Little Feathers: If Wishes Were Horses

Little Feathers: If Wishes Were Horses: I remember reading Erma Bombeck's last book. In it there was a list of things she wished she had done differently. One item that struck ...

If Wishes Were Horses

I remember reading Erma Bombeck's last book. In it there was a list of things she wished she had done differently. One item that struck me as counter to most of what I have always believed, she said she wished she had spent less time reading books. Less time imagining other lives and struggles and triumphs. More time participating in real ones. I have always thought of reading as the greatest opportunity for education. The best way to consider what others think of life and compare my own philosophy. I guess it is just like anything else...a matter of degree.
There is currently a popular book chronicling the experiences of a palliative nurse with the dying. It is a list of the most common regrets. It is notable partly for the items missing on the list. No one is recorded as regretting that they didn't drink more or eat out more, no one mentioned they wished they had watched more TV. The usual suspects were there, though. Almost all men she worked with regretted having spent so much of their lives working. Many women voiced that as well, and she pointed out that the age of the women meant that, in most cases, they had been stay at home mothers. I know it is very possible to fill your life with work as a stay at home mom. I used to volunteer so much that I missed the entire TV run of Friends! Tragic. Well, that may be tongue in cheek, but the truth is that I was busier than I wanted to be for years.
Regret is a hard emotion. Regret at the end of life is doubly sad. Even though there are no people anywhere who can escape wishing they had done something differently, taken a different road or handled a crisis better, regret seems to be the flip side of gratitude.
If wishes were horses, we would all have saddle sores. I heard that when I was growing up. I can't remember where I heard it, but I always imagined it meant that too much wishful thinking only caused pain. That wishing was not doing, it was merely waiting for something to be done for me. It meant that we all spend time riding that horse to nowhere, the one that leaves us limping around. Saddle sores are graphic.
I hope I remember to live today with the kind of gratitude that leaves very little room for regret. And very little evidence of saddle sores.

Little Feathers: Safe Harbor

Little Feathers: Safe Harbor: Everything changes. It has to. I know. It is such a fact of life that there are a hundred clichés about it. My favorite, of course, is the o...

Safe Harbor

Everything changes. It has to. I know. It is such a fact of life that there are a hundred clichés about it. My favorite, of course, is the old "How many Lutherans does it take to change a light bulb? (pause for effect)  "CHANGE!!!????"   Being an old Lutheran, I can relate.
Some changes are harder than others. Some changes make marks on you that never go away. Like losing people you love, needing to find a way to go on without them. Sometimes they are taken by death, but sometimes they choose to leave you, and that mark can be a very tender scar. Even happy changes, like the birth of a baby, or the move to a new house, a new job, or retirement offer their challenges. Letting go of the kids happens in little pieces, but that final big one, the day when they load up the car and head out on their own or you wave goodbye from the parking lot of their dorm, that day sends a lot of us looking for solace. When a bunch of changes happen in close succession, feelings of being adrift in unfamiliar waters can keep you awake at night. This is where my harbor title comes in.
How easy it is to seek solace in things that are temporary themselves, or at least offer empty promises.  The first time we celebrated a holiday without one of our kids, I felt like something was truly wrong. I ached for the past, the time when everyone was together under one roof all the time. But you can't spend much time protesting change or longing for the way it used to be, or you get stuck. And society makes a lot of empty promises about things that can un-stick you. We all know the warning signs of becoming reliant on things...first you choose them, then you use them, then you need them, then you can't do without them. It can be the classics, alcohol or food or work or shopping or exercise. It can be the more subtle ones, relationships that cost you more than they give back, good causes that drain your energy and leave you hollow, social media that offers connection with a price tag...your self esteem. Traditions that start out as a blessing but become a burden.
The people I have known who have seemed to stay young all their lives, the ones I admire so much, have found an essential truth about youth that has nothing to do with appearance or even health. It has to do with courage to change, courage to allow the next generation to be different without being threatened. And the courage to continue on being themselves and living the way they want to live no matter what everyone else is doing. It isn't a small and selfish courage. It doesn't wish others would just be like them. It is a generous, outward-looking optimism that seems to accept a changing world as a matter of course. I want to be like that. I want to be the person who seeks solace in the unchanging safety of truth, grace and love.
Our daughter, Sally, wrote a song with a line so memorable it is burned into my brain. "I'm not build for crying, I'm built to fly".
Of course we cry. Of course we grieve and rail against the unbearable sadness of life. Then, we turn. We lift our faces to the sky. And we fly. It is what we do. Being grounded in the only truly safe thing there is, the only reliable solace in this life, we start from love and acceptance and return to love and acceptance. It is our safe harbor.

Little Feathers: The View From the Back of a Donkey...or Tips for L...

Little Feathers: The View From the Back of a Donkey...or Tips for L...: In my faith tradition, yesterday marked the beginning of a very holy week. What began with palm branches and hallelujahs ended with silence,...

The View From the Back of a Donkey...or Tips for Living in Exile

In my faith tradition, yesterday marked the beginning of a very holy week. What began with palm branches and hallelujahs ended with silence, and, for me, the heavy dread of knowing I would grieve at the foot the cross before I could stand in the sunshine.

Sitting there listening to a reading I have heard all my life, I realized is how easy it is to get the story wrong. How easy it is to skew it to favor one group of people,one mindset, one religion.

We are all living in exile. Living in a land that is far from safe, far from the paradise it was created to be. And that is because the creator had no intention of making obedient robots when we were set in this place. Free will is the most unselfish gift we could have been given. It resembles that thing parents do when they understand their children have minds and lives of the their own and deserve to use them as they wish.

In spite of the fact that Jesus made it his focal point, over and over and over, that God is love and we are to love one another, we as a church have failed to mirror that unconditional love. We give our blessing to those who agree with us,those who are like us, those who buy our brand. But the view from the back of a donkey has nothing to do with keeping traditions. It has everything to do with radical risk taking. It has to do with a love that is reserved for no one people, but given to the whole of humanity, the ultimate inclusive gathering of all souls back to the heart of the creator.

People who live in exile are never quite comfortable. This exile is no exception. There is always the tension of life pulling against death, well-being against illness, joy against sorrow. Jesus modeled life for us, in this home we have been given that is never quite safe and never quite comfortable. Love. Forgive. Share. Show mercy. Judge not. Love some more. A very few days later, he modeled death for us.

It is no mistake that we given the stories from the cross. The forgiveness continues. For the ones who nailed him to the cross. For the criminal hanging beside him. Love continues. For his mother, who needed comfort. Mercy was not reserved for some and denied to others. The grace flowed then, as it flows now, to cover us all.

It is no good to be critical of the church as if it had nothing to do with me.  The failings of the church are the failings of human beings. When we get it right, when we love mercy and do justice, we are triumphant in exile. When we extend the grace to others that we need so badly ourselves, we are as at home as we will ever be in this life.

Little Feathers: Sometimes You Have to be Still

Little Feathers: Sometimes You Have to be Still: Last night I sat in the quiet beauty of our church for the last Lenten service of this year. Our music director, Thomas Pavlechko, has writt...