acts as transitional text + monologues

So… My colleague (and friend) retired at the end of June. I’m not even sure what to say about that. I’m mostly filling in for now, though I expect we will call an interim at some point. I asked for some breathing time between the farewell and someone new coming in, but I do think having an interim is a good idea.

I considered preaching ideas. Would I ignore the idea of transition or tackle it or somewhere in between? I was trying to go to the lectionary, maybe doing a Lectionary Series, but I wasn’t feeling the Matthean parables and the idea of preaching Romans felt like I might be saying the same thing over and over. If I could have started genesis at the beginning, I might have gone there, but it was well started before I started preaching. I finally decided that a good transition text would be the book of Acts, the stories of the disciples as they transition into a world without Jesus right there (though I promise I am not equating my former pastor to Jesus.) Then I immediately questioned my choice because doing a series on a book felt so evangelical, like I was falling back into something, and it’s not something my colleague would have ever done. But I didn’t have a better idea, so I went with it.

(Edited to add, I used Willie James Jennings commentary on Acts + posts from various chapters of Acts at Working Preacher. I am grateful for the Working Preacher Bible Index that let’s me see if a passage is covered.)

My series seems to have been well-received.

• Week One I talked explicitly about transition using Acts 1 and 2, new beginnings and the coming of the Holy Spirit.
• Week Two was Peter and John carrying on Jesus’ work, healing and preaching though they were ordinary men.
• Week Three I walked about the creation of the deacons and discussed our presbyterian structure and the office and significance of deacons.
  • Week Four was Saul’s conversion, God surprises us with whom God chooses and a bit of an emphasis on Ananias who comes alongside Saul.
  • Week Five was Cornelius and A New Way, inclusivity for all including us 2000 years later.

I could have gone on a few more week, but 6 weeks seemed long enough for a series and I had one lay leader who asked me several times “when I would be finished with this thing with Acts.” We are not used to non-seasonal series. So I decided to wrap it all up in week six with a number of reflections on several moments I hadn’t covered. I was hoping to write monologues, but I wasn’t sure what would happen. As I worked through the end of Acts, I came up with four moments to highlight. I created an order of worship with 4 sets of Scripture/Reflection/Refrain. I invited 4 young people, siblings/cousins three of whom were here for the summer from Minnesota jobs and colleges to be the readers for the service. These are people I have worked with for a decade of youth Sundays as well as other readings and services. 3 of them were able to do so. I did manage to write monologues. I went back and forth about whether I should read them myself or ask my young people to read some of them. Sometimes when other people have read what I wrote, they haven’t totally gotten my intentions and nuances (my colleague could, but with other people I had to be satisfied with not quite). But I decided having multiple voices was better, and I was willing to take a risk on these particular people who are all brilliant and strong readers, so on Saturday I sent an email to my young people asking them to read 3 of them. They agreed. They were brilliant! So good. I read the final monologue, but I’m pretty sure they read my other monologues better than I read the last one. I have to admit, I kind of got chills listening to them even though I had written the things. They are also excellent lectors, adding in exactly the right unwritten bits and leading with grace and strength.

When I started working on this service, I look up “monologues from Acts.” I found very little. So I thought I would post here what I came up with. These are free to use. Credit would be ideal. They are specific to my context, but I think they could also work elsewhere. If I could have chosen the refrains after I wrote the monologues, I would have changed it somewhat. I thought the first two refrains worked excellently, but I would have saved “God Welcomes All” for the end and added in “Take O Take Me as I am” or something else after Priscilla and Aquila. I worked the last lines of the Luke dialogue to make “Within the Darkest Night” work, but it felt labored.

Here is what I did:

SCRIPTURE: Acts 9:36-38

Tabitha
I was dead and now I am alive.
I don’t have words. I remain confused, flummoxed, grateful.
I live to serve another day.
I am called Tabitha, or Dorcas for the Greeks.
My name means Gazelle.
I have often felt like a gazelle, running on the plains, part of a herd,
my eyes wide open to the need.I see so much need in the world.
The women without families, without provision
Who helps them?
I saw no one, so I did what I could
I made clothing to give to those whose clothes were threadbare and worn out
I made clothing to sell to provide food and shelter
I did what I could.
But I became ill. I could not sew any more.
I died?
They tell me the grief was palpable
Wails and laments
Especially from the widows.
But
They knew Peter was nearby
They sent for him
He sent everyone out of the room
The next thing I knew, I had come out from where I was
I was opening my eyes
Seeing Peter’s rough but kind face
Looking into his eyes as he prayed.
He held out his hand to me
And helped me up.
I was not weak, I was not ill. I was well.
We went out to the others
They believed; they called for Peter after all,
but they were still astonished when they saw me
Alive!
I don’t know why I am singled out
A woman alone
People die every day
Why did I get to live?
Why did I, a woman who lived and served among women, matter?
But somehow, to the community, to Peter, to God
I did.
I mattered. I matter.
And so do the needy widows I serve
Because I live to serve again.
We matter.
Women matter. The destitute matter. Those on the outside, matter.
And so I live
But my life will never be the same.

SUNG REFRAIN (GtG 544) Bless the Lord, My Soul Berthier
Bless the Lord, my soul,
and bless God’s holy name.
Bless the Lord, my soul,
who leads me into life. (Repeat)

SCRIPTURE Acts 13:4-5, 13; 15: 36-39

John, Called Mark
I am a failure, a deserter; I abandoned them.
I blew it.
I had the chance to work with Paul and Barnabas.
I was their assistant, taking care of the little things so they could minister.
They were amazing men, so learned, so spirit-filled
And here I was, John, not The John, but John also called Mark
Young, untried, irresponsible
And I blew it.
I left them.
I couldn’t hack it.
I went back to the relative safety of Jerusalem.
I didn’t have enough stamina, enough guts, enough trust.
But then I was sorry.
I was so sorry. I knew it was my fault. I knew I had messed up.
I tried to come back.
And I was the cause of one of the great breakups in history.
Barnabas.
The one who sold his land and gave the proceeds to the church
The one who came alongside Paul and trusted him and introduced him to the apostles
The one who travelled alongside Paul for his first journeys
The one they call Son of Encouragement
Barnabas took my side
He wanted to bring me with them on their next journey
He… trusted me… that I had learned and would not fail again
But Paul was having none of it
Once a deserter always a deserter
They disagreed so sharply they parted company
Paul went off with Silas
And Barnabas put his trust in me. We sailed to Cyprus together
He didn’t have to do that
He risked trusting me
And I will be forever grateful.
I think sometimes people say this was for the good
Two pairs of people could do more in spreading God’s word than one alone
Maybe God ordained it.
I just somehow don’t think so.
There are times to part,
But I don’t think people disagreeing sharply and parting ways in anger is God’s plan
It worked out, but it wasn’t Good.
I did change. I grew up and I grew in the Spirit.
Eventually even Paul asked me to come to him, to assist him once again.
But I never would have had that chance if it hadn’t been for Barnabas,
Son of Encouragement.

SUNG REFRAIN (GTG 204) Stay with Me Berthier
Stay with me; remain here with me;
watch and pray.
Watch and pray. (Repeat)

SCRIPTURE Acts 18:1-3, 24-27

Priscilla and Aquila
We are Priscilla and Aquila.
We are always mentioned together.
True partners in life, in work, in mission.
Priscilla or, formally, Prisca, the venerable, the revered one
Aquila, the eagle with far sight and gliding strength
We are God-fearing Jews who were exiled from Rome
We found a home in Corinth and together set up our tentmaking business
This is where and how we met Paul.
He was a tentmaker! Who knew?
He was a pharisee, a learned man
But he, too, worked with leather, sewed, made tents
And there is this about Paul
He travelled around and around for the churches he started
By he never asked for funds for his ministry
He asked for communities who needed help
But he supported himself.
So we worked together, and talked together, and learned together.
We also travelled together,
but we were called to remain in Ephesus while Paul travelled on.In Ephesus we encountered Apollos.
Apollos was great, so charismatic
Many people listened to him and followed him.
But his learning was incomplete,
He knew Jesus, and spoke eloquently and enthusiastically about him
He knew about the baptism of John
A baptism of repentance
But he did not know about the Baptism of the Spirit
The marvel that had been happening since that day of Pentecost in Jerusalem.
After we heard him speak in the synagogue
We took him aside
And, together, we instructed him
We told him the glad news of Jesus’ baptism, the baptism of the spirit.
It was not easy to correct someone who was so right in so many ways
But we could not hold back
We had to be able to teach the teacher
But sometimes we are incomplete
Our vision needs to expand
And he heard us.
He listened and expanded his message.
And then he took the message abroad
And became known for his ministry and mission.
We are glad he was able to discern the truth with us.We continue to work together
To forward God’s kingdom
Where all are one
Just as we two are one
In life, in work, in mission.

SUNG REFRAIN (399) God Welcomes All Bell
God welcomes all,
strangers and friends;
God’s love is strong
and it never ends. (Repeat)

SCRIPTURE Acts 27:33-40 

Luke
I was a witness.
I wrote about the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.
And then I wrote about the Acts of the Holy Spirit.
The transformation of an ordinary group of men and women
By the Holy Spirit
Into a whole movement
A new way
The way of Jesus Christ.
I am Luke, and near the end of Paul’s travels
I had the great privilege of traveling with him
I talk about the things “we” did.
He is in trouble for preaching the Gospel
And he claims his Roman citizenship
And asks to plead his case in Rome.
So we work to get to Rome
Maybe the way Jesus worked his way to Jerusalem
(I may have included some parallels in my books).
We have a ship, but it’s winter and Paul suggests we stay where we are
The pilot disagrees and the centurion in charge listens to the pilot and pushes on
To be fair, it was not a great port
They were hoping to get to a better place to winter.
So we go.
We hit a storm and our ship is battered and everyone is on edge.
Paul is the only one who stays calm.
He does say, “I told you so,”
But then he also reassures them that everyone will be safe
There will be no loss of life, only of the ship.
Then he does this thing
Everyone is exhausted and scared and hungry
Paul takes bread, gives thanks to God, and breaks it.
He eats and he encourages everyone else to eat.
Communion
And invitation to eat
A source of hope and divine love.
They may not have understood the symbolism of the bread
But they gathered around it
They were sustained
Bread for the journey, the body of Christ, the source of love.
Eventually we made it to land.
The sailors did try to kill the prisoners—
Better dead than escaped—
But the centurion wanted to save Paul, so he stopped that scheme.
We were welcomed by the natives who showed us “unusual kindness”
and were able to winter there.
While we were there, Paul did his usual thing of healing many people.
Three months later, we were able to set out again.
We finally arrived in Rome, and Paul was allowed to live under house arrest.
He found a house and welcomed all visitors
Including John-Mark, whom he asked for personally to come and help him
He continued to preach and teach and write about Jesus Christ as he awaited trial
He offered hospitality to all
He welcomed all
He spoke to all.
This was Paul and this was the way of Christ.
I hope that in my books, I have made it clear
Jesus came to transform the world
To bring a new kingdom
And the Holy Spirit continued that work after Jesus was gone
Through this group of people who were transformed by the power of God.
And so the Spirit is still at work, calling all
No matter how dark it gets
And a ship in a storm is pretty dark
House arrest awaiting a trial is pretty dark
But God is there
Jesus is with us
The fire of the Spirit will not die away.
May it ever be so.
Amen.

SUNG REFRAIN (GTG 294) Within Our Darkest Night Berthier
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire that never dies away,
never dies away.
Within our darkest night,
you kindle the fire that never dies away,
never dies away. (Repeat)

quick update

I’m sitting in an office hour, so I thought I’d do a quick update.

I didn’t do very well with the free writes. I can’t make myself sit and work during class. That semester is over. It was good, but really hard to keep up with everything.

This semester I am teaching one, in-person American Lit class at the college. I’m having a ball. It is a small class (10 students), and they are super interested in the readings and conversations. I am enjoying the resonance of the American Lit. Brit Lit, which I will always love, is removed in time and space. American lit feels, to me, here and now. This is the second half of the survey, so it covers 1865-the present. The issues of 1865 are so similar to the concerns of 2023 that it kind of takes my breath away. I am so much more enlightened, awake, aware now than I was the last time a studied or taught American Lit that I am seeing all sorts of things I missed before. It’s heartbreaking and breathtaking at the same time.

I like doing “Book Groups” in my classes to give students some choice about a reading and to fit more books into the semester. In Brit Lit first semester I just do longer texts that we don’t get to, so we get Utopia and Dr. Faustus and and Gulliver and Robinson Crusoe and Oroonoko. In Brit Lit II (where I started the idea), we do books by women authors to balance the Dickens that is on the course outline and that we read as a class. I offer Pride and Prejudice, Frankenstein, Jane Eyre, Cranford, Mrs Dalloway, and Strong Poison. The students do their roundtable discussion when the text fits chronologically into the course. For Lit by Women, I did genre literature, choosing, sci fi, fairy tale, mystery, dystopian selections. For American Lit, I decided to do diverse contemporary authors. I asked on Facebook for friends to make suggestions (I have Facebook friends from both my graduate programs + English teacher types), so I figured I would get good input. Of all the texts suggested, I chose four: The Poet X by Elizabeth Acevedo, American Born Chinese by Gene Luen Yang, Deacon King Kong by James McBride, and There There by Tommy Orange. There are other, better known texts, but I decided to go with really recent ones, and ones that came up more than once from people. (I will teach Octavia Butler at some point, but I didn’t go there this time. I offered her last semester, but was not taken up on the offer.)

Last week I read all of them except There There (on my list for this weekend). These are some great books. Here is my update on them from Facebook:

Of the four books I selected for American Lit book groups from the list you all created for me, I have now read three of them.

All three made me laugh out loud and one (The Poet X) made me cry.

Deacon King Kong had a funny resonance because of the question raised more than once in the book, “what is a Deacon?” [Our Deacon Moderator] spoke eloquently on that very topic in church yesterday. It was such a wide-ranging book. I liked the last third better than the first 2/3s, but it needed the first 2/3rds to build up to the last third. So. Much. Hope. Beautiful book.

American Born Chinese, as Asian American books usually do, had personal resonance for me because of my time in Asia and living in So Cal. It also made me laugh and surprised me with the ending. Additionally, when. my 8th grader saw I was reading it, he casually said, “Oh, yeah. I read that last semester.” so we got to talk about it. (I’ve read a lot of the books he has been assigned in the last two years, but didn’t actually know about this one.)

The Poet X undid me. It is a beautiful novel in verse that makes me want to write poetry and so much more. (this is the one that made me cry.)

Just There There to go.

I was also intrigued by how much these three books have to say about faith and religion. I guess I know this is an ongoing theme in American literature, but I was surprised about how much it came up in the very contemporary texts. Questions, arguments, but also symbols and moments. The Monkey King Legend part of American Born Chinese has a Holy Family allusion in and illustration. It also has other references to scripture including, “even at the end of all that, my hand is there holding you fast.” This stood out to me because Deacon King Kong uses the quote from the end of the Irish Blessing, “May God hold you in the palm of his hand,” as a king of motif and continued allusion. It was an unexpected connection, and kind of a lovely one.

In this class, I have made the book groups the final assignment for the class, so it will be a while before we get to them, but I will be fascinated to see what the students do with them. Of course, they are each reading just one, so they won’t make the cross-book connections I made, but they will delve into each of the books and listen to one another talk about them. It’s so much fun.

We wrapped up 1865-1914 today and begin the 1914-1945 section of the textbook on Tuesday. Fascinating stuff. So good. So many of the stories that stand out clearly to me from High School anthologies are in this course, stories that stunned me when I first read them (“The Yellow Wallpaper,” “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “The White Heron,” etc.). I have these clear memories of reading them as a 15 or 16 year-old. It is pretty amazing to revisit them. Also, rubbing hands together gleefully, I get to do Modern American Poetry, a class I took both as an undergraduate student (Stephen Axelrod, UC Riverside) and Graduate Student (Wendy Stallard Flory, Purdue University, my favorite British Americanist), and which were two of my all-time favorite classes (along with my other all time favorite classes like the Emily Dickinson class which was my all-time favorite). Anyway, I’ve concentrated on Brit Lit for so long, and I’ve always said I loved individual bits of American Lit, but didn’t love it so much as a whole. I am revisiting that now. I want us to read it as a whole and understand why were, as a nation, as a people, are where we are, how we got stuck, and ask ourselves whether we can do batter. What a privilege. What a responsibility.

freewrite 11/14

I was slow getting started today, so I have only about 3 minutes. I look at the National Day Calendar and if there is anything interesting I offer it to the students for a prompt. Today is National Family PJ day. I find the family PJ thing both charming and kind of silly, but I have to admit, when my kids were small my son had a hand-me-down pair of snowman pajamas that he loved, so I got my daughter snowman pajamas as well and we have pictures of them lighting advent candles in our home in snowman pajamas. So when he finally outgrew that first pair (they were very large the first couple years), I have bought them each snowman pajamas for Advent. I think last year may have been the final year for that, though. Neither of them really wears pajamas anymore and I’m not sure they would wear them for more than one photo one time. Makes me a little wistful.

free write november 10

I invited my students to write about Veteran’s Day or Armistice Day since we have tomorrow off. I have to admit that I have become much more aware of World War I and the impacts of it since I have been teaching British Literature regularly. I don’t thin we in the US have any comprehension of the devastation of WWI for the countries in Europe (and even Canada). I know probably my first keener awareness of the impact of WWI was reading Rilla of Ingleside as a young adult. And then reading about the women, like L.M. Montgomery, who had been so devastated by the first way that they couldn’t face another. And then teaching Brit Lit, there are, of course, the war poets. The Wilfred Owens and others who wrote poetry and didn’t return or did return shaken and changed. The more I read, the more things become real to me.

free write november 9

My prompt for my students today was, “What IS your superpower?” People talk about this sometimes. We all have things we do very well. I’m not sure what my superpower is. I used to have a really good memory, but that is slipping away. I am a good listener, but I’m not sure I’m better than anyone else. It may be that my superpower is making connections, being able to see how things fit together and where they don’t. I’m the one who can be in a discussion and tell people if we’ve already done something like that, if there are any conflicts to do what they want to do when they want to do it, and what some of the repercussions might be. So, I don’t know what to call that superpower, but I hold a lot of information in my head and can sift through it as I need to. This is especially helpful in the church job where there are so many different groups and moving parts.

freewrite

My students write a free-write every day. Since it is a 5-day-a-week class, a Community College English 101 class taught at a high school, that is really Every. Day. One of my students challenged me to write with them, so I may try that for the next few days anyway. Ironically or coincidentally, that student has never missed this class before but is not here today as I begin this.

Sometimes it feels like every day is too much, and I even thought about lessening the assignment, because usually our comp classes are 2 days a week. Writing for 5 minutes straight two days a week is considerably less. But then two different students in their free-writes wrote about how much they liked doing it every day, and having a consistent start to the class is helpful. Routines are good. If it were every other day, there would always be the vagueness–is this a free-write day or not?

My prompt for the students today, I give them a prompt to be helpful, but they don’t have to use it, is what superpower they would like and how they would use it. Since my favorite scene in all of movies is Superman flying over Metropolis with Lois Lane (Christopher Reeve and Margot Kidder version), I think I have to say flying.

update

Have I really not posted since last April?

It’s been a year. The girl finished middle school with her Principal’s Honor Roll K-8 intact, the only one in her class with that particular achievement. The boy made it through 6th grade.

The girl started high school at one of the IB schools in the local district. It has been going well. She got involved in drama right away, and that has given her a focus and a group of friends. She is doing well in her classes and likes most of her teachers. She performed in her first high school play. She will be taking the AP Human Geography exam next month. I’m impressed. She also did confirmation class this fall and was confirmed in the Presbyterian Church.

The boy started a new middle school at the neighborhood school. It is a 7-8 school, so he started with all the other 7th graders (and none of the 8th graders had been on campus last year, so the whole school was starting new in some ways.) About 6 weeks into the school year, he was moved into a new cohort. He said the biggest difference between the two groups is that the students in the new classes engage. There is a lot to unpack in that, but this probably isn’t the moment. He has made some school friends. He wishes he had friends who weren’t just school friends.

The school year started in person with mask mandates. Masks became optional last month. With a few exceptions, so far, mostly kids are wearing them and teachers are not.

The community college was in-person with masks in the Fall. It was good but challenging. There was a lot of attrition in attendance. With the Omicron surge, we started Spring semester via Zoom and moved to the classroom 6 weeks later. The mask mandate at the college has been extended through the end of the semester.

I have had a nice run of 6 years teaching British Literature as an adjunct. For the first time in those years a full-timer has asked to teach Brit Lit. I have enjoyed my niche, but sharing is good. The professor who wants the class is suggesting an every other year trade-off–which he doesn’t have to do–and the department chair is working on getting me good classes in the interim. I have the opportunity to teach a Distance Education Women’s Literature class in the fall. It will be some work, but it should be totally fun. I think I will also be teaching a dual enrollment English 101 at a nearby high school. I did that in Fall 2020 virtually and enjoyed it. I do enjoy high school seniors. This will be in person 4 days a week, one hour a day.

Computerguy is back at work fully in person for the last year. They have given no consideration to allowing people to work from home (If any employees have to be in person, all employees must. They used to use the same argument for why the computer guys had to wear button up shirts and ties every day.) Right now he is in Idaho visiting his parents. He will drive back their 2012, 53,000 mile Plug-in Prius for us. That will give us a reliable car and allow us to have our 2005 Prius for the girl to drive next year (!!!???!!!). I was telling our neighbor and remembering he and his wife coming over to meet the newborn baby girl. Wow!

I came over to the blog to write about the confirmation of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. I don’t have much to add to the discourse, but it makes me glad.

I guess that’s the last year in a nutshell. In some ways it was harder than the first year. There has been a lot of pivoting. It was easier to just hunker down. I continue to try and think of how we can come out of this different. I don’t just want to go back to “normal.” I don’t think “normal” was healthy. But I’m not sure what I am hoping.

springtime talk

The boy is serious about his chess.

I managed to get my talk written yesterday afternoon and evening as my spouse and son talked computers and then played out the final match-up of the family chess tournament my son orchestrated. (His dad won, but the newly 12-year-old played an excellent game. If he didn’t occasionally miss something, he would win every time, I think.) Anyway, it doesn’t feel like anything super profound, butI like it well enough, so I thought I would go ahead and post it here. Some of it is verbatim what I said yesterday and a big chunk is me quoting Kristin’s blog which I will link instead of paste in here. It’s better with the photos anyway.

I love Spring. It has always been my favorite season, and not only because I have a spring birthday.
To me, springtime speaks of cool but not cold weather, possible rainy days, our green season, and bright blooming flowers. Also, my birthday.
If, like I did, you grew up watching Bambi, Springtime is the time for love, when all the animals are twitterpated.
In Chaucer’s medieval England, Spring is when folks “longen to goon on pilgrimages” to see the sainted St. Thomas a Becket at Canterbury Cathedral in the Canterbury Tales.
Symbolically in literature Spring is youth. Spring is youth. Summer is the prime of adulthood. Fall is middle aged. And winter is aging.
So springtime is green and blooming; it’s time to get out of the house; it’s time for love, and it’s the epitome of youth. But it’s more than that. In the Christian tradition, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, Spring is the time of the resurrection, and it reminds us every year that it is a time for resurrection and renewal. The date for Easter is determined by the first full moon after the vernal equinox, so Easter will always be in spring. When we celebrate the cycle of the year, the idea that what has died is now alive again, we also celebrate THE resurrection. I love Eastertide, this season of looking at the resurrection appearances of Jesus. He appears to Mary in the garden. Now there’s an spring image. Or at least it always has been for me. Enough so that Mary thinks he’s the gardener. We see Mary and Jesus among the plants and flowers as he speaks her name, and she recognizes who he is. Other resurrection appearances also feel like springtime moments: a walk on the road to Emmaus, breakfast on the beach, an outside gathering before he ascends. All of these are springtime moments: the disciples on the road to Emmaus see Jesus with new eyes, a new understanding. Peter is given a second chance in that breakfast on the beach. You denied me three times, now three times I will ask you if you love me and command you to feed my sheep. And just before the ascension, all of those listening are given a new mission, to go beyond their little group in Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and all the ends of the earth, sharing the good news and baptizing people into new life in Jesus’ name. Renewal for the whole earth. That is a springtime command if ever there was one. We need all of the seasons, but it is in Spring that renewal, new life, growth happens. As Jesus said earlier, “look at the fig tree and all the trees. When they sprout leaves, you can see for yourselves and know that summer is near.” Spring is the time of new life so that fullness of life may come.
The resurrection appearances are certainly moments of Springtime, and each year they remind us of that ultimate truth, that God is more than death, that resurrection is possible. I think it can be helpful, while remembering the ultimate resurrection, to look for small resurrections, moments of renewal, moments of redemption wherever we are. I think of Peter raising Tabitha from the dead in Acts. Here is a woman who has done good her whole life, and Peter shows the power of God by raising her. I also think of Saul who becomes Paul and his conversion and redemption on the road to Damascus. There are resurrection stories all around us. When people are able to change their minds and see things a new way, that’s a resurrection story. When people are reconciled after being estranged, that’s a resurrection story. When we listen to one another and really love our neighbors, that’s a resurrection story.
There are also resurrection moments in Springtime in the natural world around us. Nature suggests the resurrection all the time. Butterflies are a symbol for us of the resurrection as they move from caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. My blog friend Kristin tells this story about Spring and butterflies and resurrection. Nature in the Butterfly Garden, Bewitching and Terrifying.

And so we see resurrection and redemption in everyday life, in the butterflies emerging from the chrysalis, the snake saved from drowning that doesn’t eat the butterflies. The butterflies flying away to new life.
This is springtime: Resurrection appearances in the Bible, resurrection and redemption moments all around us, resurrection and redemption in the natural world.
In this year, Springtime seems particularly poignant. As we very slowly move from a year of winter, a year of lent, into what’s next, it really does feel like SPRING, all caps. As people are being vaccinated, as we slowly move into a new way of being outside and around one another, as life slowly moves forward after a year of minimal movement, spring seems to have an all new meaning, at least for me. But this isn’t a California spring, a few weeks of beautiful weather, green mountains, wild flowers and then summer is here. It may be more like a midwestern spring: one day it’s snowing and then another day green is peeking out of the ground and another day the frost hits again and finally there are sure signs that the trees are budding and frost may hit again, but it won’t keep spring from coming. Spring is coming. It may not be as swift as we would like. It may not be as easy as we would like. And it won’t look exactly like it did. But spring is coming, and we can say with the poet of the song of songs,
“for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.”
As we cautiously move forward, let us watch for spring and notice the moments of joy and redemption and resurrection all around us, and let us know that the time of singing will come.

assignment: springtime

I was asked to speak at a women’s club tomorrow. The theme or topic is Springtime. At the time I said yes, I thought it was a great topic for this moment, but I haven’t had much chance to think about it, and I’m coming up a little blank.

The last time I did this was in November, and I was asked to talk about gratitude. I was finishing up covering for my colleagues sabbatical, so I wrote a sermon about gratitude and then revised it for the talk. Then I felt kind of bad because several of the women were from my church, so they heard more or less the same thing twice. So maybe this way is better. If I can come up with something.

I do love spring. I’m not sure here in California it has the impact that it does elsewhere, but it’s definitely our greenest season, and our most colorful one. I would like to be able to say, “Let’s all go outside and look around and breathe deeply of the spring air.” Alas that is not what they are looking for and the club is on a very cemented in city block.

My birthday is in Spring, so I have always had a fondness for that. My son’s birthday is also in Spring. In fact, it is today, and so I am skipping LiveStream worship leadership to help him celebrate his second Covid birthday, so I probably have about an hour before he wakes up to write what I can before the day is dedicated to him (and to chess, his choice of birthday activities). Nope. I finished that sentence and he woke up.

So… Spring. Time of renewal. This year spring seems especially renewing as we slowly work our way out of the deepest restrictions. Vaccines are offering us a new kind of spring. But it may not be a California Spring. It may be a midwestern spring (or at least what I understand a midwestern spring to be) where one day it’s snowing and then another day green is peeking out of the ground and another day the frost hits again and finally there are sure signs that the trees are budding and frost may hit again, but it won’t keep spring from coming.

And then we will be able to say with the poet, “for now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth; the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land” (Song of Songs 2:11-12).

in-between times: beach, beer, bikes

It feels as if we are entering a time of in-between times. I have a sermon to write for Palm/Passion Sunday. Maybe that’s what I will write about: the in-between times.

This week is my spring break and the kids’ first week of 2 weeks. Computerguy took Monday off and we went to the beach. It felt completely ordinary and totally extraordinary. I’ve been going to the beach during Spring Break as long as I have lived in California. I have never seen a Southern California beach so uncrowded. There were people here and there, more closer to the pier, but once we put our things down, we had our entire stretch of beach to ourselves. It was a little surreal, like this other world of the Pandemic still exists in pockets even as daily things (grocery stores, gas stations) seem to be as bustling as ever.

The peace of the ocean came over me as I watched the waves and the birds. We never go to the beach as much as I long to; I get too caught up thinking about traffic and crowds and sand everywhere. I need to remember how much it is worth all of that to just be at the beach. The kids had a ball. They got all the way in and played in the waves and the surf. And then they froze.

Beach

We finished the day by finding a deli for a late lunch. We were going to get our sandwiches take out and eat in the car or go back to the beach for a picnic, but the place had a lovely little patio that was completely empty, so we decided to eat there which meant I could order a beer with my sandwich. It’s a funny little thing. I don’t much buy beer to drink at home, but I love to get a beer from a tap when I go out for a casual meal. We hadn’t eaten a meal on the premises of a restaurant in over a year. So we sat on the patio and ate our delicious sandwiches (and tomato soup for the boy) and I drank my beer and slowly people came in, but everyone was cautious and finding tables as far from others as possible (and they were already widely spread out). Without being a big deal, it felt really good.

Beer

We started heading home and decided to stop for ice cream. It was delicious. Then we drove home. We hit some traffic, but it wasn’t too bad. And so. A really nice day.

We dusted off the bike rack and took our bikes to the beach, but we never got to them, so I left them on the car and on Wednesday the kids and I took them to a riding trail. It was a really nice trail along the train route more or less (Pacific Electric Trail). I enjoyed just riding the trail more than the kids did, though. The girl wants “to ride to some place,” not just ride to ride. I may check it out again some afternoon on my own.

Bikes

On the way to the bike trail, we got the call that the girl had been accepted into the high school program we were hoping for. It was kind of fun, taking the call on the car’s bluetooth with her sitting right next to me. The trail was fairly close to the school, so we drove by on the way home, and then drove from there to the boy’s new school (for which I have formally pre-enrolled him) which is close to our house. They… look like schools. If all goes as it seems to be going, we will have a Hawk and a Cougar this fall.

Finally, yesterday the kids and I picked my mom up and went out for ice cream. For her first outing in a year without having to quarantine for 14 days after, I think my mom would have liked to do a little more (go shopping), but our time was limited and I wanted the kids to come. It was nice. And again, it felt like an in-between sort of moment. We picked her up, got ice-cream, but had to sit outside. Then it got cold and we ended up sitting in the car. The nice thing is, I can take her shopping next week. And starting next week, I will be able to go in to the building, up to her room. And we’ll be able to bring her to church on Easter. And then we can do something the next week and the next. And maybe even the week after that. This makes me glad. The hardest part of the year for me was that we had brought my mom to San Bernardino, but we couldn’t actually do anything with her. Now we can.

So we make our way through. We’re not back to anything, but we are on to what’s next. We’ll see how it goes.