Lenten Sweetness: Tasting Towb

Grape Harvest, Joaquin Sorolla,
1986, Valencia, Spain

I drank at every vine.

The last was like the first.

I came upon no wine

So wonderful as thirst.

(from Thirst, Edna St. Vincent Millay)

Our culture is addicted to sugar. Global sugar consumption has tripled in the last fifty years, with Americans leading the way. Current US sugar intake is up to 20 teaspoons of sweetener per day – hidden in everything from fruit drinks to ketchup.

Recent studies show what I’ve found in my own experience: sugar is addictive. The more we have, the more we want, and the more difficult it becomes to say no. And sugar is closely interlinked with our emotional histories in ways that fuel our cravings. In my own family history, sugar is closely linked with nurture, belonging, fun. It’s the approved mode of dealing with stress, the accepted ingredient of any party, the secret reward for any sacrifice.

Which is why, every Lent, I give up sugar and artifical sweeteners, completely. Which has come to mean I give up most processed foods as well, anything with sugar/fructose/dextrose/sucrose or that ubiquitious corn syrup in the top three ingredients. So no ketchup. (Sugar is ingredient # 2). No Honey Nut Os. (#2 again). No barbeque sauce.

Since I can’t drink coffee without sugar, I also give up coffee. The caffeine withdrawal headache lasts a day or two. The sugar withdrawal takes longer.

So is the point to punish myself? It feels that way for a week or two. Then something wonderful happens. I start to taste food in a new way. I find myself appreciating the subtler sweetness of real flavors: carrots, walnuts, bananas, red peppers. Raisins are almost too sweet. A single date is a delicious dessert. A cold glass of water has flavors I’d forgotten.

Sugar, in the quantities we normally eat, clouds our palates, shifts our blood chemistry, puts our energy levels on a roller coaster, and contributes to illness and emotional instability. Yet we consume more and more, searching for that happy high the soda and energy drink ads lure us toward.

Vineyards with a View of Auvers, Vincent Van Gogh, 1890, France

I find myself thinking of Isaiah 5, a beautiful, troubling song of accusation. It starts this way:

I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit. 

The prophet recounts God’s provision on Israel’s behalf, and Israel’s insistence on twisting the good gifts given, craving more and more, wanting things that are neither healthy nor wise, manipulating people and abusing the earth to fulfill desires that yield nothing but sorrow.   

Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.
Woe to those who are wise in their own eyes and clever in their own sight. 

Looking at old Hebrew words for “sweet,” I came across this word: towb. Occasionally translated “sweet,” it’s more often translated as good, pleasing, right. As with some of the other ancient Hebrew words I’ve come across lately, we have no word that stretches as wide as this one. Towb is good in the broadest sense: beautiful, agreeable to the senses, morally right, pleasing, pure, splendid, sweet, happy, delightful, precious, gracious, full of grace.

The “good” of Genesis 1 is towb: not just good as we understand it, but beautiful, sweet, delightful, harmonious, full of grace. Woe, says Isaiah, to those who lose their taste for towb, who substitute other things for the real sweetness we’ve been given.

This goes far beyond sugar. I recently spent the day with several preteen children who had decided that “good” and “fun” were defined in entirety by video screens. As we headed out of their house for the day, I suggested they leave laptop and handheld video game behind. They objected, strongly, and I cheerfully insisted: they were going to experience a screen-free day. And they would survive.

Summer Afternoon, Edward Dufner, 1916, New York

After a short stare-down, they grudgingly complied, and off we went, to a day that included some very different games, time at a local farm greeting goats and sheep, and a happy hour on a sunny spot of land between a pond and stream. I could see in them something like the process in me as sugar leaves my system and I learn again how to taste real food. They raced around the pond, looking for fish and frogs, foraged along the stream for smooth, round stones, then practiced skipping them across the open water. In the unseasonably warm weather, we all soaked up the sun, ending our time by the pond sitting and talking together on a bench, enjoying each others' company and the sweetness of the day. For a few minutes, we tasted towb together.

I tasted towb again just a few days ago when my husband and I sat together at the end of a long hard day, talking quietly before dinner over a small glass of chardonnay. He had been catching up from a week of travel, preparing for another season of travel and speaking in the weeks ahead, with some difficult complications thrown into the mix. I had spent the day registering voters at a nearby high school, then helping a friend in the middle of a challenging move.

Tired as we were, we were thankful for the grace to engage in the world in real and significant ways, for the chance to sit and reflect at the end of a busy day, for the sweetness of wine before a simple dinner. For towb: shared glimpses into God’s gifts of harmony, beauty and goodness.

We are masters at deception, lying to each other, but most often to ourselves. We tell ourselves we can have it all: sweet with no calories, non-stop video with no loss of life skills or real relationships, all the goods and services we want, with no impact on the globe, no harm to our own inner selves. We spend our time reaching for more: more food, more fun, more stuff, more money, telling ourselves just a little more will give us that sense of satisfaction we’ve been hungry for.

“Seek towb,” God tells us through his prophets: be still, slow down, deny yourself. That craving can’t be filled by sugar, or by anything else bought or sold on the market. We’re hungry for the gifts already given: goodness, harmony, graciousness, beauty, a sweetness that lingers, with no bitter aftertaste.

But we can’t taste it until our palates are clear, our hearts alert and quiet. Fasting is a good way to get there: fasting from sugar or tv, from wanting our own way, from the full closets, cupboards, schedules that dull our senses and scatter our attention. Slow down, be still, then taste and see. 

Taste and see that the Lord is towb: 

sweet, good, pleasing, gracious.

Blessed is the one who takes refuge in him.

Fear the Lord, you his saints, 

for those who fear him lack nothing.

The lions may grow weak and hungry,

but those who seek the Lord 

will not be lacking in towb:                                                                                                sweetness, harmony, grace, goodness, beauty. (Psalm 34)

This is the fourth in a Lenten series: 

     Looking toward Lent, 

     Lenten Sorrow : Lament and Nacham.  

     Lenten Silence: Charash, be Still

As always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Click on the  _commentslink below to open the comment box.

Anxious in America

I’ve been thinking about what gets in the way of generous giving, of hospitality, of other spiritual practices, and I keep coming back to the idea of anxiety.

I was struck, when I began in youth ministry, at the level of anxiety among kids: school anxiety, social anxiety, worry about going away on retreats without knowing exactly who would be there, exactly what would happen. Each year that anxiety seemed greater in the new sixth graders arriving, while the level of parental anxiety also seemed to grow in ways that seemed perplexing.

Last year our local youth network hosted an area therapist specializing in teens, and I wasn't surprised when she said that anxiety is the most significant mental health challenge she currently addresses. In fact, just google “anxiety epidemic”. It seems there’s general agreement that 21^st century America is the most anxiety-driven culture ever, with each generation of teens demonstrating greater levels of anxiety.

Here’s a summary from an ABC report just over a year ago:

“According to researchers, psychological problems among teens have been on the rise since the 1930s, and Americans' obsession with material gains and success may be to blame.

"We have become a culture that focuses more on material things and less on relationships," said lead researcher Jean Twenge, author of "Generation Me" and an associate professor of psychology at San Diego State University. Twenge said this focus is affecting mental health on a societal level. …

Drawing on self-reports from widely used psychological surveys, including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, researchers found that over time, more and more students are reporting symptoms of mental illness.

Eight-five percent of college students today fall above the average mental illness "score" of students in the 1930s and 1940s.

Students today report they feel significantly more isolated, misunderstood, and emotionally sensitive or unstable than in decades past. Teens were also more likely to be narcissistic, have low self-control, and express feelings of worry, sadness, and dissatisfaction with life.

Although self-reported symptoms would not be enough to diagnose mental illness in these populations, the authors suggest that changes in students' responses over time suggest a real change in mental health levels.

"These results suggest that as American culture has increasingly valued extrinsic and self-centered goals such as money and status, while increasingly devaluing community, affiliation, and finding meaning in life, the mental health of American youth has suffered.”

Walter Brueggemann, theologian and professor of Old Testament, and auther of some of the most challenging books I’ve read in the past year, has been discussing anxiety and culture for decades. In his most recent books, The Journey to the Common Good and Out of Babylon, he describes two competing kingdoms.

The “pharoic” kingdom, “Babylon”, is a place of policy rooted in nightmare, anxiety caused by fear of scarcity, no time or energy left for the common good. Economic exploitation is essential; suffering is inevitable.

“Sinai,” on the other hand, the “prophetic” kingdom, depends on God’s abundant provision, and demonstrates generosity, divine abundance, feasting, Sabbath rest from work. Deep trust in God’s goodness replaces epidemic anxiety.

Worldy wisdom, might and wealth are the “royal triad” of Babylon. God opposes these with his own triad of steadfast love, justice and righteousness. As Brueggemann notes: “One is a triad of death, and the other is a triad of life.”

Brueggemann is outspoken in his criticism of multinational corporations and what he calls “the national security state.”  Both depend for their survival on our anxiety: we need more and more weapons and products to protect us from assailants eager for our destruction and to fend off the dangers of modern life (balding, boredom, last-year’s styles). We are schooled in dissatisfaction, trained to mistrust those around us, sold an attitude of discontent, disparagement, and competition. No wonder kids are anxious. There is no safe place. The distant threat of holocaust is balanced by the immediate threat of strangers, and at every turn, in every context, someone is better, faster, has more of the right stuff. In Babylon, no one wins.

Is this new? Not really. As Brueggemann demonstrates, Babylon and Sinai have been in opposition since the days of Moses, through the days of the prophets, through the time of Christ, and on into the present day.

What may be new is how insidious, how inescapable, how monolithic the message of Babylon has become. As kids are more and more attuned to their culture, tied to it night and day through cell phones, ipods, netbooks, it becomes harder and harder to hear another voice. And even adults, listening to the nightly news, drawn in by party rhetoric and alarmist headlines, find it hard to believe in the kingdom of God, when the kingdom of this world is so starkly, unavoidably present.   

How to escape? Brueggemainn would argue that the first step is the prophetic voice, pointing to the reality we live in. But today, as always, we dismiss the voice that’s outside our current mental construct. In a highly politicized world, prophets are hard to hear.

Hear, then, the words that come across the ages, Jesus’ words from the sermon on the mount, in Matthew 6:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

 And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.  Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.  Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Yes, very familiar. We’ve heard that before. Easier said than done.

As we’ve recently seen, though, revolution starts in small, symbolic acts, and every act of defiance of the current regime encourages others to join the cause. Would it help to think in terms of defiance? Of opposing the regime? What does it mean to be an agent of the kingdom of God, in nonviolent resistance to the kingdom of this world? 

For me, these are small acts of defiance:

“Store up for yourselves treasures in heaven.”  Give generously. Give first, then budget what’s left.

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.” Try not to think about more “stuff.” Refuse to judge or be judged by material measures.

“The eye is the lamp of the body”. Limit media viewing: not just what, but how much. One or two tv shows a week, one or two movies. Devote the rest of the time to books, conversation, adventures outside.

"And why do you worry about clothes?" In an appearance-dominated culture, this is an area where I take defiance seriously. I choose not to dye my hair, spend hours on manicures, or wander in clothing stores unless I need to replace something.

I find, though, that one of the quickest ways to escape the claims of the culture around me is to fill my mind with the claims of Christ. Daily time in scripture and prayer is essential for the transforming of my mind, to bring anxiety under control, to remind me of where true power comes from.

Memorizing scripture is another route out of Babylon. With God’s word fresh inside me, I can hear much more clearly the words that don’t measure up, the lies that try to lead me into fear, or sell me things that will never satisfy. We’re told: "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." Memorization is one of the best tools I’ve found for allowing this kind of inner transformation.   

Brueggemann talks about neighborliness and community as paths into experience of God’s kingdom. I find this to be true, and am often stunned to see how much God has to show me through people who have seen God’s faithfulness in contexts far different from my own.

At every turn, obedience is the hardest, but most important means of stepping from the kingdom of this world into deeper experience of the kingdom of God. Jesus said “follow me.” Every step that brings me into closer alignment with his heart, his values, his kindness, grace, compassion, and welcome yields unexpected joy, peace, energy, insight. Obedience is inevitably the path to the abundance promised. Anxiety threatens each step of obedience, but with each courageous step, anxiety loses power, and before long, God’s peace sweeps anxiety away.

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Law – Grace – Giving

I’ve been puzzling over the statistics I mentioned in my last post – that the average church contribution is 2.52% of income. A recent Christianity Today article suggests that church contributions are even lower – 2.43%, but evangelical Christians are giving a bit more – 4%.

I’m never sure what definition is used for “evangelical.” If it means someone with a high regard for Biblical authority and the teachings of Jesus, it’s a bit perplexing that the giving would be so low.

I know in some of the churches I’ve attended there’s a discomfort with talk of tithing: it sounds legalistic. And we’re done with the law, right?

Except, in Matthew 5, just after talking about being salt and light, Jesus says, as I noted last week:  “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven." “

So is it law, or grace? And does God want a consistent amount of our money, or an occasional generous impulse?

The best discussion of this I’ve seen is in Erwin Raphael McManus’ An Unstoppable Force: daring to become the church God had in mind. I first picked his book up ten years ago, and have reread it about five times since. It’s one of those books that has repeated underlines, stars in the margins, and the pages are starting to show some wear.

The last chapter is maybe the best: "A Radical Minimum Standard." Discussing the ten commandments, McManus says “They are not the standards by which the angels live. They are not God’s attempt to pull us up beyond the human into the spiritual. The Ten Commandments are the lowest standard of humane living. . .The Ten Commandments don’t call us to the extraordinary spiritual life; they call us to stop dehumanizing one another. The law is the minimum of what it means to be human.”

From there McManus goes on to discuss the relationship between grace and law: grace gives us the ability to live beyond the law: “Grace deals with the generosity of God, his gracious work in the hearts of those who would turn to him. Yet many times grace is misunderstood or even cheapened . . . Grace has been seen as the liberty to live beneath the law rather than the capacity to soar above the law.”

McManus describes a conversation with someone attending a new members’ seminar at his church:

I was sitting on the hearth of the fireplace with an individual who was considering becoming part of    Mosaic. He turned to me and asked if Mosaic was a law church or grace church. It was pretty obvious to me that he was setting a trap, so I thought I would go ahead and jump in. I said, “Well, of course we’re a grace church.” “I thought so,” he replied. “I was concerned that you were one of those law churches that told people they had to tithe.”

“Oh, no,” I said. We’re a grace church. The law says, ‘Do not murder.’ Grace says you don’t even have to have hatred in your heart; you can love your enemy. The law says, ‘Do not commit adultery,’ but grace says you don’t even have to have lust in your heart for another woman. The laws says, ‘Give 10 percent,’ but grace always takes us beyond the law. You can give 20, 30, or 40 percent. We would never stop you from living by grace.”He looked at me and said, “Oh” – a profoundly theological response. (McManus, An Unstoppable Forc)

When we were first married, we read Ron Sider’s Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, where he described something he called the “graduated tithe,” an intentional strategy to start with giving 10%, then increase the percentage as income increased. He’s offered details on this in several subsequent books, and the idea has been discussed and shared in various contexts.   

More recently, Rick Warren, of Saddleback Church and The Purpose Driven Life, has been talking about “reverse tithing,” giving a higher and higher percentage away until he’s living on 10% and giving away 90%.

We’ve never been as mathematically precise as Ron Sider, and we’ve never made the kind of income Rick Warren is currently enjoying, but we’ve always had a goal of giving more than 10%. Gross or net? We started with net, then were convicted, fairly early in our marriage, that God’s percentage should come before the government’s, and shifted to gross.

We’ve had set-backs along the way, including down-sized salaries, job uncertainty, and lots of college bills. At our best, we were close to 14%. Now? Closer to 12%, and hoping to find a way to grow that.

Why give numbers? To say it can be done. It’s worth doing. Even with ministry salaries. In an uncertain economy.

In 2 Corinthians 8, Pauls sasy: “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will also reap bountifully. So let each one give as he purposes in his heart, not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may have an abundance for every good work.”

I’d heard the phrase “cheerful giver” more times than I can count. It always set my teeth a little on edge. I don’t like instructions to be “cheerful.” It feels a little forced.

But the following verse? When someone showed it to me a few years ago, I was stunned: all grace? all sufficiency? in all things? That’s a lot of “all”. 

Here’s how I understand that verse: If we give, generously, bountifully, well beyond the letter of the law – not just in money, but in time, in creativity, in love, in hospitality – God will give us everything we need. For every good work. Every time.

Impressive promise, but I’d have to say, in thirty-three years of marriage, we’ve found it to be true.

Now may He who supplies seed to the sower, and bread for food, supply and multiply the seed you have sown and increase the fruits of your righteousness, while you are enriched in everything for all liberality, which causes thanksgiving through us to God.  2 Corinthians 9:10

Please join the conversation. Your thoughts and experiences in this are welcome. Look for the "__ comments" link below to leave your comments. 

Mary's Song

Magnificat, Marice Denis, 1890s, France

I’ve always enjoyed reading Luke’s account of Mary and Elizabeth in Luke 1. It’s one of those little advent side-stories that reveals far more than we take time to hear.

Mary, pregnant, unmarried, fresh from her shattering encounter with Gabriel, hurried off to the hills to see her much older relative Elizabeth. Elizabeth, past the time of childbearing, is pregnant with the soon-to-be-born John, the John who will become the prophet John the Baptist, the John predicted to her husband by Gabriel.

When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.  In a loud voice she exclaimed: “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.

That little paragraph stirs up so many themes:

1.      Elizabeth’s obedience to the Spirit’s prompting. She sounds a little out there. How does she know Mary will respond well to what she says? Yet Elizabeth’s obedience in sharing what she was given to say deepened Mary’s own faith and obedience, and is handed down to us, all these years later, as an example of the Spirit’s action.

2.      The importance of rich, encouraging friendship among women (and men) of very different ages. Who is reinforcing the anti-Christian idea that we should only be friends with people our own age? How many times has God spoken through me to people much older? Much younger? How many times has God used courageous much younger people, faithful much older people, to nurture and encourage my faith?

3.      The spiritual liveliness of an unborn child. If John, in his mother’s womb, could respond to his unborn savior, Jesus, what does that tell us about when life begins? About the spiritual nurture of pre-born children? About the potential spiritual responsiveness of even our smallest family members? Interesting to consider.

But the part of the story I’ve been considering comes next, Mary’s song of praise, often called “the Magnificat.”

My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant.
From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me—
holy is his name.
His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.
He has performed mighty deeds with his arm;
he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts.
He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.
He has filled the hungry with good things
but has sent the rich away empty. 

I’ve always been struck by the prophetic beauty of Mary’s song. Clearly these words go beyond her own understanding, as prophetic words always do. They point to God’s faithfulness across generations, and the power of his plan.

But there’s an edge to this song, as there’s an edge to any prophetic message. As God extends his mercy, he scatters the proud. As he lifts the humble, he brings down rulers. As he fills the hungry, he sends the rich away empty.

I’ve been reading Walter Brueggemann’s The Prophetic Imagination, on the strong recommendation of our son. His insights into the announcement of the kingdom of God shed light on Mary’s song:

The coming of Jesus meant the abrupt end of things as they were. . . . But surely implicit in the announcement [of the kingdom] is the counterpart that present kingdoms will end and be displaced.... The announcement carries within it a harsh criticism of all those powers and agents of the present order. His message was to the poor, but others kept them poor and benefited from their poverty. He addressed the captives, but others surely wanted that arrangement unchanged. He named the oppressed, but there are never oppressed without oppressors.

Mary’s song of joy and praise was sung from the margins, on behalf of all those on the margins who wait with joy for the coming king. But her song was a threat to those in places of power: to Herod, to the Pharisees, to the rich, the rulers, the proud. In her song, Mary pictured a new reality.  According to Brueggemann, that’s what prophets do: help us see, and grieve, the present order, and help us imagine, look toward, believe possible, act in harmony with, the new reality that’s been promised.

Brueggemann returned to this theme in a later article (The Liturgy of Abundance, The Myth of Scarcity):

As a little child Jesus must often have heard his mother, Mary, singing. And as we know, she sang a revolutionary song, the Magnificat--the anthem of Luke's Gospel. She sang about neighborliness: about how God brings down the mighty from their thrones and lifts up the lowly; about how God fills the hungry with good things and sends the rich away empty. Mary did not make up this dangerous song. She took it from another mother, Hannah, who sang it much earlier to little Samuel, who became one of ancient Israel's greatest revolutionaries. Hannah, Mary, and their little boys imagined a great social transformation. Jesus enacted his mother's song well. Everywhere he went he broke the vicious cycles of poverty, bondage, fear and death; he healed, transformed, empowered and brought new life. Jesus' example gives us the mandate to transform our public life.

If the genealogical record in Matthew 1 is true, if the angel’s message to Joseph is true, if the coming of the savior, Jesus Christ, is true, how do we live that out? What does it cost us? How do the patterns of our daily life reflect this radical reality?

We’ll be singing lots of Christmas songs in the next week. Whose songs are they? Whose reality do they represent?

As I tally my Christmas spending, I find myself wondering: Am I one of the rich Mary sang about, one of those who will be brought low? Am I among the proud? Do I benefit from oppression? Do I quietly support the current regime, and turn from the oppressed?

As I plan my time for the week ahead, I wonder: how can I live more faithfully as a visible witness of a new kingdom, when I’m so firmly entrenched in the old one?

And what am I hoping for? That’s the question I find myself asking, as I prepare for Christmas, write my Christmas cards, finish my shopping, pull out my cookie recipes. At the end of the day, at the beginning of the day, what am I hoping for?

And what am I doing, now, to make that hope visible?

Generational Sabbath

Sixteen years ago the Kuniholm family gathered for a two-day Thanksgiving celebration, a combined family reunion/ lock-in at a church where one family member was pastor.  That initial event turned into a long run of bi-annual Thanksgiving gatherings, with wheel-chair races, impromptu plays, endless rounds of hide-and-seek, and plenty of amusing stories I’m not at liberty to share.

When job changes made the church gathering space unavailable, the tradition faltered, but the discovery of an affordable and available retreat center opened new possibilities. This year, from Thanksgiving until the Saturday after, twenty-five Kuniholms gathered at the Welcoming Place, a simple, beautifully-executed, environmentally-friendly Mennonite center.

Dan Allender, in Sabbath, says “To practice eternity on the Sabbath, we must give way to curiousity, coziness, and care.” It’s hard to explore those in a fast-paced holiday dinner, with half the crowd worrying about gravy, half wondering which team is winning, one eye on the weather, kids shy around relatives they haven’t seen in months - or years. Spread the time a little, though, and much deeper connections become possible.

When we started our Thanksgiving gatherings, we had one set of grandparents, four siblings and their spouses, and seven grandchildren. We’ve added five more grandchildren ,and one grandchild has married, adding another member of the “cousin” generation  and two small great-grandchildren, just two years behind the youngest of the cousins

Pie is a strong family tradition – and we had twelve: pie for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No one counted the pots of coffee, but there were many. Hide and seek for the small ones gave way to impromptu charades, then a silly sliding game across the radiant concrete floor. Fast-paced Dutch Blitz, contentious Settlers of Catan, Set, ping-pong and carpet pool kept older cousins and parents occupied, along with excursions to the Lancaster market and to an area rec center.

There is something about multigenerational play that helps create a sense of belonging, that lowers barriers between generations and creates shared laughter and memories. After dinner one night, one of our teens suggested a game he’d learned in his youth group, and soon we were laughing and sending crazy signs around the room.

More memorable than the games, though, were the conversations. It was exciting to hear our oldest family members sharing new experiences in contemplative prayer, encouraging to hear the stories of God’s financial provision through the past two difficult years, exciting to hear new directions God has taken some of us, to share our own sense of what God is asking, and to hear that affirmed in the responses of others.

What a luxury to have time for questions beyond the obvious. We had time to ask “What books have been shaping you and your thinking?” “What’s next on your reading list?” Time to ask “What do you want to accomplish in the year ahead?” A surprise question prompted good conversation: “If you had to try a new job – for a year – and it didn’t matter if you were good at it, or prepared, what would you like to try?”

Much has been written about how today’s adolescents are segregated and cut off from older generations, and the damage done as they try to navigate life without the example of an extended community of elders. Chap Clark’s Hurt explores this in depth, observing “We are a culture that has forgotten how to be together,” to the great harm of our children.

But the harm extends beyond children. All of us need to be reminded of our value in God’s larger family, and all of us need to see, in the lives of those we come to know well, the continuing work of maturity.  We are not alone in this walk of faith; as the generations are woven together, God’s care, purpose, and provision become clearer.

Our family gathering was one form of generational Sabbath, and treasured more deeply because we weren’t sure those gatherings would continue. I’ve also experienced that kind of Sabbath on some of our youth retreats. Youth ministry, at its best, can provide that same expansive opportunity to see God at work across generations. Our spring retreats often offered a similar sense of play, care, gratitude, excitement. Our legendary Golden Fleece games allowed adults and teens to face each other in play, while ample free time allowed more casual groupings of older and younger adults, college students, older and younger teens. In large and small groups, as we shared our stories, we could see the ongoing work of God in different personalities, different stages of life. And as we shared repeated retreats together, we could look back at moments when we had seen God move powerfully, and look ahead to what he would continue to do.

In an odd way, our mission trips to Kensington, an inner city neighborhood in Philly, have provided generational Sabbath as well. I was most conscious of this this past summer, knowing the trip would be my last. I went into it feeling physically tired and spiritually drained. I had just started reading Sabbath, and was wrestling with some of Allender’s ideas: division surrenders to shalom, destitution surrenders to abundance, despair surrenders to joy.  I began to pray that God would allow me to experience the trip as Sabbbath, not sure what that would look like.

What I saw and experienced surprised me. For the team, the week, despite the work and challenging circumstances, provided a kind of multigenerational fellowship rarely experienced. Team members from their sixties (the vicar of our partner church) down to early teens played games together (Apples to Apples - endlessly), told stories, worshipped together late into the evening. We shared uncertainties, prayed about challenges, told stories of our own walk with Christ, discussed what we were reading and thinking.

Each evening, from five to seven, the team went into the neighborhood to create a Sabbath space for children, teens, parents, grandparents. The fenced church yard became a place of shalom, safety, fun, for everyone who gathered. As we shared, from our different ages and our own unique experiences, our view of God’s goodness at work in us, and in the world, as we shared our knowledge of what God is doing, now, and our hope of what he will do, tomorrow, next week, on into the future, we were all enriched, strengthened, encouraged, fed.

“Sabbath calls us to act against division and destitution – defying it through the celebration of peace and abundance. We are invited to write the script for our character each week, to act on the stage of Sabbath a new play of redemption. We are to pretend, to play as if the new heavens and earth have dawned and all despair and death have been swallowed into the glory of the resurrection. For Christians the Sabbath is the day we play in the light of untrammeled freshness.” Allender

During our trip, instead of using my daily “rest and reflection” time for rest, planning, weary prayer, I found myself reflecting joyfully on God’s goodness, and writing poetry for the first time in years. The challenges hadn’t changed – my perspective had. Which is what Sabbath is about: taking time to shift perspective. Taking time to see from God’s point of view, rather than my own. Taking time to sit with others, older, younger, further along in the journey, just starting.  Taking time to listen for the cries of justice, the whispers of blessing. Asking God to make us more fully alive in fellowship with each other.

A few Kensington Sabbath poems:

Justice is this ache,

This lingering limp – this –

Silence, echoing.

God breathes, a breeze stirs

Cool air from the river, sweet

Whisper of blessing.

I will pray . . .

I will

For hope beyond this corner bar,

For joy that lifts

Beyond the salsa beat

And rains

Like kindness

Down on flat tar roofs,

For peace, a peace beyond mere calm,

A peace that sings

That blooms

That shimmers off the streets

And shines

Like sun

On sun-starved skin.

I’ll pray.

But if I pray, good God,

But if I stay

Alive enough

To care

To hope

To wait

Then meet me here

Right here

Beneath the broken light

Here, on this narrow strip

Of rubbled pavement

Meet

And teach

My tired

Feet

To

Dance