Day 7...Bed Rest

It has been an up and down week.  Friday I had some scary contracting, which only helped me to take this seriously.  I would say, every other day is good, every other day is not so great.  In some ways, that was the pattern for the entire pregnancy - half the time I felt pretty normal, half the time I felt like crap.  The hardest part of all of this is not the lying around, not the doing nothing - I am beginning to embrace that.  The hardest part is trying not to freak out at every tightening of the stomach, every pain in the stomach, every symptom I have never had before and suddenly am diagnosing it as end of the line.  I am not really sure how to manage this anxiety.  I have tried meditation tapes, and I decided I will do at least one prayer podcast per day, so maybe some of that will help.  Mostly, I am in my head, and it is creating more anxiety than need be.  I psych myself out, and then I start to create symptoms that I am not sure are really there.  It is totally possible (and so many people are witness to this) to make this last a while - weeks, maybe even months.  But something in my head is not able to trust that it will last.  And I think, if I really want it to last, I need to get it in my head that it is going to last.  That it is possible and can and maybe even will happen.  John's cousin Sara sent me a verse from Romans - "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him".  I think maybe that need to be my mantra for a bit.  I need trust and peace and joy, and I feel like I am lacking them all.  We'll see what tomorrow brings.  Prayers for a peaceful evening with good sleep.

So I am officially on Bed Rest

Pregnant with twins - 29 weeks along - and on bed rest due to pre-term labor.  The doctors have managed to stop contractions with medication and now we just wait and see how  long they are willing to stay in there.  I think three weeks is a minimum, so hopefully until the end of the year.

It has been an interesting and humbling experience.  First of all, I already know it is difficult for me to sit still or do nothing.  And yet, as I had contractions last night for a bit (and was scared out of my mind for a few hours), I am a bit more ready to try and do just that.  Secondly, it is amazing how many people have stepped up to help out - with meals, with childcare, with cleaning.  We have been blessed to receive a gift of a housekeeper until the babies come, which is amazing.  And I think we will have meals for the foreseeable future.  It's only been two days, but I feel like I can do this.  We'll see...that's why I thought I would try blogging about it.  See how I feel in a week, two weeks...a month.  I have many stories of real people who have made it ten weeks, so it is possible.  I am hoping.  Until then...rest and following doctor's orders.

Lent 3 - Meditation

Lent always gets me.  Right around the third or fourth week of Lent, I remember how much it affects me.  I have lived through the church seasons for 35 years, and I am still surprised when the heaviness of Lent hits me.  This has been a particularly difficult Lent - or at least it seems like that.  And I feel so incredibly unsafe - insecure - paranoid.  I feel like the darkness and demonic is swirling around me, touching me, tempting me to join...giving me the taste I do not want.  I shake my head, I try so desperately to walk away - run away - and yet, am pulled back again and again.  I want anything but to be thrown back into the darkness, and yet I seem to step closer and closer.  What I would give to feel safe - inwardly and outwardly.  What I would give to taste the sweetness and not the bitterness...the sugar and not the salt.  Keep me, O God, outwardly and inwardly safe.

Lent 2 - Meditation

I have felt astray for a long time.  Astray from so many things.  And I have my moments when I beg for anyone to be gracious to me.  I don't doubt God  is gracious, I just wish some times someone here on earth would as well.

Lent 1 Meditation

It isn't often that we offer our first fruits to God...let alone give thanks.  Sure, we may bow our heads at the table, offer our gratitude for the close parking space or successful maneuvering around the slow going traffic.  Thanks overflow for triumphs in sports, individual achievements at televised award shows.  But, remembering to thank God every day...for everything we have...even the things we don't want to have see or be around?  That's not particularly natural, at least not in recent culture.  And I think it's to our detriment.  What would the world be like if we did offer our thanks to God...daily, hourly, at each moment?  How would my life be different?  How would it be the same?

But even offering thanks is easier than offering anything to God above and before all else.  There is the saying that our offering to our church should be the first check we write, rather than the last - or giving what we have left over after we pay everything else the world demands of us.  Many of us try to do that each month.  But the same goes for all in our life, not only our money.  We are called to offer the best we have to God - our thoughts, our emotions, our physical being, our health and our "things" and our everything - before we give the rest away to the demanding world around us.  But the world seems so much more demanding than God does - so much more in your face.  Sure it would be great to wake up and have a quiet time to pray - to offer my time to God before anything else.  But then my son wakes up and the coffee needs to be made and clothes need to be changed and showers to be had and breakfast to be eaten and then I'm out the door before I can even remember to say anything at all to God, let alone something nice. And that's just one day.  Compound that for weeks and months and year and even the idea of waking up early to pray slips away into the impossible dream and life continues as stressfully and hectically as ever. 

So for today, I will offer my FIRST FRUITS to God in THANKS for all he has given me - as a tiny little token for the grace he sheds on me every moment of every day.

Stranger

It has been so interesting, living here for the past three and a half years. Some days I just wonder...what was I thinking moving here? And other days, I look out my back porch at the rising sun and the deer tip-toeing through my back yard and I think...ahhhh. Lately, I have really felt like an outsider. I crave a friend who thinks like I do - who cares about politics and wants to talk about it - who doesn't constantly bitch about how stupid her husband is - who isn't competing to make sure her child is better than mine, her parenting vastly superior to mine. I talk about things that are important to me and people just stare at me. I share things about my life and people move on to other subjects. I get emotional when people hurt my feelings and I am a moody bitch. I suppose that last one has followed me from childhood, really. I was at my neighbor's house, seeing their new baby, and casually she said, "do you like our bear?" I looked over to where she was pointing, and, lo and behold, there was a black bear...stuffed and placed nicely in a lovely forest setting, scratching a small tree, and resting gently on a bed of pebbles. "Yes, i said...it's very nice." What else do you say? I have seriously never been asked that before. And that's just one of many moments...there will be more, I am sure. That's what this is about now. My experience as a stranger in a strange land.

11B Year B

I am always amazed at the way young children approach the world - they can talk to anyone; they get a kick out of everything; and they look forward to learning new things. I don’t know when we stop coming at life like that, or when we start to realize that he is different or she is not like me - somewhere in elementary school, I am sure. And it very quickly morphs into distorted and ugly ways of distinguishing people - name calling and cliques, and being afraid of new things. And while we may not worry so much any more about who is a nerd or who sits at the cool table, and while we may be more subtle or internal about it, we still find ways to distinguish ourselves from others and to approach the world in fear.

A lifetime of knowing what’s good and what’s bad; who’s in and who’s out.

In the early church, and when the letter to the Ephesians was written, there was a clear division between the in’s and the out’s - the Jews and the Gentiles. The Jews, referred to as “the circumcision”, were God’s chosen people - Israel, whom God led through the desert to the Promised Land. The Gentiles, the “uncircumcision”, were more newly chosen people of God, drawn to the faith by Jesus of Nazareth, brought into the fold by the apostles. The Jews followed the Torah – God’s Law. They circumcised their sons - the visual and physical sign of the covenant with God. Many Gentiles, however, did not do either. So, the question that was swirling around was: just who were God’s TRUE children? Who were the faithful followers of Christ? Who would inherit the kingdom – the Jews or the Gentiles?

Paul says, in this letter that all of that is moot, and those divisions are meaningless once Christ died on the cross for us all. In death, Christ formed a new identity for everyone - Jews AND Gentiles - and each were called to die to their old lives and be reborn in the new life of Christ.

But while that is wonderful in theory, and sounds great being read from the lectern, the two groups were still enmeshed in ugly arguments hundreds of years after his death. Still focused on what they knew, rather than what Jesus had tried to teach them and how Jesus lived. Still stuck in their old lives, rather than the new life he offered to them.

Of course, we can’t say much these days either. The early church isn’t the only place where Christians fight amongst themselves. We have hundreds, if not thousands, of denominations and non-denominations. We have white churches and black churches, high church and low church, hymn music and praise music, Eucharist-centered worship, and sermon-centered worship. Conservative Christians, Progressive Christians, mission-centered churches and bible-based churches, Episcopal, Anglican. Hundreds and thousands of ways to define who’s in and who’s out, who’s closer to the church God intended us to be.

Even within our own walls of the Episcopal church and right here in Trinity, we have our own ways of determining difference. We have those who have been here most or all of their lives, and those who have here for barely a month. Life-long Episcopalians, and those who come from other traditions. Leaders and followers, younger folks and older folks, women and men, married and unmarried and widowed.

And our differences create diversity. The problem arises, as we all know, when the differences interfere with the way we see the other, the way we treat other people. When we concentrate on our differences and give into our fear, we start to collect people that are like us, and subtly push those away who don’t fit the mold. We divide ourselves into those who get it and those who don’t. We remind people that we’re Cradle Episcopalians, and that they most definitely are not. And when someone wonders aloud about change or asks why it is we do this or that, we quickly explain that we’ve always done it that way, or that no one would ever go for it, and remind them politely not to bring it up again.

What can I say, as humans, we like the status quo.

And we shy away from people who challenge us, who are not like us, because they make us think, maybe even dare to make us think about our identity, and yes, even our beliefs. And rather than engage that challenge, many of us run right back to the familiar, back to our comfort in knowing that we are in and they are out. Like the Jews, we run back to the Laws that tell us exactly what to do: what to eat, what to wear, what to believe, who is good and who is bad. Rather than consider that a new idea might be interesting, or the question might be a good one, maybe we, who seem to know all the answers, can even learn something from this person. Yes, even from a former Protestant, or … gasp … even a Catholic! Maybe we don’t have all the answers.

Thinking like that allows for the Spirit to move amongst us and form us, gives us a new identity, a unifying identity. We like to focus on the differences, we’re just so good at it, but we are called to focus on the one unifying factor, our faith in Christ. That kind of thinking and living is what Paul is talking about, and what we are called to do as Christians. To focus on what brings us together, not what draws us apart. Yes, it seems simple, but that is the way it is supposed to be.

Heck, if the Jews and Gentiles could come together than we surely can. If they could begin to focus on what draws them together, than surely we should also try.

We are called to try, to be open to the stranger, to resist the fear that tells us not to give up anything, or reminds us how different we are from them. We are called to be open and allow someone else to teach us something; let them to help us to live the way Christ wants us to live.

We are called to be a Christ-centered community. Gathered together - in the pews, in our homes, in the world - the way we gather together at the Lord’s table: kneeling, hands-out, open and looking for what Christ has to offer. This is the image we are called to strive for. Any other way of being, and we, as a church,offer little more than Starbucks or the comforts of a living room. We’re just another pleasant place to spend an hour on Sunday morning. Another bunch of nice folks with good coffee and pastries.

If, however, we push our limits, extend ourselves, offer our hands we can be a place bursting with life with the Peace of God John spoke of last week. And we can continue to grow - not just in numbers, not just in dollars, but in health and faith and life. We are called not to hostility, but to hospitality, reaching out to the stranger, helping the sojourners who walk through that door find a home, find a place to discover what the Kingdom of God might look like on earth.

Allowing them to offer us a way of seeing God, a way of seeing ourselves that we could not have seen if they were not with us. That is radical hospitality, that is the openness with which young children approach the world - expecting to learn and barely able to contain the joy when they do. That is what it means to come to the table and receive the gifts, the bread and the wine each week. That kind of hospitality, rife with anticipation and joy, is something the world is missing, and we are called to show them a vision of what a holy community might look like. What it means to be one in the Spirit, and one in the Lord.

We are called to let Christ do his work - to tear down the walls of division, as Paul puts it - and proclaim to the world, there is another way, there is Christ