Giving your testimony... speaking your truth

We called it "giving our testimony" and it was a periodic part of worship. Giving one’s testimony was a skill learned in Training Union class on Sunday nights and was considered an important part of our religious education. Generally in the Baptist church of my youth, the "age of accountability" (the time when children were considered old enough to understand the importance of joining the church and "being saved") was twelve and up. I began wanting to join the church at nine years old but Daddy did not give in to my pestering. He remained adamant and I was required to wait until my twelfth birthday. The first Sunday after my birthday I marched down the aisle and I was off to the church races.
Baptists had a system for teaching children and adults. Sunday School on Sunday morning was designed to teach you the Bible. All the lessons centered on the Bible, verses were memorized for each lesson and you got credit on the eight point record system for bringing your Bible to church. Sunday evening Training Union was designed to teach you how to "do" church. The practical skills... standing up to "give your part" ( read or recite a passage from the Training Union book)... learning about the organization of our denomination and our local church... writing your testimony and preparing to give it to the church... all these skills gave us a solid footing for our church membership. Being a church member was not taken lightly at Clyattville Baptist Church. Much of what I learned about being a Christian began in that little white concrete block church set among the tall pines of South Georgia. My solid foundation became a trampoline that has allowed me to explore the many faces of God without "losing my testimony."
I wish we could re-instate that ritual in my church. We come from so many different places and religious traditions. That often makes it difficult for us to understand our individual belief systems. Hearing what someone believes (or doesn’t believe) opens a window into their soul and changes the tenor of the conversation about differences. In the sharing of our stories of belief, we are transported to a rocking chair front porch where our individual faith family stories can be told and heard. Like all front porch conversation and all family stories, there is humor, recognition of our connections, and sometimes truth that transcends individual differences.
P.B.S. has a version of giving your testimony, a program called "This I Believe", and I find it soulful. It is not always religious but it always leads me to think about what I believe in response to what is presented. Giving one’s testimony, or saying "This I Believe", calls for some hard work. It is never easy to condense fluid, rarely examined, can’t find the words for beliefs. Nor is it easy to write what you believe if you are sure of what you believe. Putting beliefs in words is a difficult process calling forth the gifts of discernment, process, basic principles, the bed rock of your soul and it can be painful as well as liberating. I wonder what would happen if we were required to write our testimony and give it as a part of being a member of First Congregational United Church of Christ? Revolution would happen, probably. Maybe a good revolution...
If we were required to do the hard work of naming what we believe, naming the source of those beliefs, naming the struggles and affirmations of our beliefs and then had to share those testimonies with one another in public, what a revolution that would be. We could hear the voice of God speaking in the voices of those with whom we worship, those like us and those unlike us. We could know one another, not with our heads and facts only, but with our souls. We would be forced to define our beliefs and share them with others who are seekers also. It would be more difficult to dismiss one another as "too traditional" or "too liberal" or "messed up" or "just like me" or "not at all like me" when we hear the stories, the pain, the triumphs, the changes, the joys of one person’s faith. We would become the faces of God’s revelation for one another and like the sphere, a seamless whole would begin to emerge where everyone would have a "part to give". None of us can ever know God fully. Our souls and minds would be shattered if we ever saw or heard or felt the immensity of God. But we can know one another, truly know one another, and then a luminous image of God can begin to emerge as we risk sharing our deepest selves with one another. What a beloved community that would be...

sinking sands and solid rocks

The sunrise this morning was striking. As I lay in bed watching the first light slip over the rim of the earth, I saw a broad, dark band of cloud at the base of the sun rise. The dark cloud blocked any light shining through but could not contain the light spilling over the top. The light changed from a soft, pastel barely there pale gold to a strong, look at me bright yellow gold topped by the rising sun, a show stopper of brightness. Sunrises are so deceptive. They begin with a faint hint of light to come and seem to move with agonizing slowness. And yet, if you look away for a moment, there is a whole new light show in place. As the sun gets closer to the edge of my world, it moves so quickly. One minute it is not there and then it has risen. Day has begun.
Saturday was a sunrise day for me. Our church retreat, full of laughter and getting to know you’s, lifted my spirits. Hearing the story of Sylvester and the magic red pebble, finding red pebbles in our building and using them as magic introduction to people I thought I knew, a scavenger hunt in downtown Asheville, dancing, laughing, eating, talking about nothing in particular and everything in general... rays of warming light slipping over the dark edges in my life. I hated having to leave early for another community event because it felt so warm and funny and blessed to be with my church family. But leave we did and attended a fund raiser for the foundation that supports pastoral counselors in our region.
We went with our neighbors, the Roberts, and met another friend there. Again, laughter and food and connection... Jim and Gary kept winning. Gary got so embarrassed with his last win that he made me go up and get it for him. We told horse stories and saw mill stories and life stories. We have a date to get together again next Saturday to play some more. And then we came home to the message on the answering machine... Priscilla’s voice saying "Michael, please call me. I need you." Our hearts sank because we knew what that call meant. Hugh, our long time Presbyterian minister friend, had died.
My life, like yours, I suspect, is always a balancing act between the light and the dark... the joy of sunrise resting on the dark clouds of night... laughter with the memory of tears... and I am always caught off guard with the swiftness of the transitions. In this past month I have had the joy of my first horse and the grief of suicide in a close friend’s family, the sweet, beautiful, temporary, intense color of autumn leaves and the death of another friend after a long struggle with cancer, the choir and congregation and organ and drums and trumpet singing "The Church’s One Foundation" at the organ dedication service lifting my soul closer to God and Ardelle’s continued struggle to find joy and meaning in her life as she lives with blindness and dementia and digestive disease. I live standing on shifting sands, never able to settle, always having to live in the moment, grateful for the joy and the sadness, the gifts of life and death. The "ground of my being" in this world is God.
In my forties, I began to catch glimpses of my aging in my older friends. In my fifties those relationships became dearer to me as time began to fly past increasing the meaning of the present moment. Now in my sixties I find I have less need for being "nice" or proper and more need to be true to my self. If I am not as pleasant to be around as I used to be, I have learned the lesson of pleasing others at the expense of my own soul. I don’t have much time left to waste and the sense of my own ending in this world is a daily reminder of my final destination. So I haven’t changed the world in any significant way that will require a monument or holiday in my honor but I am still becoming... becoming more solidly anchored on the solid rock beneath the shifting sands... becoming more honestly loving... becoming a lover of the blazing sheer genius of creation in our world... becoming a child again as I travel home for the reunion with God that awaits me when my body dies... becoming the soul I was created to be.
My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame but wholly lean on Jesus’ name.
When darkness veils his lovely face, I rest on his unchanging grace;
In every high and stormy gale, my anchor holds within the veil.
On Christ the Solid Rock I stand; All other ground is sinking sand,
All other ground is sinking sand.
As a Christian, Jesus is the clearest vision of God for me and the anchor that holds my soul in place when sinking sands pull me apart. I am grateful for the incarnated human ,Jesus, who carried the name Son of God, and who is a lively guide for me still as I search for the solid rocks in my life. Thanks be to God for the gift of Love in the face and form of Jesus.

Ezekiel saw a hill... Can I climb that hill?

Who would have thought the grizzled Old Testament prophet Ezekiel would have the words of comfort I needed this morning? When I played the Game, the Bible fell open to Ezekiel 34:11-31 and an ancient writing became my soul’s breakfast, images to carry in my heart all day long. I read the passage in three different translations and each version added to my understanding.
Ezekiel, the bone dreamer, has a vision of sheep and shepherds that offers care and caution to the people who hear his words. He describes what the Lord God, our shepherd, will do and has done... I will feed them with good pasture... I will seek the lost and bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled, and I will strengthen the weak... I will watch over those who have plenty and make sure they share (my translation). Our home, a secure place in the wilderness, on God’s hill, will be showered with blessings in season and we will not be afraid. "And they shall know that I, the Lord their God, am with them, and that they, the House of Israel, are my people, says the Lord God. And you are my sheep, the sheep of my pasture, and I am your God, says the Lord God."In this stage of my life, I long for that hill showered with blessings, a home that is not an institution or a building or a denomination or a country, but a resting place where all I need will be provided in season. I carry the soul scars from some of my temporary homes that collapsed while I was still under their roofs.
My faith in my government’s ability to make wise decisions began cracking the day Tim died and shattered the day we left Viet Nam. Thirty years later, I still carry the seeds of distrust, now full grown into kindly cynicism. I love my country and believe fiercely in our ideals but cannot abide the lies and deceit, the fat sheep who have prospered at the expense of the people without being held accountable. And now, more families feeling the anguish of death in a far away place, more public debate about the purpose and rightness of the war on terror, more rhetoric on both sides of the aisle, each convinced of the absolute justice of their position... and I remember and cannot forget that olive drab car turning into the driveway, the sinking feeling in the pit of my soul that solid ground was turning into quicksand.
My faith in my denomination as a safe place for Baptist Christians, regardless of our theological differences, started unraveling at a Convention where I stood and watched bus loads of people come in with one point of view, cast one vote for an elected office, get back on their busses and leave the rest of us behind sinking in the mudhole of anger, distrust and a holy war. No peaceful hill with showers of blessing could I find even though I stayed a Baptist for years to come. My denominational home was consumed in the wildfires of change and like the wild animals in California, I fled from the destroying force of fiery righteousness running over people like me.
I have belonged to ten different churches, all but one Baptist. They were different in theology, worship styles, size, mission action, calling, location and structure. Some were the grace full hills of blessing for me. One was my church home in name only. I gave myself and my family to the care of these institutions. Sunday School, Wednesday night prayer meetings and suppers, Sunday morning worship, mission trips, youth groups, deacon boards, choir and endless committees were the field of service for us as we lived out our commitment to the Church in our daily lives. Church was not an optional activity for us. It was a way of life, a witness to our belief in the power of God’s people to change the world, one person at a time. Two of those churches we left with grief and tears, one as a minister’s family and one as a member. Each of those communities gave us gifts and relationships that have endured even in the separation. Now I find myself once again feeling the ground beneath my feet shifting as I struggle with feelings of exile and misunderstanding in my present church home. I wait... I pray... I show up... I work... I weep.
Perhaps my friend Joe was right. I should get used to living in "no man’s land", the land of the in-between, since I don’t seem to fit comfortably on either side. I want both and, not either or... both grace and judgement... confession and forgiveness... buying olive trees for Palestine and mission trips to rebuild homes destroyed by nature... Bach and The Sweet By and By... God as father and mother... God beyond my understanding and God in my heart... church as safe haven for all God’s children and church as prophet for all God’s children. I’m asking for too much, aren’t I? Like Ezekiel, I’ll continue to dream dreams and work to make them come true. A hill, showered with blessings in season, level at the top with room for all to rest and graze and drink and sing praise to the Creator Shepherd , each in a different key (or in Diane’s case, her own unique key), loved and loving... Please, God, can I climb that hill soon?

please pass the bread...

Meals at our house were not complete without bread. If mama didn’t make biscuits or cornbread, there would be a stack of "light bread"on the table. Daddy needed bread to sop his grits up at breakfast and his gravy at supper. Our plates weren’t licked clean. They were wiped clean with bread. GrandMary’s biscuits were the best biscuits in the world. Every day of her adult life, three times a day, she made biscuits from scratch, rolled the dough into little balls, placed them in the old iron skillet, patted them down and baked them. For many years she cooked on a wood stove and said it was the best heat for baking. She also made griddle cake cornbread. The thin cornbread batter would be poured into a round cast iron griddle cake pan, sizzling at the edges as it cooked and browned around the edges. My Grandma and mama made yeast bread, fragrant and hearty, best home deodorizer in the world. To come home from school to the smell of fresh, hot bread, grab a slice and cover it with butter, eat the chewy crust and the soft center, was and is still one of my sweetest memories.
Our bread choices were limited as I was growing up. We had cornbread in various forms... muffins, griddle cakes, sticks, sheet... and biscuits... not canned but the real McCoy... and yeast bread... rolls, loaves that were homemade and store bought. In those three types of bread were endless variations. We were never bored with our bread. We made it and if it was good, we gave thanks. If it was flat or heavy, we gave thanks and ate it anyway. Bread was important and we lived the phrase "Bread is the staff of life"... please pass the butter and the blackberry jelly.
As our covenant group gathered around the communion table last night, I was struck by the bread that sat on the table. It came from a bakery and was real bread with a solid crust. As we prepared for communion, we named the broken places in our bodies and named those we knew who were broken and hurting in some way. In the silence, Pat began to break the bread, speaking the ancient words... "This is my body, broken for you". The bread was resilient and crusty, resisting being broken and torn. As we passed the bread saying to one another "This is the Body of Christ, broken for you", the bread was still full of texture and strength. It took some effort to become and share the Body of Christ with each other.
The beloved community can only come into being when we are willing to be broken for one another, be the staff of life, make ourselves vulnerable and weak so that new strength might come from the Body of Christ. All of us have invisible wounds. Some are more easily identified by labels... divorced person, single parent, gay, old, lesbian, widow, abused child, sick, bisexual, rich, poor or transgendered... but the hurts often lie deep in the darkness of our fear, never seeing the light of communion.
When you see me and do not know me, you see a woman who wears hats on Sunday, dressed to the nines, seemingly articulate and self assured. I am a woman who has a loving marriage and children who come home with our grandchildren most of the time because they choose to out of love not guilt. I live on the farm of my dreams in a house we built that is the home of my dreams. My real self is far more complicated than the one dimensional image you see when you do not know me.
I wear hats on Sunday because it is my connection to a woman who loved me without reservation, my Grandma. I play dress up because it is fun and helps me remember clothes are necessary but can also express some of my personality. I have spent years finding my voice, finding ways to speak my truth without dissolving in tears and chin quivers. My marriage is both a gift and hard work My first marriage ended when my husband was killed in Viet Nam. He was 21 and I was 20. That was my introduction to the real world. I give thanks for the marriage Michael and I have that has seen us through some very hard times. My sister’s suicide left invisible scars and unanswered questions that will be with me until the day I die. Our children struggle and suffer like I did. I can no longer kiss the boo boos and make them better. All I can do is listen and love and show up. The farm and house of our dreams came after many years of moving from place to place, remodeling old houses, living in cities, raising our family and waiting for the right time and place. Because we could not afford nor did we desire a home built by strangers, we were our own contractors. We knew every workman and woman who helped us and we were covered in paint and dirt and dust for the whole process. The mistakes are ours as well as the successes. My life, like the communion bread, has not been easy, one joyful song after another. Neither has your life.
It is in the sharing of our brokeness, whatever that might be, that we begin to catch a glimpse of what heaven might be. No one’s grief or pain is greater than anothers. We all fall short, do not measure up, struggle to find affirmation of our soul selves. In some strange way, the Spirit of Light can never move through Communion until we own and name our darkness to ourselves and with each other. Forgiveness without confession is like store bought bread. It falls apart and dissolves easily. Confession creates the yeasty, crusty, resilient soul that knows the dark places can always be transformed when brought into the Light. Breaking bread with one another is never easy. It is not supposed to be. We are transformed by our pain and suffering, not consumed by it, when we can be the Bread of Heaven for one another. May it be so.