It’s not like I haven’t had things to say, and it’s not like there haven’t been things to be said, both about the deflating and the elating experiences of 2021.

For that matter, I simply love writing, and look forward to engaging on social media.

I’ve missed it, that is.

So there I stood in the room illuminated only by the fire and the Christmas tree, cup in hand, pondering what, with all sorts of things to think on, to write about, to post, was stopping me?

Why have I not been able to publish but a few words here and there?

But there in the firelight of our wood stove, I found myself with an answer, “Because my circuits are overloaded.”

And that, I’ve decided, is a fairly decent metaphor, and perhaps exactly right.

~~~~~

An electrical circuit is a circle of power that runs throughout, say, a house.

Into each circuit, a person can tap into the electrical current for x-number of purposes; lights, appliances, heat, computers, TVs, speakers, and so forth.

The amount of energy, though, that the circuit can provide remains constant.

So given that, its ability to serve the needs asked of it depends on both the number of needs and the power demanded of each thing that needs some electrical juice.

For example, last winter we were running into circuit problems at the Spent Dandelion, because the same circuit ran the garage heater, the CO2 monitor, the small freezer, the refrigerator, the lights…and then a guest would pop on a hair dryer—a perfectly reasonable, appropriate thing to do, except that hair dryers demand a ridiculous amount of power (who knew?).

So with that little flip of a small appliance’s switch from ‘off’ to ‘on,’ the circuit breaker would shut off the electrical current through the whole place, making nothing work at all.

It turns out that the circuit load doesn’t care what is using it: it has the same limited energy to offer of itself regardless of whether it’s being used to power up a KitchenAid Mixer (which, it’s no surprise to anyone who knows me, I love doing), or a vacuum cleaner (which, no surprise to anyone who knows me, I hate doing).

And it also doesn’t care whether the last thing to put the power capacity over the top is a large electrical drain, like, say, a refrigerator, or a small one, like a phone charger.

The energy available is the energy available.

If you ask more of the available energy than there is, a protective switch flips, and everything stops.

This, it happens to be, is both inconvenient and a good thing.

It’s inconvenient, because…well, because of the obvious: if the circuit breaker trips, it doesn’t matter whether there are expectations of demands for power that need to be met, the electricity is still going to go off, because the electrical circuit can’t meet the electrical expectations.

When that happens, the food in the freezer melts, essential device batteries lose charge, a person stumbles in the dark and stubs their toe.

That being said and true, if the circuit breaker weren’t there, making the power stop, then the wiring would fray, a fire could start, and everything could burn down.

On a personal level, the take-away, I think, might be this:

You’ve got only so much energy to use, and if you have more demands (welcome or not) on your energy than energy, either a figurative circuit breaker is going to trip, turning everything off, and making some things that need power suffer from a lack of it, or the demands will be too great, and your proverbial place could go up in flames.

Upshot: if there is more power needed than there is power to give, the house will burn out or burn up.

The analogy ain’t bad, gotta say.

Ideally, a person has at least enough, if not more than enough, energy to meet the demands.

If not, A) a person will not be able to meet those demands, and some things won’t go well for a spell until they’ve caught a break and had their switch flipped again; or B) a person will be overcome by the stress of it all, and will need help rebuilding.

For the record, it dawned on me that for a good while, I’ve been experiencing Option A, which is precisely why I haven’t been blogging or posting so much.

I’m not ashamed to say that my circuit breaker has been getting a workout in 2020 and 2021, and I totally get those who find themselves all the way in at Option B.

No shame either way.

~~~~~

So here’s just some of what I have wanted to write about:

The Taxing, Troubling, Terrible, and Terrifying

Manchin could take up pages of my words, as could Sinema.

And Biden himself has continued too many of Trump’s immigration policies to make me happy, and don’t get me started on the Democratic party’s apparent inability to take the GOP’s encroaching authoritarian threat to democracy seriously, and everyone’s apparent inability to take the climate change threat to the Earth seriously.

And then there’s the grief of fires and tornados and flooding, all very much related to the environmental reckoning with which we don’t want to reckon.

And the Texas Abortion Law: not enough pages nor words.

And rostered leaders are having such a slog these days for so many complex reasons, and many are saying “Enough!” not just to their congregation but to their calls and even to the Church.

And my denomination, the ELCA, is facing questions and shifts about race and systems and inequity, each simultaneously wrenching and far too late-in-coming. In fact, I do believe that there is good reason to wonder if it’s too late for the ELCA to face them and survive.

And Covid: I simply can’t wrap my mind around humans, regardless of their religious inclinations, but especially Christians, not vaccinating, not masking, not caring for their own well-being or that of others.  The profound, devastating selfishness is painful to comprehend.

And an insurrection—with not a single participating lawmaker yet being held to account, and an overwhelming majority of Republican congresspeople voting to avoid investigation into and accountability for the treason of that day—on Epiphany.

On Epiphany!

And Christian nationalism.

And the mean-spiritedness that is on social media: just….ooof.

And such pillars of hope and joy have died—that Bishop Tutu and Betty White both passed within days of one another at the end of a year when we needed their hope and joy is simply not right.

And with that and ever so much more, Lord Almighty we are all tired, taut, and tapped out.

Our switches have tripped.

But to such depressing pieces, one can’t help but counter them with the power infusions of goodness and righteousness, complicated though some of them are, brought to us in 2021:

The Uplifting, Unexpected, Utterly Joyous

The election was certified.

We survived the coup.

Derek Chauvin was found guilty.

We are out of Afghanistan.

Confederate memorials were taken down.

Cuomo resigned.

Vaccines were made available to all.

We reentered the Paris Accord.

Workers began to mobilize for rights.

Donald Trump was banned from Twitter.

We have the first Black and the first female VP.

Simone Biles and Naomi Osaka taught the world about the value of mental health.

And perhaps most importantly, cheese was discovered to not cause weight gain.

Gosh that last one makes me so inexpressibly happy.

~~~~~

To be honest, as I reflected on this New Year’s morning, most of my personal 2021 was very much on the upside:

Dad’s cancer diagnosed in 2020 was kept at bay, and by all accounts appears to be cured.

Else got off to college and has found her place and her people and her personal growing sense of who she is (which, as an aside, breathtakingly ah-may-zing).

Karl is not just content but thriving at school and as a volunteer at the Great Lakes Aquarium in Duluth, spreading his unparallel-able life-giving joy wherever he goes.

We were able to receive a few more hours of help per week for Karl.

My book was finished and sent off to the publishers.

And this kind, generous, intelligent man in my world—people he brings my mind alive, makes my heart flip, makes my mouth smile and my belly laugh, and causes my lungs and spirit to breathe ever so clean and full.

But all in all, it’s been a stressful not just past year, because ⬆️; and not just past couple of years, because Covid and distance learning and cancelled events and no care providers all while trying to write a book; and not just past six years, because a move and a new business and Trump; and not just…well, heck, the more I think of it, it’s been a bit of a tax on the old system not just since the accident all the way back in 2004, but even before with grad school (1999-2004), two babies (2001 and 2003), first call (1996-1999), new marriage (1995), and seminary (1992-1996), and that’s not even mentioning graduating in the rotten economic year of 1991 with a degree in English and medieval women mystics!

So, I think that last year, my circuit breaker flipped.

I’m awfully glad I have a working circuit breaker.

On the downside, I lost my post-accident honed ability to omni-task.

But on the upside, in the last year especially, I discovered I could only do so much, brought all the more to the fore by the various increased demands on my energy (e.g., distance learning for Karl) and reduced available energy (e.g., an almost utter lack of PCA care for Karl).

Moreover, I (re)learned that the good stress in life also takes energy.

Just like even a mixer turned on to make cookies is a very, very good thing, and even so can trip the breaker, so too can new love, a new book, a new way of life have the same effect.

So I have been resetting my circuit breaker, quite a lot, actually, flipping the switch back and forth in a variety of ways, and it helps.

That explains why I’ve been posting and writing less: I love to do it, and very much miss doing both, but given all that has been going about, these things that I love doing tapped my energy load, so to speak, like a metaphorical KitchenAid mixer whipping up a batch of my favorite cookies.

I needed to keep the proverbial lights on, and so had to conserve some energy.

~~~~

So in the early dawn of this New Year’s Day, I found a rare opportune time to ask some self-reflective questions, and questions like:

What/who takes my energy?

What energy demands on me need to be pitched, repaired, swapped out, unplugged for a while?

What/who gives me energy?

What/who recharges me, enlightens me, makes me shine brighter?

And what/who needs my energy?

What is a necessary, efficient, useful way for me to empower others, to shine some light on something or someone that needs a little illumination, to charge up something that is itself waning in energy?

What of my system might need to be rewired?

And what systems to which I’m plugged in need at best to be rewired, and at worst can’t be, leaving the only alternative for me to unplug myself from them?

~~~~~

Advent is quite possibly my favorite season, so it was bugging me to no end that I had no load capacity to jot down some words about it.

To myself, I chuckled wryly that in the very season dedicated to waiting, I was waiting for some time to write about this very season!

But I also realized that I was waiting, this Advent, not only for more time, but for more energy for myself, and more kindness, more grace, more love, more Jesus in the world.  Just thinking about that real need cost me some real wattage right there.

And when Christmas came, I realized that Jesus had come, but that Christians are often willing to tear into every gift but that one.

I’ve come to think that to one degree or another, we’re all a little afraid of what’s really in that manger’s box.

And now we are on the verge of Epiphany, this season of light, this season when the power of God shows up in the world when we least expect it, and who shines brightly even when we are feeling quite dimmed—and quite dim!

I think that this power of God is not, say, for us to feel like now we have extra amps to do it all, and that we should do it all, because there is so much in the name of God to be done, and through God all things are possible, even crossing off every single one of our very long list of righteous and garden-variety to-dos.

(Spoiler alert: that, with all due respect to God, is not possible.)

No, rather it’s the sort of power that courses through us giving us the energy to do what we can, and when we just can’t anymore, it gives us the power to actually take a break.

Before we burn out, or burn up, we’re given the grace to stop the circuit.

Unplug a few things.

Rewire if necessary.

Conversely, for those of us with extra power coursing through us, we’re called to share an outlet with those who need it.

We can even be a generator, so to speak, of energy not just by offering to do things, but by offering to be a way that expresses goodness in the world (this article tells of how simply availing oneself of occasions for awe, and inviting others to it, makes for more generous, kind, centered, and energized people), and by offering simply to be there for people whose circuit breaker isn’t working, or who have dangerously frayed wiring, and perhaps have some smoke around their core beginning to swirl.

On this dawn of a New Year, then, I wish for all of you the power to do what you are called to do and be, the power to share yourself with others who need your energy, and the power to trip your own breaker when you need a break.

With hopes for more blogs, more posts, and a lot more cheese, I wish you blessings in 2022!

Even pre-pandemic, but especially mid-pandemic, who among us is not beyond over limits.

Those so-last-year normal, garden-variety frustrating limits we faced on the regular, like the limits of time, budget, abilities, vocational options, caloric intake, viable dreams (and please, once more—I’m begging now—may I have more time), these limits were already tiresome.

But nowadays, thank you Coronavirus, we face those limits and we have to extend our limit list to include limited gatherings, limited worship, limited school days, limited work, limited eating out, limited travel, limited recreation, limited finances, and (in case I haven’t yet mentioned my personal limit albatross), really really really limited time.

I do believe that, a year in to Covid, the word ‘limit’ should enter the Adult Language Lexicon.

It turns out that ‘limit’ comes from the Latin word limitem meaning a boundary, or a border.

And it turns out that it is related to the word ‘liminal,’ which means ‘a place at the threshold.’

A liminal space, then, is the in-between space between limits.

It’s a disorienting, mysterious, nebulous, scary, and thrilling place, all at once, and in its midst, a person is helpless, faced by an infinite set of options compressed, paradoxically, within a very finite set of limits.

~~~~~

This week, on Ash Wednesday, we began the season of Lent.

And how do we liturgical Christians inaugurate this season, year after year?

By imprinting a definitive limit on our foreheads.

On that day, every time we look at ourselves in the mirror, or we look at others—mirrors themselves of our own mortality—we are reminded of the most inhibiting limit of all: that of death.

From the inception of the season—Ash Wednesday—to its culmination—Good Friday—Lent is both framed by and imbued with the notion of limits.

The whole point of the season is that limits don’t just happen: we are, essentially—that is in our very essence—limited.

So it shouldn’t be any surprise that the Christian tradition has taken this season straight on down the path of solemnity.

Lent is a reminder of that which we already know, but try—and really are quite masterful in our attempts—to escape.

We are limited.

We are born, we die.

”Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Talk about limits.

That’s a pretty clear set of brackets we’ve got there.

And everything—even our capacity for good, say Christians—is limited by them.

The only thing that isn’t limited is our need for redemption.

And perhaps imagination.

That, and, thankfully, God’s grace.

Nonetheless, I get it.

I do.

I understand why we have, as a tradition, dedicated the intentional time of Lent to the deep value of focusing on our mortality, our sinfulness, our need for repentance.

But this year, just as I did in Advent, I’m entering the season of Lent differently, which means I’m seeing it differently.

This year, I’m in this liminal space of loving someone.

So apropos to liminality, everything is informed by that utterly disorienting, mysterious, nebulous, scary, and thrilling truth, and I am helpless in its midst.

Surprisingly, I’m discovering I’m ok with all of that.

~~~~~

It turns out that among this gentleman’s many swoon-worthy features, he happens to have fine taste in music.

He’s introduced me to all sorts of tunes by different artists, in a variety of genres, and with distinct lyrical themes.

My repertoire is about caught up to where it should have been long ago.

I am now way way hipper than I was, and were that not such a low bar to cross, it would be a substantially more impressive announcement than it appears to be.

Of all of the music he’s sent my way, the lyrics of one song in particular have grabbed my attention: Jason Isbell’s If We Were Vampires.

It’s a love song, to be sure, but not your garden variety love song—as the title itself makes clear.

You hear “vampire,” and you think “I want to suck your blood,” which is not in the top ten list of successful come-on lines, let’s be frank.

But the point of Isbell’s tune isn’t about capes and long teeth, but rather about limits—or, rather, the lack of them.

When you aren’t bounded by the limit of mortality, Isbell’s lyrics sing, the value of everything is diminished.

In fact, the value of everything is empty, is lost.

In this interview found here, Isbell explains what moved him to write this song.

He says he began to ask himself these questions: “What is it, really? Really? Why do I care? Why does anybody care about anybody else to make themselves this vulnerable…”?

And then it dawns on him: “This is it. That’s all we get. We get this time on earth and then that’s it. We don’t know what’s next, if anything.”

It’s true, he says, that his beloved’s dress is beautiful, and so is she.

Her trust in him, her love for him, her support of him, these are also all true.

But Isbell sings this true-er truth: neither her dress, nor her beauty, nor her vulnerability, nor her love for him, nor even their lovemaking, none of these would matter, none of it at all, if the truth of it all weren’t fleeting.

If we were vampires and death was a joke
We’d go out on the sidewalk and smoke
And laugh at all the lovers and their plans
I wouldn’t feel the need to hold your hand
Maybe time running out is a gift
I’ll work hard ’til the end of my shift
And give you every second I can find
And hope it isn’t me who’s left behind

Exhale.

Both my love and I know the truth of the death of one whom we’ve cherished.

The risk of falling in love again, the risk of embracing another, the risk of loss…it’s all inexpressibly risky.

And yet, here we are, drawn to this liminal space.

But why is any of this risky?

Because love is, life is, temporal.

Everything can, and will, end.

And that, right there, that is why love is, life is, beautiful.

None of it can be taken for granted, because it could be gone in an instant.

Precisely therefore, then, love and life are to be treasured, delighted in, cherished, and protected.

We are to stand in wondrous awe of it all.

Last night, my father was telling me of a Jewish tale he’s heard along the way.

He can’t quite place it, he said, but the gist of it is that a man died, met his maker, and found God staring at him sternly. “Why,” asked God of the man, “why did you not delight in the gift of my creation while you were alive?”

I would love to find the story, but even as it stands in its incompleteness, it offers holy truth.

Lent, like life, is liminal.

Distinct from the normal pattern of life, in Lent we begin with death, and end with new life.

We have forty days within to focus on anything, anything at all.

It is worth noting that the opposite of death is not life, but birth.

Life, life is what happens in-between those markers.

So Lent, actually, is a season of life!

Instead, what do we do with it?

We tend to opt to turn the focus of these 40 days onto death.

What, I wonder, what would happen if we turned our Lenten focus instead on finite life?

What would happen if we began to consider Lent from the perspective of liminality, like Isbell invites lovers to do?

I can’t help but wonder if we would instead engage the season less with somberness, and more with gratitude driven not by guilt, but rather infused by delight.

I wonder if we would see Lent as a way to invite us to savor as long as we can, to steward ourselves as well as possible, to sit in perplexed, astonished wonderment of it all, even (gasp! in Lent!) to celebrate the goodness that is God’s gift of creation.

Life is fleeting.

Life is limited.

But perhaps exactly therefore, life is all the more to be embraced, and, paradoxically, embraced with no limits to our love of it all, at all.

~~~~~

(P.S. For movie aficionados, the glorious Babette’s Feast is another way to consider this same message: might be a wonderful congregational Lenten adult study!)

You can hear this blog on my 10 minute recording of it here!

Holy Saturday is the most honest day of the Church.

It is the vortex of pain and balm, grief and comfort, rage and reconciliation, despair and hope.

We have a foot in each truth, on this day: things as they are, and things as they will be.

Here’s a distinct difference, though, between this Holy Saturday and the first one: in contrast to those living at the time of Jesus’ dying, we know it’s Holy Saturday.

To those who loved Jesus—and, for that matter, who hated him, or were indifferent to him—it was…Saturday.

Of course, any Saturday was the Sabbath; I do not mean to diminish the sacredness of that weekly, holy observance.

But it was a Saturday, it was a Sabbath, like any other, excepting the rocking, wrecking, wrenching grief of Jesus’ crucifixion the day before.

The women didn’t know what they would find—or wouldn’t find—come the next morning.  And the men didn’t even come to look.

Nobody knew anything about angels or gardeners or of fear when faced by resurrection news.

All they knew was despondency.

But we do know something about angels and gardeners and fear, because we know the story.

We know that Jesus got himself on up, declared himself hungry (well-deserved, to be sure) and announced that death doesn’t win.

But the Holy Saturdays in our lives can mess us up, precisely because we know the story.

We know by faith that resurrection happens, and if it did then, why not now?

Think about times when someone we love is gravely injured and ill, and we cling to the hope that resurrection will happen, because it did way back on that day.

Think about relationships we have lived through with a loved one who sabotages trust and spirits and even self, and we keep staying Saturday after Saturday after Saturday, on the edge of our seat for that sure-to-be-coming Sunday…which never seems to come on our calendar.

Think about addictions or harmful habits or personal/relational/vocational patterns we have known all too well, and we keep thinking that this time, this time, we have given them up, broken them down, stopped them in their tracks…and then Friday comes before Sunday every damn time.

I’ve written before about the line I heard sometime back: the amount of pain in your life is commensurate with the distance between your reality and your expectations.

Back on that Holy Saturday, those surrounding Jesus knew only the reality of his death and had no expectation of his renewed life.

We, in contrast, we know the reality of his death (and any number of variations on that theme in our own lives) and we know to expect not just his resurrection, but ours.

But that resurrection changes our perception of reality and expectations.

It frees us to re-evaluate our reality, and our expectations.

We are liberated to consider changing not just our expectations (typically by first considering lowering them, but it is worth a handy reminder that our expectations can just as well be raised) but changing our very reality.

Holy Saturday, for us who know about Holy Sunday, is where the stirring to reconsider everything begins.

We can hope for complete healing, or we can trust that death doesn’t win, and we refuse to cede to it our spirits too.

We can hope for relational reconciliation, or we can see that the resurrection will come not from within a toxic person or dynamic, but by leaving it all behind.

We can hope to break out of harmful self-sabotage, or we can see our return to wellness as incremental, as a work-in-progress, as a reminder that we are still here, with breath to change, to fight, to become whole again, to live—and die—another day.

Holy Saturday doesn’t eliminate pain.

It reframes it.

Honest.

Son Karl and I have watched all three games of the season so far, and my daughter and exchange student as many as they could.

Each kid is now properly hooked on the game, learning the players, and seeing the importance of stats. We have enough Twins swag to go around, and I make amazing homemade Cracker Jacks, which I have on hand for every game.

The season’s opener also gave us reason (not like I need one) to watch Field of Dreams again, that marvelous movie of the late ‘80s which managed to capture the essence of baseball and redemption in 1 hour and 47 minutes.

Not entirely sure how many times I’ve watched that movie, and how many more times I could and will.

But for today’s blog purpose, a day known as April Fools’ day, I’ve got the notion of foolishness on my mind.

Plowing under the main crop at high season when you are on the cusp of bankruptcy?

Foolish.

Believing that there are ghosts in your field?

Foolish.

Chasing after a recluse writer and kidnapping him?

Foolish.

Driving to Chisholm Minnesota to chit chat with a dead player who doubles as a doctor?

Foolish.

Refusing to sell your farm because of a dream?

Foolish.

And yet, here we are.

And also yet, who really are the fools, as we, the movie goers, mouths filled with popcorn (or Cracker Jacks, as the case may be), and as Ray and Annie and their daughter Karin and Terrance Mann, know?

Why it’s the people who can’t see the dead guys playing on the blame field, of course,

Right after the players have finally come out to play for the first time, Annie’s brother, a banker, along with their mother and Mark’s wife Dee, storm out to Ray and daughter Karin, who are sitting on the bleachers, watching the boys of summer do their Thing.

MARK: I thought you two were going to watch some game.

RAY: Oh, I guess it’s not really a game. It’s more like a practice.

         (MARK LOOKS AT THE FIELD AND SEES NOTHING. TURNS BACK TO RAY)

RAY: …See, there’s only eight of them, so they can’t play a real game…

MARK: Eight of what?

RAY: …Them.

MARK: …Karin honey… what are you watching?

KARIN: The baseball men.

MARK: Do you see any baseball men right now?

KARIN: Of course I do.

MOTHER: I don’t think it’s very polite to try to make other people feel stupid.

ANNIE: You don’t see it?

DEE: That’s not funny, Annie.

(THE THREE WALK AWAY IN A HUFF)

ANNIE: They couldn’t see it.

RAY, GRINNING: Interesting.

The players were right there.

Or, rather, they were for those who had eyes to see and ears to hear.

It didn’t hurt to also be completely open to the accusation of being a complete fool, and, in fact, actually being one, by the standards of some.

One of the most irritating things for me as a Christian, not to mention as a pastor and theologian, is when I hear people to say that faith calls and claims, ones like welcoming the stranger, feeding the poor, sending the rich away empty, healing the sick, caring for her prisoners—Matthew 25 sort of stuff, for example—aren’t meant for us to really do.

”That’s not how the real world works,” they explain.

In these conversations, I feel like Annie talking to her sister-in-law: “ANNIE: You don’t see it? DEE: That’s not funny, Annie.”

I’m always a bit perplexed about how to respond to the dismissal of Jesus’s teachings, the very ones which got the guy killed, the very ones that led Jesus to say things like, “Take up your cross and follow me,” or “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it. What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose or forfeit themselves?”

These words and the ethic undergirding them are all rooted in the entire prophetic and personal history of Israel, and were echoed throughout the entire New Testament, not least in the second chapter of Acts, where the entire Christian community shaped itself around these essential tenets.

Like, if they are not supposed to be principles upon which we base our lives, why did Jesus bother giving them?

Given our teachings about the Reign of God in its fullness, it’s not like we’re going to need them then.

It’s as if Jesus could just as well have said, “Hell with it. The world doesn’t work like this anyway, obvs. So as for me and my house, since you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! The sick need to figure out healing on their own—it’s their problem anyway, amiright?—and the hungry should get a job—never mind the economic and power systems that make it damn rough for them to do so—and those dirty immigrants are clearly unclean in more than one way, so I’m throwing the first stone to Build That Wall! Who’s with me?”

(And the crowd of the comfortable goes wild)

I’m increasingly persuaded to forgo the term “Religious Left,” moved by those (like Rev. William Barber, eloquent and righteous champion of the Poor People’s Campaign) who say that the fundamental emphases of upending oppressive economic systems, of ensuring health care for all, of welcoming the strangers, of feeding the hungry, of calling out then rich and empowering the poor, isn’t Christian Left.

It’s Christian.

And you know what?

By the world’s standards, it’s foolish.

The apostle Paul totally got it.

We are fools for the sake of Christ, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute. To the present hour we are hungry and thirsty, we are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless, and we grow weary from the work of our own hands. When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure;when slandered, we speak kindly. We have become like the rubbish of the world, the dregs of all things, to this very day. 1 Cor. 4:10-13

And, for that matter, guess what.

Not only are there dead guys playing on that field.

There is a dead guy who any day now is going to be springing from a tomb.

You want a foolish belief?

That’d do it by any metric.

If you call yourself a Christian, you are publicly saying that you believe that Jesus died and was raised.

Publicly.

As long as you’ve already raised eyebrows with that mind-bending humdinger, you might as well make like Ray et. al. and live like you actually believe it.

I am fully aware that this is not heaven.

But it is Iowa. Or Minnesota. Or Alaska. Or North Carolina. Or Michigan. Or Washington D.C.

Upshot?

Live like you can see the dead guys.

Live like a Twins fan.

Live like the fool you are called and were baptized to be.

————

Read Anna’s last two blogs here and here!

Check out up-coming Group Retreats here!

You can find it here.

The piece began with this intro:

So, how many of your great grand parents can you name?

We all have 8 great-grandparents, but most people can only name 2 or 3 at most.

That means the odds are your great grand-children won’t know your name, let alone about your life, your thoughts or your memories.

Statistically speaking, most likely you’ll be forgotten.

“Well, dang,” I thought to myself.

”That can’t be right on any level.”

So I tried to prove the story wrong.

My paternal grandmother’s mother was Ane Margrethe.

Ha!

Ok, so I was named after her…

But I still get credit for it, obvs.

My paternal grandmother’s father was…no clue.

My paternal grandfather’s parents were…no, um…no clue.

My maternal grandfather’s parents were…(*suddenly realizing I would be proving the story right*)…absolutely positively no clue.

My maternal grandmother’s parents were…Elsberry…their last name was Elsberry…I think my great-grandmother had a pet name?

Maybe?

At best I get only partial credit for that.

So my grand tally is 1.5 great-grandparent names out of eight, and that’s pretty much because the kids and I visited Elsberry, Missouri, named after an ancestor on my mama’s side, and as for my paternal great-grandma, I was named after her, and have a cookbook with her picture and name on it that I see on a very regular basis.

(Again, it still counts).

The question, though, intrigued me, so I looked up the broadcast, and discovered that it was produced via a news program that “seeks to cover positive trends and inspirational stories.”

I find that an bit funny, as this particular episode reminds a listener of Qoheleth’s words in Ecclesiastes 9: “But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost.“

Sheesh.

But while one can argue that the intro could have been a bit more on the “positive” and “inspirational” side, the intention of the subject of this show, Suzanne Pekow Carlson, is positive: it’s to gift the future with a memory of the past.

Ms. Carlson’s mission began when her mother was afflicted with pancreatic cancer—my mother died from that too, so my ears perked up when that tough tidbit was mentioned.

During her mother’s last days, Ms. Carlson began to wonder about how to ensure that her mother were remembered, and then she stumbled on the notion of a ‘legacy letter.”

Her mother had enough strength for just three paragraphs of one before she died, an experience which gave Ms. Carlson all the more reason to encourage other people, before their dying days, to also craft a legacy letter, namely “a place to state your beliefs, your values, your advice and how you want people to remember you.”

Because, to circle back to the beginning of the show, not to mention Qoheleth, apparently people won’t remember you, specifically you, so much, otherwise.

~~~~

Today is New Year’s Day.

New Year’s Eve has never been a big thing in my family.  We’ve usually celebrated it by fixing up yummy appetizers to nosh on throughout the day, and we watch a few fireworks from all over the world usher in the new year, and I raise a Manhattan, but we often call it a wrap by, oh, 10:30 or so.

New Year’s Day, however, is more our style: a yummy cozy breakfast (on the menu this a.m.: vanilla cardamom scones, fresh sausage patties, scrambled eggs with herbs and cheese, and fruit) and all-day-jammies while we watch the Rose Bowl parade.

For all the hoopla, both celebration-and-end-of-tax-year-wise, the actual date of New Year’s Day, celebrated on January 1, is both arbitrary and intentional.

For political reasons, not least of all, Julius Caesar took it upon himself to establish a uniform calendar.

Because the Roman God Janus (after whom January is named) had two faces, JC (the Roman ruler, not Jesus Christ) felt that it would be appropriate to begin the official annual calendar on January 1; it’s quite lovely symbolism to have one face looking back, and one looking forward (You can geek out more about this history here).

The occasion makes lots of us tap into our inner Janus, and glance back and forward on these days, and some of us even have a habit—or at least really good intentions—to craft New Year’s Resolutions based on what we see, and on what we envision.

The basic deal about resolutions is this: you don’t resolve to do something you already do; you look back on what you have been doing, and resolve to do something different.

New Year’s Day may be an arbitrary moment, but it is a moment nonetheless on which to take stock, to evaluate, to re-evaluate, and to commit to something new.

~~~~

I’m not a huge fan of bucket lists, to be honest.

I get their intent, but I can’t shake the notion that there’s a latent-to-not-so-latent anxiety that drives them: you never know when you’ll croak, so better jam as much life in before you do (see live dog/dead lion reference above).

Focusing on a legacy, though, that has a different sense to it, and, etymologically, it turns out for good reasons: the word ‘legacy’ comes from the word, legacie, which meant a “body of persons sent on a mission,” and even held the notion of designating someone as a representative “by a last will.”

A legacy, that is, is both personal and communal.

When you are gone (either because you are sitting on your throne and instruct others to go elsewhere to do your bidding—happens to me all the time—or you die), others extend you, they act in your stead, they represent you and they carry out your wishes.

It’s a beautiful notion, really.

Your life isn’t just yours.

You influence and shape other people.

Even when you do not know it, and never will, your life matters.

I’ll never forget that, at my late husband’s memorial service, the church in Regensburg, Germany overflowed with people, most of whom I did not know.

It was a stunning thing for me to be surrounded by people whom I did not now, but whose lives my late husband had touched.

Later I discovered that shops closed down in and around town, just so that the store owners and workers could pay Bill their honor: he affected others, walking around almost every day with little Karl and tinier Else, showing them the sights and sounds of beautiful Regensburg, and always with such clear love and delight for his two babies.

He was a walking fixture of Regensburg, a figure of paternal-love-in-motion who, unbeknownst to him, gladdened, and moved, and inspired people.

Humble Bill would have been stunned.

He had no idea that his life impacted others to this degree and for these reasons.

They didn’t even know his name.

I will never know theirs.

~~~~

So New Year’s Day invites questions:

Who was I last year?

Is it who I want to be?

Is it who I am called to be?

Is it who I am?

What, in this New Year, will make me more the best of me?

How will that me impact others to make them the best of them, or this world the best of this world?

What is the legacy I want to leave, even for those whom I will never know, and who will never know me?

See, a person can’t leave a legacy of oneself if one doesn’t know oneself.

For people of faith, who you are is shaped by who you understand God to be, and how you understand God’s intention for you to be, and how you understand God’s intention for the world to be.

~~~~

I think that the idea of a legacy letter is quite beautiful.

I think of how I treasure the stories that my Grandma Madsen passed on to us in the cookbooks and her autobiography, and know that they are already being passed on to daughter Else, who will pass them on further, no doubt.

And I love the notion of holding a letter that was written by my ancestors to me, even though they didn’t know me, to share with me—and with all of their descendants—to say, “This is important. I learned this. I valued this. This shaped me. Therefore it shaped you. I don’t know you and yet I love you.”

Perhaps, on this New Year’s Eve Day, we can consider another form of legacy, an embodied one.

For people of faith, your legacy represents not just you, but God, and God’s intentions for you, and for the world.

Your legacy, that is, is about you, but not just about you: it is mostly about God’s intended legacy for you, and for others.

~~~~

Qoheleth was a bit cranky: sort of like an ancient Eeyore.

But he wasn’t entirely so.

Qoheleth saw that God willed not just our humility (“Vanity of vanities! All is vanity…” Ecclesiasties 1:2), but also our delight—our delight in good things, and in each other, and even in our work.

Right after the most famous passage in Ecclesiastes (“For everything there is a time…” Ecclesiastes 3:1-8), Qoheleth shoots us this:

9 What gain have the workers from their toil? ¹⁰I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. ¹¹He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. ¹²I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; ¹³moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. ¹⁴I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him.

May this new year be, for you and yours and those whom you will never know but with whom you will leave your legacy, a year of new reflections, new beginnings, new possibilities, new self-awareness, new delights, new transformations, new realizations, and new hopes, and may it be blessed by the God who makes all things, not least of all this very year, new.

Happy New Year!

~~~~

The Spent Dandelion is now offering monthly retreats on various themes! Come for really good conversation, really good food, and really gorgeous North Shore beauty.  Find out more here!

~~~

Check out the last couple of OMG blogs, while you’re at it!

O Little Town of [Fill In The Blank]

Dropkicked by Jesus

The Good News (No, Really) According to John the Baptist and Luke 

I simply uploaded this picture on Facebook:

I meant the photo and my post as a tribute to my Grandma Madsen, and as leavened proof that free will is a demonstrably total illusion when a person (*cough* me *cough*) is left home alone with homemade sticky buns from my Grandma’s 100+ year old recipe from Denmark, and (in related news) as a confession that given a decent carb, I’m helpless.

Positively helpless.

Let’s be clear: I am fit.

I am a very healthy weight, and eat a healthy diet of mostly organic foods, and I drink lots of water and green tea and a glass of red wine per day and go on regular walks (though admittedly it’s a bit harder around here in the winter).

Let’s also be clear that all of that is a bit so that I can live a longer healthier life….but mooooooostly so that I can eat more carbs.

Like these sticky buns (in fact, in very much related news, as I was writing this blog, I rediscovered another blog I wrote for Thanksgiving about my grandmother, and my love of butter, and her love of butter and how it cost her a job).

The trouble is that, after sharing this picture, people began to ask, then beg, then clamor for me to share the recipe.

Both on the post’s thread, and then even in private messages, they wanted my Grandma’s recipe.

A lot.

Here’s the thing: it’s not my recipe.

Technically, it’s my grandma’s recipe, but this amazing woman, this stunning person who emigrated from Denmark to the States at but 23 and then built a family and a life and a legacy, this breathtaking Kristine Olesen Madsen died on January 1, 1993.

But before she died, she wrote two small books: one was a family history with pictures and tales of her days, and one was a small cookbook with not only recipes from her time as a Danish girl growing up on a small farm in Jutland, but also with stories that accompanied each dish.

All of the children and grandchildren received a copy of each.

So, you see, the recipe for my grandma’s bread dough, which can become either a loaf or buns or sticky buns, isn’t really mine to give out.

It’s my family’s.

So that was my pickle, you see, which in the great scheme of things isn’t on par with other world crises, of course.

But at least in my mind and heart, it was a Situation.

I’ve never been quite able to totally understand people’s recipe-sharing reticence, but a bit of me does appreciate the apprehension, because a recipe isn’t just a recipe: it’s a memory.

I have indescribable warm memories of my grandmother making her buns—the recipe calls for shortening, but what she meant was goose grease, so they are still called (even when we make them with the most obviously and righteous on-hand substitute, butter) Grandma’s Goose Grease Buns.

And then my mama (Grandma Madsen’s daughter-in-law) made them, with her own twist, and I can still see the sticky buns upturned on the cooling racks with a puddle of hot caramel under each pan with a pat of butter melting on each roll, and my mother grinning and nodding that yes, even though they were still hot (in fact, because they were still hot) we could break one off and pop the brown sugar ooze into our mouth.

In college, I started to try my hand at them.

I distinctly remember staring at the small cookbook, in awe of the legacy of this particular recipe, deciding to give it a try anyway, and then noticing, horrified, that there was an inconsistency in the directions.

The ingredients said that one needed ¼ of a cup of warm water in which to dissolve the yeast, but the recipe proper said that we were to mix the yeast in ½ cup warm water!

That could make all the difference between Grandma’s goose grease buns and a wretched attempt at The Legacy, I was sure of it.

So I rang up my father’s sister, my beloved Auntie Es.  “Auntie Es!” I said. “Is it a ¼ of a cup or a ½ a cup of warm water?!?!”

She harrumphed. “Anna Margrethe,” (I knew she was annoyed when my middle name got pitched in there) “it makes not a particle of difference.”

And I heard it for what it was: both rebuke and blessing.

Yeast dough is forgiving, within certain parameters.

Between the basic non-negotiable of nothing hotter than lukewarm liquid to get the yeast doing its thing, and not forgetting to take your bread out of the oven, there’s a lot of grace.

Sometimes the flour has more humidity, and therefore is bulkier in your measuring cup, so you need less than you did last time: no reason to fret. Sometimes you have a hankering for a handful of sesame seeds: go on, be bold, pitch them on in. Sometimes you get a phone call mid-knead, and then your dryer buzzes, and then your kids come home from school, and like a boomerang thwapping you on the back of your head, you suddenly remember your dough, which has since taken on a life of its own and taken over your kitchen, but no worries: it is wrestled to your counter again in no time, and is quite playful about the whole thing.

It’s really hard, that is, to bung up bread, which is perhaps why I like baking it so much. It’s knowledge and intuition and palpable grace.

So, back to my pickle (which, by the way, I have never and would never stick in a loaf of bread, but if it’s your thing, give it a whirl).

I decided the right thing to do was to connect with my cousins: many of them are on Facebook, and so it seemed like a good reason for a Facebook group message.

What, I asked them, should I do? Share the recipe with wild abandon, or change the thread’s focus to, say, green jello?

And before long, we got to talking about how this recipe is not just a bun recipe, but is a heritage.

And then we reminisced about my Auntie Es’ gingerbread recipe (itself, along with a so-precious picture of her and her granddaughter Lis overlooking a spread of her frosted perfection, published in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune: one of their most requested recipes), and my Auntie Ann’s pork roast recipe, and how some in our family can make one or more of them to perfection, but few can do them all just as they should be done and we remember them being done.

It’s not just following a recipe, that is: it’s a feel, an intuition, and maybe, in a weird way, a relationship with what you’re baking for loved ones now, just as it has been baked countless times by other beloved hands for other beloveds.

Although there was no official consensus, during the course of the thread, I felt a bit of a blessing to share the recipe, and all the more when I looked in my tattered copy of my Grandma’s cookbook.

Here’s the cover, with a photo of my grandmother and her mother, after whom I am named, and the inset page:

And then this gorgeous introduction:

Did you read that last paragraph?

“These few recipes and recollections are written here to help you enjoy your Danish heritage, and encourage you to ‘pass the blessing.’ I love you.”

Gosh, I love that line, to “pass the blessing.”

I am choosing to take it as a blessing from her to pass the blessing of her recipe on far and wide.

I posted that picture of her gooey sticky buns in the first place because although I make the recipe often, every holiday I make it 8-fold (the scribbled math is more or less correct in the recipe photo below) to offer both the buns and the sticky buns to other tables: it’s a small way, I suppose, of passing the blessing.

But…it seems only right and good to test them, though, before I dole them out to others…right?

So I did.

They were fine.

I am about to do the same with the batch I made today.  A person needs strength for Thanksgiving preparation…right?

The point is, in this season of giving Thanks, at tables where we pass the dishes, there is also a reminder that we are also passing on the blessings, and, in fact, are ourselves only passing blessings.

And so, from this blessing of a grandma who has passed, I pass on her blessing: her Kaffekage recipe.

May this Thanksgiving be an opportunity for you and yours to be blessings and to pass the blessings (and the basket of buns while you’re at it) on not just to those at the table, but to all who have a no tables and hunger in their bellies or their hearts.

And now, the recipe, with a few small adaptations.

2 packages of yeast (4 ½ teaspoons bulk yeast)

¼ cup warm water

½ cup sugar

2 eggs, beaten

1 teaspoon salt

½ cup butter (or goose grease!)

1 cup whole milk

4-6 cups organic bread flour (or more…)

(For sticky buns, you’ll also need some whipping cream, and brown sugar, and cinnamon, and almond paste, and butter)

Scald milk and add shortening and sugar; let stand until lukewarm.

Dissolve yeast in the ½ cup of warm water. Add to the cooled milk mixture.

Add two beaten eggs.

Add flour, mixing first, and then kneading until the dough is no longer sticky and (not making this up) feels like your earlobe.

Let rise in a buttered bowl in a warm place until doubled or until you remember it.

Knead the dough again, and then….decision time:

Make half into buns (which, to get a largish size, makes about a dozen), and the other half into sticky buns; or all buns; or all sticky buns.

It is a hard call, for real.

If you opt for sticky buns, pour about a ¼ inch of cream into the bottom of a pan, and pour, what, a ½ cup or more of brown sugar in, and mix it up (not going to judge if you swirl it with your finger and lick when no one is looking).

Roll the dough out until it is ⅛”-¼” thick, then slather with soft butter, pour some cream on for good measure, sprinkle cinnamon or cinnamon sugar, and ¼-½ cup brown sugar, and then a ½ cup or so of almond paste.

Roll up, cut up, stick in pan.

Let buns and rolls rise until double-ish.

Bake at 350 degrees for 10-15 minutes for the rolls, and 15-20 minutes for the sticky buns.

I sort of got distracted with the rolls, must confess: was one of those days…

And now, finally: please pass the blessings!

A very Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

Anna M.

~~~~

In case you missed it, the last three blogs!

Of Dominent Men, Subversive Courage, and My Very Fine Woodpile

If You Had Been Here: An All Saints’ Day Sermon

Knowing Each Other in the Biblical Sense

For one, I did not know that skunks belong to the taxonomic family Mephitidae.

Word nerd that I am, that little ‘meph-‘ caught my attention: my mind went straight to “Mephistopheles,” the name for a demon in German folklore with a front-and-center role in Faust.

Turns out that some think that the meph- comes from the Hebrew מֵפִיץ (mêp̄îṣ) which, according to a quick glance at Wikipedia, means ‘scatterer, disperser.’

That fits [she writes, just after her early morning caregiver for son Karl arrived, took one whiff (a whole day) post-skunk-blast, and says, “Ohhhhhh. You poor thing….”].

But that might not be the whole etymological story, nosiree.

Not only do skunks belong to the taxonomic family of Mephitidae, but their specific genus is Mephitis.

That comes from the Latin, says my favorite go-to geek site Etmyonline, which says that actually, the word stems from the Late Latin mephitis/mefitis, and means “noxious vapor.”

(It/she also happens to be a Roman goddess whose sole responsibility was to guard earthlings from noxious gasses from the earth—her shrines are found sulfur fissures [my sister noted that poor Mephiti absolutely got the short straw when it came to doling out goddess duties)].

Depending, then, on whether you etymologically bend the word history to include the Hebrew or not, given that skunks are from the taxonomic family Mephitidae, Genus Mephitis, the way I look at it, skunks either incarnate “noxious vapor dispersed widely about,” or “noxious vapor squared.”

Bottom line, and in English: man it’s been a rough, stinky 24 hours.

4:00 a.m., Gimli (he’s the extremely pathetic-looking big red dog below) howled to get out.

So, fine, I let him out, though I was not just a little grumbly about it.

Immediately, he and Chutzpaw shot to the back left corner of the dog run.

Rustling, barking, whimpering ensued.

And pretty much immediately, they shot back my way, Gimli in the lead, and threw themselves onto the back patio in hopes of getting what I’ve come to believe that even God might not be able to remove, no matter what those songs and Scripture say about even the worst sins being washed away.

And definitely immediately, I used adult language, and somewhat loudly, not sure whether I should direct it at my hounds, at the vile skunk(s), or God who created them all.

A quick 4:15 a.m. Google search of “How to get the  #$%@^! smell of skunk off of dogs” revealed that hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and Dawn does the trick.

Naturally I had no hydrogen peroxide (I picked that up later in the day, along with lots more baking soda and lots more Dawn for lots more Washings of the Pups).

So after a quick google search of “hydrogen peroxide substitutes” I whipped up a batch of apple cider vinegar, baking soda, and Dawn, and I brought the dogs downstairs, one at a time, and I doused them, and then I put them back in their kennels, put myself back into bed, and tried to repress what had just happened for the measly 45 minutes I had to sleep before I had to get up.

Didn’t work.

A little side story is that at 2:00 a.m., two hours pre-skunk, my son Karl had an episode of something called ‘myoclonus.’ It’s a sudden expression of involuntary muscle movements—hiccups, say, are a mild form of myoclonus, as is that sudden jerk that you might feel as you are trying to fall asleep.

Karl’s are significant, though, and rock his whole little body—even his eyeballs and eyelids are affected.

They only happen every 4 to 6 weeks, and we don’t know why.

Naturally, it happened right before the skunk/dog episode came to pass.

When I told my daughter Else about the whole series of unfortunate events, she looked at me, and grinned, and said, “You know, Mom, nothing you say surprises me at all.  Of course this all happened at once, because we are we.”

And then she baked dozens and dozens of chocolate chip cookies to help mask the Eau de Mephitis that had enveloped our house.

In fact, two weeks ago on our way to Outlaw Ranch in South Dakota’s Black Hills, after we had a half-day delay because I learned the day before that my tire treads were bordering on illegal (for the record, I bring my van in before every major trip for a check-up, and therefore had seen the good people at Sonju Motors twice in the previous month, once before we drove to and from Alberta, Canada, and once before we drove to and from Houston, Texas, and everything was hunky dory then, but apparently two back-to-back 2,100 mile trips do do a number on tire treads), and after we had to drive out to the Hills a day early from Sioux Falls, where we’d stayed one night with good friends who offered their company and their wheelchair accessible house to us, excepting that their house was wheelchair-accessible for a very different kind of chair, and so Karl got stuck on the front patio for a half hour while we rigged a temporary ramp situation up through the garage, and it became quite apparent that the whole operative “accessible” part of “wheelchair accessible”…wasn’t, so we had to pack up and leave early for Rapid, I apologized to my daughter’s good friend, who had come along with Else for the week at camp.

”I am so sorry,” I said to her.

”For some reason,” I said, “my little brood seems to be the vortex of chronic chaos. I truly apologize for the way that it is affecting our trip and you.”

”Are you kidding me?” she exclaimed. “My family never has chaos. This is so much fun!!!!”

And you know what?

She was right.

It was sort of fun.

Our family has a thing, we picked it up from somewhere, about how to think about certain events that come to pass…pretty regularly, actually…in our world.

Funny One is when whatever happens is funny now, and will be funny later.

Funny Two is when whatever happens is not funny now, but will probably be funny later.

Funny Three is when whatever happens is not funny now, and will never, ever, ever be funny…at least, ahem, not with the affected person in the room.

I am many things: Pollyannaish is not one of them.

I break out into theological hives when people suggest that we should be happy all of the time, and in fact I get fairly cranky about the whole idea.

All too often, Christians feel as if grief, lament, anger, exhaustion, and irritability are somehow expressions of unfaithfulness.

Bullpucky.

It’s a terribly unfortunate, and even terribly harmful notion.

Things are not what they should be, due to both external and internal realities, choices, and habits.

Regrets, wishes for do-overs, powerful losses, fears, yearnings, and even every-day annoyances do a number on one’s spirits, no question.

To deny that reality is not an act of faithfulness; it’s an act of illusion.

But to what end?

What’s the point?

Brother James’ answer does not seem to help my cause. Here he’s saying that we should encounter suffering with joy so that we can learn to endure…more happily?

²My brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, ³because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance; ⁴and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

With all due respect, clearly James had not smelled anything nearing the mephitic horror on my hounds.

Let me be clear: “Nothing but joy” was not my emotional posture when I realized what had just taken place in the deep dark recesses of my dog-run.

Nothing but gagging, groaning, and expletives was more like it.

In related news, I suppose, with a nod to James, it’s worth noting that I am neither mature nor complete.

And I do lack for any number of pieces in my life I wish were present.

But somehow, we don’t lack for joy, here, despite chaos.

Chronic, chronic chaos.

Somehow, along the way, I think my family and I have simply come to realize that that somewhere in that space between Funny One and Funny Two is Life.

Obviously, there are all sorts of experiences of Life that belong in Funny Three, that aren’t funny in the least: devastating losses, and illnesses, and stresses, and injustices, and words and deeds that can’t be taken back.

And on more than one occasion, as I’ve often said, we do pray an exasperated “Come Lord Jesus, BE OUR GUEST” before our meals.

But we do so with a grin, come to think of it.

We do because on garden variety (a.k.a. dog-run variety) days, most of what could chip away at our spirits, our patience, our priorities, and our primary relationships happen in that Funny One/Funny Two zone.

One of the ways, that is, that we keep death, despair, and disgusting odors at bay is to laugh.

We will not cede any more wins to awfulness than we have to.

In so doing, we acknowledge the Ish, and we defy it (endure it, even) better with joy.

So neener-neener, Death and Stench.

(I told you I’m not mature).

You might have gotten my dogs.

But I got them clean again, and got cookies.

(Still, given recent events, fragrant flowers, heavy perfumes, and even random cans of Lysol Room Deodorizer are received with gratitude and joy…)

I love travel, don’t get me wrong.

I wouldn’t do what I do if I weren’t to enjoy chucking a suitcase into the back of a car or to a friendly neighborhood airline checker-innerer.

And thankfully I love the people who were with me in the van for four 20+ hour van trips, and it was a thrill to see again and meet people who have been or who became dear to my heart at each of these events.

But when I got home from Houston on Thursday evening, and every day since then, let me be clear: I have wandered about my yard and my woods, I have breathed deeply, and I have soaked in the beauty of this earth.

I am so glad to be home, and I can’t help but notice that I am so much calmer.

It dawned on me that my lowered shoulders aren’t only because I could relax after the full-on pace of presenting, and not only because I no longer needed to be tensely alert on the highways and byways of our travels (God bless you drivers of Texas and Missouri…)

It was also because in the last several weeks, I haven’t had time to breathe in beauty.

I finally got home to savor beauty.

You can’t help but notice it, when you’re here: the place somehow just seems to open up its arms and says to all who visit: Welcome. Let’s show you around. We’ve some stunning sites to display for you. This is ours together to enjoy while you are here.

The luxury of the vibrancy of nature simply announces itself to you as soon as you turn onto the driveway.

But sometimes, the beauty is in the details.

Those, of course are the very things that are so easy to walk by, both because one is so overwhelmed by Big Picture Beauty, and because humans have a habit of harried, hurried lives.

But if we slow down, if we maybe wander a bit, notice what we notice:

Look, for example, at the difference of a month in my orchard.

That was taken on May 26.

Now look at this apple tree, just four weeks later:

Or take a peek at some increasing closeups of a birch tree by our seasonal creek, which runs under our driveway.

We also have wild flowers: sudden patches of daisies, wild blooming chives, bees making their honey thanks to our more-than-welcome dandelions, whatever the heck those blue blooms are, and just within the last week peonies (I wish I could somehow send their scent as an attachment: beauty comes also in the form of a fragrance…) with industrious ants launching their petals.

(bonus points for ooohing at the shoes)

The first two Saturdays of June, my congregation came and helped re-create and create trails through our woods.  The greens are nothing short of lush—and some of these pictures were taken two weeks ago!

I might need to tie a rope around myself when I make my way into the forest next week…

(See? Even Jesus is exhilarated by all the branch-and-eye-popping nature!)

It’s easy, in these days of resistance, of strife, of indignation, let alone of the normal patterns of normal life, to feel that one doesn’t have the time to mosey.

But I find that frenzy builds on frenzy, and anxiety breeds anxiety.

Here’s some word trivia: The word ‘frenetic’ means, quite literally, ‘inflammation of the brain,’ and the word ‘anxiety’ has a direct etymological connection to the word ‘anger,’ and means ‘tight’ and ‘constricted.’

But after two years in this majestic place, I’ve come to think that an antitode to both is anchored in the simple habit of noticing beauty, and breathing it in (not to mention owning a fantastic pair of shoes or two…).

Helpfully, Matthew 6:27-29 reads this way: “And which of you by being anxious can add a single cubit to your life’s span? And why are you anxious about clothing? Observe how the lilies of the field grow; they do not toil nor do they spin, yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory did not clothe himself like one of these.”

So the lilies we have in our yard peaked here while we were gone last week, even though they neither toiled nor spun.

Everything fades, this is simply true.

Even shoes, darn it.

It is also true that immersing oneself in nature, surrounding oneself with vibrant expressions of creation—even if it means having but a single pot, maybe two, of blooms and greens on your windowsill—crafting times to simply breathe might not add any more cubits to one’s lifespan than anxiety does.

But without a doubt, a person’s cubits graced with the peace of the proverbial lilies (or whatever may be in season) of the fields adorn not just the senses, but one’s very essense.

Grab a moment, grab a hand, grab a bloom, grab a breath.

And then find yourself releasing the grabs, and welcoming, savoring, luxuriating in the peace and the grace of a lily considered.

___________

Sign up at www.omgcenter.com to have OMG blogs delivered straight to your inbox!

Check out OMG on Twitter @omgcenter too.

Contact Anna at anna@omgcenter.com to visit about personal or congregational consultations, as well as to speak about booking her to present at your next event.

She also runs The Spent Dandelion Theological Retreat Center, where you can come to Retreat, Reflect, and Restore at her North Shore home. Visit www.spentdandelion.com to learn more!

We are a people called and gathered and washed.

We stand on sacred ground.

We acknowledge that the land on which we gather is Treaty 6 territory and a traditional meeting ground for many Indigenous peoples.

The territory on which the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta is located provided a traveling route and home to the Cree, Blackfoot, and Métis, as it did for the Nakoda, Tsui T’ina, Chipewyan, and other Indigenous peoples.  Their spiritual and practical relationships to the land create a rich heritage for all who gather here.

Karl, Else, Karl’s caregiver Kelsie, and I arrived home late last night from Camrose, in Alberta, Canada, where I presented these last several days at the Convention of the Synod of Alberta and the Territories. 

We love these people, as an aside.

So twice, the above words were read; once in the chapel, and once in the main gathering hall, at each of the inaugural events in these two separate places of communal gathering.

I found it to be a stunning, humbling acknowledgment of the history of these spaces and places, for without this publicly read paragraph, worship and decisions and gathering and thinking and conversing would go down with no recognition of this land’s sacred past and present meaning, and its meaning-and-memory-laden past would remain forgotten.

The Synod has come to see that those who loved and love this place as theirs, who mourn its loss, who remember it, are due these words as an act of repentance and respect.

My family and I had never experienced this sort of publicly expressed humility before, nor this sort of publicly expressed acknowledgement that a place has history.

Just a few weeks ago, as daughter Else and I were driving down to Duluth, we drove by—as we do almost every time we buzz to Duluth and back—the site of a tragic accident that occurred several months ago.  

I sighed, and told her that as much as I miss Regensburg, Germany, where we lived for five years and where the accident occurred, I have been thankful many times over that we left when we did.  I didn’t and still don’t think that I could bear going by the site of the accident that claimed so much.

But, I said, other people do, and don’t even know that at that site, a life was taken and countless lives were changed.

Just, I said, as streams of people will drive up and down the North Shore right on by the site that claimed a different life and changed so many others.

We talked, then, on the way to her school, about how every day, we all walk and drive and work and go to school where, sometime in the past, something happened that mattered to somebody.

And generally, we are fairly oblivious to the stories that the places could tell, could they speak.

The same thing happens with dates.

On June 19th, tomorrow, the accident occurred in 2004 which killed my husband and gave Karl the brain injury.

That year, the next day, June 20th, was Father’s Day.

Two days after that, June 22, is the anniversary of my late husband’s and my ordination.  

And June 23rd was my late husband’s birthday.

So compressed in a handful of days is more than a handful of history; grievous and joyous.

And I’m mulling these days and these events, along with passed-over land and history and stories, compressed in a 20+ hour drive, as we coursed through Alberta, and Saskatchewan, and North Dakota, and Minnesota, land itself with countless buried and forgotten histories and stories, some of which include that of both sides of my family.

Taken all together, I’ve been reminded that every place and every day has meaning to someone. 

Be they occasions of deep grief, deep joy, or simply the familiar knowledge of a place one calls home, no moment and no place is untouched by the sacred memories created then and there.

The Synod Convention’s intentional acknowledgment of place, of story, of loss, and of remembrance struck me powerfully. 

It’s a spiritual practice, among other things.

And it left me wondering whether one could, on a daily basis, and in an interpersonal basis, be similarly as mindful of significant unheard stories that occurred in the places and in the people whom we encounter.  

That is, how often do worship and decisions and gathering and thinking and conversing go down with no recognition of the sacred past and present meaning of that place and for those people, and how often does their meaning-and-memory-laden past remain tragically forgotten?

I can’t help but imagine that, to use Wendell Berry’s phrase, ‘a pattern of reminding,’ let alone a habit of remembering, might offer opportunities for compassion, for humility, for inquiry, for repentance, for renewal, and for connection, not just to the present, but to the past; a reminder that we all, and that all is, is connected, is sacred, and is worthy of being told and heard.

___________

Sign up at www.omgcenter.com to have OMG blogs delivered straight to your inbox!

Check out OMG on Twitter @omgcenter too.

Contact Anna at anna@omgcenter.com to visit about personal or congregational consultations, as well as to speak about booking her to present at your next event.

She also runs The Spent Dandelion Theological Retreat Center, where you can come to Retreat, Reflect, and Restore at her North Shore home. Visit www.spentdandelion.com to learn more!

Turns out the hashtag is, no real surprise here, trending.

Turns out also that under it, #motivation, #diet, #workout, #healthyeating, #stopcaringwhatothersthink, #noexcuses, and #change are top tags.

So’s #hangover, actually, which may or may not be related to this blog, I suppose…

Anayway, as I look at all those annual-been-there-done-that-maybe-this-year-it-will-stick New Year’s goals, it dawned on me that perhaps instead, an overarching resolution for 2018 might be at hand.

At the risk of sounding far more pious than I tend to be, it seems like the First Commandment might just serve as a fine one-stop-shopping #NewYearsResolution: “You shall have no other gods but me.”

That’s the thing, really, that messes us up: when we trust in something or someone more than we trust in God, and the intentions that God has for us.

So many pressures claim our attention and allegiance: the pressure to be thin, to be beautiful, to Have It All Together.

We might find ourselves in toxic relationships, addicted to someone or some substance, even addicted to a perception of ourselves that might be outdated or out-of-line.

Maybe we sabotage ourselves by staying in patterns that defeat rather than uplift us, that make us squander rather than savor our gifts.

Perhaps we don’t trust our possibilities, and opt for the security of Safe Ruts rather than the risk of Unknown Adventure.

It’s possible that we don’t even recognize our other allegiances as such, and find ourselves relinquishing or betraying our religious claims because we don’t see them for what they are: challenges and contradictions to our theology and the faith that springs up from it.

So a handy dandy pocket 2018 resolution is: Worship God.

That’s it.

Worship God.

Not gods.

But God.

Worship the One who has claimed you as you are, while also calling you into new ways of being.

Worship the One who has an agenda of resurrection, bringing life out of things that have died, or should die, into spectactular new creation.

Worship the One who wants you to be healthy and well, which may mean that you eat the damn cake.

Worship the One who judges, not out of cruelty but out of concern, willing you to be whole, and to create wholeness, rather than be broken, and create brokenness.

Worship the One who sees that your poverty of wallet or spirit is in need of redemption.

Worship the One who knows that you can’t redeem yourself, and provides advocates and community to help you find your ground again.

Worshp the One who sees that the oppression you experience or that you cause is in need of redemption.

Worship the One who knows that you can’t redeem yourself, and provides advocates and community to help you find your worth—or that of others’—again.

Worship the One who sees that your external or internal malignment is in need of redemption.

Worship the One who sees that your privilege is in need of redemption.

Worship the One who empowers you to resist anything less than your fullness of being…which is intricately related to everyone’s fullness of being.

Worship the One who was on the move.

Worship the One who needed a nap.

Worship the One who got angry at unrighteousness.

Worship the One who loved good wine and good food.

Worship the One who Called a Thing What It Is.

Worship the One who was born by a woman.

Worship the One who was schooled by a woman.

Worship the One who was proclaimed first by women.

Worship the One who injects the impossible into the impossible: something radically risen out of something unbearably dead.

In 2018, then, resolve, to Worship God.

That’s it.

One resolution.

Worship God: not brokenness, not despair, not dysfunction, not meanness, not oppression, not hate, not apathy, not security, not racism, not power, not slogged-through-fatigue, not unreal expectations, not lack-of-self, not death, not that-which-should-be-dead.

Instead, worship God, who loves you, loves creation, loves re-creating, loves reconciliation, loves restoration, loves resurrection.

And cake.

God loves cake, so absolutely resolve to eat the cake.