Some things I've learned and some I've let go of

Daily Devotion - May 5

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

What are some of the things you've learned during this Quarantine? I am not talking about deep life lessons or spiritual truths.  Those are well and good, but I feel like it's too much trying to find a silver lining for me to go there with that yet.

I mean, concrete things. What have you actually learned. For example, my sister used YouTube to fix a broken fuel line in her minivan. That sort of thing. 

I have few.

Things I've learned:

• Pickled onions. Oh my ever-loving word. How have I not known about these before now??  They're amazingly easy, and having them in my fridge for sandwiches, salads, wraps, etc. is changing my life. (Not to overstate things or anything).  
• On the topic of food, I've also learned how to make beans. From scratch - from the hard, stone-like things in the bag, not from a can.  That is because I rushed out and bought a lot of beans when this started, because they told us to.  But homemade beans are delicious. So, that's a win.  Also homemade salad dressings. Yum.
• How to clean my window blinds. The metal kind. I don't know if I did it right, but soaking them in the tub in dish-soapy water and wiping them off did the trick. (I have yet to figure out how to clean the soft accordion looking ones, though).
• Computer things. So many computer things. Let's just leave it at that. I feel like I've taken a whole community ed course on video conferencing, social media, and website design, and I should get some kind of credit for it.
• Elderberry gummies are DELICIOUS.

Things I've let go of:

• Our family calendar. In March, it hurt too much to change it.  Then it felt horrible to fill in April with nothing but zoom things, so I left it a big empty page hanging in the hallway.  Same with May.  
• Regular-length, down-to-the-wire sermons.  It's weird to preach to tiny faces on a screen from my living room, and I know my own attention span watching someone talk at me on a screen is not ideal, so shorter it is. After 20 years of preaching, it took a global pandemic to accomplish something no other methods or strategies could: shorter sermons, completed earlier in the week. Who knew?
• The rule about not playing in the car.* Do it- yes!  Two hours? Sure! With the hairy, sheddy dog? OK! Radio on, why not? All the seats down? Absolutely!  (It's not like we take it anywhere...) *See also, the rule about not sleeping places that are not your bed.
• Days that go like I planned.  First of all - my planning has become weirdly concrete. I am making a list every morning that literally includes things like, "make dinner" and "call sister" - because I feel like if I'm not tethered to the ground somehow I will float off.  And when I do things not on the list, I add them afterwards just so I can check them off, like "make muffins" or "rake leaves."  But most days don't go how I think they will. And I've learned that's ok.  There's always tomorrow, (and the day after that...)

For me, today has been a helpless and sad kind of parenting day where all I can do is say, on repeat, I'm sorry. This is hard. I wish this were over too.  Tears were abundant, and schoolwork was impossible, so instead of "order groceries" and "pay bills," what happened was "drive child to a park to run bare-footed in grass," and "roll down a hill together until I think I will barf." (And you can bet I wrote them down on my list and checked them off as completed!)

There will be lots of time in the years ahead to ponder how this experience has changed us all, and changed us each.  I look forward to the deeper spiritual insights on that future day when the lessons have coalesced and there is energy for pondering them.

Right now, I am making my way through this one day that is my life, trying to be as present as possible, which sometimes isn't all that possible.  But like we said Sunday: love. That's what it's about. That's all it's about.

In the meantime: how are you making your way through today?  What's made you laugh? Where are you finding rest? What have you learned? What have you let go of? 

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight at bedtime, whenever that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way and so join our hearts.

For the gifts of today - thank you.
Especially...

From the burdens of today, release me.
Especially...

For perspective and peace I pray.
for hope and spark, I pray.
For patience and strength, I pray.
For release and rest, I pray.

Thank you for life.
Help me live present.
And when I can't, help me come back to love.
Amen.

How it works

Daily Devotion - May 2

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)
while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

Today is a perfect Minnesota Spring day.  The grass is electric green, the sun is warm, and the air feels like it's holding you.  On our walk, Andy commented on this phenomenon in Minnesota - where our world goes so all in with each season that, just a few weeks apart, you can't even remember what it felt like to be in the last season. 

Right now, to even imagine being a locked in the bitter, icy, snow-muzzled, dead of winter feels like a foreign country or a distant memory.  And it's so glorious outside it's hard to anticipate the inevitable muggy, mosquito-laden heat of summer just around the corner.  Today is so completely and fully Spring, there is no alternative for our mind or body to even contemplate.  

We Minnesotans are used to being in the present moment - fully in whatever is now, at least as far as the environment around us is concerned.  

My daughter and I set up her fairy garden today. (We are waiting for the white stones to come in the mail that she will use to make paths).  But the setting up of the fairy garden is our active participation in the arrival of Spring - a sure marker for us of moving from one reality- one season - to the next. (Now I need only to hang all the winter coats in the basement closet and finally put away the boots and it will be official).

As we wandered the beauty of the earth on our many walks this day, we were also finding the grief come up again at the canceled Spring plans and unknown Summer plans, and tried to be gentle with ourselves about it.  

It has been 47 days since we started this Quarantine in our house.  A whole season, it feels like.  It's hard to even remember or relate to what life was like before.  But in the today, we are living just fine.  We are weathering what comes and we are surviving.  We are finding pockets of peace and moments of joy, and it is life, just like life is always life.   

Here's what life as a Minnesota has taught me:  Feeling like this is all there is is part of the deal.  But that doesn't make it true.  It just makes it real.  And when the next season arrives, this will feel like a distant memory or a foreign land, hard to even conjure up in our imaginations, so real will be the next thing. Because that's how it works.

So, Happy Spring, and a Blessed Quarantine to you.


CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight at bedtime, whenever that is in each of our homes, we might pray in this way and so join our hearts.

Let's take up the Evening Prayer again...

Lord it is night.
The night is for stillness.
Let us be still in the presence of God.

It is night after a long day.
What has been done has been done;
what has not been done has not been done.
Let it be.

The night is dark.
Let our fears of the darkness
of the world and of our own lives
rest in you.

The night is quiet.
Let the quietness of your peace enfold us,
all dear to us, and all who have no peace.

The night heralds the dawn.
Let us look expectantly to a new day,
new joys, new possibilities.
In your name we pray.
Amen.

- New Zealand Prayerbook

Welcoming ourselves

Daily Devotion - March 20

I will try to send a brief message to my congregation each day while we are pausing gathering in person.
- Kara

 I have been repeating my sister's words to myself all day today:

"We have grace for what is actually happening. Never for what might be."

I felt that grace today.  

I realized in some ways, I have been blocking myself from receiving that grace. I have been using productivity as armor - if I keep busy I don't have to feel my disappointment, my fear, my anxiety, my cabin fever.  

If I keep busy I don't have to feel the discomfort of being.  

Today I unclenched a little bit. I tried to let the feelings come in a little more. And I tried to slow down and practice the gentleness I encouraged you all to give yourselves yesterday.

What if we gently welcomed the upheaval of emotions? 
This is an unprecedented situation. Feelings will come without warning, and they will likely surprise you. 

Here are some I've heard:

"It sounds terrible but I'm glad my mom died last year and isn't here for this."

"My family sucks.  I'm lonely and they wont hang out with me."

"I've been alone all day but I'm in the house with everyone else and I desperately need space."

"I had to run an errand and found myself wanting to drive around aimlessly and not go back home."

"I'm terrified imagining who I love will be sick and maybe die."

"I'm furious that mother in law in the hospital (for an aneurism) can't have anyone visit her and she's scared."  

Feelings are indicators of needs that are being met or unmet. They are not dangerous or threatening. They're just signals. We can listen to our feelings for what they have to tell us. We can welcome them.

I love Rumi's poem, The Guest House.

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.

meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

When the feelings come, how about practicing some self-empathy? 

My friend Jamie taught me a short-cut to self-empathy.

It goes like this: Place your hand on your own cheek and gently say, "Oh honey..."  This works for me.  I immediately feel a tenderness open up, a willingness to receive myself with care.

Or, do as she does: place your hand on your heart, and pat your chest softly, and say, "There, there..."

Treat yourself as a precious human being.  Treat yourself with the kindness you would a child, a friend, another precious human being.   May we welcome ourselves as God welcomes us.

And then, may we let God welcome us too.  
There is nothing we bear that God doesn't see and carry with us.  We can name all the feelings we have to God.  Because unless we can say what is actually happening, we can't receive the grace that God has for us right here in the real.  Grace doesn't run out, and it can't be saved up. God gives us all the we need, only when we need it.  

Let your heart speak these words:

PSALM 139:1-12

O Lord, you have searched me and known me. 

You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

   you discern my thoughts from far away. 

You search out my path and my lying down,

   and are acquainted with all my ways. 

Even before a word is on my tongue,

   O Lord, you know it completely. 

You hem me in, behind and before,

   and lay your hand upon me. 

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

   it is so high that I cannot attain it. 

Where can I go from your spirit?

   Or where can I flee from your presence? 

If I ascend to heaven, you are there;

   if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. 

If I take the wings of the morning

   and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, 

even there your hand shall lead me,

   and your right hand shall hold me fast. 

If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me,

   and the light around me become night’, 

even the darkness is not dark to you;

   the night is as bright as the day,

   for darkness is as light to you.

May we rest ourselves in God's limitless care.

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps in the morning, when we wake up tomorrow, 

whatever time that is in each of our homes, 

we might all say this prayer, and so join our souls:

The Prayer of St. Patrick

I arise today

Through the strength of heaven;

Light of the sun,

Splendor of fire,

Speed of lightning,

Swiftness of the wind,

Depth of the sea,

Stability of the earth,

Firmness of the rock.

I arise today

Through God's strength to pilot me;

God's might to uphold me,

God's wisdom to guide me,

God's eye to look before me,

God's ear to hear me,

God's word to speak for me,

God's hand to guard me,

God's way to lie before me,

God's shield to protect me,

God's hosts to save me

Afar and anear,

Alone or in a mulitude.

Christ shield me today

Against wounding

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down,

Christ in the heart of everyone who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in the eye that sees me,

Christ in the ear that hears me.

I arise today

Through the mighty strength

Of the Lord of creation.