Author: pilgenfritz

I posted this last summer and am re-posting it now as Glennon Doyle is coming to University Congregational Church on Friday night September 14 – and you definitely want to come if you can!  Like me – she might surprise you!

Here’s my post from right after our General Synod Gathering of the United Church of Christ in Baltimore…

Love Warrior

Of all the people I wanted to see, there was one person I didn’t want to see at General Synod – Glennon Doyle.

I mean of all the people we could be hearing from at our national gathering of the United Church of Christ (remember when Barak Obama spoke at General Synod?) why did we get stuck this year with seeing Glennon Doyle’s smiling face as one of our “featured speakers” of the week?

But then on the morning of the second day, when I’m sitting towards the front of the huge conference center, Glennon walks on stage.  I’m completely caught off guard.  I was going to leave, skip this part – but now here I am stuck up front with no path to an easy escape.

My prejudice against Glennon was based – as all my well-held prejudices are – in a fleeting experience from which I went on to make huge generalizations.  A few months ago, in my struggling attempts to write a book, I’d read – or more fairly, skimmed – her memoir, Love Warrior.  A promising premise and beginning:  a cheating husband, a couple caught in their own foibles and neuroses and a main character who come hell or high water will fight for love to save love, to keep love.  Sure enough – as I jump to the end to read – Glennon ends up jumping back in bed with her husband and finding we are assured that indeed love conquers all, Glennon has conquered all in the fight for love.

For all of us with a tendency for obsessive behavior, of fixing everything that is out of place and we have deemed “wrong” with the world, this kind of story is not particularly good news.  All us “fixers” read into stories like these that if only we too had been stronger, a better warrior like Glennon with drive and commitment, enough peroxide persistence and high heeled tenacity we too could have soldiered our way through all the foibles and failures, the mishaps and misadventures that have defined our lives.  We too could have written a best-selling memoir, have a Facebook following of three-quarters of a million followers (Momastery), and be strutting onto stage to remind good Christian folks to keep fighting the good fight, soldiering through and fixing all problems within and around us.

Instead of throwing Love Warrior across the room – I’d more sanely flung it through the return book slot at the library content to think that I was done with Glennon Doyle, until now when she shows up on the stage and me stuck here with no escape.

I crossed my arms.  I expected to be angry.  I didn’t expect her to make me laugh but she made me laugh.  Laugh right away.  Laugh some more and got me paying serious attention when she started by sharing her story of addiction – bolemic, alcoholic, drugs, you name it, since she was ten.  She made me think there might possibly be something real worth listening for and when she mentioned her “former-husband” (“spoiler alert” she chimed) – and mentioned she married a woman last year I am startled and caught up in hearing more.  Perhaps there was more to Glennon Doyle than I’d assumed.

Glennon talks not – as I’d assumed – about the mighty warrior overcoming all obstacles but about a warrior-ing that is found through being leveled by pain.  I find I’m taking notes – pages and pages of notes – more notes than I’ll take all week at Synod.

I didn’t expect her this – I mean her to talk about pain.  “Pain is a travelling professor who comes in and sits down to teach me what I need to know,”  she comments.  I am moved by her story of the mother who writes Glennon distraught by how her divorce and other so-called failures in her life have failed and crippled her children.  I am struck when Glennon recalls asking the mom what kind of qualities she hopes her children to have.  The mother names – courage, wisdom, compassion.  “And what are these qualities born from?” Glennon asks.  From pain. We find our way haven’t we all – to any courage, wisdom, compassion we might have in us through our pain?

“We seek to protect our children from pain.  Our job is not to protect our children from pain but to direct them towards it, to learn the journey of the warrior in and through the pain,” she says.  “We need friends to be still with us in our pain.  Two friends who practice not being God together.”  Again, I laugh.

“The battle of the warrior begins in sitting 1.6 seconds in the pain.  To sit in it and not drink it, snort it, smoke it, work it away but sit in it.  To sit with the pain that wants to sit down with us and teach us what we need to know.  To help us risk sending our realness and not our representative out into the world.”

I didn’t expect her to talk about faith – and then she talks about walking into my friend Ron’s UCC church in Naples Florida and finding there the people she had been looking for.  Sure, she loved the free coffee and daycare but she finds here as well the God who she has been looking for – a God who she is shocked to hear called “She”, a God of “unbelievably low expectations” – low enough expectations to have love even for her in all of her brokenness.

Yesterday I’d told my colleague Dan about my Glennon Doyle experience and he affirmed that my cursory read of her memoir wasn’t all off base.  In fact, he told me she struggled in her Facebook postings with the paradox – the public embarrassment, shame – of having Love Warrior come out at the same time that her marriage was falling apart.

Life goes on.  Just when we thought we had solved all our problems, climbed the great mountains, transformed our lives, on to live happily ever after – we discover that life, that God, is not through with us yet.  Which perhaps, perhaps, is ultimately good news – though it doesn’t feel so oftentimes in the short-term.  In the pain that is part of life, like Glennon we too might learn ever deeper that we don’t need shiny or perfect or good to be “successful”, whatever that is, we need real.  A real that is found – that begins – with sitting in those 1.6 seconds in the pain, to hear what it has come to teach us.  To find the way it is leading us towards the doorway to a deeper compassion for ourselves, a wider love for all the world – yes, Peter, even the Glennon Doyles – in me, in the world, in it all.

The destruction of the planet, the extinction of humanity, the sell-out of organized religion and our collective imagination to the concerns and agendas of the economic bottom line and the control of mega-corporations…..In it all – Will God forgive us?

I mean, forgive us for what we have done and what we have left undone – Will God forgive us?

The question haunts the characters in Paul Schrader’s latest movie, “First Reformed” and the movie’s protagonist, Reverend Toller, the shipwrecked pastor of a quaint historical church in Upstate New York with a souvenir shop and tiny handful of members.

Will God forgive us?  I mean, forgive us for our parts in the huge issues in our collective lives as well as the equally huge issues in our own personal lives – the death of a child, the wreckage of a marriage, the diagnosis of cancer, the addictions, the fragility of all of our lives….

Forgiveness can seem at times like a cop-out, an impossible or irresponsible dream, so like us, the characters respond by lashing out at what cannot be forgiven.  They take on the breastplate of rage and the desire to inflict pain and hurt on others – and the sword of self-hate at their powerlessness in making a difference at all.

Haunting, disturbing questions at the heart of it all.

And this – how can we survive, endure, live with the pain of our world and our lives?

I recommend “First Reformed” to you and yes, I look forward to seeing a movie about Fred Rogers, one of my true role models and heroes – and perhaps more than ever need to see it!   And yet I recommend “First Reformed” this highly agonizing and disturbing movie with no easy answers because of the whisper it offers in the midst of all the noise and destruction.  It’s a whisper that I needed to hear – so quiet that I almost missed it – “Love Wins”.

It’s what my friend Esther wrote back after I texted her right after the move – “What was that?!”  Esther and her husband Dale are much more serious moviegoers than me – and Esther’s a poet as well.  She often perceives what I don’t catch at first glance. She texted back, “Love Wins”.

“Love Wins.”  That perhaps the meaning of that final scene.  That perhaps the answer to the question, “Will God forgive us?”  That perhaps the lens with which I want to go see this movie again.  That response – why I write this blog this week in hopes that if you go see it you might become part of a conversation about the power and impact of that whisper to meet the huge issues of our times and our lives.

At the memorial service last Saturday I read those familiar words from 1 Corinthians 13 again…. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.”  And I concluded my eulogy as I always do with the heart of Paul’s faith at the end of Romans 8:  “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God….”

Nice words?  Or might it perhaps be true?

In January I had my first swimming lesson in 45 years. As I panted by the edge of the pool after doing a few laps, my swim teacher kneeled down beside me,

“Actually sir, that’s not too bad.”

I took this as high praise.  Whatever good and bad swim habits I had remembered from my last swim lessons at Boy Scout camp, it had served me well enough to come down to “not too bad” 45 years later.

Of course, there were also things like “Point your toes” and “Keep kicking – kicking – your feet – keep kicking your feet.  And “Yes, kicking even when you turn to breathe.  Don’t stop.”

There was something about not bending my wrists but bending my elbows and my hands catching almost at the same time.  There was something about turning and no, not just from my hips but with my whole body.  There were a lot of other things I don’t remember.  For the past 6 months I’ve been practicing, two three times a week, practicing learning to swim.

A couple of months ago I asked the lifeguard at the Y about the bright blue kickboards and the black plastic pieces with red loops, the blue and white little foam pads and flippers that I had seen some swimmers using.  I wondered if these things could help me swim.

“I don’t know how to use any of those things,” I told him.

“You should come to the Master Swim class on Wednesday night.  I’m going to try it out myself,” he replied.

It gave me encouragement that the lifeguard was still learning how to swim too.

So I got brave and went that next night to the Master Swim class wondering what I was doing there as I was no “master swimmer.”  I discovered a couple of others there who weren’t “master swimmers” either.  They too were learning how to swim.

I started out in the beginner lane.  Others have graduated from there to other lanes where swimmers swim twice the laps we do in half the time.  In the beginner lane we actually don’t worry too much about how fast we’re going because like me, we don’t have any “faster” speed to go.  Often times, Adam, a 20 year old exuberant injured runner is the only other swimmer in the beginner lane with me and within 4 or 5 laps he’s passed me one more time.

A couple of weeks ago, the lifeguard stood by the edge of the pool and stopped me at the end of the lane.

“Sir, you have to stop! I am demanding that you stop right now and rest!”

He turned to go, turned back, “One minute!  You have to rest one minute here by the edge of the pool!  This is hard work you’re doing.”

I figured he didn’t want to get wet having to come in and rescue me.  I waited my minute, felt better and did a couple more laps before staggering to the showers.

Last night, the Master Swim class coach, Caroline kneeled down by the edge of the pool as I rested after being lapped one more time by Adam who was swimming on ahead.

“How are my arms?  Am I doing my arms right?  I’ve been practicing,” I told her.

She smiled, paused.  “A little bit….It takes a lot of time 3, 6 weeks to master something new with a stroke.”

I thought, I’ve been practicing for 6 months….

“Hey, when’s your race?  August?” she asked.

“Yes.” I said.

“I think you’re going to be alright.”

And right there in the pool I could have cried in the wet exhaustion of it all.

No, not that “You are going to win the race,” but also not that “You can’t do this.”

Instead, “I think you’re going to be alright.”

Yesterday I received the email that the race my sister and I were going to do in New Hampshire this August was cancelled.  For sure there are other races, and a shorter race we can do that day.  But I had been learning to swim for this race these past six months.

And amidst it all, I haven’t been able to get Caroline’s words out of my mind.

What if even though the race is cancelled, “I think you’re going to be alright.”

What if even though what we hoped for didn’t happen, what we wanted so badly we didn’t achieve, what if when we floundered and couldn’t remember our head from our toes and why we were supposed to, we also heard Caroline kneeling down by the edge of the pool, looking us in the eye,  “I think you’re going to be alright.”

What if whatever is happening in your life right now and mine, wherever we are in this journey of life and death and everything in between, “I think you’re going to be alright.”

As for this panting swimmer, still learning to swim, I hold on to the slippery tiles at the edge of the pool, push off one more time.  Believing once again, no matter what.

Bruce and Julia are moving to Canada.  Rose sold her home in Seattle of 53 years and now lives with her daughter and her husband, their dog and a cat on a farm in “the far north”.  Anna left her job to pick up two new jobs in order to provide space and energy to do a reasonable job of picking up her primary third job of taking care of her parents!

All of them, migrating from what had been their “life” to a new life.  This year our congregation reflected on the journeys of preparing to leave home, leave-taking, the in—between, and the journey “home” – to where we begin again.

Bruce reflected on the long process of becoming a Canadian citizen – endless forms, interviews and questions – and now the process of applying for Family Sponsorship for Julia which as he noted “sounds so much better than ‘chain migration’ – for us it represents the completion of a journey not some sinister act.”

Anna reflects that the changes in her life have not been easy – It took five job interviews in eight months and being turned down for all of the positions before she found a job that fits.  “And no, it is not easy to balance being a daughter and a caregiver. Taking care of my parents is hard – we have gotten upset, we have fought – and we have good times as well.  There is joy in it as well,”

It’s a “strange country” where Rose lives now.  She gathers eggs from the chickens each morning, looks out her kitchen window across the fields to the mountain range beyond.

“There is a woods across the road from us and we hear the Cooper’s Hawk calling each evening.  The Barn Owls are flying in and out of the barns when dusk arrives – no doubt feeding their young.  If it’s still light enough, we can see them as they silently fly back and forth.”

Gene reflected that internally or externally all of us are making these journeys of migration all the time.  Besides the passages of life and stages of aging and the changes they bring, “There are the intra-migrations of learning, knowledge and wisdom, knowing self, social maturation, and the growth of spiritual consciousness, envisioning God’s Will and finding ‘the Way’.  There are also larger more universal, inter-migrations, including understanding one’s place within our historical family, tribe, culture and nation, comprehending Humankind’s role in the vast cosmos of God’s creation, and entering into the consciousness of being at-oneness with God that is beyond Self.”

Bruce and Julia reflected that every emotion has been present with their journey of migration with the exception of one – regret.   Instead, I hear from them that they have given themselves to life, to movement – to the unknown – to what is next.

I think on this turning to a new season – on my own and yours – where are we going?  How do we understand and discern “call”?  What enables us to say yes to go?  What makes us say no?  And what is the faith that we need to step forth as Rose said “leaving my home of 53 years, three daughters, her church, her wonderful neighbors and friends and stepping forth into a new life and adventure”?

“As I turned 65 and as we put together our “life plan” migration seemed to make sense,” Bruce reflected.  Is something “making sense” to you that you need to do?

Joel was on a routine drive home from work when he was side swiped by a car.  His car rolled and flipped and when the medics arrived at first they couldn’t find his pulse and assumed he had died.  Instead, Joel survived and was knitted back together over a long period of time and carries a story that has defined his life.  I don’t know how Joel was before his accident but today he is a man that exudes that “life is not done with me yet”.  Every day he seeks to live life to the fullest and reminds the people in this life to do the same.

Rose reflects, “I simply know that wherever I am, God is.  No worries.”  If we believed that – what difference might it make?  What choices might you make today?

I hear Bruce and Julia, Rose, Anna, Gene and Joel beckoning us all into the journey that is life – to risk taking a step forward into fullness and risk, joy and wonder, today.

 

“I simply believe that no matter how hard I work at not being racist, I still am.”  Stephanie Wildman

I’m standing on the curb
Waiting for the Bolt Bus back to Seattle
When he staggers down the street
The bent over black man
Sunken cheeks, fingering coins
Do you have a dollar?  I need a dollar…

I’m reading “Dear White America” for my
Allies for Change class – the assignment due tomorrow
As the man comes closer
Do you have…?  

No
No
No
The men beside me reply as he goes by…

I just want him to go away
Like I wanted the homeless addicted black woman
Last month to go away when I stood here
In the drizzling rain to go away and leave me alone
I don’t want to talk to him, ask his name
I want to be left alone to finish my reading assignment

No
No thank you.. I mutter

What?  “No thank you?”

Later the young white kid
Asks the driver how much it is for the bus
You have to pay with cash she says
He looks around wide-eyed like where’s the cash machine?

I don’t think, I react
Here – how much do you need? I ask
Hand him a 20
No way man, really?
Sure, no problem
How much is the bus? he asks
25
You don’t happen to have…
Here – I hand him a 5
Peter I say, extending my hand
James

Thank you for helping him out sir the driver says as I climb on the bus
No problem, I say.  If only we all would help each other out
In times like this.

On the bus, I finish the article,
“I’m asking you to enter into battle with your whole self.
I’m asking that you open yourself up, to admit to
The racist person that is inside you.”*

Peter Ilgenfritz
May 10, 2018

*”Dear White America” by George Yancy, professor of philosophy at Emory University, New York Times Opinion Pages, December 24, 2015

See also, “Should I Give Up on White People?” by George Yancy, The New York Times, April 16, 2018

“We do not celebrate assassinations and killings of our prophets. Instead we find the place where they fell, we reach down into the blood, we pick up the baton and we carry it forward.”
(Rev. William Barber, co-leader of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival)

Early morning, Wednesday April 4
The Tidal Basin ringed with blossoming pink cherry blossoms
A thousand of us gather to walk silently through
These great pillars of stone, these mountains of despair
Through which you can see the rock from which is hewn
The statue of King,
“Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope.”

I wonder on this hope, and of what it is made.

We process up by the statue
Look out over the water to the Jefferson Memorial
Where are inscribed the words of the slave owner,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident – that all men are created equal.”
I wonder how far away it is.
I wonder how long it will take to get there.

We process in silence out to the mall, past the White House and African American Museum of History and Culture, the Capital before us. The National Council of Churches and its interfaith partners have called us together on this 50th Anniversary of King’s assassination to complete the work that he began and eradicate racism. See: http://www.unite2endracism.org. Among those gathered, seven of us from University Congregational United Church of Christ in Seattle.

Lillian Lahiri:
One speaker after another call so eloquently, passionately and urgently for our coming together with renewed purpose to end racism now. Such a bold, audacious call, drawing forth from me what I hope is deep and long-lasting commitment to grow in wisdom and skill and power to co-create a more just society in my lifetime.

Rosh Doan:
Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, activists and founders of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream illustrated so honestly from their own experience what white privilege is all about. Their speculating what their lives would have been like had they been born black was powerful. What is the commitment, discipline, persistence required of us now? Where is the courage?

Carol Hamilton:
The African American Museum of History and Culture was one of the most spectacular experiences in DC– we “took in” the sad history of the hundreds of years of slavery–and most notably the “slave revolts” that had happened in each of the “eras featured.” The Cultural presentations were pure joy and recognition for the many people visiting–the familiar and proud parts of the past.

Toni Higgs:
Standing on the mall with the wind pushing me around after our lunch, listening to DeRay McKesson talk about quitting his job with good pay and benefits and moving to St. Louis so that he could organize on the streets of Ferguson after Michael Brown was killed by police. That combined with the images of the fire hoses and beatings of MLK and John Lewis and others made me salute their bravery and realize I and other white people could be doing so much more than we do. I mean I complain about attending yet another meeting, and there they are, putting their lives on the line.

At the close of the day, Bishop Darwin Moore of the mid-Atlantic Episcopal District of the AME Zion Church held his one year old black grandson in his arms. He pledged to him that he would work with the others here to complete the work to get to the Promised Land where all God’s children stand as equals on level, fertile ground.

Then, he looked out at us.

“It’s time to get off the mountaintop – to get off our blessed assurance – and do something for the Lord.”

 

What do you do on the week before everything happens?
I mean how do you get ready?
How do you prepare?
I mean, how might I?

I mean even though I know the story
that never changes, never veers,
relentless with its pounding feet,
the parade, the temple,
the upper room, the garden,
the courtroom, the hill
boring with its repetition
the exultation, the anger,
the breaking, the grief,
the betrayal, the trial,
the agony, the death
haven’t I done this enough – haven’t you?

I mean, how do I face it – how do you?  –
one more time again?

I mean have I been good enough – have you? –
prepared enough
suffered enough
sacrificed enough
withheld enough
prayed enough
am I now strong enough – are you? –
to see it all through
given my all
so I might finally give myself up
ready as I never am – are you? –
to give myself over to the story one more time
the impossibility that is never
what I could have imagined
nor at times wanted to believe
preferring to hold on
to my present imagined certainties.

Is new life possible again?
For me? For you?
And why does it take this story to get there
with all of its losing?

On this morning in the week before everything happens
I remember how my father would wake me in the dark
carry me across crusted snow
gnarled bare limbs fingering stars
up the hill to the clearing
the huddle of family
strangers shivering cold, stomping boots
waiting again for what seemed an eternity
interminable words and prayers
I did not understand.

Until finally,
Al the milkman
lifted his trumpet
as bright rays arched
over dark hills
and I believed
as I want to believe
as I want to dare to believe – do you? –
once again.

Peter Ilgenfritz
On the week before Holy Week 2018

 

Regarding the Sermon

I wish I hadn’t said that we’re homeless
Because we’re not
As you reminded me afterwards
At least most of us here
That even if it feels that way at times,
It’s not true, not fair
To those who are.
I wish I’d been more careful with my words.

I wish when I told the story of us standing there in the dark
That early morning waiting for the bus,
The homeless woman shuffling by with her hand outstretched asking for change
I wish I’d told it so the woman beside me offered not only change but her hand and
Said, “Hi I’m Dwinelva”
And the homeless woman said, “Doris”
Because as you reminded me afterwards,
Sometimes fiction tells it truer than truth
Would have made the point clearer that the naming matters,
The meeting of each other with hands outstretched –
I wish I’d told the story true.

I wish I hadn’t dismissed the expectation of heavens tearing,
Spirit descending, voice naming at his baptism
Because as you reminded me
It might actually happen, might actually be happening
In silent, covered over places
To us, even now, if only
We could hear
I wish I would have opened more wide
The possibility, the wonder.

I wish I hadn’t gone on so long about the disorientation of being here long ago
This place so far away,
The hugs instead of handshakes
Off-putting for this New England boy
Wondering afterwards if that’s why everyone today comes by and shakes my hand
I wish I could take it back, swallow the words.

I wish, once again, you didn’t have to complete the sermon
As you always do,
That it could have stood alone proud and sure
But as he told me long ago, no sermon is complete, no word is the last
It’s the gaps in air, the missing places,
The missteps and stumbled words
The ways that we can put it better or clearer
That we find a place
That we make a way in
That the conversation can begin
The reminder that we need each other
It was the point, right?
Not the perfection
But the imperfection
Not the final word
But the unfinished.

And yet here I am again
Long after you’re gone
Still standing here preaching
Talking to air
In an empty room
Trying to explain, again,
Clearer, so you’ll understand
Just how much I love you.

Peter Ilgenfritz