News

Hello friends!  The long silence has been marking time of my call search process - one defined largely by joy, and a bit of anxiety, and most of all, the inability to speak openly since it was not a done deal and Presbyterians can be a bit fussy about these things.  (Us?  Particular?  Never...)

It is with joy that I can now share that I've been voted in as the new pastor at First United Presbyterian Church of Loveland, Colorado!  I'll be heading out next weekend to appear on the floor of their Presbytery for final examination and, if approved, I will be ordained the following weekend at my home church.  I'm still processing the implications of that identity shift - actually becoming the Rev. Laurie - but that's for another blog post.

For now, I simply want to share my sincere thanks to those who have partnered with me in this process.  Non-church friends who listen with bewilderment at the papers and committee meetings and endless processes that make up the walk towards ordination.  Family and dear friends who gather me up when I felt discouraged.  Mentors and colleagues in ministry, justice, and compassion who gently correct my mis-steps, and who provide encouraging feedback.  Seminary friends for 3 am conversations figuring out exactly how little we knew and know about life.  All of you who stood beside me in helpless awe at how well things work out, sometimes when we least expect it.

So it is with joy and optimism that I step into this next chapter of a pretty wild adventure - solo pastor serving a vibrant little community in the nearby cradle of the Rocky Mountains.  Thanks for joining me.  Allons-y!

Very funny, God

So it seems that God and the universe have something of a wacky sense of humor.  A lifelong avoider of public speaking, I started finding my way out of front-of-the-class speaking assignments as early as third grade.  I’d read extra books, write extra reports, create elaborate tri-fold poster board creations, pretty much anything to get out of having to face down a roomful of eyes and the sound of only my own voice.  I’ve always been a relatively confident person, but something about the sheer vulnerability of public speaking renders me a bit… ridiculous.  Hands shaking, voice quaking kind of ridiculous.  I’ve gotten over this in stages, though not without a few tears shed over speech and preaching classes at seminary.

            People frequently, and very sweetly, reassure me that this ongoing struggle doesn’t show much when I preach.   I hope they are right.  This is a good thing, since that’s a part of my job.  I love crafting sermons, and I’m learning to love the act of delivering them.

            But, getting a grip on the pulpit (often literally), I thought God’s hilarious choice of calling me into a life of preaching was just about all the comedy I needed.  I was spectacularly wrong, as is often the case when I try to guess where my life is heading.  Within the past few weeks, I have been invited to speak about the justice issue of human trafficking multiple times and the list is growing.  At a Mosque.  At a Big 10 university.  At a high school to a hundred or more teenagers.  At churches.  At community centers.

            I made a promise a few years back to communicate about trafficking to anyone, anywhere, any time because I think it’s incredibly important.  People must know this is happening, and must be called to do something about it.  I just never assumed it would be me doing the talking.  

          So, dear friends and family, please feel free to pass the word around that I'm available to inform groups about human trafficking.  If you know of a group that is interested, please feel free to send me an email (vivalamariposa@gmail.com).

            I am incredibly honored to be doing this work alongside the parish ministry I love, and am going to continue to do my best to swallow those waves of nervousness that are becoming part of the preaching and teaching and speaking experience for me.  There’s a lesson in all of this about call, about God equipping you for what you need to do, and maybe about keeping your mouth shut about things that make you nervous, lest you be thrown head first into them.  And if nothing else, it’s a reminder that God is very, very funny.

Disintegration

            One of the real joys of working with little kids is their complete and ridiculous honesty (and even when they start learning to lie, they’re usually pretty bad at it for at least a few years).  They are who they are, wherever they are, regardless of who else happens to be around.  If they are tired, jubilant, scared, hungry, nervous, or, as my nephew recently proclaimed himself, “feeling too wild”, you know it.  Because when we start life off, we are pretty much whole.  We are unified.  All the parts of our lives are integrated.

            But the older we get, the harder it gets.  We recognize that we have roles in life and our sense of self changes based on our counterparts or audience.  Few people know this more acutely than teenagers – the way we speak, dress, behave and even think can be wildly different when we’re with our friends, in front of teachers, with our parents, at church, at school, etc.   We conform to the roles others expect us to fulfill – for good or for ill.  If we’re the funny one, we’ll make jokes.  If we’re the smart one, we’ll study hard.  If we’re the problem kid, we’ll get into trouble.  Kids are pigeon-holed from an early age and are tremendously aware of the expectations (spoken and implied) placed on them.

            The real trouble here is that, for a whole lot of people, we get the idea that the people we love will only love the version of us that they’ve come to know.  That’s more than a bit of a problem if we’re one person with them, and someone else entirely in other parts of our lives.  Everybody’s got some secrets, but the more varied our personas and roles get, the harder it can be to ever feel whole or intact.  Who doesn’t know an adult with a “business voice / face / demeanor” who changes 180 degrees around when they get home for the day?  Maybe that’s just the reality of adults doing what we have to do to survive.  Or maybe it’s demonstrative of our inability to trust that anybody would - -if they really knew the truest, most integrated “us” completely – love us just as we are. 

            Since God created us each as integrated and whole, maybe living into that a bit more in our daily lives will bring us closer to daily remembrance of that truth – somebody does love you, all of you, exactly as you are.

Dreaming Dreams

            In preparation for a preschool chapel session on courage, I’m re-reading the full story of Daniel.  It’s funny that the stories we knew best as little kids are often the ones we look at the least as adults.  Maybe because we think we already know those stories.  But man, the Bible is so rarely PG!  There is just a spectacular amount of intrigue, courtly mind games, fire-walking, and alliance-shifting in this story.  And if anyone is looking for a good motivator for kids to eat their veggies, that’s in there too.

            Amidst the royal temper tantrums and the threats of limb-from-limb tearing, we have yet another instance of that which happens all the time in the Bible – people dreaming dreams.

As a frequent somnambulist, I am fascinated by what exactly happens when we switch off for the night.  I often find myself waking up mid-sentence, or in a different room than the one in which I went to sleep, or absolutely convinced that there is something important and urgent I am in a rush to take care of, only to realize after a few moments of confusion (and occasional arguing with roommates) that the world is just as it was when I went to sleep. 

            While I have a dream life spotted with some pretty terrifying nightmares, I generally see dreams as a gift.  Sometimes nonsense, but sometimes a chance to connect with those we have lost, with those we miss, with places and times we have forgotten or never got to know.  We dream about what might be, and what couldn’t be except there, in that mix of imagination, memory, hope, faith, and possibility.  I can’t think that we would all spend this much of our lives engaged in this crazy alternative life of dreams if it were nothing more than keeping us from getting too bored when we sleep.   I think it’s worth paying attention to how much we all dream, and how much we all (from Nebuchadnezzar to now) crave understanding of our dreams.

While we may lack Daniel’s interpretive super powers, we have all been gifted with vision, with dreams, and with the capacity to be open to what God might be up to in this bit of mystery in each head.

Getting Excited about Church

Aaaaaaaand I'm back.  Hello all (or few, or some, or whatever)!  It's taken nearly two weeks to feel like I've truly got my feet back under me, back home near Chicago, but it feels great to be home.  Stepping back into the pulpit for prayers this Sunday was the same terrifying butterflies in the stomach adventure it was before I left -- a bit like being at home and in an Escher-esque dreamworld all at the same time.

Of course things are not as they were before I left.  My colleagues and the congregation I serve continued to grow and change in my absence, and so did I.  The anti-trafficking work I did this summer did a lot to shape my thinking about the relationship between the church and social justice, and the time I spent with a wide variety of church and un-church types did too.

A few examples...

The Arena warehouse space I lived for three months taught me how to relish the making of art.  I'm a die-hard museum freak and I love appreciating finished works, but there is something so visceral, so spectacularly human about watching people paint, write songs, collaborate, and explore their art, and my housemates demonstrated this act of love over and over again.  What would happen if we treated sermon writing more like art and less like a science or work?  What if every prayer became a loving act of creation, an offering?

The energy I saw at Greenbelt festival and gained from conversations with small and large church communities, local and international celebrities in the world of theology, vicars, pastors, preachers, and innovators.  Peter Rollins posed the question - what are we offering in Jesus that is any different than the quick fix of Coca-cola, Cadbury, or cigarettes?  Shane Claiborne pushed us to think about the radical inclusiveness of the church.  Nadia Bolz-Weber and Phyllis Tickle (who has, in fact, the best name ever) invited us to really think about the emerging church, and how it is different, deeper than trendiness.  To say I have a few new theological crushes is a serious understatement.

So I'm thinking about where all this fits into my personal ministry and into the life of the church as it grows, stretches, dies and is reborn -- the phoenix-like resurrection of the church on fire with spirit.  Looking forward to exploring this with anyone and everyone.

In the meantime, I'm reading and loving the following:

How (Not) to Speak of God - Peter Rollins

http://www.sarcasticlutheran.com/ - Nadia Bolz-Weber of House for All Sinners and Saints

http://achurchforstarvingartists.wordpress.com/

Please send any favorites my way, and happy exploring!

Homeward Bound

For the friends and family who follow this blog, I apologize for the radio silence these last few weeks.  Between festivals, wrapping up projects, and saying farewells, things have been a delightful kind of chaos!

Amongst many thrilling experiences (including getting to help out on a UK bill of rights for kids), I went to Greenbelt Festival - four days of camping, making new friends, listening to music, hearing speakers (like the theologically dreamy Shane Claiborne and Pete Rollins), and, in my case, helping to promote and refine a design for Stop the Traffik's latest project, which will be unveiled across London leading up to the Olympics.  (Sidenote:  They're building a festival similar to Greenbelt for the states in North Carolina called Wild Goose Festival and, if it's anything like Greenbelt, I highly recommend getting there.  If I can get back to the UK for Greenbelt next year, I definitely will!)

I couldn't begin to capture everything that this summer has been, but I want to take this opportunity to say thank you.  Thank you to everyone who supported me emotionally, spiritually, and financially that I might have this amazing opportunity.  Thank you to ACT London and Stop the Traffik for allowing me to learn, share what I know, and be a part of their stunning team. 

I will miss a great deal about London -- primarily the great people I've met this summer (and the scones. And the casual existence of buildings that are many centuries old), but I'm also quite excited to get back to the states.  Back to family, friends, and another kind of ministry. 

As I think is completely normal in trips like this one, I'm walking (flying) away feeling like I've gained so much more than I've given.  This summer has been a real blessing, so thank you for helping me get here!

On Hope

When my plans changed from a service trip to Cape Town to one in London, most of my nearest and dearest breathed a sigh of relief at the compared relative safety of the two places.  And London is indeed incredibly safe.  Maybe that's why the riots of the last few days have people especially on edge.
A word of comfort - my daily routine has been completely unchanged.  The routes I take to and from various volunteer commitments are fine, and while it is pretty scary that the shops near my walking-distance grocery store were smashed and looted last night, it does appear that these riots are mainly targeting shops, not people or homes.  My house is tucked back in a residential neighborhood, so I'll exercise reasonable caution and all should be fine.

And now, a word on hope.  I'm not going to comment on the exact motivations of the (mostly young) people doing this rioting, because I haven't spoken to a single one in person and I don't think it's helpful to speculate in situations like these.  I do think it is important that things like this happen frequently when people feel fearful or hopeless.  You take a society where things look grim (either from dictatorial leadership, or just a bad slump in the economy, or distrust of the leadership), you fuel that fire by having high unemployment rates, and boom.  A whole lot of bored, angry people will try to gain control over their lives by any means necessary.  I am grateful we haven't seen this in the states recently and I hope people (particularly in democratic nations) everywhere can find a way of articulating their outrage without turning to violence.

There is an upside to this (stay with me here).  These riots and any similarly violent, seemingly pointless outburst are atrocious.  People's livelihood and in some cases lives are being put at risk and that's simply not okay.  But the upside is that it is a reminder (albeit a negative one) that we are creatures of hope.  In times and places where people have reasonable hope - young people have the promise of not only a good education, but confidence that they will be able to actively pursue a future after receiving that education -- I believe that instances like this are much more rare.  Of course they happen, and they can be instigated by myriad things.  But we are creatures who crave hope, direction, and futures.  We're creatures of Life.

Here's hoping order and, much more importantly, hope are restored to the streets of London and soon.