Category: The Comma

And then, Charlottesville….

This summer we’ve invited our congregation to make a “migration bird” that tells something about their own or their family’s history of migration.   We’ll hang a great flock of our “birds” overhead in our sanctuary during our upcoming year-long worship series on exploring issues of migration.

In the last few weeks I struggled with how to portray something about my own and my family’s story of migration.  Would I use pictures of relatives, draw a map, paint a picture of what all the ups and downs of my life have felt like?  Would I picture my story or include what I know of my ancestor’s stories?

Two weeks ago I started by gluing some watercolor paper on my cardboard bird.  I painted my bird blue which made me think of water and skies, movement and change.

I started writing on one side the names of all the places I’d lived.  On the other side, people that have been important in my life.

And then, Charlottesville….

The news of the past week has made me look at my bird in a different way.  Now instead of just being a bird showing all these people and places I celebrate, I now notice at what’s missing in my own story.

I notice all the places I have been privileged to live.  I think about who I connected with in these places and those I did not.  I think about the places I have not chosen to see or go.  I think places I need to go to learn and listen.

I look at the people in my life and give thanks.  I look at all the peoples that have not been part of my life.  I look at how few people of color I named.  I think of people I need to reach out to and get to know.

I see the beauty and I see the wounds now in my story.

And then, Charlottesville….

The riot in Charlottesville calls me to again to commit myself to step into and look at my own story – my responsibility, my whiteness, my privilege, my silent complicity.  The violence and hatred in Charlottesville and the racist rhetoric from President Trump force me to commit myself to not just throw up my hands or get mad but to change my own story.

How will I do that?  How will I commit myself to deeper learning, continued growing, listening, and engagement with others as I look at my story of how race, racism and white privilege has shaped my life?   How will I be changed?

And then, Charlottesville…

This week our church added our own words to all the words that have surrounded this week, words that give me hope and make me wonder:  How will we as church not only proclaim but embody these words and change our own story and engagement here as church?

A Statement of Commendation and Solidarity:  The Church Council of University Congregational United Church of Christ, in Seattle, Washington, gratefully commends the faithful work of religious leaders in and around Charlottesville, Virginia, as they demonstrate their commitment to the love and justice of God in the face of hatred and violence on display in their community. In their spirit, we affirm that Christ leads us to celebrate and protect the unity and diversity of all of God’s people and, therefore, to stand publicly and to organize cooperatively in solidarity against any appeals to white supremacy, religious bigotry and nationalistic intolerance.

As we stood at our Church Council meeting on Wednesday and recited them together, I committed  to live more fully into this way of change. It’s a journey I’m glad we can step up and take together as church.

“Deep in our hearts, we yearn for true amazement.”  Yayoi Kusama

When Yayoi Kusama was ten years old, she had hallucinations in which she experienced the world as an array of polka dots.  I imagine such an experience might have been scary.  But instead of getting scared, Yayoi got curious.  Instead of dismissing herself and saying she was “crazy”, Yayoi embraced her vision as a gift.  Instead of following her family’s advice to forget being an artist and to marry a rich man, Yayoi embraced a call to live as an artist.  Now 78 years later at age 88, Yayoi Kusama’s art exhibits have been bringing record-breaking crowds to witness the world that Yayoi sees – what happens when we take a gift we have been given and experience it expanding to touch infinity.

As I stood in line to go into one of her six “infinity rooms” at the special exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum, I wondered what it is about her vision that we need in our world today.  Perhaps in a time of grim realities, incessant tweets, and endless traffic jams we long to have our imaginations sparked by amazement.  Perhaps we need the encouragement to look at what we’ve been given here and now – the gifts, the visions, the emotional ups and downs that are life, and not dismiss them, hide them away – but to offer them to a larger imagination.

The stories of Jesus feeding huge crowds with a couple of loaves of bread and a few small fish are familiar stories to those in Christian circles.  The story is told many times about how in an impossible situation, Jesus turns to his friends and tells them not to run away from the challenge of an overwhelming task and call, but to look in their pockets and see what they’ve got.  One time all his friends found were five loaves of bread and two fish between them.  But instead of dismissing their gifts as inadequate or irrelevant, judging them or hiding them away and keeping them to themselves they offered them to Jesus which is another way of saying they offered them to all they called God.

They took what they had out of the hands of their own small imaginations and put them into an imagination bigger than their own, a love wider than their own, a possibility greater than their own labor could ever provide.  In other words, they put their gifts into the hands of that which is at work in the ongoing work of creation.  The story goes that Jesus took those seemingly paltry gifts and broke forth hilarity.  Not only is there enough food for all to have their full, there are snacks to take home and share – twelve baskets full.

 

What that story points to, that kind of creation of everything from seemingly “nothing”, is what I experienced in Yayoi Kusama’s art.  I walked out of my twenty second experience in my first infinity room wide eyed and exultant after a weary day.  “You won’t believe it!”, I laughed to those waiting in line, “It’s so worth the wait!”

Today, I don’t want to wait.  I want to take out what I find in my pocket, the gifts I shy from, the feelings I don’t know what to do with, the things I would rather hide away – my lostness, my loneliness, my grief, my joy, my gifts, the “polka dot” dreams I have been given – and take them out and risk giving them to God, give them to a wider imagination than my own obsessing or fussing.  To take what I’ve got and risk naming it, sharing it, and letting God break it open.  I can’t wait to see what might possibly happen.

(You can see Yayoi Kusama’s special exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum through September 10.  You can get timed same-day tickets when the museum first opens.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The sad half-written poem scrawled

on the brown cracked bench

due for the poetry group in an hour and a half

never did get completed

as the captain announced

that an orca had been spotted

50 degrees off starboard,

heading north.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I rose, united with others who were once strangers

calculated together

port, starboard, left, right

determined, Yes, the other side

scurried with armfuls of books,

laptops and backpacks and children in tow,

elders teetering at the elbow

standing here together at the rail

watching gray waters and rolling waves

wondering what kind of day

it might turn out to be

what kind of surprise might possibly

be waiting just below the surface,

hoping for a sign, a spotting,

a different ending to the day

between the grief of friends we had left,

keep leaving behind,

the long trek home ahead,

with the anticipation of heavy traffic…

Then! A rippling of waves, a fin!

One! Two! Black fins rolling

side by side together

an elegant dance

a flash of white,

a belly, an eye

as we point and cheer

one, two together –

Can you believe! 

The miracle of this day

the surprise of this passage!

Then closer yet, one, two, three – Five black fins

break side by side rolling,

rolling, rolling through the waves

coming closer and closer

 

as words turn to shouts

Oh! 

Ah!

 Can you believe it! 

You could go a long way to Alaska 

and never see anything like this!  

Yes!  What a birthday it has been for the young

girl with hair wild and black in the wind exclaiming

which makes me wonder on all the poems

waiting out here to be discovered,

breaking forth from gray seas!

All that is out here, here on the deck

away from our lostness, outside of our grief

out Here – Here in the bright May late afternoon and sparkling light

and rolling sea!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Come out! Come out!

Come and see the wonder of it all!

All that sends us off the ferry with exclamations of delight

and stories to tell –

the surprise of a passage,

the wonder of the sea,

this moment,

this disruption,

this black fin then four, then five!

Did you see?  Did you see!

This poem revealed in the wonder of time!

 

Peter Ilgenfritz

Late Monday Afternoon, May 8, 2017

(Completed in time for the poetry group at 7pm that night!)

It was swinging my backpack,
far too heavy,
up onto my shoulders
one too many times,
the long flight home
curled in the narrow middle seat
not meant for sleeping
with no room to stretch
the weight of the tearful good bye,
it’s been too much
too much to carry.

And so no surprise
when I rolled out of bed
into an ouch and ache
a groaning to stand,
a back ache and strain –
it’s been such a pain.

I took my usual advice –
ignored it
kept going and
going some more
all my usual ways of
of not giving up
not giving in,
nodded at the kind advice of co-workers,
referrals to chiropractics
and advice on pain meds.
Not me, not that
kept going
kept on
running
biking
swimming
ready to feel better
ready for it to be over.

It’s been a lot more challenging
than I thought it was going to be
the backache that is,
the change in the schedule at work
the new marriage,
all a bit more difficult to navigate
than simply swinging out of something old
and into the new.
I drag too much behind me –
the patterns and regrets
the fears,
too many things
set in my ways
stuck in my past.

The doctor says I’m fine
no slipped disk or whatnot,
just the common backache and muscle strain
and yes different he smiles in your 50’s than your 20’s
not just as quick on the get up and go.

I tell him I hate that.
He looks me straight in the eye tells me, it’s alright.
It’s what I came for
that, and the kind nurse, Shawna, saying
Oh that’s too long to feel so bad,
the embrace of the warm cuff
velcroed to my arm,
the pressure rising
the slow emptying
the ticking numbers,
the puff of release,
the assuring word, this too, okay.

Perhaps it is,
and this just the pain of adjustment
of getting back into shape
from what’s been tweaked out of place
from carrying too much.

The doctor looks at the heavy green backpack
there at my feet
looks like you have a lot in there.

Did you need to carry it all in here today?

Perhaps yes,
perhaps no.
I carry a lot
and perhaps not all I need.

It will be a good thing
to leave some behind,
I know that,
to empty my bag,
to put down what I need no longer carry.

Today, I swing on my pack
and out into the bright spring day.
ready,
perhaps,
ready for release.

Peter Ilgenfritz

 On Monday, March 20 we marked the Spring or Vernal Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere.

I’ve heard that the spring equinox means that at this moment the sun crosses the celestial equator from South to North.

I don’t understand what that means but I do know that I can now bike home while it’s still light out.  I see all around Seattle the flowers are blooming.

I’ve heard that on March 20 there were 12 hours of light and 12 hours of dark all over the world.  I’ve heard that’s because on the fall and spring equinox the earth’s axis is perpendicular to the sun.  I’ve heard that’s unlike every other day of the year when the northern or southern hemispheres are tilting towards the sun or away from the sun.

While I often get confused about all this astronomical stuff, what I know is that I love days of balance like March 20.  I love days when everything is even, ordered, all is in it’s place. But this is not normal in the way things actually work on our planet.  Except for those two blessed days of balance on the spring and fall equinox, every other day is off balance.  Because of that 22 to 24 degree tilt of the earth, the atmosphere flows, the waters swirl, life on earth is dynamic and changing.  Static is not the norm and because of that there is life on earth and I am standing here typing this blog post.

As I’ve said, I don’t understand how all this works.   But I do know that in working in a large institution like the church that in our DNA as institutions is our aspiration towards balance.  The model of the equinox – the earth held in perfect balance of darkness and light – is a model for many of the well run institution.  Institutions tend to love stability.  Institutions tend to love sameness  Sameness helps protect and preserve the status quo and if the status quo looks pretty good from where you’re sitting you will do a lot to maintain it.

 

However what we also know is that if we stay in sameness life dies.  If the earth got stuck in the equinox balance, life would not be as dynamic and balanced.  Life would be less varied and interesting.  When institutions become stuck in sameness they become irrelevant.  Life literally passes us by.

Like life on earth, life in institutions depends on the tilt – on keeping and celebrating what is off-balance.  Creative institutions know that in trusting in the dynamic of off-center, we grow and change, life blooms.

I know my own desire to choose stability over innovation, sameness over creativity. I know well my fear of change over the embrace of change.  I know my propensity to choose what I know over all that I do not know.  I’m learning that the consequence is that my life, my faith, the institutions I am part of don’t swirl and grow and move.

I learned about all this at a new outreach at our church called “Spirit Workshop.” These periodic Sunday afternoon gatherings are designed to get folks like me tilting into thinking and being differently.  At the end of the workshop we were asked what we might do in response to what we learned.  I made a commitment to play each day. Play for me is about taking things out of the stuck ordinary and well, playing with them – doing them in different ways. And here’s the thing – I will need to schedule my playfulness in order to commit to it.  I will need to calendar it to be attentive to it.  I will have to choose the tilt.

These are uncomfortable days.

These are also days of great possibility. For this is true:  the more uncomfortable we feel, the more open we are to disrupting our usual ways of thinking. The potential for transformation is all around us in uncomfortable times if we use the gift of uncertainty and discomfort to help us get somewhere new.

But in order for that to happen, we’re all going to have to learn about getting more comfortable with being uncomfortable.  Instead of just pining for a past that is no longer here or setting our hopes on a future that does not yet exist, we need to practice being present in this day and time, full of anxiety as it is.

Physical and emotional comfort is a luxury, a privilege that some rarely if ever experience.  To have this kind of comfort, this quality of ease and restfulness, there has to be something going on in society that enables you to be at peace, to let down your guard.  This kind of comfort loves the status quo and instinctively feels the threat of change because it might mean the loss of the very things that brought about the comfort.

But there is a different kind of comfort than we find in our idealized place of life going well.  It’s the kind of comfort that is finding comfort in times of discomfort.  This kind of comfort is a real strength.  It’s a kind of comfort that we can find within that is not dependent on what’s happening around us. Even though the room is cold, the emotions raw, our uncertainty and self-doubt swirling madly in the air – with this kind of comfort we can stay present in a situation that we otherwise might run away from.

Katherine Johnson was a brilliant mathematician at NASA during the race to put John Glenn into space.  She worked in an environment that was deeply uncomfortable because it was cruel.  She had to take her coffee from a coffee pot labeled “Colored” that no one ever filled. She had to run a half mile to use the restroom because there was no “Colored Women’s Restroom” in the building where she worked.  She was kept out of briefings that she needed to attend for her work.  She had to leave her name off reports she helped complete.

But Katherine didn’t leave that room uncomfortable as it was to work there.  Instead she stayed when others wanted her to leave.  Instead of being silent, she voiced her needs.  She stayed, she called for justice through her daily persistence of showing up and being seen, and slowly over time the room changed.   The work for racial justice is far from over, but because of people like Katherine, change happened.

In these uncomfortable times I hear the Spirit calling us to go like Katherine did into uncomfortable places ourselves –  to stay in conversations that we would rather leave, stay in the hard work of our own healing, stay in our work in broken institutions that we might otherwise give up on so that change can happen.

The first, the invitation to stay in the conversation.  Everywhere we hear about the divided America.  Who among us are called to be the listeners?  Who among us are called to engagement with the ones we call “other”?  How can we learn to listen to each other below all the noisy words with compassion? How can we seek deeper understanding – hearing what we perhaps don’t want to hear or know?  How can we learn to put down our assumptions, our rightness, our egos and open ourselves to being with the other.  To heal the world begins with the uncomfortable work of deep listening to the other.  Such deep listening is a strength.  It is valuing relationship despite differences.  It is rising out of our hatred and quick judgment to meeting the other with whom we disagree as a person.  It is foundational for the restoration of our humanity and building up of the beloved community.

The second, the invitation to know when to leave a conversation.  When a relationship involves physical, emotional, or sexual abuse, the Spirit calls us to leave the relationship in order to heal ourselves.  For some of us these days, it means intentionally turning off the news and focusing on the work of healing within.  These are deep trigger times that are exposing deep and unhealed wounds in many – I see that all around.  These uncomfortable times are essential times for us to begin to tend the wounds that are newly exposed.  To heal the world begins with the uncomfortable work of healing ourselves.

Finally, the Spirit calls us to continue our work in broken institutions so that through staying there those institutions may be changed.  The story of Katherine Johnson in the book and movie “Hidden Figures” shares one of those stories.  To heal the world begins with the uncomfortable work of staying in the work to bring about change.

What enabled Katherine to stay in a highly uncomfortable workroom was her learned experience in living in a society that constantly made her feel unsafe, uncomfortable and unworthy.  Because of her daily challenges, she drew upon the support of her friends, her church, her family.  She was alone in that uncomfortable work environment and she was not alone.  She had people she could get support from, who were Christ to her so she could stay in the room.

I believe that the Spirit today is calling us into rooms which we would rather leave.  The Spirit is calling us, calling the church to walk deeper into connections, conversations that will make us uneasy, uncomfortable, facing realities that fill us with dis-ease.  Situations where we may be afraid and anxious.  We need each other so we can walk into this work.

As we practice staying in the uncomfortable places we are called it may be helpful for us to think about ourselves differently today – not as employees, leaders, parents, pastors with the delusion that we should have all the answers but as inventors – as explorers – trying to learn, to experiment with staying in the uncomfortable so we can do the work we are called to do today.

These are uncomfortable times and these are times full of the possibility of transformation.  The way to that transformation is into the uncomfortable.

I hear the Spirit today calling us to go where we don’t want to go, to be changed from who we are into who we are called to be, to set out from the comfortable lives we have led into the uncomfortable places where the Spirit calls.

Let’s draw comfort in walking there together.

 

Word Made Flesh

The ties that bind…
in unity and diversity…
welcoming everyone…

The words in the Sunday
liturgy and song
ring from the page –
this Gospel Call
of conviction and change,
this alternative story:
remember our connections…
resist evil with good…

Our confessed
complicity
with injustice
and discrimination…
not just words we glaze over –
today they stand out:
we see this,
we know it all around.

Our special offering
we’ve been collecting all month
without thinking much about it –
just a simple thing
that churches do –
raising funds for refugees from Syria…
becomes this past week
a revolutionary act.

Our simple words –
all are welcome to this table
the creation of a community
so far from where we live.

And what of this neighbor, this enemy
we must love as ourselves – 
these persecutors who we must pray for?

Perhaps now
we are finally Waking Up
awakening as if for the first time
to this story made
for times like this.

I don’t know what’s happened to America
this America I used to know and love –
but I hear today what’s happening to the church –
naming, remembering, living our call
as we have never sung it before.

Coins ring in the offering plate
Voices rise to sing
Hands outstretch to those we love
and those we don’t know how to meet.

We pray and march
placards in hand –
words extracted from
the Sunday bulletin:
Love Your Neighbor…
Welcome Everyone…
Resist Evil with Good…
Love Your Enemy….

For times like this, perhaps,
the church was made.

For times like this, perhaps,
we were made as well.

 

This Great Outpouring

This Great River of Love

This Great Connection

of which we are all apart

and so easily forget –

we felt it that day

we feel it still

flowing

flowing

reminding

grounding

strengthening

centering us still

moving together

arms outstretched

gathering each other,

holding each other close

never forgetting

castaways and refugees

battered and bruised as we are,

and how we keep on

flowing,

flowing,

flowing,

A man on a park bench looks

out at the solitary gull perched

on a log floating

in the middle of the lake.

A young man who has just started

to grow a beard leans

forward on the stone wall watching

the white sailboats rolling

in the waves, knocking

gently on the dock.

A woman with curly blond hair and a flowing

black dress strides

down the walk, right arm raised,

palm outstretched, shading

her eyes from the sun.

A little girl in a pink dress holds

her father’s hand tight, leans

down to touch

the puddle, to stroke

the water with her fingers.

The puddle ripples.

A little boy holds

hands with his older brother and his mother, swings

back and forth, jumps

up and

down.

Hush now, hush, his mother says,

Give me a minute.

I’m just trying to figure out

which way to go.

*********************************************************************

(The picture of that exquisite bird is from my friend Esther Elizabeth.)

It’s the Longest Night of the year and in a few hours we will gather here at University Congregational United Church of Christ as people will do in many other places, to light candles for where we need hope on this longest and darkest of nights.

I wish I had something big to offer, something large enough to meet the holes and the losses that this season is for some of us.  And yet the gifts of these holiday seasons are small.  Gifts that can seem all so inadequate, yet all that we are given.

What can I offer, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb.

If I were a wise one, I would do my part;

But what can I give you?  Give you my heart.

(In the Bleak Midwinter, verse 4

Christian Rossetti, alt.)

I have come back to singing “In the Bleak Midwinter” often this season.  It seems to be a carol written for times like ours.

And so I offer you a few small things, little things for the meeting of these days.   Mostly, and most importantly, my heart and prayer goes out to you and is with you this season, and will be with you these days. And I offer to you, all that I have, a few stirrings of my heart.

Like some of you, there have been years that I would just assume this holiday season be over.  Like many of you, there are years that I have looked back on many losses of many kinds.  Years that it feels a bit beyond me to imagine singing, “Joy to the World!  The Lord is come!” on Christmas Eve, just a few days hence.  How will I be ready to sing out “joy” this year?  In the Christian tradition, these weeks before Christmas are marked as Advent, a time of emptying as we prepare to make room for the Christ child.  And oh, we all have been emptied of so much this Advent season.  Lost so much.  Had so much taken from us and fear more being taken.  Deaths, job loss, terrorism, war, uncertainty, health crises, financial stresses…the list goes on.

In the various faith traditions of this season, little lights are lit – on the menorah, on the Advent wreath.  In Christianity, we traditionally light a candle each of the four weeks before Christmas – the candle of hope, the candle of peace, the candle of love, the candle of joy.  And finally the Christ candle on Christmas Eve, a sign and celebration that God is present here with us.   Just little lights.  And little words to meet the still growing darkness of these days:  “hope”, “peace”, “love”.  Words that seem all too fragile or even a little beyond us, like “joy”.

I remember this year, the little gifts that were given in times of crisis and change.

In time of war, enough oil given for the lamps.

In the midst of a season of oppression and death, a little child is born.

Little gifts that come in sad and trying days and times.

Not big gifts, but little lights and little words to meet us in these days. Little gifts I can often miss if I try to look for something too big these days.  Little gifts I can walk right by, stumble over if I don’t keep watch for them. Little things.   But little things that finally are what we are given, sometimes all we are given and that even can be enough.  Enough to meet us today.  Right now.  Where we are.  Not enough to take away the grief and pain now and forever, but enough for now.

And that is the hope and prayer of this season I fall back to.

That little things be given to us – little signs of holding and hope and love each day.

And that we live in the hope and promise that tomorrow little things will be given as well.

Enough to meet us for today.

Enough to meet us for tomorrow.

I pray that we all may keep our eyes open, our hearts open, our wonder open to the surprise that comes in little gifts.

Little gifts that even, and finally, may be the greatest gifts of all.   Gifts that are sparks of the eternal – those gifts of that hope, and faith, and love that cannot but spark out and be found in many surprising ways.  Even now.  Even tonight.

There are times when

all the stars are torn from our skies,

and the morning will not come.

We try to make our way in unlit passages,

frightened, desperate and despairing.

We cannot see,

for wherever we turn

the night continues.

And yet, it is

into this impenetrable night

that the Child is born.

Tearing through the seams of darkness,

the Morning Star appears

in our eyes and in our hearts.

The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great Light.

( “Morning Star” from Searching for Shalom by Ann Weems.)