Three Word Wednesday: Lessons Among Boxes

Three Word Wednesday from Kristin Hill Taylor—Lessons Among Boxes. I could talk about containerizing and therefore limiting ideas and expectations; I could refer to the domesticated God that was one of Martin Luther's main theological currents. However... the prompt is a serving suggestion, but Kristin clearly means the moving house types of boxes, so I'll do that, too. Kristin writes about Lessons Among Boxes and concludes with, "Have you learned any lessons from moving? What did your June teach you?"


Unlike many people I love to move, but won't divulge details of the nine times I moved in a span of 34 months at the end of the last century. I'm currently in my fifth temporary housing for the past 12 months; as much as I've savored getting to know five very different sections of the City of Los Angeles (technically one place was in Santa Monica City), these haven't been fun moves because most of the material objects I want to surround myself with again are in storage, and I'm still yearning to find an affordable fairly long term place.


• Westwood in July • Koreatown House
• Street in West Hollywood • Santa Monica Alley • San Fernando Valley Courtyard
Before leaving Previous City and even afterwards with some gear I'd almost inadvertently toted up the coast to Current City, I donated close to a literal ton of stuff that included furniture, dishes, quilt, comforters, and clothes. I've gotten into the habit of going through my clothes at least twice a year, so that part of clearing and making space was routine. Erik Erikson speaks of the "furniture of self," and says to lose the sum of one's belongings is to lose evidence of who one is. Given that I live in a world of color, light, pattern, sound, and design, with people and cats and other critters on the periphery, the stoneware and quilts I adore are like the photographs most people keep. Ya know what? I like buying the boxes that are very inexpensive at any Big Box Store; I enjoy packing the boxes; I love labeling and stacking the boxes. I love opening and unpacking the boxes when I get to the next house or apartment! But who doesn't?

Because of the way a few things went down, I now have only a single piece from my late grandparents' place, and I'm not convinced the small bentwood chair ever was inside the house. True I kept most of those pieces mainly so I wouldn't need to shop for and find them again, but I'd repainted most and refinished two of the three wood pieces. I LOVE painted furniture, so I enjoyed choosing colors and coordinating everything. But have I "learned any lessons from moving" this time, when I relocated from Previous City to Current City? I learned I have a real sense of relief to have downsized enough to fit everything into a bit more space than the 5' x 5' storage unit I've been renting. Relief? Yes, color and fresh paint make my heart sing, but I'll easily find and paint comparable pieces. So that means excitement for future color-filled projects!

I've been on a long trek from what I called minimal living so radical I had such a scant number of material possessions I could pick everything up with two hands and a backpack and move on foot from one place to the next. This long haul had moved into daring trust myself enough to like, buy, and keep things because they attracted my designer's eye. People who have not traipsed alongside me seem not to realize getting and keeping more things meant growth, definitely not decline. I've learned I can't convince people that I need to keep those five or six milk crates of organ and piano scores not only because of the unconscionably high cost of replacing the ones that still are in print, but even more so because of the fingering, dynamic, and other performance-related markings I've made in them. I've donated countless books, but I needed to keep my marked up paperbacks of Paul Tillich's sermon trio Shaking of the Foundations, The New Being, and the Eternal Now. They're easy to find new and on sale, but my copies contain my notes. I need my originals! I've learned.... no, I'm still very in process of learning I do not trust myself enough and I need to learn to trust myself.

Despite my surprise I haven't found a longer-term place, living in very different sections of the country's second largest city has been awesome. I'll list some of my learnings and experiences during June when Emily P Freeman's linkup goes live.

letter to grief

Today our Five Minute Friday host Kate Motaung offers a Letters to Grief linkup.

As I typed offline, my thoughts unraveled in a free ramble. I've saved about a third of what I wrote (update: more like at least half separated out) as a separate file, so this is an edited version with lots of deletes.

Loss, the passage of time, passing of people, end of relationships, death of hope. Grief. Emptiness, tears. Or no tears. darkness. Grief. A whole-body, mind- and spirit-wrenching response or no reaction at all.

Like many or most, I could write about near-endless losses, my reactions, characteristic lack thereof, my lifelong habit of denying losses and (therefore) refusing to acknowledge there might be light and life on the other side of darkness and death. I've talked a little in real life about my Dad's apparent disappearing from my world with my daily expectation for ten whole long years that he'd return today—or make that tomorrow once the clock approached midnight. At 14 I finally and necessarily declared him dead in order to move on with my life. Everyone has smaller, easier, essential losses that need to be so we can move on, change, grow in every dimension, become the person God calls us to be. Home town—whatever that means. High school and teen year friends. You need to leave your first job to continue your career; if it was a good experience with fun people, that can be a serious, prolonged grief, as well. You get the general idea.

A severe injury I denied for too long cost me the career I'd intended, that I'd fully (and then some) prepared for, totally expected to continue in some shape, form or expression forever. Which did not happen. Kay Redfield Jamison speaks about aging so during a certain period in her life, "as well one must, with such loss of self, such distance from shelter, such proximity to death." Proximity to death, because the loss of my career – literally what I ran with every day – also included the end of every friendship and relationship I'd known. A brain injury that according to observations changed me. "This is not the person we hired; this is someone else," to quote Sizable Suburban Church 's recall committee chairperson. I no longer recognized myself either, but surely the gradual, grace-filled, healing, passage of time would change me back to who I'd been? Time doesn't heal, activity does? I've been there, done that, too. Still have the stole? Yes. (That's a side quote from an old blog post). Such loss of self. Yet when I glanced through the letters from last December's letters to grief linkup, every one of them seemed to be about the loss of some other person in some sense. To death, to illness, divorce, other separations or estrangements.

Today C is my grief. In church on All Saints Day they read her name not once but twice! How that happened is "complicated," but it touched my heart and finally tore part of it open. Finally.

Welcome to my household, grief. Welcome into my heart, grief.

After Shrove Tuesday 2014 Mardi Gras pancakes C and I made a covenant I've illustrated here. We sat together at the Easter Vigil.

Not long after Easter Vigil C died. During the early part of the Great 50 Days of Easter. But after Bright Week, the Eighth Day of Creation, the Dawn of the New Creation! The Celebration of the Death of Death! I've deleted a lot of my original reflections because they felt too private, too personal, too inward and intimate. At the reception after C's funeral, her baptismal certificate was at the top of the display of the collection of her mementos and keepsakes. As the pastor observed in his homily, C now was with her parents because God claimed her. Because of Jesus' infinite faithfulness we celebrate and we live(!) the death of death itself!!

Before I left Previous City for Current City, late last spring I participated in the Survivors of Suicide Loss Strength for the journey 5K. Walk, jog, lope, run a bit, reach the finish line any way you can: my left knee still gave me enough physical "grief" I couldn't run or jog the entire course, but I still crossed the finish line.

Jog, walk, lope, run a bit, trot, skip for a few steps. Reach the finish line any way you can.

Claudia. Why? Grief? Welcome.

Reign of Christ to Advent 2013

I'm writing this on 16 March 2017 that's Thursday of Lent 2, but posting it for early December 2013. As I did some computer housekeeping a couple days ago, I discovered completely unedited photos I'd taken and at the time called the folder 2013novdec, with keywords: rubios, mexican, mission bay drive, grand ave... and others.

For blogging I'm labeling this "what I learned in..." although I hadn't started that linkup back then, and when I checked Emily P. Freeman's archives, I noticed she was posting monthly learnings but hadn't started creating a graphic for each month; you know I'd've grabbed one if she had (though it's many years later). Intro to telling my audience here's a series of eleven illustrations for the days beginning with Reign of Christ, ending with Blue Christmas on Advent 1, 2013.

• Reception Desk / Dining Room patio porch at Pacific Beach Rodeway Inn, San Diego, California.



• Breakfast supplies and dining area at the PB Rodeway Inn, Sandy Ego, Cal.



• Since this is Pacific Beach, we need surfboards and a vision of palm trees—here they are!



• Ralph Rubio's fish tacos are a true San Diego institution; here's Rubio's on Mission Bay Drive with Taco Tuesday sign in the window.



• Flower on the Fence at All Saints University City, aka "Church On the Hill."



• Surrounding the University City rowhouse where we were international and intercontinental housemates!



• Blue Christmas at Clairemont ELCA, aka "Church Around the Corner."

new normal

Saturday of Easter 7 / Eve of the Day of Pentecost

Last month I attended the Print Week vendor trade show on Thursday morning 25 April, ArtWalk the afternoon of Easter 5—28 April. God commands Israel to re-member their history and re-assemble in a sense [past] events they've experienced, essentially to bring them into the present. God charges the people to recall both devastations and redemptions that have re-created them into the community – and the individuals – they've become.

As always, I rode the super-fast express bus 50 downtown to Print Week, which meant walking about .6 miles to the convention center; on my walk I re-imaged when I worked downtown in a former life. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts' housing peeps were at Government Center, so that felt a little different from strolling through downtown San Diego, but the year I worked at the design studio was in the CBD and a blast of a location.

Recently this has been all over the 'net, so I'll simply quote to set the pace for the next section of this post:

The Italian immigrants of Roseto, Pennsylvania, ate meatballs fried in lard, gorged on pasta, and smoked, but they had half the risk of heart disease as the rest of the country. Why? Researchers concluded that it was because they lived communally, celebrated regularly, and had a huge network of friends. Dinner party, anyone?

Here's a scant handful of "what really was memorable."

• Prior to my move to Former City, being courted by Historic Inner City Church truly was exciting and kind of a mind-trip (they consider me qualified for this?!), but what were the details of that possible call? I don't recall. But I do remember potluck Thanksgiving Dinner at the HICC parsonage.

• From my last couple of years in Seafaring Town at the end of the last century, when I roomed with Heather, it was "do you want your pasta on a plate or in a bowl?" Aside from some gardening and drawing, sharing meals remains my main memory.

• Later with Nick in City of History, I'll never forget dinner together every evening—in fact, aside from starting to write some again by starting an urban page on the old MSN groups, that's the only thing I remember.

• About the church that since that summer disbanded and recently regathered as a mission in a different form? I enjoyed preparing and leading intercessions for Sunday liturgy, I liked playing organ/piano keyboards those Sundays, but more than anything, midweek evening Bible Study, dinner, and Eucharist humanized and fed me.

Week after week in this town, we have another military farewell, or homecoming, or sometimes one of each. Recently on the national news, we've seen families, friends, and communities literally "come together" from all corners and support each other, stand along side each other, and be there physically, emotionally, on every level for individuals and families who've experienced overwhelming losses and who need to grieve, who need help creating elusive "new normals."

In all this I still cannot shake the conviction individuals are supposed to be connected to other people. As Oprah said to the teenager, "You know you can't do life on your own." I remember waiting for a plane or car to pull up; sometimes I was in the car or plane, sometimes someone else was on their way to visit me at my place. Will that happen again? I'm too weary and actually have grown too smart to try to engineer that type of happening again, as I unsuccessfully tried to do for a few years.

Life is about seeking and finding a reasonably good fit amongst people, tasks, and goals. Barring a very cold climate (International Falls, Yukon Territory), I know I could be happy as long as I had human support, a few opportunities to contribute to the greater good. For me it's more about geography and weather and climate than about culture. Even so, how is it that I don't do concerts or museums? Why haven't I for a long time?

To start those activities in a new city or town, you need to connect with people; later you can do them by yourself. Education and skills usually literally "buy" (purchase) certain accoutrements and perks… but I'm well aware of the multitude of free and very-low cost high cultural (remember Edmund Sapir's Kultur?) and ethnic cultural opportunities around here. However, as I wrote at the top of this post, I did go to spring ArtWalk this year. It was fun, but nothing about booth browsing and people watching was enticing enough to convince to go again, unless someone will go with me.

For the past month I've loved listening to the vireos sing! Bird calls are innate; however, birds need to learn to sing from other birds. They begin with a sub song that's not quite singing, then go on to imitative (of other birds, of course) plastic song (interesting terminology), finally find their own crystallized songs. I'm yearning for a community that will teach me my own song, or help me relearn, or maybe that's remember my song, that will help me start composing new songs. A community of people who will raise me from this death?

Easter Saturday

Today is the 8^th day of Easter 2013; This is another of my "life stuff" blogs, particularly the series I began during late Epiphany 2013.

Late, great, Preacher to the University at Boston University's Marsh Chapel Howard Thurman had essential advice for anyone trying to figure out what to do with their life—for the first time or two, or for the twentieth time or so: "Don't ask what the world needs, ask what brings you to life, because the world needs people who are fully alive." Another commonplace observes a person finds their calling – not always their career, job, or working life – where their gifts and passion intersect. At this age and stage, I'll add education and experience to the mix. I had every expectation I'd again have opps to engage world and church at levels related to my abilities. For a moment I'll discount the housing crash of September 2008 and the financial dominoes that tumbled in its wake, but anyone with my gifts, education, vision, ambition, (and hard work) could have expected to have a financial choice to attend symphony concerts, or jazz fests, a trip to Greece or the Pacific Rim every two or three years. This is not a hunter-gatherer society!

Given how a shrinking, stuttering economy has caused everyone but the super-rich to cut back on everything, I'll add September 2008 and its aftermath back into the mix and say whatever the $$$ and employment markets, I still fully expected eventually to find a welcome place of embrace and participation. By 2006 or 2007 or so, I'd started to, and then it evaporated. At Good Friday lunch with the then interim pastor at North Minster, I told him Lent and Holy Week 2007 at North Minster and at North Park finally had shown me what might be possible. It's now six years later!

Over these years I've had watersheds galore. Besides major rejections, disappointments, and other "stuff" I maybe need to look at and through, I'm also reading the literal plethora of little things I'm not getting done as symptoms of too much that needs to change. "Not getting done" not because I've been so busy and involved in more important activities... In one of her early books, Kay Jamison mentioned aging so during a certain period of her life (exactly as I have over the past decade); she said it was inevitable, "with such loss of self, such distance from shelter, such proximity to death."

What brings me to life? What makes my heart sing? I enjoyed preparing notes and class handouts for Thursday bible studies at Church Around the Corner a couple months ago, but I truly loved interacting with the class. I felt like myself again; I was alive for that short time! Thinking of ways I can help make that happen again... I easily can make a simple list of ways I'd love interact with world and church again on a regular, ongoing basis.

In my blog and review of The Outermost House, I observed:

Walter Brueggemann insists much of life is sabbatarian, spent in the interstitial, liminal time between Good Friday afternoon and Easter Sunday dawn. During winter in a four-season climate like Cape Cod's, there is a simply being who we've become thus far that has a sense of Sabbath about it. We almost hang suspended in time waiting for gifts of birth, of spring, of new life to ready themselves.

I'm talking about moving to Los Angeles. But to where, and to what? And how?

On the eve of Easter 2 I'm still in winter's holding pattern, still suspended in time waiting for new life to spring forth.

halfway to easter

Lent 4 / Laetare + 2 days

To mark the lengthening days of Lent, I've been participating in the Lenten photo-a-day challenge on rethink church; silence was today's prompt. Tonight in the silence I was double-shadows against the fence, but the camera didn't capture those nearly well enough, so here's the alley thoroughfare.




A couple weeks ago my Facebook status update got a few comments:

Blog readers and Facebook "likes" have become such a major concern (distress, devastation) because I'd imagined maybe I could create something of an online life, since the real, local one wasn't happening. In other words, theology blog, design page, aren't simply something extra I decided to try for fun or as an addition to what I was doing here in town; they became almost the whole entire thing. I realize most of the (art / design / theology, etc) peeps who get a lot of online action have an offline life that enriches and informs their online activity, which is why their stuff is (more) worth "likes." I'm aware nothing I've been doing for the past few years has been my best, but I believe it's respectable.

That was one of my rethink church posts; I added, "I fear more months, years, decades of aimless drifting."

Tonight's double shadows by the fence in the alley were a compelling metaphor for the shadow I've become. Maybe shell, possibly ghost? Shadow. A while back on RevGalBlogPals' Thursday "Ask The Matriarch" feature, someone advised "do not announce the pastor's or the pastor's wife's pregnancy as a petition in the intercessions. Many many people struggle silently with infertility, and would not be able to rejoice." I've been struggling semi-silently with a different type of in/fertility, trying one thing after another ("this next thing will work, this next thing will work, this next thing, next thing, next...") to regenerate the level of productivity and participation I used to have and assumed I'd soon have again.

In my attempts to imagine a future – to "practice resurrection?" – I remember those magical times when I had everything but didn't quite realize it―friends, opportunities, health, fun, creativity, responsive emotions, a ringing telephone. Everything went away in a heartbeat. Oh, I knew how badly life could tear, I knew how brittle it could be, but I trusted the power of resurrection―and the power of body and mind to heal.

It's amazing that I used to stay up until 1 am or 2 am after work, or school, or spending an evening with friends. Sometimes I even went out and walked the almost empty streets (ok, that was a very long time ago, when I was an undergrad in a very urban residential area). It wasn't unusual for me to write or create art into the night, yet I'd always be awake and out of bed before dawn. I still have plenty of physical energy, but whatever the ambient temperature or length of daylight, waking days have become short. My life changed when my friends disappeared.

Crawling rather than walking or limping, extreme non-productivity, the loss of ability to "just do it," absence of true social context, inability to practice resurrection, to live "as if," are symptoms of a broken life, just as chest pains, headache, a rash, or a fever indicate something amiss within a physical organism.

Most people almost immediately will attend to or at least be concerned about symptoms that are more physical in nature; even casually, people will ask if a person is eating properly, sleeping enough, getting at least a little exercise.

Despite contemporary awareness of human psychological needs, many, if not most (myself included) attempt to explain away more specifically psychological signs. What person asks about an individual's social milieu, about ways they have to contribute to the common good, about people they can "go to" in times of need, or about others seeking them out in their times of need?

Without the support of others (axiom: people do the best when and where they get the most support), and without the mirror of the other to tell me how I'm doing – and, in a sense, who I am – I've drifted. Life is about story, and for the story to continue, you gotta get back into community. I'm like the violinist who wonders why her career hasn't bounced back, then she suddenly notices her left arm is missing and finally knows why her career's still gone.

What do I want? Sun on my face, sand under my feet. A ringing phone, answers to emails. Fun, creativity, friends, Facebook likes and blog post comments! A real life to enhance my virtual one. A few people who recognize me as gift rather than threat. Oprah told the teenager, "you know you can't do life on your own." The door only can be opened from the other side—would you believe it's about grace?!

Hurry, Sundown!

by Earl H Robinson and Edgar Y Harburg

My seed is sown now, my field is plowed;
My flesh is bone now, my back is bowed.
So hurry, sundown, be on your way,
And hurry me a sun-up from this beat-up sundown day.
Hurry down, sundown, be on your way;
Weave me tomorrow out of today.
Get lost in the sunrise, of a new dawn.
Hurry down, sundown, take the old day,

My life cries out for resurrection from the dead!!

almost lent

this is part the third; here's part the first and part the second

Susan Shapiro suggests Make Me Worry You're Not O.K. by writing from the heart as part of shedding "vanity and pretension." Did you realize "The biggest mistake new writers make is going to the computer wearing a three-piece suit"? Because "This rarely inspires brilliance or self-insight." So I don't exactly flaunt 3- or 2-piece suits, but still, fresh cargos (long pants in cooler weather, shorts or skirts in warmer) with a light bright sweater and shirt is tame and safe, most places, almost any time of the day, and makes me appear as okay as most other people along this coast.

RevGalBlogPal Julie at "The Preacher and the Party Store," wrote about being at her Dad's funeral and seeing pictures of him when he "had flesh on, was more energetic and whole. ...how quality of life slips away so slowly, it's easy to miss, easy to forget what it used to be." My story exactly! Though in terms of avoirdupois for sure I do not lack flesh, I still miss the enfleshment of being part of life, of the action. Now that we've celebrated Christmas – Incarnation! – with a star, a song, and a child, I'll dare include clothed in the vulnerability of community. And you know I long ago gave up imagining the ideal rather than the real typically – or ever – would obtain.

Like everyone, I've many losses yet to grieve; many unacknowledged, buried emotions that may or may not need liberation. In some ways my life as I knew it slowly unwound and unraveled; in other ways I simply kept on keeping on, carefully preparing for a future that simply hasn't yet dawned. My last year in City of History started becoming my index as to how I was doing. Rather than sites of bondage and imprisonment, those were spaces and places of relative freedom and service. The disappointments and devastations of the two decades since then have affected me deeply and (apparently) completely invisibly! Death takes many forms. I've predeceased my former friends, but no one has held my funeral because no one notices or realizes. Via Ezekiel [37:12], God promises, "I will open your graves!"

Phillip Phillips sings "Hold On," from Greg Holden and Andrew Pearson

Hold on to me as we go, as we roll down this unfamiliar road
And although this wave is stringing us along, just know you're not alone
Cause I'm going to make this place your home

Settle down, it'll all be clear; don't pay no mind to the demons; they fill you with fear
The trouble it might drag you down
If you get lost, you can always be found

Just know you're not alone
Cause I'm going to make this place your home ¹

To paraphrase words I read a couple weeks ago ², nature has ways to scrub things clean, through storms, winds, rains, the pasts all washed away for a fresh start, making space for seedlings to replace lost trees. There’s no way to turn back this process.

In his foreward to The Word On the Street, Walter Brueggemann reminds us, "The bread is thin and the wine is poured out, and Easter is fragile news wherever it is told and trusted. None of that is compelling, unless one is on the street to see it, unless one is free to discern it, unless some are bold enough to sing it and say it. This act of evangelical reconstrual is daring and always uphill, but in no other way will the street be seen to be congruent with the word." [xv] ³

Recently I've really really noticed a TV commercial where the main character tells us she lived for dinners with family and friends; I also lived for those sometimes frequent, more often occasional, times of good friends, good food, good drink, good conversation. "The reconstruction of [a person's] social space..." (The Word on the Street, p. 164) also is daring and always uphill. I'm very very definitely not O.K., I'm trying to convince you by shedding some vanity, pretension, and the parts of a past that no longer works for me or for anyone. I long and ache for the flesh of community back on my bones. But is church not where the baptized connect with each other, in the Spirit make space and newness, create context and community for each other? I don't know. I'm asking. I'm alone, I'm lost, lookin' to be found, my life cries out for resurrection!


1. lyrics © Downtown Music Publishing LLC, Razor & Tie Direct LLC, Universal Music Publishing Corp.
2. A Glimpse of Heaven: Life After the Tragedy in Sandy Hook
3. In The Word on the Street: Performing the Scriptures in the Urban Context. Stanley P Saunders and Charles L Campbell, authors; foreword by Walter Brueggemann.

mid advent

Part the first of this blog was my December / Advent synchroblog: planting hope.

Everything about the city intrigues me; seems as if those of us who live, work, study, create, or re-create in the cities need a specific kind of stuff to keep them fed, productive and complete; to quote myself I'll call it "all kinds of urban fare for wayfaring." No one ever claimed it would be easy; given my total background, propensities, and history, I guess the hill's always been steep, but when I wasn't alone, it didn't often feel that way. I'm still an artist and a dreamer, but time's been lost, time's still slipping away. Will I find a road that leads me home? Will that road find me?

The day before Advent 1 I visited the University of San Diego website to find Sunday liturgy times; since I was planning to attend Lessons and Carols at 2 pm, why not attend church Sunday morning at the university and then chill for a while? I went to the University Ministry page and there was the famous quote from Howard Thurman, "Where does my deep gladness meet the world’s great hungers?" plus "What is the meaning of my life and what should I do with it? What is my life’s purpose?"

Since I first learned of the To Write Love on Her Arms movement and cause, I've designed for TWLOHA Day every November. TWLOHA reminds everyone, "You were created to love and be loved. You were meant to live life in relationship with other people, to know and be known. You need to know that your story is important and that you’re part of a bigger story. You need to know that your life matters." Our lives are about story; gradually I'm becoming aware my life has held no stories for decades now. Stories happen when we're involved with each other...

To continue with the Advent topic, on the first Sunday of Advent, I did attend 11 am liturgy at USD's Immaculata parish and hung around until 2 for Lessons and Carols at Founder's Chapel. I went Friday evening, too―it was that good! I wanted to hear it all again, maybe especially Daniel Pinkham's Christmas Cantata. Pinkham was music director at King's Chapel, Boston, where I played at least one solo recital, as well as recitals at quite a few other somewhat elite venues, not to mention the many vocal and instrumental recitals I accompanied. In a past life? I keep wondering if "time takes all but memories" is true. For a while I almost regularly looked through my stacks of recital programs and academic transcripts, trying to convince myself I'd been there, done that; the friends I was there doing those experiences with no longer were in my life.

Year round we watch military homecomings on TV; have I mentioned I get the impression people are supposed to be connected to other people, miss them when they're gone, long for their return, be excited to see them again? Again last week the local network affiliate featured a celebratory homecoming of troops who'd been deployed for months, "home in time for the holidays." I've been there, done that too. Achingly I remember counting hours, then minutes, for a plane to land, a car to pull up. Sometimes I was in the car or plane; other times I awaited a "loved one." I remember the excitement of getting tickets (yes, you needed tickets) for Lessons & Carols at Mem Church—first when I was a music major undergrad at huge university across the river, then later on as a seminarian on the other side of the river. Music and mood of the seasonal worship(?) concert(?) event both were immense draws, but so was connecting and reconnecting with people, maybe getting a snack or meal or libation afterwards, maybe promising to do so first thing next year.

The annual commercials blitz featuring snowy scenes, families, gifts, and dreams is on again. I try to remember and re-gather enjoying activities with family and friends. Parties, phone calls, invitations, overtures, givens and gifts, assumptions, expectations. I've cited Cornel West's "dangling people" terminology for individuals with no organic connection to community or to other's lives. Despite this being southern Californian 21^st century, I constantly observe people on the street, online, on TV, enjoying activities with other people.

If you need to re-member, to re-collect, to re-call, re-invoke past events, they must have become dis-membered, scattered, ignored. God constantly charged the people to remember, remember, remember. My covenant with Abraham. I brought you through the desert wilderness. Fed you with manna, gave you water from the rock. Jesus commanded, "Do this; remember me." But those rememberings are about mighty acts of divine initiative, presence, and deliverance! My situation must be different? Only a little... as I recall where I've been, with whom I've sojourned, what I've done, how I've contributed, as I dare reclaim my dreams, I gain hope for a future related to that former life, yet a future cast in a different shape, with differing details, in another place. A few years back someone pointed out, "not a single door has been permanently closed," and truly, none have, but the door(s) only can be opened from the other side. Am I trying to live in a long gone past? I've buried 1,000 of those good, horrendous, splendid, and horrific pasts, made at least 1,002 new beginnings.

At about the midpoint of this blog's decade-long internet presence, I wrote some expressive posts about my current situation, though at the same time I was quite opaque, reluctant to reveal many details publicly (I realize there's no need to name actual names). At one point I wrote, "stories starting to be written, then suddenly erased." Some situations are ambiguous; many are not. It's one thing to put the best construction on a situation, esp when it's virtual rather than real; it's another thing to lie about it. I'm twenty years (two decades) post-recall; I've been back in San Diego a dozen years, and no matter how generously I construct everything, my life has not rewoven.

Someone I met in summer 2008 during my 1231,20,3998^th attempt to connect to people with similar interests, and who's now a Facebook friend, not long ago updated about recently visiting people he worked and worshiped alongside at Church of the Saviour in DC. Rick referred to the "deep history" he shared with them. What about me? I also share "deep history" with some people, none of whom remained in my life. Does re-collecting those memories signal hope for a similar future for me? Maybe with people I've yet to meet?

Break of day truck stop in the Utah winter desert. North Torrey Pines Road and La Jolla Shores Drive early Sunday morning. All things about the city intrigue me; seems as if those of us who live, work, study or re-create in the cities need a specific kind of stuff to keep them fed, productive and complete. I'm still an artist and a dreamer, but time's been lost, time's still slipping away. Will I find a road that leads me home? Will that road find me?

"Where does my deep gladness meet the world’s great hungers?" Death take many forms, and sometimes wields surprising powers. Via Ezekiel [37:12], God promises, "I will open your graves!" We're more than halfway through this Advent season, so "Amen! Come, Lord Jesus!" "What do you call soon?" "I call all times soon," said Aslan.

planting hope: advent synchroblog

You can find this year's Advent synchroblog on WordPress synchroblog headquarters.

We find a lot of comfort in the story of Christmas, as we should. Advent is that time each year when we slowly make our way through the journey of that wonderful birth so long ago. Very often we, as the larger community of Christ, consider this season from the perspective of expectant waiting. But Advent is about much, much more ... it’s about the harbingers of Jesus’ ministry on earth ... hope, and love, and joy, and peace. What are your stories of hope, love, joy and peace? How do you remember them and pass them on to your family or your neighbors? Can you see the shadows of Jesus in them? Since it’s Christmas, won’t you please tell us all a story about Advent in your everyday life.

Our lives are about story. Stories create themselves from our presence in each others lives, in our interactions – of every type, style, length, uncertainly, and distinction – with others. Most of my writing and even much of my thinking has become abstract, lacking the flesh, spirit, and messiness of real-life relationships and exchanges. I'm constantly remembering pasts that may model a real future of life gradually reweaving itself again, but often almost despair of what I can do to help it happen.

Although I'm on Facebook sabbatical until the Feast of the Nativity – or maybe until the Feast of the Epiphany – before starting my break, I joined the Slow Advent Facebook event; what does that mean?

"As Slow Food is to Fast Food – so Slow Advent is to most people's 'Season of Advent.'

"The Slow Food Movement’s goal is "to counter the rise of fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people's dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

"Slow Advent is to counter the rise of materialism and consumerism that bombards us this time of year, the disappearance of a focus on the traditions of the season and people's dwindling interest in preparing for that for which they wait, how preparation feels and how the way we prepare impacts the rest of the world..."

I have quite a few Facebook friends from Australia and New Zealand, several from Singapore, too. I'm trying to imagine how it would be to observe Advent, celebrate Christmas and Epiphany in a geographical place experiencing the brightest, lightest, longest days of the year rather than the darkest, dimmest, shortest ones.

In all three lectionary years, Advent begins with a splash of apocalyptic, signaling the end of the world as we've known it. I'm aching for the end of the world of death, defeat and disappointment I've inhabited most of the last two decades. I don't need to ask how Advent would feel in a part of the world just beginning the meteorological (and soon the astronomical) season of summer, rather than winter, because this human condition of darkness and devastation is the same wherever it happens.

In 2012, as it long has done, with prophetic words of judgment and hope, Advent initiates seasons of waiting and watching, living, dying and rebirth, that connect us to the entire people of God in every place and time and helps us connect to sun, sky, sea and soil. But that "rebirth" is not a conventional, inevitable outcome; it's something else altogether—it is resurrection from death! I've been updating my virtual presence as a designer, and as I looked up some work from a few years ago, I found this playlist I imagined for the back of a CD case design for Earth Day 2009. I especially enjoyed how I'd included "creation restored, broken roads, and planting hope," all of which relate well to the general mood of Advent. Because we're familiar with the stories in scripture, we've become adept at recounting the narratives of salvation history (remember Heilsgeschichte?), so we always imagine we know the rest of the story... but we really don't know. My life cries out to begin living a story again! My life cries out for resurrection!

To plant some hope in my own life, I've been continuing my attempts to connect with people. I've been helping prepare the (slow food) Thursday evening church / community family dinners at church around the corner. I love working in the kitchen (don't mind cleaning up afterwards, either); it seems like a great way to connect with Jesus and start re-connecting with people, too. On Advent 1 and again the following Friday evening (it was that good!), I attended Lessons and Carols at Church-Related University and had an encouraging conversation with the person next to me, so we exchanged contact info 10 days later she hasn't contacted me, so who knows. (Lessons & Carols banner features "Angelo Musicante" by Melozzo da Forlí, as does the printed program every year.)

A couple Tuesday mornings ago I met a friend from Yet Another Former Church for coffee; last Sunday I spent a couple hours with a friend I originally met during a bible study series during summer 2008 and since then have commented back and forth with on fb. He explained how he'd lived in intentional community several times, but since that's no option in this city, he's intentionally forming his own community with regular getting-togethers like last Sunday's. I'm attempting to become a presence in other's lives, doing what I can to invite them into mine. Compared to the rich friendships and always-available community I used to enjoy, these may sound like tiny endeavors, but they're ways in the Spirit I'm starting to plant hope for the end of the world I've been inhabiting for the past couple of decades.

PS my friendly attempts are nothing new; ever since being recalled (=fired) from Church in Semi-Affluent Suburbia, I've made a campaign of inviting people to lunch, coffee, snacks, activities. It slowed down lots, though, and with this new phase I'm expecting different results for the same behaviors.

other December synchroblog contributors for this month are:

• Carol Kuniholm writing at Words Half Heard

• Jeremy Myers tells us about Santa Clausette

• Liz Dyer celebrates Dreams Do Come True

• Leah Sophia digs in with Planting Hope

• Glen Hager reveals a story of Christmas Surgery

• Kathy Escobar wrestles with holiday expectations

• Wendy McCaig ponders storytelling in Once Upon A Time

june synchroblog: backpack cargo

For June we're synchroblogging what's in your backpack/knapsack? Unearned gender privilege? Unbought ethnic advantage? Briefly from synchroblog central:

"Invisible Knapsack" is a term coined by Peggy McIntosh in her 1988 essay, "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." Her short essay reflected on the unearned privileges that whites could count on each day, but about which they remained oblivious. ... Whether it is white privilege, heterosexual privilege, male privilege, Christian privilege, able-bodied privilege or any other privilege that we enjoy through no effort of our own, we all have a tendency to be blind to our own position of privilege. ... This month's synchroblog asks us to peek inside our own invisible knapsacks and discover what's inside.

My backpack easily stays hoisted on my left shoulder. I knew there would be exceptions to the welcome, inclusion, and opportunities I expectantly prepared for, but I've been surprised more than once. Coming up I basically looked like the majority population cohort, though half my heritage was a little further to the European east than most. Even in this year 2012, New England sees a lot more in- than out-migration [later note: I'm not sure this is so but I'll leave it because of the way it connects with the rest of the sentence], and despite outward appearances, not being from a family who'd lived in that area for several generations turned out to be a major obstacle; being the only kid in my first grade class not born in that city or even in that state caused suspicions. I didn't talk like other kids, either, since my fam hailed from the south and the midwest and had sojourned on the prairie and in the intermountain west. Vocabulary differences? A few. You'd probably think any bright, white, disciplined boy or girl, woman or guy would be noticed, welcomed, and included. But that was then and as an adult, too many of my experiences of exclusion and being pushed away and set aside from the mainstream have had more to do with the nature of the institutional church rather than gender, race, geography, or ethnicity.

Wherever I go, in my sometimes somewhat visible (really, you can see it if you look for it!) backpack I carry a passion for the city along with my own transformative experiences in the urban church. Nature of the institutional church? I have not been popular with pastors and pew sitters who desire only the conventional, the predictable, the same old same old, who themselves have become as institutionalized as the bricks, mortar, velvet, dust, and candlewax they adore.

We're blogging about unearned advantages we tote around with us. By grace I've experienced death by drowning in the Fountain of Life; I am baptized into the unearned privilege of servanthood. By grace alone I've feasted at the Welcome Table, the banquet of "go and do likewise." Wherever you find me I seek justice and healing, preach liberation and hope for all creation. Because of the life of the crucified and risen Jesus Christ that indwells me, would I dare demand or even request anyone else earn any streams in their deserts, any welcome home, any forgiveness, or any justice I could offer?

As testimony to God's everlasting faithfulness, by grace the contents of my backpack are a forever feature: I have been "sealed with the sign of the cross forever."

Other June synchroblog participants:

• Rebecca Trotter at The Upside Down World – The Real Reason the Term “White Privilege” Needs to Die
• Carol Kuniholm at Words Half Heard – What Do You Have That You Didn’t Receive
• Glenn Hager at Glenn Hager – Unjust Justice
• K.W. Leslie at More Christ – Sharing From The Invisible Knapsack
• Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – My Black Privilege
• Alan Knox at The Assembling Of the Church – Knowing Who You Are and How Others Identify You
• Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – Christian Privilege
• Kathy Escobar at Kathy Escobar – privilege.

friday of easter 7

…from the margins…

What's the essential condition for resurrection from the dead? You gotta be dead (of course).

Pastor Alan Roxburgh reminds us the poet and the prophet speak from the margins. I've been trying to explain I've spent too much time on the subverse, a location even more radical than the edges, but doesn't radical imply root and foundation as much as it evokes counterculture and unconventional? I've hung onto edges of mainline church and margins of mainstream society and I need to speak, I need to be heard. Abram was an Ivri, a Hebrew: one from the "other side"—not even from the edges or margins! In Christ Jesus we meet the God from the very other side...

In the past I've written lots about geographical and "other" centers, hearts, edges, margins but can't put many words together this evening. Earlier today I read something I wrote eight years ago and it truly wowed me. I've been trying to cull some books, especially those with content I easily can access online (no, not exclusively written by my professors) and I'm astonished at the heavy-duty theology I used to read for fun. Also surprised I'm not reading anything these days. Eight or nine years ago Marian C posted to me on a forum, "Leah, I think you're the kind of poet-theologian Pastor Roxburgh is talking about; the Church so needs your leadership at this time." I agree. The Church truly does need my voice and presence: call it leadership if you'd like! Interesting bit of my own history: long ago in city of history I was having a casual conversation with senior pastor who said to me, "You have some leadership ability but..." I finished the sentence: "I try to make sure everyone gets to participate," and he replied, "Exactly. And that's not always a good idea."

By definition edges and margins are parts of the whole and cannot exist with the usually larger main object that sometimes is called the center or at least presumably contains a center. Do you remember Gerry Rafferty's City to City? In "The Ark" we hear, "we'll meet out on the water, where all strangers are known." Water has no permanent edges, no enduring center. Still and forever I remain a daughter of the church. Paul Tillich spoke of the pain of our frequent human state if being separated and yet bound. These days in many ways I remain separate from the main stream yet eternally bound to the whole by Water and Word.

More recently than Gerry Rafferty, poet-musician Rascal Flatts sings "My wish for you is that this life becomes all that you want it to."

The habitat that's my street address reeks of death but you gotta be dead in order to be raised to new life!

What is my wish for myself? Life, community, a summer, opportunities, resurrection. You need to move out the old furniture to make room for the new. I'm considering neatly completing the Easter cycle with the Feast of Pentecost at Church up the Hill and then figuring out a "what next" place and location. How on earth did someone like me who thoroughly, intentionally, and passionately prepared for a lifetime of urban ministry (after all, "I appreciate the concentration of pathology in the inner city," a somewhat younger me explained) find herself at a location like Church up the Hill? No response to that one! For myself I wish, desire, long for life, community, a summer, opportunities, resurrection. Life only can be received, as a room receives light simply by being and not being an agent of anything. That's Will Willimon's analogy, though likely not at all original with him.

Sunday two days away we celebrate the Day of Pentecost, the Spirit of Life that raised Jesus from the dead.

My life cries out for resurrection.

eve of easter 3 / eve of earth day 2012

I've posted my Earth Day 2012 poster design on my Facebook page, on one of my design blogs and on my urban blog; I've added it to the sidebar of this blog and now I'm including it in this post.

Tomorrow morning I'll celebrate eucharist, the ultimate earth day festival, and then go to Big Municipal Park for EarthFair 2012, "the largest free annual environmental fair in the world!" My sketchbook, markers, pencils and eraser are ready to go and so are my bright new business cards—you never know who you might meet. I never can tell who might be there at the fair…

Meanwhile, I need to put together what I want and need out of life, out of this world, out of this town and out of the church. As Neil Brown commented at a choir party sometime before his passing, "I have gifts, skills, and education I need to use if I'm to be whole, and that's not vanity!"

So often I don't quite trust my own perceptions and convictions and his words still ring very true to me; they soothe me some, as well.

Happy Earth Day, World!

PS My life still cries out for resurrection!!!

easter saturday

...no one can live without defenses; some situations are ambiguous and quite a few are not; there's extreme rationalization and there's lying. No matter how I parse everything, my life has not rewoven the connections and opportunities I need to be human and whole. It's one thing to say (no lie and not rationalizing!) I've accomplished more than I'd ever imagined, but as Oprah said to the teenager, you know you can't do life on your own and as the guy at the Bethsaida Pool replied to Jesus' asking, "do you want to be healed?"—"there is no one to pick me up and put me in the pool after the angel stirs the waters." I've more than caught the dreams of the preschooler who was going to be an artist; I've more than fulfilled the promise of the urban teenager with a scholarship in piano to a major music school; I've more than claimed the vision of the 23(!)-year old leading the intercessions she'd written from the chancel of the Philadelphia seminary. God created us for community and calls us to use our gifts for the world, so it's not about standalone, disconnected, unconnected skills, education, accomplishments—it's about a place and time to use them in service to others. If there are no takers it cannot happen and, by the way, real life is local!

a recent Facebook note copied from notes I put together close to a decade ago:

• optimism
• support
• self-narrative

"the unknown undoes us so badly"
no hurry!
meaning & purpose keeps you sane!
I had a normal and it's gone...
define success differently:

• get through today; not life goals yet!
• real short-term goals
• an hour, afternoon, day at a time

not just loss, but also change
ask for help!
hill too steep to climb?
set up your support system
let people give to you
support system is critical

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

During summer 2008 I believed I'd finally be starting new years of shared history when I signed on for Reading the Bible Economically—after all, the participants were people with similar passions to mine and now, almost 4 years later, what now? It was about the 23402398^th instance of "this next thing will work; this next thing will work; this next thing will work" and none of them has yet. God created us social beings. Am I that incompetent and inept, or have the decades of social isolation made me sooooo strange to others (as well as to myself) that no one wants anything to do with me?

I am a good self-observer, yet have the wisdom (especially after all these years of social isolation) not to trust myself, (especially without having the mirror of the other to let me know how I'm doing). But glancing back, the one thing I can confidently say is this is the story of someone who's been trying to do life on her own.

My life (still!) cries out for resurrection!!!

more on Friday, 04 May: two years ago, during Lent 2010 I spent $200 I didn't have to attend the Prophetic Imagination Conference at Local Church-Related University by the Ocean. I'd been back in town almost 10 years and as a liturgical artist and/or with my interest in ecological theology *should* have been one of the local presenters, but in any case, at the conference I introduced myself to almost everyone around me and no one cared. It's not who you know or what you know; it's who knows you. When you move to a new city or section of the country it takes a while to meet and connect, and for a while it can be fun and an adventure. But it is now almost 12 years.

easter friday: label scar

A couple weeks ago I was uphill on the adjacent mesa and discovered one of the grocery store/supermarkets boarded up; a sign on the door informed and advised shoppers of three other locations of that particular chain. Building and façade were not in great condition (polite version), and likely hadn't made better than a marginally okay cosmetic presentation for at least a decade. This drama at an angle pic is a different unoccupied building, but shows vestiges of a functional past as well as decay and desolation from disuse and neglect—like the experiences of some people?

Walter Brueggemann says "bright, skilled, educated people are valued and sought after." He also speaks about people feeling nullified. Well-maintained, brightly-lit buildings filled with appealing merchandise are valued and sought after, but in some locations get nullified nonetheless? The label scar on the empty building tells us the last commercial occupant was Bradlees, a big box retailer that bit the dust early in 2001. Unlike the fairly active shopping center on Adjacent Mesa, the whole area looks abandoned, yet the sky still is blue and the sun still casts shadows.

easter friday: label scar / baptism

From an old post on one of my currently inactive theology blogs, this isn't remotely original, but I like what I said:

Someone at Former Church asked me, "Which good news story are you going to share?" I replied, "This Gospel in which we stand, the Good News into which we are baptized, is life-giving, world-changing, society-transforming, creation-renewing death and resurrection stuff! It's not about endless recycling of the same thing, so why do you still seek the living among the dead? Right here and right now, we live on the other side of death..."

and as friend at Church up the Hill insisted, "the new creation is not pristine." Marked with the sign of the cross forever, the sky still is blue and the light of Christ still casts shadows...

...my life cries out for resurrection!!!

holy saturday 2012

During Lent Facebook friend Stacey has been hosting a group for the church she serves and opened it to any interested party; she explained (Walter Brueggemann also has written a lot about this),

"Holy Saturday is that space between death and resurrection, between loss and recovery, between pain and joy. It's a liminal time, when an ending has happened but a new beginning has yet to take hold. A lot of our lives are lived in Holy Saturday time – a time of not knowing what comes next. ... if you can, find a few quiet moments to read this reflection and ponder:

• What is open and uncertain in my life?
• Where am I grieving? What losses am I living with?
• What are my "what next" questions?
• How am I living with uncertainty?
• Where am I experiencing God in the interim time?

---

As everyone discovers by the time they've lived into double-digits, we spend much of our lives on the limen, or threshold of neither still back where we had been nor quite yet where we're heading and hoping to be.

• What is open and uncertain in my life?

Everything is in-my-face uncertain – employment, housing, income, community, opportunities...

• What am I grieving? What losses am I living with?

Like everyone, many lost friends, a scant handful of lost opportunities (fewer than most people?), possibly lost years, though I've lived long enough to learn God wastes none of our experience so "lost years" may be a misnomer. I hesitate to make many losses public online since once it's out there, it's out of my grasp forever, even if I retrieve and delete it a few seconds later. Lost hope? With Easter on the way, how can I claim such a thing, but on the surface it looks that way. Every Easter memories of chanting the Exultet, of kindling the new fire at the Easter Vigil envelop me. Every Easter memories of guilt for wanting to participate more fully again return full force plus. Every Easter I remember all those "this next thing will work, this next thing will work, this next thing will work" I still haven't let go and especially "this Easter will be different, this Easter will be different, I'll finally be alive again..." Such loss of self, such distance from shelter, such proximity to death. The Renaissance documented people dying of grief. It's almost impossible to get beyond past losses and disappointments in a healthy way until you have something reasonably to take their place.

Especially the past two or three or four years are symptomatic. On the "optimal – balanced – strained – burnout – breakdown" continuum I am so at the end! I'm seeking community, inclusion, participation, and faithful proclamation. For me, everything else is ... adiaphora, maybe?

• What are my "what next" questions?

It's close to impossible to ask those "what next" questions alone. One reason I'm in this decades-long liminal situation is that I've been journeying alone without anyone to caution, advise and guide me. My first questions are all about the mechanisms of survival—first physical and then the more essentially human aspect of community and participation. Everyone needs food, water, sleep, shelter, community and (hopefully) meaningful work, though it doesn't need to be and often can't be, won't be "meaningful employment." I need to know my life has value to others. I did not do all those years of school plus gain skills and experience in order to exist at a level basically congruent with the typical 8th grade dropout. As I pointed out in a guest blog I did for a friend from A Former City, "I've long had more than a clue about human behaviors, maybe especially in settings like churches and other organizations where a lot of the daily nitty-gritty gets done by volunteers, many of whom are willing but some of whose skills and abilities would be no more than marginally employable most places." Ten years ago at this time I'd almost finished the year-long Community Economic Development Program at Big State University. I'd assured them I'd find a way to take my new skills into the church if I didn't find employment through that program. North Park Church literally dropped from the sky into my life and then it. was. gone.

• How am I living with uncertainty?

And I lot of what we do necessarily is future-oriented, one of many reasons we need Sabbath and Eucharist. A couple Wednesday evenings ago after finally setting my own pistons on the organ at Church up the Hill I've been attending more Sundays and Wednesdays than not, I expected to play and enjoy some of the Bach and Buxtehude I'd brought with me, but they fell dead and I won't try that again, at least not unless I have an upcoming performance. The magic – the life! – is in the conversational interaction between performer and audience, preacher and congregation, teacher and taught. Within extreme limits a person can theologize online in a somewhat abstract manner, but without context it doesn't fly very high, very far, or very long.

Life frequently breaks and unravels, but clearly my own life won't rebuild and can't reweave without local organic connections to community / communities and opportunities. Post-recall weeks became months (no big deal), then a couple of years (about to be expected). After my ignominious firing from We The People, followed by multiple firings (side note: that was not the entire story, since I was extremely successful in a handful of temporary gigs), trips to the day labor hangout, trips to the plasma center, friendships starting and then suddenly erased as the years stacked up even more until finally they've become two decades. I've done my part and now I only can receive life as gift. Sometimes I imagine "if I were 20 years younger," but I was 20 years younger and it made no difference. Sadly, I strongly suspect had I been a guy much of this would have been different and we're talking about the mainline church and the late 20^th, early 21^st century. But no one really knows.

Fr Thomas Keating says, "every emotion has an accompanying commentary." I'm stuck in the commentary without the emotions, yet I'm well aware that finding safe, supportive, uncritical community is the key to recovering both a life of fuller participation and a life of richer emotions. People heal by telling their stories, but they also heal by doing, by getting involved in life again; you need both/and. When you attend a graduation or ordination, the ordinand or graduate always thanks everyone, always explains they could not have gotten there alone and they didn't get there by themselves. "Stored value" (as in a stored value gift or credit card) from earlier occasions, times and places where I had sufficient human and other support mightily has helped carry me; the current balance is minus zero and I cannot refill it on my own.

* Where am I experiencing God in the interim time?

Partly in remembering what was, in trusting an open future and in observing people around me and (yes!) online, too. Participation in weekly Sunday, sometimes weekday Eucharist... attempting to eat reasonably well and sleep well, too.

My life cries out for resurrection!!!

Awaken Your Senses: Taste

The Awaken Your Senses Contest on Facebook began yesterday—with Taste!

Brent's intro—TASTE: The sense of the week!

"Have you ever thought about tasting God in what you put in your mouth? The idea that food can remind us of the different attributes, ways and stories of God is a novel thought for most of us. If we are open to letting God teach us the ways of faith through our bodies, though, then we can learn the ways of faith through our taste buds as well as our brain. The sweetness of a freshly baked cinnamon roll can remind us of the sweetness of God's love in the same way that horseradish at Passover reminds Jews of the bitterness of slavery." Awaken Your Senses, pg. 26 (adapted)

I love this idea! Our central Christian hermeneutic is God's incarnation, enfleshment, in a physical body formed from the substance of the ground. My particular Reformation tradition emphasizes the ongoing Divine presence and God's continued self-giving in the sacraments. But baptism and holy communion are far more than something we do in a ritualized way when we gather—they are lively signs to the world of our seeking and working for justice for all peoples and all the earth everywhere. Sacraments also signify the sacredness of all life as they form a microcosm of the promised time of the fullness of redemption for all creation. Real food is not manufactured in laboratory-like factories; real food comes from the earth and for celebrating sacramental ordinances we use flowing water, juice or wine from the fruit of the grapevine and (ideally recently homemade) bread baked from natural ingredients, so we need to be friends of the earth to continue celebrating sacraments. That's my own intro to this series, and here's a reflection on recent tastes.

Although I live in a central city location of a major metropolitan area, I don't often get to any of the nearby farmer's markets, so I've been buying a lot of ripe red tomatoes on the vine from the grocery store. The first thing I savor is the fragrant scent of the soil that still clings to parts of vine and fruit. Or maybe the first thing I notice is the shiny, intense orangey-red color of the tomato fruit that forms a wonderful contrast to the vine's deep green—in color theory red and green are complementary colors, which used adjacent to each other tend to buzz a little in the observer's eyes! Their solid heft and pleasant "just right" weight in my hand is the second or maybe third or was that the very first aspect of these tomatoes I noticed when I picked them up in the store?

But how do these tomatoes taste and feel in my mouth? First the satin-smooth outside skin, next fluid juicy insides along with a few small seeds to add texture. The small meaty chunks barely need chewing, but as I do, hints of sweet and sour and a slightly bitter undertone add up to a lovely tang. I want the fresh tomato experience to last almost forever, but I know there are a few more waiting for tomorrow and the next day, more in the store and more growing out of the ground for when I'm ready.

But there is more! The aroma, the feel, the appearance and the flavors of my daily tomatoes awaken memories of visiting my grandmother and picking a ripe, warm, sun-kissed tomato from her garden and bringing it into the house to slice: for lunch in a tomato or tuna sandwich on recently out of the oven bread; for dinner or supper as part of a classic salad with any variety of garden lettuce, cucumbers, onions and homemade vinaigrette. During this Heart Month of February, I'm loving tomatoes and loving the earth.

my Awaken Your Senses blog and Amazon review

I won a gift certificate for this tomato blog post! Thanks, Brent!

still waiting for redemption...

Jesus is here and I'm still waiting for redemption, yes I am! Plus, as I pulled together some scattered thoughts and notes, I realized most of them would work better for another, separate blog, possibly during early epiphany. Absolutely for sure I have a lot to say about ways following Jesus leads us into places and situations we wouldn't have guessed, and truly hope to do so soon.

Christmas synchroblog on wordpress and some [serving] suggestions:

"And Jesus doesn't always give us what we expect either. We welcome him as a cute little baby but if we continue to journey with him, we soon realize that he wants to turn our world upside down. A child born in a stable is much easier to cope with than a revolutionary leader. This month's synchroblog is centered around the unexpected consequences of our journey with Jesus. Where has it led us that we never anticipated? In what ways has it really turned our world upside down?"

Moving from my advent blog, gifts from the ground; hope for the earth to realizing even before the liturgical and popular celebrations of Jesus' birth on 24 and 25 December we've long known so much beyond the fulfillment of the Advent texts we've been hearing...

Before a baby arrives, we usually have a clue about the baby's parents, about some of their other relatives along with their backgrounds and experiences; we have more than a hint about the baby's geographical place on the planet along with their social and cultural milieu. Despite the quantifiable info, there's so much we don't know about ways that baby become child become teenager and then adult will engage the world, make a name in the news or on the street or possibly fade into oblivion. On the surface, the life of Jesus of Nazareth is pretty much parallel to almost anyone else's in that time and place. You know the narrative!

To quote from my Advent blog, "Though it's common to hear Christianity referred to as 'spiritual' practice, the way of Jesus is heavily economic, highly political and hardly ascetic in its celebration of gifts from the ground, in its perspective that insists on the interdependence of all life, in its historical affirmation of human sexuality and in its charge to care for all creation..."

Maybe especially though for sure hardly exclusively, as church bodies that grew out of the Reformation, we engage the public square and live as political, cultural and economic beings every bit as fully in the world as within the gathered assembly of the church. It's not solely "Jesus and me" but more expansively "Jesus and me in the world and for the world!" from Advent 2B: "...in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home." 2 Peter 3:13

Unexpected consequences of my journey with Jesus? Like Jesus, I was born into linear time and measurable geography. Forget about Christmas 2011—have I been getting what I expected? No, hardly in the least. I prepared for a life of service to church and world, expecting to participate in the economic, political and not ascetic way of Jesus that celebrates all creation; academically and practically I prepared to engage the public square, to challenge and maybe subvert the status quo; I expected to live at least somewhat counter-culturally. I knew the road would be rocky, but never expected to journey alone for so many years and fully expected eventually to come out on the other side of death into a relatively broad space where my participation would be welcomed and valued.

At the end of my Advent synchroblog, I mentioned "a world that cries out for cooperation, interdependence and redemption." Will no one cooperate with, depend upon me, so I might be redeemed, bought back into the land of the living? How else can we live but with each other? How else will I live again?

other synchroblog participants:

• Glenn Hager, Breathe, Underwear for Christmas

• Jeremy Myers, Till He Comes, Unexpected Gifts from Jesus

• Jeff Goins, GoinsWriter, Day After Christmas

• Wendy McCaig, Unwanted gifts...

• Christine Sine, GodSpace, The Wait Is Over - What Did I Get?

• M Kettleson, The Real Journey, Following the Baby We Just Celebrated

• Kathy Escobar, pain relief not pain removal

• Ellen Haroutunian, Jesus came, did you get what you expected?...

• Carol Kuniholm, Words Half Heard, What the Magi Found

• Sally Coleman, Eternal Echoes, unexpected...

Christmas Vigil / Baptism of Jesus

Hoc est corpus meum!

Maybe you know the story about Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli debating eucharistic realities at Marburg? It's documented lots of places, but essentially upon the Swiss Reformer's insisting Jesus' presence in Holy Communion was spiritual rather than physical (after all, Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and therefore cannot also be in Zürich, New Zealand, London and/or Baltimore at the same time)—if I remember correctly, Zwingli's point was twofold but right now cannot recall the other part of it but I do know Luther wrote Hoc est corpus meum, "this is my body" on a table because Jesus said the taken, blessed, broken and given bread was his body. Yesterday we celebrated the Baptism of Jesus, the feast that concludes the Christmas season, so it's high time I finished writing and published this Nativity blog.

I found this on Tuesday, 18 January: here's a short explanation of Zwingli's "point" I blogged long ago.

Early Christmas Eve I attended Christmas Vigil Liturgy at Holy Family Church in Linda Vista, super-grateful that Arlain posted an invitation on her Facebook wall. I've attended several Holy Family School events (Arlain's and Mike's three kids go to HFS) and Mike is famous locally as musician Michael David Lewis.

I obsess about, constantly long for and expectantly hope for homecoming, and on Christmas eve for a few minutes I was home at Holy Family, with Arlain and with Mike. When I got there the church was crowded, so I walked to an open space in the second row and realized Mike was right in front of me—Mike and Arlain were in separate places for pageant picture-taking. I often consider how God's eucharistic hospitality forms the model of what ours needs to be, and for sure I'd love and would thrive in a dynamic, multicultural setting like Holy Family's that's a mix of several varieties of Asian, of Hispanic, Caucasian and African-American. Holy Family represents every chronological age, people who are very able in most ways, some with hidden dis-abilities and a few who aren't very mobile at all. A national officer of one of the mainline protestant church bodies commented on a Roman Catholic parish very close to the denom's national ("national church" always sounds ominous to me, but you get what I've saying) office. Like Holy Family, that congregation represented immense variety, a true microcosm of the Kingdom of God, the Reign of Heaven on earth. But as the church officer observed, we're not officially welcome at *their* table and our pastors can't preside—officially or not. I've also obsessed a lot about my current lack of shared history, of "remembering whens" of experiences with friends, events each of us would remember in a mosaic of slightly different ways. Yet I realize I now share a decade's worth of history with Mike and Arlain! The first few years I was back in this city, many Sundays they sat behind me in the PCUSA I started attending almost as soon as I returned to this geographical area. As I've blogged maybe too many times, church, liturgy and sacraments fully represent a reality shared with the people of God in every time and every place, yet of course I need something not only more local but truly more individually mine. Gathered, blessed, broken and given..."This is my Body": hoc est corpus meum!

"Night of Silence," written by Daniel Kantor in 1981 was one of the hymns on Christmas Eve:

"Cold are the people, winter of life,
We tremble in shadows this cold endless night,
Frozen in the snow lie roses sleeping,
Flowers that will echo the sunrise.
Fire of hope is our only warmth.
Weary, its flame will be dying soon.

"Voice in the distance, call in the night,
On wind you enfold us, you speak of the light.
Gentle on the ear you whisper softly,
Rumors of a dawn so embracing,
Breathless love awaits darkened souls,
Soon will we know of the morning.

"Spirit among us, shine like the star,
Your light that guides shepherds and kings from afar.
Shimmer in the sky so empty, lonely,
Rising in the warmth of your Son's love,
Star unknowing of night and day,
Spirit we wait for your loving Son."

Returning to multicultural Linda Vista and HFC, for what it's worth, in high contrast to my emerging realization that my life truly has unraveled and disintegrated in some ways (yet I've achieved far more than I'd ever imagined I would, so it's not about if only, what would have, could have or might have been but about what now is, yet still is not), people in that type of setting usually get who I am quite easily, usually like who I am and usually want me to participate as one of them. Yet the huge irony is that on Christmas Eve they didn't know I wasn't really one of them, and despite their knowing and liking who I am, if they found out, as a non-Roman Catholic Christian they couldn't commune me any more. More irony is in the fact that almost every one of them would agree with me: I am baptized and therefore we belong together. About the taken, blessed, broken and given bread, Jesus told us, "This is my body!" I look around the church and around the world, at the broken people and try to feel my own brokenness that must be ready for giving yet wonder when God will use me in the world. "This is [doubly] my body?

Yesterday the church concluded Christmas with the Baptism of Our Lord and Holy Family School had a Machaco Burrito benefit, so I attended 10:30 liturgy and picked up my burrito on the way back home. One more version of my almost daily burrito, taken, blessed, broken and enjoyed...

this is my body—Amen!!!