The Season of Weighing In

One time in my mid twenties I decided I wanted...I needed bangs. I was good with hair. I could do a lot with hair average people could not do. I spent a lot of time learning how to fix my own hair. Why in the world should I pay $15.00 to have someone cut a few strands of hair. I mean really. I had watched my stylist do it many times. I had this! So I cut my bangs. (Use the word “butchered”) I had to wait a couple of weeks to get in to have them fixed so they could grow enough to shape and be repaired. I tried to pretend it didn’t happen. She knew. What she said to me was this, “I won’t ever step into your pulpit and try to preach if you promise me you will never try to cut your own hair again. A deal was struck. 

I learned a valuable lesson. There is common knowledge, opinions, somewhat experienced or educated opinions and actual learned education. I have a Masters of Divinity which is a professional degree much like a law degree or a medical degree but I can’t serve as an attorney for someone in a court of law and I don’t think anyone would want me to do surgery on them and I am certain that my hairdresser would NOT want me to cut my own hair. But I can help someone understand theology and depth of knowledge of The Trinity. 

It’s ok and natural to form opinions about issues. It is even ok to read up and form somewhat educated opinions about issues but that doesn’t make you an expert in that field. 

Let’s use this season of heightened health anxieties to learn three things:

1. Opinions are like armpits. Everyone has them and sometimes they stink. 
2. Opinions, even educated ones are not always fact and most usually are not completely accurate. 
3. You DON’T have to share your opinions. At least not in public. They cause so fusion where clarity by experts is needed. 

If you have that much to weigh in on that is not grounded in formal education consider starting a blog 😉 so that those that want to hear what you have to say can find all your brilliant thoughts. A blog also serves as a way to remove your opinions from a platform that needs facts to be clear and educated. 

See you in blogger. 

I am missing Jesus!!!

In reading  Luke 2:41-49  in my devotional time I was left with an interesting parallel and some questions that come to mind. The passage is the one when Jesus as a young boy travels with his parents to the Temple for Passover worship and on the return home Mom and Dad (Mary and Joseph) realize they are missing their little boy. They were missing Jesus! 

How many of you, in this time of a virus that has separated us, from church, work and even each other feel like we are missing Jesus? Sometimes I feel closer to Jesus than ever. Some of the noise has been blocked out and I have more time on my hands to reset my priorities toward reading and even just sitting with Jesus. Yet, not being with people, YOU, I feel I am missing the part of my relationship with Jesus that comes from being with the people of this church, the people in the community and others I have come to love and serve (and serve me.)

Mary, I know, was frantic, looking and looking for her son. When they found Jesus he was back at the Temple, impressing all the learned rabbi’s with his depth of knowledge of God. And here is where my pondering began. I remembered the passage containing Jesus’ remark.“Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” In the translation I was reading the verse said, “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?” There was a big enough difference between the two, I felt compelled to go back to the original Greek text to see what Luke really wrote. 

What Luke said was intriguing. Luke wrote, Had you not known  that in the things of the Father it is necessary for me to be?” Excusing the sentence structure, I read this to be that Jesus is supposed to be in all things, “God.” 

What a beautiful and comforting thought for these days and the days that lie ahead. It may still be a while before we can assemble, together, in the same building. Ministry looks very different. Pastoral care is almost weird and disconnected feeling. There are days when I am left thinking, “Where is Jesus? I am wondering if he is hiding, has run off or if I am not looking hard enough for him. I have become just like Mary.

But here is the beauty, when I find him, he was never hiding. He is always where he was suppose to be, in the things of God. Jesus is with those that are afraid. Jesus is with those that need to hear his words and his life. He is with those that are suffering. And yes, Jesus is with those that have yet to understand why we are being asked to do the things we are doing. 

Like Mary, I never needed to be worried. Jesus is always right where he belongs and I can always find him there and you can too. Go to God. Go in prayer. Go in tears. Go in fear. God will melt away the troubles, brighten the hope and reveal Jesus to us to sustain us.

As we wander the next few days, stay “in tune” with us. That is how is will have to be for a bit.

We are still a body, together, apart

Label Maker

Phew! It has been a whirlwind of crazy social media, news media and even listening to people in crowds. Let’s be honest, listening to crowds of people conversing is it’s own form of media.  Between the political race, highly publicized religion growth and church growing pains and even the weather’s devastation of late, opinions are flying high.  

Once upon a time conversation was a bit more flowery...detailed, filled with rich descriptors, lush adjectives and expansive explainations. Much like this: “She seemed mush older than I, of course, being a girl, and beautiful and self-possessed; and she was as scornful of me as if she had been one-and-twenty, and a queen."Or this:
“She had not quite finished dressing, for she had but one shoe on--the other was on the table near her hand-- her veil was but half arranged, her watch and chain were not put on...”

Today those sentences would take on an abreviated style. Dickens’ beautifully written descriptors would be condensed to, “That girl is boojy.” And the second sentence could be transformed in the 21st century as, “Whoa, she is a train wreck.”
We have devolved in to an abbreviated speech replacing our expressive language with short-hand labels. There is even a dictionary that aids us in navigating such labels. Urban Dictionary (NSFW)  In addition to UD, Webster’s dictionary adds many of these labels and their definitions to its list every year, almost as to certify their existence and usage. 

Why dedicate a whole blog to an English writing style treatise? The issue in a nutshell is that labels DON’T TELL THE STORY. Those long descriptive sentences came from writers that wanted you to get the whole picture of who you were reading about. There weren’t usually photos or film with these stories. Today we have photos and film. So our language has devolved (to degenerate through a gradual change or evolution.) to looking at someone or situation and give that person or circumstance a label without knowing the story. 
Currently I have the luxury of meeting and working with a group of women that have amazingly sad and transformative stories. They are in the process of rewriting their stories by taking control of their lives and direction. It is impressive to behold. I really hope you have the opportunity to listen stories like theirs soon. 
My heart is broken when I hear people diminish their story by reducing the story, or worse, the woman to just a label. I would list them here. But truthfully, I don’t want most of them perpetuated. 
I watch people reduce a presidential candidate to labels like, “crazy”, “megalomaniac”, “pedophile”, and even the “b” word often used for women. All used without knowing, or worse yet, caring to know the story. 


What if labels are positive? I still feel like we are diminishing the story. A person’s story is important. We can’t know the “thousand words” a picture tells us if we don’t take to know the context or story of the photo. 
Labels are unfair, damaging and hurtful. When I use them I look back and realize they make me sound judgemental and harsh. It also shows a lack of ability to use the English language in all its glory and beauty. Taking the time to know the story and retell it with accuracy of adjectives not only brings authenticity to our speech but also paints the subject with accuracy. Using real words instead of short handed labels we show our intellengance rather than put the lack of it on display for the world to see. 
In the novel, “The Scarlet Letter” set in the Puritan era during the years 1642 to 1649, tells the story of Hester Prynne who conceives a daughter through an affair and then struggles to create a new life of repentance and dignity. She is labeled, forced to wear a large red letter “A” to display her sin to others. When I read this book in middle school as a judgy adolescent I was appalled for someone to be labeled so excluding labels for the others In her life that helped her write her story. But here we are doing the same thing. But we don’t pin the label to a chest with a simple, single letter leaving everyone to decide if “A” stands for “adulterer” or “amazing.” Now we just pin the whole word right on social media for it to go viral. 
When my daughter Alli was little we would order her a roast beef without the cheese at a restaurant that would label the wrapper with a bright orange “special” sticker to keep it from being grabbed for another order. A child that never lacked in self-esteem, would carefully peel the sticker off and place it proudly on her chest, convinced the sticker was meant to describe her. Why can’t we allow for that; self-labeling by allowing someone to write their own story. We would have to take the time to “read” their story but aren’t humans worth being truly known. And isn’t it better to use the brain God gave you by flexing those speech muscles? 

"She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom." The Scarlet Letter