Upside Down

I go to yoga because it is a place where I can be anonymous . . . put aside all things churchy, pursue the art of emptying my mind.

In other words, yoga has been in the past one place where I can at least pretend to be normal. Not the pastor, not the one who no one can swear in front of, not the one to whom you direct obscure questions about God or look toward for a meaningful thought to share with the group (usually right about when I am smack in the middle of composing the week’s grocery list in my head).  Usually I just sit nice and anonymous in about the second row, taking care to keep my mouth soft and salute the little bit of God in all the other people there (as directed by our very limber teacher).

While it would be a bald-faced lie to say that my mind gently empties and I allow myself to be in a place of openness to the universe, etc., etc., sometimes, if I try really, really hard, I can suppress thoughts of work and dinner and homework and the sermon and the annoying email I got today and the fact that the plant outside my front door is dying and my house is filthy . . .

. . . which was what I was almost doing when I heard the teacher announce triumphantly that tonight we would be doing headstands.

As I clawed through my sheer horror back to the present moment, I heard her explain that the Jewish holiday of Purim had just passed. She told the story of Esther and how everything gets turned upside down in this story: the powerful become weak, the most unlikely young woman becomes queen, and the little band of Jews is saved from destruction again. This upside down living is echoed, she said, in the world around us, where everything we thought was cold and dead is now all of the sudden sprouting with new buds and singing the potential of new life in verse after verse everywhere we turn.

My first internal response was to wonder why on earth this would inspire us to risk the integrity of our spinal columns.  But then, inevitably, I started to think about faith. I tried to keep the pastor voice in my head quiet but I just couldn’t help it . . . I realized that Lent is kind of an upside down time, too.

Here we are, counting the days until the cross, living in each waking moment that we pass up yet another Diet Coke, the impending death of Jesus . . . .  Jesus, the one who lived an entire life of paradoxes, inviting us to turn our best instincts completely on their heads.  He was forever inviting us to live our lives in stark contrast to the world around us, acting counter-intuitively, living radical justice and love.  It did not escape me in that moment during yoga class that we as followers of Jesus are fast headed toward his death and resurrection, his ultimate salute to living life upside down.

And yet I must wonder–even with the amazing paradox of life following Jesus, are headstands really necessary? 

Life upside down: yes.  Body upside down: I think not.

Namaste and Amen.

Adventures in Self Denial

It was just the other day when I began to suspect that things had gotten out of control around here.

I was merely minding my own business, trying, in fact, to be unusually kind to my colleagues by bringing a box of donuts to work to share. (I think that donuts generally make everybody in the whole world happy, but they are particularly glee-inducing on Fridays and I happen to know that they generally thrill our church administrator, especially if they are chocolate of some sort.)  But I walked into the church office and ran into one colleague who, taking one look at me and my donuts screamed, “Get behind me Satan!”

It is not uncommon, mind you, to encounter strange behavior among the church staff, but I really thought this was a little bit unusual even for us.  Once I had this rather jarring experience I started to notice that everybody around here is giving something up for Lent and so I feel that it is my pastoral obligation to remind people that this whole self-denial-for-Lent thing is not a typical Baptist practice; its much more common in other religious traditions.

But, it is pretty fun to watch.

So far I’ve noticed the strangest things, like a collection container for the money one would have spent on all the Diet Coke she gave up for Lent. I’ve also heard the most incredible (masterful, really) rationalizing I have ever encountered (Hot chocolate is not technically chocolate? ??!?  Allyson . . . you crack me up) and witnessed urgent longings for things like . . . cheese. 

In many traditions it is customary to give up something for Lent, such as “fast from” something.  There are several reasons this tradition was started . . . it’s an exercise in learning self control; it’s a reminder of Christ’s suffering for us; it’s even been known as an expression of sorrow over the many ways in which we fail to live up to the high calling of our faith.  For some this is an important spiritual exercise, a sort of “spring cleaning” to help focus the mind and get ready for Easter.  An awareness of our failures can be overwhelming, so we do it consciously before Easter, when we celebrate God’s grace and forgiveness.  Giving up something for Lent can also be an exercise in uncluttering . . . in recognizing and naming some of the things that have crept into our lives, begun to dictate our actions, and crowded out any available space for God to speak to us.

Ultimately, my observations of my friends, family, community, and self giving things up for Lent have led me to recognize that there’s something very personal and deeply spiritual about the practice; something much more personal than any kind of church requirement could impose.  I know this because my own giving up has been hard this Lent.

I also know this because of something Sam (age 10) told me the other day.  You see, he’s had a rough time sticking to his pledge to give up playing football during recess for Lent.  When I heard this I thought, “Man, I should have given up football at recess!  That would have been much easier!”

And I guess that’s the whole point. 

What are you giving up, and why?

I’ve Given Up on the Church, Part 4

From time to time I’ve been musing here about the phenomenon that seems to be more and more common these days: people are giving up on the church. 

I sometimes think that people are surprised to know that I understand why so many do.  After all, who needs another institution, more bureaucracy, another set of requirements?  Everday life offers plenty of that, as anyone who has recently been to the DMV will know.

But when I talk about the church I am not talking about an institution for its own sake.  By “church” I mean a “thriving community that bears witness to the reign of God” (thanks for that definition Dr. Jones).  At a recent conference I attended the observation was made that vital communities like these are far more often talked about than actually seen, and perhaps this is why so many people throw in the towel.

There are many things I love about being the church here at Calvary, a significant one of which is this urgent longing for a corporate expression of the transforming Gospel.  I thought of this fact when I recently read Eugene Peterson’s introduction to the Gospel of Luke, the story of those first Christians and their struggle to be authentic.  The very first Christians were the ones faced with the challenge of translating their personal experiences with God into some kind of insitutional expression, which could not have been easy.  I often wonder how far we’ve wandered from what they envisioned: 

“Most of us, most of the time, feel left out-misfits. We don’t belong. Others seem to be so confident, so sure of themselves, ‘insiders’ who know the ropes, old hands in a club from which we are excluded. 

One of the ways we have of responding to this is to form our own club, or join one that will have us. Here is at least one place where we are ‘in’ and the others ‘out.’   The clubs range from informal to formal in gatherings that are variously political, social, cultural, and economic.

But the one thing that they have in common is the principle of exclusion. Identity or worth is achieved by excluding all but the chosen. The terrible price we pay for keeping all those other people out so that we can savor the sweetness of being insiders is a reduction of reality, a shrinkage of life.

Nowhere is this price more terrible than when it is paid in the cause of religion. But religion has a long history of doing just that, of reducing the huge mysteries of God to the respectability of club rules, of shrinking the vast human community to a “membership.” But with God there are no outsiders.”  Introduction to Luke, The Message

Thinking about all these things again made me feel grateful to be part of this community stubbornly insistent that there can be . . . there must be . . . an authentic institutional expression of the Gospel message, one that believes God’s radical inclusion and love can be expressed corporately.  We don’t always get it right, that’s for sure, but there’s something amazing and wonderful in the trying.

Faith of Our Mothers

I really . . . honestly . . . did not give much thought to the opinions of my children (who actually were future children at the time) when I decided I was hearing God call me to be a pastor. It has only been recently, actually, that I’ve pondered-often-the effect my profession has or will have on my kids. I think about this particularly with reference to the individual, personal faiths of each of my kids.

I mean, how ironic would it be for me to spend my life nurturing the faith of so many and yet somehow miss the careful cultivation of my children’s faiths?

The problem I have found is that, while I am offered the role of pastor in the lives of some, I will never be pastor to my own kids. Aside from the fact that they call me Mom (and sometimes other things) but never Pastor Amy as many others do, really . . . they know too much. They see me at my worst; they know my biggest faults; they have no illusions at all that I am perfect or even deeply spiritual as I suppose some other people might. There’s no danger of them mistaking me with God, but I do worry that they associate God with me-the real me they know more than everybody else.

And, while I struggle to keep becoming-if excruciatingly slowly-a me that more accurately reflects the image of God, I always worry that associating the current me with any kind of impression of the Divine might be, shall we say, damaging to the fragile spiritual development of a little life.

I’m just saying.

The irony of all of this, of course, is that there are perhaps no other people in the whole entire world for whom I would want very desperately a life of vital faith more than my three kids. For me, faith is the force that grounds a human life; Jesus has saved me in more ways than one. I could never live a life devoid of faith . . . and the more of human life I see and experience, the more I desperately don’t want lives devoid of faith for them, either.

I think Henri Nouwen said it well in the book our small group is reading for Lent, Letters to Marc About Jesus: “Living spiritually is more than living physically, intellectually, or emotionally. It embraces all that, but it is larger, deeper, and wider . . . . The spiritual life has to do with the heart of existence.” (p.5)

Of course, wanting something desperately and managing to manufacture it are two different things-and, in fact, I do know that I cannot manufacture anything spiritual in anyone-but I often wonder what I can do to help my children set out on their own journeys to find God.

Most times I end up concluding that I don’t know there’s anything other than to keep seeking myself.

The other night, in fact, I invited Hayden (age 14 almost 15) to join me at Lenten small group. To my everlasting surprise he came. And participated, in what I thought was a fairly thoughtful way. The next morning when I woke up I encountered him on the couch, nose buried in our Lenten devotional book.  There was, perhaps, great wisdom in not allowing Hayden to see the hot tears that sprang to my eyes when I observed this, but there they were: tears of deep gratitude for a faith community filled with adults who shepherd my kids in their spiritual development and tears of relief in the assurance that God loves them even more than I do.

I don’t know the answer to all of this, obviously. But I am starting to think, and even pray, that maybe in our shared life together just a little piece of my own longing for God might chip off and plant itself very deeply in the tender little hearts of my kids, so that no matter where they wander they will always be able to find their way back to the God who created them good and who will pursue them until they are able to live that truth with every part of who they are.

Forever Family

We’ve been waiting for the day when our niece and nephew (and cousins!) Jeremy and Marissa’s adoption would become finally, finally final, and today is the day!  We already know that a family can come to be in many different ways; thanks be to God for the grace-filled intersections of our lives. 

We love you Anna, Mark, Marissa and Jeremy.

Anna Butler Lane, Jeremy Lane, Marissa Lane, Mark Lane (l to r)

The Lanes, formerly two, now four . . . and flanked by grandparents!

Super-stellar adoption social worker Elisabeth with Marissa and Jeremy