Slain in the Spirit on Good Friday

(Christian Courier column, March 26th, 2012)

 

 

 

 

“What do you see, Cathy?”

 
On Palm Sunday our pastor called us to worship with a dramatic and arresting greeting: “Daughter of Zion, ‘See your Savior comes!’” I’d never before felt so personally addressed, so publicly validated as a woman in church. Sure, I know it’s metaphorical. I know it’s Jerusalem. But, at that moment, the extraordinary proclamation was for me, too, a daughter of Zion. Jesus the Bridegroom, taking the initiative, coming to me. The distaff version of the Prodigal Son, I mused fancifully.

 
Then, a few days later, at choir practice, I noticed the Lord’s Supper table was already dressed for Good Friday’s Communion celebration. Palm Sunday’s proclamation echoed in my heart: See, your Savior comes. He’s already prepared the table for you. Frederick Buechner points out that reading Scripture in a different language can enrich your comprehension of the text. How true of this verse: “Tu dresses devant moi une table.” Here is not the daily setting of the table by some grudging servant, but the gracious preparation of a banquet by the host himself, smoothing the linens, eyeing the wine glasses for water spots, troubling himself to ensure that every detail is perfect. A clue that something was up, maybe, but I paid no further attention to what seemed nothing more than my usual proclivity toward imaginativeness.

 
It happened on Good Friday. Like Ezekiel, “I looked and I saw the glory of the Lord filling the temple of the Lord.” No, I didn’t fall face down. My cellular construction is knit too tightly with grey woolen threads of Dutch reserve. But somewhere in my soul danced a tiny charismatic, a holy ghoster Appalachian snake-handler, a whirling dervish fanatic in visionary thrall.

 
Don’t get me wrong. I followed the sermon and the liturgy and the singing. I was fully present. But I also saw so much more. Buechner writes about looking “at a window” seeing the “fly-specks, dust, the crack where Junior’s Frisbiee hit” and looking “through the window” to see the “world beyond.” I was looking at my worshiping church family, but seeing beyond, seeing my church as a precious gift, a “pearl of great price,” gifted out of the liberality of the Host.

 
Join me at the window. Look past the surface scratches and smears. Come and look at the multitudinousness (exactly the right kind of overblown word) of the blessings that fill the sanctuary of even such a humble church like mine.

 
See the pastor who prepared and prayed over his text. See the elder who visited the nursing home yesterday bringing Communion to the shut-ins. See the devoted daughter who picked up her visually-impaired mom and drove her to church. See the custodian who cubed the bread early this morning. The young people who raked the gravel of the parking lot last night. The 80-year-old who put up the sign Jesus Died To Save Us And Lives To Keep Us. The volunteer who photocopied some children’s bulletins because the service might be long and the kids might get restless. The sound guy who showed up early to test out the microphones with the mom and daughter who also showed up early early to practise their duet. The flautist and trombonist, their exquisite harmony plaintively asking, “Were you there?” The pianist and organist who practised their pieces the day before. The elders who presented the sacramental meal with the quiet dignity of tuxedoed butlers. The seamstress who stitched a crimson cross on a black banner. The widow who donated the lilies and watered them during the week so their heady fragrance would waft Easter to us already today. The volunteer who arranged for a video to be shown to the Sunday school children. See the people who offered their gifts: their voices, their prayers, their money, their talents, their time. See these friends, the Body of Christ, who brought their fears and worries and hopes and dreams to the Cross at 4524 Confederation Line, Wyoming.

 
I’ve written this kind of list before. I probably will again. Like Jeremiah, I’m helpless before the One who reaches out his hand and touches my mouth and asks what I see – a vision that never fails to shake me, that impels my spirit to wave frenzied palm fronds before a triumphant Saviour who did not find us unworthy of his love but came riding on a donkey toward a deadly destiny on our behalf. This vision: when we, the prodigals, gather in any old worn and patched church to say we believe that we are “the Holy People, the Redeemed of the Lord, the Sought After, the City No Longer Deserted.” And not just “we.” Me. The daughter of Zion, wined and dined, desired by the Bridegroom. My hands are still trembling.

Heavyweight January

(Christian Courier column, February 27th, 2012 issue)

Last month was heartbreaking for our community. Four weeks, four successive deaths, waves of sorrow attending the birth of the new year like labour pains. I had connections to each person who passed away.

One was my dad’s best friend. When Dad was ill, battling his lymphoma for a decade, Hank visited him weekly. Theirs was a robust friendship, cemented by their shared roots in Groningen, shared immigrant experiences in Canada and shared faith in the Lord. Hank’s jolly outlook boosted Dad’s spirits and Dad’s spiritual calm steadied Hank. Before Dad’s death in 1996, Hank took him back to Holland on a guys-only road trip. Bedum, Ten Boer, Noordpolderzijl – scuffed places, humble beginnings. Hank gave a moving tribute at my dad’s funeral and I attended his as my own quiet tribute to the sacredness of their friendship. 

  
Two others called home to glory were lifetime members of our church. Again, strong ties laid these losses at the door of my heart. They had been pioneers members. I taught their children and grandchildren. I know their great-grandchildren by name. When you live and work in a small town your whole life, and you confess the communion of the saints, everyone is family. You suffer loss to the third and the fourth generation.

 
Jessica, 21, passed away, too, a dearly-loved child of our church. Paralyzed at age five with a virus, she had been tenderly cared for at home by her family and faithfully remembered in prayer throughout sixteen years of illness by both our congregation and the local Christian school community. My class once created a hallway bulletin board with a huge tree in the centre. Every student and staff member in the school wrote Jessica a caring note, a hundred or more leaves of love tacked to the branches.

 
These are the days when I cling to my Calvinism. Oh, I’ve struggled with election and free will, grappled mightily to resolve tensions between limited atonement and universal salvation, sought to balance God’s omnipotence and goodness with sin and evil, tragedy and death. Two particularly fine and helpful books were Gerald Sittser’s A Grace Disguised and Richard Mouw’s Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport. 

Over time, I developed a couple of my own simple illustrations to unify what seem to be opposing concepts. Here’s a coin, I’d say to my  catechism class. It’s one whole thing, but it has two sides. My human vision is capable of taking in only one side at a time. It’s simply not possible for me to see both heads and tails simultaneously. But God, being God, isn’t limited like I am. His divine gaze can merge what I can’t. Or I’d show one of those optical illusion drawings that include two faces or scenes. You focus your attention on one set of details and see a witch. Re-focus your eyes and voila, there’s a beautiful woman. Two conflicting portraits in one design. Ok … I’ve already admitted they were simple illustrations. But they do embody the idea that it’s possible to combine polarized truths in a kind of “willing suspension of disbelief,” to borrow a phrase from Romantic poet, Samuel Coleridge. That willingness to suspend disbelief, to swing contradictions like so many buttons on one string, is faith. It’s acknowledging my own limitations and ceding to God’s grander abilities and plans, not God as abstract deity or “the force”, but the God who brings himself to the bargaining table, who is, as Sittser describes him, a “suffering Sovereign.” Not a God who sticks it to you, but the God holding your hand, sitting beside you in the ashes.

 
I cling to my Calvinism because it offers the best comfort at the graveside. Here is where I stand, not denying that cancer, pneumonia and stroke cause death, but not granting them the final say. God is in control. In life and in death. My favourite psalm, an amulet around my neck, is Psalm 121, a psalm I memorized originally because it was short. (Yes, because it was short.) But it’s become an everyday touchstone for its extravagant confession about God’s solicitous concern for my life.

 
It took me awhile to get it. How can it be true that my foot will not slip or that the Lord will keep me from all harm? I’ve slipped many times. I’ve been harmed a few times, too. But the key is to choose to look at the psalm from another angle – the aerial view, not the close-up. To squint deliberately at the summative focus. My daily life will surely be crashed by storms, as Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish builders so graphically portrays, but the epilogue of my life will be this: that I was deemed a royal heir, guarded vigilantly by a sentry God who never slept, protected from the sun’s burning rays by a God who, slave-like at my side, shaded me with palm branches. 

 
Dad. Hank. Jessica. Pioneers of the Wyoming CRC. Israel. All who have eyes to see and ears to hear. A sovereign God watches over our coming and going, both now and forevermore. A quixotic God, Omnipotent Servant, worthy to be worshipped, even at the open grave.

Heron River: It’s about what’s real

(Christian Courier review, February 27, 2012)

Promise me you’ll read this novel twice. Don’t worry, you’ll want to. The first time through you’ll be so caught up in the dramatic tension that, like me, you’ll simply gulp it down in unseemly drafts, impatient to discover how these disparate characters, who reside in a “small safe town,” are connected. There’s Madeline, a middle-aged teacher battling multiple sclerosis and other multiple losses. Her son Adam lives in a group home, developmentally-delayed from an accident she thinks is due to her own “critical error.” Imaginative and likable Jacob, an adopted kid, proves susceptible to the adrenaline of slipping into his customers’ homes when they’re away. Nineteen year old Orrin is a powder keg. Tara, a dedicated cop, serves and protects. The lives of these five individuals intersect, but not until the gathering dread reaches a gripping level.

 
 “The details are not the details,” said Charles Eames, noted mid-century modern designer. “They make the product.” His insight certainly applies to Hugh Cook’s achievement in this meticulously-constructed novel. Acutely observant, Cook builds an authentic community out of precisely-rendered and scrupulously-ordered details. The barbershop with its “slightly curved oak pew that Tony picked up when Sacred Heart installed an elevator several years ago,” the Native reserve, the mill and the river itself – all granite solid, crafted with measured description that’s spare and sinewy, never fussy. 

 
Such attention to detail informs Cook’s characters as well. No slap-dash here. Even minor characters are drawn with a particularity that implies more, like the fisherman with eyes “the colour of the beer bottle.” Every conversation, glance and gesture positions the characters in a real world, one we recognize as our own. And, familiarly, the currents of life along Heron River create a mash-up: callousness, sadism, and physical deterioration log-jammed with compassion, caring and courage.

 
In an Art Waves radio interview Cook remarked that the writer’s job is, first of all, “to tell stories.”  In Heron River he does just that, and it’s a compelling tale. But read the book again. Like a painting whose subject runs off the canvas, suggesting a wider plane, the narrative expands, probing our perceptions of what’s real. The small town of Caithness is indisputably real, but a spiritual reality hovers there, too, as patient and determined as a heron fishing, waiting to pierce the surface with sudden and irresistible energy.

 
The story opens with malevolence intruding on an ordinary Monday morning. It’s “garbage day.” The “stealthy, shabby” crows are cawing. Madeline listens to the Mamas and the Papas on the radio: “Oh, Monday morning, Monday morning couldn’t guarantee, That Monday evening you would still be here with me.” Prophetic lyrics. By evening, the Adam she knew was no longer with her, and successive revelations of compounded sorrow establish the wide-ranging effects of his fall, a spreading misery evoking a more cosmic fall.

 
Intimations of grace and hope
But there are other ripples, too, intimations of grace and hope. Madeline’s friend Donna has a smile that “continually plays at the corners of her mouth, as if she’s the perpetual recipient of good news.” When Madeline finds a photo of the mother she never knew in her father’s old Dutch Bible, she unearths an even better surprise – comfort in a place she’d overlooked. After a suspect punches Tara in the mouth, she must undergo the painstaking restoration of a front tooth. Her trusted dentist expertly affixes the new crown, the procedure containing within itself the faintest outline of another terra waiting to be restored.

 
Jacob’s quick-witted lying covers his misdeeds, his cunning (his surname is, in fact, Cunningham) reminiscent of that archetypal biblical deceiver who, nonetheless, was chosen and marked by the mysterious wrestler at Peniel. Young Jacob is likewise chosen, first in his adoption, and then again when he is recruited to be an altar boy at St. Paul’s. Leaving the sacristy after his first service, “invisible choirs of birds raise a riotous, chirruping psalm as if today were the first morning of a new creation.”

 
Adam, perennially on the lookout for the majestic heron as he walks along the river, is afforded a close-up view at last. As he approaches the bird, he realizes with amazement that the heron is moving ever so  deliberately to keep him in its sight as well. Eager to follow the bird as it flies off, Adam begins to cross a dangerously high railroad bridge above the river. He panics when a bystander’s warning shouts cause him to recognize his foolhardiness. Fortunately, his Native friend Keller is nearby to talk him back to safety. Before Adam reaches the bank, however, a grey shadow startles him, “large as the shadow of a moving cloud,” another allusive Old Testament nod. It’s the blue heron “flying over the water larger than he has ever seen it. As large as something he might see in a dream.” Rescued from the depths of a well, Adam has conquered the heights, thrilled with this rapturous meeting in the air.

 
These transcendent glimmers are not a facile overlay. Cook’s tenacious exactitude, whether it’s about baking a pie or cleaning a gun, that same truthfulness from which emerge his textured settings and fully-dimensioned characters, lends an equivalent veracity to these flickers of redemption. Nor are all questions tidily answered. Madeline wonders who is watching the 99 while the shepherd is out searching for the one lost sheep. Orrin, raised by an addicted mother in a highly dysfunctional home, is a complex figure whose actions and culpability challenge easy assumptions.

 
There’s so much more. Read this multi-layered book twice. Maybe even a third time. I will.

Glory at home

(Christian Courier column, January 23rd, 2012)

 

Glory at home

Very few books have actually made me weep because they were so beautiful. Godric by Frederick Buechner was one. I read it twice and wept both times. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson was another. And now, Home, also by Robinson. Its luminous hopefulness, centred in the home, ennobling women’s work, also makes me cry. 

Marilynne Robinson has been in the news a lot. She’s an articulate defender of Christianity and capable critic of those vociferous New Atheists. I was fortunate enough to hear her speak at the 2006 Calvin College Festival of Faith and Writing. It occurred to me then that I had never, ever before heard a woman speak with such grace, intellectual authority and cultural acumen. I was mesmerized.

I took notes. “Books have potency,” she said, quoting Milton’s Areopagitica. Books can show you your own soul. Reading a novel is a solitary experience akin to prayer and meditation. In our culture, she continued, there is a loss of respect for that kind of inwardness. Our culture has become “decadently rationalistic.” She reflected on the legacy of an old copy of King Lear that she read under the blankets when it was past her bedtime. It had, she said, “an honourable weariness about it, having passed through innumerable hands.” Books, she asserted, have brought more freedom into the world than perhaps we were even able to handle.

In all the reviews I’ve read of Robinson’s Home, not one writer has quite zeroed in on what captivated me about this novel. So, I guess I have to write about it myself. Please insert a smiley face, here, as together we wryly enjoy the chutzpah of that sentence.

Robinson’s deliberate application of homemaking as a metaphor for the work that God does is subtle, original and affirming. I adore the fact that the main character, a woman who has come home in quiet disgrace after a grievous relationship with a married man, is called, absurdly and triumphantly, Glory. As she tends first to her ailing father, Rev. Boughton, succumbing to infirmity and age, and then also to her recovering alcoholic brother Jack, Glory is the centre of this home, doing all the background tasks that women do, sweeping, making coffee, doing laundry, trying to restore the garden.

She worries and prays and cares for these two men without bringing up her own heartbreak. Repeatedly she sets aside her own tiredness, frustration and sorrow to reach out and salve their wounds… her brother’s “inaccessible strangeness,” her father’s need for comfort and  dignity in his dying. Glory “was wary indeed of certain thoughts, certain memories, because her father could not bear her unhappiness.” Through her sensitivity to their pain, through the ministrations of her hands in the home, we witness and touch the cost of caring.

Glory, with a career in teaching and Masters degree in Literature, muses at one point that she might have chosen the ministry had she been a man. But “she seemed always to have known that, to their father’s mind, the world’s great work was the business of men …. Women were creatures of a second rank, however pious, however beloved, however honored.” With the gravest and gentlest kind of irony, it becomes apparent Glory is a messianic maid, her lowly service in the home blessing the two troubled men, providing anointed fragments of grace and peace to them.

Robinson’s adept descriptions wrap the house and its furnishings, the yard, and the outbuildings with sacredness. The oak tree in the front yard “makes rubble of the pavement at its foot” and flings “imponderable branches out over the road.” The “torsion in its body made it look like a giant dervish to them.” That tree, older than the neighbourhood or town, becomes more than itself, hinting at that “other” tree of religious ecstasy. The homely objects and familiar trappings of the house become vessels for something greater – human and even divine love. Glory ponders the character of the house, with its “staunch” and “brokenhearted” presence. She consciously puts aside wistful visions of someday having her own home or her own children. She commits to preserving this home and what it represents, its rootedness and its tender way of tying down belonging to a concrete place, for the future, for Jack’s son.

Glory does what she can for those she loves. She bakes pies and scrubs the stains out of Jack’s shirt. It’s the transcendence in the daily mundane sacrifices that are required to run a home that gets me choked up. The daily setting aside of self for the elderly and hurting. Christ-likeness in dusting and peeling potatoes. I look at my mom and the thousands of women like her who had fewer choices than I did, who for generations did what they could with all they had, often not very much, to minister to their families in the home. Marilynne Robinson’s book is good news for them.

Marilynne Robinson

Serving by sitting

(Christian Courier column, December 31st, 2011)

Maybe this has happened to you. You have to go to a meeting. You don’t really feel like it.

One Thursday night last month we had our fall congregational meeting. I didn’t feel like going at all. It was our first cold night, the kind of November dusk when inky blackness suddenly spills from the sky, cloaking the houses across the street by 5:30 PM. The kind of gloom that signals your inner grizzly bear to lumber to the nearest den. We’d had an early supper, the dishes were done, blue and orange flames  capering in the woodstove. It was a perfect night to stay home, enjoy a cup of coffee, curl up on the loveseat and watch the hockey game with my husband. I’d already been out on Tuesday night for catechism and choir practice and would have to go out again the next night for another event.

But, you guessed it, I went. I stared down my grumpy grizzly, touched up my makeup, re-fluffed my hair, left my husband to cheer on the new and improved Leafs alone.

 
I’m glad I went. The clerk had worked hard to get all the materials prepared in advance. He’d photocopied the agendas the previous week and inserted them into the mail slots. He’d set up the sound system and powerpoint the night before. He was slated to read the minutes from the spring meeting and to present the clerk’s report, so, naturally, he had spent time on those items, too. Before the meeting he also had to meet with the guest speaker and help her get wired up for her presentation.

 
The council chairperson had prepared for the meeting, too. He’s a busy guy. But he’d written out some remarks. The pianist, too, had prepared. She’d been busy that day, volunteering at the Christian school, but there she was, on this dark and windy night, ready to play, arriving with her music in hand.

 
The custodians had prepared. They’d set up the chairs, made coffee, and baked some cookies. After the meeting, they would do the dishes, check that the lights were turned off and make sure the doors were locked. They would get home late.
 

Our guest speaker, Marg Smit-Vandezande, had travelled some distance to speak to us about a Counselling Assistance Program offered by Shalem. This program helps churches and other organizations provide counselling services to their members. Her talk was accompanied by a clear and helpful slide show that she’d brought along. It was good for our congregation to hear about how we might be able to offer immediate assistance to hurting individuals or families.

 
Our treasurer and our finance committee had prepared a preliminary budget. We voted on that. Some other people gave reports about the ongoing work and ministry of our church. My friend Olga gave an enthusiastic review about the Day of Encouragement that she’d attended in Ancaster. Several individuals stood up to share opinions and thoughts on a variety of matters. We sang three hymns together. We prayed.

 
I had a serious five minute talk with an elder on my way out. It was a heart-warming moment of trust discussing things close to our hearts. He’s not someone I have a chance to chat with often.

All I really had to do at this meeting was sit. I simply had to provide the affirmation of bringing my body along to warm a chair. It’s a humble service, offering only your presence and your interest, but this, too, I think, is love.

 
And here’s how I know that’s true. After I’d grabbed my coffee and found my seat, the chairperson opened the meeting with these remarks: “Thanks for coming out tonight. It’s a cold night, and maybe you felt like you’d rather stay home, but thank you very much for coming out and caring about the business of the church.”

 
We’re in this together. An old African proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That’s why I made chili for the potluck luncheon hosted by the Enfolding Committee, attended the Mission Trip planning meeting although I’m not signed up for the trip, and why I’m sitting in the pew at the second service pretty faithfully. There are a myriad of small, unsexy ways we can serve Christ and our neighbour if we have the will to do so. Here’s another quote I picked up on Facebook: “The measure of a life is not its duration, but its donation.” And guess what? Donation can be as easy as showing up and respecting the effort of others. It can be as simple as sitting in the circle, enlarging it just a bit.

 
Another year is dawning. Annie Dillard, Pulitzer-prize winning author, said, oh so wisely and succinctly, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” May we measure our days and our years in donations. Even the smallest, like sitting at a meeting, count.

AfterWord – Reflecting on our Christmas Day Sermon

I thought I’d share some thoughts on the sermon I heard yesterday morning, delivered with  conviction from our Wyoming CRC pulpit by Rev. J. Hellinga. Not a précis, just some musings. I don’t think he’ll mind. Good preachers want you to not just hear their message, but to think about, make it your own, apply it in some way. Hopefully I won’t garble his points as I share … . I didn’t take notes, so I’m going by memory. This is the condensed version, the “interpretation according to Cathy.”

Pastor John began by asserting the value of the various gospel viewpoints, something I also just read about in an excellent Banner article by Meg Jenista. Each gospel adds a unique and complementary angle to the Christmas story. One event, multiple refractions, like a prism. Today’s sermon would come from Matthew 2 which provides, said Pastor John, a critical balance to Luke 2. While the narrative of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes offers the humble view, Matthew’s version reminds us that this is also, without question, a royal birth. The Magi come seeking a King.

Pastor Hellinga spent a few minutes discussing the star. He said it really didn’t matter if it was a star or a comet or an alignment of planets. It might be interesting to discuss and investigate what kind of celestial body it was, but that’s tangential to the main point which is that creation announced the birth of its king. He quoted Romans 1, referring to God’s invisible presence in creation, and also mentioned the Psalms where the heavens “declare the glory of God.”

The pastor identified the Magi as learned men from Iraq, astrologers, but not astronomers. He suggested that they propounded a pseudo-science and that astrology today continues to be a popular false spirituality. I agree that astrology is something that is neither science nor religion and should be identified for the empty thing it is. However, I’ve always thought of the Magi as genuine astronomers, true scholars as measured by the standards of their day. So I’d like to know more about them and do further research and reading. Pastor Hellinga shared one idea about the Magi, though, that really grabbed my attention. I’ve wondered, now and then, why the Magi connected a new star to the arrival of a King. That assumption always seemed kind of random to me. Why did the star have to signal that? Why not a bountiful year? Or an upcoming victory in a military campaign?  I guess I always assumed it was an arbitrary divine intervening – a vision or intuition or revelation – that the Holy Spirit must have provided. But Pastor Hellinga noted that Iraq was formerly known as Persia and, before that, as Babylon. So during the exile and captivity, while Israel sat and wept, they also, no doubt, planted the seed. Or perhaps it was the daring of Daniel and his faithful band. But the Messianic promise was whispered even there, in hostile and heathen lands, for centuries. This struck me as remarkable, both for the fact that I never connected the dots in this way before, but also because of how absolutely fitting it was. I wanted to jump up and say, “Hallelujah!” My mind jumped to the passage in Luke where grizzled old Simeon, holding a tender-fleshed baby, praised God for “your salvation, prepared in the sight of all people.”  It was like the smooth joining of a ball and socket, or the satisfactory click of a key opening a door. The salvation was “for all people.”  The Magi had been linked into the salvation chain long before either they or Simeon were born. The Jews and the unclean Gentiles were coupled while still enemies, the chosen and the to-be-chosen. The Magi’s presence in the story was not so mysterious and surprising after all, but deftly foreshadowed in OT events. (Pastor Hellinga also pointed out briefly, but refreshingly, that God works in the unholy places and people as much as in the holy. God uses the wise men from heathen nations as well as characters from within Israel.)

Ok, back to the sermon. Pastor Hellinga noted that Herod had to ask his advisors where the promised king was to be born. They consulted the Scriptures and found the prophecy in Micah that predicted Bethlehem would be the birthplace. Here, said the pastor, is where creation’s word, the star, is backed up by the “written” word. He assured us that God’s creation will never contradict God’s revealed Word.  Both emanate from God. We should remain calm and not get disputatious about these matters.

Pastor Hellinga went on to talk about the Magi finding the Incarnate Word of God, Jesus himself, in a house in Bethlehem. They worshipped and adored him. I loved his progression through the sermon, the triad of Words:  the creational word, the scriptural word, and the incarnate word.  But, finally, and even better (kudos to Pastor John!) he brought us to the house we were in that very morning, the Wyoming CRC. The Word of God is here, too, he reminded us, and, like the Magi, we must worship and adore him, our Saviour and Lord.

A sermon that made an impression.  Taught me something new and pointed to paths for further exploration.

After the service, I was on coffee duty. It was a treat to hand the steaming cups to my fellow parishioners, to shake their hands and say “Merry Christmas.” There were people present from Sri Lanka, the Philippines, the Netherlands, the United States and probably a host of other places. As I exited the sanctuary a bit early to serve the coffee, “Ere Zij God/Glory to God” was ringing around me in both Dutch and English. A fitting doxology.  As Simeon had predicted: “For glory to your people Israel” and “For revelation to the Gentiles.” All are bathed in the glory. All belong.

Christmas Eve Reflection

It’s been a quiet day. More of them are these days. That’s OK. The frenzied decades slide into calmer waters. You think they’ll never come. You cover your eyes from the glare of the sun and check the horizon periodically, but you don’t see any change in the distance. You keep doing your chores, your duties, the things you do. Then, one day you look up in surprise to realize that something’s different. Somehow the landscape’s been transformed. It was so gradual, glacial, that you never even noticed.

I remember one Christmas Eve not that long ago. I was still working full-time. I got really sick right before Christmas. Some kind of bronchial infection or walking pneumonia. Who knows? Who has time to go to a doctor? I was coughing up my throat, my lungs and probably my toenails. I was coughing incessantly, and not sleeping well because the misery was worse at night. I couldn’t finish out the semester and felt so bad for my co-workers who had to cover my duties and classes when they were end-of-term weary themselves.

 Because I’d been so busy and then so relentlessly ill, I hadn’t had time or energy to decorate the house. So, I was madly hanging ornaments on the tree on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, still barking and hacking. The kids were coming home. There had to be some semblance of Christmas. I remember crying a bit as I hurriedly hung the ornaments on the tree. Too hectic. Too run-down. It was all wrong.

 Today my house is decorated and cozy. My village is lit up, nestled on “snow” on top of the wall unit. The Victorian with the wraparound porch and gingerbread trim, the bed and breakfast hotel with the big front window through which you can see a little girl playing piano, the schoolhouse and railroad station house the memories of the people who gave them to me. The little white church was my first acquisition, a gift from my mother-in-law. The following year she gave me a bank. I bought the windmill myself, persuaded by my sister-in-law, who insisted that the village should include a nod to my Dutch heritage. At night, if you walk down my street, you can look up and see the village winking at you through the living room window pane.

 

 

 

In the kitchen I have a Nativity made by my father-in-law set up on a little table. It’s a rough-hewn manger, but it’s lit up too. The figurines are from Dollarama, so please don’t picture an elegant Mary or three imposing kings. Still, I rather like it. My granddaughter was playing with it and she put all the people and animals crowded right up against the manger. Somehow that’s a compelling arrangement. The ceramic Christmas tree on my desk is lit up, too, made by Aunt Eleanor who used to run a shop called Ellie’s Dolls. My in-laws and Aunt Eleanor are gone now, but live on, forever connected to me, especially at Christmas.

A digital frame in my living room, a gift from the kids, rolls through Christmases past, reliving old memories. The photos mark the passing of time in the ever-changing hairstyles, the addition of new faces, the absence of others.

 I’m typing this on my laptop, watching CMT and enjoying Christmas music by Martina McBride and Faith Hill. I’ve had time today to vacuum, take a walk, peel potatoes for tomorrow’s dinner, make soup for supper tonight and run to Europa Bakery for some treats to bring to my sister’s later. Mark has been puttering around the house working on some remodelling projects.  He put a battery in the wreath on our front door, so it lights up once again. We stopped to have coffee together a few times. Right now he’s reading a book on the KOBO e-reader that the kids gave him last year.

 This sounds like a story about the rewards of the golden years, doesn’t it? You live through the harried times and emerge on the other side to appreciate all you’ve got. Some peace, perhaps. Sure, there’s some of that. But the truth is, the older you get, the more your family grows, the longer you stay in one place and put down roots and come to know your friends and neighbours intimately, the longer your prayer list gets. Every minute of every day could be spent praying for the broken and troubled marriages, the cancers, the accidents, the aging, the addictions, the misspoken words, the harmed childhoods, the famines in far off places, troubled waters swirling around your feet. It’s enough to make you cry even when your house is decked to the nines, your poinsettias and cranberry wreaths match, and you’re not infectious.

 Today, on my walk I saw some things. I saw the shining sun, not up in the sky, but glinting off the leaden water in a mud puddle. I waited for a train to pass. I saw the usual graffiti, but one black car raced by completely covered with a superbly executed gang name in vivid green and yellow. Dramatic. Masterful. It was there and gone before I had time to even decipher what it said. Then, in my own drab December garden, perched in the middle of bedraggled sedums, bent stalks of grass and lumps of wet brown leaves, a lime-green heuchera – preening its frilly plumage just like a cocky parrot inordinately proud of its bright sheen.

 Tomorrow, I think, I will take a breath. I will let myself be at peace for just one day. I will believe that tiny surprises like sunlight dancing in a mud puddle or graffiti art whipping down the track or chartreuse leaves glowing in a dead garden are signs. Blinking bits of unexpected glory. Like beauty in a barn, worth huddling in for a closer look. Tomorrow I won’t focus on what’s wrong. For one day, I’ll strain to see what’s right.

Back to the Future

(Published in Christian Courier, November 28, 2011)

This is my twelfth and final year of teaching catechism. I joke that I’ve finally learned enough church history to graduate! I always begin by telling my students that I enjoyed catechism as a teenager. They smirk. I tell them we’re going to have fun. They roll their eyes.  No really, I say.  I perform, with serious gangsta attitude, a catechism rap I “invented.” They perk up.

Wake up, kids, it’s half-past eight!

Ain’t nothin really changin’ but the date.

You’re a real grandslammer, but you’re no Babe Ruth.

You gotta learn how to relate,

Or you’ll be stoppin’ at the Pearly Gate!

Now Luther and Calvin’s who I’m representin’

Ain’t nobody better in my hood…

They say the only way’s by repentin’

And not by any works that you might call good.

So, wake up, kids, listen to what I say!

This ain’t no cheap rhyme display.

If you wanna get to Reformation Day…

It’s Geneva and Wittenburg, all the way. Yo!

On our first night together, I ask my students why they go to our church. Invariably, with amusement or derision, they answer, “Because my parents make me.” We go on a field trip and check out all the churches in our village – Baptist, United, Presbyterian. There are seven other churches in our bite-sized community! We slide through Tim Hortons for some donuts. I leave them with this question: Why don’t your parents (and you) belong to those churches? The next week we’re off and running, travelling back in time to figure out how we got here – to the classic white-sided church on  4524 Confederation Line in Wyoming, Ont.

Recently I had a chance to visit a museum in the basement of the Graafschap Christian Reformed Church, near Holland, Michigan. (Huge shout out to Bill Sytsma and friends who had the foresight and dedication to create this archival treasure). The artefacts and displays tell the story of the birth of the CRCNA. Those stubborn Dutch pioneers overcame tremendous obstacles to build a church and carve a community out of the inhospitable Michigan forest. I marvel at my ecclesiastical bloodline, simultaneously herculean and petty. In 1865, a scant eight years after secession and the formation of a “denomination” of four tiny congregations, they are squabbling about fire insurance. If you buy fire insurance, you betray your lack of trust in God and tarnish the church’s witness. After vehement  wrangling, the issue is finally resolved … you can participate in the Lord’s Supper if you own fire insurance, but can’t serve as  deacon or elder. Such austere faith was put to the test in 1871 when most of  Holland, Michigan was burned to the ground.  Insured or not, the settlers carried on. They rebuilt their town and their lives. They kept on going to church.

This year, one last time, I’ll guide my lone catechumen (no one really calls them that, anymore), yes, my ONE student, down the historical path from Paul’s missionary journeys to the Inquisition to Graafschap CRC to the Wyoming CRC. We’ll talk about her hopes and dreams, her faith, her choices about church membership.

I’ll testify to my love for the CRC and make a pitch for it being the church she should cling to as she matures. I’ll use every teacher’s trick I know – a rap song, video clips, and those old tried and true mnemonic devices like GRACE( God’s riches at Christ’s expense), ACTS (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication), and SIN, SALVATION, SERVICE (The Heidelberg Catechism). I’ll try to impart some sense of what drove her spiritual ancestors to sail across the ocean to nothing but hunger and hardship  – all for the exultation of worshipping God without fire insurance. In Calvinism in the Las Vegas Airport, Richard Mouw says, “For some of us at least, to be a Calvinist today also means that we will have to work at keeping alive the memories of older sayings and teachings in the hope that there will soon come a day when many others will want to learn such things again.”  

Mouw’s right. Thank you, Bill Systma, curator of our heritage. Thank you, Rev. John Wierenga, my first catechism teacher. And thank you, dear Hannah Klazinga, for showing up each Tuesday night and listening. For wanting to learn.  Another teenager, Graafschap settler Egbert Fredriks, wrote, “Even in the midst of this misery, prayers to God for mercy were heard and the woods rang with psalms. We remained firm in the belief that we journeyed with him. We kept believing on his promises that light would shine upon us out of the darkness and better times would come.”

                     

Seated beside Hannah, in a plain church basement room, reading from A.D.: A Study of Church History, I can still believe it: “The light will shine out of the darkness and better times will come.”

 

New Atheism Hits Home

(Feature article published in Christian Courier, Oct. 8, 2011)

In my church we often pray for those “who have strayed from the fold.” There’s an old-fashioned restraint to those words, a politeness that veils the pain of having family members leave the faith. Our children and grandchildren have slipped away to live a different life than the churchly one we love. Sometimes it’s tempting to rationalize that they still “love Christ, but don’t love his church” as author Ann Rice proclaimed about her own public stepping away. But I can’t engage in even that kind of comforting equivocation. One of my children is a committed Christian, while the two others, influenced by Dawkins and Hitchens, call themselves atheists.

Seeing my children blatantly reject my faith produces a devious kind of suffering, mostly kept under wraps. Once, in my online discussion group, a new member introduced himself by sharing that his children and their spouses and all his grandchildren follow the Lord. I was stung. No, lacerated. When others share that kind of blessing, it’s a boast blaring in my ears. It wasn’t meant that way. How could he know that I’m an open oozing sore on this topic? After faithful church attendance and support for Christian school at all three levels, devotions at meals and at bedtime, and as long a list as anyone can produce of spiritual habits and resources consistently implemented to encourage faith in my offspring, I counted on the Lord to bless my due diligence. I certainly didn’t expect atheism.

It’s a debilitating kind of pain that doesn’t resolve, the guilty kind that comes with questions of responsibility and perennial what-ifs hovering in the background each day and bloating as the years spin on. It is, after all, the most seductive thing in the world to imagine that we can mould  our children, that we can input some spiritual data and print out a carbon-copy Christian mini-me. A careless reading of Scripture even seems to guarantee it: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and in the end he will not depart from it.” But that’s a proverb, not a money-back warranty. We persistently misconstrue our blessings as personal achievements because it happens just often enough that if we add a and b, we get c. Children raised in the fold, mostly stay in the fold. But life isn’t math, we’re not in control, and the Lord is in the heavens doing as he pleases (Psalm 115:3, Psalm 135: 6). How can we reconcile the fact that our Heavenly Father, who holds our lives in his hands, permits our precious covenant children, brought to the font and raised before his face, to walk away from that inheritance?

And why do our children choose to turn their backs on the church? Why have mine chosen to become atheists, of all things? You can’t begin to guess the nights I’ve spent awake tearing apart my life, analyzing where I went wrong, trying to understand why they reject the faith that is my very life-blood, so I can fix it, so I can change it. It’s wearying, and, of course, I can’t.

 Tentative conclusions:

But, over time, I’ve arrived at some tentative conclusions.

1. The choice for atheism is not exclusively a rejection of the Christian faith, though it’s frequently portrayed as such, but a recoiling from all faith. It rejects the fanaticism of Islam and the rigidity of Orthodox Judaism as well. Given our increasingly polarized globe, it’s not surprising that atheism is experiencing resurgence. New York Times editor, David Brooks, in “If It Feels Right…” (Sept. 12, 2011), describes the most recent research conducted by Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith about moral virtue and American youth. Smith’s book, Lost in Transitions, concludes: “The default position, which most [respondents]  came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste. ‘It’s personal,’ the respondents typically said. ‘It’s up to the individual. Who am I to say?’” Brooks writes, “Smith and company found an atmosphere of extreme moral individualism — of relativism and nonjudgmentalism.”  I wonder if atheism legitimizes this individualism and gives it structure, a coat hook upon which to throw one’s hat.

You might protest, as I have done, “But surely our covenant children, raised in a community with a particularly clear moral paradigm, know better than their average North American peers! Perhaps we woefully underestimate the influence of culture on our children. Psychology professor Jeffrey Jensen Arnett’s book, Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from late Teens through the Twenties, argues that our century will see a new category of life-stage emerge, similar to what happened with the arrival of the “teenager” in the previous one. Robin Marantz Henig, in her New York Times article, Documenting the Life of 20-Somethings (August 18, 2010), reveals the statistical facts upon which Arnett’s theory is based: “The 20s are a black box, and there is a lot of churning in there. One-third of people in their 20s move to a new residence every year. Forty percent move back home with their parents at least once. They go through an average of seven jobs in their 20s, more job changes than in any other stretch. Two-thirds spend at least some time living with a romantic partner without being married. And marriage occurs later than ever. The median age at first marriage in the early 1970s, when the baby boomers were young, was 21 for women and 23 for men; by 2009 it had climbed to 26 for women and 28 for men, five years in a little more than a generation.” Every one of these descriptors applies to both my children who have declared themselves atheists.

2. I think the science/religion controversy is a pivotal point of angst. In New Atheist literature, science is revered and Christianity is mocked for its insistence on a literal six-day creation in the face of the overwhelming acceptance of evolution by the majority of respected scientists of our day. For my own children, the evolution versus Genesis debate has been a significant issue. The critical discussions we are now having about how to interpret Genesis in a way that serves both theological and scientific truth have come too late for many of our twenty-somethings. They are no longer listening.

3. We haven’t created a safe place for doubt. The triangle of church, home and school can be claustrophobic. I was complicit in creating confining boundaries for my own kids, too. I was so afraid that they would follow my own youthful rebellious flight from church that I sought doubly hard to impress upon them the “rightness” of my faith perspective. J. D. Kirk, a New Testament professor at Fuller Seminary, writes in his blog about Drew Dyck’s The Leavers, a book which explores why young people are leaving the church in droves. Kirk writes, “But the point that interested me most was when he probed the reasons given for folks leaving: ‘Almost to a person, the leavers with whom I spoke recalled that, before leaving the faith, they were regularly shut down when they expressed doubts. Some were ridiculed in front of peers for asking insolent questions. Others reported receiving trite answers to vexing questions and being scolded for not accepting them.” When Kirk tweeted, in response to Dyck’s book, “Apologetics is bad for my soul. I’d rather have no answer to my doubts than a bad one,” it hit a nerve and went viral.

4. Lastly, I think that the church doesn’t always do a good job of being church. Shawn Graves posted a piece in Christianity Today (3/28/2011) called “Why There Are Still Atheists: The heavens aren’t the only proclaimers (and are sometimes silent).” In a plea for humility as we interact with our atheist neighbours, he concludes: “We ought to confess that our religious proclamations haven’t been as clear and compelling as the heavens and the skies in proclaiming ‘the glory of God and the work of his hands,’ that our lives haven’t ‘made it plain’ that God exists.” I want to convey to my non-believing children a nuanced understanding – that the Body of Christ is full of sinners because perfect people don’t need a Saviour, and a place where sanctification grows, but sometimes falteringly. I want to explain that it takes an investment of time and loyalty to see and love the church as a broken – but still priceless –  vessel. But maybe such a vision can only be nurtured from within, and they are no longer in the building.

Lingering questions and beyond

In the case of my children’s atheist stance, no doubt their own personalities and familial factors play a role, too. I have their permission to write about this, but it’s possible they would offer a completely different spin. Our evolution into a family with opposing world and life views has had its raw and wounding moments. We’ve stepped back from dialogue, preferring, for now, not to tackle the “provocative” subjects. I pray for them; they temper their opinions around me. Perhaps someday there will be space for genuine dialogue. For now, I try to let my life speak for itself in the practice of my faith and in my unwavering love for them. And I have one child who is a professing Christian, so, in the end, I have no answers that satisfy. I’m left with lingering questions. Why only one believing child? Why not all?  

Only when I surrender to God the design of my life am I able to achieve equilibrium. When I recognize that it’s neither my conscientious parenting that wins my child for Christ, nor my failures that cause my child to walk away from Christ, I stumble gratefully into Gilead. Not my obedience or lack of it, but God’s sovereignty. I must relinquish control to the One who answers out of the storm (Job 38:1). I have to lay my life on the altar and confess: Lord, this is not what I expected or what I worked for. Forgive my prideful thinking that I could make it happen. Forgive my self-centeredness in always worrying about my own family, my constant whining to have things my own way. Help me to look around and notice that others have pain too. All kinds of it. Help me to minister to their pain.

And more: Lord, I really, really want the blessing of having all my children be faithful Christians. Yet you have decided that this isn’t my blessing to have right now. Maybe never. Help me submit to your will in all things, even in this. You have given me other blessings. Help me to use those blessings to be Christ to all I meet.

When I can pray this way, it’s possible to refrain from picking at my own scabs. It’s possible to love my children without nagging or manipulation. It’s possible to rejoice in the blessings of others. It’s possible to have and to be the peace of Christ.

 

 

 

First Sunday in Advent

 It was one of those “serving” kind of weekends. On Friday night I served at the Seniors and Singles Dinner. Some good folks, both women and men, take it upon themselves every other month or so to organize an amazing dinner for the seniors and singles of our church. For only $10.00, they get mashed potatoes and gravy, meatballs, ham, baked beans, corn, green beans, applesauce, an assortment of rolls and breads, cauliflower and carrot casserole, seven-layer salad, cheesecake with raspberries, lemon squares and diabetic Mississippi mudpie. Not a word of a lie. All that, and seconds, for $10.00. Volunteers like me show up to serve and to help clean up. After dinner, the seniors play shuffleboard or cards or just sit and talk.

I served alongside my catechism student, Hannah, and her sister, Mackenzie, who was in my catechism class two years ago, and their mom, Tracy, who was my student in Grade 7 and Grade 8 at John Knox, and their grandma, Gertie. And NO, I’m not old enough to have taught her… :-). I chatted with fellow-gardeners Anita and Theresa as we cleaned up all the dishes, separating the “good” silverware from the ordinary silverware and putting all the dishes away. I snapped some photos for the next DVD I make about our church family.

Today I had to serve as an usher at church. That’s one of my new volunteer jobs, but it’s darn easy – just smile and hand out bulletins. The only hard part about that job is getting myself out the door in time. I had my camera with me again so I could take some shots of our guest bell ringers from Christ Church Anglican. These mature women in their bright red blouses were simply beautiful to me. Their black gloved hands rose and fell gracefully as they played their bells. I was amazed by the hushed hum they coaxed from the bells as they waved wooden wands around them.

 It was my turn to teach Sunday school today to my special needs student. I asked him if he wanted me to pray for anything special. He said, “No, everybody’s good,” so we thanked the Lord that everyone in his family is good and we prayed for our church family upstairs, too. The story today was about the ten lepers, all of whom said, “Please, Jesus, heal me,” but only one of whom returned to say “Thank you.” He was delighted with the story because it included the sign language for “please” and “thank you,” and he knew those signs. We completed our Sunday school papers and then played Pop-a-matic Trouble. We were getting lots of sixes, so we raced through the game. Today I won. Usually I don’t. We read a rhyming book about Zaccheus and then the considerate custodian brought him a cup of juice and then we were done.

 I had nursery duty in the afternoon service. There were only two children, a brother and sister, both cute as a button, and they both cried when their mom left. In no time, I had the little girl sharing a book with me and the little guy arranging farm animals in a barn. He laughed when I tried to put an elephant in the barn. “That doesn’t belong,” he told me. We read a lot of books. I read two different versions of “The Wheels on the Bus,” singing the song both times. I wasn’t even embarrassed that my teenaged assistant was there listening. He’s heard me sing many times anyway because he was my student back in Grade 5.

 We chatted a bit. He told me how school was going, about his summer job roofing with his dad, and what he hopes to do when he’s done high school. He wants to be a math teacher, so we talked about teaching for a bit. I told him it was an awesome career and he’d be good at it. He brought me up-to-date on his brothers and sister and told me about his Doberman.

 So, a busy weekend. Psalm 1:6 tells us that the Lord watches over the way of the righteous. Heaven knows I’m far from righteous. I know some of my own sins and failures all too well. The Lord knows them all. But a weekend like this brings me hope. My sinful self is there, counted, among God’s righteous people. I’m doing my best to be a blessing to them and they are, in turn, blessing me. God is watching over us all. I find hope in that.