The Spirit says sing, but what shall we sing?

As the spiritual invites us:

“I’m gonna sing when the Spirit says sing…”

This Sunday the church celebrates Pentecost, that Spirit-filled day when worship spaces are decked out in red, when we find the red clothes in our closets, when we display red flowers. It is a day of celebration, a day when we proclaim that we can be church only by the gift of Holy Spirit.

This is certainly worth singing about. But what do we sing? This decision required some extra attention and altering of our worship plans. Many of the hymns associated with Pentecost are grand testimonies to the purging, cleansing fire of the Holy Spirit. Take, for example, this stanza from “God of Tempest, God of Whirlwind” by Herman Stuempfle:

God of blazing, God of burning,

All that blocks your purpose, purge!

Through your church, Christ’s living Body,

Let your flaming spirit surge!

Here’s the thing: Our community has had three funerals in just the last two weeks, seven over the past months. We are praising the breath of the Spirit all the while mourning those whose breath has left them. Moreover, a faithful family’s home was devastated by fire last week. Fire cleanses, yes, but fire destroys.  Singing hymn after hymn with fiery words and melodies may have hit too close to home.

When we gathered this Pentecost morning, we sang hymns laden with diverse images for the Spirit, a little wind and fire, yes, but more, the images we needed on this day, images of the Spirit anointing  wounds, wearing our pain like a garment, reviving our souls.  We sang “There is a Balm in Gilead” and wrapped the fire-stricken family in a prayer shawl. We sang “Lead me, Guide me” trusting that the Spirit is indeed what gives us strength when our own fails us, as it certainly will. We sang of the promised peace of Jesus, the peace breathed on those disciples locked up in their fear and the peace for us in our fear.

Psalm 104 declares:

How manifold are your works; in wisdom you have made them all

When you hide your face, they are dismayed; 

when you take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.

When you send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the ground.

Pentecost is that day to say yes, God is renewing and recreating, taking the ashes of our lives and the dust of our bones, taking them and renewing them in ways we cannot fathom. And so we sing. In our singing, we are one in the Spirit, one breath joined to another. This Spirit wears our pain with us, enveloping us like one of those prayer shawls, reminding us that in Christ’s Spirit, we are restored, we are whole.

Fair Fish?

You know the advice about not giving a child a pet for Christmas? Received alongside the stash  of new toys and clothes, the child or the family may discard the pet just as readily as the shiny gift paper. The danger of the gift is that it could lead to the mistreatment of the gift, in this case, the mistreatment of a live creature. It is not pro-life in the wider, more appropriate use of that term.

Today I hereby make an addendum to this advice: Do not let your child play any game at a carnival that involves winning fish unless they are already skilled fish keepers. Better yet, abandon the practice of giving away fish at all.

Here is the story that led me to this conclusion. Last night, my husband took our three kids to the elementary fair. They had a great time. Our two boys threw some ping-pong balls in a game and won some tiny goldfish, six in all. I come home later that night and find them swimming around in a plastic Rubbermaid shoebox filled with tap water. This was Mistake #1. When you win fish at a fair, they don’t come with any instructions or warnings like: Don’t put fish in tap water. It will kill them.

Saturday morning rolls around and three fish are floating on the top, two are moving sluggishly and one is still shows some energy. It’s clear the boys want to care for the fish (a healthy inclination) so we head to the pet store as soon as it opens. Eighty-four dollars and some odd cents later, we come out with all we need and one, well three, things we certainly did not need. You see, the nice young girl who sold us the tank, gravel, food and water drops made a huge error, Mistake #2. She sold us goldfish on the same day that she sold us their new home. After spending two hours trying to get the tank prepared and reading instructions that may have well been written in a language foreign to us, my husband called the pet store for advice (He had made Mistake #3, putting in the filter incorrectly). This is when we learn that a fish tank needs to sit at least a month without the fish in it to have the water stabilize. Why didn’t someone tell us that in the first place?!

So after spending three hours of a spring Saturday inside when we could have been outside planting flowers, helping them live, we discover that a total of nine fish have died or will soon die because of these many mistakes.

We call a family meeting and explain to our six and almost eight year old what happened and the certain fate of their new fish they had planned on naming. They actually took it pretty well and now they understand that our fish funeral will be a little larger than initially thought. They will wait patiently while the water is prepared to be a source of life, not death, for these little creatures with the cute eyes and mouths (their best features according the boys).

The lesson to me in all this is that  life is so messy, so full of contingencies, so interdependent. You don’t give a child a fish, hoping it will live, without understanding all that is needed to sustain life. What was going to be a new life for our house became a lesson in death. I’m cool with the lesson, but not cool with the casual way we treat life that is not human.

The next time you are at a fair or carnival and you are thinking, hey, my kid could win a cute fish, think again. Are you ready to care for a fish? Can you afford to care for it? If not, go on a ride instead.

Off to bury the fish…

Mismatched Grace

This is one of those posts where I wish I had taken a picture.  A picture of my 2 year-old daughter dressed in pink Mary Jane shoes, lime green polka-dot socks, a purple floral skirt with a yellow cloth diaper underneath, and a hot pink shirt adorned with a gray bunny. Next came her army green coat, her brother’s too big blue mittens and her too small purple fleece hat. All dressed and ready to go to a family dinner.

For those of you who are “Js” on the Myers-Briggs, you might be able to sympathize. I love things that match. My idea of heaven is a gift card designated for all the overpriced organizers donning the shelves at Target (I confess: I did give in on a basket on clearance just last week). So match this love of matching with my daughter’s new fashion sense and stubborn streak and you have quite a challenge.

I know… I can hear the parents of teenagers saying it now… just you wait. Ok.  But still, when your happy-go-lucky toddler makes the switch in a matter of days to throwing food (and telling me she needs a time out) and refusing to get dressed, it’s quite a ride.

I’m writing all this, however, not for the drama of the day but for how it turns out. It had been a long day, time in the car, eating out, playing with family, all after refusing her nap. But at 10 pm when the purple jammies finally got zipped up, I laid her down in her crib. She chose the purple blanket, too, and the baby dolls. Then, all snuggled with a doll under each arm, she said something that sounded like “pipe the drum.” What?  I looked at her, quizzically. She said it again. And then the light bulb went off in my head.

“Child of God in your baptism.” Drum= the end of bap-TISM.”  These are the words what I say every night to my children while making the sign of the cross on their foreheads. But it was later than usual; I was tired and we had groceries to put a way.

Miriam didn’t let me forget. This was a child speaking words of grace to me. Yes, she may have pulled every string, the rope fraying on both ends, but at the end of the day, she is a child of God in her baptism, loved beyond the love even a mother can give. And matched or not, God holds us in mercy. Thanks to my youngest for being that “still small voice” of the Spirit this evening.

Remembering at Table

We remember.

“We remember your Word dwelling among us….may this word take flesh in us” (Evangelical Lutheran Worship, Thanksgiving at the Table III)

I am part of a church community that remembers. Sunday after Sunday, I gather with others to remember who and whose we are. In the words of Don Saliers, “…all gatherings for worship must enable us to remember the world before God” (Worship and Spirituality, 71). Whether it is in prayer or gesture, sung or spoken, we gather to remember and be re-membered, connected more fully in our relationship with God and with one another.

This morning as I heard the great table prayer of thanksgiving, the words spoken prior to receiving Holy Communion, a great sense of gratitude washed over me. I have heard these or similar words spoken so many times.  I wondered: do others experience a similar gratitude? This week? This year? Ever?

I have heard before critique of worship “by the book.” That somehow there is something inferior if words are not spoken “from the heart,”  (i.e. made up on the spot, as if something prepared is not heartfelt). But such critique assumes a pastor or worship leader speaks for all of us, that what is on his or heart is on ours. But what if the pastor is joyful and we are sorrowful? Or what if what seems to be heartfelt becomes instead a manipulation of our emotions?

The words we say and sing each week do more than express feelings. They are more than nostalgia, more than wishful thinking. The words we sing and say and rituals we share form us for those times when we have no words, when our words fall short, when we forget the whole story.

This morning I was grateful for the individuals and community that shaped this thanksgiving prayer, a prayer that not only prepared us for Holy Communion but for another holy communion, the communion of saints. In hearing this prayer I was drawn out of myself, released from my own concerns, while also being pulled more deeply into the human experience. I had heard this prayer for the past many weeks, but today it did a new thing. It’s like children who need to sing something again and again to really know it. Somehow as we grow we think it all has to be new to be real. We are seduced by the advertisers, ready to consume, discard and move on to the next best thing. But as people of faith, we live in between past promises and future hope. All that is new is a gift of the Spirit, not something we manufacture.

I don’t come to worship to be entertained, to receive self-help tips or to hear rules to be good (which presumes others are not good). I come to remember and be re-membered because I forget. I forget “that by my own understanding and strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but the Holy Spirit has called me. (Small Catechism of Martin Luther) A friend goes through a divorce. A friend is dying from cancer and all words seem empty. But then I hear and sing words spoken through the ages. We taste the word becoming flesh. I trace a watery cross to remember my baptism into a mystery beyond my grasp. Then, unexpectedly by the Holy Spirit, I remember.  And I am grateful.