Pulpit in the Sky with Diamonds

Way too many things as usual in our world. I now know where I will be for my internship year- a church whose official name is- The Evangelical Lutheran Church of The Holy Trinity, more commonly just called "Trinity, Lancaster." For a full view of my internship world click here. There are many exciting and challenging things to consider and I am eager to begin, albeit a little nervous.
The pastors and staff have been a joy to meet. It is exhilirating to know that though the congregation has never had an intern, they are "thrilled" to have me there. And in my interaction with the various staff and volunteers, the excitement is indeed palpable. Having now had the tour of the sanctuary and the separate parish building, I am sure I will get lost a least once a day for awhile.
But I also believe that everyone there will simply smile and help me get oriented... again. The work of the church is extensive both locally and globally. There is much to see and to learn.

The church has been around since the early 1700's, and a Muhlenberg is involved, so truly there is a cloud of witnesses. There is actually a letter to the "pastor of the congregation" from Muhlenberg which is shared with each new pastor. The picture above depicts the view from the organ in the balcony to the pulpit which, when one stands in it, is almost level with the balcony. Behind the pulpit is a 16 foot mural of the Resurrected Christ. The congregation is used to a 25 minute sermon and the congregation library holds 3600 books which are theological- in other words, there is not a " DaVinci Code" in sight.
And as I stood in this pulpit, knowing the first date I will preach as the first vicar, gazing at the massive Bible in the pulpit, looking at the windows, one of which is by Louis Comfort Tiffany, I wonder- what does the cloud of witnesses think? Will the 16 foot Jesus come alive during my sermon and step down to say,"That's not what I meant!" when I am preaching?
So I think of the words I shared with a potential commuter student just a couple weeks ago. She asked, " How will I make this all happen?" I encouraged her to ponder instead, " How will God work through me to bring me to this new place?"
With a little creative license from the medical profession, perhaps I need to hear-
"Preacher, hear thyself!"

While I sort that out I confess to singing the old Beatles song with a new twist...

God's Grammar

In this Lenten season, I have been using the Book of Faith Lenten Journey
which encompasses meditation on the words of the Lord's Prayer. Though I have enjoyed each day, perhaps the meditation that has stuck with me most is the exercise of contemplating the pronouns of the Lord's Prayer, God's grammar. What does it mean to say that God is "our" Father in this prayer? What does it mean to ask for "our" daily bread? What is the weight of seeking forgiveness for "our" sins? The words "I","me" and "my" have no place in this prayer, the prayer Jesus gives in answer to the question of how we should pray. Does this change how you see others,to remind yourself again that God is not picking and choosing as we do? Might the notion that we ask for all to have daily bread, inform our choices, our advocacy, and our idea of what is "enough"? How does it feel to ask God to forgive OUR sins,not just "my sins."? There is no "us versus them" in this equation. The other pronoun I have pondered is "your." God, we hallow, your name. What is not there? Holding up ourselves as holy and worthy. Your kingdom come, your will be done. For this to be meaningful prayer, it means we are affirming that God's arrangement of the world is right and should exist and that we pray for it to be so. If that arrangement means that all have a place in the circle, and that all are truly interdependent, can we think more deeply about how we see others? And about the role of our will? Yours is the kingdom and power and glory. Not ours. Not mine. It is hard sometimes to acknowledge that God's kingdom is not always the kingdom that we desire- it does not square with our wants, our preferences, our fears.God hears all our prayers, the prayers of all of us, not just some. And one final thought- if we really mean it when we pray this prayer, how are we called to be workers for this kingdom where all have their daily bread, where all have God as Father, where all seek forgiveness and a place in the kingdom?
Lord, you answered us when we asked you to teach us how to pray. We ask you to teach us how to live what we pray. Amen.

The beginning of the Lenten Journey

Last night, my younger daughter bolted into our room, after she should have been asleep. She has been having stomach distress the last couple of days. With my husband downstairs watching TV, she confided that she doesn't think it is a virus. In fact, as soon as her head hit the pillow, her heart started racing and she couldn't sleep, or get comfortable and her stomach started acting up. Knowing the answer she asked the question she might have not dared- "Do you think I am having stress?"
We honestly evaluated the facts: she is in honors classes; she is going to team building sessions for the Youth trip to New Orleans; she is in pit orchestra for the musical and the rehearsals are becoming excessive and tedious. She is trying to still have a life and her art ( which is her release) has suffered. She can never seem to get to it unless she is illustrating or creating for the art class at school she took for fun, but which has become a drudgery. Sounds like stress to me.
SO she resorted to the old stand-by: to come see Mom and climb into the fluffy comfort of the featherbed and unleash her fears- and to go one step farther and own that she really didn't want to leave after that because it was a warm embrace by someone she knew really loved her, no matter what.

This Lent, I am engaging in the Book of Faith Lenten Journey
Over the next 40 days I will contemplate the Lord's Prayer. But for today, I am contemplating the command to "pray like this" as both law and gospel, and the place of prayer in my life of faith in the here and now.
As a seminarian, I would love to tell you that my prayer life is consistently rich and I am constant in my conversation with God. If I did so, I would be lying, more than a little. The truth is: there is prayer in worship at Chapel, but sometimes I am thinking of what comes next in the service, or I am chasing away thoughts of what needs my attention this day. I pray on the way to Seminary, but if it is in the car, God does not have my undivided attention. As a parent I know how frustrated I am when I am not being paid attention to. At the end of the day I am praying, but I am falling asleep, just like those first disciples. On Sunday, if I am serving in worship, invariably I may find I have one eye open to what is needing attention. While this is not all of the time, it is more than I would like to confess.
And I admit that while I open my prayers with thanksgiving, sometimes the race to "Lord, fix this" is sometimes a fast pace.
I try to set aside other time, and to be intentional. Some times this time is in fact rich and rewarding and sustaining, times where I not only talk, but listen. But the truth is I really wish I was better at climbing up into God's proverbial featherbed and just hanging out, even when I am just glad to be in God's presence with nothing else to discuss.
So as I engage myself in this journey, I hope to be more mindful. One of the life-altering events for me was becoming a parent. To see in my child how helpless I was once, to realize this relationship with God; to knowing deep unlimited love and to grasp a whole new dimension of comprehending God; to think of how mere presence without words is rich and sustaining. To see myself, warts and all, in this context with God as the loving and forgiving parent who I yearn to have embrace me.
Tonite when I sink into the featherbed, it will be with a new focus.
SO today's question is : How is your prayer life as you enter Lent?

Lenten Disciplines

It's that time of year again. Here in Central PA, today is Shrove Tuesday and involves a)pancakes; b) fasnachts ( and the variant spelling fausnachts); or for the trendy, King Cake with purple, yellow and green sugar ( the safest version of NOLA, but a good way to get the Chicks ready for the Lutheran Youth gathering in the "Big Easy" this summer).
Often times people give something up for Lent, as a way of invoking discipline and returning to God, and a way to conjure up the sense of separation from blessedness in this season leading up to Easter. A time of penitence and contemplation.
While I hope to be diciplined, my thoughts are these: First, I should repent of the things that keep me from maintaining relationships, real and virtual. So to that end I hope to be more faithful in nuturing the true sense of my life with God and with those in my midst- be less self-absorbed, and less distracted. I also hope to pay more attention to my physical self which seems a little out of kilter these days. There is a sense of giving up, but it is a giving up of the things which draw me from God and those whom I am blessed to know.
If I am able to be attentive to this, I will not feel like I gave up as much as I gained. For those Lutheran among us, I encourage you to also join me in the Book of Faith Lenten Journey, which focuses our hearts and minds upon the Lord's Prayer. Each day of the journey involves journaling. I hope to do some of that here- and hope maybe a few of you lurkers will join me on the journey. To close, I quote the words of Henry F. French-" May your Lenten journey be an adventure that leads you to Easter and beyond in the grace of God."

Where is God and How do we Know?

Today I met a man in the ER who rolled his car, but was going to be OK- banged up but no broken bones. My job among other things is to catalog a patient's belongings. On his laptop case was a Bible. It was important enough to carry as he commuted to work, and to his appointments among the Amish farming community. In spite of his miraculously being spared any injuries that would have admitted him and caused anguish, when I asked him if he wanted me to offer prayer for thanksgiving, he said no- because he was OK.
Later in the morning I visited a man who has some undiagnosed intestinal problem. He is homeless and suffers from mental distress. He eagerly accepted a visit and shared with me his faith, and pictures of his cat, a stray who found him. Though he occasionally was a little disordered, and his faith was labeled as a "religious preoccupation" by nursing, it was hard to see that this man's faith was just about mental illness. He asked me to pray, he held the Bible and knew it's stories. He told me that I was the first person to visit him. He chided me that Jesus conmmanded that we remember the poor, hungry and homeless. He challenged me as to whether I would stay and listen to him or would I call him crazy. He insisted I look at his blackened toenails- his concern of the day.
He thanked me for listening and for praying.
During our visit, he sat in a chair, as did I. At one point in the visit, a batik cloth he had draped on the foot of the bedrail, spontaneously slid off. I caught it and he professed this as proof of the Holy spirit in the room, and of my being someone open to the Spirit.
It mught be easy to lump him together with other "crazy" people. But I wonder. This man who has nothing and no reason to believe in God, professes the presence of God in his life.
One whose life was spared, carries a text that does not speak to him in a moment defying rational possibility.
Who sees God for who God is?
And how do we know?

And After Internship Matching..the Wait

Ready for Speed Dating

Today and tomorrow are times of concentrated effort as our middler class spends time interviewing with congregations from across the country who are graciously willing to have an intern for the coming year. In this year in particular gearing up has taken an added strenuous times as the economy has in some instances decimated the ability of parishes to support interns. And it has become more challenging for interns to contemplate who to have some level of viability in the year on internship. Given the ages of my children, with LC#1 being a high school senior next year, I am not free to travel just anywhere. Yet, I feel blessed to have six possible locations for my learning experience. Though some see our region as being fairly homeogenous and monolithic, in fact each of these flocks is vastly different from the other, and a few are in very transitional times. From my perspective this translates into my feeling that there are many exciting and challenging opportunities in which I may be stretched and formed in new ways. In the good old days, our internship matching process has been called "the meat market" though I prefer the updated phrase " speed dating."
I have read the profiles, and looked over whatever else the congregation provided as a glimpse into their world, and I have visited websites, talked to old interns and acquaintances of supervisors.
In short, I have done everything I can do. Which is I think the main point. So much of this process is not up to me, and not even up to the supervisors or field education team, but is, I hope and believe, the work of the Spirit in our midst.
Some of my classmates are dealing with great anxiety as they sort out their situations in relationship to the notion of being ready to "mobilize."
I am again reminded of the story in the Gospel of Mark in our recent lectionary of the calling of the first disciples. "Come and follow me on the way" What are the nets we find it hard to cast down? Are we so preoccupied with them that Jesus needs to yell to get our attention?
Jesus says come and FOLLOW me. Even in ministry it is hard to remember that we are called to follow God's lead, not to try to lead God where we want to go. To prepare myself for the way I was blessed to spend two hours with Taize and contemplative prayer and walking the labyrinth by candlelight with some friends in our chapel in the evening. And now, it is time to listen to where God is calling. Veni Sancte Spiritus.