Friday Five: Games

In less than three weeks, my family, including children and their partners, will be gathering in Seattle, WA for 12 days. After various days in Seattle sightseeing and in Bellingham seeing family, we will travel to the coast of Washington State to spend three nights in a large rented house. With nine adults (from almost 20 years old and up), I am thinking that we need to have some activities pre-planned--like GAMES! (Any ideas will be appreciated.)So this Friday Five is about games, so play on ahead. . . .
1. Childhood games? I was an "only" by virtue of my late late birth, and grew up in a neighborhood where there were not a lot of other kids, so I played with the grownups a lot. We played cards...Canasta, Euchre, 500, Pokeeno, and some dice games. When there were other kids around I remember some hot summer nights playing Statue and Hide and Seek through the neighborhood.
2. Favorite and/or most hated board games? For some reason I was never a fan of Monopoly. It seeemed to go on forever and I just didn't get the point! I liked Scrabble and Trivial Pursuit when that came along.
3. Card games? Yep. Cut my teeth on em! Canasta was my favorite, though I was sitting in on Euchre hands at about age eight and was kind of a little ringer by about ten.
4. Travel/car games? Making up phrases out of the letters on the license plates, seeing who can find certain items, NOT singing 100 Bottles of Beer! Please, oh Please!
5. Adult pastimes that are not video games. Conversation....it really is not a lost art. Going for walks or hikes. Geocaching. Going to museums and plays. Reading. Painting. Playing musical instruments and singing. Learning a new skill. Gardening. Fixing something instead of throwing it out. Cuddling. Spending time with a kid or a pet. Traveling (even locally). Going to a concert. Going to the library. Visiting a shut-in or the nursing home. Calling or e-mailing or writing (on paper--gasp!) a friend. Blogging, writing or journaling. And all this in a small town where people tell me on a regular basis there is "nothing to do." Boredom? not in my vocabulary!

?Bonus: Any ideas for family vacations or gatherings? Croquet, Bola, badminton, bag toss...all those "old fashioned" games are great fun in groups. Especially if there is a little spirit of competition going!

Today's Sermon---Good News Even Here!

Sermon for Pentecost 6B Proper 10
Amos 7:7-15, Mark 6:14-29

I'm on a preaching run for about four to six weeks, depending on fast my colleague heals from her surgery. This is always a challenge of time-management with the day job and life in general, so I try to be proactive and work on my sermons ahead as I have the time. When I saw this Sunday's lectionary a couple weeks ago I literally said, "God, you have GOT to be kidding!" I thought about avoiding the whole thing by going with one of the OT readings or the Epistle, but I got to thinking that Mark is judicious what he includes, so you know, there's just got to be some Good News in there somewhere! So I set myself the task of finding it and this is what ensued. It preached pretty well this morning at my place, and I will be giving it another go in a little while at the nursing home.

A “perplexed” king, a seductive dancing girl and a beheaded prophet. What on earth does any of this have to do with Jesus? Well here it is before us in the Gospel of Mark, and we know that Mark’s purpose was to tell us of “the good news* of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. How on earth does this work, we might wonder? Jesus does not even show up in this Gospel, let alone do any of the things he is usually about in Mark. So, what’s the point?

I have to admit, when I saw that this reading was the one assigned in the lectionary for this Sunday, my first reaction was less than enthusiastic. And I had to ask that question, too. Why on earth tell this story then or now? What could possibly be the good news here?

Let’s start with the big picture. John, as we know was a prophet. Just like Amos, whom we heard from in the Old Testament reading this morning. Prophets. The scriptures are full of them. In addition to Amos, we have Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Hosea, Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, Nahum, Jonah, and Ezekiel. And of course there were the women …Sarah Miriam, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah, Esther and many many more. Prophets. Those who told the truth about God. Because that is what a prophet does. Whether he or she does it willingly and fearlessly or only after great prodding and with some reluctance…the prophet is called to stand and tell the truth that “God is here and wants you to join in relationship with God to bring about God’s kingdom.” The prophets appear when something has gone amiss in relationships. When injustice and opression are front and center, when hatred, not love are ruling…a prophet’s voice is heard crying out. And it is inevitably and always a call to conversion, a call to repentance, a call to acting like the kingdom of God is at hand right here and now.

Because that was John’s message…he said it at the very beginning when he burst out of the wilderness…”Repent for the kingdom of God is near.” And people were apparently stirred up by this wild and wooly man. This prophet John was not a mainstream kind of guy. He lived in the wilderness. He did not dress well or act refined. He was out there at the edge and he preached a rather unsettling message. And yet something about him and what he had to say drew people, at least some people, in. We hear in the Gospel that “The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.”

The kingdom of God is near. Imagine a world where the radical love of God is the dominating force…a world where we would wage peace instead of war, where we would strive for generosity not acquisition, where justice and mercy would be common, and tolerance and concern for others would be an everyday thing. It would be a world in which it would be safe enough for all to be vulnerable, safe enough for all to live and love freely as God loves. God’s kingdom, the world we are created for in God’s great dream for God’s beloved ones. God’s kingdom is near….we need only repent. This very same message of God’s kingdom being near is not only John’s message but it is the one that Jesus preached and lived, and it is the same message that Jesus instructed his followers to proclaim. This is the good news and at least one of the reasons why this particular story appears in the middle of Mark’s Gospel.

Not everyone of course was happy with John’s message. The end to John’s life reads like something off the tabloid news. Herod had broken up his brother Phillip's marriage in order to take Herodias as his wife. John had confronted Herod with his message of repentance and the nearness of God’s kingdom, and talked to Herod about the problems with his marriage to Herodias, which upset her greatly. In order to placate Herodias, Herod had John arrested. This, despite the fact that we are told that Herod personally felt John to be a righteous and holy man, and even enjoyed listening to his “perplexing” message. At Herod’s birthday party, the evening’s entertainment was provided by the daughter of Herodias and Phillip, also named Herodias. She so enchanted Herod that he told her that she could have anything she wanted. She consulted her mother, who told her to ask for John’s head. Herod seemingly does not want to grant the request, but does not have the strength of will to refuse and look foolish in front of his guests, who had heard him make his promise to give her anything she asked. So poor “grieved” Herod does as she asks. And John, prophet of repentence and teller of truth bout the nearness of God’s kingdom, is killed.

Jesus continued to preach this message and to live it out in his own life and death. Repenting. Turning our hearts and our lives another way. The only way that God’s kingdom can come is to turn our lives to another way of being…not to the world’s way but to God’s. Entrance into God’s kingdom requires a choice to believe that in Jesus, God’s kingdom on earth indeed is near. And, more importantly as followers of Jesus we are the ones charged with carrying the prophetic message about that kingdom. The choice to do this of course is a challenging counter-cultural one. It flies in the face of much that the world says is important. Sometimes the message is perplexing. Sometimes it requires that we make hard choices and take risks, taking the chance that others will reject the message and even shoot (or behead) the messenger.
John’s listeners were encouraged to take action – “repent” is a verb. In its most literal sense repentance involves turning ourselves from one course to another, stopping, changing direction, setting off in a new way. And being a follower of Jesus may sometimes require that of us. As one writer pointed out, the earliest and most radical Christian form of confession was simple. “Jesus is Lord.” Not money or power or possessions are our lords and masters. Not righteousness, or winning, or being the best and brightest. Not getting it right, or being in control or triumphing over. In the kingdom of God, Jesus is Lord. This Jesus who gave us one commandment -- to love one another as God loves us. John urged his listeners to prove their spiritual intentions by concrete deeds. Perhaps repenting, then, is not the only verb required. Love, too is demonstrated in action, turning our lives more and more to resemble this Jesus whose disciples we are by virtue of our baptismal covenant. As another prophet, Micah tells us, to “Do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God.”

John’s prophetic call was to repent, to make our crooked ways straight, to flatten the hills and to make space for the coming of God’s kingdom here on earth. May it be so. Amen.

Friday Five: Exercise

Sophia says: "I just got back from an 8 mile bike ride down the beach boardwalk near our home, and was struck with the number of people out enjoying physical activity. Runners, other cyclists, surfers, swimmers, dogwalkers, little kids on scooters....It's easy to lose track of my physical self-care in the midst of flurried preparation for a final on-campus interview Monday for a college teaching position in the Midwest (prayers welcome!) and the family move that would accompany it. But each day that I do make time to walk or ride my bike it is such a stress reliever that it is well worth the time invested!So how about you and your beautiful temple of the Holy Spirit?"

1. What was your favorite sport or outdoor activity as a child? I have just been having some great conversations about this with R as we visited my old hometown. As a kid I loved to ride my bike and would do so for hours and for long distances. My favorite ride was out to a beautiful park that is built up on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River. I'd ride out there with my journal and literally spend the day, riding, dreaming, writing and thinking. As we drove up and through the park it brought back great memories of those days, and also amazed me a bit with my ability to do those hills!

2. P.E. class--heaven or the other place? Oh the other indeed! I was a chubby little unathletic kid. The classic "last one picked" for all the team activities and the child the PE teachers loved to hate. In high school as students from the Catholic girls high with no gym, we were bussed across town to the public school gym for PE and were subject to the catcalls of the guys as they watched us do our jumping jacks in our cute blue jumpsuits out on the track. I managed to wipe out on the cinder track in fine form the week before graduation and graduated in a knee brace. Oh, yeah...I loved PE!

3. What is your favorite form of exercise now? Yoga gave me back my body. It was the beginning of my actually beginning to reside in myself. I also like to walk and to do anything that feels dance-y. Biking is coming back into my life, too. I bought myself a bike for my birthday and R and I took our first cruise the other night. It was quite an adventure. He had a flat that required bike shop intervention. I lost a pedal! That one meant we had to walk the bikes over to his work, so he could get some tools to put it back before we could ride home. While there we discovered that my tire needed air, so we had to detour to the gas station. But it was fun anyway, and we are hoping that we worked all the kinks out!

4. Do you like to work out solo or with a partner? It depends on the activity. Yoga is a solo thing for me, walking and biking, I like a friend along but will do alone if need be....other "exercise for the sake of exercise" is a necessary evil and I'll do it however.

5. Inside or outside? Again, depends... but outside overall and strangely enough, the hotter the better. Heat and humidity energize me. Nothing like yoga on the beach, or a bike ride with the air blowing on a hot day. I know....people tell me all the time. But it works for me!

Bonus: Post a poem, scripture passage, quotation, song, etc. regarding the body or exercise. While this isn't about the body or exercise exactly....it came to me from one of my yoga teachers at a yoga retreat in Mexico that was a very special experience in terms of reclaiming my body and so it does have that connection for me.....

The Guest House by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

You Can't Save All the Starfish...Can You?

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I have been a freely admitting and unabashed Pollyanna about humanity most of the time. My stance has been that I will, until proven otherwise, give folks the benefit of the doubt, believing that their behavior makes sense (at least in their little scheme of things) and that generally they are doing the best they can to get by, and that when they do things that are stupid, hurtful and thoughtless, they really don't mean them in the worst possible way. I excuse a lot, and let people get by with a fair amount. While in many ways this is a trait I like about myself, I think it is also a form of denial that has kept me in some rather insane situations longer than I needed to stay there, and that has allowed others to manipulate me right under my nose while I blithely went along in complete blissful ignorance. R will tell you right up front that he is far more pessimistic about humanity than "Polly" is. When we were first dating we laughed about that bell curve....he the outlier on one side, me on the other. So the two of us together....a good balance?

He has helped me attain some very important clarity about at least one instance of Polly being manipulated by someone. This was a very good thing as it had gone on way too long and it was way past time for clarity. The funny thing was....he didn't have to say a word. He simply witnessed an exchange between me and this person. That was all it took....me observing him observing us....a small mid-course correction, and suddenly I was balanced in a whole new way in that relationship, walking with clarity and confidence along that particular tightrope .

We have been having some serious talks this week about how and with whom we choose to spend our time and energy. Polly still wants to save the world, but she is very, very tired. And she is beginning to see that not everyone wants to be saved. Some of the starfish will persist in crawling back onto the shore no matter how many times you toss them into the ocean. They are that determined to self-destruct. So it is about discernment, too, I guess. I cannot work harder on other people's lives than they do. I have known this professionally for a long time. Perhaps it is a truth that needs to come out into my personal world. I think saving people has been one of my avocations as well as my job. I have been drawn to the wounded birds and the strays. To the needy ones. Yes, it had its payoffs....and its costs. And I think I'm done. After all, you can't walk the tightrope with any kind of grace when your pole is being gabbed by others. It is my pole and I need it for balance. Maybe it's time I take that a little more seriously.

That Balance Thing

I'm starting to feel like a blogger slug. I write posts in my head, or at least I begin them. But for one reason or another, they never make it here. One of the reasons is time. There is, it seems, never enough for all the things of life. And the strange thing is, I am doing so much less than I used to! When I think back to those Energizer Bunny days when I taught at the college, overfunctioned wildly as a priest, and seemed to think I needed to put in an extra ten or so hours a week here at the day job, I am not sure how I did it or what I was operating on. Fumes would be a good guess. By comparison these days it seems I am doing very little. I come to work at six-thirty or seven and am usually out the door at five. Most days I do not work through lunch. My sermon writing is done in the early mornings or in the spaces afforded me in my days, not in long Saturday marathons. Sometimes there are community or church commitements, but for the most part, evenings are spent in some sort of personal pursuit, either the necessary activites of keeping body and soul together, a house running, my pets content or, better still, doing something good and wonderfully restorative....with R, with my Soul Sisters or other friends, or even alone.

But in the midst of this, blogging, and writing in general have slid a bit. I don't mean to ignore my virtual friends. This balance thing is challenging and I have never seemed t0 be able to get the hang of quite how to do it. House, yard, church , pets, shopping, tending, people, writing, meeting, working, doing, being, seeing.....*sigh*

When I was a kid I fell off the teeter totter in the park and whacked my head. I didn't have a whole lot better luck with the horse. Yep. Balance. It has always been a challenge.

Friday Five: Life is a Verb

Jan says" Jennifer recommended this book, which I got because I always value Jennifer's reading suggestions. The author of Life is a Verb, Patti Digh worked her book around these topics concerning life as a verb:
Say yes.
Be generous.
Speak up.
Love more.
Trust yourself.
Slow down. As I read and pondered about living more intentionally, I also have wondered what this Friday Five should be. This book has been the jumping off point for this Friday."

I loved the title of this Friday Five! Just last week "cake" became a verb in my life as I was caked several times over on my birthday in a way that did have great intentionality and gave me foo for thought as well as great enjoyment on many levels. So this seems very timely.....

1. What awakens you to the present moment? I think I'd have to say remembering to choose to be awake. Sometimes this happens spontaneously, and sometimes requires the help of the little reminders I keep around me of the times when I was awake. When my spiritual disciplines are going well it is more effortless and tends to be more flowing and natural and there are fewer times when I have to "ping" myself gently and say, "Kate, it's life, wake up, you are missing it!"

2. What are 5 things you see out your window right now? I am cheating a little and including the things I see in my window because I am at work and have a lovely view of a parking lot....IN the window are two plants and several rocks and crystals that come from various places I have been when I was....yes...awake! Also there are a star that says "hope" and a tiny metal plaque that is inscribed "Love with an open heart" that was an ordination gift. A cross with prisms that make rainbows on my wall in the afternoon sun hangs from the blinds.

3. Which verbs describe your experience of God? Personal, energetic, loving, endless, faithful, knowable and not knowable, deeper and deeper still, quirky

4. From the book on p. 197:Who were you when you were 13? Where did that kid go? A shy, smart dreamer, a budding theologian, a poet, a musician, an artist. A young girl trying to find her way. Unfortunately she got lost doing so and wandered for many years after having met with some unfortunate detours and difficult circumstances that stifled and silenced her....for a time. The good news is that she has found her self and her voice and claimed her creativity and she is found and being nurtured into full expression.

5. From the book on p. 88:If your work were the answer to a question, what would the question be? What is the thing that you never knew you wanted, sought for a long a time, finally found and would do even if no one paid you. (This is true of both of my "jobs" as therapist and priest).

Bonus idea for you here or on your own--from the book on p. 149:"Go outside. Walk slowly forward. Open your hand and let something fall into it from the sky. It might be an idea, it might be an object. Name it. Set it aside. Walk forward. Open your hand and let something fall into it from the sky. Name it. Set it aside. Repeat. . . ." I think I'll save this one....based on my car, all that seems to fall from the sky with any regularity here comes from the bottoms of birdies. 'Nuf said.

Time Travelin'

We took a little trip in the time machine this weekend. Well actually we took a trip in the Mini Cooper, but the roads we travelled led down to my hometown for a bit of nostalgia and a peek into the places of my past. It's been decades since I left, and geographically a lot has changed there. New businesses and freeways, the riverfront has been dramatically changed with the addition of a convention center, riverboat casino and Riverwalk on top of the flood wall. It's very definitely a city focused on the tourist trade, and yet.....it is not a cheerful place. The natives may not be restless, but neither do they appear to be happy for the most part. Many of the everyday walking around folks have frowns, that judging from the creases, seem to be a permanent part of their facial landscapes. The folks who provide services are often crabby and seem to feel put upon by the need to be gracious to the traveler. The "Thank you for coming," and "Have a nice day" are often barked or growled, and we were pretty sure that was not what they were really thinking. I was reprimanded twice in a mere two days there for "infractions" of rules. R asked me if I remembered the town in this way. It's hard to know, as growing up I was steeped in whatever mood the place had, and it's hard to recall it objectively. But as I think back, maybe there was a general unhappiness, a dourness of mood. Maybe this is part of what I left to escape. I knew there was something I could never put my finger on. When I was growing up there, it was an industrial town. Some people made good livings from the union wages paid by the two big companies. Many others just eked by. It seems much more prosperous now, overall. But apparently it is not a whole lot happier place. I used to say that you could toss a kleenex on the street and come back three years later and it would still be there, because in this place time stood still. While this is no longer true in some ways, perhaps it in others it remains so.

We had a good time, none the less. We did all the required touristy things. We took the riverboat sightseeing tour and rode the funicular cable car that goes up and down the bluff. We walked in the lovely bluff top park that was my home away from home for much of my adolescence and early adulthood. We "did" the Riverwalk and saw all the places that were parts of my early life....the house, the church, the schools that knew me when. We ate, we shopped, we bought candy at the local candy shop. It was a good trip, and I'm glad we went for lots of reasons. Traveling together, we learned more about each other, and I have another interesting piece to put into the puzzle of the things that shaped and formed me. It was good to go, but it was also very good to come home again.