Category: Articles

This week I experienced a beautiful thing. My son’s graduation from high school. John got into a special program at the local alternative high school for his senior year, so he graduated from two schools, his ‘home’ school and the ‘alternative’ one. And so, even though I have only one kid, he got two opportunities to walk across a stage. It was extra poignant, and a beautiful thing to witness.

In our culture, or at least the subculture I live in, a high school education is barely the start of things. I come from a family where everyone has at least a Master’s Degree so high school seems almost a given. But it isn’t, of course, and especially so for recent graduates. It’s quite an accomplishment really (emotionally, hormonally, and interpersonally as much as academically). Especially for this beautiful group of young people that just graduated.

My son was six years old when Sandy Hook happened … the very same age as the group of young ones who died in that fateful incident in 2012. He and his classmates have since weathered regular ‘active shooter’ emergency drills at school. They’ve lived through wildfires, including a couple that came close enough to burn up the homes of some of his fellow students and teachers. The end of middle school happened just a few months into the Covid pandemic so we drove thorough the parking lot, adorning masks, to pick up his ‘diploma’ and final papers/artwork portfolio from a gloved and masked administrator. This meant he never got to connect with some friends who then dispersed to different high schools. And all of this was within days of the killing of George Floyd, which sent our very white but largely woke community into a tailspin. So much so that the public high school striped itself of it’s name (Sir Francis Drake was an explorer who came to the west coast of America just about 100 years after Christopher Columbus, and as would’ve been the case at the time, Drake owned slaves). So Drake High got the serial number of HS1327 until the community weathered a public and heated process of selecting a new name. This meant, personally for John, that he started high school in a nameless place and from his bedroom (we were just 6 months into the massive shutdowns for Covid).

If John’s reading this, he’s rolling his eyes and thinking “Really mom, a history lesson, … I just graduated from all of this.” But there’s a method to my madness. I’m not droning on just to take a trip down memory lane. I’m recounting the above because it is a lot to endure for a group of young people trying to grow up in a tumultuous world. I for one, am very proud to have watched so many of them walk across a stage … one that every last one of them deserved very, very much.

As a parent, I get to relish in the joy of watching this happen, but really we all might benefit. These young people have weathered a lot, and come through as shining stars. God willing, to quote a young man’s speech on Tuesday, they “have a lifetime to grow into the change-makers the world needs us to be.” The good will expressed by John’s fellow students, the talent expressed in speeches, poems, song, and multiple languages, was very inspiring. I wish I could convey it adequately to those of us who now regularly cower from the evening news. Because we are in good hands, people. This upcoming generation has what it takes to get us through the worldly morass we are currently in.

Good times are coming. Yes, may it be so!

I awoke this morning to the interesting realization that the Christian celebration of Epiphany (on January 6th) is the same day that we in the U.S. are now recognizing the first anniversary of an insurrection attempt on our Capital building (at least half of our country would attest to this anyway). What a very odd pairing of events!

Epiphany might just be my favorite Christian holiday … a ‘minor’ one, which is less known, because it’s not commercialized. Epiphany is the day when Christians remember a group of Wise Men whose travels to find God’s promise took them far from home to an unlikely place. They found Him, the Christ child, in a very plain manger. Not only did they have to search diligently to reach Him, but once there, they had to overlook a messy and slightly obstructed view of this Gift, who would forever change the world. Think of a barn full of straw, smelly animals, and a mangy gaggle of shepherds and other local worshippers.

The invitation for followers of Jesus today is the same … to look for Light amidst the darkness that surrounds us daily … Covid, environmental disasters, warring nations, interpersonal violence, and yes, our collective history now includes what happened at the U.S. House of Congress in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021.

As a clergy woman, I feel it’s my vocational responsibility to look to the big picture as much as I am humanly able, and to extend ‘grace and mercy’ as well. This understanding led me to review news stories today from the Left and Right, the Top and Bottom, and all Sides in between. Not entirely surprisingly (now that I’ve been on this faith journey for many decades) the Holy Spirit allowed me to see some truth in the varied opinions of people across this country. For example, as I watched (in horror!) video clips of Americans breaking glass and storming a secularly ‘sacred space’ in our capitol city, I heard a rioter say: “This country belongs to US, not just YOU!” And it gave me pause. Because, this is true, and biblically aligned. Jesus came to topple the systemic powers of this world, the leaders of which so often forget they are called to serve the common person. On other occasions, many of us ‘commoners’ would argue that increasingly our political leaders seem to forget this central call. 

Now, Jesus wouldn’t condone the violence that erupted a year ago today, but he did understand what would lead people to express themselves in such a way. A human person, much less a community full of them, can only hold so much pain. The Rev. Nadia Boltz Weber expresses this well when she says, “I’m not saying we should put our heads in the sand, I’m saying that if your circuits are overwhelmed there’s a reason and the reason isn’t because you are heartless, it’s because there is not a human heart on this planet that can bear all of what is happening right now.”) Jesus knew our human pain … and he helped, time and again, heal that pain by removing obstacles to our individual and collective healing over and over and over again.

So, where does this leave us? I think we have the opportunity to reset our own personal intentions (how fitting, at the start of a new year!). To look for the Light. To be the Light. To welcome the Light in others. This Light can be found “in the words and actions of many who are following Jesus, loving neighbors, and working for reconciliation in a wide array of often-unacknowledged ways. Protecting the vulnerable. Speaking the truth. Befriending the lonely. Listening deeply. Choosing tenderness and compassion. [We] just have to remember where to look,” (quoting the Rev. Christopher Henry, Senior Pastor, Second Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis, Indiana, who inspired much of this article).

The Epiphany story reminds us that in spite of the provocations of a fearful king (King Herod) with terrifyingly violent plans (to murder all infants in Bethlehem in an attempt to get rid of Jesus), the Wise Men kept their eyes on the star. They knew where to look, and they knew how to respond (by refusing to follow Herod’s command to tell him the Christ child’s location, and instead, kept that to themselves and took another road to their remote homes).

It’s so common these days to ask the question, “Are we doomed?” As an ordained Presbyterian pastor, I’m vocationally obligated to look for Light. And so I say, “It’s out there … have courage and hope.” These two virtues must go together. It takes courage to remain hopeful. And without hope, it is impossible to speak or act with courage.

For the Wise Men of old seeking God’s promise, “the glimmer of a distant hope gave them the courage to journey on, to journey through, to keep looking. For a pastor, the embodied hope of fellow travelers, the sturdiness of ancient words, the beauty of worship, gives courage to embody the call to ministry.

Hope and Courage. Faith’s answers to fear and despair. They insist on a different path forward. A path toward nothing less than the reconciliation of the world.

Keep looking for the Light.

Keep making it more visible and pervasive in your words and in your actions.” 

And, remember that the Light of the World is with you today, and always!!

In April 2020, our world plunged into a scramble. For anyone not living in a very remote and deep cave, you know that by April, Americans had been confined to their homes for a number of weeks due to the pandemic. Our unexpected ‘vacation’ from work came to an end and we had to find ways to get back to business. For those of us fortunate enough to have work easily transferable to an online format, Zoom became our new conference room.

Thankfully, video conferencing platforms had taken a foothold in advance of the pandemic shutdown. But now the need to use this venue exploded exponentially. We all needed to become experts, and fast. Anytime a new routine gets established in such rapid-fire circumstances, challenges inevitably crop up. We can’t anticipate the many issues that will arise and commonly agreed upon rules are slow to manifest. Enter poor Zoom etiquette. 

Now this may not seem terribly important. After all, Ms. Manners is clearly out of vogue (have you noticed how many of us go to the grocery store in our pajamas? Our standards for professionalism have lowered considerably!). But, etiquette, commonly agreed upon rules, and the like are generally developed for deeper reasons.

You see, in the midst of our explosion of online meetings, we’ve failed to notice the many ways that trust, which is critical for relationships, is being eroded at a rapid pace. Beyond the trouble of missed connections, lagging and glitchy video, and forgetting to turn on (or off!) our audio, many of us are employing practices that are getting in the way of trust. Think for a minute about virtual backgrounds (do you trust that you are speaking only to the person you see on your screen?). Or, how does it feel when someone’s video turns off mid-meeting (are they still there)? What about noticing your colleague multi-tasking when you are in the middle of making a critical presentation (are you and your thoughts not important enough to hold their attention)?

Yes, etiquette has its place. And, so does confession. That may not be a natural segue for you, but as an ordained Presbyterian minister, it is for me. Let me explain. 

Since the vast majority of Americans are now ‘spiritual but not religious,’ confession, like so much religious ‘dogma,’ is a “baby that has been thrown out with the bath water.” I would argue that this is a huge societal problem. Confession is a way to acknowledge our deepest realities. To put voice to matters we’d prefer not utter to ourselves, much less another human being. And to do so without fear of judgment. Or at least, that is what it is designed to do. When your grandmother couldn’t talk with your grandfather about something, the natural place for her to go was to her priest or rabbi. Maybe just getting the issue off her chest was enough. Or maybe her pastor offered a thought that helped her step into a necessary conversation.

Now, post-church membership, we take our troubles to our therapist. Most of us no longer live intentionally in a religious community and don’t have the benefit of being held by a group larger than our families or friend groups. Sometimes this is a good thing, which is what caused the departure from religious communities in the first place. But, it can also leave us swimming in an overly individualistic society, at times drowning in our own pools of freedom from community.

In a Presbyterian worship service, one of the first things that happens is confession. It is said corporately (all together … a written confession that meets us (as an individual) exactly where we are some weeks, and not so much on others), followed by a period of silence for personal confessions to be prayed by each worshipper. The point is to clear our conscious first. The flow of worship is to 

• Come as we are.
• Acknowledge where we are.
• Be forgiven for not being our best selves.
• Be reminded how much we are surrounded by God.
• Be called to try again to be the people we were created to be, namely individuals that bring love and healing into our world. 

Sounds like a decent way to live life, with the intrinsic benefit of building and growing trust … in God, in ourselves, in our families and in work environments. Maybe a new practice of confession would benefit our business circles? Something to consider …

I remember the first time I was sitting at dinner with friends when a progressive friend of mine picked up her gigantic cell phone. I didn’t yet have one, not being an early technology adopter, but I did have an opinion about what happened next. My friend answered her phone and proceeded to speak with the person on the other end of the line, rather than forgo the interruption and face the 6 people currently sitting in a restaurant having dinner with her. What?! How rude!!! It struck me then, and often has in the years to come, that we need to establish some new etiquette for our new (at the time) cell-phone reality. 

Well, here we are again. We’re 6 months into transferring most of our professional and personal lives onto video calls … a safeguard in the midst of this Covid-19 environment in which we now live. We weren’t prepared, and (chalk it up to the maturity of my now 50 years on the planet), etiquette is actually the least of our worries. We don’t have time for such niceties. Now we are dealing with life and death matters, and substance is where it is at. Forget considering whether we are being thoughtful; let’s move on to our communication effectiveness and the resulting impact of our words and actions.

But, maybe etiquette is designed not only to be polite, but also to address deep seated human needs. Like the courtesy of being seen for example, or establishing and nurturing interpersonal trust. Forgive me, but I’m a preacher, and as a result, pulpits appear at all times and in all places (like this article, for example). 

Let’s talk a bit about some of the pitfalls of living almost entirely in an online world. For one, we’re starving for authentic human connection. Zoom, as miraculous as it is, does not replace real-time eye contact, a momentary element of touch (a hug, a slap on the back), or even catch those faint inflections of voice that acknowledge someone is tracking with us (‘um’ or maybe even a muttered ‘Amen!’). No, even if we’ve remembered to log on in the first place, even if connections are easily made and technology doesn’t glitch, online video presence is not the same as real-time human interaction. For one, it’s exhausting for our brains. God might correct me on this, but I don’t think we were created to move as fast as life has been asking us to … and this goes back to the 1990’s and that first insulting cell phone call during dinner, if not significantly before then.

Here’s the thing. Our new Covid-19 world, if you haven’t noticed, is asking us to rethink everything from how we show up at work and family gatherings to how we buy groceries and vote in the most significant election of our lifetimes. Everything is up for grabs. It’s exhilarating and exhausting at the same time. For those of us not deterred by change, we’re in our element, but for most of us (even if we fall in the afore mentioned category) our new environment utterly hijacks our repetitively traumatized brains. It’s too much. We’re quickly reaching our breaking point, collectively.

Which is where my sermon reaches it’s climactic close. Praise be to God, religion matters again!! Wait, you don’t follow? Well, like etiquette, religious dogma isn’t necessarily ‘dogma’ at all. It’s meant, at least in the right context and from the ‘right’ people (by which I mean people intending to bring love to the foreground rather than judgment), to protect us from the brokenness of our world. We are each just small pieces of a huge pie. We’re tiny snowflakes in the midst of a snow storm. We’re that one wave in the midst of the continuous ones that hit our shore each moment and along every body of water we can possibly find (unless it’s a puddle on the front sidewalk, and if the neighborhood 5-year-old is splashing around, even there). And, no matter what metaphor we use, we are here! We are a contributor in this vast beautiful world. And we need to be seen. Let’s do that for each other. Now.