Talk With the Preacher

I’m giving up church for Lent.

You heard me.

After a challenging year of rigorous work, opening a new facility, welcoming new staff and integrating many new members, I find myself strangely . . . exhausted.

After much thought and prayer (not to mention a couple of good friends yelling at me about the fact that I might not be able to save the entire world single-handedly), I asked church leadership if I could take some time: time to recover, reenergize, reorganize and, hopefully, sleep all the way through one whole night.

Thanks to the wonderful Calvary congregation, this novel idea for me has actually become a reality.

When I realized, “Hey! My friends might be right! I really need a break!” I finally gathered the courage to talk with church leadership about the idea.

Cringing and ready to hear, “You slacker!” (Is it any surprise I have issues? Please!), instead I heard comments like: “I am so relieved to hear you say you’re taking some time” and “Do you think 5 weeks is enough to gather your strength and come back ready for Easter?” and “Thank you so much for trusting us to take care of the church while you are gone. That means a lot to me.”

My original plan for worship during Lent was inspired by the beautiful words beginning this blog entry (written by my friend Sharlande). Lent is my very favorite church season of the entire year, and planning meaningful worship is an experience that, for me, compares in excitement and energy to, say, Mark looking ahead at a whole season of playing shortstop on the Baylor Alumni Softball Team.

I just love Lent.

So taking time away from church during my favorite season of the entire year is, well, hard . . . and I swear I had this planned before I decided to take some time off: at Calvary our theme for Lent this year is A Holy Pause, a whole season of actively remembering to pause, confess, open our hearts, take time to really listen for God.

Thanks to this community that has loved and cared for me and my family, I am getting an opportunity to really, really take A Holy Pause.

What a gift.

Just the thought of rest and time away makes me feel stronger and more whole, ready to reenter the year ahead with enthusiasm and energy.

I am a little worried, though, about the bulletins . . . I mean, what will happen if I don’t do a final proofread? And staff meeting . . . those Calvary staff members can get up to a lot of trouble if they are not supervised . . . and don’t even get me started on the deacons! Who’s going to keep them in check? For five weeks I won’t be there to invite folks to pass the peace during worship! Who will greet visitors at the door? And the really serious question: can I possibly turn off my BlackBerry for 5 whole weeks?

I think I might have to admit that everyone will probably survive and the world might possibly keep turning even without me as cruise director for awhile. I don’t quite know how to feel about this fact, to be honest, but I do know this: I love this church; I love the pastorate; I am tired.

And the reality is, church membership stepping up, laity taking charge of thoughtful planning; staff energized by worship leadership . . . hmmmmm, come to think of it, isn’t this what I’ve been working toward all this time? How strange that this idea of community, gathered and led by each other on this journey of faith, could actually be lived out. How strange that this dream I believe and preach might have the opportunity to take on real and tangible life, if only I would get out of the way!

Not just strange, but how wonderful! How very, very wonderful.

I guess during this Holy Pause I’ll have to hang on tight to what I say I believe about transformational community and the Spirit of God empowering us all to help each other be the body of Christ . . . and allow room for God’s Spirit to do some rejuvenating work in my own heart and soul.

This is the work of Lent for me, and to do it . . . (this is so hard) I am giving up church.

(But what about the newsletter?!?!)

Pastor Amy will return to worship April 1, Palm Sunday, when the deacons will plan and lead worship (hang on!). We’ll then enter Holy Week together and move and onward and upward into the adventures of 2007. During the time Pastor Amy is away some excellent voices will grace Calvary’s pulpit: Shelby Haggray, Eric Bebber, Stan Hastey, Brent Walker, Leah Grundset and . . . don’t forget . . . the deacons!

What a gift . . . time for us all to take A Holy Pause.

Today is my birthday.

For those of you would never believe if you saw me, I am now, uh, 37 years old.

Strange, only a very short time ago being 37 seemed really old and completely incomprehensible personally. Now it seems so young . . . carefree, just really at the beginning of life . . . .

(Apparently, it is also delusional.)

Last year on my birthday I received a card which I thought deserved note on the blog. This year, it happened again. So, here I share it with you, along with a few of my ponderings about this incredible creation.

The card you see here was made by hand and signed by all the Calvary staff members. Each person’s picture pops up to reveal a personal message they wrote for me.

Even better, a special bible verse was chosen for each person, to reflect the special nature of that person’s contribution to the staff.

For example, I’ll bet Paul, our administrator, must have picked his, or at least approved it (Luke 10:9 “The kingdom of God has come near to you”). And, as for Eric’s verse, well, I’m not quite sure of its significance but, knowing Eric, it seems strangely appropriate as well.

The imagery here, it was explained to me, is that of a tree, symbolizing our interconnectedness and shared passion for our work.

(I was relieved to hear that, as I wondered about the image of the entire staff growing out of my head. I refuse to take all the responsibility for that crazy crowd.)

In addition to the touching imagery, I was happy to see that the order of our staff was appropriately reflected with Harold, our Office Manager, featured with the largest picture prominently in the middle of the card (his verse: 1 Corinthians 15:32 “Do not be deceived: bad company ruins good morals.”)

We’ve been through quite a year together, so the card meant a lot . . . especially the verse at the end, Ezekiel 47:12: “Their leaves will not wither nor their fruit fail, but they will bear fruit every month, because the water flows from the sanctuary. Their fruit will be for food and their leaves for healing.”

For all these reasons I don’t think I’ll forget this birthday card for a long, long time (despite the increasing frequency of snide comments about memory loss).

And since I am now getting to be elderly, I think I deserve to be cut just a little slack. So I hereby choose to just ignore whatever symbolism might be contained in the last fact I learned about my birthday card: it was carefully handcrafted out of paper made in Africa . . . of elephant dung.

First of all, Mark, dearest husband and focus of all my affections on this, Valentine’s Day, if you read this before seeing me in person, please sit down and try not to hyperventilate.

Massive storms are slamming the East Coast, as you know if you have watched the weather channel recently. I believe we had a debilitating 4 inches or so of snow.

It did not shock me, then, that Montgomery County Schools closed.

Again.

With church programming cancelled today (and some actually pretty slick roadways), I thought it might be a perfect day to take care of some of those around-the-house jobs I’ve been putting off for four years.

One of the jobs on my list is repainting the front of the steps.

See, the fronts of the steps on the inside stairs going up to the second level of the house are painted a very dark gray/blue. Over the years we have nicked the paint with our shoes going up and down and it has always bothered me.

How fortuitous, then, that when I happened to be in the basement this morning and found an entire gallon of oil-based porch paint in the exact color of the front of the steps. Touching up the paint . . . FINALLY . . . would be one task I accomplish today, I told myself.

And I did.

Boy, did I.

Wisely determining that the job was a small one and I could save on clean up if I just brought the whole gallon of paint up the stairs (oil-based paint, you know . . . yuck), I took a small brush, dipped it into the paint I had previously stirred and touched up the nicks.

It looked great, but I thought one more little touch up would finish it off, so I decided to let the paint dry a few minutes then come back and touch up again.

I had a few minutes, then, to get another long-overdue task accomplished and I knew just the one: the portable baby crib in our attic had to go. Really. There are no more babies here and will not ever be again, amen. Since Sam is now 8, our regular use of the portable baby crib has significantly declined. Time for it to GO!

And as I got busy clearing out the crib, that’s when it happened.

You know how people always talk about watching horrible events happen in slow motion? I never knew quite what they meant until now. It seemed like just a few seconds stretched into hours as I felt the crib slip, crash down the stairs and hit the open gallon of paint sitting on the top step.

You can probably imagine the scene that followed, and your imagination may be aided by further explanation that the stairs themselves are finished wood on the top of each step and the walls on the stairway . . . well, a light yellow.

It was a surreal Jackson Pollock/Freddy Krueger sort of experience, I have to say, and the following hour and a half in this house was, well, rather stressful.

(Let’s just say we are now a little short on bath towels.)

I think we got most of it cleaned up, though that light yellow, while not quite green, will certainly need repainting. The fronts of the steps are now, not just touched up, but completely “repainted”—no more nicks! And the wood grain . . . well, I would say it has a little more depth to it.

And, if blood was blue, you might think I had committed a heinous murder and failed in my attempts to wash both of my arms up to the elbows.

Oil-based paint, you know.

I have spent much of my free time the over the last week serving as research assistant in the Social Studies efforts of my 8-year-old, Sammy.

Sam had to do a project on an ancient city, including a timeline, and one other assignment. He could choose between making a model of the ancient city and writing a newspaper article as if he lived in the city during an important time in history.

Venice was the choice.

Why?

I do not know.

I didn’t even know that he knew Venice was a city. And I am not absolutely certain, but I do not think that when I was eight I said things like, “I’m really interested in Venice because of the system of canals in the city.”

Strange child.

My greatest fear in all of this was that Sam, having chosen Venice as his city, would also insist on making a model of the ancient city. I was trying my very best to envision how we might make a canal and successfully transport it in the van all the way to school.

To my great relief, Sam chose instead to write a newspaper article . . . because he thought it was so interesting that half the city of Venice died in 1629 from the Black Plague. Sam was deeply intrigued, for example, that if you get the Plague your fingers will turn black and rot off.

(Quality education. That’s what I am celebrating tonight. And, you know, come to think of it, I’ll bet we could have come up with something resembling a canal . . .).

Nevertheless, Sam worked very hard on his article, keeping the Washington Post close at hand while he wrote, just to make sure he got the newspaper style correct. Sam even included a few pictures, shown below, with captions he wrote for ease of understanding (just in case you couldn’t tell that all the people lying around in the background were actually dead).

My favorite line in the article is reflected in the title of this blog entry, but I’ll let you make your own judgements because Sam gave me permission to reprint his article here. Enjoy . . .

I’ve always known that great things can be achieved with a hair dryer. I’ve known this fact because I myself have occasionally exited a professional hair salon looking far better than I have ever looked after any effort exercised by myself on my own behalf.

I knew this about hair dryers.

What I did not know and would never have believed, ever in my entire life before now, is that, since I can’t even consistently coif my own hair, I’d be wielding a hair dryer . . .

. . . on the dog.

This is how it all went down.

Wednesday was a snow day here in Montgomery County. Basically that means we had 1 1/2 inches of snow and, to assure the safety of the general public, Montgomery County Public Schools were closed.

(The shouts of joy in our house could certainly be heard from long off . . . and schedules were juggled yet again by parents whose employers are, sadly, not scared of 1 1/2 inches of snow.)

Due to the snow, the dog, who is now officially the male member of our family with the most hair (further comment on this issue would not be welcomed by some individuals who remain nameless, so we move along . . .), ended up covered with slush and sidewalk salt as a result of his regular forays outside. (On another note, we’re almost there with the house training. Really, we are so close. Thanks be to God.)

I, the parental figure elected to supervise safety during a day of treacherous 1 1/2 inches of snowfall, decided that dog needed a bath.

One of the most wonderful things about Nunya, our new puppy, is that, though he does have quite a bit of hair, he does not shed. (This was essential in his acquisition–read more here.) Nevertheless, a slush and salt-covered dog is not something I generally like running around my house, so the kids helped me get ready to give that dog a bath. As we collected the puppy shampoo and some towels in the bathroom (kitchen sink is too small now that the canine has grown to 11 pounds) I noticed out of the corner of my eye Hannah’s raspberry smoothie shampoo.

Hmmm, I have to say, raspberry smoothie smells a lot better than Groomax Gentle Puppy Shampoo .

(If you don’t already know this for a fact, I suggest you just take my word for it.)

I did it then, and I don’t care what all of you dog-loving, canine-shampoo only champions think.

I slathered that dog with raspberry smoothie shampoo until every inch of him was covered in suds and he smelled fabulous.

Much like a raspberry smoothie, in fact.

All rinsed off and looking like a drowned (11-pound) rat but smelling really, really great, he was smothered instantaneously by several towels in a group effort to dry him off.

In spite of these efforts, the poor dog was still slightly damp (so much hair, you know, hard to dry with a towel–or two or three). And, being the diligent mother I am, with the treacherous 1 1/2 inches of snow outside, I didn’t want that poor dog catching a cold just because I insisted on making him smell like a frozen blended drink.

That’s when the hair dryer came out. (This is so embarrassing.)

To his credit, the poor puppy was generally cooperative in efforts to blow dry his fur. I wouldn’t say he liked it, but when we were finished he was not shivering anymore. And he looked fabulous.

As you can see, he quickly warmed to his new look, coiffed and teased, blown dry into a big ball of fluff. And smelling really absolutely great (like Hannah, actually).

And all was well . . . until about 15 minutes later when, probably as a result of all the trauma, Nunya had to go outside again. I encourage this behavior, but you know what happened. Only a few minutes after (I can’t believe I am writing about this) using my hair dryer on my dog, he returned to the house, once again, covered in slush and salt.

But, I maintain, he still smelled great . . . .

(PHOTOS BY HANNAH!)

I first became aware of the poem about 10 years ago.

It was painted, lettered by hand, on a white cinderblock wall on Simon Bolivar Avenue in New Orleans. I drove past the wall every morning on my way to work at a large downtown homeless shelter where I ran a program for women.

It always seemed a little curious to me that these words were painted on a wall bordering an empty parking lot, littered with trash, frequented by homeless folk and drug dealers, in the middle of a neighborhood totally blighted and depressed:

“You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.”

I think it is safe to say I never imagined, as I drove by that wall every morning, the different perspective I would come to have on Maya Angelou’s magnificent poem, how faith and justice-making would intersect my life again far from a desperate neighborhood of inner city New Orleans.

It happened a few weeks before Christmas when Terry Lynch, director of the Downtown Cluster of Congregations, called to ask me if I might be available to participate in a prayer service ushering in the new administration of D.C. Mayor, Adrian Fenty.

Terry explained that, while most clergy participating would be offering prayers as part of the service, he specifically wanted me to read “Still I Rise”, the Maya Angelou poem I knew from the wall near the Mission in New Orleans.

It wasn’t until I started looking closely at the poem that I started to get a little worried.

First of all, the poem is definitely about the struggle African Americans face, primarily African American women, in overcoming racism, classism, and sexism in this country.

Small matter to note: I am not a Black woman.

Further, in articulating the frustration of oppression, Maya Angelou uses some powerful language and provocative images. Could I pull it off? From the pulpit at New York Avenue Presbyterian Church??!?! The same pulpit from which PETER MARSHALL preached?

(Deep breaths.)

Thanks to the encouragement of professional actor and co-director of the Washington Theatre Lab, Deb Gottesman, I decided to tackle the poem head on. As she made me practice (and practice and practice) I gradually began to read and say the words of that poem in a totally new way.

In other words, the beautiful images and heartfelt expressions of the words began to plant themselves in my own heart, to become more than just a mural on a wall standing in curiously sharp contrast to the desperate context in which it was painted.

Despite my determination and new appreciation for the poem, I realized on January 2, when I lined up with 8 other area clergy to process into the service that I still didn’t have a full understanding of the pomp and circumstance that reigns in this city. So much media . . . myriad of security officers . . . public personalities milling around . . . I was overwhelmed.

But once you’re up there it’s hard to leave.

When my turn came I walked up and recited the poem as Deb and I had practiced. As I finished up the poem, I felt the power of Maya Angelou’s words rising above all the political trappings of the moment and really, powerfully, embodying the hopes we shared for the future of our city in that moment:

“Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.”

It was nerve-wracking, yes. But I’ve started to see the experience as one of coming full circle. From a crumbling wall painted with these words in defiance to a neighborhood of squalor . . . all the way to the excited report of a Calvary teen: “I saw Pastor Amy reading Maya Angelou’s poem on TV!” . . . this is the power of masterful words to shape our lives and give meaning to the struggle we engage in as human beings walking this earth.

For words that powerfully articulate pain and struggle, while at the same time calling us together to change things . . . for opportunities to notice how these words intersect our lives in powerful ways . . . for life coming full circle, all the way from a struggling neighborhood in New Orleans to City Hall in the capital of the free world . . . for all these things I am so thankful.