Good afternoon, Treehousers, and others who have wandered in. Please come on out to our beautiful treehouse porch and help yourself to some mint tea, freshly-brewed coffee, water or wine, and find a comfy seat. I have some things to say, and it might take a minute.
When we began this journey over a year-and-a-half ago, I invited you to join me as I try to rediscover and articulate what I believe about God, Jesus, the Church, Christian faith, and so on.
On Monday, July 28th I quietly noted the 32nd anniversary of my ordination as a pastor in the ELCA. I clearly remember kneeling on the hard brick steps of Trinity Lutheran Seminary’s sanctuary as the bishop invited me to make my promises and fellow pastors’ hands alit like birds on my shoulders. It’s weird to think I’ve been out of that pastoral role longer than I was in (14 years of service) and yet the joys and sorrows, struggles and gifts of being a pastor still have a powerful, beautiful hold on my heart and spirit.
It was in 1983, three years after my sister’s death and a year-and-a-half after our baby boy Cooper died, pregnant with daughter Maggie, that the first church I’d ever belonged to began to be torn asunder by serious conflict. I was newly arrived to the practice of Christian faith and was surprised that during this time of strife I was experiencing intense grief. My newfound faith had revealed to me a vision of wholeness, healing, and reconciliation, of mystery and wonder and hope and the movement of grace in the world, and I’d fallen for it hard, and I mean all the way. It was becoming one of the great love stories of my life, and that hot passion for what the Church could be was likely the first clue I was headed for ordained ministry, but I didn’t know that then.
Now, as Christian Nationalism spreads its twisted and toxic version of faith, one that rejects empathy and compassion, forgiveness, love, and justice as core ingredients, and instead sidelines Jesus Christ, in his place elevating the golden calf of power and money to be worshiped above all else, I’m revisited by those same powerful emotions. In other words, it still matters to me that the Church be the Church, that it should bear witness to and impart Divine Love to the world, and as if this even has to be said, have the person and teachings of Jesus Christ as its foundation and cornerstone. (To be honest, I’m a little stunned to realize how deeply invested I still am.)
We are living through dark times right now, and I believe it is going to get a lot darker, a frightening and sobering prospect. Yet, something powerful is stirring, and I don’t think it’s just in my heart, my spirit. Some enlivening breeze is moving us together, drawing people of many faiths and people of varying beliefs and people of no specific faith to lift together the banner of Love over all and to put forth the imperative of justice and compassion as we work alongside one another for what is good and true and right.
This vision of the Church at its best — knocked-down walls, bigger tables; less dogma, more blowing the doors clean off; less isolationism, more ecumenism; less judgment, more no-strings-attached love, lots and lots more love — is overwhelmingly alluring to me, and in some wild way still seems achievable. (Listen, it’s the untamed wildness of the Spirit that to me is one of Her most attractive features.)
So here I am, somehow having made a giant circle, coming not exactly back to but more like forward to this new faith, an updated, refashioned, renewed faith, a fresher, wider, less naïve yet paradoxically more hopeful faith. Because hope, that stubborn, muscular, little terrier-like thing, won’t let go of me. I’ll be sharing my new constructive theology as it’s coming together — be warned, it’s pretty pliable and isn’t very concerned with orthodoxy, but then outside the box seems to be where a lot of us encounter and celebrate the Holy, and it seems the Holy is pretty comfortable there, too.
In the end, I suppose for me faith is as simple as choosing which story to live into — the one without hope where we’re left to our own devices, or the one where hope not only resides but against all odds, the Divine causes to flourish and grow.
Today, I’m choosing to lean into hope.
"Today, I’m choosing to lean into hope." In spite of all that swirls around me, I'm also choosing hope Thank you for sharing.
Yes: Hope. Me too.