Easter Memories

Being a pastor, I should have all kinds of religious Easter memories. I do have a few. Portraying Mary Magdalene in a sunrise service wearing shorts and high heels (although I've come to realize that's poor theology since Mary wasn't a prostitute). Preaching my first Easter sermon at a sunrise service on internship. That's about it. Christmas was all about the Christmas Eve service, but Easter was about....chocolate eggs.

My mom used to hide several hundred of these little chocolate eggs around the house every year. We'd find most of them, but there were always a few she would find months later. She would also, I've heard, make Easter a big deal for my nephews. Easter egg hunts, Easter baskets. But I wasn't there. I was there when she hid chocolate eggs for my brother and me all during our teenage years. She kept saying she was going to quit, but we wouldn't let her. I searched for little chocolate eggs long into my twenties.

Yes, that's what I remember about Easter. Not the chocolate. But my mom.

Dances and Dresses

My mom is the one on the left

My mother didn't think she was very beautiful. She would say that her younger sister Margaret was the pretty one. Family members said she was shy in high school, and didn't date very much.

But then I found a number of photographs like this one, of my mother in fancy dresses going to dances. This was at the Peony Park Ballroom. My mother was beautiful. And she probably went to more dances than I did. I went to one dance in high school, Homecoming my junior year.

I'm starting to catch up with her. Frank and I have gone to the Submarine Birthday Ball for the past four years. The first year wasn't any fun. Frank told me about it that week. I needed a dress. I don't like to shop, and I especially don't like to shop for expensive dresses that don't look very good on me. On Friday, the day of the ball, I finally found a halfway decent dress at JCPenney. It was cocktail length, which I've since found out isn't as good as a long dress for a military ball. But it worked. For three years. (I like to get my money's worth, just like my mom.)

This year I started looking for a dress early. I looked online, my favorite way to shop. (You can find anything online, even a husband!) My online dress shopping corresponded with signing up on Pinterest, so the dresses I "tried on" are saved on my "Dress board."  I never thought I would find a dress online that worked. I wanted to see what was available. But it turns out that I found a beautiful plum dress with sequined sleeves that looked like it might work for me. I ordered it, it arrived several days later, I tried it on, and it fit! I had to get it hemmed, but it will be perfect for the ball on April 20.

I wonder if I'm like my mom? I wonder if I don't think I'm very beautiful, when in fact, I am.

Scrapbooking Online

Photographs. Stories. About my mom. About me. About Frank. About stuff I've experienced. About God. About my friends. There are so many stories that I want to tell. So many photographs that touch my heart. I have boxes of photographs from my mom, and I wish I knew what she was thinking and feeling when they were taken. I wish I knew what she remembered about them.

I don't like fru-fru things, lots of embellishments or layers or fancy paper. I like simple things. Pictures. And simple text. One or two fonts. White or black backgrounds. I don't want to spend hours figuring out what paper to use or how to position the photographs on the page. I want to plunk it down and tell the story. It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be told.

So I'm going to scrapbook online. Choose a photograph and tell the story. Maybe somebody will want to read my posts. Maybe not. Some of my favorite blogs are those where people share the details of their lives. So this blog will share the details of my life.

This is a picture of my mom as a little girl. I love it. I love her.

Saying Thank You

Do you think we could change the world if hundreds, thousands of us started to say thank you more often?

Mary Kay Ash, founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, had a personal philosophy that she taught her sales reps. She sent out three handwritten thank you notes every night before bed.

Not only did this allow her to express gratitude to the people she met and did business with, but it helped her to maintain a positive attitude all day long as she sought out people to say thank you to.

Oprah Winfrey talks about keeping a gratitude journal, where you write down five things you're grateful for every day. What if, instead of writing them in a journal, you sent them in a card. That would improve not only your life, but also the lives of the people who receive them.

Too hard, you say? You don't have enough time to write three handwritten cards a day? How about just two? Heck, how about just one? And what if there was a way you could send out one handwritten note in five minutes? Would you do it? What difference do you think it would make in your life?

Can you find one person a day to thank? How about the waitress who served you lunch? Or your neighbor for shoveling your walk? How about your spouse for taking out the trash or washing the dishes or cooking a fine meal or just for being your spouse? What about your child or your sister or your pastor or your teacher? What about thanking the person who made the biggest difference in your life?

Lately I've been having fun thanking people I don't know personally. A pastor/writer whose resources I'm using right now. The hosts of a radio show. Someone whose website I benefited from. And some people I don't know all that well, like the new activities director at my mom's assisted living facility.

My next project is to thank people whom I don't particularly like right now. It will do me good to think about something I can thank them for. And then I want to thank the people who have made a profound impact on my life.

Who would you like to thank?

Loving the Questions

Do you have questions about God? About the Bible? Do you sometimes struggle with concepts such as sin and hell? Do you wonder at times how you’re supposed to live as a Christian? Do you wish you could sit down with Jesus for an hour one evening and ask all the questions you have?

You’re not alone. Jacob wrestled all night with a man (an angel? God himself?) and afterward the man said to Jacob, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.” Jacob physically wrestled with the man, but it’s a great image for the way we sometimes struggle mentally and emotionally with God.

The whole book of Job is about Job asking why bad things happened to him. Job did have a sit down with God, and God’s answer? “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the world?” In other words, there are some things we just won’t know because we’re not God.

Paul said, “For we know only in part…now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.”

If we’re not going to know everything fully here on earth, what’s the point of asking? Well, the point is the asking. The struggle, the questioning, the seeking is the point. Rainer Maria Rilke said in his Letters to a Young Poet:

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves...do not seek the answers which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

In January, I’m going to preach a sermon series on the Questions of the Faith, questions about sin and hell and salvation. I do it with fear and trembling, first of all because people often expect pastors to have all the answers, and I don’t. I’ve been waiting for years to preach a sermon on heaven and hell, because I’m waiting until I have it all figured out. I don’t yet. So I’m not going to give you the answers, we’re going to live the questions together.

And the second reason I do this with fear and trembling is because many people think they have to agree with their pastor about everything. And you won’t. I can guarantee it. You might think that because I’ve studied theology and the Bible for three years in seminary, I should have all the answers. But if you read many of the Biblical commentaries, you’ll realize that very educated and wise people often reach different conclusions.

So I invite you to join me on the journey of asking our difficult faith questions, and allowing the Holy Spirit to lead us all. What are your biggest questions of faith?

Quotecard

Mondays

My friend Mark wrote on Facebook, "I like Mondays. TGIM!"

I agree. I love Mondays.

I know for Christians, Sunday is supposed to be the beginning of the week. It's not for me. It's the end. The culmination. The crescendo of my week.

Monday is the beginning.

I know many pastors take Monday off. It makes sense. After an exhausting day, it helps to have a day of rest. And since most of the time I'm not fully prepared for worship until right before it happens (and sometimes after it happens), you'd think I'd prefer my sabbath to be the day I'm not thinking about what's ahead.

But I love working on Mondays. Of course, I start slowly. I wake up when my body tells me to. I drink coffee and read in bed for a while. Then I straighten the house (it's usually a mess from the weekend). And I go through the piles on my desk.

And I start thinking about the week to come. The scripture and the sermon. They hymns and prayers for worship. Sunday school. Pastoral care visits and meetings and nursing home services. I can think and dream and plan and brainstorm.

One of my favorite characters, Anne Shirley, from Anne of Green Gables, says, "Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?"

That's how I see Mondays:  a new week, fresh and clean and full of possibilities, with no mistakes in it yet.