Prayer for Pentecost: Rooted in Love

Today is my oldest daughter's fortieth birthday. We celebrated last night with a pizza gathering at Charlestown Farm, the beautiful farm where we buy a share every summer. We meet there on Thursday afternoons to collect root crops and greens from the cool lower barn, pick herbs,  strawberries, and flowers in the gently rolling fields, and enjoy the swings hung from trees along the hillside.

Last night, while we baked pizza in a homemade brick oven and watched purple martins twirl across the recently planted fields, the farm family and friends gathered across the road commemorating the life of the founder, Marvin Andersen, who died a few weeks before. His investment in Charlestown Farm continues to bring health and joy to his family, his community, all who share the fruit and beauty of his farm. 

Today is also Pentecost Sunday. My younger grandson will be baptized today, with our extended family gathering in church, in person, for the first time in over a year. He's already part of the family, but marking that more formally today: part of our family, part of our church family, part of the borderless family of God.

I've been reading lately in Ephesians. I memorized Ephesians 3 long ago, but am newly aware of how tightly connected the strands of this letter are woven. Paul's repetitions of  "therefore" and "for this reason" tie the entire letter together, almost as one thought about unity in Christ. Arbitrary chapter divisions obstruct the connections Paul was trying to make: 

But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. . . . 

Therefore, remember . . . now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility . . . 

Therefore, you are longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God's people and also members of his household, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. And in him you too are being built to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. 

For this reason . . .  I, Paul, became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God’s grace given me through the working of his power . . . . I ask you, therefore, not to be discouraged because of my sufferings for you, which are your glory.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

The ideas are connected, but they also speak of deep connections in all of heaven and earth, far beyond our understanding. 

I've been starting my days, now that the weather has warmed, outside on my patio. I read, think, journal, then pause to watching the robins enjoy my birdbath. The yard is full of the sweet scent of locust tree blooms. The bugs drawn to those blooms attract cedar waxwings and great crested flycatchers. I can't always see them, high up in the branches, but I can hear them, chattering and calling. 

See it or not, admit it or not, we are part of a mighty web of interconnected nature. The air we breathe is a gift from the green plants around us. The food we eat is a gift of the soil and sun. My morning coffee is grown on hillsides far from my home, harvested by hands I will never see. 

Paul's "therefores" weave it all closer: this is not a world of disparate parts, of aliens and strangers, little islands on our own, answering to no one. We are woven into interconnected families, all rooted and established in love, all bound together by a gracious power far beyond our own. 

I sometimes listen to people pronouncing judgement, dividing the world into "them" and "us," and wonder: have you read those words of Ephesians? Have you let that reality sink into your heart, and soul, and bones?

I sit on my patio and listen to God's love singing around me: bird families, bug families, woven together with plant families and our own neighborhood human families.

I sat on the hillside yesterday with my children and grandchildren, my daughter's oldest friend, my daughter's husband's parents, and reflected on the ways God weaves us into families. I thought of the ways we become rooted and established in love, over years, decades, llfetimes. Sometimes we catch glimpses of that love, but we will never fully grasp how wide and long and high and deep it is.

Watching my family, I see and enjoy each one. And I see and enjoy their care for each other: my son walking with his nephew around the distant fields. My older grandson swinging in the trees with my younger grandson, laughing. One daughter spending her day gathering flowers for her sister's party. The childhood friend driving hours to spend the evening with the family, remembering together. 

God loves us all more than any of that. Enjoys us more than the most loving parent enjoys the most devoted child. Delights in our care for each other, our care for those near us, our care for those farther away.

The real work of the Holy Spirit, I'm beginning to see, is love: giving us love beyond our own, and helping us see and share that love. 

"The Lord's holy people," I've come to believe, are not the "chosen," the sole recipients of love. We're the ones who have begun to see how amazingly expansive God's love is. We're the ones who have begun to live in that love as dearly loved children. And we're the ones who have begun to treat those around us, those far from us, even those difficult or hostile or completely foreign to us, as dearly loved children as well

Here's the awareness I pray for us today: that we will see how much we are loved, but also how much others are loved. All of us: near and far. We are not foreigners and strangers. We are not members of different tribes, distant households. We are not divided between the loved and unloved, those within and those without God's love and care. God's infinite love includes us all, surrounds us all. Every piece of creation, every person ever made, is part of this mystery, made alive to us by the working of the Spirit:  

I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord's holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge - that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

Nurturing Connections

As of Thursday, I'm now fully vaccinated.

And as of Thursday, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky announced: “Anyone who is fully vaccinated can participate in indoor and outdoor activities, large or small, without wearing a mask or physical distancing. If you are fully vaccinated, you can start doing the things that you had stopped doing because of the pandemic.”

So last night, meeting members of our family for outdoor pizza, as we've been doing in good weather since the pandemic started, we gave them all hugs.

This morning, my husband Whitney and I attended church indoors together, for the first time since March 2020. It was wonderful to be in church again, to see people I hadn't seen since our outdoor worship ended late last fall. It was wonderful to pray together, to take communion, to feel the words of worship wash over us.

The pews had blue painters tape, marking where to sit to maintain social distance. We did our best to respect that. 

Most parishioners were wearing masks, as were we. A few were not.

The worship team sang. Most parishioners didn't.

Most took communion. A few did not.

Does any of that matter? Is anyone keeping score?

It's been a hard, strange year for churches. Changing guidelines forced creative response, investment in new technologies, hard conversations. Divided attitudes on everything from masks to electoral outcomes made some church sanctuaries feel unsafe or unwelcoming. Friends report leaving churches where the conflict became too destructive. Some pastors we know are exhausted: whatever they do, whatever they say, there's someone just waiting to attack. 

Our own church seems to have weathered the storm fairly well, but I find myself wondering, and praying, for the church writ large. Stats show that among younger generations, engagement with church in any way is dropping fast. Emotional distress is rising: anxiety, depression, loneliness.

If we're the body of Christ, are we a healthy body?

Last week I wrote about the book my daughter gave me: Finding the Mother Tree. I've been reading it, puzzling over descriptions of mycelium and mycorrhizae: the underground network of microbes connecting trees, plants, and fungi. When those connections are healthy, young plants thrive. When connections are lost, young plants are at risk. 

During my years of youth ministry, I became aware of Search Institute's Developmental Assets® Framework, 20 external resources young people need in order to nurture 20 internal strengths. Several I spent time thinking and strategizing about:

Young person receives support from three or more non-parent adults.
Young person perceives that adults in the community value youth. 

It seemed to me then that if kids knew and trusted at least a few adults within the church, that would help build an understanding of personal faith at different stages of maturity and provide a future resource when crises of faith emerged.

I've learned since that that need doesn't stop when teens graduate from high school or college. I remember with thanks the warm older adults I knew during my first years after college. I give thanks for Bible studies I was part of where Christians just a bit older, sometimes decades older, shared their faith, listened to my worries, regularly prayed for my concerns.

One challenge of this past year has been that the informal rhythms of relationship our church worked hard to develop were interrupted when we moved to virtual worship. Will we find ways to reclaim what was lost?

In many US churches, demographics find themselves siloed: teens; college students; young single adults; young parents and children; older single adults; older couples. 

I need prayer from people older than me: from people who have weathered the first years of retirement, who have lost spouses, who have learned to move slowly with dignity and grace. 

I need insight from people younger than me: young women still bumping their heads against invisible ceilings. Young moms struggling to balance expectations and demands and too little time. 

We all need conversation and friendship from people unlike us: older, younger, single, married, working hard in tough careers, learning new hobbies, processing illness and loss and change. 

The pandemic shattered some of those connections. 

So did the harsh partisan climate we've been living through.

I'm okay, but are there others who aren't? 

Digging through Search Institute materials this afternoon, reminding myself that nurturing relationships take time and intention, I found a resource, A Coronavirus Checklist for parents and teachers, one I'll be using as a prayer prompt in the days ahead, not just as I think of kids in my life, but beyond that. We all need someone to express care, challenge growth, provide support, share power and expand possibilities, no matter how old we are.

And we all, always, need prayer: an essential part of that invisible network of communication and resource. Not starting with us, not ending with us. Fueled, always, by love far beyond our own. 

Becoming a Mother Tree

One of my daughter's gave me a perfect Mother's Day gift: Finding the Mother Tree, Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest, by Suzanne Simard. I heard her on an interview this week, so was thrilled to be given the book, although I'm not quite sure when I'll find time to read it.

The book is part memoir of Simard's career in forestry, part exploration of new theories about how forests work. Her thesis: plants communicate through an underground mycorrhizal network and share resources that flow from hub trees, "mother trees," to places of greatest need.  Forests with healthy older trees, can adjust more easily to environmental stressors. With multiple hub trees, overlapping networks of connection make a forest more resilient.

I haven't yet read the book, and even if I had, wouldn't be able to give the breadth of depth of her research in just a few short paragraphs. What I heard, as I listened to the interview, was a reflection of what I know to be true in the human forests around me. Urban neighborhoods with a strong Mother Tree in place are healthier, and happier. Churches blessed with wise, generous Mother Trees can withstand stresses and nurture younger believers better than those without. 

My own grandmother was a Mother Tree. Elda Capra was fifth of 9 children in a poor rural family, ran away at 13, married at 16. She came to faith listening to a itinerant evangelist on a street corner in Oklahoma sometime in her early twenties, when she was already the mother of three small boys. In an angry, abusive marriage, she immersed herself in scripture and prayer. By her sixties she had become a hub of nurture for dozens of families who looked to her for prayer, advice and wisdom. I watched from the edges of that as her own years of struggle were turned to grace for other families in their own times of stress. 

Another Mother Tree was Doris Neilson, director of the camp where I worked in my college years. She had lost a child in a camp riflery accident, yet continued her camp work without reserve. In a time and context when so many others were telling young women, "No, you can't," her message was always, "you can." That message still ripples through the lives of so many of us. When everyone else insisted we follow, Doris saw us as leaders, and showed us what that looked like.

My mother-in-law, Althea Kuniholm, is another Mother Tree. Now 92, she is still writing poetry, still prompting those around her to read, and think, and talk, still inventing games and investing time and love in children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. 

Of course Mother Trees don't need to be mothers. They don't need to be women. They DO need to be wiling to put give more than they get, to listen well, to share beyond their own control. 

The image Jesus used wasn't of a tree, but a vine. Our sermon last week was from John 15, a passage I memorized as a kid because I found it so comforting: 

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 

Our rector, Richard Morgan, told of his experience seeing the the Great Vine of Hampton Court, the palace of Henry VIII built in the early 1500s. The vine was planted in 1768 and is now the largest and oldest in the world. It yields over 600 pounds of grapes a year. 

Richard focused on pruning, an important part of that passage in John, and of that metaphor. But my interest has always been in that sense of connection: if you remain in me, and I in you, you will bear much fruit. 

The idea of hub trees takes the metaphor to another level, one that resonates with my own experience of prayer and time spent with others: when we remain in Christ, grace flows from us to others. When we stay open to connections, available to others, open to God's leading, invisible networks of mercy draw us closer together and others, more fragile, more lonely, find shelter in an ever expanding network of care. Then we ourselves, in our times of sadness, or need, or frailty, find comfort and care in that same network we've helped to nurture. 

For some, Mother's Day can be a lonely day, a day of sadness, regret, "if only", "I wish." We don't all have warm relationships with mothers or children. For some, the day can be a reminder of how very alone we feel.

But we are all part of an invisible network. We all draw sustenance, in some way, from others. We all can become part of those channels of grace for someone more fragile than ourselves. 

I have much more to learn about Mother Trees. More to learn about how that might apply to my own small backyard woods, to my own human networks. I have more to learn about becoming a healthy Mother Tree myself. 

But today, I celebrate the Mother Trees in my life, the networks I live in, the grace every part of those networks share with me. 

Thanks for being part of that. Happy Mother's Day. 

WHO is my neighbor?

I had my second Moderna vaccination on Thursday, in a very organized, well-run mass vaccination site two counties away. I was grateful to the volunteers staffing the desks, grateful to the recently-retired pharmacist who cheerfully jabbed my arm, grateful to the medical researchers and production managers and every person along the way from idea to inception to injection. 

This week, while looking forward to that moment on my calendar, I was also listening to news about a COVID outbreak in India. On NPR I heard stories of overwhelmed emergency rooms, listened to a reporter describe the constant sound of sirens in the streets of Mombia. Early in the week there were desperate please for US intervention, then of President Biden's conversation with India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the promise to provide oxygen and vaccination production supplies on the same day the US agreed to share up to 60 million doses of AstraZeneca doses with undersupplied countries. 

For me, one of the emotional challenges of this pandemic has been the pressing awareness of great need and of my own inability to help.

There are small things I can do, for family and friends who are struggling, or for groups in need beyond my easy reach. 

But the need has been huge and my reach has been in many ways smaller than usual: I can't have friends bring their kids to spend the weekend. I can't come hang out for the day to give. young mom a break. Of course there are things I can do, ways I engage, yet in the face of huge need, it all seems too small.  

I attend the Church of the Good Samaritan, a congregation that takes seriously the call to be a compassionate neighbor. Our logo is a graphic rendering of a statue that lived for years in the church entry. I walked by it almost daily during the eleven years I worked as youth pastor. That call to be a good samaritan is visceral to me: if you are in pain, I am in pain. I believe with all my heart: we all thrive when we all thrive, and only then. We all rest when we all can rest. Not until then. 

Those values were baked into me long before we landed at the Church of the Good Samaritan. My childhood family was the family in need, four kids and a grandmother who worked for minimum wage, always needing rides, resources, help of any kind. The churches we attended were under-resourced themselves but never failed to pick us up, get us where we needed to go. They provided shelter when we would have been homeless. They made sure we went to camp every summer so our grandmother could work.

Part of the emotional exhaustion of this past year has been the challenge in every direction: neighbors in need everywhere I look.

Who hasn't struggled with anxiety, isolation, fear of illness, grief at the divided political discourse?

Add the complicated challenges around racial justice, unjust policing, inequitable health care, COVID lockdowns colliding with mass incarceration. 

I have always found it a challenge to stay open to the pain of the world without becoming incapacitated by complexity. I'm good at compartmentalizing: putting hard emotions into cupboards in my heart and mind, to consider when the time is right, to hold until there's space to resolve. But what if every cupboard is full? What if every complex emotion is stashed away because there's no way, ever, to resolve them?

In 2016, I wrote about a fractured time and a sermon on the Good Samaritan. Rereading that post this morning, I find it speaks to me. It reminds me of what I've learned since then, and what I still need to learn.

Rather than pull pieces that fit today's context, I'm sharing it here. A sermon to myself.