Constructive Play, or Why I Like Holy Week

This is my first Holy Week as a pastor and, to be honest, I'm probably inappropriately excited about it. Holy Week is something to be "observed", not really "celebrated", at least not until Easter Sunday. It's about penitence and suffering and being aware of Christ's actions for us. For pastors, it's probably the busiest week of the year. For, while Advent and the Christmas services are big and involved, it doesn't involve the sheer number of services that Holy Week does. And yet, despite the stress and the general tenor of the season, I'm excited.

You see, Holy Week gives an opportunity for creating lots of creative liturgy. While most other major observances in the church calendar have a relatively set structure, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services can be done in lots of different ways. In fact, it's very much encouraged to look for creative ways of bringing the meaning of the passion narrative to life for people living two thousand years later. We can do powerful things that engage multiple senses, we can write prayers and litanies that capture the season in fascinating ways... the possibilities are nearly endless. It gives me a chance to be creative.

When I was growing up, I thought that I was the most uncreative child ever. I was always the kid who couldn't really draw or create anything new in art class, who would simply re-create the teacher's example or the ideas of the people sitting around me. I could never come up with brilliant ideas for class presentations or writing prompts. Instead, I was the kid who would think about the practical ways of carrying out other people's brilliant, original ideas.

But when in college and seminary I started putting things together to plan worship, something clicked. All of a sudden, I had ideas; I was no longer utterly bereft of creativity! When the professor teaching my Writing Liturgical Texts class invited us to write collects, I fell in love with shaping words for prayer. I had always loved writing, but had struggled with subject matter and structure--liturgy provided both. And when my worship class and practicum class gave me the opportunity to design worship services, I fell in love. Getting to weave themes through the parts of worship and selecting elements of worship to further the themes and help people find meaning in the stories and ideas became a beloved challenge.

For me, it's like Spirit-guided playtime. I love to think about and play with words and images. I really enjoy trying to find new ways to help people engage with the sacred stories that make the ancient come to life for us living today. It's drama and poetry and tradition and theology, all blended together. I adore it.

Holy Week, and the preparations for it, allow even more of this playtime than usual. We get to wade into these rich texts and the wealth of the theological tradition that surrounds them. We get to tell the stories in powerful ways. We used drama and participating for our Palm Sunday worship services today. On Thursday we're bringing in the contemplative tradition of Taize. On Friday we're combining technology and the Catholic tradition of the veneration of the cross to bring the passion narrative into stark relief. Our Easter Vigil on Friday will involve some drama, some participation, and a lot of elements from Catholic tradition, woven together with the hope of making high church traditions more approachable. And I'm excited for this. I feel honored to get to be a part of this, and I have loved getting to work in the creative, collaborative process with the other members of our worship teams.

When I started as a pastor and began working on worship planning, I knew it would be a lot of work. But I didn't realize how much fun it would be. I hope that this planning will continue to remind me that this is what I'm called to do.

Self-Care with Charlie

Six weeks ago, I got a puppy. There were lots of reasons for this decision, but one of the many motivations for getting this new roommate was to help with self-care. I figured it would force me to come home on time, to get more exercise as I walked the dog multiple times per day, and give me a good reason to enforce better time boundaries in my life. So far, all of those things have been true. I've been able to spend more time at home and I've actually lost weight from eating more home-cooked meals and getting more regular exercise. But there have been some unexpected self-care lessons, too.

Charlie reminds me of the importance of stopping to sniff things. Charlie doesn't just stop to smell good things, he stops to smell grass, pine branches, and even other dogs' poop. His sniffing is an investigation: he's gathering data about the world and those who have gone before him. It often helps me, too, to stop and investigate things further before acting. Charlie reminds me that it helps if I stop for a few minutes and investigate people's motivations and the potential consequences before moving on.

Watching Charlie also reminds me that it's not healthy to keep obsessively chewing things that are bad for you. On our walks, Charlie likes to pick up bits of mulch, dried worms, litter--anything that he can find and fit in his mouth, really--and chew on them obsessively until I take them away from him. I tend to do the same sort of thing with ugly situations in my life. If something has hurt or angered me, or if there's a challenge that I can't seem to overcome, I'll turn it over and over in my mind, mentally chewing on it. It never helps the situation, and it's bad for me, just like that chewing is bad for Charlie. Plus, if he eats too many of those things it makes him sick. Likewise, if I obsess about stuff like that too much, I just upset myself. Each time I pull Charlie away from a worm or dig a piece of mulch out of his mouth, I try to remember that I need to let things that aren't good for me go, too.

When he's tired, Charlie just flops on the floor and goes to sleep. He plays hard, runs around and has a great time, but when he's worn out, he lets himself rest. This is an example I should seek to follow, I think. I could definitely take a napping lesson from the puppy.

She's Out of Your League

This evening, instead of writing the two sermons I need to finish by Sunday, I went to the movies with a couple of friends. We didn't really know what to see, but we were looking for something funny and stumbled upon "She's Out of Your League." It's not great cinema by any stretch of the imagination. The acting is mediocre, the humor is shallow and sophomoric, and it's a predictable plotline. But I think that this movie, more than most I've seen lately, has an important message for guys of my generation: GO FOR IT.

The main character in the movie, Kirk, is a self-proclaimed loser. He's an average guy, not particularly attractive, lacking in education, and stuck in a dead-end job. He meets a beautiful, successful woman who is, apparently for no good reason, interested in him. He goes out with her several times and they both seem very interested in each other, but he keeps coming back to his friends and wondering why she'd ever like him. He has no confidence in himself.

I'm not sure if it's just the men I meet, or if this really is as widespread as it seems, but a lot of the guys I run into need some lessons in confidence and assertiveness. I see guys across crowded coffee shops and bars and I can tell by their eye contact, facial expressions, and body language that they're interested in me, but despite encouraging glances and signals, they don't have the guts to come over and strike up a conversation. I have male friends who don't have the guts to make moves on girls they really like. And it makes me wonder: is there something in the way these guys are socialized, in their upbringing or experience that makes them such chickens? Why is it that seemingly decent guys, men who are intelligent and reasonably attractive, are so convinced that they have nothing to offer that they refuse to even risk starting a conversation with a stranger? Is the fear of rejection so petrifying that their feet turn to stone and can't carry them across the room?

I have asked guys out before. I have made the first move. But the thing is, I'm tired of doing it. All day long I'm in charge of things. I have to be assertive and decisive, I have to face people and risk rejection, I have to be in charge. At the end of the day, I'm tired of it. I would like to meet a guy who doesn't force me to make all the moves and decisions. I would like to meet a guy who can start a conversation, express romantic interest, and even go in for a kiss without obvious prompting from me. Why, I ask, is that so hard to find?

Or is it that all of the guys who have confidence and assertiveness have already made their moves successfully and gotten married? Most of my male friends who are my age and married seem to have plenty of confidence and assertiveness. So, are all the guys who are still single in their late twenties either those who haven't had the guts to make moves earlier or those who made moves and are such jerks that their moves were rejected over time?

I wonder if young men struggle as much with confidence and body image as young women, but it's not talked about as much. There's lots of literature about adolescent girls and self-image issues. I wonder if guys have the same problems, but we don't have studies identifying it or language for articulating it. Is it that these issues go untreated because they are unknown, so twenty-something and thirty-something guys are still struggling with them? Or is assertiveness just a dying trait in the male species? There is a sociological study here, I think, but I don't have the time or resources to dig into it.

Since I can't do an official study, I'll try something else. Men: I challenge you. Go start a conversation with someone you don't know. If you're single, try asking out someone you just met. If the girl says yes, bully for you! If she says no, she'll probably have more respect for you because you at least had the courage to try. Either way, I don't think it will be as bad as you fear.

Poetic License

I want to be a poet when I grow up.

I wrote my first poem when I was in sixth grade. My teacher played the song "Goodnight Saigon" by Billy Joel, and I was inspired by the power of the words and the way Joel expressed them. So, when my class had some free time in the computer lab later that afternoon, I spent those moments writing my own poem. The rhyme scheme was cheesy and the content somewhat overblown and stilted (I, like Billy Joel, wrote about the experience of a soldier at war. Nevermind that I was ten and had no person knowledge on the subject...) But I was both proud of what I wrote and embarrassed. I wanted desperately to share my work with someone, but I didn't know how to do it. So, I printed a copy of the poem and put it on the teacher's desk surreptitiously. The next day, the teacher asked the class who had put the poem on her desk, and I didn't want to say anything. I couldn't tell from her tone whether she was impressed or concerned. It took several hours before I got up the courage to take credit for my work.

That's so often how I feel about my poetry. I want to share it with people, to use it as a form of expression, but I'm also really insecure about whether or not it's any good. While I've gained enough confidence about my other writings to feel comfortable sharing them, to be able to preach my own words in front of a congregation, I've never developed that sort of confidence about my poetry. I get nervous anytime people read my poetry, and I become totally tongue-tied when I try to share my poetry aloud.

When I lived in South Africa, I went to weekly poetry readings at a coffee shop with another American student. We would go, order hot chocolate, and listen to the words the others shared. Each week a similar crowd gathered: the blind man who wrote his poems in braille and shared them from memory while his guide dog sat on the floor, the sixty-something white male English professor, the thirty-something black female graduate student, the black teens who spoke of racism and transformation, the fifty-something wealthy white man who funded studio time so that the whole group could record a CD together, to share their work and get feedback and encouragement. Listening to their words inspired me to write my own poems, to expand my imagery and start the search for my own poetic voice. Finally, during my last week in Cape Town, I shared a poem that I had written with the group. With courage born of knowing I'd be going 9,000 miles away and likely wouldn't see them again, I shared my words. But that remains the only time I have had the courage to share my work aloud.

One of the friends I made in seminary, R, is a spoken word artist. He would write poems and share them at open mic nights. When he wanted to express himself in less formal situations, he'd find a song on the radio with a good backbeat, turn the bass up and the treble down, and freestyle over it. His talent never failed to amaze me. As I listened to him, I always wished I could craft words that quickly and beautifully, and share them with others so bravely.

The pastor of my home church is a poet. Every few months he even preaches a poem, somehow weaving together the Scriptures for the day, world events, and the comings and goings of a small community. That is now what I aspire to do. I want to find a way to meld together what I learned from the poetry readings in Cape Town, the rhythm and creativity of freestyle from R, and the wisdom and liturgical touch of my home pastor to develop my own poetic voice, and I want to share it from the pulpit. The Psalmist spoke poetry into his community to bring their stories and the stories of God together. I want to do that, too.

I want to be a poet when I grow up.

Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

This was my first Ash Wednesday as a pastor. It was a long day, as I went to church early this morning to work on the details of a memorial service for tomorrow. It seemed fitting, though, to be pondering death on this day when we are called to be mindful of our own mortality. As I tried to put together words to remember a woman who lived a long, ordinary life, I wondered about the sorts of words people use to remember one another. We remember stories and images, interactions more than accomplishments, yet we work so hard all our lives toward accomplishments, often to the detriment of relationships.

My office overlooks the church's memorial garden, and as I thought about death and ashes today, I remembered a service of scattering ashes there a few months ago. The ashes were a paler shade of gray than I had expected, and they stood out starkly against the dark soil on which they were sprinkled. For days I looked out my office window and could see the scatter pattern of the pale ashes against the dark earth. It reminded me of the erasure patterns that used to show up on the blackboards at school, where chalk dust remained on the slate, just faded and moved around by the felt erasers. But, after a few weeks, some windy days and rain showers, the patterns faded; all that was left of the deceased were the memories stored away in loved ones' minds, while the bits of dust and ash faded into the peat to give life to the next spring's flowers.

That is, I suppose, what will happen to all of us. Whether we are cremated and disappear quickly into the soil, or embalmed and boxed, whereupon our return to the carbon cycle is slowed for decades and centuries by chemicals and material barriers, eventually we end up back where we started: as a-dam, creatures molded of mud. What matters in this rapidly-disappearing life where all that is physical is temporary is what we have done, the legacy we leave behind in relationships with one another and with God.

I'm not much good at theology around resurrection and eternity. The idea of bodily resurrection is a mystery to me. As I see the ashes disappearing in the garden, as I remember that the physical is temporary, I wonder what that means for eternal life. Will we be made new, shaped again from the earth, a-dam once more? Will all of our dust particles, carbon molecules, scattered all over the world, reassembled in plants and animals and soil around the globe, be somehow knit together once more as they originally were? I do not know. I'm not sure I could handle the truth, whatever it is.

From dust we have come, and to dust we shall return. We are just small parts in a much larger picture of life; words, maybe just letters or punctuation marks, in the larger narrative God is writing in the world. The ashes mixed with oil that we placed on people's foreheads this evening reminded me of potting soil in their color and consistency. As I dug my fingertips into the bowl, I felt as though I was digging in the earth, planting something. And perhaps I was. I was planting a reminder, no matter how small, that we are temporary. A reminder that we are tiny specks in an enormous picture of the universe throughout time, that all that we have is a gift, time and love and relationships-not to be taken lightly.

New Roommate

For years (I mean YEARS... Decades, even) I've wanted a dog. I begged my parents to let me get one as a kid. When they informed me that we couldn't have a dog because my dad was allergic, eight-year-old me considered trading in my father for a puppy. In retrospect, I am sure that I made the right choice in keeping my father. But now that I'm living alone, in an apartment complex that allows them, I have FINALLY gotten my dream: my own dog.


Meet Charlie (Charles W., officially) my new roommate/furry friend. He's a two-month-old Goldendoodle, which is a mix of a golden retriever and a poodle. He's less allergenic than most dogs because of the poodle blood, and he's absolutely adorable. Definitely a cuddle bug. He follows me around the apartment and cuddles up next to me when I hold still. When I don't hold still, he just sits on my feet. I'm sure there will be more stories later, but for now I'm going to bed. I hope his whining in the crate doesn't keep me up all night!

And Silence Reigned

I have been adjusting, for nearly nine months now, to living alone. For the first 24 years of my life, I lived with family members, or in dorms, or in apartments with roommates, and suddenly, at age 25, I found myself in solo housing. Most of the time I like it. I like getting home at the end of the day and not having to be "on", ready to support people and handle crises. The only crises I have to deal with when I get home in the evening are those I created and left in the morning--and there aren't many of those. I don't have to worry about unknowingly being out of milk or TP, no one complains when I leave books cluttering the living room, and I have sole custody of the remote control (and we all know that's important).

There are only two problems with this scenario: Loneliness and silence. The loneliness I'm learning how to handle. I'm beginning to make friends here, I'm doing a better job of keeping up with friends who are farther away, and I'm working on getting a dog. But the silence is more of a problem.

When you live alone, the only sounds are those you create yourself. As an extrovert and an aural learner, I can drown in that kind of silence. Henri Nouwen critiqued our modern society for being unable to handle silence, and he was absolutely right. We have the ability with technology to never be in the silence. Since we can record and play music easily, we have surrounded ourselves with sound. We walk in malls and there's music. We stand in elevators or walk in stairwells and there's music. Stores, restaurants, sporting events, gatherings of friends... there's always background music or sound effects.

I'm not trained to deal with silence. Without any sort of sound to stimulate my brain, I find my mind going in a thousand different directions at once. I'll start out focused on writing and end up cleaning the apartment. Or I'll start meditating and end up mentally creating my to-do list for the next day. Based on my inability to do only one thing at once it has been suggested that I might have ADD. As much as I hate to admit it, that's a plausible explanation.

But if you live alone and want to have white noise, you have to turn on the dishwasher or the dryer or the television. And I'm not very good at turning off the television once it is on. I get sucked into shows that I don't even like, and I'll watch them (while doing other non-productive things like playing on facebook or doing sudoku) for HOURS. I've probably watched more television in the last nine months than I have since junior high. It isn't so bad when I'm working every day and only have a few hours after I get home from a 12-hour day to watch. Then I can justify it as needing to rest my mind after a long work day. However, in the last two weeks when snow and ice storms have cancelled things and left me stuck at home much more than usual, I've wasted entirely too much time in front of the television. I watched eight consecutive episodes of America's Next Top Model, and I don't even like that show.

I want to read more. I want to work out more. I want to watch less TV. But in order to do that, I must learn to deal with the silence. This revelation has come at a good time, I suppose. Lent begins in just over a week, and watching less TV in order to spend more time on reading and genuine self-care will be a good Lenten discipline. I just need to work on embracing the silence. Maybe if I keep reminding myself of all the people who long for silence and can't get it (people who live in Manhattan, people like my sister who have infants that cry at least every three hours, etc.) and take up singing to myself (like my grandmother) this will work out.