The New Mealtime

As I began this Lenten blog series, I asked the question: what does newness look like? Call me crazy, but I wanted to see (and hear and taste) a more peaceful dinnertime in our home. Until this week, the dinnertime at the Baker-Trinity household went something like this.

We’d gather, pulling kids away from their Legos or books. Sometimes they’d help set the table. We’d sing our table grace and begin to pass the food and eat. You can imagine the reaching over brothers and sisters, the occasional “please” mixed in with the “give me that.” The three-year old has the wrong spoon and then spills her milk. Non-food related dinner conversation gets interrupted by “Did you eat any of your broccoli?” “Can I have more milk?” “Why does he get the last piece of garlic bread; I want it.” Then, at different times, each child asks to be excused and leaves the table. Yes, this leaves Nathan and I time for conversation but we are also stuck with the entire cleanup. That had to end.

Sunday we called a family meeting. As of Monday, we now wait until everyone has finished before leaving the table. The adults have agreed to eat more quickly; the kids agree to sit and wait. We clear the table together and only then go our separate ways.

What makes this transition really new, however, is one very important element: the end of meal prayer. Praying as meals conclude is nothing new to religious traditions, but I am ashamed to admit our family had never considered it. We’ve begun using the prayer from Luther’s Small Catechism, an excerpt of Psalm 147:

Give thanks to the Lord, for the Lord is good, for God’s mercy endures forever.

God provides food for the cattle and for the young ravens when they cry. God is not impressed by the might of a horse, and finds no pleasure in the speed of a runner, but finds pleasure in those who fear the Lord, in those who await God’s steadfast love

Mealtime with three children will have its share of chaos and mess, but I’m hoping our little new prayer will, like good ritual does, shape us in ways we can’t yet see. In the meantime, we can rejoice in many hands making light work.

Snow and Dust

 

The other day as I was walking my boys to school, I noticed something about the snow in our neighbor’s yard: it sparkled. I hadn’t remembered seeing snow like this since my years living in

Northwest Minnesota. I vividly remember being awestruck by newly fallen snow that far north. I’d drive down the road and be glad to be alive, fortunate to take in the white splendor of it all.

I fear that any appreciation of a winter wonderland will sound like nonsense to many by mid February. My friends in New England have every right to say, “bah humbug” (and that’s putting it politely). Tonight I could sympathize. During the hour prior to our Ash Wednesday service, a storm blew across our valley that caught many by surprise. The person who two weeks ago gave a lovely temple talk about what the Ash Wednesday liturgy means to her was forced to turn back on her journey to church. So much for snowy beauty on this night.

But here it is, isn’t it? The truth of Ash Wednesday? “Wash me, and I shall be purer than snow” is uttered in the same service as “Remember, that you are dust.” Dirty dust. Old dust like the kind I scrubbed today from the bathroom at the restaurant where I work. New snow like the sparkles I caught a glimpse of yesterday. We are both.

Snow looks lovely at first. Then the plows come, the salt trucks spread, the cars exhaust, and the mud melts. You have this:

And what about us? We are beautiful, beloved creations. The dust is called good, after all. But we fail, hurt, despair, and hate. I think of my three-year old daughter who was simply angelic during the Ash Wednesday service. She quietly held the hand of a caring church member during the imposition of ashes, stood attentively in the communion circle. Then we got home and all hell broke loose. How dare we choose the flower underwear; she wanted Dora. The heart pajamas! She wanted flowers. Childhood innocence mixed with defiance unsurpassed.

I still cherish the new-fallen snow just as I cherish so many unearned gifts each day. But I am grateful for days like this that speak the truth about ourselves: saint and sinner, purer then snow and plain as dust.

At the edge of Lent

A New Heart and a Right Spirit: Musings for Lent

Create in me a clean heart, O God,

and renew a right spirit within me (Psalm 51:10)

What has been is what will be,

And what has been done is what will be done;

There is nothing new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

I contemplated giving up Facebook for Lent. A friend of mine once termed it “the eternal time-suck of death” and the name fits. Yet Facebook is also a source of connection to friends and family that I value. I decided instead to commit to a Facebook diet of sorts in lieu of complete abstinence. Those minutes I used to spend surfing I’ll spend writing. When I whine that I have no time to write, I am fooling myself. I have the time; I just choose to see what other people are doing, eating, saying and sharing instead.

This Lent I will hang in there with Facebook so I can link to regular blog posts (I use “regular” instead of daily to provide myself a loophole; Lent doesn’t require piling on burdens to prove one’s piety). The posts will respond to this paradox: How do I, how do we encounter newness in the everyday (other than going shopping)? What does newness sound like? Look like? Feel like? And what about those days when we feel like Qoheleth in Ecclesiastes: one damn day after another, all the same?

Of course, my take on newness won’t be yours. It will be newness as experienced by a mother of three kids living in central Pennsylvania during a cold winter that I trust will turn to spring. It will be informed by my passions for liturgy, music, ecology, healthy eating, music and anything else that creeps in.

I write these musings in the hope that something I discover, as mundane as it might be, will resonate with someone else looking for newness. Not the newness of a fad that fades in a breath, but newness deep within, the kind of clean heart that the psalmist describes.

Peace as we stand at the edge of Lent.

Marching in Song

I suffered from a case of the blues last night. People around the world —including treasured Christian colleagues and friends—would be part of the People’s Climate March. They would walk in solidarity out of care for our only earthly home.

Colleagues in NYC

What was I doing on the eve of this march? I was preparing to lead our first children’s choir rehearsal of the season. I had a plan in place to introduce the choir to songs from all around the world: “Sizohambe naye (We Will Walk with God)” from South Africa  “When the Poor Ones” set to a beautiful Spanish Folk tune, the African American spiritual, “I Want Jesus to Walk with Me,” and a canon set to the most important commandment: love God with your heart, mind, and strength and your neighbor as yourself.  

I told the children that the theme for our year together was  “Walking with God.” It wasn’t until this afternoon that it dawned on me like a big slap on the forehead:  Here I was teaching the children that God walks with all of us, yet I  was down because I couldn’t be marching. Did I not believe that God works through us, walking with us wherever we are walking or sitting? What about the claim that “We are one in the Spirit, one in the Lord?” Is not teaching these songs a form of solidarity?

Perhaps its self-delusion or an exercise to assuage my own guilt, but today I’m choosing to believe that we do support one another in prayer, song and worship and that it makes a difference. We didn’t plan it to coincide with today’s march, but our church’s gathering hymn this morning included these words:

“Give heed, O saints of God! Creation cries in pain;

stretch forth your hand of healing now, with love the weak sustain.”

                                   

I long for creation’s healing. I long for our eyes to be opened to the long road ahead and not just the sensationalist headlines that do nothing but distract from what matters (An insightful blog post from pastor friend Daniel Wolpert points to this shortsightedness).  We humans charged with caring for the earth have a long road ahead of us. Dangerous theologies that treat the earth as a candy wrapper alongside the road to heaven only make the work of ecologically-minded Christians more urgent.

The children’s choir this fall will be singing these words:

“When the poor ones, who have nothing, still are giving;

when the thirsty pass the cup, water to share;

when the wounded offer others strength and healing:

We see God, here by our side, walking our way.

We see God, here by our side, walking our way."  

When I look into the eyes of children and hear them sing, hope abounds. Still I wonder: will the children take this song to heart? Will they see God at work in the poor and the wounded, even the wounded earth? I don’t know, but we can begin by singing about it and trust the Spirit’s work.

Family-friendly?

Along with “family values,” the descriptor “family-friendly” gets tossed around when considering something’s appropriateness. The recent decision of my Alma mater, South Williamsport Area Junior/Senior High School to drop its planned school musical was made, in part, out of concern that the musical might not be “family-friendly.” One of these potentially non family-friendly dimensions was the musical’s brief portrayal of a gay wedding (We seem to have no qualms about the pervasive violence in “family-friendly”media, but that’s a post for another day).

What astonishes me in all the media attention that this situation has already received is how love can be perceived as threatening and unfriendly to families. In 2010, my children attended their first wedding, the wedding of a pastor to a musician. Our kids were ages 2 and 4, hence they didn’t really “get” the whole thing, but our family had no qualms about supporting this gay couple in their commitment to one another before God and those gathered to pray, sing, and share Holy Communion. We are so proud to call them friends of our family.

We have other friends, a lesbian couple, who have been such lights in our lives, remembering our children on their birthdays, sending children’s books and Christmas gifts. When we lived in rural Minnesota, these friends made the long trek to visit us in our home. They are friends to our family and we are so blessed. 

I could go on, of course, about those many gay and lesbian friends who have enriched our family’s life, but the point is clear enough: Their love for each other causes no offense to us. It is nothing to fear but cause for celebration.

I hope and pray that South Williamsport’s schools can be motivated not by fear but by love for their neighbors, especially those families they’d rather not befriend.