All is calm. Too bad.

For nearly nine years, we've kept an eye on a creative neighbor who had been forever embellishing his front yard in dramatic ways with unusual materials. Large, flat slabs of stone standing upright like thin grave markers. Narrow paths of rock and wood chips with pumpkin vines trailing into the street. Seasonal inflatables - the big, garish ones. Tall totem poles of pumpkins and piles of gourds accented by purple flowers. A dozen plaster pillars topped with silver Christmas trees glowing with eerie green light. 


Last fall he created a tremendous mountain of dirt, covered it with black tarp, put an enormous spider at the peak and peppered the whole thing with scarecrows and carved pumpkins. I anticipated his Christmas display with growing impatience and then disappointment. The scarecrows and past-their-prime pumpkins were buried under the snow but the trees and lights of his (un)usual holiday display never appeared. 

One week this summer, a “for sale” sign popped up amid the visual clutter. I expected to see a dozen more sale signs - perhaps a statement on our sagging economy, but the house was really for sale and sold quickly. The mountain of dirt and corresponding hole in the back yard remain untouched, but the artist has gone. 


Some folks are probably relieved - the house is curiously dark and quiet with not even a single blinking Christmas light.  But I miss that guy. Every neighborhood can use a quirky neighbor.  I'm thinking about applying for the job.   

Sick day ... or Advent?

I'm working from home while the one with a high fever takes a rare daytime nap on the couch. When my husband went off to his meeting this morning, I grumpily rearranged my schedule, called in favors and complained about drawing the short straw. Since then I've cuddled in front of the television, made and eaten the chicken noodle soup that didn't appeal to my patient, cleaned a toilet, canceled piano lessons and swept up the tumbleweed of dog hair I spotted from our perch on the couch. I've briefly considered rearranging the furniture to make way for a Christmas tree and read through the scripture lessons for Sunday hoping to get a head start on a sermon. Because unloading the dishwasher would be too noisy, I am pondering the quirky John the Baptist while my sick child snoozes on.

Guess it wasn't the short straw - this unexpected time of waiting and preparation. In the whirlwind that engulfs the holidays, I hope you too will surprised by moments of peace.

Taking Turns

I'm normally squeamish about posting my sermons, but since several folks asked, here's an excerpt from All Saints' Sunday. Thus concludes my little run of blogs on death and dying.

The congregation I serve is one of sixty congregations from our synod that partner with Lutheran churches in the Iringa area of Tanzania. Along with a few folks from Salem, I had the privilege of visiting our partners in the village of Magome in 2010 and hope to go again in the summer of 2012.

This weekend I attended a festival celebrating these life-giving global partnerships that included worship, workshops, and updates shared by two pastors visiting from Tanzania. One of the workshops highlighted some of the cultural differences between Americans and Tanzanians – helpful information to have when traveling to a part of the world that is very different from our own. It was led by Pastor Gaville, a pastor of the large Lutheran Cathedral in Iringa.

Pastor Gaville talked about why women and men sit separately in church, how villagers might respond to seeing a person with light skin for the first time, and why it’s important to close the door of a bathroom when the room is not occupied. We chuckled at some of our mutual missteps and misunderstandings.

But everyone in the room really laughed when Pastor Gaville talked about our very different understandings of time. Those who had visited Tanzania had likely experienced the difference between Tanzania time and American time. For example, 10 o’clock worship might actually begin more than an hour later.

Pastor Gaville looked at his watch and shook his head, “American time moves more quickly than Tanzania time,” he lamented. Although our friends in faraway places may have watches and cell phones, he explained, they refuse to let these gadgets control them.

When traveling by foot from one town to another for an appointment, Pastor Gaville said that he might leave his home fully intending to be on time. However, if he runs into friends or relatives on the way, it would be wrong to rush a conversation with them because of an appointment elsewhere. In Tanzania, a higher value is placed on relationships than punctuality - it is better to be late than rude to a friend or neighbor.

On the way to an appointment, intending to be on time, he explained that it would not be uncommon to be interrupted by a funeral procession. Slow-moving mourners carrying a casket could block the road for hours. It would be disrespectful to hurry them along or to rush past in order to be on time.

You've probably had this experience as well. As you make your way to home or work or an appointment, a slow-moving procession of cars making its way to the cemetery stops your progress. You wait as the hearse and the following cars pass, sometimes curious about the person who has died and the family and friends that trickle past. Sometimes, you wait, impatient to be on your way, inconvenienced by death.

In Tanzania, when your travels are interrupted by a funeral procession, Pastor Gaville told us that there was only one thing to do. You take your turn carrying the casket. Whether you knew the person or not, you share the burden of that death upon your shoulders, walking alongside the mourners as if they were your own family. You take your turn carrying the casket.

This is what we do this morning on All Saints’ Sunday as we remember those who have died this past year. We come alongside those who mourn and we help to carry the casket of those who have died because these saints are members of own family. We are fellow members of the body of Christ.

Some of you may remember LouCille Newcomb. She’d be the last to admit it but she was an extraordinary woman. At the beginning of January, we celebrated Lou’s life with a funeral here at Salem. The next day we traveled an hour away to Rush City where she was to be buried. I thought there might be a few friends and family from Rush City at the cemetery – folks who hadn’t been able to get down here for the funeral because of the snowy weather– but it was just LouCille’s two surviving children, a granddaughter, the funeral director and me. The funeral director backed the hearse as close as he could to the gravesite but there was still a lot of icy, uneven ground between the two. “Okay,” he said, pointing from the hearse to the open grave, “we just have to move the casket over there.” I looked around to see who he meant by “we,” thinking there must be a few strong cemetery workers behind me ready to help. Or even one strong cemetery worker. But by “we”, the funeral director meant the five of us. By “we”, he meant me. So I grabbed tight to a handle on that casket and helped to carry it and its precious contents to their final resting place.

I did this not because I was the pastor, not because LouCille was a close personal friend or relative, but I did it because it needed to be done – and because LouCille was a saint, a saint I was lucky to encounter on life’s road.

We slow down to give thanks for LouCille and an unbearably long list of others this morning -- the ones we knew well and the ones whose names are unfamiliar, those from this congregation and those whose names and memories you carry in your hearts.

Our text this morning from the Revelation to John indicates that, at the end of time, we will be gathered together with all the saints, those who have gone before us, those who stand next to us, those who have come after us, from every tribe and every nation. (I know now that our brothers and sisters from Tanzanian might be a little late.) Most of these saints gathered around the throne of the Lamb will be unknown to us. But they will all be known and precious to God.

Today we have an opportunity carry the casket of our saints. To bear one another’s grief as if it were our own. To laugh and to celebrate and to mourn. As we read the names of those who have died in the past year, we anticipate that great day when we will be reunited with them -- for just as surely as we are joined with Christ in death, we are joined with Christ in resurrection and new life. Thanks be to God!

I was here! (God was too.)

A new bridge is being constructed alongside the old one we travel daily - connecting us to work and school on the other side of the Mississippi River. For months the slow-moving, single lane of traffic has given us a good view of the construction being done both on and below the bridge.

Unfortunately, just as soon as the mammoth section of the new bridge was completed on the north end, the top third was covered with a giant swath of bright yellow graffiti. Someone was willing to risk life and limb, a misdemeanor and hefty fine to leave an impression on those headed toward downtown.

At the Bible camp where I worked years ago, the frames of the bunk beds were sanded down and repainted every fall. Over the course of each summer, campers would use whatever they could find to carve their names into the wood - letting the world know they had been there, had hiked those trails, worshiped at that campfire, slept in that bed. Our caretaker hated this chore, grumbling about the life of crime he imagined each child would no doubt lead. I secretly cherished each name and every story.

The desire to be noticed and known, to be remembered, to leave some kind of mark on this world is something we all share. It's one of the things we celebrate tomorrow on All Saints' Sunday. Memories, hymns, prayers, the small flame of a candle, a taste of bread and sip of wine - these things connect us to those who have gone before us, those who stand beside us, and those yet to come. A great cloud of witnesses, experiencing and sharing God's love and grace.

Though our names are not carved into the pews (I hope), we remember and honor one another's stories and give thanks to God for loving us from birth to death and beyond.

Who are you remembering this year?

Short Cut to Community

When I crave a new perspective on things, or even fresh insight into a vexing scripture passage, I will get out of my office to talk with people - at the local McDonald's, waiting to pick up the kids at school, at a coffee shop. And ... although it's risky... occasionally I will get my hair cut by someone new. While the stylist attempts to tame my unruly hair, I steer the conversation away from myself and my work to current events, the dilemmas working mothers face, or my theological troubles.

Recently, it was the anniversary of 9/11 and that Sunday's appointed gospel lesson on extravagant forgiveness that had me headed out of my office to the salon. The stylist was in ninth grade ten years ago when she and her classmates learned of the attacks on the World Trade Center. Teachers and students huddled together in stunned silence around televisions and computers, anxious about the breaking news and what it might mean for them.

The last period of her day was an art class in a basement studio. The art teacher was surprised when the class was reluctant to work on their projects and grew concerned about the serious expressions and even tears on the faces of the students. "Did something happen?" the teacher asked. Even though the attacks had occurred hours earlier, she had not heard the news. Class was canceled and the students joined hands as she saw the images of destruction for the first time on a television she pulled from the closet.

"Wait a minute. None of the other teachers sought her out to share the news?" I asked, clumps of hair falling onto my lap. "She didn't eat lunch with anyone? Run up to the office during the day? Bump into the custodian in the bathroom?" I was troubled by the isolation of this art teacher in a school full of mourning teenagers and distraught teachers. "She was always a little different," came the explanation. (This might also be true of pastors who go to hair salons for help with their sermons?)

For obvious reasons - including some really poor haircuts - I can't resort to this strategy often, but I appreciated this young woman's insights about our deep need for communities of care in a world where our differences can isolate us from our neighbors. Our conversation highlighted my own need to reach beyond the safe circles of people I know to learn from others.

I am so grateful to be part of a faith community in which we wrestle to love, to forgive, to serve. Together we help create the kind of hope-filled world God intends for all. Where do find places and people of encouragement and hope?

Thanks, Popcorn!

Our daughter discovered one of her guinea pigs dead in his cage this afternoon - a big bummer during an already emotional sliver of time between summer and sixth grade. Over the years we have loved and lost many hamsters, sometimes burying them behind the garage with prayers and tears, sometimes whisking them out of the house and into the garbage cart in a brown paper bag. One escape artist is living happily - we tell ourselves - somewhere in the walls of our house. This was different.

Popcorn vacationing at a friend's house

The guinea pig was a much-anticipated birthday gift several summers ago - a homemade coupon picturing a cartoon guinea pig was exchanged for the real thing, chosen with great care. The nocturnal, wheel-spinning hamsters paled in comparison to the lumbering, chattering, goofy, basil-loving poop factory that was Popcorn.

We sat together at the end of the sidewalk and cried, sharing stories about Popcorn and all those pets that had gone before. With geese flying overhead, we lamented the end of summer, the reality of death, our short-comings as pet owners, mosquitoes and the unrelenting passage of time. Between sobs, we laughed - and in that anxious sliver of time between summer and sixth grade - I was grateful for both.

Thanks, Popcorn, for bringing out something good in us.

All work and no play

Over the last 2+ years, I've exchanged daily greetings with the neighbor across the street from church. Our short conversations are often shouted from the sidewalk on my side to his open garage on the other where he builds canoes - one after another. Normally, he teases me about the odd hours I spend at church and I rib him about the obscene amount of time one man can spend in his garage. When I'm leaving the office after dark, he'll yell across to ask if I'd like to borrow a sleeping bag. He often comes home between appointments as an insurance agent and works on the canoe in his suit and tie - even for just a few minutes. When I comment about whether it's wise to purchase insurance products from a guy with sawdust on his shoes, he laughs - then shows up again a few hours later. He doesn't neglect his work but he will do almost anything to make his true passion a priority.

Today as I was leaving church to go home, I admired the neighbor's craftsmanship from afar. For months he's been building an extra-long canoe out of a 35-year old redwood picnic table his mother wanted to discard. "It's done!" he crowed, "Come over and take a look!" The finished product was so beautiful, I couldn't take my eyes or my hands off of the smooth, gleaming redwood. My neighbor, too, was beaming and brimming with plans for a first voyage. What fun!

Who can argue with a strong work ethic? I love my job and work hard at it - sometimes this demands long, odd hours. What I learn from my neighbor is to foster an equally strong play ethic - to make more room in my life for the kinds of people and things that feed and sustain a sense of joy and fun. Time I would carefully guard and treasure. Things I'd run home for at lunchtime.

What's your true passion? Even if you are lucky enough to love your work, what other things bring you life and joy?