The Best Is Yet To Be?

Sorry for the long pause.  No time to write but have been thinking a lot lately about this theme.  Robert Browning in his poetry puts it this way:

Grow old along with me!

The best is yet to be,

The last of life, for which the first was made:

Our times are in His hand

Who saith "A whole I planned,

Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

I think there comes a point in everyone’s life when a person begins to wonder about the truth of this poem.  Is it possible as we age that “the best is yet to be”?  There is something about being over 50, dealing with transitions in life, and even seeing some young people soar to success at an early age that leaves me with some plaguing questions.  Have I peaked?  Is the best really still waiting out there for me or is it already behind me? 

I enjoy serving the church as a pastor, and yet with nearly 25 years of ordained ministry behind  me I realize that it could be that what I am doing right now is as good as it will be for my career?  I have no regrets about how God has led my life in serving the church and the community but I am still curious about the journey ahead.  It is good right now.  Could it get any better?

I love being a mother.  Yet with most of my children out of the house I wonder, are the high points of motherhood behind me?  If so, I look back and wish I had done better.  It all goes so fast.  The role of a mother changes through the years.  How do I know if I passed the peak?  What can I do in this phase of motherhood to make it the best?

In 26 years of marriage, my husband Kirk and I have gone from doing everything together in the first half of our marriage - working, serving the church, raising children, building a home - to having different interests and activities that consume most of our days separately.  Some say that everything goes down hill after the honeymoon.  I don’t agree but is there a peak somewhere else along the way?

In the midst of my wondering about growing old and when the best comes, I read a couple of weeks ago about Carol Masheter, the 65 year old woman who became the oldest woman in the world to climb the highest mountain on every continent.  Yesterday, I read an article about a 90 year old Florida woman who went skydiving for the first time and is ready to go again. Neither of those activities really appeal to me but they remind me that there are endless possibilities of exhilarating moments as we age if we choose to pursue them.


Vivian Bugbee is one of my inspirations.  To date, she has made over 300 full size quilts and over 300 baby quilts.  She didn't start quilting until she was 70.   One of my role models in life is Ann MacGregor, founder of Hospice of North Iowa in Mason City, IA.  She made the bold move of hiring me, an outsider to the organization,  as the first paid director of spiritual care many years ago.  I would have thought that her CEO hospice days were the peak of Ann's success but instead she has gone on in her retirement years to peak again in directing the organization that restored the Frank Lloyd Wright hotel.  Ann seems to have numerous high points in her life with potentially more to come.

Other examples come to mind as well.   Frank Lloyd Wright designed Fallingwater at age sixty-nine and the Guggenheim Museum at seventy-six and did what some consider his most productive work between the ages of eighty and ninety three.  Michelangelo was appointed chief architect of St Peter’s in Rome at age seventy-one and continued in that position until his death at eighty-nine.  Ray Kroc, Colonel Sanders, Grandma Moses, Emily Post, Ferdinand Zeppelin all of them didn’t start doing what they became famous for until they were in their late fifties or sixties.

Are you on the way to the high points in life?  Who knows?  All I know is that it is not  necessarily a matter of age, or position, or circumstances.   As Browning concludes the first stanza of his poem, “Our times are in His hand.  Who saith "A whole I planned.  Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, nor be afraid!"

Happy aging to you.  Seize the best in your life right now and enjoy.

Symbols and Deaths

To be honest, I don’t remember every funeral I officiated during my hospice years.  There were so many with often little more than a few hours of knowing the person or family.  However, I was contacted this week by a family that I do remember.  Around their mother’s death there were several moments that I have come to think of as “thin” places - times when the division between God’s actions and our vision, between our connections with loved ones in heaven and the loved ones on earth seems to be divided by only a sheer curtain. It was memorable to share those signs and symbols with them.  Not everyone is fortunate enough to have these reassuring “thin” moments, but they did.

Symbols and death, Transfiguration Sunday, life changes  - perhaps those were what my subconscious was working on when I woke up after a dream this morning.  I dreamt that I was burying a child - my infant child.  Further, I was upset that the funeral director was allowing the child to be buried in a basement.  Yes, I know about interpreting dreams and basements.  So I had to think... what does it all mean?  Well, several things - but here are two:

I am at the stage in life when my body is telling me that I won’t be having any more children.  Of course, that hasn’t been an issue since our last child was born but yet I think there is something symbolic for a woman when she knows that her body can no longer sustain life within it.  When I pray to Creator God, when I read in the psalms that we are known by God “in the mother’s womb,”  there is a level of resonance with those images because of pregnancy and childbirth.  That identity, one who can nurture new created life, is dying.  For some women, that reality comes much earlier in life.  For many, it is part of that middle age journey that is both physical but also very spiritual in nature.  

I also woke up thinking about our spiritual connections to people that have died.  I have told people in grief for years that after the loss of a loved one you don’t forget them you simply come to a point where you establish a different kind of relationship.  I now have greater confidence that it is true.  It doesn’t matter where my loved ones are buried, nor do I need what is left of their bodies or the physical things from my childhood home as much as I once did.  I sense a different kind of relationship,  a unique connectedness, one that is more spiritual in nature. My relationship is with the memories, the values, the parts of me that have been shaped by their influence - both in life and in death. These are the things I need to hang on to.   The rest can be buried.

According to my records, at the hospice funeral that I mentioned at the beginning, I read a poem by an unknown author.

Go bury thy sorrow,

the world hath its share,

Go bury it deeply

Go hide it with care

Go bury thy sorrow

let others be blest

Go give them the sunshine

and tell God the rest.

Epiphanies and Baptisms

People of God, do you promise to support (the baptized) and pray for them in their new life in Christ?   ( ELW pg. 228)

In this season of Epiphany and celebrating the Baptism of Jesus, I have had a series of events leading to reflection on my encounters with young people.   Last week at Bible study we talked about the promises made in baptism - the promise God makes to us, the promise parents make to help the child grow in Christian faith, and the promise the sponsors and congregation make to  nurture and support the newly baptized.  Before church on Sunday, the pastors and I commended a local congregation that had produced several seminary graduates in the last few years.  In the sermon on Sunday, the pastor told about his 8th grade Sunday School teacher that said that he would one day be a pastor and how that message was revealed in his life in spite of his original intentions.   After the service, I had a chance to sit on the floor in the fellowship hall and give comfort to a little girl and her stubbed toe until her mom arrived.  I felt inspired as I left church thinking about these moments and more.  I may be Pastor to Senior Adults, I may of an “over-the-hill” age, I may not have young children at home anymore,  but everyone of us has promised to nurture the young people that are in our church.  I have a few church kids,  of a wide variety of ages, that stay on my radar but I need to expand and be more intentional in what that means.

All these thoughts were going through my head as I proceeded into an intersection on my way home, halting half way through because the car ahead of me was stopped.  A group of 6 teenagers were slowly sauntering across the street.  The passenger in the car ahead rolled down the window and started shouting at them.  The occupants of the car seemed to think it was there responsibility to instruct this group on proper etiquette in street crossing.  Whether it was out of concern or anger, I will never know.  However,  I said to myself, “Why are you doing that?  This won’t help those teenagers.  It will only make them more angry.”  At which point one of the boys turned and yelled at the car, “Just get going, old man!”  The line-up of four cars in the intersection eventually proceeded on our separate ways, but I was left to ponder another event in my series of epiphanies.

Just what does it mean when I promise to support and pray for the children?  What kind of involvement ?  I see so many people just sitting back and doing nothing when young people are getting in trouble.   Instead of getting involved, it is easier for all of us to talk about the lack of parenting skills and the decline of morals in society.  So, how do I support teenagers in a way that is heard and received in 2012?  Or maybe it is not what I say, but how I demonstrate care, concern, and supportive presence.  Maybe I was getting it right for all ages when I was sitting on the floor in the fellowship hall with the stubbed toe - trying to see things from their perspective,  listening to the cries, and just providing a little bit of my own kind of comfort and reassurance.   It might work in the church, but what about on the way home?  Modeling a Christian life at church is one thing, but what about at home, what about on the streets?  It is a big challenge.

I’m not sure how this new challenge will be revealed in the year ahead, but I do know that every time I answer those promises of the congregation in the service of baptism, I will be thinking about what it truly means - and maybe you will, too.

Ageless Christmas

What is it about Christmas that makes us ageless?  Somehow this time of year easily and consistently takes me back to memories of years gone by.  I ponder the lights on the Christmas tree in our house and at the same time feel myself transported to the sofa in the living room of my parents house where every year my mother and I would sit side by side and admire the Christmas tree together.  The smell of coffee and Christmas bread reminds me of the early morning Julotta services at church where I would have to patiently wait for my parents to drink that second cup of coffee at church before we got to go home and open the presents that Santa had brought.    There is the same swelling of emotion and pride at choir concerts and Sunday School programs as I remember in the years when our children were young.    Now my heart is filled as I watch other parents and grandparents grinning ear to ear with their child’s performance.  I made rosettes last night and could see my mother and our neighbor, Julie, standing in the kitchen making them while I had to stay a distance away because of the hot oil on the stove.     The memories keep flooding back and I am 8 or 12 years old in my heart.   I am 25, 30, or 40 again in my mind.

All these memories can be comforting and reassuring but for many it is also a bittersweet journey.  Times and lives have changed.  People are missing from our holiday celebrations.  Traditions have evolved to accommodate scattered and busy schedules. I desperately cling to some pieces of the holidays that connect me to past memories while at the same time realizing that there is no way to go back and that time and change will continue to march on in our lives.  Of course some of that is good.   It is good to grow up.  It is good to be flexible enough to embrace new opportunities in life. Yet, it always seems to be an emotional mix in this season.  

And then I come to the Christmas story.  There it is again.  The same story from the gospels.  The one everyone knows and has heard over and over again.  For a preacher it is hard to figure out what could possibly be said that is new or refreshing... but then maybe that is the message.  In the midst of changes, in the midst of things we cannot control in our lives, in the midst of the sometimes bittersweet emotions of the season, there is something that is unchanging.  Jesus comes to us - a little baby born in Bethlehem.  Thanks be to God for the unchanging, unconditional love of God revealed to us at Christmas. 

Advent Tug of War

I had one of those days recently.  You know the kind.  A day when you have perfectly timed out a plan in your head so that you can make the most efficient use of your time and get everything done.  That is until the day actually starts.  What began as a happy morning, suddenly took a turn as activities took twice as long as expected.  Nothing went wrong but even pleasant interruptions and circling the hospital parking lot four times for a parking spot intensified my frustration of not keeping to the appointed agenda. 

This advent has been that way.  For much of it, God and I have been playing a game of tug of war.  I imagine God smiling and laughing as I have tried so hard to pull on the rope to get it to come my way. Alas, God has held strong.

Slowly and finally the message has come to me.   Our timing is not God’s timing.  How often I have used that phrase - usually in the context of someone dying or receiving a difficult diagnosis. But this year it seems to me that it is also the advent message that God has been trying to teach me.  The more I plan and get anxious about checking things off my “to do” list, the more hurting people come to visit me.  Each person, unaware, has been a messenger of Advent.  Not only is my timing not God’s timing, but my priorities of  tasks over  people have been misplaced.   This week, I thanked God for a couple that came in asking for assistance and told me all about their life story.  They were messengers of Advent as I put aside the piles on my desk and focused on their desire for better times in life.    
It is in Advent that we wait, we wonder, we hope, we dream and we believe that God will come to restore us and  make us new.    It is in unexpected interruptions -  the announcement of Gabriel, the imposed travel for a census, the appearance of angels in the night sky - where God’s love intervenes with hope.  And perhaps it is in the interruptions of our daily schedules that God continues to break in to redirect our paths.  The proclamations may come in such humble packages from unanticipated visitors that they could be easily missed in the frenzy of busy days.  It is in anticipation of unexpected interruptions that I enter in to the last week Advent with joy. 

The Other Sermon

     I am preaching this weekend.  My problem in preparing a sermon is not a lack of ideas.  My problem is having too many ideas and needing to choose one that I think I can develop in to 10 -12 minutes of something meaningful.  Often the “other sermon” is what I share at the communion services in nursing homes. However, I have decided that this blog may be a place to share some of my undeveloped thoughts that continue to intrigue me.  

     This weekend’s text is the parable Jesus tells about the end times in Matthew 25.  Jesus returns in glory as king, gathers the nations, and separates the sheep from the goats.  On the one hand, the sheep receive eternal life because they have fed the hungry, visited the prisoners, etc.  On the other hand, the goats are punished for sins of omission in not caring for the “least of these.”  It is a tough text with some hard questions for a wide variety of reasons. 

     What I find curious is that both the sheep and the goats are surprised by the dividing.  Neither group realizes what they have done or not done.  Jesus seems to be able to discern something that they do not even realize.  When I was researching the difference between sheep and goats, I further discovered that in the wild and certainly in Jesus’ time it was very difficult to tell the difference between sheep and goats.  Primarily it is their tail that gives them away.  Goats have a tail that stands up and sheep have a tail the goes down.  Goats aren’t inherently bad and sheep aren’t inherently good.  They are both very useful animals.  The curious difference comes more in what I would call attitude.  Goats are independent, like to go their own way, more frequently butt heads with the other goats while sheep prefer to stay in the flock and will follow wherever they are led.  In fact in the sale barns today, sometimes a goat will lead a flock of sheep into the ring only to slip away and lead another group in while the sheep are being sold for slaughter.  The men at Bible study this week exclaimed, “sheep are just dumb.”

     So what does all this mean for us?  “Thank God I am a dumb sheep” or “I hope I’m not a stubborn goat.” Is it our resistance to recognizing our need to live in community that Jesus is addressing?  Is it our independence that gets us in trouble?  How often are we the ones who want to decide who is in and who is out of our community, church, family, etc?  

Maybe you can continue this "other sermon" for me. 

Free Love Hippie?

Last spring I was standing in line at the post office waiting to mail a package.  In my mind I was reflecting on the gospel story about the man who was born blind and thinking about the different kinds of blindness there are in the world today.  As I turned to leave, a man in line said to me, “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but notice how you are dressed.  You might be interested in this.”  He handed me a business card.  I received the card saying, “thank you,” and walked out the door. 

To my amazement the card read, “Hippie from Iowa.”  Once in my car, I ruminated the whole way home.  Hippie? Me?  What is there about my dress that says “hippie”?  Okay, now my daughter says that my wardrobe is dated and I dress “frumpy”.  I didn’t think I was doing that bad but I was wearing shoes that look a little like earth shoes from the ‘70s,  a long khaki skirt,  and my pink tweed coat.  Maybe it is all a little dated since I bought it used at least 5 years ago but retro is cool, right?

Anyway, according to the card, the gentleman in the post office line has written about his “coming of age” experiences, learning about sex and traveling Europe during the 70s.   Maybe I should be flattered that he thought I was in to the “free love” movement but obviously he pegged my age if not my temperament.

So ultimately, the question is, “what did he see?”  And perhaps more to the point, what do I see when I look in the mirror?  Obviously, they are two different things.  And when I am out in the community, am I truly seeing the people around me or just passing judgment about whether they are like me or different from me?  Blindness comes in many different forms, from denial to distrust.  But then I wonder what God sees.  No amount of wardrobe choices cover or confuse who we really are before God.  Yet in God’s great mercy, we are the recipients of “free love” through Jesus Christ.  Open my eyes, Lord, and let me see Jesus.