Defining Mom

May was an amazing month for me (and it’s not even over yet!) I was invited to share my gifts throughout the Midwest in so many different ways, and it is that great variety that is giving me so much joy. My first stop was Concordia Seminary St. Louis, where I presented my thesis work on Man Turned in on Himself to an eager lecture hall of young seminarians and faculty. From there I went on to the “anchor” stop of this mini-tour: St. Paul’s in Decatur, IL, where I was the Guest Speaker for Mother’s Day, speaking on a Saturday night (my birthday!), and twice on Sunday, with a Q & A in between services. I returned to St. Louis for Mother’s Day dinner with a beautiful, noisy, young family, and got to spend a few days walking alongside a young friend in great need of an older mother’s love. I was then spirited away to a lake house in Kentucky to rest and pray and prepare my thoughts on the Psalms. During that time, Stories from Selma was getting ready to go live, and I was excited to share the story behind that important work online as I headed to St. Andrew, Cape Girardeau, MO. There, I got to teach on Man Turned In and Loaded Words with the staff, share meals with many wonderful families in the congregation, and be interviewed in three services by Pastor John Dehne as the church kicks off a summer study on the Psalms with my book happy are those. It was Pentecost Sunday—the day we celebrate the gifts of the Holy Spirit and His ability to communicate to all people in a language they’ll understand— and that “cute, little book” is a perfect example of that sort of cultural translation. My journey was made complete that night when I had the privilege of working with Kristin Schweain to introduce Taize worship and the practice of lectio divina in a coffee house run with love by the church. It was seven years from the day I sat on the floor in Church of Reconciliation in Taize on Pentecost, and I was mindful of how those moments connected. How all the moments connected, even now as I’ve returned. As Blake Flattley and I finalize a new compline liturgy we’ve been working on together called Fear Not! As I mentor a young female leader in the church about some big talks she’s about to give. And now, for the rest of the summer, to return to my truest heart work, a new memoir.

I guess you could say that I am the “mom” of all these projects, but to me I am simply living out the truth of Ephesians 2:10. “For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”

Although each moment of the trip was a gift to me—including so many divine appointments—the Mother’s Day talk in Decatur is charged with special meaning. Because of my friendship with Pastor Eric Trickey. Because of his circumstances, literally living each moment by the Grace of God as we all pray for a miraculous recovery from a cancer that has moved beyond human solutions. And because I would speak on the topic of women, something I rarely do.

I’m glad I had the opportunity.

If you’ve never seen me speak, I should warn you: I am often moved to tears, and this weekend was no exception. I’ve learned to come to the mic with tissues.

Oh, the places you’ll go….

Over the past five months or so, I’ve been in something of a transition. First there was an intentional Wadi Cherith season, rooted in the just-rest-and-wait- and-stay-out-of-view example of the prophet Elijah. Then there was the nudge, on Christmas night, to plan a pilrimage to the Isle of Iona, Scotland this Easter. Then there was the gift of music, as my friend Blake Flattley invited me to work on a new liturgy and I—who cannot sing or play an instrument—begin hearing/writing/composing hymns. Then, after a new season of working with a Spiritual Director for the first time, a totally unexpected Call to begin a 2-year program in Christian Formation and Spiritual Direction. This program has already blessed me with the gift of a community of like-minded souls. More pointedly, it forced me to write a 10-page spiritual autobiography on “how I saw God working at every age and stage of my life.” This assignment, which I did grudgingly, led me to the answer I’d been struggling to find over what my next book would be. I longed to write another heart book, a memoir, but could not envision the scope, the framework, the timeline. This assignment gave me just the container I needed and set me back to the steady rhythm of prayer and reflection and writing. My office is now filled with stacks of old treasure–advertising memories, and screenplays, and unsold novels, and datebooks, and journals filled with notes and names and faces and big visions for stories, for the Church, and for speaking to those who don’t want anything to do with the Church. In all that, I unearthed a single DVD from my first big interview when Baptism by Fire was released. As it happens—really, as it happens?—it was filmed 20 years to the day that I will be leaving for Iona. That’s what life is like in the hands of the Master Storyteller.

A Glimpse of Heaven at Trader Joe’s

It was just supposed to be a quick grab and go. Fridays can be tricky at Trader Joe’s, so I was prepared for an aisle or two of three-lane traffic. What I was not prepared for was the gaggle of senior citizens mingling in every entry aisle and passageway as if they’d rented out the bread & muffin section for an octogenarian birthday party.

In the place where impatience usually rises up in me I found myself instead leaning in. Their wizened faces were alight with joy as they chatted in thick accents. “Russian Jews,” I thought to myself. Russian Jews at the end of life telling stories and smiling and entitled in the best possible way to be clogging the aisles of the neighborhood store.

What could they teach me about slowing down? About recognizing that, in the end, when all the suffering is behind you, that there is nothing else but this: to delight in the company of one another.

Just this morning I had read in the Benedictine devotional Always We Begin Again these words: “Every day carries the potential to bring the experience of heaven; have the courage to expect good from it.”

For a moment they were like icons to me: windows into the realm of the sacred, the holy. Although depression, anxiety, and isolation is epidemic in this country, there were no shadows on these faces. Some were in wheelchairs. Others had walkers. By virtue of their advanced ages, all would have known heartache and illness and loss. The fact that they were all together told me that they had arrived that way, likely a field trip from a local senior center. I reached for a loaf of Ezekiel bread.

“What is that?” one of the ladies asked. She was 5′ tops with a cropped shock of red hair. In a brief conversation, she had confirmed that they were, in fact, all Russian Jews from a local day care.

“Oh, it’s very healthy,” I told her. “No flour. See here. Ezekiel 4:9. It’s the same recipe one of your prophets gave us.”

“Ah,” she said, and smiled.

I continued on with my shopping, carrying inside me a new shade of meaning for “the fullness of time” (Galatians 4:4).

I was loading up my trunk when the seniors finally began heading out to a large van. Driving away, I looked in my rearview mirror. On the side of their shared vehicle I saw the words Nazareth House. And smiled.

One of my favorite promises from Jesus is this: “In my father’s house there are many rooms,” (John 14:2). Today I’m grateful to have had a glimpse of this one.

 

 

 

The Glorious Vocation of Vin Scully

So many memories, so many tributes, but his life’s work says it all. Vin was born to do and be the voice of the Dodgers—a voice that at all times delighted in children and families,  captured moments in time that were greater than our own first-hand witness, and always—always—spoke of players, teams, umps, leagues, and the world in a way that upheld the dignity of all.

Here, Kevin Costner recounts a life of vocation in words almost as eloquent as Vin’s.

 

Who are you?

This is a question I get asked more and more lately. Who are you? How did you get here? Why are people listening to you? One retreat director, who—based on multiple recommendations—was engaging me as the lead speaker at a week-long event for 2017, actually spelled out the confusion,” I mean, you’re not a pastor or a professor or a worship leader or a director of Christian Education.” In other words, how did you become a credible figure without any of the traditional credentials?

I get the confusion. In the Lutheran world where God called me to faith (and out of which He has not yet shown any inclination to move me), I am an anomaly.  Not of the German Lutheran culture. Not a lifelong Christian. And, perhaps most confounding, a woman who talks about theology and culture—both inside and outside of church walls.

When I was working on my MA thesis, I discovered a non-Lutheran, Luther scholar named Gordon Rupp, who said this about a pivotal season in Luther’s development: “you could almost hear him growing in the night, so plain is the growth in maturity, independence and coherence in a few months.”

This idea that a person’s public writing might reveal the fingerprints of God in her life stayed with me, until I came to see that the answer to the question “who are you?” might be hidden in plain sight, in the blogs, books, and talks I’d written over the past five years.

Soon I will be releasing an e-book that will endeavor to retrace the steps of the Living God in my life over a period of profound transformation. It is my hope that in sharing my story, others will be encouraged to pray, listen, and follow His Spirit with boldness and great joy.

Soli Deo Gloria

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