beautiful ugly, all

To hear Brandi read the essay instead, click here: https://youtu.be/AeNGFIxkeRo

I spent nearly a decade of my life on staff with Young Life. As a result, I have an irrationally large brain-file of absurd games meant to help kids connect, laugh, get out of their own heads, and stop taking themselves so seriously. Ever convinced a teenager to feed another teenager chips and salsa using only their toes? I have. Ever wondered how many clothespins can dangle unassisted from your husband’s face? I know, and it is more than you would think.  Ever Saran-wrapped a cup to the front of your body so someone can throw hotdogs across the room while you try to catch them with no arms? I could go all day….

As I’ve aged, I observe a similar use of such “mixers” among adults. Having invested far too much in our serious-adult-selves, we no longer play with hotdogs. However, we absolutely need help getting out of our own heads to really see the people around us. Some gatherings begin with a confession of our favorite show or podcast to binge. I tend to go a little darker, and often ask dinner guests when they last knew they were just the worst. When did you lose your temper at the worst possible time? When were you sort of a jerk for no reason? (I know, I know, I’m not for everybody!)

I like these kinds of questions because, like the toe dipping salsa game, they force everyone in the room to not take themselves so seriously. My humorous public confession invites us to admit we are beautiful ugly. As my friend Patti says, “We are all mixed bags.” Naming our worst, even in jest, bears fruit. In the Bible, Jesus’s cousin and womb buddy John the Baptist, urges others to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” I love his admonition because it reminds me that when I confess my worst and name my troubles, I often see the fruit of connection with others, of safety in failure, of a humble welcome into a community of people trying to find their way.

This week’s readings remind us to live as people on the way. We are not people on strictly linear journeys, but we are folks designed for eternity living in the here and now. Immortal mortals. We live knowing that all we see is not all there is, and that gives us hope for the redemption possible when we take the mysterious love of God seriously. If we know that one day, every sad thing will come untrue when God redeems the world to life, then we also have to patiently offer hope and possible redemption to those around us.

This week, show up for others, knowing they are a mess and they are also holy, being transformed in ways we cannot see. My friend David often reminds me that “to love a person is to love a process,” and this means I get to love the people around me like they are gorgeous disasters who are learning a whole lot about their place in the world every single day. Live into the reality that God is with us and promises to do more for more than we could possibly imagine. Ponder it, believe it, and see it. For yourself and others.

Week Six: Live as people on the way

“The future orientation of Christian time reminds us that we are people on the way. It allows us to live in the present as an alternative people, patiently waiting for what is to come, but never giving up on our telos. We are never quite comfortable. We seek justice, practice mercy, and herald the kingdom to come.”                                                                               -Tish Harrison Warren

“The incarnation, the concrete, powerful, paradoxical, even scandalous engagement of God in history, changes forever our perception and reception of one another…For his cross teaches us that conversion of life is not merely something about which we speak; rather, despite whatever consequences, the living out and living out of that transformation is the subject of our daily struggle.”  -M. Shawn Copeland

“We spend too much time trying to fix the things we don’t like rather than simply reconciling everything to God….But I’ve come to understand that true justice is wrapped up in love…God’s love and justice come together in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and we can’t be about one and not the other. They’re inextricably connected.”                                               -John Perkins

4/6 Ps 9:7-14; 17:6-11

4/7 Ps 3:1-5; 21:3

4/8 Micah 7:18-20

4/9 Ps 28:1-2; 40:1-11

4/10 John 14:1-7

4/11 Ps 102:1-4

4/12 Isaiah 54:1-8

lent readings, week five

To hear Brandi read this week’s essay, click here: https://youtu.be/AHbHJzveOiY

Lent feels like a great time to think less of me. This is hard to do when many of us have spent more time with our own thoughts than we ever have before. This year of rolling quarantines has given many of us a lot of time to think. We have been reflecting on our choices, reconnecting with our feelings, revisiting our pasts, evaluating our current habits and relationships. This is a good thing, and many of us are consumed with our discoveries. In reclaiming our own stories, have we unwittingly become self-consumed? Do your impressions of the world the dominate your thought life? Do my fears, sense of injustice, scarcity, loneliness, uncertain future, and constant disruption keep me in my head, obsessed with my own hard life? A year in to a different rhythm of relating, am I more self aware, or simply consumed with myself?

When asked by close friends, Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love God with your thinking and doing and feeling and speaking. Then he said, that one doesn’t stand alone, but is linked to one just like it: “Love other people the way you love yourself.” His life demonstrated that we do this best by looking not only to our own interests, but in humility, we think of others.

This year has offered us time to reconnect with ourselves, to recognize who we are and what we have experienced. We all relate most to our own perspectives, but let’s remember a basic tenet of bearing witness to the life of Jesus. We must consider the perspectives of others. In every situation, with all our power or in all our weakness, think about others.

We are drowning in our self-obsessions, and God offers us a way out through a surprising method: think about the lives and feels and realities of the people around you. Allow that awareness to lead you to bear their burdens. If we develop habitual empathy, we simply cannot be consumed with ourselves, but will always see us in context with them. We can be self aware without being selfish. This week, raise your gaze to consider moments from the eyes of another. In your thinking and doing and feeling and speaking, think about others. Consider, value and esteem the experiences of someone who is not you, and let that influence your words, speech and actions. If we practice this habit this week, maybe it will spill over into the rest of our lives.

We have a sacred opportunity before us to consider others before ourselves. The Beloved Community, the community God established through Christ, is built on such consideration. This week, begin the practice of considering a moment through the eyes of others. Then, with incredible patience and compassion, act in a way that honors the person whose perspective you do not share. Be kind. Be mindful. Be considerate. Be like Jesus.

To Ponder:

“The kind of peace shalom represents is active and engaged…Shalom is communal, holistic and tangible.  There is no private or partial shalom.  The whole community must have shalom or no one has shalom…Shalom is not for the many, while a few suffer; nor is it for the few while many suffer.”  -Randy Woodley

“We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face-to-face and side-by-side with others in work, love and learning.”                  -Robert Bellah

To Read:

Mar 17 Ps 101:1-6; 119:9-20

Mar 18 Micah 4:6-7; Luke 6:20-27

Mar 19 Ps 22:1-11; 24-31

Mar 20 Prov 3:1-12

Mar 21 Luke 6:20-31

Mar 22 Song of Sol 8:6-7; Isaiah 41:3-13

Mar 23 Ps 116:1-9; Ps 127:1-2

week 7 lent readings, 2020

In April 6th’s The New Yorker, Elizabeth Kolbert writes about the impact of pandemics through history in a piece called, “The Spread.” In it, she traces the Christian roots of the word quarantine. This week, as we experience Holy Week in unfamiliar ways due to the disorienting quarantine, it is helpful to read her words:

The word ‘quarantine’ comes from the Italian quaranta, meaning ‘forty.’ As Frank M. Snowden explains in “Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present” (Yale), the practice of quarantine originated long before people understood what, exactly, they were trying to contain, and the period of forty days was chosen not for medical reasons but for scriptural ones, ‘as both the Old and New Testaments make multiple references to the number forty in the context of purification: the forty days and forty nights of the flood in Genesis, the forty years of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness...and the forty days of Lent.’

For Christians who celebrate Holy Week, not unlike Jews who celebrate Passover, it is both a time of celebratory gratitude and a gruesome reckoning of what salvation costs. For Christians, the Sundays that bookend Holy Week are all smiles: Palm Sunday celebrates Jesus’ Triumphant ride into Jerusalem, when he was worshipped as the Messiah and recognized as the One for whom Israel waited. Easter Sunday, of course, offers us a collective chance to rejoice in the resurrection of Christ. His conquering of death practically changed humanity, allowing us to live with the knowledge that we are justified to our Creator and redeemed by God, unified and sustained forever.

Easter is a time to celebrate, but Holy Week is a time to grieve and reflect.

This QuarantinEaster, I find myself resonating a lot more with the dark middle of Holy Week than with the festive Sundays on either end. All is not well with us. Whether physically, mentally, medically or spiritually, many of us cannot improve our situations. The experience of profound powerlessness is frightening. Although we think it will end, we aren’t at all sure how it will change us, or if we will even survive.

This is why I am so thankful for the 40 days that pop up over and over in Scripture. God, in the Bible, relentlessly shows us that the journey through life is difficult. Most of us go through large swaths of time where we struggle to find our bearings, to know how to keep ourselves or others healthy, or to understand why we face what we face. Answers don’t come. Indeed, Jesus, the man whose life we trace during Holy Week, faced a dark night of the soul that lasted for days. He was lost, scared, and dreading the path ahead. Weakened, he asked for friends to be with him, to pray with and encourage him. They didn’t. As the days unfolded, his people, his community, scattered.

Maybe his days of intense struggle purified Jesus, just as the forty days of quarantine might purify us. The end is not in sight though, and for now, even at Easter, we face the confusing grief of uncertainty. This Holy Week, I am greatly comforted by the idea that Scripture prepares us for (and Jesus also faced) long periods of hardship.

I invite you to resist the temptation to reduce “Easter” to the Sunday Celebrations. This quarantine is likely more than a time to pause or regroup or finish projects that enhance your life. It might also be disorienting, confusing, frightening and dark. If you follow the way of Christ, then I hope you will hear the invitation and affirmation that the same Jesus who arrived and later resurrected to cries of Hosannah also cried his guts out in the dark, scared and alone. His life invites each of us to bring every piece of us to God. The Hallelujahs and the What the Hells?. The moments of victory and the moments of terrified despair. The moments of feeling comfort and the moments of feeling utterly abandoned.

We call it Holy Week, and this year, during quarantine, I will believe that every moment—good, bad and ugly—is Holy.

To Ponder:

“Jesus is not some impossible horizon in the distance, far removed from the realm of possibility or your everyday life. He is very near. This is the nearness that union with Christ brings; you are in Christ and Christ is in you…Christ now set you free to be your true self: the self you are by grace, not the self you are by nature…Jesus came from heaven in order that the image of God might be restored in you.”                                                                                                         -Rankin Wilbourne

“When we walk with God, all things become new.”          -Mary Wineinger

“There must always be remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.”                    -Howard Thurman

To Read:

Apr 7 Isaiah 54:1-8

Apr 8 Ps 18:25-36; 20

Apr 9 Isaiah 55:1-12

Apr 10 Ps 32:1-5; 38:1-11, 15-18

Apr 11 Isaiah 61:1-11

Apr 12 Matthew 5:1-12