Check on your Minnesota friends and family members

Please:

Check on your Minnesota people. (including college students and others away from home)

Lay aside all you are reading, hearing or watching, and be ready to simply listen. Give the people you love a place--outside of the friends, neighbors, and coworkers right in it--where they can be seen and heard and held. And if they don’t have words or feel like talking, I promise that your having reached out (without expecting a long conversation from a drained person) means so much. That people elsewhere are paying attention, caring, praying, or thinking of us is important to hear.   

Pray.

You don't have to feel you know the whole picture, or the correct picture, or the picture that aligns with your beliefs or perspectives. Just pray. God's way is not our own, and is not directed or hindered by our views, labels, or divisions. God knows what needs doing. 

If it is hard to find words, one way to pray without telling God what to do or how to do it is simply to say to God, 

"Here now, with you, for _____". 

Repeat with as many different people or groups as you feel led.  

Help.

Here is an organization that, for years, has mobilized volunteers from faith communities into schools to provide take-home, weekend, meal ingredients to food-insecure families of children who rely on school-provided breakfasts and lunches during the week.  With their massive infrastructure and strong local connections, they are working now to care for families whose needs are exponentially greater in this time. A donation here immediately becomes food reaching children and families who need it.

Saving / Being Saved

Mark 11:1-11 

I was raised with a high anthropology – which is to say, a view of human beings that puts a lot of power in our hands. I could choose whether or not to “accept” Jesus into my life, and evidently, my word was powerful enough to keep Jesus out of my life.  If people were not “following” God, their lives would be worse, and their afterlife doom, but it’s our choice. Human beings, in this view, hold an enormous amount of power. When it comes down to it, more than God, actually. Because we can tie God’s hands. We can keep God from acting, just by our inaction! Oh well. God would’ve saved us, but we said no thanks, and there was nothing God could do about it. God seems unable to override human beings’ refusal to accept God’s saving, or humans’ basic ignorance that that decision was ever in their hands to begin with. If we don’t say Save us! Which is what Hosanna! means, then God just won’t do it. 

But maybe you didn’t grow up like that. Maybe your underlying messages of human idolatry were not about eternity but about now. Maybe your hosannas were pointed inward, toward your own outstanding self. And the work of saving -whether that’s your own self, the world, or maybe even others, was your work to do. If we don’t do it, it won’t get done. Maybe Jesus didn’t factor in, except as a motivator or an example, and God’s role was simply to serve as an ethical ideal on which to base all the world-saving work we humans need to get busy with.  This is also a dangerously high anthropology, that is, this also seems to think human beings are far more capable and in control than we really are. 

But the bible has a pretty low anthropology. In the bible people are portrayed as mostly having no idea what we’re doing.  In the gospels, the disciples, who walked side by side with God incarnate, still had no clue what was happening most of the time. Even when Jesus told them, over and over again, how it was all going to go down, they still didn’t get it.  

And when the crowds naively celebrate Jesus’ coming into Jerusalem on a donkey, they laid down cloaks and branches heavy with misunderstandings and expectations. Their version of Hosanna! Save us! assumed they were welcoming into town the one who was coming to overthrow the oppressive Roman empire occupying their land. Here comes power to speak truth to power and overthrow power and give power back to the powerless!  Hosanna!

A high Christology believes Jesus is capable of saving.  So the palm Sunday crowds were ahead of us there. Because saving is what Jesus does; Jesus saves. Not our belief in Jesus, not our patterning our lives after Jesus, but Jesus, himself, saves the world, whether we believe in him or not, whether we follow him or not. The crowds were wrong about him and what he was there to do. But so what?  God does what God will do anyway. 

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem, he didn’t fit the people’s ideas of him; and all throughout the next week he resolutely refused to live into their expectations. He kept on undermining their hopes of glory and power with vulnerability and weakness, and then he let himself be killed, which was a killer to their dreams and plans.  

When we cry “save us” what we usually mean is, we want to not feel so much pain, or we want to be freed from the consequences of our choices, we want bad people not to be in charge of things, or we want to be spared from some impending tragedy or have security – even eternally. What we usually mean by “save us!” is “give us more control!” or at least make things turn out how we would like them to.  We use God as a means to our own end, a tool in our own self-development project or societal change platform. Our telos, or ultimate goal toward which our life is pointed, is usually our own comfort and well-being, the safety or security of those we love. 

When we cry Hosanna! Save us, Lord! we do NOT usually mean save us from our delusions, save us from our self-centeredness, save us from our mistrust of others and fear of vulnerability, save us from pride and thinking we have more control than we do, or save us from forgetting that you are God, and we aren’t, and denying that those we most dislike are also your beloved children. We’re not usually asking to be saved from our idolatry or ego. We’re certainly not asking to be humbled and brought low like Christ himself; we’re usually asking to be propped up and protected.

But that’s ok.  When we point our longings and fears toward God, God knows what we need hears our hearts, even if we can’t name what salvation is or imagine what it could look like, God brings it anyway, because this is who God is and what God does, regardless of who we are and what we do. 

And even when the people who cheered his arrival on Sunday turned around and cheered his demise on Friday, it didn’t alter God’s course.  We think death ends everything and is the strongest power of all, but in Christ God moves in and through death to bring new life. Because God brings life and salvation to the world.  This is what God does. And nothing, no matter what, can stop God from saving the world. 

So, first, here this good news, which comes as a blow to our high anthropology: You are not powerful enough to stop what God is doing.  And what you do will not save the world. You’re not really in control of much of anything. None of us are. It’s part of being human. And you are too important to God to let go of.  And so is this world. God’s YES is always bigger than our human Nos, or I don’t knows.  All this means your most excellent actions, most generous sacrifices, highest deeds of goodness cannot bring God nearer or give you any security at all.  And, your most horrible mistakes, most self-centered spitefulness, and worst deeds of cruelty, cannot make God retreat further or disqualify you from God’s love.  

We are making some terrible mistakes in the world. We are hurting each other badly. Our selfishness and division have very real and heartbreaking impact. Choices we make have appalling consequences and contribute to horrific suffering. And trapped inside of time, we can’t undo what we’ve done.  Nevertheless, nothing, nothing can stop God’s love and redemption. Nevertheless, Jesus saves.

We can participate in that salvation with awareness and gratitude, choosing to align our lives with the inbreaking Kingdom of God and seeking live as we were created to live, connected to God and others. Or we can participate in that salvation with naivete and ignorance, or even live our one life with deliberate malice. But make no mistake, we participate. One way or another, we are part of God’s redemption story. God will do what God is doing – in us and through us, or despite us and without our approval. God uses anything and everything to move the world toward healing and hope. God’s presence inhabits every moment. God’s voice cannot be banished or silenced, God’s work cannot be hindered or obstructed. Love prevails. Most often in unexpected and ordinary ways; most often through weakness. We can watch for it or not. We can recognize it or not. We can receive it willingly, or resist it pointlessly. But the love of God has claimed this whole story, Christ has come into this world, and turned it all inside out, and nothing can stop God.

Every year we read this text in one gospel voice or another, and every single year, we just breeze past and generally ignore a certain character that, in Mark, takes up over half the passage. This is, of course, the donkey. When Jesus tells a couple disciples to go untie a random colt from a random doorstep and bring it to him, and he gives them words for if someone asks them what they’re doing, it happens just like he says it will.  What this shows us is this: They may not have any idea of the big picture, or even what’s about to unfold, even though Jesus keeps trying to tell them that he’s here in Jerusalem to die. But in this small moment with a random donkey, they DO glimpse the Divinity of Christ, and they get this small taste of their own participation in something bigger. With this act of trust and courage, their actions join what God doing in the world. They go into this strange parade having been guided and having obeyed. 

God is always up to something way bigger than we can see or understand. Even though our participation is often misguided, driven by our own agenda for what being saved would feel like, nevertheless, God uses our actual experiences to bring love and healing into the world. Nevertheless, we are part of a story that reaches beyond us and yet encompasses our lives entirely. God’s healing comes into our most vulnerable and broken places, not because we are impressive and powerful but because we are not.  Jesus, in vulnerability joins us, and invites us into our own brokenness alongside one another to share in God’s redemption where it comes, where it is needed. 

This next week is going to suck for the disciples. And not just this next week, which ends in Jesus’ death, not to mention the death of all their beliefs and dreams and plans. Life is going to be overwhelming and disorienting for them for some time to come.  

So, the week begins here, in this moment of participating, with this donkey, and this goofy parade, where a whole crowd of people says the most true thing in the universe, even though none of them have any idea what they are actually saying or what it really means:

Hosanna, blessed is the one who comes to save. 

Blessed is the coming kingdom of our ancestor David!

Hosanna in the highest heaven!’

 Amen.

Imperfect Together

Daily Devotion - June 4

I will send a brief message each day (except Mondays)

while we are pausing gathering in person.

- Kara

This morning I read this article: “Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People.”  

  

I recognized myself, both because I had this messaging in my own upbringing, and also because I contributed to groceries that day at Sanford Middle School.

Here’s the gift of this time. Discomfort. Confession. Recognition of the sin (another word for division from God and each other) that has a hold on us, sin we join in without realizing it.  

Also, I do not regret sharing groceries.  The call came from the community and it was something I could respond to.  

A risk of this time is that we try so hard not to do it wrong that it could paralyze us.  We live in a time when we tell each other what to do, what to think, how to act, what to say, and then we are terrified we’ll do, think, act, say the wrong thing and get called out. 

When I get caught up in this, it helps me to return to some things I know are true: 

• God made us to be with and for each other. God intentionally created us diverse and different from each other, each single person unique. We ALL belong to God and we ALL belong to each other.  
• Sin / the Way of Fear / systemic evil tells us we have to earn our way, some lives are of higher value than others, we are in competition, there is only so much  - voice, justice, respect, resources – to go around, so we have to decide who gets it and who goes without.  These are lies.  
• We believe the lies most of the time. Even when we are trying to do right in the world, even right in the middle of it, we are often believing the lies.  The response is not to judge ourselves for not getting it right – that’s part of the lies too.
• We will never get it right.  It’s not about getting it right. It’s about being a human being alongside other human beings. 
• Being human is vulnerable. It feels uncomfortable a lot of the time because it feels risky, scary, weak.  
• The greatest strength we have is when we are in our most honest place of weakness, when we can receive each other and allow ourselves to be received. We can actually live our shared belonging.

Sin would have us do the wrong things, or the right things for the wrong reasons, or nothing at all because we are so afraid of doing the wrong thing.  It’s a game with no winning.  But the game is false.

As the above article so beautifully said, 

Part of the trouble with the Paternalistic Racism of Nice White People that has been a part of my own experience, is that white people assumed we were to serve as saviors. A quick mistake all of us often make when attempting to change this is to reverse it. And quickly we look to the first black person we're in relationship with to be our savior, to imagine that now instead, it's their turn to save us. 

Part of being a Christian, for those of us who are, is knowing that there's only one Savior, and that's Jesus. We shouldn't make gods of others just as we can't make gods of ourselves. So in working to build relationships, to create a more equitable community, we have to remember our shared humanity first. White people don't need to save black people, and black people also don't need to save white people. Jesus promises to save us all.

And, 

My vessel is imperfect. I was born in a culture that taught me to sin, and into a family that also taught me to love. In this imperfect jar I can lament my imperfections or I can whitewash them and cover them up with good deeds and nice words and passive aggressive utterances of racism. 

Or I can stand, blemished and unblemished, at the foot of the Cross. I can try to tell the truth. I can try to work harder for justice. I can hand off the microphone. I can build authentic, honest relationships with white people and black people alike. I can confess my sin, I can be forgiven, and I can forgive others.

I’d add to this – and so we can forgive ourselves.   

There is never a pure motive or a completely perfect approach, and we are actually not called to that. We are called to know ourselves to be sinners in need of saving. (Remember what salvation is? Wholeness.). And we are called to see each other as children of God.  

We are in need of being restored to our wholeness – to live consistent to our belonging to God and each other. We can’t do this for ourselves, and we can’t do it for each other. But we can come alongside one another in our brokenness and confess, and listen, and offer care to, and be willing to receive care from, each other. When we do that, God restores us to wholeness.

As for the Sanford food drive that requested 85 bags of food for their impacted families, the school called in The Sheridan Story, who took over distribution of the food to the whole impacted community.  Because while Paternalistic Racism certainly plays a huge role in our lives as Minnesotans, and is undoubtedly woven into what’s happening when white Minnesotans from outside the most impacted areas respond, the other thing that is happening is whole communities coming together, across perceived boundaries of culture, race, city lines, income, and religion, and trying to support each other, drawing on the strong networks and organizations who have already been bringing us together and know how to do this to help guide us.

Here’s the update from The Sheridan Story:

We have distributed most of the food from the food drive at Sanford Middle School on Sunday out in the community.

This was one of the biggest food drives we've ever seen… and perhaps one of the largest-ever in Minnesota. In less than a day, we estimate that over 2,000 families were served. Our amazing community came together, some waiting in line approximately 14 blocks long, to provide a total of about 18 semi-trucks of food. Of these:

•  3 semi-trucks of food were distributed to families the day of the food drive
•  4 semi-trucks of perishable food went to our friends at Loaves and Fishes and Minneapolis Public Schools Culinary and Wellness Services
•  4 semi-trucks of non-perishable food went to us
•  7 semi-trucks have been re-routed to additional collection and distribution points throughout Minneapolis

God uses whatever we give.   

Even while seeking to make us more real – to remove hypocrisy and sin from within our hearts – God calls us to join in our belonging to each other right now. 

To believe we have to earn the right to live in this belonging by making sure we’ve rooted out all sin, or racism, or brokenness from ourselves first is also sin / the way of fear / the lie.  

(By the way, this is the gift of seeking to be “anti-racist” as opposed to the false notion of  “not racist.”  Racism has infected us all; it’s in our un-thought thoughts, and we all operate inside its strictures.  But we can acknowledge its hold on us and also act deliberately against it.  This is a great resource to learn more about anti-racism).  

We can help each other. We can seek to see and hear each other. We belong to each other. Each of us can participate in whatever ways we can, in what God is doing in our communities, city, state, nation and world, to bring wholeness and healing into all our brokenness and division.  We can be imperfect together.

One more message from The Sheridan Story:

POP-UP FOOD DRIVE

As we continue to distribute this extraordinary show of support for those most in need, we hear both the need for food and the desire to help. The calls are loud and clear!

We are collecting donations of food and other essential items at our warehouse.

• Where: 2723 Patton Road, Roseville
• When: Monday - Friday from 10 am - 2pm
• What: Non-perishable canned food, rice, pasta, diapers, wipes, feminine hygiene items, and baby formula
• How: Follow the food donation signs and you'll be able to drop off items in tents we've set up in our parking lot. 

All of the donations we receive will be re-distributed to our community partners in neighborhoods across the metro as quickly as possible!

THANK YOU for showing the positive power of what our community can do together!

---

CONNECTING RITUAL:

Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

I seek your presence, O God,
not  because I have managed to see clearly
or been true in all things this day,
not because I have succeeded in loving
or in reverencing those around me,
but because I want to see with clarity,
because I long to be true
and desire to love as I have been loved.
Renew my inner sight,
make fresh my longings to be true
and grant me the grace of loving this night
that I may end the day as I had hoped to live it,
that I may end this day restored to my deepest yearnings,
that I may end this day as I intend to live tomorrow,
and I intend to live tomorrow.
Amen.

- J Philip Newell, Sounds of the Eternal

Living Abundance

Daily Devotion - May 20

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

Last week, I reflected on the first of our congregation's guiding convictions that we have hanging in the church Gathering Room: God is doing something here and now that incorporates the past and leads us into the future. You can see that reflection here.

Today I want to consider our second guiding conviction:

We are exactly the right size and make-up, and have all the resources we need, for what God wants to do in and through us.

I have seen this in action so much during this time.  Church, your creativity is shining, your generosity abundant, your flexibility and humor are huge strengths and massive assets in this time of unknown, loss, confusion and waiting.  You are watching for God, you are loving your neighbor, you are being honest with your pain, you are welcoming each other's support, you are being Church.

This time has flipped everything on its head - but we talk a lot about God's Kingdom being upside down and backwards from the world.  Nobody was prepared for this. But we're prepared to not be prepared for things.  Nobody knows what comes next. But we know that it's normal not to know what comes next.  Nobody has answers.  But we know that not having answers is part of the journey.  We've gotten used to waiting for God's leading and direction, and acting on the one next step revealed to us, instead of laying a confident path for the ten steps after that.

As we move into the summer, I am really hopeful, even excited, for all the creative ways God will bind us to each other, and draw us deeper in love with the world. We will be changed; we are being changed. But being changed is what being Church is all about.  Being changed is what our faith calls us to.

I don't know if you all know this story, but our guiding convictions came from our biggest fears.When 2011 began, we named our congregational fears - the stories we tell ourselves deep inside that hold us back from what God wants to do with us,  (Things like, "We're too small. We don't have enough money. We're too old...")  We said our fears out loud.  And then we said their opposite.  And we felt so strange and silly saying the opposite, because that felt like lies. We believed our fears were true.  But we said the opposite anyway, and then we hung them up.  Not even a few years later, they came to clearly describe us.  Our stories of scarcity were the real lies.  The truth was right in front of us and remains there now. 

We feel lonely, maybe. Disconnected, weary.  We forget that our belonging transcends our circumstances. We are impatient and frustrated.  But also, we are held, we are loved, we are sustained through this by the Spirit of God and the community of the saints - that's each other.  Let's keep in touch, shall we? Share when we need help, share when we're brimming with joy, share when we are tapped out or ready to step up?  Let's draw on all the resources God has given us for the ministry God is calling us to right now: loving each other, loving God, loving the world.  Let's trust in the infinite grace, constant provision, and overflowing abundance of our God.

 

CONNECTING RITUAL:
Perhaps tonight before bed, whatever time that is in each of our homes, we and so join our souls with each other and the people of the whole earth:

In the great lights of the night sky
and its unbounded stretches of space
I glimpse the shinings of your presence, O God.
In the universe of my soul
and its boundless depths
I look for emanations of your light.
In the silence of sleep
and the dreams of the night
I watch for jewels of infinity.
I the silence of sleep
and the dreams of this night
I watch for the shinings of your presence.
Amen.

(prayer from J. Philip Newell, Sounds of the Eternal)

Sabbath questions and busy minds

Sabbath is so counter-cultural that we don't even know where to begin.  

It seems by the time we grow out of toddler naps, we've aged out of the right to rest (until retirement, at least). For most of our lives we are trained to resist rest, to label stopping as "lazy," and to treat rest as a reward that is earned after work is completed, instead of a necessary rhythm, the foundation from which life flows.
When given a chance to practice sabbath, even with the desire to do so, we're often at a loss.

I received this question a couple weeks ago from a friend, and thought it might be helpful for others.

Hi Kara, Do you have suggestions for how to help people embrace sabbath? 

Like how to quiet your mind to make way for creativity? 

Will be interested in your thoughts or reading recommendations. 

Love, Sandy

Hi Sandy,

I love Wayne Muller's book, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives. That's kind of what got me started in all of it seven years ago. I also love Walter Brueggemann's book, Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No the the Culture of Now.

It's hard to quiet your mind. 

But it all begins in grace and abundance, so I think the way to start is to have gentleness with yourself, compassion and curiosity. Look at that, my racing mind!. (My friend Jamie taught me that sometimes self-compassion can start as simply as placing your hand on your cheek and saying to yourself, "Oh, honey...") and feel the self-empathy well up.  

The idea that we must have a quiet mind to do sabbath right is still trapped in the idea of our worth, or the worth of the day, being dictated by productivity - doing things right, or well, or enough. The gift of sabbath is stopping whether you're ready or not, whether you're in a good place or not, because our value comes simply as children of God and that's it. Even busy-minded children.  

I also think with some compassion and self-empathy and patience, minds eventually quiet and we can tap into creativity, but some sabbath days it never does come, the build up of stress or whatever, is too big. 

But the day is still a gift. It's still stopping.  

Creativity comes from a place of settledness, groundedness, and sometimes we're so rest-deprived that we can't quite get there, but we get closer than we were.

Sometimes I keep a little list - all the things my mind is trying to hang onto that I am choosing to set down for the day and come back to tomorrow. So as things comes up I jot them down to let them go.

And in our family, we try to start the days with some sense of intention - beforehand we each answer: Today I say no to... Today I say yes to.... and the day is shaped by freedom and not obligation. That's the most boiled down way we practice it.

Our congregation is hosting a workshop on sabbath and chance to try it out - a practice sabbath - on January 10-11; that's a great place to start if you want to brainstorm together with a few others and be sent into sabbath time with some direction. www.deepbreath.eventbrite.com

Peace!

For this. Thank you.

I’m going to do a little bragging. A little celebrating. First, about my sister. She and her husband are amazing. I refuse to tell them that, because that is what everyone says to them, and sometimes saying that lets us keep the distance of awe and wonder and not feel the sacrifice and pain of the wide open lives Callie and Jason are living.  But it’s true. They are amazing.

On Sunday they received the news that the foster family who was preparing to take their four foster kids next had backed out.  Being that Callie was on week four of “bedrest” with her pregnancy, and they had been trying to find a new foster family for the kids since September, this news was devastating.  They are exhausted, overwhelmed; they feel alone.  They’ve done the hard work of grieving letting go these precious lives they love and have been privileged to care for this past year, but the goodbye hasn’t come.  They’ve held off preparing for the imminent birth of their second son – nine years after their first – because they haven’t had the time or space to turn their attention there, and the babies they have in their home now need their love and attention now. 

I sent out an email to my congregation – please hold Callie and Jason and their little family in prayer.  This happened, I said. Nowhere else for these kids to go.  Fear and sadness.  Tiredness.  Please pray.  And I knew they would.  Second bragging/celebrating – this small, quirky little group of Christ-followers here in Minnesota – also amazing.

When I awoke Monday morning I found myself arguing with God.  God! What is going on here?  Help them, PLEASE!  Those kids need a safe home; Callie needs rest.  Jason needs help.  They can’t carry this on their own any more!  For safety, God, for rest God, for help, God, TODAY.  Do something TODAY.

Three hours later the phone rang.  It was Ms. Barb from church.  Ms. Barb and her husband Mr. Lee (as my children call them) take care of children for a living.  It’s what they do.  And they had prayed.  

“I want to help.” she told me.  “I want to go down to Kansas and help.  It’s what I know how to do.  I can do this, Kara.”  

So she did.  

She packed her car, cast her vote, and hit the highway on Tuesday morning to go into the home of these people I love, but whom she had not even met.

“How long will you stay?” I asked her, when she was half-way from Minneapolis to Kansas on the longest solo car trip of her life so far.  “We’ll play that by prayer.”  she answered.

“OK.” Callie told me on Tuesday.  “Bedrest is ending. We made it this far.  Barb is coming.  We can shift our thinking.  I wont let the department split them up and place them in shelters and take them out of their therapy school when this week they have a home here.  We can do this week now, and so that is what we will do.”  For safety, for rest, for help, God, TODAY.

So that is what they are doing.  My Ms. Barb and my sister Callie.  Loving kids, scrubbing floors, freezing meals, getting ready to make space in their home for a new life in the midst of these lives being saved – all of them, by each other.  This is grace in the flesh.  And I am celebrating.

For the communion of broken saints, who say, “I can do that.” and then do it, thank you, God.  For hope that comes in surprising ways, thank you, God.  For holding our tomorrows and our next weeks, thank you, God.  For the gift of carrying each other’s pain and joy in prayer, thank you God.  For safety, for rest, for help for Callie and Jason, today, thank you, God.

Amen.

HANSON FAMILY, 2012

**********

(You can see more about Callie and Jason's journey in a guest post Callie wrote, and I also did set up a meal registry for them - so if you are in Kansas or Missouri and want to cook a meal, or anywhere else and want to send them a food gift card, you can participate!)