I heard yesterday that tomorrow is "Poem in your Pocket Day." Oh, my gosh. There are so many poems I love. Which one do I want to share with you?

Someday I'll tell the whole story of a pair of slippers my sons made for me one Christmas. They are probably what I would risk my life to rescue from my burning house, given that every living person was already outside and accounted for. Not that I could ever put them on my feet.

So I'll offer up Billy Collins' "The Lanyard." And from a mother's point of view I will say that the giver may not understand that his/her gift is received as sacrament.

The Lanyard

by Billy Collins

The other day I was ricocheting slowly
off the blue walls of this room,
moving as if underwater from typewriter to piano,
from bookshelf to an envelope lying on the floor,
when I found myself in the L section of the dictionary
where my eyes fell upon the word lanyard.
No cookie nibbled by a French novelist
could send one into the past more suddenly—
a past where I sat at a workbench at a camp
by a deep Adirondack lake
learning how to braid long thin plastic strips
into a lanyard, a gift for my mother.
I had never seen anyone use a lanyard
or wear one, if that's what you did with them,
but that did not keep me from crossing
strand over strand again and again
until I had made a boxy
red and white lanyard for my mother.
She gave me life and milk from her breasts,
and I gave her a lanyard.
She nursed me in many a sick room,
lifted spoons of medicine to my lips,
laid cold face-cloths on my forehead,
and then led me out into the airy light
and taught me to walk and swim,
and I , in turn, presented her with a lanyard.
Here are thousands of meals, she said,
and here is clothing and a good education.
And here is your lanyard, I replied,
which I made with a little help from a counselor.
Here is a breathing body and a beating heart,
strong legs, bones and teeth,
and two clear eyes to read the world, she whispered,
and here, I said, is the lanyard I made at camp.
And here, I wish to say to her now,
is a smaller gift—not the worn truth
that you can never repay your mother,
but the rueful admission that when she took
the two-tone lanyard from my hand,
I was as sure as a boy could be
that this useless, worthless thing I wove
out of boredom would be enough to make us even.

Sacred Ground

You never know when you're going to step onto sacred ground. Well, I guess sometimes you do. There are times it announces itself and you have a chance to get all reverential and proper and can take time to dress up before you take that step into what has been declared holy. But there are times when you land on it all unsuspecting and you are not dressed for the occasion or full of holy thoughts but maybe preoccupied by very irritating stuff or just stuff stuff, and it packs a wallop, and you wonder what hit you and pretty much dissolve when you get it. That was this morning.

I really didn't expect it. The confirmation class had been meeting for a couple of months on Sunday mornings, and we'd had a good time covering the usual ground. What our faith is, what our scripture is, what our Book of Common Prayer is and our sacraments are and our traditions and the ministries of the church. This morning's meeting was to wrap up the loose ends and take the tour of the nooks and crannies of the church, name the vestments and sacred vessels and learn about the lectionary and the liturgical year and allow for random questions and rehearse where to stand and when to say what when the Bishop visits tomorrow.

I did not expect all the tears.

A couple of new people were there today, choir people who couldn't come to our classes, but who want very much to have their new membership blessed, so we had to do introductions, and that was where it all broke loose. That was where they opened their hearts as they hadn't before. Most of these folks had begun their lives somewhere in the church and had been abused by the church, had been beaten up with the Bible, had been declared unworthy and decided that church was not for them. I don't blame them a bit. The stories were pretty darned horrific. But somehow they made their way very tentatively up our hill, and what they found was not what church had been but what they always hoped church could be...open, forgiving, comfortable with doubt, full of laughter, resplendent with quirky people who appreciate who they are and the gifts they have to share.

I was humbled and pretty darned close to tears myself. OK. We did some laughing too. What I wonder is how we can get this story out there to all the people who are not in church because they have suffered the same kind of damage these people did. People who think that church is a place where you have to wear your most uncomfortable clothes and sit in hard seats for an hour and a half to listen to somebody make you feel guilty.

My own tears are tears of joy. That these people have discovered that church is a group of people who pretty much don't care what you think about the laws of Leviticus or the Virgin birth or what the heck happened at the resurrection. They care about whether your heart is broken or whether you'd like to go out for a beer or help mentor first graders or sit on the floor with toddlers or mow the grass or set the altar or make tacos for the youth or discuss the profound meaning of a movie or make the beds of refugees who are flying in from Burundi. They care about hearing your story, your weird, bumpy, flawed story, and they've got one to share with you, too. Church is messy, but it is gloriously messy, and I'm so grateful for the vulnerability of these people who are admittedly taking a huge leap of faith tomorrow and joining our ranks. They gave me a huge gift today, and tomorrow will offer themselves to all of us in the ever so weird body of Christ that is St. Alban's. Thanks be to God...and to them...and to you.

Sam Wells' Harvey Lecture at SSW

Sam Wells is one of those rare folks at whose feet I would like to sit simply to pick up whatever crumbs he might drop. Until recently the Dean of the Chapel of Duke University, he has been called to fill the post of Vicar of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, one of the most prominent and important churches in London. A person whose opinion I highly respect said this was the best lecture he has ever heard. Enjoy, and please do offer comments. Thank you.

Harvey Lecture Series 3/26/12 06:26PM PST

www.ustream.tv

All I'd Ever Need to Know...

I remember as clear as anything the day our Encyclopedia Britannica was delivered. I was about eight years old and we lived in a brick Tudor house on Brantley Road. The salesman had come to our house some weeks, maybe even months earlier. He wasn't like the vacuum cleaner salesmen who knocked on the door whenever they were in the neighborhood. I'm pretty sure my mother made the appointment and he came late in the afternoon when my dad was home, and we all gathered in the library as he showed us the gilt-edged volumes and the vast amount of information they contained. We all watched my dad sign the forms -- remember carbon copies? -- to place our order, and then we waited.

My mother was the most excited. She was insatiably curious all her life until Alzheimer's robbed her of interest in anything but the present moment. The encyclopedia was a gift from my grandfather, an extravagant gift. It had a place of honor in the upstairs hall, which was sunny with a big window that looked onto the back garden. As you faced the back of the house, the encyclopedia was on the left in the small bookcase that came with it, and the window was on the right above a maple chest you could sit on to read. The only other thing on the chest was a small aquarium that held the chameleon I had bought at the Shriners' circus. In those days you could buy the little lizard with a string around its neck attached to a safety pin you attached to your coat and it would crawl around on your shoulder. My chameleon lived a long and happy life in the window opposite the encyclopedia, and my mother had to go to the pet store for meal worms to feed it.

The encyclopedia was there for all school projects, but what I remember even more was spending lazy time with it and absorbing random and probably ultimately useless information. I was undiscriminating; I'd pick a volume and read consecutive articles about places and people and documents and concepts I didn't fully understand as the day sifted toward dinnertime. I was in heaven.

I don't know when we gave it away. It probably made the move to the smaller house in the country. Did it make it to the apartment on Shaker Square? I'm certain it did not survive my parents' divorce, but the little bookcase is in my study even now, and holds my Bibles, prayer books, and the other theology books I need close at hand. It is all scratched up and could use refinishing.

What strikes me, though, on this beautiful spring morning, is what a wonder it was then to have that wealth of information sitting right there in our upstairs hallway. And how contained it was. And how quaint in light of all the information that is available to us now at the click of a mouse. I'm far from being a Luddite, but sometimes I want to flee from more information. Right now I could turn on the TV news or click over to the NYTimes website, but frankly I'd rather go sit outdoors and watch the birds than learn more about Mitt Romney, the Secret Service, or Brangelina. Oh, to imagine that all the information you could ever need could be contained in twenty-four volumes plus an index and a dictionary in a small bookcase outside your bedroom door.

The Power of Story

"How impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story." Chimamanda Adichi

I talk a lot and think a lot about the power of stories. Someone once said that human beings are featherless storytelling creatures. When you think about it, we tell stories all day, every day. I just told JB the story of the really good taco I had at the new place next door to the Posse. And I've recently been told the story of a friend's birthday celebration and that another friend has recently moved into a retirement community. Just chit chat. But stories nonetheless.

I wonder if we comprehend the power that stories have over our lives. Probably not. But this video by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichi offers a very articulate insight into the necessity of discernment and openness in hearing and integrating stories. Enjoy.

http://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story.html

And now, just for the fun of it, a story I love. It is true, or at least this is the way I remember it. (Knowing me, it is likely embellished. Stories tend to get decorated when they live in my mind for a while.) I don't know how to find the people it happened to, so I'm changing their names.

A number of years ago I led a moms' group at a big downtown parish. On Friday mornings a bunch of stay at home moms brought their children, who played in the nursery, and we had a couple of hours for conversation and Bible study. There was a tremendous amount of compassion, support, and wisdom in the group. They were a great blessing to me as well as to each other.

One day Megan came with the story of how she got her son Preston to give up his pacifiers. Mission accomplished, and if you've ever had a kid who loved pacifiers, you know this is no small accomplishment.

Now Preston was one of those kids who grew increasingly dependent upon and in love with his pacifiers. As his hands got bigger he became able to hold more and more spares in addition to the one that never left his mouth except to eat. Preston was turning four. It was time.

Megan had a brilliant idea. She told Preston in a matter of fact way that when children turn four they donate their pacifiers to babies who need them. She gave him a couple of days to reflect on where he would like to donate them. She suggested the hospital where babies are born, a day care center, the church nursery.

A day or two later Preston piped up that he wanted to donate his pacifiers to Lowe's. Lowe's? Yes. Lowe's. Because there are always little children crying at Lowe's and if the managers could give them pacifiers, maybe they wouldn't cry. Ingenious logic.

So Megan calls the manager at Lowe's and says she has surely the strangest request he has ever heard. He tells her to bring Preston and the pacifiers to the service desk at 2:00 on Tuesday (ok, I don't know for sure, but why not?) and ask for Joe (again...why not?)

When they get to Lowe's the person at the desk escorts them to the break room, where not only are Joe and a half dozen employees waiting, but there is a banner that reads, "Thank you, Preston," and there is a podium for the ceremony, and applause when the pacifiers are donated, and refreshments, and Joe gives Preston his own little tool belt complete with child-size tools as a gesture of the gratitude and appreciation of Lowe's.

Preston never asks for another pacifier. Now if the story ended there, it would still be great. But it doesn't.

Fast forward a year. Megan has to return something to the service desk at Lowe's, and Preston is with her. He looks at the employee, whom neither of them had ever seen before, and says, "What did you do with my pacifiers?"

The employee doesn't miss a beat: "Are you Preston?" She looks at him with awe.

Preston has become a mythological character in the ethos of this Lowe's store. He is the icon of commitment, and ever since that Tuesday afternoon, the zip loc bag of pacifiers has been the award for the most committed employee of the month.

I'll let you make this into your own sermon. I'll let you fit this into your own life. I'll let you invite this story to weave itself into your own story.

We have fifty great days of Eastertide, and it is all, all, all in the first place about incarnation. Jesus was fully human and fully divine, but it is so easy for us to favor the divine over the human. Instead, let's celebrate his full humanity, the literal embodiment of all that is divine in a vessel just like us. Do something with your body in witness to the resurrection. Eat a chocolate. Sing a silly song. Skip. When was the last time you skipped? Open a window and breathe in this beautiful day...even if the pollen makes you sneeze. 

Seven Stanzas At Easter

By John Updike

Make no mistake: if He rose at all

it was as His body;

if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules

reknit, the amino acids rekindle,

the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,

each soft Spring recurrent;

it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled

eyes of the eleven apostles;

it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,

the same valved heart

that--pierced--died, withered, paused, and then

regathered out of enduring Might

new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,

analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;

making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the

faded credulity of earlier ages:

let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,

not a stone in a story,

but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow

grinding of time will eclipse for each of us

the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,

make it a real angel,

weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,

opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen

spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,

for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,

lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are

embarrassed by the miracle,

and crushed by remonstrance.

Welcome happy morning! Blessed Easter, everyone. Choir is rehearsing Mozart Alleluia down the hall. Mockingbird is singing outside my window. It's time to suit up and greet worshipers. Days like this I just can't believe I get to do this. My heart is filled.

I started sending this blog out to a few trusted friends today. And as I did, I realized that my trusted friends are more than I can count on my fingers and my toes. I am truly blessed. And these are the people I am willing to show something that I'm still pretty scared about, but something I'm feeling not only called to do but responsible to as I celebrate a new dimension of my calling.

So...here is the question of why. And I love that one dear friend said she loves the picture of the sheep and wants to know more about it.

Let me begin in such a way as to make a short story long.

I'm late to this blogging party. Not that I hadn't been invited. (And by that I mean invited in my heart, feeling as if it is something I ought to be doing and might even be able to do reasonably well and might actually be beneficial to my ministry and my congregation and might even, even, even be something somebody might want to read even if they didn't have to to spare my feelings.) I just took a long time getting a handle on it. And the technology was not the hardest part. (Thank you, Halley, and I'll make you chicken salad anytime!)

But I needed a core. I needed a defining and unifying and inspiring narrative...and it took me a long time to figure out that that was what was holding me back. In the lingo of our EfM groups (Education for Ministry...I'll see if I can find out how to link to that, but right now that is beyond my techie horizon, as is much else I'd like to be able to do...but I'll get to it), I needed the central metaphor.

So I took a day. I walked. I folded towels. I pushed piles of stuff around the house. I cooked a thing or two. I doodled and sat in the back yard watching the lesser goldfinches. (How come I don't get greater goldfinches. I buy the expensive niger seed.)

And at one point I asked myself, "OK, self, what is your favorite story in the Bible. I mean, you are actually a priest. You've pretty much read it. Pick one." So I did. It was the one where Elijah hands over his cloak to Elisha. No, wait. It is where Jesus hangs out with the woman at the well. No, wait. It is where the angels visit Abraham and Sarah. No, wait. It is the raising of Jairus' daughter. No, wait. It is Gabriel's visit to Mary, when she says, "Let it be to me according to your word." No, wait. Ooops, it is starting to sound like a ginsu knife commercial..."Wait, wait there is more...if you just order now you will get..." But I think you get it. I have dozens of favorite Bible stories.

And then there was clarity. Then there was the one story. The 21st chapter of John's gospel. Peter doesn't know what to do, so he reverts to what he knows, fishing. And they haven't caught anything. I'm not going to revisit it all. John 21. You can find it. Read it. Over and over. It is too wonderful for words.

Peter stands before Jesus, after eating his fish taco on the beach, feeling dirty. Feeling stained. The last time they looked at each other, Jesus was being taken away by Caiphas' goons in the middle of the night, and Peter was telling the young maid in the courtyard that no, he didn't know that guy. He failed the one he loved most. And now he is standing before him. Raised from the dead, no less.

Jesus takes Peter apart from the others, and if the words had come from anyone else, they would have been an accusation. But from Jesus they are an invitation. Simon, son of John, Do you love me more than these?
He said to him, Yes, Lord; you know I love you. Jesus said to him, Feed my lambs. Times three. Three strikes against the denials. Erase that blackboard and take the sponge to it.

Feed my lambs.

It's what I do. It's what I love. More about this later. Much more

And for the picture of the sheep? They are the sheep of dear friends who live in New Zealand and whose gorgeous ranch we visited in January.

But let me tell you something about taking this picture. It wasn't easy. I took lots of shots. With lots of time between shots. I wanted a picture of their faces, their eager smiling faces. Aren't they smiling?

But when sheep see you with a camera, they run. And I have many, many pictures of the rear ends of several hundred sheep, lambs, whatever, and I didn't think that would be quite the picture Jesus would have wanted for all of this, do you? Praise be to God for this one. And thank you, lambs. All of you, and I think you know who you are.

soft opening

A new coffee shop very recently opened in the strip center just to the south of the church. I'm encouraged by the spirit that would lead a person to open her own coffee shop equidistant from two reasonably convenient outposts of Starbuck's. Because of my bizarre Lent and Holy Week schedule, I've only made it there once, but I plan to be a regular customer. My first coffee wasn't perfect, but that's OK. They are getting their act together, not planning their grand opening until May. By then they should get the bugs out. Ooops, let's hope that is not literal, like the pink stuff at their corporate competitor.

So this is my own soft opening. As someone who has written somewhat easily if not always well since childhood -- I remember beginning my first novel at age eight -- I'm surprised at how daunting this project is. With all the drivel that floats around the ether on blogs -- and let me add that there is also a stunning amount of excellence in the blogosphere --  it can't be the worst or the most embarrassing. But there is something intimidating in the thought that once something is posted, there it is for all the world to see. So, here goes my toe in the water. There will undoubtedly be some tinkering going on as I learn what I am doing.

Why now? Well, there are several reasons.

1. Our church is having a capital campaign. This is what inspired me to get with the project. But I hope it will be much more than about the capital campaign. A capital campaign is a major fund raising effort in this case to build a playground for our children and future children, to retire debt, and to endow a fund to take care of present and future repairs of our facilities.  We are hoping to inspire people to pledge toward this project to get rid of the burdens of debt and deferred maintenance that typically hold a parish back from walking forward into the dreams God has for us. And the playground is to bless the witness of our children, whose joyful play is a much better example of God's rejoicing in all creation than our most earnest adult work. I want to tell the stories that will inspire all of us.

2. During the Great Fifty Days of Easter I want to explore the Acts of the Apostles, the story of the beginnings of our church as the apostles, empowered by the Holy Spirit, lived into their ordination by Jesus to be Christ to the world. It is a great adventure story peopled by colorful characters, and as part of our "We Love to Tell the Story" project, I want all our people to know this story and dare to live into it.

3. I want to hold up the commandment to celebrate the Sabbath. I do pretty darned well with the other nine commandments but violate this one on a regular basis. God commands us to rest and play and rejoice in God's creation with fully 1/7 of our time. I'm working on it, though so far I am not able to take it in one 24 hour chunk. But I want to explore sabbath time and to be held accountable for it. If I go too long without posting to this subject, you can call me on it. And I want to celebrate play, which I also do not do all that well. That's why there are a couple of silly components to this. I love to cook and play with food and give others delight with it, so that's why there is a chicken category. It does seem like it's mostly chicken. And I love to read, so I'll subject you to what is delighting me (or not) in the literary world.

That is probably more than enough for my soft opening. I remember reading a piece by Amy Tan in which she said, "I write to find out what I think." Maybe that is reason enough. Or maybe I write to find out what I treasure.