Living word by word

it's not about the weather

 As a California transplant to Minnesota, I frequently hear from friends and relatives about how hard it must be to stay active in the winter.  Implied, often, is the idea that we couldn't possibly value the outdoors as much as they do in a place where it hovers between 50 and 70 all year round.

Well, this month the national rankings on childhood obesity came out, and it's clear that weather has nothing to do with it. The worst states are those that typically rate the worst for education and child poverty levels as well: Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas. The sunshine states out West fare well, but not as well as Minnesota. How can this be?

Obviously, getting outside and exercising is a good thing to prevent obesity, especially in kids. And I'm sure there are many families that do not enjoy winter sports as fully as ours does. But still. Minnesotans  -- especially children -- would not rank this well if we were simply eating our vegetables and going to the gym for seven months of the year.

We get out. We savor sunshine, even when it's below freezing (we also get more of it than many other northern states. . .). We savor the lakes even when they are frozen.  And -- most importantly --  we invest in public parks, public schools and public recreation facilities that are available to everyone, not just those who can purchase a membership at a club.

I'm not one of those people who think we'll solve childhood obesity by preaching. Most of us would get fat if the options for food (junk) and activity (TV) available to us are limited, as is usually the case for people living in poverty. Public investment that makes healthy lifestyle EASIER is critical.

long time no blog

I've been working full-time, preaching off-lectionary, planning a kitchen renovation,  and continuing to try and stay in half-marathon shape -- all of which hasn't added up to a lot of energy for blogging.  Never fear, I'm sure I'll return, maybe even next week when I'm back to lectionary preaching.

I'm also working on two writing assignments for Advent and Christmas resources -- which is beyond bizarre to be thinking of just after summer solstice.  As pastors, we're always thinking a little bit "off-season," but this is just weird.

a world of hurt

  On the anniversary of Columbine,  Newsweek had a poignant article about two pastors who were serving in the area at the time, and the toll that event took on their congregation's and their lives.  Pastor Marxhausen, a Lutheran minister who presided at Dylan Kliebold's funeral, said  "I learned how fear can take hold of a community. You have to be prepared to hurt when you go into the ministry. But I never thought it would hurt that much."

A few weeks ago I met a woman who was a youth minister at another local Lutheran church at the time of Columbine. When the crisis team from Lutheran Social Services came in to talk with her and other church leaders, they said bluntly, "Most of you will no longer be on staff here in two years." Their experience was that these events take an enormous toll on leaders, even if they are not the ones directly grieving the dead. All the anniversary reporting I've read confirms their prediction was true.

I thought of this this week when I learned that a gifted pastor I know is now senior pastor at Reformation Lutheran in Wichita, where Dr. Glenn Tiller was shot on Pentecost Sunday as he was ushering for his congregation. There are all kinds of ways in which the situation is not analogous, but the trauma is still profound. I'm praying for this congregation and its leaders that they can make it through the long road ahead.

party time

When I moved to  Minnesota, I was astonished by the sacrosanct nature of the Graduation Open House. The rules:

1.  Every student must have one (or share one with a friend or two).

2.  Everyone -- not just family --  must be invited.

3.  Vast quantities of food must be offered.

4.. All parties must happen on the same weekend.

Needless to say, this makes for a lot of stops in one weekend, if you're pastor of a congregation with more than a couple high school students.

 

This year even more than most, I have connections with more high school students than someone my age would normally have. I've been to Boston and China with these graduates. Many of them have baby-sat my kids. I've confirmed them and watched their various abilities grow and griped at them for wearing flip-flops in inappropriate places.

 

If I weren't a pastor, I don't imagine I'd be spending much of this weekend going to parties. We know only one couple our age who -- because they married right out of college -- have kids that age. I suppose, without the church,  we would have found  babysitters somehow. But without this community, my daily life would not bring me into relationship much with 18 year olds. What a gift that it does!

Times they are a-changin'

Many years (can it be ten??) ago I attended several events where leaders in what-came-to-be the Emergent movement gathered to talk about the future of the church. Many of them were Boomer-driven megachurch exiles who were sensing that the old/new Evangelical ways of being church were not working for younger generations, and perhaps weren't even faithful to the fullness of Jesus' message.

I met some wonderful people there: Doug Pagitt, Brian MacLaren, and others. But as a Lutheran woman it was a little like being a fish out of water. I had no goatee. The sacraments and Roman Catholic spiritual exercises were not exotic to me. And theologically my tradition had never bought the modernist-rational deal anyway.

In my current callings as pastor and Mom  I have little space to connect deeply with emergent folk outside my immediate ministry circles, but I'm very excited about Chrisitanity 21, which will be held here in Minneapolis in October. All you have to do is read the list of speakers to know that this is not going to be the usual round of guys-with-big-churches instructing others on how church should be done. God be praised.

I can't wait to hear what Jenell and Debbie and Nadia have to say, among others.

So, if you're coming into town for this, let me know. I'd love to see you. If you want to register, use the code "wordbyword" and if we get enough through this blog I can offer someone a scholarship to go (or even a free hotel room. . . ).

Happy National Running Day!

We're celebrating by sleeping in at our house (we have grandparental visit hangover).

But later I'll do a rare after-work run from Marathon Sports to celebrate.

never post angry

My Saturday:

This post is actually from a couple weeks ago, only slightly revised. I let it cool for a few days. If you don't know Free Range Kids, check it out.

My Saturday:

Up at 5:30, run 11.5 miles with a 60 year-old woman who's faster than me.

Eat, shower, visit the ATM

Spend 3 hours garage saling in our neighborhood. Katie totally enjoys selecting her own items with her own allowance. Johann scores a Slinky and a magnadoodle board.

Visit the neighborhood park festival: hot dogs, neighborhood chamber orchestra, moonjump, goofy games, popcorn.

Go home. Kick the extremely squirrely kids outdoors for a bit while we put away our finds and figure out how to move the piano we just bought for 25 dollars at an estate sale. (Really! An upright for $25! And it plays beautifully!)

Retrieve children, get scolded by neighbor for "inadequately supervising" them (Note: no one was bruised, bloodied, or destructive of anyone else's property).

Stew all evening about said scolding. Think uncharitable thoughts about said neighbor.

Make myself feel better reading Free Range Kids.

Decide the best construction is that my neighbor and I have different parenting philosophies. I can live with that.

Married to a wonk

 I'm so proud of my spouse, even if I can't really explain what he does for a living in 20 words or less.

 But now you can read some of what he works on, in a real-time policy debate, at "Reality Based Community: You're entitled to your own opinion, just not your own facts."

 Will's lengthy response to the first article is at the bottom of this post. One of the fascinating things about his job is that he now gets to argue against recycling an idea that he helped promote some ten years ago.

While his argument is nuanced, here's my two-bit summary of a complex issue: we can't consume our way out of the environmental crisis we face. Producing new stuff -- even "green" stuff like hybrid cars -- takes an environmental toll, so think twice -- and do your research --  before you replace something that still works with the latest shiny new thing, even if it's "green."

Pre-sabbath fun.

OK, this is fun: Radical Torah syncs R.E.M.s Automatic for the People with the pre-Shabbat psalmody -- including Psalm 98.

And the best line:
        I’m not claiming that R.E.M. had this sequence of psalms in mind when they wrote Automatic for             the People, and I’m certainly not claiming that the psalmist foretold the works of R.E.M. But I’m             asserting my postmodern right to not care.

Happy Friday Everyone!

lectionary blog Easter 6B: Psalm 98

 

I had the odd experience  this month of having something I wrote wrongly attributed to someone else. It was a book review for Alban Institute's Congregations magazine, so I guess I can be grateful that it wasn’t the most original piece I’ve written. But I looked in the magazine and there was someone else’s name at the bottom. And the then  the book review next to it, for a book I've never read, had my name on it. Very strange.

 

But it sounds like I may have been critical of this other book in the same way that the reviewer named Pamela Fickenscher might have been. The author did a tour of U.S. churches, a sort of mystery shopper deal, and like most of us she had her list of criteria for what a “good church” looked like. She claimed she wanted a place that didn’t care about her politics, but then criticized churches whose politics seemed different from hers. She claimed she wanted a place with little hierarchy and lots of member input in every decision, but she wanted great music and a transcendent worship experience.

 

What she didn’t seem to understand was that being “caught up” in worship is something that necessarily gets us to set aside our lists of criteria, our evaluations, what writers call our “editors mind.” I’m sure brain scientists have a term for this, but checklists and transcendence don’t usually go together.

I'm preaching on Psalm 98 this weekend, and on praise as a dying form of speech. Not praise as in "Good job, God, I approve of what you did there!" but praise in the biblical sense, which gets us over ourselves.

Or, as Kevin Henkes puts it, in Lilly's  Purple Plastic Purse: "'Wow,' [Lilly's teacher]  said. That was all he really could say. 'Wow.' "

Or, Alleluia.

 May you be lost in wonder, love and praise some time this Sunday.