Grace notes...

Grace notes…. One of the first embellishments I learned in my piano lessons were grace notes…the tiny little black note just before the important note…that added a simple flourish to the melody. There was no complicated fingering or difficult timing, just a simple little note. My life is full of grace notes these days and they pop up everywhere. Sitting in worship Sunday morning at College Park Baptist Church in Greensboro, N.C., the announcements included recognition of our youngest grandson’s birthday. When his name was called, the church’s voice said “Ahhhh!” with delight. He is a much loved child of God in that congregation. Michael Ussey’s sermon on one of Jesus’ imperatives, love your enemy, was thoughtful and funny as always. The talkback time after the sermon was a reflection of the healthy relationship between pastor and congregation. Sharing of inner struggles with forgiveness, questions about religion that fosters remembering wrongs done, statements of hard won forgiveness for those who took the life of a child… a grace note reminder that good church is possible, not easy but possible. A friend of mine and her husband are living with the daily subtractions that come with Altzheimer’s. Each day is a challenge for them both with one increasingly more responsible for their lives together. It is not easy…painful and funny, frustrating and clarifying, complicated and simple… but the grace notes give strength for the journey. An invitation to preside at a family wedding, a nephew’s gift of a cruise with them, loving friends and family who show up, the main melody of their life is enriched and supported by these grace notes. Our summer is full… a beach trip with all fourteen of the family, a new granddaughter in July, Michael’s fiftieth high school class reunion, my work camp family gathering, the grandsons coming to Camp Nana PopPop for a week. Grace notes abound in the present and in the future. Even when the melody of my life is in a minor key, grace notes abide and I am grateful. The reminders of God’s goodness and love surround me in the loving welcome I receive from Junie B, the sound of Bob White’s singing in the field, the half grown baby turkeys trotting after their mother, the calves running down the hill in gleeful abandon with their tails raised high, the wildflowers blooming in riotous profusion, sweet warm blueberries straight from the bush, Wiley the cat curled in my lap as we sit on the porch swing together. Thanks be to God for the grace notes, the unexpected appearance of God in the world when I do not expect it. Gratitude and grace… they are twined together in my heart… the honeysuckle of my faith.

Where two or three are gathered together...

“The kingdom of God is wherever you find the people of God.” I used to watch the little old ladies taking notes at Crescent Hill Baptist during John Claypool’s sermons. Now I am an old lady taking notes. Yesterday Pastor Pat had a phrase that caught my soul’s ear and I have listening to these words trying to remember the kingdom of God’s appearance in my life these past weeks. Last night God was present at my kitchen table as we shared tomato soup and cheese toast with David, Dianne and Tracy. Friday night, my kitchen table was surrounded by more kingdom kin as Sherry cooked for us. Friday morning, the God of Creation was with Leisa and me as we took a plein air painting class. Standing in a pocket park, surveying the spring beauty surrounding us, trying to translate that beauty to our canvas, God was present in the laughter and groans as we soared and sailed through the application of paint to ourselves and the canvas. The kingdom of God was present at Room in the Inn, a traveling shelter for homeless women, last week. Leisa and I took card making supplies to the church, helped women make and mail cards to loved ones. I sat at the piano and began to play some old standards. A young woman came to stand by me, her eyes red from weeping. “Do you know ‘Eidelweiss’?” she asked. As I played, she sang. We talked a little. She was a trained singer, just separated from her husband and on the street for the first time in her life. God was there with us in that holy moment. Every time I worship, wherever I worship, however I worship, God sneaks in and surprises me through children singing or a hug from Miss Mamie or a word from God through the voice of Pastor Pat. God shows up and my heart leaps in joy. Sometimes folks have said to me “It is so good of you to be a part of that church” as if I were doing a good deed. The truth of the matter is I am needed and I am loved. God is in my presence there and God is in the people who are members of this particular part of the kingdom. I am the one both blessed and blessing. Perhaps that is the secret to the presence of the kingdom of God... blessers and blessees part and parcel of the body of Christ. We play Musical Chairs passing around the seat at the head of the table making sure everyone has a turn., share and share alike. My mother tells the story of being so frustrated with me as a little child because I seemed to have no sense of self protection. The neighbor boy would take my toys and I would never protest, just hand them over with a smile. Some worry about my sense of naivete and innocence leading to my being hurt. I plead guilty on all counts but it is the way I am hardwired. As the old hymn says... Make me a blessing... and let me be blessed as I stand in the midst of the kingdom of God all the days of my life.

Uncivil Religion

It was a lovely neighborhood, young families like ours, older neighbors who had already raised their children, and across the street, Doug and Daryl. In the midst of this Conservative Orthodox Jewish Catholic Baptist enclave of a neighborhood, they lived openly as a gay couple. They watched our kids, shared their home for neighborhood parties and were a part of us in all the important ways.
At the seminary, gay and lesbian students were beginning to find their voices. The AIDS illness and death of a Baptist minister’s son helped this group come together as they formed a care team for his family and for him. Michael and I had known this young man since he was a teen struggling with his sexual orientation. Because of his involvement with this family, Michael became a safe haven for these young people of faith who were searching for a solid rock upon which to stand as Christians.
Our home was their home. They were our friends, our teachers, our babysitters, but most of all they taught us how to be courageous and honest when faced with condemnation and abuse. We celebrated their finding love and life partners even as we grieved their inability to receive the same kinds of blessings and affirmations Michael and I took for granted as a married heterosexual couple... and I’m not talking religion here... I’m talking about civil rights.
Forty years later I had so hoped we were beginning to understand the differences that divide us. Sexual orientation not as some arbitrary choice made from malicious desire to undermine the fabric of Faith, Family and America but as a result of complicated origins of genetics and life experiences. Why in the world would one “choose” to live beyond the pale, subject to scorn and satire, if one truly had a choice? We are born blue eyed, brown eyed, blonde and brunette, male and female, Caucasian and African American, straight, gay, lesbian, transgendered and we all spring from the Image of our Creator.
And now we are voting in North Carolina on a constitutional amendment to protect marriage.
From my perspective, marriage does need protection but not from an assault mounted by gays and lesbians. The divorce rate among Christians, fundamentalists, moderates and liberals, is indistinguishable from all the other groups in our society. Spousal abuse finds a scriptural foothold in misusing and misquoting the scripture that admonishes women to be submissive to men. We need to be proactive in our Christian work with marriage, providing support for couples and families in our churches, not reactive, drawing lines and erecting barriers to keep the Samaritans out. Most of all, we need to be very, very careful how we use our own particular faith to buttress our civil religion. It didn’t work well for the Puritans and that is how the Baptists came to Rhode Island.
I remember how it felt to join a Congregational church and be looked down on because I was a Baptist. I remember when Baptists scorned Catholics. I remember churches that would not allow you to participate in the Lord’s Supper if you were not a member of that particular church. I remember preachers preaching against the granting of basic civil rights to African Americans, using the Bible to support their stand. And now I worship in an African American church where I have never been made to feel like an outsider. How I wish we could all behave not like Christians because our track record for loving the alien is lousy, but behave like Jesus who never turned anyone away... adulterers, tax collectors, Romans, women, children.
I am proud of my daughter Alison and her husband David who are a part of a courageous faith family, College Park Baptist. This church was the site of a community gathering Monday night, 650 people from Greensboro, pastors, rabbis, men, women and children who stood up to say no to this infringement on our individual rights as citizens of the United States of America. Ron Paul, where are you when we need you? Where is the liberty and justice for all in this amendment?

Tell me the old, old story...

I grew up spending time on front porches surrounded by story telling adults. “Little pitchers have big ears” was one of my Grandma’s sayings and in my case, that was certainly true. Grandma told stories about her opera singer mother and her visions of the dead. Uncle Harold told stories about Granny Grunt who stole little children, snatched them up under her apron and whisked them away from their home. Daddy told stories about the practical jokes he and the other men played on each other at the paper mill where he worked to support our family and his farm habit. One day Daddy went to pick up his tool box and someone had screwed it to the floor. Story telling, like joke telling, was an art form, highly individual, practiced until the stories became little jewels. Even though you might know what was coming when a story was repeated, it never failed to charm and delight you in the telling.
I am reading a lovely book by Gail Godwin titled “Evensong”. It tells the story of an Episcopal woman priest, her husband, and their various families. One night she is called out to the hospital to be with a woman, a tourist, whose husband has died. She sits with her until the local undertaker comes and then gives the woman a ride back to the inn where they were staying. As they ride, Helen tells some of her story to Margaret, the priest. Helen says she feels lost from God now. Standing next to her husband in church or in life, his faith provided a safe place for her, a God umbrella, and now it was gone. Much to her surprise, Margaret finds herself telling the story of her losses... a miscarriage and a mother who left her when she was six. And then Helen asks a question... “Where do you find God in this?” Margaret replies that in the telling of their stories, she feels changed, names the changes and says she feels God in that process.
In my childhood church we sang “I Love to Tell the Story” (A flat major) and “Tell Me the Old, Old Story” (C major) frequently. We were taught how to tell our faith stories, give our testimony, and exhorted to do so with friends and strangers. As a new Christian at the ripe old age of twelve, I practiced witnessing (telling how I was saved) until I made a pest of myself. Thank God my friends were long suffering and my family was patient.
The Bible is God’s story told by human beings who lived their lives losing and finding their way back to God. I love the stories about those characters... all of them far from perfect, who laughed and loved and sinned and repented, eventually (or not) getting the punchline of the joke or the moral of the story. One of the reasons I love Jesus is the stories he told filled with people I recognized in my own life. Our little church had a Mary Magdalen, a Prodigal Son, a Good Samaritan and we all knew who they were. Those were and still are true stories in every sense of the word.
Writing is for me another way to tell my story, my story and God’s story. I work out my own salvation in the telling and hear from you sometimes pieces of your own stories in response. Margaret was right. We stand on holy ground when we tell our stories to each other and resurrection comes calling in unexpected ways. We all stand under someone else’s God umbrella and stories help us recognize the arms of God in the persons sitting next to us on the front porches of our lives.
Dear One, I never tire of hearing the stories told by your children. They keep me laughing and weeping and learning.Thank you for this most amazing gift of life and love and loss. I am grateful for all the stories I hear and all the stories I tell but most of all, I am grateful for your presence in my life. May it always be so. Amen.