The Neighborhood

I've been driving by a local coffee house for some time now, thinking that one of these days I would have to stop and go in.  It's not a chain, it's a local joint, so rare these days, not just in coffee shops, but in everything.

One day we finally carved out a little time to stop in and get some coffee, pull up a lime green easy chair and stay for awhile.  It turns out they have a small menu as well, including some homemade breads, instant oatmeal and quiche (while it lasts).  I brought along the book I was reading at the time, Everything Happens For a Reason (and other Lies I've Loved).  There were a couple of local mystery writers sitting in one corner, discussing plots and current events.  Every once in awhile someone would drive up to the window and order something to go.

We carried on a conversation with the young, friendly barista.  She's originally from Montana, but lives now in a tiny town just west of us.  Besides her work at the coffee shop, she also babysits a young boy.  And she reads.  She loves to read.  Right then she was reading the book Accidental Saints, a book by a pastor from my particular tribe (Lutheran).  Although Nadia has tattoos, and I don't.

I talked a little bit about my church, just a little way down the road, and its pre-school.  I told her a little bit about one of my dreams:  to have a tiny children's bookstore, and call it "The Wardrobe."  It would only need to be the size of a walk-in closet, and specialize in children's books with spiritual themes.

She said, "I would soo... hang out there!"

I don't have a plan for this dream, knowing as I do that bookstores are sort of the wave of the past, not the future, what with online purchasing and e-readers.  But it was nice to share it with someone who could see its possibilities.

* * * * *

This morning we were back at the coffee shop.  We made small talk with a woman who was there, purchasing fresh-ground coffee.  She loves sushi and is learning Spanish.  She has a four year old son who does not yet talk much.  "Einstein was a late talker," I offered.  She counted her change in Spanish, just for practice.

The barista and I had another conversation, over coffee and oatmeal.  She likes to read the feminist Christian writers, she said, and we took turns naming some:  Sarah Bessey, Rachel Held Evans, Jen Hatmaker.   We talked about a book club starting at the coffee shop.  The next book they are reading is a mystery.

I love my congregation.  I love leading worship every Sunday, all of the voices lifted in praise, making sure all ages and all people have a place, and know they belong.  It makes a hinge on my week.  But it's too easy for me to get the impression that all the important things happen inside its doors, when that is not really the case.  The most important things happen when we meet God through all the week, in all of the conversations, in the details of each other's lives, where God is at work, if only I had more time to listen.

Language Learning, Incarnate

I have been thinking for quite some time now that I would like to learn a little Spanish.  There are a number of Spanish-speaking immigrants in our community now, and an Hispanic Seventh Day Adventist congregation even meets in our sanctuary on Saturday morning.  Some of the congregation members are pretty fluent in English, but not all of them.  It has piqued my language-learning curiosity.

When I first started thinking about learning Spanish, of course I went out and bought the prettiest, flashiest set of Spanish flash cards I could find.  They are quite attractive, if I must say so myself.  They haven't helped me learn any Spanish, but they are sitting right there in my office.

I have asked other people how to go about beginning to learn Spanish.  I have gotten a variety of advice, starting from self-directed courses with tapes and CDs, to on line resources and even apps for my iPhone!  I even downloaded a free app.  Free is free, after all.  With the apps, you can make language learning into a sort of game.

Here's my confession, though:  even though I am an introvert, I can't imagine myself learning a language from a book and a set of tapes, or even a web site.  I can't imagine myself learning a language by myself.

Part of it is accountability.  I can't imagine myself sitting down at the same time every day, or a different time every day, and remembering to take the books or the tapes out, or get on the web site and do the lessons.  I am sadly afraid (and this is a character flaw) that my language learning self-discipline would last all of two days.

But mostly I can't imagine learning a language by myself.  I can't imagine trying to learn a language without the motivation of actually speaking it to someone else, even if the words are as simple as "Buenos Dias."

When I lived in Japan, my best language teacher was the wife of one of the local pastors.  I went to visit her every week, and we sat down and had a conversation.  I don't remember any more whether we had a textbook or not.  But the main thing was, she didn't know any English.  If I wanted to communicate, if I was curious about a Japanese custom or a food or anything else, I had to throw caution to the wind and just ask her, with whatever language tools I had.  If she had questions for me, I had to try to answer, and keep trying until she figured out what I was trying to say.

Now that I think about it, she wasn't my only language teacher.  I had many others, all of them good, in their own way:  the four year olds at the pre-school, the children in my church's Sunday school, the history teacher whose desk was next to mine in the Japanese high school where I worked.  The parents of some of my students, clerks in department stores, people I sat next to on the train:  they were all my teachers.  Because I wanted to know them, to learn about their lives, I wanted to learn more.

Of course, language is a multifaceted thing.  It is not just speaking, but listening; not just listening but understanding; not just understanding but wanting to understand.  It is not just words on a page, but words in the air, between people.  It is not just denotation, but connotation.  A language suggests a world, and opens the door to that world, if only a crack, at first.

It occurs to me that faith is a language too, even a strange one, from a strange land which sometimes feels far away.  But does anyone really want to know the language of faith any more, to open the door, just a crack, and to see what the people know who live there?  Does anyone want to sit down across the table from them, and and listen, and try to understand, and find out what it's like to walk on water, or to find your five small loaves of bread suddenly multiplied?

Faith is a language.
I can't learn it by myself.

What I Miss

I like being a pastor.  I like visiting people, giving communion, leading worship, singing.  I like praying in a hospital room, celebrating new babies and new members, being able to be with people of all ages, from birth to death.  I love that tonight I was able to get together with two of my former confirmation students for dinner, and learn a little about the directions their lives have gone  And I get to read, and study, and think for a living.

But sometimes, I think about before I was a pastor.  I really didn't like my job.  I worked in an insurance office.  I was okay at it, but I suspected that I wasn't using some of my gifts.

But, here's the thing:  back then, I had a lot of friends who didn't go to church.  I also had my friends from church (I spent a fair amount of time at church).  I had some friends who never went to church, some friends who used to go to church, but stopped, for one reason or another.  I used to have these theological conversations with one of the women where I worked.  She called me her "Lutheran friend."

I remember going out after work with another one of my non-church-going friends.  Sometimes she would confide in me things that had happened to her when she was a child.  Sometimes we would talk about God and life and forgiveness and things like that.

Then there was the Buddhist guy I dated a couple of times.  He used to be Catholic, and he thought it was sort of cute that I was still a Christian.  Still, we had some good conversations.

I miss that.

I don't know if I ever invited my non-church-going friends to church with me.  When I think about it now, I am a little scandalized.  But I wasn't thinking about trying to get non-church-goers to be church-goers.   I was just sharing faith with people whose faith was different from my own.  And then I knew things I have almost forgotten now.  Then I knew that a lot of my non-church-going friends weren't dying to go to church, but they were dying for someone to care about them, listen to them, tell them that they mattered in the world.

I miss those conversations.

It's good to invite your friends to church with you.  I want the people in my church to do that.  But what I would really like to do is help them have the kind of conversations that I had before I became a pastor.  

On Father's Day: Lessons from My Dad

1.  Go to church.
There are probably many reasons I still go to church, not the least of them being that I am the pastor.  But one of the reasons I go is that my dad went to church.  Every Sunday.  Not only did my dad go to church, but he actually seemed to enjoy it.

Studies show that children whose father attend church are more likely to continue actively practicing their faith into adulthood.  I don't know why this is, but I am still grateful that my dad went to church.

2.  Sing.
My dad sang in church.  Sometimes in harmony.  He also sang in the car, in the shower, with my mom at the piano, and just about everywhere else.  It's true, he didn't always know all the words, but that didn't stop him.  He sang anyway.  Sometimes he made up his own lyrics.

At least in part because of my dad's influence, I too sing in church.  Sometimes in harmony.  And I sing other places too.  It's true, that singing by amateurs has become a rare phenomenon.  More and more we have learned to leave it to the professionals.  But my dad was a great amateur singer, and he gave me a lifelong love for singing and music, and a conviction that I didn't have to be that good at it to enjoy it.  Every time I stand up in church and chant the liturgy, I have my dad to thank.

3.  Use your imagination.
Here's something I remember:  when my dad used to get us out of the bathtub, he used to sing the song "The Sheik of Araby" to us while he was drying us off with the towel.  However, he used to make up his own words, while he would wrap the towel around us to pretend we were really arabian sheiks, or ghosts, or even Little Red Riding Hood.  He also would sometimes pretend he was Methuselah, the world's oldest man, when he came in to say our prayers with us in the evening.  He would tell us that he remembered all of the Bible characters as he sat on our beds.  He made evening prayer time fun.  He loved to pretend.  And I think that it was because of his imagination that he was also an incurable romantic.  He loved the movie "Pollyanna" and really thought that the world should be a kinder place than it really was.

I hope that I have gotten just a little of his imagination in my life.  Whether I have enjoyed a good pun, imagined a story or a poem, or just imagined the world in a different, better way, I have my dad to thank.

4.  Be there.
Woody Allen once said that half of life is just showing up.  My dad showed up.  I remember my dad sitting across the dining room table with me, helping me memorize my multiplication tables when I was in the 4th grade.  And I remember in high school, my dad sitting across the table from me again, helping me to learn how to do my taxes.  When I was in college one of my friends came to me to help her with her taxes, because I knew what to do.  Her dad always just did hers for her.  When I got my first apartment, my dad gave me my own set of tools.

My dad showed up.  He showed up and taught me how to do things.  He didn't just do things for me (except for the times he opened the lids on peanut butter jars for me.  Even then, he would make a big show of trying to open the jar.  Then he would say, "it's too hard for me.  You'll have to do it."  He gave it back to me and of course, then I could open the jar easily.)

Now, I want to be there for my stepsons, and for my nieces and nephew, not just to do things for them, but to help them to learn to do things for themselves.  I hope that I have given them just a few tools they can use in their lives.  I hope that I've "been there" as well.

5.  Talk to your children about your faith, and your questions.
When I was a teenager, Hal Lindsay's book, "The Late Great Planet Earth" was very popular.  Everybody was talking about the end of the world.  I was very worried about it.  I was only thirteen, and I didn't want the world to end any time soon.  My dad wasn't much of a reader, but he read that book, and I remember us talking about whether the world would end or not.  He took my questions seriously, and he had his own questions, too.  Somehow, knowing that just made me feel better.

6.  You don't have to be perfect.  Just be yourself.
When I was a little girl, my dad was my hero.  Now that I'm an adult, I know that he is a human being, with failings and flaws just like everyone else.  There were times when I really wanted him to be serious, and he really wanted to keep it light.  I know that it was hard for him when his business went bankrupt, but he never talked about it.  He didn't like to talk about things.  He didn't always say or do the right thing.  But he's still my hero.  He taught me how to sing and how to pray.  He gave me imagination and hope and shared his faith.  He was there when it counted.

He was pretty cute too.

What more could a girl want in a father?

Advent Anecdote

So, the other day I was getting ready for my noon Bible study, which entails going over to the local grocery store and buying lunch (usually soup and an orange).  I got to the check-out counter, where they know me almost too-well, and the older gentleman who was bagging my lunch remembered to put it in a small bag, instead of a grocery-shopping sized one.

"Well," I said, making small talk, "I considered buying a few more things besides lunch, but I changed my mind."

"You can change your mind," he said.  "It's a woman's prerogative to change her mind."

"It's anyone's prerogative," I replied.  "You can change you mind, too, is you want to."

He smiled.  "Yes I could...... but it would be painful."

Then I drove back to the church to consider John the Baptist, and Advent.

Holy Conversations, if we can have them

I just started reading a book recently.  It's called "Holy Conversations", and it's about strategic planning in congregations.

You might think, "why write about a book that you have barely started reading?"  That would be a good question.

We will be embarking on a strategic planning process in my congregation soon.  The other pastor thought that this was the book we should use to go through the process at our church.  He wanted me to get ahead on the reading, so that I could be help discern the right mix of people to be a part of the conversations.

Coincidentally, I already had a copy of the book.  I've been thinking about strategic planning as a spiritual discipline for awhile.

So, while beginning to read this book at the end of last week, one sentence struck me, and made me think:  "The plan does not transform the congregation; the conversation transforms the congregation."

I'm not sure that I've ever really intentionally thought about it this way, but I immediately realized that it was true:  Conversations transform us.   Conversations change the way we think and feel, and affect who we become.  It isn't always or necessarily and positive transformation, either.  I remember the conversations I overheard as a young girl -- the arguments between two of my uncles:  one a staunch Democrat and proud 6th grade teacher, and the other an extremely conservative Republican (he used to remind us that the founding fathers only intended landowners to vote).  Listening in on those conversations affected my politics, made be both fascinated by politics, but also anxious about political fights.

Of course, the more powerful conversations are the ones in which we are active conversation partners, listening and speaking, telling and hearing stories.  Perhaps these are the ones called "Holy Conversations", where we dare to take time to find out what it important to one another, what we agree about, where we disagree.

When I think about it, I realize how seldom we really have a "Holy conversation" with one another.  I wonder why it is, and the first thought that comes into my mind is this:  we don't have time.  We are busy people, and it's hard to find the time to sit still, look into each other's eyes, see the image of God in each other's faces, and know who we really are.

But I don't think that's the only reason we so seldom engage in a Holy Conversation.  I think it's also because it is risky to find out that we don't all agree with one another (and I'm not just talking about politics, here, not even mainly).  Perhaps it's easier to assume that we all agree: about which hymns are the best to sing, which way we should pray, how we should reach out and serve, which community issues should most define our discipleship.  There's a risk to finding out that your community contains a diversity of pieties as well as politics.

But even riskier is this:  I suspect that in a truly Holy Conversation, all participants are open to being transformed.   What will happen to me if I listen to an older person tell me of their experience of the liturgy and how it has formed them, or if I hear a new member talk about what it means to feel welcomed, or excluded, by the way we worship?  I just had a conversation with a woman who brings her granddaughter to church with her on occasion.  She told me that her granddaughter would like to go to church more often, but it's hard because "she doesn't know what's going on."  This statement cuts me to the quick, which is the beginning of transformation.

So we're going to do this thing called 'strategic planning,' and I don't know much about what it will look like yet.  But, as we move along, I will be reminding myself again and again that it is not the plan that will transform us.  It is the conversations, the holy conversations that will transform us, turning us again and again, back to God, and back to one another.

Overheard at a funeral lunch....

(yes, I had a funeral today)

Woman from family: We have pie. And we cut it crooked, so that it doesn't have any calories!
1st Woman at my table: What you eat at church NEVER has any calories.
2nd Woman at my table: I have to start going to church again!

What do you think? New evangelism method?