Bird at hand

I had a weepy day at work on Tuesday. My boss and I sat and discussed real life (she is my boss/friend) and real life can be hard, you know?

One of the topics we discussed is my future. I am making some pretty tough decisions right now about returning to ministry and my thoughts and emotions are swirling about. Being a receptionist at a concrete shop has been good to me in many, many ways and I have learned some valuable things – things I will never forget.

I had a conversation recently with an old colleague, one that I served as a pastor with. He questioned my concrete status saying, “It’s such a waste of your talent. God wants you to be so much more.”

Hmmmm.

One of the biggest issues I struggled with when I served the church full time was work/life balance. I made huge strides my last two years in ministry toward a healthy approach because I was blessed enough to have another friend/boss that insisted on me being a whole person. He would actually walk into my office when he knew I should be leaving to catch my kids off the school bus and say, “Why are you still here?” with a loving smile. A great work ethic has never been my problem, until it became a source of pride and identity.

I guess the real answer to my old colleague is, “I am already being it.” Yes, my book is still in the works and I may (or may not) return to ministry and I answer the phone at a concrete shop, but those things do not define me. I have finally let God have so much of me that I long to BE a servant – regardless of where or how or who or if anybody even notices.

The picture below was one I took yesterday out of my kitchen window. If you look closely you will see that I have a robin who built her nest right in my holly bush. I stand at my kitchen sink, making dinner or doing dishes, and we stare at each other. Both of us are serving our children and I’m the only one who sees her and she is the only one who notices me. She is one of thousands of robins in the area doing the same old thing, and I am one of thousands of mothers doing the same old thing. I whisper to her, “You are great,” when I am finished. She doesn’t smile or say anything back, she just keeps sitting on her eggs – being exactly what she was made to be.

Writers, Believers and Atheists, O My!

Proceed cautiously today. I am providing you with a link to a very interesting book review. Once again, Terry Eagleton has written a piece worth thinking about, but the site and the reviewer are unapologetically liberal, so please know that in advance.

Eagleton’s new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution: Reflections on the God Debate” is not what you may think. His book begins, "Religion has wrought untold misery in human affairs. For the most part, it has been a squalid tale of bigotry, superstition, wishful thinking, and oppressive ideology." As the reviewer writes, “That’s quite a start, especially when you consider that the point…is to defend the theory and practice of religion against its most ardent contemporary critics.”

You can read the review for yourself HERE, but I think there is something very valuable to be learned from the whole exercise.

I have been seeing bumper stickers lately that say, “Dissent is patriotic.” Let’s not get into all that today, but the concept is interesting. Those who question the church are not necessarily opposed to her (or pessimists or trapped in relativism or whatever accusation is currently popular) – as a matter of fact, questions often are formed from a deep-seated love.

So, read with love in mind. Eagleton asserts that much of atheism is built on the fact that religion has been unproductive – okay, horrible – for the human race. Although there are cases where this is true, it does not in turn prove atheism (or disprove faith), does it?

Let’s welcome questions, from all sorts of places and people. Honest feedback, if we can resist defensiveness, can only help us see our blind spots.

Loosing faith

Last night, I read THIS intriguing article entitled, “Americans not losing their religion, but changing it often.” Feel free to click here and give it a read if you’re interested.

The writer bases his conclusions on “a huge new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.” Basically, the survey suggests that Americans are migrating – but the article also suggests that we are migrating within Christianity. The better title for the article may have been, “Americans not losing their denomination, but changing it often.”

Here’s what I think. We are not losing faith, we are loosing it. Those who long for the “good old days” – you know, those days when church and country were “priorities” – may have tainted memories. Obeying an institution and fulfilling a duty does not a Christian make, and frankly, if the old days did produce Christians, America would look very different than it does today. Please don't read criticism of the past here, please read a honest reflection toward a hope-filled future.

People seem to be trying to embrace the real Church – a community of believers who love God and the world without condition. This kind of faith will let loose on the world as it expresses itself with extravagant love, outrageous forgiving and irrepressible generosity of spirit – all in response to what Jesus has done.

I have never been in danger of losing my faith, but I certainly am trying to loose it.

Eye opening irritants

My son, J.J., spends his summers with red, bloodshot eyes. The first year this happened, I became worried about eye infections and chlorine and other medical journal possibilities. When his problem persisted, I took him to the doctor and discovered that there was another source of his problem – baseball dust. Already this year, and it is only late April, J.J. eyes look like something out of slasher film because the infield dirt that he plays in all the time is an irritant for him. His mother needs to buy some eye drops - a remedy to help him out a little.

Yesterday, I was sitting watching my older son’s travel team play. Yes, his arm is in a cast, but we have been sitting with these players and parents for years now and a strange sort of community has been formed. I wanted to be there.

During a particularly exciting part of the game, another mother asked me a question and I snapped at her. I mean, I totally expressed my frustration and the tension I was feeling (about all kinds of things, not just the baseball game) in my voice and I hurt her feelings – in front of others. It only lasted a nano second, but I still couldn’t get it back.

Everyone on the bleachers got quiet all of the sudden. I took a deep breath, and I apologized. I meant it, too. I asked her to forgive me and I admitted that I it had nothing to do with her. Another mom asked me if I was okay because it seemed so out of character. The whole thing made me sad.

I thought about that moment for a long time and I realized that part of my apology wasn’t true. This particular woman - the one I was harsh with – irritates me and that’s the truth. The things she says and the way she says them, get in my eyes and under my skin and they have for years. The moment on the bleachers was a build up over time and I decided to investigate why.

Here’s what I discovered: Many of the traits the woman possesses, the ones that irritate me the most, are ones that I know that I also possess. They are the very things that irritate me about ME, the things that I suspect irritate the people that are around me a lot. She’s loud (I’m loud), she’s free with her opinion (I’m free with my opinion), she’s hard on the players (inside my mind, I can be too), etc, etc, etc… You get the point. Even though we may not say the same things or think in the same ways – the very moments that I find irritating about her can reveal truth about me. With so much dust in my eyes, it’s no wonder I can’t see it all clearly.

I have decided to pray for both of us with intentionality in the days ahead. I suspect it may prove even more eye opening, or maybe even the remedy to help me out of this a little.

Happy 70th Birthday, Dad. We LOVE you.

I'll turn this car around

My cousin Wayne sent me the link to THIS fascinating article. Essentially, a mother became frustrated with her two daughters’ bickering in the car. The girls were 10 and 12 years old. The mother pulled the car over and told the girls to get out – and then actually drove away – without returning.

The two girls were left on the road, and somehow got separated, leaving the 10 year old very distraught about not being able to find her mother. A good Samaritan (word choice by reporter) stopped to help her, taking her to police. When the mother arrived to collect the little girl, she was arrested for child endangerment. It’s fortunate that she is a high-powered Manhattan attorney.

I have a 9 year old, an 11 year old, and a 12 year old. There is bickering, for sure, and I can relate to the temptation to have a peaceful and quiet ride all by my lonesome, but this story disturbs me on several levels.

Being alone and afraid is one of the most terrible states ever, and as an adult if I make choices that leave me alone and afraid, I understand them to be consequences of my decisions. At 10, however, it can be nothing less than traumatizing to wonder where you are and why you were so bad that you were abandoned.

When I was a kid, I had a father who was truly extraordinary (I still have that father and he is still extraordinary, but I’m no longer a kid). My Dad’s graciousness toward his children has left me with me an untainted idea of who God is and how He feels about me. Dad is not perfect, but he always liked me, even when I was pretty unlikeable.

Friends and family have giggled over the fact that I often tell my kids that I will love them no matter what – because I often include extreme examples to prove my loyalty – examples of them committing crimes or mistakenly burning the city down or streaking naked across the field during a nationally televised Phillies game (mooning someone out the schoolbus window is already a given, but full-fledged streaking?). It is my job as a parent to point them to Jesus and I suspect the mother in the article should have asked herself, “What Would Jesus Do?” no matter how corny and hackneyed the phrase is now since the bracelet craze.

So, here’s your reminder to turn things around: Whether you are 10 or 110, nothing you have ever done is so bad that you have been left abandoned. He has always liked you. He always will.

Although, if you are 110, I wouldn’t dare the streaking thing - traumatizing on many levels.

The Name Game

We have a game that we play as a family. Truth be told, it is an old college drinking game (not that I ever played one of those) where one person says the name of a famous person and the next person must think of another person whose first name starts with the same letter as the last name of the person before (confused yet?). It is supposed to go very fast, but we take it slow at the Melchior’s.

During a recent car version of the game, J.J. suddenly said, “You know what I’m going to name my son, if I ever have one?”

“Tell me,” I said back.

“Ja’Derrick,” was his reply, and then he spelled it out,”Big J small A apostrophe big D small E-R-R-I-C-K.”

I paused a minute before I answered. I was confounded, to say the least, but wanted to respect J.J. choices. But it only took a second of imagining myself 20 years from now telling my friends at the garden club meeting that my grandson’s name was Ja’Derrick to suddenly start pursuing a line of questioning.

“What an interesting name,” was how I cautiously began, “did you invent it?”

My son glanced at me with that incredulous of course not look on his face. “No, I didn’t make it up. I read it in a word problem in my math book. It said, ‘Ja’Derrick and Ahmed decided to run a 100 yard race to see who was faster. They both knew that Ja’Derrick was much faster than Ahmed because Ahmed could run 4 yards per second and Ja’Derrick could run 6 yards per second. So, Ja’Derrick decided to give Ahmed a 10 yard head start. Who wins the race?”

One of the things that I love about my children, and many of their friends, is how they have completely embraced different cultures. When I was a kid, even though there was not a hint of intentional racism in my home, if I was describing a kid at school I would say, “He’s the black guy who wears the Chuck Taylor’s…” or whatever. I was not judging him based on the color of his skin, but I was identifying him by it.

My children do not do that. Names like Kushal and Ramya and Miguel and Joe and Malik and Victoria and Chan and Kioski and Justin are all said at the dinner table without any other descriptors. "Chan told the funniest joke today" and "Malik got an A on the English test" or "I think Ramya likes Joe."

Ja’Derrick Melchior is growing on me. At least he is kind enough to give the other kid a head start – and in the long run - that’s what really matters. My math skills aren't good enough to figure out if he wins or not.

LOST

I never watched the show LOST. It always intrigued me, but since I missed the first seasons, I just never dared jump in – until last week.

We were at our dear friends’ (the Kelly’s) home for our annual Egg Hunt in the Dark which requires flashlights and eggs covered with reflector tape. It is an annual tradition, and the adults love it as much as the kids.

After most of the eggs were found (some may still be in forgotten places) we all settled in to play a game. I happened to look up and saw the boxes for LOST Season 1 and LOST Season 2 on the TV wall unit. Hmmm…

I have since had sleepless nights due to my LOST obsession. What a great idea the creator had, and I have been fascinated by his/her depiction of humanity.

In case I am not the only one who never watched LOST, the basic premise is that a group of people are involved in a plane crash and end up on a seemingly deserted island. How they form a society and how each character sees his or her role in the new society is crazy fun to observe. On top of it all, we are given flashback looks into the lives of each person to help us understand why they respond in the ways they do.

I often feel lost in society and I can really relate to how hard and complicated real relationships can be. How great would it be to have flashback looks for the people we meet and love? Just a minute or two of insight, then back to the conversation at hand? Instead, we have to listen and patiently nurture trust with others – even when we do not fully understand their responses.

I’m not really lost. No, I have been deeply found, but the journey can still be a profound mystery at times. I just want to be willing to love – even without knowing everybody's information.

By the way, I’m only halfway in to Season 2. No telling.

What's with the piracy?

I discuss current events with my children all the time. I’m a bit of a news junkie, and I like to hear them think through what’s happening in the world. Lately, we have been talking about the pirates.

These groups that are getting the world’s attention by hijacking ships in and around the horn of Africa bewilder me. The kids and I were in a deep conversation about what would motivate piracy (which led to debating political instability) when my 9 year old daughter (who had been mostly listening) said, “There are still pirates?”

Admit it. When these stories hit the global news wires, you wondered the same thing, didn’t you? PIRATES!?!?! I mean, I love Jack Sparrow, so this was a little hard to believe really.
I guess the real question, though, is why would someone choose a profession that is based on stealing from others?

Then I started to think about the many forms of piracy. We steal music off the Internet, don’t we? My oldest son had a friend at school tell him of a website where you can watch movies that are currently in theatres. I didn’t believe it, of course, so we checked it out. Basically, people go into theatres with a video camera and record the entire picture (think Seinfeld). You can hear the other moviegoers laughing or asking for the popcorn bucket. Craziest part, however, was that there were no advertisements on the site and the movies are free. Why? What’s in it for the pirates? I have since concluded that people do it just to simply prove they can – I cannot uncover any other logical reason.

Here’s the thing: the recent stories have forced me to look for the pirate in me. No, I am not going to hold an automatic weapon to the head of a ship captain, but what do I do to simply prove I can? Do I steal from others – maybe not money or cargo, but do I steal joy or credit?

Wendy Sparrow.

Up to my eyeballs in you name it

If I tried to list all the things that are going on right now, I would not know where to begin. After consulting the experts about our explosion issues, we have discovered the need to have the concrete floor of our home jack-hammered up.

Needless to say, I have been slightly overwhelmed by the events of the past few weeks (and the cost of the repairs). Not delirious or frantic, mind you, just slightly out of sorts.

On the bright side, I have been forced to decide about every item I have ever stored in my home - remember my desire to unclutter? Anyone looking for an oil and seafood soaked loveseat?? It's yours free of charge - delivery included.

I will return with my pretentious ponderings and forced analogies soon. Thank you for your kind emails and offers to help. If I currently owe you an email or return call - be patient with me. I'm not ignoring you, I simply can't think over the chaos.

Frankly, Scallop, I don't give a clam.

The tale goes something like this:

In December, the Melchior’s had an unfortunate accident involving their furnace. Oil leaked all over our downstairs, forcing the repair and demolition of a 3 year old addition built on to our house. The odor created by oil is amazingly difficult to remove, and our insurance company sent professionals who worked for many months on the problem – including the flushing of cinder block, replacement of studs and drywall, and the complete removal of two full rooms of carpeting.

Good Friday marked the near end of the months long project. The last piece of new carpet was laid, the strong oil odor had been replaced by the smell of fresh paint and the workers on the cleaning crew - that we now know so well - were beginning to say their goodbyes.

On Saturday, I decided to clean out the refrigerator. To you neat nuts, that may seem harmless, but we’re talking about ME today. There were things in that fridge that I could no longer identify (including what appeared to be a seafood medley) and so I figured that the day between Good Friday and Easter was the perfect day to get rid of the dead to make way for new life. After all, I know how the story ends.

Easter Sunday, we went to church. I love Easter Sunday. My hope is built on nothing less, and frankly, my hope is of HUGE proportions. We came home so that I could prepare pineapple stuffing to take to my mother’s house for dinner (I am guessing that pineapple stuffing is a Pennsylvania Dutch thing, but I don’t know). As I mixed and scooped in the kitchen, my white faced husband entered.

“What’s the worst thing I could tell you right now?” was exactly what he said.

Now, I tried to use my context clues. He was pale, but not weeping. He was not reaching for the phone to call 911. There did not seem to be a young beautiful woman who still had her figure standing with him. I did not smell smoke. That pretty much covered it.

“I don’t know. It’s Easter – what could be that bad?” was exactly what I said back.

Apparently, the cleaning crew had inadvertently removed a cap on top of a pipe during their work downstairs. It was a fairly innocent mistake, but the pipe was directly connected to both our dishwasher and our garbage disposal – which, of course, is where I had flushed all the unidentifiable food items from the refrigerator the day before. For 24 whole hours, we did not know that we had an explosion of HUGE proportions beneath us that, yes, had leaked through onto all the new carpeting and work that had been just completed. In the days since, I have found myself longing for the oil smell back. We have discovered something worse.

R.I.P. Harry

If you are not from Philadelphia, today may lack meaning for you, but for those of us who hang around the great City of Brotherly Love today is a day of mourning. Harry died in the announcer's booth yesterday.

Perhaps the most famous voice in the tri-state area, Harry Kalas called Phillies games since 1970 – in other words, I have never watched or listened to a game without him. He would declare, “It’s outta here!” and a whole town would cheer. The stories of his graciousness are well known and my own children would use their binoculars to look for him in the booth every time we went to the stadium. He was as beloved as our players.

After I heard the news, I sent a message to a great friend who recently moved out west to let him know. His response intrigued me. He noted that Harry had died doing something he loved, and then my dear friend wondered if he would do the same.

I considered his words for a long time. Funny, but I am not afraid to die. I am far more afraid to live without becoming who I was made to be – to never know what it’s like to rest in peace while I am yet alive.

Easter's on its way

I will be taking an Easter break, and the blog will be quiet until Tuesday, April 14. Until then, an old friend sent me a fascinating quote, and somehow it resonated with Lent and Easter (and death and new life) for me - so I am sharing it.

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it. My optimism, then, does not rest on the absence of evil, but on a glad belief in the preponderance of good and a willing effort always to cooperate with the good, that it may prevail. I try to increase the power God has given me to see the best in everything and every one, and make that Best a part of my life . . . No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars or sailed an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit."

-Helen Keller

Don't look for the living among the dead. He has risen. He has risen indeed.

LOVE and GRACE to you.

Any similarity to actual people

You know how some TV shows have a disclaimer at the beginning? Usually it reads something like, “The events depicted are fictional. Any similarity to actual people or events is purely coincidental.” LAW & ORDER does it a lot, but in most cases, the plot of the show then goes on to closely mirror a current news story. So, even though we are all told to not look for common denominators, we all know exactly where the idea actually came from.

I saw the disclaimer last night, and my mind wandered to a recent conversation I had. Often people talk in disclaimers, don’t they? Acting as if we are speaking in generalities or harmlessly making broad statements, the listener clearly gets our real meaning and often it is a specific message about a certain person or event. Those who are experts at this kind of manipulation/communication somehow end up looking chaste as well. It’s an art form.

I don’t want to look innocent, I want to be innocent – whether I look it or not. I want my talk to be clean, without innuendo or disclaimers. It isn’t always. Just last Saturday, I was asked about some of the decisions on my plate, and I said a few things I shouldn’t have, things I wish I could get back.

NO DISCLAIMER LIVING. I don’t think it’s purely coincidental.

Munchausen’s by Peanut

Our children are now taught that a classmate might die right in front of them if they bring PB&J for lunch. Where were these kids when we were in school?

Click here for the rest of this wonderfully snarky article.

Road kill and other temptations

On Sunday morning, the family and I were headed to my in-laws’ church to see their Easter musical (which was great, incidentally). We were actually on time, a feat we were admiring as we sped down the road on our way.

As I looked ahead from the passenger seat, I saw a turkey vulture in the opposite lane, towering over some road kill. I do not know if you have turkey vultures where you live, but trust me when I say that they did not get in line when God was giving out beauty. Turkey vultures are some of the ugliest birds I have ever seen, they are even a tad bit scary looking.

Our Sunday friend was no different. I did not get a good look at the dead carcass, so I cannot tell you what it was dining on, but I can tell you that the turkey vulture did something unexpected.

As we neared it, I kept waiting for it to become startled or frightened by our approach, but no deal. The vulture seemed to completely ignore our speeding car as we neared. In fact, it NEVER MOVED – even as we passed directly next to it about 2 feet away.

I found this very intriguing, so as I saw a car pass us in the vulture’s lane heading directly for it, I turned around to watch and told the kids to also. You know, it was the craziest thing! It still refused to move. We watched as the car slowed at first, but then came to a complete stop right in front of the bird and its feast.

We continued on our way, trying to maintain our “on time” status, so I do not know who won the face off, but I did keep on thinking about the brazenness of it all.

Then I started to think about myself and all the times I have actually seen danger coming, but have refused to move. I think that sometimes unfortunate things come out of the blue, but often we are aware that trouble is speeding toward us but we still do not flee. That dead thing in front of us seems so attractive at the time.

Brazen.

God in cafeterias

I knew I was weepy yesterday, but I had no idea it would turn out to be a little too true.

J.J. was playing in a band assembly at another elementary school cafeteria and asked me to come and watch. Naturally I agreed, even though I will see the exact same concert twice next week at his school.

I guess it all started when the 6th grade girls’ chorus sang, “Ordinary Miracle.” Even hard core cynics begin to thaw at lyrics like:

“It’s not that usual when everything is beautiful
It’s just another ordinary miracle today
The sky knows when it’s time to snow
You don’t need to teach a seed to grow
It’s just another ordinary miracle today…”

I, being easily stirred, began to sniffle.

Of course, watching my own son, sitting upright in his chair with his fingers working adeptly at his saxophone and his foot tapping to the beat caused some eye leakage as well. I began to marvel at the opportunities we are afforded because of where we live and who we are, and then I began to mourn for every child in the world who doesn’t get the chance to play an instrument.

But the tears started rolling as I noticed a little boy with Downs Syndrome sitting to my left. He insisted on standing through the hour long assembly and one of the teacher’s aides tried to get him to sit down at first. But the lead teacher gave the aide a shake of her head – after all, he wasn’t hurting anyone and the only person whose sight line was interrupted was me – and I loved the sight of him.

At first he just stood very still, watching the instruments move and make their sounds. Slowly, however, he started to feel what he could see, and he began to sway and move his arms. After each number he would applaud enthusiastically, all while the lead teacher clapped along and smiled in encouragement.

I began to feel a blessing deep within me. It was a sense of wonder and enchantment as I sat and experienced these young musicians and what they are already contributing to the world. My heart was full for this fabulous teacher who patiently let a child be exactly who he is, in spite of the rules. But it was the boy who overwhelmed me - my sight being interrupted by a boy who had joy he could feel.

Children making music. A great teacher. Joy you can feel. Just another ordinary miracle yesterday.

Weather I like it or not

After dinner last night, I was helping my son with a “weather project.” The main objective is to record the weather for 20 straight days, including cloud type/coverage, high and low temperatures, barometric pressure – you get the idea. He gets up early every morning, consults weather.com, and then tells us all if we need to wear jackets or not.

So last night we were completing his daily journal (what really happened vs. the forecast) and J.J. was complaining about how long this task has proved. As he lamented his 5th grade fate, he looked at me and said, “I hate learning.”

Before I had time to disagree, he then said, “Well, I like knowing, but I hate learning.”

Still thinking about his words long after he’d gone to bed, I had to admit I agree. I like when I know things, but I often dislike the process of getting there – the learning it requires. Sometimes it’s sunny and clear, but often learning includes lots of storms, high winds and rising pressure. The trick is to forecast, early in the morning, that you will weather the learning and end up understanding what God wants you to know. If you’re really good, you can choose to embrace the whole process, confident that all hail falls together for our good (Romans 8:28 meteorologist version).

Let’s approach everything that happens today READY TO LEARN. Sometimes I walk around in other positions - ready to fight, ready to cry, ready to avoid, ready to party, ready to criticize – but today I will be ready to learn. I suspect it will help me get ready to know.

Weather I like it or not.

O the world changing clutter!

Last week (or maybe before that) my friend Beth told me that I had to watch Oprah. Ms. Winfrey is on a de-cluttering kick, a kick I wish I could get on. I used my DVR to record the late night rerun and watched as Peter Walsh instructed me on my way to organized bliss.

So, he said one thing that really caught my attention. For those of us that cannot seem to find a place for anything, he insists that before we introduce ANYTHING new into the house, we must choose what we are getting rid of – or as he said, “Throw away, donate or sell.”

Interestingly, I got together over the weekend with the beloved 20somethings that I used to pastor. It was so great to be with them, to hear their stories, to hear them laugh, to catch up. Two particularly lovely women named Meredith and Wendy (you can never go wrong with a Meredith and Wendy) are living out their faith in such beautiful ways, one of which is that they never acquire anything new without giving three things away to someone in need. I use the word “new” loosely, because they opt to shop at thrift shops and clothing swaps. They are battling the consumerism that has ensnared us all and I admire their efforts.

Part of living in community is inspiring one another to greater faith. Wendy and Meredith inspire me and I am currently de-cluttering in a combination Oprah/Wendy/Meredith sort of way. I am not getting anything new, but I have decided to give more away. There are a lot of people in need right now, and I suspect God wants them cared for.

Look around. What can you live without? Not your potential yard sale fodder, but what do you love that would bless someone else and who does God want you to give it to? Giving your best, instead of your extra, is a revolutionary idea. One that just might change the world.