animal in the boat, and he has to get them all across to the other side of the river. The wolf won't eat the cabbages but will eat the sheep. The sheep will eat the cabbages. The cabbages won't, apparently, eat anything.

I thought of this little thinking game just this morning. M., the hubs, was still sleeping when I got up. I set about getting the cat and two small dogs their kibble. Because the cats and the dogs would each eat one another's rations, we have developed a system both for where they eat and also in what order we deliver their food. 

I collect that cat's bowl from a side bathroom, part of what's called a Jack-and-Jill, a full bathroom that opens on one side to a powder room. The bathroom is off a bedroom for which we leave the door propped so the cat can slink in but the dogs really cannot. 

I pick up the dogs' bowls from opposite sides of the kitchen and put all three on the counter. Fill the bowls. 

Leaving the dogs' bowls, I deliver the cat her food, closing the door behind me so that the cat can eat and then is free to move about the house. I return to the kitchen and set down the food first for the older, slower dog. Then the younger dog, who is the most impatient for food. This solution is not exactly analogous to the brain teaser, but close enough to get me pondering (which, I admit, does not take much).

In the cabbages challenge, the solution is this:

The farmer must first transport the sheep across, leaving the wolf with the cabbages. He crosses back over and picks up the cabbages. (Yes, you have spotted a problem.) He transports the cabbages and picks up the sheep. He takes the sheep back to the original bank of the river and exchanges it for the wolf. He transports the wolf, who is now on the other side with the cabbages. He then transports the sheep.

To solve this puzzle, the thinker must come up with a solution that goes beyond moving A to B. 

How often do my relationships - with God, with the hubs, with anyone - function like this brain teaser?  How much of my relational living is limited because of my own thinking, the neural pathways I currently have, the neural pathways that have decayed from lack of use? What if a fundamental (as in, the foundation) part of my being a beloved and unique creation of God is the ongoing invitation to explore?

To puzzle out hypothetical situations. To play "Apples to Apples" (we have) and "Cards Against Humanity" (I haven't). To read books in genres I don't like, by authors I've never heard of? To read and listen to commentary opposed to my own? What if the way forward in a time that seems dark is simply a matter of being willing, being open, to engaging with the question of the wolf, the sheep, and the cabbages?

When the End is Not the Beginning

Yesterday the hubs and firstborn and I went to see the movie that lots of people are talking about, have seen, or have yet to see. We have been impressed with the complete loyalty and cooperation of the network of fans, who have been tight-lipped about not only the ending but about plot points.

One of the shared experiences of movie-going (or, movie-staying-in-and-streaming) is to talk about it with others who have seen that same movie. In this instance, virtually all of the people who have seen the movie have found one another and found places to discuss it without spilling any information on social media or in person that would give something away. We want everyone to experience it - and then we want to talk about it with them.

When in conversation with other fans, people have been prefacing conversation with, "Have you seen it?" and proceeding accordingly.  They are being solicitous with one another. And when one person who has seen it meets another who has seen it, their enthusiasm is unbounded. When one person who has seen it meets another who has not seen it, the one who has seen it is evangelical.

Yep, eager to share the good news, the eu- (good) -angelion (message, news). [The eu- has become -ev along the way]. 

I know of a person who has chosen to be introduced to the cinematic universe. The movie now playing is #22 in this cinematic universe. My friend had someone invite her to get to know this universe. Along the way, she is receiving support and encouragement as she absorbs and talks about what she has seen in each movie. She has found a small community to listen as she shares her thoughts and feelings; to understand and talk about the complexities; to talk through developments; and to promise that not only is there more to come, but also that what is to come is the best.

There will be weeping and laughter. There will be moments that seem horribly dark and also there will be epiphanies. And those who have seen, those who have witnessed, will seek one another out and find one another. and talk about and relive moments, and what characters said, and the pain and joy, and the redemptive completion of this movie that provides a sense of what the prophet Jeremiah said the Lord promised: "A future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11). 

Go and tell. Share the good news. Let your joy be unbounded.