Maundy Memories

Maundy Thursday is one of the days I fell in love with Jesus.

(I say one of the days because some of us are slow learners and it takes repeated experience to get the idea.)

It was Maundy Thursday 1990 when I had an epiphany that changed the way I understood my faith. I don’t know why it took so long for me to get the idea (20 years, to be exact) but the experience was like someone pulling up the shade on a window so I could finally see the view I knew was there because I’d been staring for years at the thin cracks of light around the edges.

As I’ve said before, I did not grow up with much appreciation for liturgical structure in the church and, frankly, had no idea what Maundy Thursday was. In retrospect this ignorance is quite surprising given the fact that I was an every Sunday kind of kid, but, as my friend Carol says, “There it is . . . !”

That year I attended a Maundy Thursday service at the church I was attending while in college because I was curious and also because I was very, very holy back then (my, how things change!).

There were probably 15 people at the service. The lights were dim and the pastor read the scripture account of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. Then we all had to get up and stand in a circle. (I remember being curious about what was next; I now know that, had I not been an extrovert, this instruction would have terrified me beyond belief.) This was what Jesus wanted most to leave with his disciples, the pastor explained as we gathered in the circle: his final admonition that we should be busy loving each other. Then, we took a towel and symbolically washed each other’s hands.

I never knew.

I never knew that’s what Jesus’ final message to his ragtag group of disciples was.

I guess I grew up fixated on Good Friday, when the pastor would turn off all the lights and we’d wait for the huge slam of the Bible on the altar—our cue to leave in silence. We heard about torture and whipping, about Jesus struggling to carry the cross, about abandonment and blood and pain and death.

But we never talked about loving each other.

Maundy Thursday is the day I fell in love with Jesus because I finally realized that it wasn’t the horror of Good Friday that gives substance to my faith . . . it’s the mandate of Maundy Thursday: I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

The Sound of Silence

I realized today that silence has a sound. I never knew this fact before, of course, because I’ve rarely had occasion to hear it, especially since becoming a parent March 23, 1994.

This is how my life sounds now.

My day begins with the alarm clock ringing at 5:45 a.m. I am a very happy morning person so I usually bound out of bed, sometimes even humming. By the time I turn the shower off the coffee maker is brewing and around that time I usually hear the footsteps of my children, who get up every morning to spend some time with me before I have to leave for work.

Every morning once I get down the stairs it begins . . . as I try desperately to get some coffee in me (fast) I entertain their sleepy musings about the day ahead; frantic, sudden reminders of a permission slip, homework assignment or class party forgotten the night before; spirited debates about the school lunch choice of the day; grumbled protests when they’re reminded to make their beds.

But this morning it was different. My family has been gone, on a road trip to the cousins’ for Spring Break, which happens to fall this week, the biggest workweek of my entire year (no road trip for me, I’m afraid).

So this morning I got up . . . to silence.

And it was so loud I could barely stand it.

It’s hard to describe, this silence. It’s sort of echo-y and empty, illustrated by the trail of dust motes dancing peacefully in the morning sunshine (no one running around to stir them up) and the careless disarray of little lives packed up in excitement (funny, those strewn backpacks normally make me irate. Today they made me a little wistful).

This is what I’ve been longing for almost every day since, well since about March 23, 1994, that is, every day that I can’t seem to even hear myself think with all the chatter in my life.

But today the silence is so loud that my deepest wish is just to hear one little voice say, “Good morning, Mommy” because I know with that sound I’d finally get relief from the roar of the silence.

Clean Hands Week

There is a huge sign in the women’s bathroom at church announcing Clean Hands Week.

It’s been up there for about 6 months (relatively short in church time).

I don’t know exactly what is customarily included in a celebration of Clean Hands Week but I am all for clean hands all 52 weeks of the year so I have not gone to the trouble to take the sign down. That’s pretty significant since you know how I feel about clutter around the church (especially in the church bathrooms!).

This morning I happened to walk past the sign again, and I suddenly saw it in a totally different light (isn’t it weird how that happens?). It’s Holy Week, you know . . . the week of the year during which we are especially invited to think about how it is we relate to God. It occurred to me that perhaps one way we could think of it is another Clean Hands Week.

Yes, yes, I know I said that every week is a good week to wash your hands. But this week especially is a good opportunity to really scrub our spiritual hands, to pull out the antibacterial soap and metaphorically scrub the hands of our souls for a really long time, just like they do on ER.

Lest you think I am crazy, consider please that this metaphor is not original to me. It was King David, in fact, who brought it up first in Psalm 24. Remember? “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in God’s holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. They will receive blessing from the Lord, and vindication from the God of their salvation.”

If we’re going to take it seriously, Holy Week is bound to be a long hard week in the Christian life (not to mention the professional world of church leadership, ahem). Professionally I am looking for smooth sailing at all the various services; personally, well I think I’m down with David trying to find some blessing from the Lord, and vindication from the God of my salvation, aren’t you?

I know life gets busy and I’m not always as attentive to clean hands and a pure heart as I should be, but I thought this might be the week I really work at it a little more vigilantly.

See you at the sink . . . .

In Search of Profundity

Do you ever have the feeling that the experience you are in is bigger than you are? I have that feeling a lot. If I could just express the profundity I feel . . . .

Most recently it happened to me when Mark and I went out for the evening without the kids (and while quite a notable occurrence in itself, this detail was not the specific reason I had the feeling that night).

Let me assure you from the beginning that this was no boring trip to the mall (for us an evening out is more like a trip to the grocery store, I am sorry to say), oh no. Since we live in this grand and wonderful city there are always great things to do; last week we went to the Canadian Embassy to see a screening of a new film from Quebec: L’Audition.

Oooooh, it feels so dramatic just to type it. I think I’ll do it again.

L’Audition.

That would be French (for you uncultured mall-goers) for The Audition.

The film was shown in the Canadian Embassy’s theatre (who knew embassies had theatres? Who knew I would ever find myself in one?). There were about fifty people there, and after we watched the movie (which was very powerful, I thought) the writer, director and star, Luc Picard, answered questions.

It was sort of like Inside the Actor’s Studio, but in French.

I tried my best to look thoughtful during the question and answer session (hint: laugh when everybody else laughs). And, of course, while the experience was not unlike Inside the Actor’s Studio, usually I’ve actually heard of most of the actors on that show.

Nevertheless, as a result of this experience I am now perfectly willing to liberally name-drop with any French Canadians I might meet (“the other night when I was chatting with Luc Picard . . .”).

I mentioned to my husband Mark later that I thought I might want to blog about the experience.

“If you did that, what would be your point?”, he asked. (Strange . . .this question very often comes up in our conversations. Come to think of it, it’s always Mark who is asking it.)

I paused and patiently tried to tell Mark that I wasn’t sure . . . that possibly I would blog about the universality of human emotion . . . how the love of a child and the love between partners are themes that transcend language and culture and can be communicated across all sorts of barriers.

You know, something deeply profound.

I explained, “The whole movie was in French but the images were so powerful you could understand them even if you don’t speak French.”

(Which I would know because I don’t, in fact, speak French. At all.)

Mark paused when I finished and helpfully pointed out: “Well, that could be true. Except for the fact that the entire movie had English subtitles.”

Sadly it seems that I am unable to write a profound blog entry identifying exactly what it was about that experience that seemed so larger than life. All I can say is, if you get a chance, order L’Audition up on NetFlix. Maybe you can turn off the subtitles, really feel the profundity of the experience and add a thoughtful comment to this blog entry.

And, in the meantime, I’ll just keep thinking about ways to work “the other night at the Canadian Embassy . . .” and, “have you seen that wonderful new film by Luc Picard . . . ?” into my conversations.

It will be up to everyone listening to recognize the profundity of the experience . . . and ignore Mark rolling his eyes in the background.

Let Down

I let a friend down today, and I’m feeling rather proud about it.

This friend is somebody I would put near the top of my very short list of pastors whose churches I would attend. Any telephone call from John Ballenger gets my immediate attention because I think he’s such a superstar and because I would never want to let him down.

Plus, I am very self-important and I want, at all times, to be totally indispensable to and completely liked by everyone.

See, just the fact that John would call to invite me to be on the coordinating board for the Alliance of Baptists Convocation in 2007 makes me all tingly with pleasure. I feel tingly even though I know (since I am a pastor) that the work of desperately searching for volunteers requires only that those volunteers be breathing. It still made me feel good that John thought of me.

“I could do it,” I thought to myself, glancing quickly at my April 2007 calendar.

“And you would have that breakdown you’ve been barely avoiding,” whispered a little voice in my head.

My calendar said, uh screamed, it all. Not only does this Alliance meeting fall right around Easter, I also will be right in the middle of intensive D.Min. coursework and getting ready to host the 100th anniversary meeting of the American Baptist Convention, founded here at Calvary. Plus preaching and visiting and staff supervision and homework and PTA meetings and dinner and . . . arrrrgggghhh!

It was suddenly clear. I was going to let John down. The only question was: will it be now or will it be later?

I chose now. I summoned my courage, took a deep breath and told John I just couldn’t do it. I’d like to do it; I’d like to do whatever I could do to help John. But if I am being totally and completely honest, I just can’t do it.

How strange that the best thing I did today was to let a friend down.

(Sorry, John!)

Unexpected Goodbye

When I came to Calvary there were, objectively, a lot of older folks filling the pews. (Of course as each year goes by “older” gets a new definition, but that’s another blog entry.)

Those older folks provided the leadership everywhere I turned at church and, frankly they’d been hanging on for much longer than they’d anticipated waiting for new birth to come. They were tired; they were getting even older. Rather than dealing with church politics, their waning energy should have been spent dealing with health problems, moving out of large houses and into retirement communities.

Well, things are changing around here; new leadership is stepping up; new faces are filling the pews. And this has freed some of the old guard up; I’ve noticed lately that some of the folks who were the most visable leaders when I came have been fading a little. Not all of them, and not completely, but gradually a weekly Sunday presence has been replaced by an occasional appearance—it’s too hard to make it down into the city every single week anymore; there are too many personal decisions taking their energy and attention.

Not to be morbid, but the end of life is coming for some of them (well, technically it’s coming for all of us, just some sooner than others). And that means I’ll be doing some funerals.

Now, believe me, I’ve done a lot of funerals over my last three years as pastor of Calvary (I’m too tired to go back and count exactly how many, though). But for the most part they were funerals for the older folks I didn’t really know, those who had been unable to make it to church for quite some time, certainly longer than I’d been here. Those goodbyes have been sad but pretty standard, textbook pastoral care situations.

I’ve had, for the past three years, a vague sense of dread because I knew that time would march on and that, sooner or later, I’d be doing funerals, not for people I knew only by their pictures in the 20-year-old pictoral directory, but for these people . . . people with whom I’d had meaningful, lucid conversations, people who had walked a little while along this journey of faith with me.

I knew it would happen, but I’m finding I’m not quite ready. Who ever is, really?

It was last Thursday when I found myself way up near Columbia, Maryland and thought to myself, “I should really stop in and see Bill Goon.” Mr. Goon used to come every single Sunday and sit with his wife, Jenny, in the second row, left side. At age 90 he was pretty spry, spry enough to know he had some serious objections to a young woman coming to be Calvary’s pastor.

Like every other kind of grace, gradually it happened for us . . . . Love melted my fear and his ambivalence, and by the time he had to move to assisted living last year, Mr. Goon and I were fast friends.

He loved it when I came to visit; whenever I did I left feeling like I’d done something wonderful just by showing up. He’d beg for me to sing the song we’ve been singing at Calvary every Sunday for several years, Make Us One, even though it is an objective fact that I should never be singing in public in any manner audible to the human ear. We’d pray together and he’d pray for his Jenny and for Calvary and for me. And he’d always chuckle every time we visited, about how he used to be so closed-minded—to think that a woman couldn’t be pastor! How silly!

It’s been about a year since he’s been able to get home, and we’ve visited every six weeks or so. Last week when I happened to stop by he told me he was happy to see me because he was getting ready to leave. Bags were packed, he told me, and he was going home. I nodded and tried to ask for clarification; this was news to me. Frankly, he wasn’t looking all that robust, and I couldn’t imagine Jenny caring for him at home by herself, but his eyes twinkled in anticipation as he talked.

Turns out Mr. Goon was right after all. He did go home, just last night. After 92 years of life he closed his eyes and went home . . . to Jesus.

I didn’t know when I kissed him goodbye last Thursday that I was saying a forever goodbye—and a beginning hello, for the first time since I’ve been pastor at Calvary, to the job of saying final goodbyes to my friends.

I’m so glad for Mr. Goon that he doesn’t have to suffer anymore.

I’m so sad for me that I’ll never leave another visit without wondering whether or not I’ve just said an unexpected, final goodbye.

Love No Better Than Mine

It’s a rather ridiculous situation if you think about it.

I grew up singing the song Jesus Loves Me, and, really, the main point of the song is not some hard-to-access, mysterious idea.

As they say, it’s not rocket science.

But I’ve realized lately that, for some strange reason, this is an idea that’s been easy to sing these past 36 years and awfully hard to live. As a matter of fact, I think that as I sing I must change the words a little because in my heart they are something like, “Jesus loves me this I hope . . . .”

Here’s how the logic (can we call it that?) of my thinking plays out:

1. God knows everything.
2. Jesus is God, therefore Jesus knows everything.
3. If Jesus knows everything then Jesus must know that the things I think everyone loves about me are often masking “the real me”–the me with flaws and mistakes, the me who is not all that lovable all the time.
4. It seems that, in my life, I (often) run into people who are not totally lovable every single moment.
5. And sometimes I just do not love them.
6. And if I can’t stand them, then it’s very likely that I might occasionally drive God nuts.

I suppose I don’t have to tell you that all of this “logic” is somewhat problematic. (Not the fact that I don’t always love people. The fact that I have a hard time sometimes living as if I believe the words to Jesus Loves Me.) See, first of all, I have been a Christ-follower since I can remember. This is a very long time, certainly long enough to have gotten the gist of the idea, as I could probably sing Jesus Loves Me long before I learned to read. And second, (a very minor detail) I happen to be in the business of professionally helping people learn to live as if Jesus loves them. It would be appropriate for me to really believe it for myself, don’t you think?

These were the thoughts in my head this week when I turned on the CD player in my newly repaired Toyota. On the CD in my car Andrew Peterson was singing a song called Just As I Am (which sounds awfully Baptist but is not, in fact, the hymn we sang 25 verses of while praying that someone would please walk down the aisle so the pastor would not have hurt feelings). It was in listening to this song that I finally had a revelation about this dilemma in which I’ve found myself lately. Here are the lyrics that jumped out at me (after having listened to the album only 523 times at least):

All of my life
I’ve held on to this fear
Its thistles and vines
Ensnare and entwine
What flowers appeared
It’s the fear that I’ll fall
One too many times
It’s the fear that His love
Is no better than mine . . .

That’s it! It’s fear, not just of falling one too many times (which is also a fear, of course), but worse . . . that God’s love is no better than mine.

So that’s what’s been on my mind lately . . . the deep hope that until I can sing, “Jesus loves me this I KNOW” at the top of my lungs and believe it without reservation, that I can at least believe God’s love is better than mine. At least.

A good friend recently passed along these words of Thomas Merton: “God seeks Himself in us, and the aridity and sorrow of our heart is the sorrow of God who is not known to us, who cannot yet find Himself in us because we do not dare to believe or trust the incredible truth that He could live in us, and live there out of choice, out of preference. But indeed we exist solely for this, to be the place He has chosen for His presence, His manifestation in the world, His epiphany. But we make all this dark and inglorious because we fail to believe it, we refuse to believe it. It is not that we hate God, rather that we hate ourselves, despair of ourselves. If we once began to recognize, humbly but truly, the real value of our own self, we would see that this value was the sign of God in our being, the signature of God upon our being.”

Brother Thomas seems to know exactly how I feel . . . maybe I’m not the only one who has a hard time with the words to Jesus Loves Me. That’s rather comforting as I keep trudging on, trying to learn to sing that old song the way it was meant to be sung.

Sinful Thoughts

As you know if you’ve been reading the blog these last weeks, the folks at Calvary are spending a lot of time sinning . . . er, that is, theoretically considering the Seven Deadly Sins as part of our Lenten practice.

Today we’re discussing the sin of sloth.

(Here’s Dorothy Sayers‘ definition of sloth, just in case you are unfamiliar with this specific sin: “In the world it is called Tolerance, but in hell it is called Despair. It is the sin that believes in nothing, cares for nothing, seeks to know nothing, intereferes with nothing, enjoys nothing, hates nothing, finds purpose in nothing, lives for nothing and remains alive because there is nothing for which it will die.”)

I expect you’re thinking (or maybe not) . . . “How appropriate, since this week the new Ice Age Movie, which stars a sloth—the animal, not the sin—debuts in theatres.” Is that incredible planning on the part of the worship team or what?

As part of our worship we’ve been reflecting on different readings from literature, both modern and ancient, to help us focus during prayer on the areas of our lives in which we need to recognize sin and make a change.

To consider the sin of sloth we heard a reading from Andre Dubus III’s powerful book House of Sand and Fog (read the book; the movie doesn’t do his writing justice).

Here’s the part we heard:

“[As I sit and watch these people] I again think to myself: These people do not deserve what they have. When I first came to these United States, I expected to see more of the caliber of men I met in my business dealings in Tehran, the disciplined gentlemen of the American military, the usually fit and well-dressed executives of the defense industry, their wives who were perfect hostesses in our most lavish homes. And of course the films and television programs imported from here showed to us only successful people: they were all attractive to the eye, they dressed in the latest fashion, they drove new automobiles and were forever behaving like ladies and gentlemen, even when sinning against their God.”

“But I was quite mistaken and this became to me clear in only on week of driving my family up and down this West Coast. Yes, there is more wealth here than anywhere in the world. Every market has all items well stocked at all times. And there is Beverly Hills and more places like it. But so many of the people live in homes not much more colorful than air base housing. Furthermore, those late nights I have driven back to the apartment in Berkeley after working, I have seen in the windows the pale blue glow of at least one television in every home. And I am told that many family meals are eaten in front of that screen as well. And perhaps this explains the face of Americans, the eyes that never appear satisfied, at peace with their work, or the day God has given them; these people have the eyes of very small children who are forever looking for their next source of distraction, entertainment, or a sweet taste in the mouth.”

Ouch.