I am a Christian educator and writer.I have worked in churches, denominational offices, and seminaries. I have a PhD in Theology from Princeton Theological Seminary, with a focus on Practical Theology and educating in faith. In 2010, my book, "How the Other Half Lives: the challenges facing clergy spouses and partners," was published by Pilgrim Press. I believe that words can build doorways that lead to encounters with God through the Spirit.
It’s seventeen years old, a Sunday school project in a unit with the focus Giving Thanks. It’s got grease stains from food splatter and the yellow of the construction paper has faded.
I’ve spoken or listened to these words a hundred times, my hands joined with the others around the table. And for a brief moment, in that pause before serving plates are passed and dinner plates filled, I’m offered a glimpse of something beyond this particular meal. Beyond and connected in grateful thanks. Table grace connects the food on the table to the space that shelters and offers rest. Thanks for home connects to the created world outside the window, water and sun and wind that foster plant and animal life. At last come the thanks for those we love. Not just the ones seated at the table, but those who are not. The prayer moves me outward even as I feel a deep inner gratitude.
And the pronoun isn’t a singular I, but a plural We. Perhaps a reminder that a grateful life isn’t a solo endeavor so much as it’s a group adventure.
It’s that time between ghosties and elves – November. By the time you read this, you’ve already seen Christmas displays in store aisles; Christmas songs play while you put carrots in your basket; ads remind you that you deserve a new car with a big red bow on it – or that someone you love does. You wonder, what happened to enjoying a meal with family and friends? Has giving thanks for the breath in our bodies and the love in our lives been buried in tinsel?
I love tinsel, tree decorating, and cocoa. I enjoy holiday classics – Charlie Brown, Grinch, and Kevin MacCallister. But I want my November to be more than pre-December: I want my month of thanks back. How about you?
So it’s time to give thanks, to say grace and take a breath. I hope you join hands and pray with me…
Table Blessing
This table blessing was made by my son in 2009. It’s survived countless meals and spills…
In the dark, we fear the dead that haunt our steps and our thoughts. Perhaps what really haunts us isn’t someone who has passed beyond the veil, but the suspicion that it will soon enough be us making that journey out of life. Halloween.
But Halloween ushers in the Day of the Dead/All Souls Day. On this day, we remember loved ones and how they sustained us. We honor and name those who came before us – the ones we commended to God’s love and laid to rest. They walk with us, in memory and in how we live in this world.
My favorite definition of the Church comes from Orthodoxy: it is the unbroken chain of prayer throughout time and space. We never pray alone because all who have come before pray with us.
Maybe a visit from the spirits isn’t so much a haunting as a prayer meeting…
The book behind the title is a murder mystery set in Victorian London and beyond. But the title itself? That could go in a different direction.
Collaborations bring individuals together, and the combination can move them beyond the sum of their individual abilities. Two perspectives, two approaches, two ways of seeing and being in the world. And every time you add another person, the collaboration expands so much more than the numbers might suggest. Watson, Crick, and Rosalind Franklin; Fred and Ginger; John, Paul, George, and Ringo.
Collaborations can be dangerous. What one person would not dare to do, two or more just might attempt. There’s a certain weight to a collective, a critical mass that collaboration offers that just might change the world in extraordinary and fundamental ways. For good or ill – that’s what makes them dangerous.
But danger to the status quo, threatening what deadens the mind, body or spirit? That’s hope. That’s love. That’s reconciliation and justice. That just might save the world.
For wherever two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them. Matthew 18:20, NRSV
I don’t know about you, but I haven’t played a part in any kind of espionage, and I haven’t solved any murders. I don’t fight fires or climb the Himalayas; I haven’t sailed around the world or landed on Antarctic ice.
I suspect you and I don’t have to do any of those things to find ourselves in a perilous undertaking. Judging by the state of the world, I’d say all it takes is treating others as if their lives are of no consequence – as if they are mere pieces in a game rather than God’s own beloved. Such a way of life may not result in physical harm, but it certainly damages the soul. To imperil others in ways physical and metaphysical rebounds – a spiritual boomerang returning to the one who threw it.
Someone I knew cut the bad and scary parts out of The Little Mermaid before showing it to her children. Ariel sang her way into marriage with Eric, with Ursula the Sea Witch removed – no scary bargain to gain legs and no final battle included. She didn’t want her children to be upset or frightened, so she just curated what they saw and heard. She did the same with the fairy tales she read them – choosing innocuous versions that left out undeserved suffering and pain, or skipping over those parts in the reading.
This kind of behavior, well intentioned though it might be, offers a false version of what fairy tale reality includes. It only offers the ending, skipping tragic loss and abuse. It also skips the unexpected acts of bravery from unlikely sources – a daughter switching places with her father in a beast’s dark castle, or a huntsman who chooses not to kill the stepdaughter of an evil queen.
It’s tempting to do the same with the Gospel: to skip over or excise from the narrative anything evil or scary or tragic – and to miss the irony and humor involved. Don’t read about Jesus asking God if he could avoid torture and death, just celebrate the resurrection. Don’t laugh at Jonah running away only to be swallowed by a sea creature and spit up at the very place he didn’t want to go. Miss the humor in two followers fleeing Jerusalem for Damascus only to run into Jesus and not recognize him, or the widow’s two cents being worth more than thousands dropped in the plate by the wealthy.
There’s a part of me that doesn’t want a Gospel that offers me the truth of tragedy, the unexpectedness of comedy, and the last word of a fairy tale. There’s a part of me that wants the fairy tale ending without pain and death and without having to see myself as a comic figure. But cutting out the scary parts of scripture is doing to life what cutting Ursula out of the movie does to The Little Mermaid. It’s turning the story that is my life, God created and related, into a false narrative.
Perhaps that’s why Frederick Buechner’s title caught my eye. It refuses to skip over tragedy and comedy. Because a fairy tale ending is a lie without the beginning and middle included in all their tragic and comedic depths. And the tragedy and comedy of life are incomplete without the unexpected all is well ending…
The words Child and Machiavelli aren’t usually found in the same sentence, but Claudia Hart put them together. Inside are wonderfully old fashioned illustrations that accompany political advice such as You gotta be tough. People won’t really like you but they’re probably only your friends ‘cos they think they can get something off you anyway and People who cheat are always more successful than people who are always honest. Such advice isn’t part of typical parenting, at least not overtly, but I wonder how often similar messages are received during childhood.
Machiavelli isn’t a great resource for nurturing the spirits of the young and impressionable, in a typical form or this cheeky one. But that’s why it’s so gripping. I think it conveys a truth, this coming together of lessons in power and nursery illustrations:
Only the spiritually immature offer such advice, and only the spiritually stunted would waste a life putting it into practice.
Chomp. Flush. Hoot -Onomatopoetic titles all. Carl Hiaasen’s titles are sound tracks for the stories they front. Full of humor, life in Florida, and the courageous young vanquishing the crooked old, they are quirky tales of hope and working for something larger than personal gain. But the word squirm induces the action in a way that the others don’t.
What makes me squirm isn’t a snake, although snakes play a major part of the plot. It’s not an upcoming test or the high expectations of others. It’s likely to be something I’ve done that’s come to light, something I’d rather others not know – and what I do when confronted with it. It’s hard to sit still, hard to stay put when I’d rather slide out of my chair and sneak out of the room. It’s what I do when I’d rather not admit to my own failing. I squirm when the smallness of my actions breaks through the carefully crafted inflated persona I offer the world. That deflation that reveals my true self makes me squirm.
When I get squirmy in my spiritual life, it’s a sure sign that I’m trying to present a false face to God. Like a child, I do my best to wriggle out of the encounter. But when I stop squirming, when I drop back into my true self, I learn the truth that’s so simple and so hard to keep hold of: that false face, that public persona – it’s too small to contain the image of God which is who I really, truly am.
And it’s too small for who you really, truly are as well.
[This is one in a series. For more information, click Title Search above…]
It’s a famous line from Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi. They paved paradise, put up a parking lot. Behind the title, you’ll find pictures of city streets full of cars and empty of people, stories of murder over parking spaces, and the headaches parking codes create for building lower income housing or repurposing abandoned buildings for inner city housing. I finished Henry Grabar’s book over a year ago and it still haunts me every time I see acres of asphalt surrounding empty malls. I doubt I’d have thought much about it if I hadn’t been captivated by the title.
For most of my adult life, and now, I’ve owned a car – and I’ve lived within walking distance of almost everything I need to live. I’m planning on retiring in such a place as well, making it easier to give up driving when I’m no longer capable of doing it safely. I’ll lose a bit of freedom to remain independent post-driver’s license. I’ll have to plan around train and bus schedules rather than drive whenever it suits me. I’ll need sturdy shoes and outerwear for walking around in inclement weather.
I won’t have as many choices. I’ll have to limit my groceries to what fits in my wheeled cart. I’ll end up waiting at train stations and bus stops, and I’ll have to accept things running behind schedule with as much grace as I can muster. Such a life may not be paradise, but it just might be a dream come true.
[This is one in a series. For more information, click Title Search above.]
I was pulling books off the shelf Monday, part of Fall cleaning, when I ran across these six books. Two were gifts, two part of a series I found at the library, one purchased for my son a decade ago, and the remaining one required reading for a preaching class. Each one captivated me with their titles. Genre didn’t matter, age of intended audience beside the point: something in me had to walk through the words to see what was hidden beyond and behind them.
I still wonder why I was so drawn to the titles – enough to take a deeper dive into the titles themselves. How can a scant few words work such magic? Perhaps you’ve had that same experience. As we move toward Halloween, perhaps you’d be willing to share with me the titles that worked their magic on you…
[This begins the series. For more on this, click Title Search above…]
