Front Porch Morning

today holds promise
from the front porch.
cool breeze kids
asleep quiet morning
with so much potential
while I sit, anticipating ~
what will it be like?

soon I'll get up
and do something
then something else ~
before long, the day is
full, done, potential no longer
but for now
I am complete with possibility

Altar Call

What follows is my recollection of an event from when I was young. I look at it with much different eyes these days.

Instead of tying knots and setting up tents, one night the Boy Scout troop meeting left the church building where we always met ~ incidentally, my home congregation, where I heard the stories of G-d and G-d's people almost every Sunday ~ and went to the football field for the evening. Now maybe it isn't such a stretch to go from a church to the football field, since the high school football field in small town Texas is virtually cathedral-like anyway. Not in form or shape or details of activity, but to some extent in communal function. Every Friday night, all across the state, communities would gather religiously in the company of their community to watch the ritual and drama of Texas high school play out.

This one Tuesday night, though, instead of staying at the church building for Boy Scouts, the Boy Scouts went to the football field. See, there was a revival in town. I don't remember much about it, but it must have been a normal revival, complete with singing and preaching and testimonials; complete, with everything planned out and thought out and rehearsed to evoke the maximum emotional manipulation possible.

All I really remember is the altar call. Well, not the actual altar call, but the fact that I got up from the backless wooden bench where I was sitting, walked down the aisle & down the steps & onto the field (much as I would in later years to receive awards for scholastic and extra-curricular achievement). There, someone met me ~ I remember a college-aged woman ~ and we walked across the field together to the visitor's bleachers (shorter, not as nicely painted, and just generally inferior to the home team bleachers), where we must have talked and prayed.

Being Lutheran, and thus unfamiliar with the altar call, I remember being hesitant to go forward. I had seen my scoutmaster get up from his backless wooden seat to respond, so I figured it was okay. But he had done this before, had committed his life to Christ, and so simply had to re-commit. No trip across the field, no conversation with a college student, no uncomfortably intimate prayer for him. I, on the other hand, had the full experience.

After the conversing and the praying and the committing, I met my mom in the gravel parking lot. I'm sure she asked me about the experience; and I'm sure I didn't really have much to say. Mostly, it was not much more than a completely foreign experience that I didn't understand.

All in all it wasn't necessarily a bad experience ~ it's just that nothing really came of it. You might think, "Well, you're a pastor now; surely they're related?" To which I reply that I believe my vocation as pastor was nurtured much less in a football field altar call than it was by participating weekly in hearing the Word and sharing the Meal in the company of faithful Christian community. A place where people knew me and cared about me; where people watched me grow and mature in faith; where I felt safe and loved and embraced by the Body of Christ.

Sure, revivals have their place, and altar calls can be important for some people. But the real work of faith happens in communities where we find support and encouragement, critique and admonishment, comfort and love that is consistent and reliable, and that doesn't pack up & leave the next day.

I wonder where that college student is now, and if she ever thought of me again.

Politics

I've just received another e-mail from one of the political parties asking for money. Apparently I signed up for e-alerts some time ago, and periodically I receive notices letting me know what's happening in the party. I signed up to receive these e-notices because I was (and am) interested in what's happening in political leadership in my nation, in my state, and in my local municipality. I'm not sure, though, that I really want to know any more.

Before I articulate my misgivings, let me make something clear. I am not, and have never been, a member of a political party. For my entire voting life, I've always made a point of deciding how to vote based on what the issues are and how the people who are running address those issues. Having said that, I must also confess that I lean politically more toward one direction than toward the other, and on some issues I lean pretty far. In fact, once I had a conversation with a friend who leans pretty far to the other direction. It was fun to discover that, for completely different reasons, we came to the same conclusions ~ we didn't meet in the middle; it seems like we met around the back side. But I digress.

Because I lean more toward one direction than the other, and because I was particularly interested in what one candidate for office was saying a few years ago, I signed up for the e-mail messages. I always expected that I would be asked for financial contributions, and that's fine ... I can ignore those pretty easily. But what I've seen in recent e-alerts has disturbed me. Maybe they've always been like this, and I haven't paid enough attention, but it still bothers me.

This is how recent e-mails have seemed to read: Our party is good; the other party is bad; we have good ideas; the other party doesn't have any ideas besides keeping our party from doing good things; the other party has lots of money; if you want the good party to keep the bad party from making your life terrible, give the good party some money.

I only receive e-mails from one party, but I do listen on occasion to talk radio from both sides. And every time I read the news, I make sure to read the news from both perspectives. I can say with complete confidence that one party does not have the upper hand over the other in name calling and in vindictiveness, which is what it seems like our political system has been reduced to.

It seems like we're not willing to even entertain the idea that someone with whom we disagree might have something valuable to contribute to the conversation. It seems like we believe that recognizing the validity of a different perspective will completely invalidate our own. And it seems like we believe that if a person disagrees with us, there is nothing redeeming about that person.

I reject these beliefs. They are harmful to our collective life, and are antithetical to my beliefs as a Christian. See, I don't have to believe the same thing as you do to recognize you as a child of G-d, created just as much in the image of the divine as I am. I don't have to be part of the same political party as you are to sit at a table with you for dinner, whether it's a lavish dinner party or casseroles at a church potluck or simple bread and wine from a shared plate and cup.

My voice is not much, and doesn't reach very far beyond my seven readers ~ but I would like to call us out of our insular bubbles of like-minded-ness and into real conversation with real people about our real differences of opinion. I don't mean the shouting matches that are already happening, but real conversations where we see the person on the other side of the opinion (other side of the aisle) as a real person instead of a set of opinions which need to be debunked.

And maybe, before we have a real conversation, we could eat together.

$0.02

A Prayer

prayer magic
isn't what we think
isn't what we wish
isn't to harness G-d's power

then teach us to pray
so that we know
so that we recognize
so that we experience

the real power and strength
of mercy
of grace
of death

our death, and G-d's

...

but we do not,
can not, ourselves
overcome death

so we pray
and in praying, let us enter
into where we're already
welcomed ~ the midst of the

divine

Summer Sun

arid shade like magic
when the sun broils skin
becoming red and hot, strength and
patience sapped, gone quickly
like church potluck fried chicken

...

to move through the sunheat
and find respite in relative cool
shade/breeze/grass, a bonus of
water running for the ears enhances
the music of children playing nearby

specializations

I'm afraid we've become too specialized. I'm afraid that we've worked too hard to become good at only one thing, without actually having any interest in anything beyond our own field of expertise. I am regularly surprised by the number of different interests that occupied someone like, say, Thomas Jefferson or Hildegaard von Bingen, especially compared to how compartmentalized and specialized our professions today seem to be. There surely isn't anything wrong with specializing in that to which we are called and gifted by God, but to ignore the vastness of the rest of human experience, is to sell ourselves short.

A person doesn't have to be a professional to play music. In fact, I believe wholeheartedly (to quote Michelle Shocked) that music is too important to be left to professionals. Further, we all use language to communicate. What about spending some time exploring how to communicate more about life than simply what to have for dinner, or what time the mall opens. Why don't more people write poetry, for instance? It doesn't have to be good; it doesn't even have to be shared (... maybe everyone does write poetry, they just don't share it?).

I know some of us are super busy, and just don't have time to devote to pursuits beyond holding down multiple jobs while trying to keep track of raising a family. But for many of us, surely it would do us some good to turn off the tv and shut down facebook for a while, so there's time to at least explore more of the variety that human experience has to offer.

$0.02

Letter to my 20-year-old self

There was a story on NPR that prompted a blog post that I happened across, and thought it might be an interesting exercise. On the occasion (nearly) of completing the second 20 years of living, and at the risk of too much self-disclosure ...

Dear 20-year-old self,

You know this, but it's good to be reminded: you have a good life. Enjoy your life. Embrace the things about your life that are good, and keep in perspective the things that are hard or painful.

Don't be timid or afraid to do that thing you're thinking you can't do. Just because you haven't done it yet, doesn't mean it's impossible. Don't wait for tomorrow, or someday down the road. Tomorrow is coming quickly, and if you're not ready, tomorrow will pass you by. Embrace today now in anticipation of tomorrow. Besides, you're 20 ~ you don't need permission to make decisions about your own life.

The things you choose to embrace, to give yourself to, will inform who you will become. Make wise choices ... or at least good choices. And this means don't be afraid to fail. Failure is much less painful than the heartache of regret that comes with inaction or complacency.

Make friends. Good friends. Ones who you allow yourself to be close to. Make these friends now, as deep friendships may be scarce.

And recognize the truth that despite appearances, almost everyone else is just as uncertain and conflicted and underconfident as you are.

Pay attention to what's going on around you. This is a good life you're beginning.

~ your (almost) 40-year-old self.

***

Certainly this 'letter' would apply to myself 20 years ago, and that's how it's conceived and written. However, I wonder if at the same time it isn't also a note to my (almost) 40-year-old self ~ or is that too obvious an observation?

Also, I can't give too much advice to my young self, because if he would have been much different, my life would not be as it is ... and all in all, I love my life.

$0.02