Author Archives: Johnna

About Johnna

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.

First Do No Harm

Readings: Psalm 79; Micah 4:1-5; Revelation 15:1-8

Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors;

Let your compassion come speedily to meet us,

For we are brought very low.

Help us, O God of our salvation

For the glory of your name…

Return sevenfold into the bosom of our neighbors

The taunts with which they taunted you, O Lord!

Then we your people, the flock of your pasture,

Will give thanks to you forever;

From generation to generation we will recount your praise. Psalm 79:8-9, 12-13

There’s no false piety in the psalms. Jealousy, rage, praise, fear, awe, love, compassion – the whole spectrum of human emotions is on display. A startling number of requests for smiting turns up, and quite a few peevish wishes for God to inflict humiliation and suffering on those who have crossed the people of God. Pleas for mercy and help are barely uttered before the “let them get theirs” words appear. It’s uncomfortable to read these vengeance requests sprinkled among the more acceptable praises of God and cries for mercy. Should I be asking God to harm anyone, even someone who has harmed me? It doesn’t feel right, and these bloodier and baser requests are often dropped when the psalm is read in church.

If these words make me feel uncomfortable, it’s probably because I’m expecting the psalms to be moral lessons in poetic meter. That’s not what the psalms are, and I misuse them if I justify wishing another harm because they are part of my sacred scripture. I also misuse them if I remove all the offensive parts, cutting verses out to leave only the happy and uplifting parts.

The psalms are cries to God; in times of joy, in the darkest of circumstances, in strength and weakness, the psalms give voice to my deepest feelings. Am I angry at the world for being unfair and God for not fixing it? There’s a psalm for that. Am I alone and in doubt? There’s one for that, too. Am I acutely aware of the Great Love that holds me? The psalms express my joy. Whatever is happening, there’s a psalm for that. It doesn’t mean that all my feelings and wishes are pure or acceptable – some of them aren’t. But God already knows what’s in my heart: I’m the one who needs the psalms to be honest with myself.

A very kind, wise professor once told me something I’ve never forgotten. While ancient Israel’s cries for God’s revenge and brutality against enemies may seem beneath any person or community of faith, they were also statements of great faith. The singers of the psalms didn’t take revenge. Instead, they handed over their worst and most hateful thoughts to God. Isn’t it better to hand vengeful and destructive impulses to God rather than act upon them?

God, take the worst of me into your embrace. It’s too awful for me to keep. Amen.

Beginning in Hope

The First Sunday in Advent
 
Readings: Isaiah 64:1-9; Psalm 80:1-7, 17-19; I Corinthians 1:3-9; Mark 13:24-37
“I wish you would open up your heavens and come down to us.” Isaiah 64:1
Have you ever been warned to be careful what you wish for—it might come true?
On this first Sunday in Advent we light the candle of “Hope”.  Could there be any message more hopeful than Isaiah’s, or the Psalmist in today’s reading imploring God again and again to “restore us” and to “let your face shine, that we may be saved” (Ps 80) or Micah’s reading for today where he prophesies that the Lord is coming down to tread on the earth. Then there is the message from today’s gospel to keep awake because the “Son of Man” is “coming in clouds with great power and glory.”(Mk. 13:26)
I remember, when I was an adolescent, asking my pastor why he didn’t preach about the “Second Coming”. Dr. Triplett smiled the smile of a wise elder and said that not nearly enough people are aware of the first coming and what that means to them to be spending time talking about the second coming. First things first.
It seems we are a hopeful but unappreciative lot. The times I have been blessed to get what I had hoped for, I’m very grateful, of course—for a few weeks, maybe. Then I’m all about “what’s next?”
This Advent, may we all for once just be grateful for the greatest gift ever given to humankind in the coming of our God to tread on the earth, to restore us and lift us in arms of love to everlasting salvation. If we can “get” this, there seems little need to wonder about what’s next. That’s my hope.

Soli Deo Gloria,

Bill Albritton

“There is a truth that lives within us that will be with us forever.” (2 John 2)
Bill Albritton is a church leader, prayer minister, and child of God.

Almost in Sight

It’s strange to have a week between Thanksgiving and the beginning of Advent. Most years, it’s Thanksgiving, Friday to rest, Saturday to prepare church activities, and Sunday to light the first candle on the Advent wreath. These days are a strange bonus, extra time that I hadn’t expected and hadn’t thought to fill with planned activities or responsibilities. And the most extraordinary thing has happened: I’ve seen the moon every day as well as every night.

Seeing the moon while the sun hangs in the sky isn’t an every day occurrence, but it’s not exactly a rare thing, either. Noticing the moon by day is another thing. It’s easy to miss it, sitting at my desk, attending to the housework, driving to the market. Without night’s dark sky, the moon blends in with the clouds and is outshone by the sun. I have to look for it if I want to see it, otherwise I’ll miss it in the brightness of the day.

There’s an Advent lesson here for me, one I might have missed without this in-between week. If I don’t look for it, if I don’t leave some time open between holiday gatherings and the extra work they bring, I’ll miss out on the constant if understated presence of holiness this life holds. In the season dedicated to welcoming God-With-Us, it would be a tragedy to see the grace of God only in the expected times and places (Sundays, Christmas Eve, church services, saying grace before dinner).

The season of waiting is almost here, it’s true meaning almost in sight. Lord give me the good sense to look for it, day or night.

Photographs taken by Jared Fredrickson

 

The Wait

I’m not much of a Black Friday shopper, nor are my husband and sons. So yesterday we headed for Boston to enjoy burgers in Cambridge and a visit to the Museum of Science. As we drove through Quincy, we spotted the cars. Hundreds were lined up on I93 and Route 3, stretching up to a mile away from the exits for the South Shore Mall. A quick look at the mall parking lot and the roads leading to them revealed hundreds more cars, all trying to get into a parking space and into the stores. As we drove past, we were all happy to be heading elsewhere. A three mile walk, four delicious burgers, and a visit to a special football exhibit at the museum added up to a great outing. Leaving the T station just before six pm, we drove past hundreds more cars heading for a filled-to-capacity mall. I wondered how many people sitting in those cars enjoyed their day. Was a day shopping worth the wait?

Time is a precious resource, something I do my best to remember. The time I spent with my family didn’t provide me with packages and presents bought at the best possible prices: it gave me memories of a day spent together rather than spent apart. I can’t wrap them, but they are so valuable to me, worth every penny and every minute I spent.

My sons return to homework and class schedules tomorrow. My husband and I take up our work tasks and holiday responsibilities. It’ll be another four weeks before we have the pleasure of a day spent together. But that’s okay – such waiting fills my soul with love and gratitude, treasures that can never be discounted or found at the local mall. Is there any better use of my time?

Simple

One of the things I love about cooking is the simplicity of it. With a few basic skills and a minimum of utensils, I can make something that feeds the body, gladdens the heart, and delights the soul. Chicken soup, grilled cheese, cinnamon toast, scrambled eggs, and flatbread with dipping oil require time and effort, but making them is much like walking a familiar path – there’s little to trip me up and a lot to enjoy.

The food on my Thanksgiving table is much the same. I’ve used the same recipes for years: Salted turkey from a 2010 Bon Appetit, mashed potatoes like my mother made, stuffing and candied yams a la my mother-in-law, cranberry sauce, and my husband’s pumpkin pie. The cheese tray before dinner varies from year to year, as do the vegetables. Add some sparkling cider and a nice wine and there’s a feast. The peeling, chopping, seasoning, and baking are familiar tasks made enjoyable through years of repetition. I think I enjoy the preparation almost as much as the meal.

I’d like to enjoy the work that goes into the other aspects of my life the same way I enjoy making dinner. But to do that, I’ll have to limit the number of things I’m working on and I’ll have to put in enough time and effort for it all to become a familiar exercise. Will I get bored with a simpler life? Will I miss the complexity that keeping more options brings? These are questions I am pondering.

But if Thanksgiving is any indication, simple isn’t boring: it’s just a good way to focus on the beauty and holiness found in every single moment.

May your Thanksgiving be blessed, happy, and simple.

Simple Gifts, Liz Story, artist ( The Carols of Christmas: A Windham Hill Collection, 1996)

A Bump in the Road?

The other day, I heard someone say that Thanksgiving didn’t seem particularly important – it was a bump in the road from Halloween to Christmas. Judging by store displays, grocery stores being the exception, he’s got a point. Halloween decorations and Christmas ornaments leave little room for anything else. Sure, there are a few pilgrim hats or ceramic turkeys tucked away on shelves, perhaps a spare dreidel, but it’s much more difficult to commercialize a holiday dedicated to giving thanks than ones involving costumes and candy, blinking lights and wrapping paper. Is it really just a commute from handing out Halloween candy to eating the Life Savers and chocolate coins that fill our stockings? Is Thanksgiving just the bump in the road that rattles the car and cannot be avoided?

I think there’s a value to this bump in the road. It’s enough of a holiday to require intentional planning and not a small amount of work. It’s a time to join others around a table, either our own or someone else’s, or enjoy the hospitality of a restaurant. There are things to buy, cleaning to do, and cooking involved – but none of it gets wrapped in paper with a gift tag because it’s not given by one person to another. Thanksgiving isn’t about getting gifts or giving them out. Everyone brings something. It might be food or drink, it might be helping to get the meal on the table, or it might be washing pots and pans when it’s all done. It might just be showing up, telling stories and listening to the stories of others. This bump in the road causes us to look up from our shopping lists and over-filled calendars just long enough to look across the table and see the holiness of God in the faces looking back.

 

Preparations begin…

No matter how familiar the Thanksgiving menu, it’s still a lot of work to get the turkey in the oven and the fixin’s on the table. Shopping, cleaning, and making sure everyone gets home are tasks already begun. There are still a few outdoor chores to do as well – getting the leaves raked and bagged, putting away the hose and collecting the garden tools. It’s the same every year before Thanksgiving because it’s time to prepare for the winter months as much as it is time to prepare dinner. Isn’t that the point of Thanksgiving? Giving thanks for the bounty of the earth as we approach a time when the earth sleeps and nothing grows? In the season of canning and drying, storing apples, cranberries, sage, and other herbs for use during the cold months, I sometimes forget what a counter-intuitive act of faith it is to throw a feast when summer’s bounty had come to an end. Would I be as generous with my Thanksgiving meal if I had to depend on what I’d grown and preserved to get me through to Spring? With a market right down the street supplying more than I’ll ever need in the cold months, it’s hard to know the answer.

I think preparing for this Harvest celebration is trying to teach me something more than gratitude for the food on the table and loved ones around it. I’ve been wondering lately about the garden that is my spiritual life. What are the fruits of this harvest? If I’m honest, there have been many times I’ve neglected to tend this inner spiritual space. I can name quite a few of the weeds that choke its growth because I haven’t put in the time to pull them out – impatience, arrogance, and lack of gratitude come to mind. As far as I know, there is no spiritual grocery store down the street: My spirit lives on what I’ve grown in my God-given garden.

The older I get, the more I realize that my inner spiritual garden becomes more and more visible as I age. How I treat others, especially those whose actions or attitudes frustrate me, is a glimpse into the state of my spiritual growth. Like everyone, I am imperfect and easily broken. If I don’t tend to my spiritual life, I will push my own brokenness on others. If I don’t want to do that, it’s going to take some inner work. If I want enough generosity of spirit to celebrate the bounty of this life, if I want to share what I’ve been given rather than hoard it for myself, it’s time to do some gardening…

 

Table Blessed

Last night, Halloween dinner was at my house. Phyllo puffs, a cheese board, bread and dipping oil as we gathered, then a choice of soups and salad. We finished with an apple pecan pie and coffee. The food was wonderful, but it was the company that made the evening – eight amazing people who grace my table and my life. There were stories of John Denver’s Take Me Home Country Roads and Amazing Grace sung together in three different countries during the same vacation and the Blues Brothers buying chairs on the way to Martha’s Vineyard. The latest family news and losing electricity in the last storm were tossed back and forth, along with what’s happening in the oyster beds and maternity wards. All too soon, coats and purses were gathered up and everyone headed out the door, the evening a memory.

My husband and I know these eight friends through two churches. Four were on my husband’s church board, three added their voices and instruments to church choirs, two were on search committees that called my husband as a pastor. Two gave us their beach house when we first moved to town, two others hosted Easter Egg Hunts when all our children were young. Three came to the book club I led a few years back, and two included us in the Chinese naming ceremony for their grandchild. I’ve spend countless hours walking streets and trails with two of them. I’ve spend birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, funerals, baptisms, and graduations with every one of them. In more ways than I can comprehend, they have brought joy into my life.

Sixteen years ago, I hadn’t met any of them. I’d have missed them entirely if the Spirit had taken us somewhere other than Wareham. For a bit of cooking and cleaning on my part, some cooking and driving on theirs, the ten of us gathered together. I’d have to be blind not to see in their faces the love of God.

Wherever two or more gather together, I will be.

But for the grace of God…

I’ve seen several car accidents in the past seven days. Last Thursday: A high school driver and a minivan crashed at a four-way stop, a sedan side-swiped turning left onto a busy road, and a truck running through a red and into a four door Corolla. Last Friday: two SUV’s crumpled on the side of I495 and a dump truck rear-ended on Main Street in Carver. Tuesday: three police cruisers, an ambulance and a firetruck tending to the drivers and passengers of two wrecked vehicles in front of Carver’s Rockland Trust. Miraculously, no one involved was seriously injured. In fact, only one person out of all the crashes required assistance to get out of a car. Thank God for the life-saving automotive technology!

During this past week, in the same areas as these accidents, I’ve been passed in a double yellow zone by drivers frustrated by the reduced speed in school zones and thickly settled areas. A woman in the car behind me beeped and flipped me off for not turning left into oncoming traffic. A pick-up truck driver laid on the horn because I yielded to oncoming traffic at the end of an off-ramp. Fortunately, none of these ended in dented fenders.

I understand that people are in a rush, and that life pace pushes drivers to take risks they might avoid if they weren’t constantly hurrying. Passing all those crashes, I wondered how many of the drivers and passengers in the other cars paused long enough in their busyness to be thankful for the lives of strangers that weren’t lost – and for their own good fortune to be observing an accident rather than in one. I also wondered how many accidents I’ve passed in my lifetime that didn’t register more than a passing glance. I suspect the number is higher than it should be.

Today, I’ll drive to Plymouth for a weekly Bible study and carpool pick-up. I hope I can remember that the slow cars and the speeding cars, the beeping horns and squealing brakes are not inanimate annoyances – they are the carriers of God’s beloved children. May I have a grateful enough spirit to value each life without needing the reminder of roadside wrecks.

I Owe You One

It’s only two days into writing about giving thanks and being grateful, and I’ve already acted without thanks or gratitude. As offenses go, it wasn’t a major one – just annoyance at having to do last night’s dishes. But such a little thing led to sending my beloved out the door carrying my irritation instead of wishes for a fabulous day. And this was after he had already offered an apology and an “I owe you one.” And the kicker: last night, I offered to do the dishes! He didn’t take me up on the offer then, but should that really matter? The dishes are the same, the task the same, and the time it takes to do them identical.

I took my crabby self for a walk before sinking the pots and pans in sudsy water. I saw a new mom pushing her baby in a carriage, a lovely woman working on her garden, and a man opening a car door for his wife. I stopped at the library garden long enough to prune the butterfly bush and dead head the marigolds; I saw two bumble bees just warming up enough to hum and a couple of squirrels racing up a tree. The sun turned the wet grass into brilliant slivers of light and the breeze brought the piney,fern-filled scent of Autumn. By the time I turned back and headed for home, I’d traded in my pettiness for joy.

Had the dishes been done this morning, would I have gone on that walk? Would I have missed out on the beauty of this day and the holiness of the life it holds? I’ll never know. What I do know: I owe my husband a gracious acceptance of his apology. What I suspect: for the blessings of sun and wind, work and play, I owe him one.

PS. I actually enjoyed doing the dishes when I got home…