Ordinary Time

Today is the 17th Sunday in Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time sounds kind of romantic--or unromantic, depending on your perspective--but it simply means counted time. It is the time we count in between the penitential seasons and high holy days. It is one week, two weeks, three weeks, four. It is so simple as to be almost unremarkable, and almost, if we’re not careful, unnoticeable.

Every time I’ve thought, over the past 17 weeks, of writing this post, it has seemed almost too straightforward. Life with young children is almost unrelentingly ordinary--counted. It’s the sixth week of my daughter’s school career. It’s the third day of illness. It’s the 101-degree temperature. It’s 20 minutes past bedtime. It’s the fourth trip to the store this week. It’s a birthday, or a half birthday, or a how-many-days-until-my birthday. It’s first steps and first words and first heartbreaks. It’s the four hundred and seventy-seventh time I’ve told you no.

And life with young children is also ordinary in the other (ordinary?) sense of the word. It is chock full of the mundane to the point of weariness, even to the point of boredom. Of course, life with young children also has its high holy days of jubilation and its penitential seasons of worry and loss; it is not all ordinary all the time. But much of the day to day is counting, and breathing, and taking the next step.

Ever since I was a teenager, my relationship to faith has been complicated. At times, I have longed to leave but found myself strangely rooted; at other times, I have longed to believe but found myself unutterably weary of trying. But between the high holy days of assurance and the penitential seasons of self-examination and despair, I have spent most of the last 10 years or so in a kind of ordinary, counted time. I have attended church. I have observed the seasons. I have recited the prayers and creeds, taken part in the sacraments, and made my life with the faith community. In ways, this has been my salvation. I have discovered that the community can hold faith for me when I am finding it awkward and unwieldy to carry alone. I have found that the liturgical seasons offer rhythm and repetition that ring true in ancient ways, that sync with the primeval depths of me that circle the years with the sun and cycle the months with the moon. I have found the stories to be true in ways that aren’t limited to history or even fact; in moments when I have been convinced, in my loneliness and hubris, that no one has ever been where I have been, the stories have come to find me. They have surfaced in my mind like a song long forgotten. They have reminded me that people have been asking these questions for thousands of years. They have reminded me that I am ordinary; what a relief.

I’m having trouble, today, staying in ordinary time. All of my doubts and fears about God, about the future, about the life of faith, seem to have woken out of sleep with me this morning. It feels more like a Lent or Advent of the soul, a time of acute waiting, a time of darkness deep enough to imagine I’m alone. I’m trying to stay put. I’m trying to find the touchstones of my ordinary time, my counted, daily rhythms set to keep me moving forward, one step, one day, one breath.

Part of our family’s ordinary time is that on Sunday afternoons, following church and lunch and naps, I leave to write. This is a rhythm that gifts me, that reconnects me to myself and to my work. And then, when I return two hours later, it reconnects me to my family. I have renewed energies to pack another lunch for the start of another school week. I am ready to read to my son, to listen to my daughter’s stories of the playground, to exchange backrubs with my husband while we watch Louie before heading to bed. And all of these rhythms, welcomed and resisted, are making me into someone new, someone better equipped for mothering, for loving, for working, for resting. Maybe even better equipped for faith, for believing in something that feels so impossible, and yet so impossible to leave alone.

Pentecost

I've heard so many interpretations of Pentecost, even just this year. It's about the birthday of the church! It's about multiculturalism! It's about change! It's about speaking! It's about hearing! It's about spreading the gospel! It's about (oh yeah) the Holy Spirit!

And, okay, maybe it's about all of that. 

1 When Pentecost Day arrived, they were all together in one place. 2 Suddenly a sound from heaven like the howling of a fierce wind filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 They saw what seemed to be individual flames of fire alighting on each one of them. 4 They were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages as the Spirit enabled them to speak.

5 There were pious Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 When they heard this sound, a crowd gathered. They were mystified because everyone heard them speaking in their native languages.

And then the story goes on to say how some people rejoiced, and some people called them drunks, and then Peter got up and preached a sermon, quoted a bunch of scripture, and called people to change their lives, be baptized, and live a new life in the community of believers.

I've always liked Pentecost; it's the Sunday of red paraments and red dresses (when I can remember to wear one), talk of wind and fire and words, and, if you're lucky, maybe even some birthday cake. But Pentecost has also sometimes made me anxious, especially if I'm paying any attention. It's the Sunday when I can't help but remember that famous Annie Dillard passage about crash helmets and signal flares.* It's the Sunday we ask for the Holy Spirit, even as we remember what affect the Holy Spirit had on all those people on that long-ago day.

Wind. Fire. Speaking in new languages. Seeming hopelessly drunk--at least from a distance. Chaos.

When I was about twelve years old, I went through confirmation class at my United Methodist Church. The Sunday of confirmation, when each member of our class stood before the congregation and confirmed the vows made on her or his behalf at baptism, was Pentecost Sunday. I wore a red dress. I knelt at the rail. Several people laid heavy hands on my head, and I wondered, kneeling there with my eyes closed, what would happen if I opened my eyes to find everyone's head on fire, all of us staggering around in fear and wonder at God, at last, in our midst. I almost wanted it to happen.

I've spent enough years living with faith communities that live with the Bible to know that stories in scripture can have layers upon layers of resonance, meanings upon meanings that are true. I'm pretty sure Pentecost is about birth and multiculturalism and change and speaking and hearing and all those other things I heard this year. But I think the layer that hangs me up the most is this one: Pentecost is about power.

For as long as I can remember, I have both craved God's power and feared it. But those words don't get the weights quite right. I have wanted God's power, yes, somewhere deep inside of me, someplace that has kept me coming back to faith for many years. But what has been far more overwhelming is my terror, my quaking fear that my timid requests for God will be met by Job's whirlwind, by the Lord of the universe, by the power that, of a morning, can set heads aflame.

My kids don't know yet that God is fearful. They'll learn. But it has been much more important to me, and to my husband, and to the good folks at church, to tell them that God loves them. (We'll lay aside, for the moment, how this is itself a fearful truth.) We tell them that God loves them, that God made them, that God called them good, that God wants them to be loved, and to love.

Even so, I think my kids understand power more than I do, somehow. They live closer to fear and to anger, to the visceral response and to the roaring temper. They throw themselves on the floor (something I haven't done in far too long). They scream--for fun, for fear, for frustration. They positively explode with all their huge, kid feelings. They overflow.

And I have to be careful, because my impulse, every time, is to shush them, to teach them to settle and reason, like I do. To keep them calm. To make them less like God and more like me.

I've been so irritable the last few days, so short with my kids and myself. I am weary of their outbursts, of their needs, of their noise, of their child-ish-ness. I can come up with a litany of reasons why, but instead, maybe I should just start to pay more attention. When the kids burst forth with excitement, anger, frustration--with power--maybe I can watch for tiny flames on their heads. Maybe I can feel the wind off of their dancing backs. Maybe I can hear their strange, loud language speaking good, saving news for my weary soul.

*Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? … Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us to where we can never return.”—Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters (New York: Harper & Row, 1982), pp. 40-41.

Easter

Oh, Easter. Oh, resurrection. What in the world are we supposed to do with you?

Today is the fourth Sunday of Easter, so it has clearly taken me a while to get around to an Easter post. Partly, this is because Lent was so brutal. Partly, this is because I’ve gotten myself in totally over my head this semester, taking a class, writing for a few local papers, plus the usual work and home responsibilities. But mostly I’m late because Easter befuddles me. Sometimes resurrection seems like sweet, clear water in a parched world, and sometimes it seems like a bad joke.

Just before Holy Week this year, I happened into a conversation among clergy about teaching children during Holy Week. “How should we talk about Jesus’ death?” someone wanted to know. I barged my way into the conversation: “Death is easy,” I said. “Kids can get that. It’s teaching the resurrection that’s so complicated.”

Maybe that sounds overstated, but I mean it. My kids understand death. Their understanding is incomplete, of course, but my understanding of death is incomplete too. When my grandfather died last month, both of my kids understood in ways appropriate to their ages. (When someone at the visitation commented to my daughter that it was sort of like my grandfather was having a long sleep, she set him straight: “No,” she said. “He died.” She gets it.)

And I believe there are very important, very concrete ways to teach kids about Jesus’ death too. Jesus loved people that others didn’t love. Jesus made powerful people angry. Jesus said things that were true, and people didn’t want to hear it. Jesus’ friend cared more about power and money than about Jesus. For all of these reasons and more, people killed Jesus.

Those may be difficult things to say to a child. They may be difficult things for some children to hear. But those truths are everywhere in our world, and kids, as they grow, see that more and more. We give them immeasurable gifts by sharing those truths with them, telling them--right now, not when they’re all grown up--that Jesus lived and suffered under those truths just like we do.

But then Sunday comes. And we have to tell kids, “And then Jesus rose! Hooray!” And of course this is good news--right? this is good news?--but it’s confusing to kids when we’ve been teaching them the whole rest of the year that dead means dead. The flowers they picked for mama can’t be replanted. The dog isn’t coming back. We won’t see Papaw--or whomever else--again. Ever.

Then again, so what? This is probably just as well. Isn’t confusion just as instructive as anything else? I’m confused too. I’m confused about how it’s Easter but everything feels the same. Why do marriages keep ending and children keep dying and earthquakes still rock the world? Why does living in the season of resurrection--which, by the way, is a scant 40 days out of 365--still look, smell, taste, and sound so much like Holy Saturday, the most godforsaken day of the year?

Today I was thinking about the disciples. They lost their guide, their friend, their Lord, source of their hopes for the future and maker of meaning for their past. They lived for three days (oh, let’s be honest: it was only about half that) in the shock and grief of that loss. And then: wonder of wonders, joy of joys--resurrection! Jesus returned to them. He wiped their tears and took them in his arms. He ate with them; he taught them; he encouraged and challenged them. The glory days were back and better than ever.

And then he left. Yes, I understand that theologically, it makes all the difference in the world that Jesus rose from the dead. God has endured ridicule, shame, and death. And God has triumphed. Death has not won. Alleluia!

But--the disciples. What about the disciples? They met a grief that sent them into locked rooms, reeling. And then they had a 40-day reprieve. And then he was gone again. In the real, personal, concrete ways--the ways that matter to me when I’m talking to my children--how did resurrection help? When the disciples missed Jesus’ comfort and guidance and maddening habits and shared humor, was it really a comfort to them that he’d visited life one more time?

I don’t have any magical way to tie up these wandering thoughts. Today, I’m angry, sad, tired--so very tired. I make a point of being honest when my children ask me questions I can’t answer: “I don’t know,” I say. “It’s mysterious,” I tell them, even though neither of us knows what that word really means either.

On the way to my grandfather’s funeral, my husband and I talked to our kids, our daughter in particular, about what was going to happen. We explained how we would see my grandfather, how he would look sort of like he was sleeping, but sort of different. We explained how he would look sort of like he looked when we saw him alive, but sort of different. We explained that when you die, your heart stops beating, so your blood stops flowing, so you look different, and we explained how the people who cared for my grandfather’s body used makeup to make him look as much as possible like we remembered him.

We also talked about the other people at the service. “Some people may look sad,” we told her. “Some people may be crying. Other people may be laughing. Some people may be crying and laughing at the same time. And they may be feeling lots of things at the same time.

“All of that is okay,” we told her. “People feel lots of different things at funerals. And however you feel is okay too.”

When we despiritualize the passion story, when we try to confront it in the concrete, fleshy realities of the world instead of only offering the spiritual narratives (“Jesus died on the cross for our sins!”) it gets… complicated. But the fleshy reality, the concrete reality, is my children’s reality. And by the way: wonder of wonders, joy of joys, the fleshy reality was Jesus’ reality too.

So, okay. I’m going to try it out: I don’t know. It’s mysterious. However you feel is okay too.

Holy Week

Two years ago, when our daughter was two-and-a-half, we took her to the community Maundy Thursday service. It was held at a Lutheran church that I love dearly because they collectively look away from their watches and phones for as long as it takes on Sunday morning (or, in this case, Thursday night) to go through all four readings of the day, to chant at every opportunity, to kneel and bow, to get the bread and wine into the hands of every congregant, to offer healing prayer and sprinkling of water no matter how long the line or how late the hour. 

My strange, religious self, though uncomprehending, loves all this ritual and its eschewal of clock-watching. Our 2-year-old daughter, though she didn’t watch clocks either, was not as eager as I was for the long, slow service on that Maundy Thursday. We made a few trips to and from the nursery, but she didn’t want to stay there. She opted for the sanctuary, with me, where she proceeded to color and talk and wiggle and whine. 

Maundy Thursday services remember Jesus’ last evening spent with his disciples before his death the next day, on what is now called Good Friday. Many Maundy Thursday services rehearse two of Jesus’ last acts in particular: a meal of bread and wine, and foot washing. Churches do foot washing in a number of different ways. The Lutheran church that hosted that year’s service invited folks forward to strip off socks and shoes and take a seat at one of the wash basins. Then one of the pastors washed their feet.

I asked our daughter if she wanted to have her feet washed. She wasn’t sure. “It’s up to you,” I said, “but if you want to, you can. It’ll feel nice.” 

She followed me forward and watched as I took my turn at the basin. I do not particularly like this practice; I am exceedingly ticklish, my feet especially, and sometimes it’s all I can do to avoid kicking whatever poor soul is doing the washing. Plus, I have weird feet. But I do it anyway, for the same not-quite-clear reason I do a lot of religious rituals, because I trust that something about the practice will form me in ways I probably can’t even predict. 

I survived my foot bath; more importantly, so did Pastor Ken, the lucky washer assigned to me. And then I asked our daughter again if she wanted a turn. She still wasn’t sure, but I told her she could sit on my lap and this seemed to make her feel a little better. We returned to the basin, and I sat down again, this time presenting her perfect feet to be washed. She sat quietly while Ken poured the water and washed and patted them dry. And then I helped her back into her shoes and we returned to our seats.

It was a sweet moment, for sure, but there were another 30-plus minutes of service to go. We made it. Barely. And then we went home and gratefully to bed.

But our daughter talked about Ken washing her feet for an entire year. An entire year, until it was Maundy Thursday again, and we got to go back to the Lutheran church, and she got to sit again on my lap in front of a basin. She remembered all year long.

Other parts of Holy Week--Good Friday, the day we remember Jesus’ death; Holy Saturday, when we try to resist drowning out the silence of a godforsaken world; Easter Sunday, when we celebrate the unlikeliest day of the Christian year by madly claiming that Jesus beat out even death--made impressions upon our 2-year-old too, though admittedly not so deeply as the touch of hands and water on her small, smooth feet. But she remembered all of it. She didn’t necessarily remember the story; she certainly couldn’t articulate all the meanings (as if any of us could), but she remembered the deeply sensory experiences of the rituals of this holiest week.

In this way, our daughter, as usual, gives me hints about the rest of us, myself included. Surely she is not the only one deeply imprinted by ritual; she just happens to be more transparent in her memories and thought processes. (For instance, for that year, whenever we would mention Pastor Ken, she’d make the connection out loud: “The Pastor Ken who washed my feet?”) Surely I am imprinted by my own rituals too. And maybe that’s a hint to why I keep them when I don’t always know what they mean, or if I like what they mean, or if I believe what they mean.

If our daughter's experience hints toward the power of ritual, it also offers a warning: I’d better make sure that the practices of our every day--the things we do again and again, often without thought--are offering the kind of formation I want in my children’s lives. I don’t just mean church. I also mean toothbrushing and bathing, snuggling and spacing, greetings and goodbyes, mealtimes, bedtimes, all the sometimes-mind-numbing incessance of our days. If she remembers the once a year water on her feet, surely the patterns of our life--our sitting down, our rising up, our sleeping and waking--are literally forming who she is and will be. 

We will do it imperfectly, as we have been reminded all through Lent and every day, but may we strive to do it all with the cool gentleness of water on skin, hands on feet, with love.

Lent

I feel a little like I’m skipping Lent this year. I didn’t mean to. As a matter of fact, I selected a Lenten discipline, albeit a modest one, for the first time in years. I planned to read a Psalm every morning--with my children and husband on the days we are home together, and in the seclusion of my office on the days I head off to work before breakfast. We are on day 19 of Lent (day 16 if you don’t count Sundays) and I am on Psalm 6. Six out of 16 is only good if you’re calculating a batting average.

First, I had trouble keeping up with Lent because my kids were sick. Then, because I was. After that, we were in wash-all-the-laundry, scour-all-the-surfaces recovery mode. And then we were readying ourselves for a trip to visit my grandparents, one of whose health recently got much more fragile. We got back from our trip a few days ago, and I’ve been consumed each of those days with trying to find a way to wedge in a nap. I’m worn out.

None of these are excuses, not really. None of these things has so taken over my life that I couldn’t read a measly Psalm at some point during each day. They’ve just helped me do something I’m prone to do anyway: forget.

There’s a line in one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets that says, “When I forget my prayers, they will / bundle up and go out on their own / across the street, down into the basement, / into a small town with no mayor where / there is a single swing in the park.” I hope my prayers have been out without me, swinging in the park and meandering down the side streets. I have a hunch that this may be more than wishful thinking, in part because I think (I hope) we humans have prayer built into us: our heartbeats, our breathing, our sighing, our sleeping and dreaming. And in part because I think this is one of the great gifts of liturgy and the faith community: the liturgy and the community hold the seasons for us when we fail and forget. No matter how much I ignore and neglect Lent, I can’t ever really skip it because it doesn’t depend on me. It happens with or without me and somehow folds me ever back in.

And then there is this: I can't really skip Lent because Lent is really damn hard to skip. Lent, as a time of penance and self-denial, seems to barge its way into our lives invited or not, named or not. This winter has been brutal for pretty much everyone I know. We are sick. We are grieving. We are fearful and lonely. We are reeling from hurt after hurt, loss after loss. We are living Lent.

Psalm 6--my psalm of the day, delinquent though I may be--says, “Have mercy on me, Lord, because I’m frail. Heal me, Lord, because my bones are shaking in terror. My whole body is completely terrified! But you, Lord! How long will this last? Come back to me, Lord! Deliver me! Save me for the sake of your faithful love!”

And I hear our voices: My grandfather. My grandmother and mother and aunt who are caring for him through the long nights. My friend who is grieving the death of her husband, missing him so much it hurts to breathe. My friend who longs for a baby. My friend who longs for a break. My husband, who carries the losses and hurts of so many, bound up with his own. Everyone I know who has been sick several times too many this season, which is pretty much everyone I know. Even my children, whose small, sweet lives are already offering them tastes of the loss and death that are all around them.

And me. Have mercy on me, Lord, because I keep skipping Lent. Have mercy on me, Lord, because I can’t skip it even if I try.