morning dilemma

I like coffee. A great deal. I always drink it in the morning and often in the mid-afternoon and sometimes even in the evening as the day draws to a close because I like it that much. And even though it is now all, always decaf, because it turns out my digestive system cannot, in anyway, handle caffeine (a sure sign I am becoming an old woman) I still love coffee as much as I ever have. Maybe I love it even more now because I drink it without having to worry about staying up all night (see comment above re: old woman).

So you can imagine my disgust, really there is no other word for it, when I showed up at First United Methodist Church at 9:00 am on Saturday morning to discover that I would have to immediately abandon my coffee. I was there for an all day workshop on being “fired up” in my spiritual life and the fact that I was at some other church at 9:00 am on Saturday for an all day event was disgusting enough. But I was there, coffee in hand, ready to learn something, thinking God would help me set my 9:00 am attitude aside with a little time and help from the morning cup of joe.

Until I realized that, though we were going to be in the Sanctuary all day, and though they had church coffee set up in the foyer for those who were not snobby enough to bring their own vacuum insulated Starbucks cups with Starbucks coffee (which I am snobby enough to do), NO DRINKS ARE ALLOWED IN THE SANCTUARY. None. Nada.

Granted their sanctuary is decorated in almost white carpet and lightly colored pews and granted it is First Church so you have to expect some sort of prudish attitude. But this ban on drinks in our meeting space, this denial of the coffee in my hand as the workshop was about to start was almost more than I could take. I debated. Should I break the rule and sip discretely while sitting in a pew toward the back? That would be arrogant, satisfactory but arrogant. And considering this was a workshop on spiritual vitality, an act of brash rule-breaking didn’t seem a good way to start the day.

Should I stand at the doorway drinking my coffee in obvious protest of having to decide between the sweet black nectar and the workshop session? I did that for a few minutes but I am a sipper and it can take more than 45 minutes to finish off my tumbler. So standing at the door seemed a very awkward and impermanent solution. It would be obvious to all that I was a poor girl, an addict even, who could not relinquish her morning coffee. Which I was but I didn’t need the pity.

Should I toss the rest of my coffee and go into the workshop humbling myself to this ridiculous and false barrier constructed between coffee and the worship of God? Finally that is what I did. I went out the front door (into the 11 degree weather, which, mind you, was not the kind of atmosphere that encourages one to throw out perfectly good, hot, coffee) to toss my remaining liquid in the bushes. Only I didn’t want the door to close behind me lest I be locked out so I stretched and aimed my throw toward the bushes but fell a little short and managed to make a large coffee splat on First Church’s nice clean sidewalk. I only felt slightly sorry. The coffee colored reside felt like a silent memorial to my protest.

Note to all organizers of 9:00 am Saturday meetings. Hold them in rooms where coffee is allowed. It’s the Christian thing to do.

dressing the altar

Thank goodness John Wesley was Anglican. If the Moravians had converted him I would probably never get the chance to change the paraments in the Sanctuary.

Not all of my colleagues understand the beauty of this. There are loads of pastors who delegate duties like parament changing to the worship committee or some good steward who likes to watch the calendar. Other churches have dismissed with paraments all together in favor of worship space that is more “contemporary” and lacks things like silly banners whose colors rotate according to an archaic code.

But the KS West Cabinet, in all its wisdom, appointed me to a church that still has paraments, carefully hung in a wall cabinet off of the Sanctuary, and to a congregation who expects them to be purple during Lent and white on Easter and red on Pentecost. It is one of my secret pleasures to change them myself.

I walk into the dark and quiet and cool Sanctuary and up onto the chancel where most of the congregation never goes. I move the Bible off the lectern and the candles from the altar and pull the bright and silky cloths from their resting place, neatly folding them over my arm while I hum some hymn or another. (in an empty Sanctuary, one is compelled to sing). At the sacristy closet I exchange one color for another and return to the chancel to restore what I have disturbed. With the new paraments hung, I step back to examine my work, pleased that I have once again kept sacred time.

It is a small and tangible moment of preparing the place for worship, for our worship, for our gathered praise to God. And it is an act physically more satisfying than the work I do at a static computer desk to get ready each Sunday. Changing the paraments is at once ancient and now, it is mundane and full of meaning, it is pastoral, it is prayer.

This afternoon I took down the white paraments of Transfiguration Sunday but left the altar and pulpit and lectern blank. Their barrenness is a sign of the stark nature of the Ash Wednesday ritual. No pretty cloths today. From dust you came, to dust you shall return.

Love letter

The following is part of a sermon I preached on January 18th. It still seems a little preposterous to write a letter on God's behalf. But in the preaching it seemed to touch people. So I only ask forgiveness for whatever hubris this reveals.

“Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends…and now faith, hope and love abide these three; and the greatest of these is love.” –1 Corinthians 13:4-8, 13

What would it sound like if you and I received a letter from the one who loves us most in the whole wide world? What would a personal love letter from God sound like?

I’m not sure. I’m not at all sure. But it might sound like this…


Dear Woodland Congregation,

I am writing this to each one of you, personally, your name is on the envelope. I don’t mean, Woodland Untied Methodist Church, I mean your name. This is a letter meant for you, so take this personally. Don’t assume it’s for your neighbor or your friend or the one who has been here the longest or the one who is newest in the door. It’s not. It’s a letter for you.

I’m glad you’ve come today. I’m glad you’re sitting here reading this because there is something very important I want you to know. I love you.

That’s what I want to tell you. That is what I have been trying to tell you for as long as I have known you, and I have known you for as long as you have been you. I love you. That is what I have been wanting you to hear for as long as you have known me.

I realize this is hardly news. But you can never hear it too much, because you tend to forget. You tend to get wrapped up in the business of everyday life and you get bogged down with getting to work on time or keeping the dishes clean or having the energy to do life’s chores, and you forget how much I love you. You get tied up in stress that isn’t even yours to carry and you struggle with fights that aren’t yours to win and become distracted by trying to solve other people’s problems and you don’t have time to realize how much I love you.

But I do love you. In fact I love you more than anyone else you have ever known loves you. And I know what a powerful statement that is.

But I love you that much. And I do so knowing exactly who you are. There is no hiding part of yourself from me. That persona that you carefully construct for the world to see, the way you keep part of yourself separate from everyone around you, it doesn’t work with me. I know even the quiet thoughts of your heart, before a word is on your tongue I know it completely. And yet I love you. I know you work hard to protect yourself in the world but there is no need to cover up or cover over your mistakes with me. I’d like it better, actually, if you would admit them to me, come clean, be honest. It’s the only way our relationship can grow. Like I said it won’t be news to me, but it will help. It will help you feel my love.

Because even in the face of your biggest mistakes what I want to give you is forgiveness, the ultimate kind that only I can give. Forgiveness and mercy, those are part and parcel of my love. They come as a package deal.

I know it might be hard to believe, when I say that your honesty will help our relationship grow because you have been let down by love in the past. What you thought was whole and perfect love that would last a lifetime turned out not to be perfect. It turned out not to last. Over time and through your living your friendships have faltered, your family has been fractured and your romances have failed. But those are only partial loves. Those are only pale reflections of the love that I have to give. Even your biggest successes in loving are only a reflection of my love, and you have been far from perfectly successful. Don’t judge my love solely on the basis of what others have done or failed to do to you. The love I have to offer is whole and perfect, it is everlasting.

I don’t want you to think that this is easy for me, however. Real love, deep abiding love is always a costly affair. Love, though freely given, always requires something of the lover. To love is to give of one’s own self. And that is what I have done for you. I have given of myself, I have given all I have to give, for you. I have redeemed you because I want you to live in love with me forever. I trust you want that too. Tell me so, if you do.

I love you. I love you because it’s who I am. I am love. To know me is to know love and to know love is to know me. As I am present with you, and I have promised to be present with you always, my love is all around you. In fact you are surrounded by it right now, now and every single moment of your life, you are surrounded by my love. It is a basic fact of your existence that you are surrounded by my love. That should make a difference to you. It should effect how you live and what you do and how you treat those around you. Because it is yours, my love will never falter or fail, it is your eternal possession. That should make a difference to you.

I love you and I want you to grow, I want you to grow in my love. I want you to grow up, to mature and become more and more the person that I created you to be. You aren’t there quite yet but you are on the way. And with time and strengthened by my love there is no reason in the whole universe why you can’t continue to grow, in love with me. I look forward to watching what you will do, it gives me great pleasure to see you change and mature, to see you become the child I have envisioned you to be. And I have things for you to do. I have ideas about how you can make a difference in this world, how you can bring the truth and beauty and love that you know in me to places that need it. I am calling you, calling you by name to be a light for me, calling you to share my love.

I have already said that my love is yours, it is your eternal possession. Take that gift seriously but realize that it is not a static or stale gift. It is the kind of gift that I mean for you to give away. As I have loved you, so I want you to love others. Don’t worry that giving away your love will mean you have less. I am ready with an inexhaustible supply. Love is not a limited commodity. There is no limit in me, and there is no limit to how much I can love you.

So give it away. Give love away freely and without caution. Just as I have surrounded you in love, so I want you to love others. Surround one another with the same deep and abiding love that I have given you. Keep each others best interests at heart. Trust one another with your deepest pains and share your greatest joys. Be present for one another in times of need, keep track of one another. See gifts in one another and encourage their use. Celebrate one another and realize what a gift you are to each other. Love one another. Love one another as I have loved you.

And I mean all of you. There are a few among you who don’t always feel the full course of that love, there are a few who get left out or left aside in the love feast that you enjoy. Don’t forget a single one, for my sake, take care of all. I realize I’m asking you to do something difficult for you, for you can get crosswise with one another and end up annoyed, or even angry. But don’t let your disagreements tear down or block out the love that I have for you, for any of you, for all of you.

I love you. I’ll be telling you again because I know you will need to be reminded. You will feel close to me and distant from me, your perception of my love will ebb and flow. But regardless of how you are feeling, my love does not change. It surrounds you and upholds you and is with you always. Always.

Love,
God.

Amen.


Written by Rev Amy E Lippoldt.
Woodland United Methodist Church, 1100 W 15th St N, Wichita, KS

The Big "O"

I watched an entire episode of Oprah this afternoon.

I realize this is fairly typical white-middle-class-woman behavior. But I have been an ardent anti-Oprah-ist for years. Yet good critics know what they are criticizing, so watching an entire episode isn’t really a softening of my stance against avoidance of all things Oprah, right?

Really I watched because I was intrigued. Yes, she hooked me. The show was with some business/life coach…famous…Mark somebody? Maybe? Anyway Oprah had seen a statistic published by CareerBuilder.com that 84% of people are unhappy with their jobs. My first question is, if the survey was done on CareerBuilder.com, isn’t that kind of a self selecting population? Wouldn’t we expect those who are cruising job websites to report dissatisfaction with their work? But such questions do not trouble Oprah. Instead it provided a flashy statistic to get this Marcus somebody on her show.

She and 30 other women took Marcus’ eight session “change your life” workshop to learn how to become happy(ier) in their jobs. Of course four particularly miserable women were profiled through video shorts and given private coaching so they could return to the show and reveal how their lives had changed.

(Forgive the slightly cynical nature of the report. Strict anti-Oprah-ism is hard to filter.)

The major lesson of his workshops, of the episode? Do what you do well. Play to your strengths. Focus on what gives you energy. Use your gifts.

What hooked me about the episode is that this problem, focusing on my strengths instead of my weaknesses is exactly the task that is before me at work. It is the shift I want to accomplish, or at least I want to work to improve the balance between strengths and weaknesses. It is something I have been convinced I need to do for over a year now, I am just not completely sure how to get it done.

Now that I have the full range of pastoral duties on my plate (being the only full-time staff member around), I am becoming ever more aware that some things I do well and some things I don’t. There are parts of my job that are always a huge chore for me, which I dread, which make the whole enterprise more difficult. Unfortunately the time and energy I spend dreading the things at which I am weak pushes against the amount of time I have to do what I do well. I didn’t really need Marcus to tell me that.

I wonder if in the eight week session he talks about how to make the structural changes necessary to fix this strengths/weaknesses problem. Especially when there are no other staff members to pick up the work, but rather lay leadership that must be recruited and nurtured.
Oprah did make the whole life coaching session available to me, to ME, on her website for FREE! But I don’t think I can watch it, I can’t add to her “click total” for the week. I am sure there is a link to Marcus’ book though, complete with the big “O” on the front cover.

One interesting thing about the episode was the way Marcus and Oprah danced around religious language. They said everyone had been given gifts to use, natural strengths that we should use and enhance, this is the way to happiness. (Spiritual gifts given by the God who made us, I say). Also we each have a calling in the world, they said, and we need to find and pursue that calling in order to find fulfillment. Oprah even mentioned paying attention to “God or the divine or the universe or whatever” to help you figure out what your strengths are.

So thanks, Oprah, for the push. I am going to keep working on giving away the parts of my job at which I stink. One other question: How do you get away with having the last half hour of your show involve 1min 45 sec segments followed by 2min 30 sec commercial breaks? I was running on the treadmill while I watched, so I know what you were doing! I guess that’s what happens when you build a kingdom on getting people to buy stuff.

Whoops, guess the anti-Oprah-ism is back. I wont’ be watching tomorrow.

Nashville

I'm at the Methodist Vatican and wondering about:

1. Why are there leather recliners and a leather couch in the Women's bathroom at GBHEM?

2. What will it take to change the conversation about young clergy/candidates in Kansas West. Holy Smokes we are behind the curve. A few people might be sorry they sent me here.

3. How many of the people who are typing on computers right now in this room are actually paying attention to the meeting? (free wi-fi, what a danger.)

4. Of all the thing toward which I feel like I can apply my energy (church and conference) what should I actually get started on?

5. Why didn't I choose to walk to Starbucks on our half hour break so that I could be drinking a latte RIGHT NOW!

6. Who can I talk to who will help me sort out my goals and priorities in ministry. I need help sorting through the morass right now.

7. How many youth can we get on a bus to head to exploration 2009? And who else should go with us?

8. What is it that my church most needs right now? What does it need from me? What can I most faithfully offer? And this leads me right back to #6.

9. Where should I eat dinner tonight?

Protesting

I have a new plan.
When I first saw the coverage my instinct was to picket. But after yesterday’s news reports that the church members got into a shouting match with Obama supporters who came out to protest, I believe an approach without face to face contact would be better.

Wichita, long the safe-haven for religious nuts, has the infamous honor of once again supporting a lying, blasphemous, anti-American preacher who calls himself Christian. Whew! That’s strong language, but look what Mark Holick did. http://www.ksn.com/news/local/34487444.html


Normally I would say, let crazy people be crazy. But in this instance I am concerned because in October I had three, count ‘em, three, conversations with well-intentioned, kind people who told me
1. Obama is a Muslim.
2. Obama’s campaign funding came from Arab terrorists
3. Obama’s campaign funding came from China.

I am not making this up.

So I worry that Holick’s craziness has traction or at least allure for people outside of his church.

Therefore I would like to cover his lawn with yard signs that say,
“Though shalt not bear false witness” Exodus 20:16

Disagreeing with someone’s politics is one thing. I do not expect the whole world to be happy that Barack Obama is the 44th president of the USA. But spreading incendiary lies that are meant to stoke religious fervor is quite another. I have no idea what Holick suggests his members do about the situation (I shudder to think about his sermon) but considering we have seen medical doctors shot in this city…
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9400E5DB1E3CF935A15750C0A962958260 I believe the marquee lies are no small thing.

I do see that my plan is a bit undersized, probably ineffective, but at least it would be doing something. Want to help?

Leadership

I get a lot of leadership training. Maybe too much. At times I feel like a football player who has too many plays in the playbook and not nearly enough time on the field. Because of all my leadership training and reading I find myself thinking about “leadership” frequently. I do get confused sometimes if I am being loyal to business/organizational culture or if I am being true to the gospel. Am I learning how to effectively serve God or how to effectively serve the bureaucracy?

Either way I am slowly forming a picture of what I consider to be “good leadership” and becoming better equipped to evaluate my own.

Last night I saw two excellent examples of what I consider to be good leadership. First: John McCain’s concession speech. Gracious is the only word to describe it. He left me thinking that he will be willing to work with President Obama. I found McCain’s speech to be of a completely different tone than Hillary’s at the convention. She seemed to be putting on a good face but was really conflicted inside if not choking back bitterness over the loss.

I thought it especially poignant that McCain took so much time to comment on the historical nature of the election and how it was a symbol of old hatreds being cast aside. He spoke about it longer than Obama did. That seemed fitting to me. McCain also seemed genuinely upset when his supporters booed at the mention of Obama’s name showing his disinterest in any “hate and fear” politics and reminding us all that even the biggest ideological opponents are still human beings worthy of respect.

McCain said that he had served America since he was 17 years old and every single day he considered it a privilege and a blessing. Considering his story that is one hell of a statement. He showed last night that a strong democracy and the will of the people are more important to him than his personal ambitions. That reveals character. John McCain is the kind of leader I want in the U.S. Senate.

Then President-elect Obama took his turn. And instead of gloating or shouting or even appearing gleeful in his victory, he was as calm and stable and taciturn as ever. He talked again about listening seriously to those that disagree with him and I believe he will. I believe it will be a completely different atmosphere in the White House starting in January. And the more Obama invokes the memory of Lincoln, the more I believe he realizes it is his job to heal and bring unity. Most presidents elect make this promise and I realize that Obama has a great deal to learn about the job before him. But his commitment to keep rivals and opponents inside his sphere of influence seems an awfully good place to start. That shows he is not easily threatened. What an important change.

Instead of celebrating last night and basking in his own history making glory, Obama called us as a country to get to work on the problems ahead. I don’t know if you noticed but the man barely smiled last night in front of the huge crowd. Maybe it was in part exhaustion but he was not gloating last night. He’s got a job to do and he realizes it is the most serious one of his whole life.

I’m sure there is more to say but this entry is long enough. Two strong, committed, healthy leaders. That’s what I saw last night. No bluster, no façade, no puffed up ego. Just two men sold out on their own vision of this country and what it means to serve in its government. That inspires me to leadership in my own life. That’s how effective leadership works, it breeds more effective leaders.

Yes we can.

ouch!

I almost broke my toe on Friday afternoon (x-rays confirm it is just a nasty sprain). I wish it had been the result of some high-adventure exploit, come during a stunning athletic victory or involved the saving of small children. But no, I was organizing the garage. While carrying a box of birdseed I tripped (on what?) and fell to the ground. En route one sandal flew off and two toes made contact with the top of my foot. I am pretty sure that’s not supposed to happen, anatomically speaking. Note to self: the fancy toe-guard rubber on Keens does not work if shoe is removed from foot.

An injured toe is no big deal, as several church members reminded me in recounting their own stories of broken digits on Sunday. I don’t even mind limping around, that much. I realize my body will heal on its own. What I am not looking forward to is three to six weeks without running. The pinkie toe is such a small body part it seems unreasonable that its injury would disrupt an activity that benefits every other part of my body. Hopefully I will be able to cycle (or go to spin class more likely) once I can put a shoe on.

Right now, a little more than 48 hours later, I am full of restless energy and really wanting to go for a run. Reading my latest RUNNERS WORLD magazine cover to cover this afternoon did little for my ability to sit still and wait to heal. Surprise, I know. For the record, I expect no sympathy on the “I can’t run” front either. One church member told me, “I’ve not run for six weeks straight lots of times.” The fact that she probably hasn’t run six times in her adult life made the quip funny but not comforting.

Last Tuesday I was with a group of clergy and we were asked what distracted us from ministry. Not distracted as in, “I can’t get my work done because…” but distracted like “I remember there is something more to me than my pastoral responsibilities.” My first answer was exercise, I make it a central part of my day 5 times a week. Those are the moments where I am not necessarily a pastor, only a slow but committed runner or cyclist.

Oh forget it. No sense explaining to you what running/cycling means to me. Just know that it means a lot. And I can’t do it for awhile. And that’s disruptive to my equilibrium.

step, clunk, step, clunk, step, clunk, step....here I go.

pReaching

Matthew 22:1-14 revisited in today's sermon

Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like a dinner party, here is one of the stories he told about that party, more or less.

He said the kingdom of God is like if the President of the United States decided to throw a wedding banquet for his daughter, right here in Wichita, in the middle of the country, in Wichita at the Hyatt hotel downtown. The President, or rather his people, sent out invitations to guests well in advance but on the day of the wedding, just to be extra nice, he instructed white house staffers to telephone the guests with a gentle reminder that the party would begin promptly at 7pm. There were plenty of important people on that list, city officials, religious mukity-mucks, plenty of pastors who normally never turn down free food, wealthy business people, the who’s-who of Wichita, they were all expected to attend and Bonnie Bing was prepared to cover it all on the Eagle’s society page. Surprisingly though the people who had been invited refused to come.

When the President got word of this, he sent out a fleet of secret service agents in big black Suburbans to call on these people’s homes and tell them, “look the president has everything prepared, the Hyatt is ours for the night, his personal chef from Washington has been flown in, the Wichita symphony will be playing the dinner music, there is an open bar!” But the guests refused to come. One said she really needed to tackle her e-mail inbox, another said he couldn’t think of missing the KU game on tv, others, well they were plain nasty and they tasered the secret service agents before they could even finish the invitation.

This was a bad situation for the city of Wichita. But the banquet was ready so the President told his chief of staff to go out on the streets, right in front of the Hyatt and start pulling people in to come eat. And that’s what the staffers did. They walked over to Gander Mountain and grabbed all the guys buying new fishing tackle. They went to the century two Expo Hall and brought in all the people setting up for the car show. They scooted over to the main library branch and rounded up the homeless who hang out there during the day. They went down to the river bike path and pulled in the joggers and cyclists for the meal. It was a big party so they had to fan out all over downtown to fill the tables, getting drug dealers and prostitutes off of Broadway and lawyers who working late into the night in their offices, they even pulled construction workers off the job as they working on the new arena.

It was a crazy scene but the tables were packed and the party was in full swing, just like the President wanted. As he roamed the party, pleased with all the fun everyone was having, he noticed one guy who refused to sit down and eat, in fact he hadn’t even taken off his coat and just stood against the wall. When the president asked him why he refused to actually join the party now that he was here, he had no answer to give. So the president had the man driven to Oklahoma and he was never heard from again.

Many are invited but not everyone RSVP's.

Grrrrrrritch.

I started a blog this morning about how awful my mood was, about how I woke up feeling so groggy and out of sorts. After two paragraphs it sounded suspiciously like whining. I am not a whiner. I erased. I filtered. That’s better for us all.

I seem to always have this sort of work “hangover” after a Monday night Trustee meeting. What is it about Trustee’s business that is so draining? Oh, yes. I don’t care. Oh, that’s harsh. What I mean is if you were to ask me what is most important, most meaningful, most pressing of my time and energy, I would put the Trustee’s agenda on the bottom of the list, just above keeping my files organized. Last night at our meeting we talked about: the parking lot cracks and new striping (you can’t even see where the parking stalls are anymore); bundling the telephone and internet; a laptop purchase; certain leaks in the ceiling; switching the trash service; options for snow removal…

You were bored reading that list, were you not? I had to sit through the 90 minute meeting.
I’m not saying that all such matters are unimportant, woe to the church that neglects them. I realize that the care we take of our building is a key part of our hospitality to guests. I want my house clean when people come over for dinner. I want the church in great shape when members and friends stop by. I just don’t want to deal with it the minutiae of it all. (at work I mean, I do clean my own house!) I want others with the spiritual gift of building maintenance to sit in on those meetings and take care of the decisions and leave me, pastorally, out of it.

It is all part of the struggle that is continually before me: How can I spend my time doing the things that I am best at and hand off responsibility of the rest to those who can excel in areas where I do not? That’s what makes for team, right? That’s what ensures that the pastor does not have control and responsibility for everything. That’s what makes for a healthier church. It seems so clear when I talk about it in theory. And so murky when I think about actually extricating myself from Trustee meetings.

On Tuesday morning I see again the great size of the gap between what could be and what is. I realize it’s up to me to make the changes, no one else will “fix” my work flow or job responsibilities for me. Though I’m not sure what a path to different functioning looks like. Guess I’ll pray about that one. Seems a pastoral kind of thing to do.