Category: The Comma

“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

 

 

 

“We can’t do this again! We can’t!”

And yet, here we were, doing it again.

It was the same old pattern.  The meeting began with great connection, vision, dreaming and energy.  But after the lunch break, as the conversation turned to plans on what to do next, all that energy we’d experienced fled the room.

We turned to making long to-do lists, agonizing over all we had to do,  remembering everything that we’d once tried that hadn’t work.   Hopelessness and despair descended like thick fog over our morning mountain top clarity and excitement.

It had happened to us before – one, three, five – too many times.  And this time we were headed that same way again until someone interrupted our pattern and said, “Stop.  We have to stop.  We can’t do this one more time.”

And so that day, we did something different.  We stopped.  We put down our to-do lists, raised our heads from our hands, unclenched our fists, and got curious about what we were doing.  We talked about our fears.  We acknowledged that as a board we had a lot invested in our time, energy, histories in holding this work together and keeping it going.  We remembered however that our call wasn’t to keep things going as they’d always been, but to do things differently, to lead into change.  We wondered if we kept falling back into our familiar pattern of stuck and despair, so that nothing needed to change.

My experience at the meeting made me wonder what patterns I might be invited to interrupt today.  I mean, when we find ourselves falling back into the “same old same old”, what if we stopped and acknowledged that we were stuck again in a life-draining way. What if instead of pushing through it we got curious about what was happening?   What if we tried doing something differently?

The meeting that day, ended not with us fleeing the room exhausted and weary, as we had done so many times before – but looking around at each other with delight and giving ourselves a round of applause.  Instead of a long list of things to do and not sure who was going to do it, we came out with just a couple of items that a few folks gladly took on.

What pattern might you be invited to interrupt today?

How might you pause and reflect on the way things always are – to make room for the new that might possibly be?

What would it take for your day to end with clapping?

 

So, what would you like to talk about?…

What do you want to take away from this conversation?…

Are we on track?…

What’s a next step you would like to take?…

Who can keep you accountable to do that?…

Some simple questions in a half hour conversation that is held in confidentiality and care.  Some open ended questions to invite some deeper personal reflection.  A listening ear.  There you have it – the essence of what some might call a simple “coaching conversation.”

Last fall I started a training program on becoming a coach with other United Church of Christ clergy.  I stumbled into this opportunity at our General Synod for the UCC last summer when I met Felix Villanueva, Conference Minister for Southern California-Nevada Conference.  He told me about a training he was offering for clergy in his conference to be coaches for other clergy.  I asked if I could attend as well and signed up.

The thing that keeps brining me back into ministry and the gift of pastoring is conversation.  There is nothing more that I value than conversations that probe beneath the surface of “fine thank you” and make space to consider some of the important matters of our hearts and discernment.  It has been a gift beyond measure to walk with so many in the many joys and trials, challenges and change that are life.

This practice of “coaching” has been a great tool in my toolkit as a listener.  As therapy can focus on processing what in our past keeps us stuck, coaching is a conversation about stepping forth into the future.  While I know for myself the need at times to just spin in my own lostness or sadness, I am also gifted by those who open up for me the possibility that there could be some meaning in all this, or in other words, that despite the spin of the familiar, that this in fact is all going somewhere.  That I am going somewhere from lost to found (or often into deeper lostness!) and that this is the way to find my way through.

Which brings me to New Years.  By now I have stepped into my annual joy of naming new resolutions in my life and by this second week of January already have forgotten many of them, neglected most of them, and held onto the vague hope that yes, this year, I will, despite my false starts, make a path forward in ways that are life-giving.  I’ve learned that I can’t take those steps as effectively alone.   At my best, I remember that!

So I’d invite you to join me and practice some informal coaching in your own life this new year.  Do you have a resolution for what you’d like to be about this coming year?  How might you articulate that as a specific, measurable, time-specific commitment?  And is there someone in your life you could ask to help keep you accountable to do that?  Maybe you would agree to tell them each week by phone or email or to meet in person and check in on how you did.  A partner like that can be a great way to hold you to what you want to do as well as a good reminder and expression of grace when you don’t.  With support like that you can get up and try again.

This is a time of tumultuous change in our world and in many of our personal lives.  And this is a time that would be an especially great time for some of us to commit to making some changes in our lives that lead to those very things we talked about at Christmas – deeper hope, peace, love, joy.  More life.  More taking in Christ-among-us in all the ways Christ is known in and between us.

Happy New Year – and Happy Stepping Forward into where Life Abundant is calling you to go!

500 years after Luther tacked his 95 theses on the church door, Seattle has its own reformer.

Well over a year ago, University Congregational United Church of Christ member, Rock Moulton first talked to me about his conviction that as we prepare for a historical commemoration of the Reformation that we need a New 95 Theses focused on injustice and the failure of compassion.

Like Luther’s 95 theses, Rock believes we need to post on the doors of our churches and the doors of our hearts issues of injustice.  Issues that I often fail to see or know how to respond to.  Issues like racial inequity, the criminal justice system and incarceration society, gender equity and environmental justice.  As Rock puts it, “The New 95 seeks to provide resources to empower people to take action, and to expand our justice ministry to the wider community.”

I will leave it to Rock to speak more about the specifics of the project and I know he welcomes your engagement and imagination on how and where this idea could take root.  I’ve included here some pictures from the display at University Congregational UCC on Rock’s project and you can link in to find out more at his website at www.new95theses.net.

What I want to testify to today is the difference it has made to me when someone like Rock has an idea and makes the commitment to say that it matters and shares it with others.  What a difference it makes when someone invests in an audacious and grand idea in the hope that it might catch on and catch fire in others imaginations.

Perhaps the tending of the ideas and imagination we have been given is the very heart of reformation.  It’s the conviction to believe that the story is not over yet, that there is somewhere wider and deeper that we are called to go.  It’s the conviction that we don’t need only to remember what was happening in the church 500 years ago but must wrestle with naming where we stand today and how we hope to step into tomorrow.

Rock has taken his little idea and grand vision to share in Germany at Kirchentag – a biennial meeting/convention/festival for the German reformed church.  Rock set up at booth in the “Marketplace of Possibilities” (which filled four huge exhibition rooms!)  As he put it, “My goal was to encourage others to take up a similar project in their own countries and post their own thesis.”  He took his idea to the General Synod of the United Church of Christ in Baltimore last summer as well.

I know it must be discouraging that these little ideas we are given sometimes don’t seem to take root and catch fire as we hoped they might.  And yet, I for one want to testify that the sharing of these ideas make a difference.

This Reformation Sunday I won’t so much remember all that Martin Luther and the reformers did (most of which I have forgotten since divinity school!) but see and celebrate what Rock is doing today – calling the church to wrestle with where we stand and who we stand with and for.  His call and challenge for us to step forth into a deeper love and wider justice for all.

After attending Kirchentag, Rock wrote, “I had no idea that something like this was possible. I might go to the next one to see everything else.”

Thank you Rock for inspiring this pastor to see beyond what I thought was possible to what might yet be.  Thanks for reminding me that the work of reformation keeps on.

How do these present times

change what you write? the poet asked.

 

Another poet responded, It means we can’t write

about blueberries anymore.

 

The poets, around the circle, wiped their tears

as another rose,

 

In this present time,

in this necessity to write of what is real

and what matters most

how can we NOT write

of blueberries?

 

I mean, in our time of such ugliness

who will recall us to beauty?

I mean the shape and fragrance of it,

how in this small blue orb rise oceans and seas,

mountain lakes and tears.

 

Who in our time of such grim truths,

will tell of the surprise of discovery,

I mean, this patch of bushes

we discovered along the mountain trail as it opened

out of the dark woods onto the rocky peak?

 

Who will remind us in such a time of bitter discord

of the taste of sweetness?

 

Who will speak clearly of stains,

the futility of saving ourselves from them,

on lips and the white shorts you knew better than to wear

but couldn’t help yourself for summer is made for times like this,

I mean, the messy juiciness of it all.

 

Who in these times will take the time

to tell of that summer day on the mountain

how we picked berries one by one

placing them with care in our buckets,

filling our mouths,

careful lest we lose one precious pearl?

 

Peter Ilgenfritz

 

 

Last Sunday I messed up.

If there’s any good news in it, perhaps it’s that I messed up in the High Holy Days of Judaism which my Jewish siblings remind me is an invitation to open our hearts to our need for forgiveness, for grace, for living anew into a new year.

In my sermon last Sunday I did exactly what we’re trying to be more aware of and not do as a community of faith – I stepped right into a verbal microaggression.

A microaggression is a brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral or environmental indignity whether intentional or unintentional that communicates hostile, derogatory or negative racial slights and insults towards people of color.

It’s been helpful this week to reflect back on what I did and what I’ve learned.

I thought my sermon last Sunday had gone well and before I closed things down to leave for the day, I saw an email noting something about the “impact” of my sermon.  Assuming a complement, I opened the email only to discover that it was an expression of deep hurt at a comment I made in my sermon using a derogatory term for migrants as a way to refer to Moses.

When I’m sailing, and the wind starts blowing hard, I’m quick to do the opposite of what I need to do.  Instead of letting the sails out, I tend to grip and hold on tight.  I did the same thing I do sailing in my office last Sunday afternoon.  I didn’t take a breath but took refuge to my familiar reactive practices:

• I felt awful and I wanted to make it all better. I picked up the phone and called.  When my call wasn’t picked up, I left a voice mail message.
• In my message I offered my apology and ran to tell my back story of why I’d used the term, where it had come from, all my intentions.
• I said I was sorry. But that expression of apology didn’t really release anything in me but continued to leave me tangled in my own self-incrimination, despair, and hopelessness.

Fortunately, the story didn’t end there.

A few minutes later I got another email from the same person who didn’t let me off the hook.

• They let me know my need to talk it out and make it all better was my need. They were not ready to talk.
• They called me on my justifications. They told me my response and back story didn’t help but only made matters worse.
• They reminded me that this community of faith has asked me as a pastor to hold a space of safety and that space was violated on Sunday.

I can only call it God’s Grace.  The Grace of God that came to me in not reacting again in my familiar spinning ways, but taking a breath and stepping back.  I heard what they were saying or at least had a little more understanding of what I had done and the impact it had.

I have no doubt that my ability to see something beyond my familiar reactions this second time was due to the little bit of practice I’ve had engaging in challenging conversations on race when I’ve messed up before.  I had a little bit of experience that had shown me there was a different way to respond than my first response.  It’s why I know that having opportunities to practice having conversations about race and racism is so important for my spiritual growth and that of our church. What I’d learned in practicing before, helped me see another way forward.

I remembered the “Ted Talk” by Jay Smooth I’d seen at our church’s racial justice training, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Discussing Race.”

I remembered that he said too often white people like me jump to the conclusion that if we do or say things that show our racism that we are a “bad” person.  We jump into all the justification, denial, self-incrimination like I did and was tempted to do.  We believe that if our racism has been called out and exposed, we couldn’t possibly be “good” people and we run to do a lot of things to defend our “goodness”.

My response to run to the defense of my own goodness and my spiral of trying to get out of my shame does nothing productive.  If anything, as I learned last Sunday again, it causes more harm.  In doing so, I can keep all of the structures of racism intact, including my own. I can run to shame and blame and never change, not really.  I never really hear what is being said and the impact it has had.  I can’t see my way out to a better way to respond when I have caused hurt.

Smooth’s invitation to whites like me is to see what I did on Sunday as an issue that’s not about “goodness” but is instead a dental hygiene issue.

Getting a piece of lettuce caught in my teeth is not an uncommon experience for me.  When someone points it out, I often feel embarrassed and self-critical.  I also know what to do.  I go rinse my mouth, floss my teeth, take care of it.

My humbling experience on Sunday taught me it lot.

• It clarified for me again that it’s not about defending my “goodness” and getting it right all the time. I certainly don’t and I won’t when it comes to conversations about race.  I’m a work in process and there will always be a lot I need to understand and learn.  Racist assumptions, attitudes, ways of being run deep in me as they do in our country.  But I am committed to not letting the story end there.  I have been and am committed to intentionally grow, learn and change.  I just don’t expect that I’ll be perfect.
• When I have committed a microaggression, I know what to do. I know that when I have caused harm it is my responsibility to take responsibility for what I’ve done, to say I’m sorry and to make concrete steps to change and grow. I will do that on this Sunday as I lead our congregation into the prayer of confession.
• I’m all the more grateful for truly generous souls in my congregation who don’t just walk away but risk having the conversations with me that help keep me accountable for the words I say and the impact they have.

What about you?

• If you identify as white, when you are in a conversation on race, how important is it for you to defend your goodness?
• What keeps you from hearing what is being said?
• How are you committed to change?

In the heart of these high holy days in Judaism, perhaps it’s a very good day for us to join our Jewish siblings and hear the invitation for us to open our hearts to deeper truth, vulnerability, forgiveness and grace.

Perhaps it is a good day, to begin anew, again.

It takes a lot to disrupt my Sabbath day on Tuesdays.  It’s often my writing day and always my lazy day after a long week.  I know what it costs the rest of the week and the people in my life when I don’t have just a little time to put down all I have been about and to just be on this day.

Although I often forget it, I’m often reminded that it’s a privilege to have such a day of rest. A privilege that so many don’t get as they struggle day in and day out just to get by.   I was reminded of that this week.

It was early Tuesday morning when I saw the newsfeed:  Attorney General Jeff Sessions Ends DACA (Differed Action for Child Arrivals).  That little newsfeed disrupted my anticipated peace and rest of the day and sent me out to join a small rally at El Centro de la Raza who had gathered to respond to the news.

I knew if I didn’t go, I’d regret it but I wasn’t sure even on my way there why I was going.    Was I going there with my pastor hat on and serving as a representative of our church that had recently voted to become a sanctuary congregation?  Was I going to join a protest and chant and sing?  Was I going to strategize and network with colleagues and friends?  It wasn’t until I came out on the little square and stood on the sidelines that I discovered why I’d come.  I’d come here to cry and the tears come again now in the remembering.

I don’t know all they’re about as I often don’t know with my tears. What I do know is that years ago, Dave and I took in a young man named Pedro who had just aged out of foster care and was seeking political asylum.  The social worker dropped him off with suggestions about registering him for public school and a blessing of “good luck.”  He was with us for two years.  During that time he got through 9^th and 10^th grades.  He learned English and math, played lots of soccer.  Pedro didn’t meet the strict criteria of DACA when President Obama began that important program.  I forget now just how many months it was that made Pedro ineligible.  I remember grieving that, grieve it still for Pedro’s story is the story of countless children refugees – a dangerous journey across desert, here vulnerable, strong and alone.  Stories that he told us surrounded by deep silences and hurt.

I talked with Pedro on Sunday as the floodwaters were rising in Houston.  They had an inch and a half of water in his apartment.  He told me that he and his roommate were staying on their beds to keep dry.  Then the phone went dead like all the other millions of phones went dead in Houston without power.  It wasn’t until a week ago, last Saturday, that I finally heard from him again.  He was safe.  The water rose to the windowsills and they found refuge at a friend’s apartment.  This week, they moved back into their apartment and began the long slow work of recovery.

Pedro has no insurance.  FEMA is not going to help him. He doesn’t have a job with a guaranteed income or vacation days.  And it’s the Pedro’s of the world who will rebuild Houston as they will in weeks to come rebuild Florida and wherever the next hurricane comes.  The Pedro’s of the world will do the work without any labor laws or protections, without any guaranteed minimum wage, without any guarantee that they will get paid.

For all that DACA does not do for children and their families, DACA does provide a breathing space, a breathing room, the privilege of having a little less disruption in lives that have born so much disruption.  It gives a little respite from having to be so constantly preoccupied with being deported, upheaved from your life and family and offers the hope of being able to go to school, go to college and get a job as so many DACA recipients have.

Yes, it takes a lot to disrupt my one day when I have the privilege of not being disrupted.  And because of my personal relationship with Pedro I know the difference a little less disruption can make for people who live in the cracks of our society’s care.  DACA helps provide a little assurance of stability, a little ground to stand on, a little ability to look forward and around.  DACA makes hope possible again.

I know the difference DACA would have made to Pedro.  I know the difference it would make to millions like him.  I cry for him, for my dreams of what could have been for him and our government’s unwillingness to do some small things that would be a little ground for hope.

Washington’s Attorney General, Bob Ferguson, said at the rally on Tuesday, “In all of the dark days we have seen, there is none darker than today.”  Perhaps he’s right – it’s the darkness that comes when we had lit a little candle of hope and then by choice blow it out.

In my tears of today is my passion for tomorrow.  To relight the small candle of hope and keep it burning bright.

I never made my destination

That perfect spot I imagined

To view the eclipse

Through special glasses I did not have

Or a pinprick hole on paper I did not bring

 

For on the way to where I planned to go

On that windy, shadowed road

I was transfixed by a way

Turned bright with crescent moons

Or a great flight of migratory birds

Stopped, stared, took photos,

Tried to hold light,

Finger shadows

 

Further on, chickens,

And a men jogging down the road,

Helped him find his reading glasses

Lost in the grass

While chasing the fowl off the road

Where are we going?

And why am I always so certain I’ll make it?

How often miss I the destination where I’ve been all the time

 

How do you read the signs of the times?

Have you as I been too cautious in love?

Not risked disruption enough,

Made complacency your home?

Look! The chickens have flown the coop

The crowds emptied the offices of

Monday morning productivity

 

Am I making too much of it or not enough?

A partiality I am reticent to embrace

A happiness I am reluctant to find

A turn in the road eclipsing

All that I thought I was about

Look!  A crescent moon lights the face shadowed in tears

The whole world converted to

This spectacle of light!

Peter Ilgenfritz/Monday, August 21, 2017