let it be

This year, for the week I turned 32, I decided to head for the hills.  I had booked four nights at the Hermitage at St. Mary's Sewanee.  I was feeling emotionally drained, tense, anxious, not eating much, and had suffered some significant personal stresses lately.  I left the number for the center with Jeff, kissed my kids good-bye, asked a neighbor to feed the chickens, packed some clothes and books, turned off my phone, and retreated into the silence.  I was both excited and terrified.  Would my mind be too loud?  What if I got lonesome?  Wouldn't I get bored?

I made the 1.5 hour drive, threw down my bags, observed a breathtaking misty sunset over the bluff, and set off to find something to eat.  I turned the wrong way out of the center and drove to Alabama before turning around and coming back.  Life with no phones - how did we survive?

As I was scaling back up the mountain, "Let It Be" seeped into my ears from the stereo.  "When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me . . . there will be an answer:  let it be."

Let it be.

I scampered into a little burger joint in Sewanee just before the kitchen closed.  I ordered a cheeseburger and a beer.  I finally felt hungry - for the first time in months.  I drove back to the Hermitage and drank some wine and drifted off.  I had troubling dreams.  But I did sleep for hours and hours.

I don't remember much about the next day.  I did some hiking and a lot of reading.  I did my prayers in the morning.  After I made a big steak and Brussels sprouts for dinner, I sat down in a chair and cried and cried.  There is someone I miss cooking for, and I don't think I will ever cook for this person again.  Food is love for me.  Making it and sharing it.  Knowing just how someone likes things.  Kneading the dough that will rise into the bread that will become the French toast.  Stirring the milk that will be pressed into the paneer that will get mixed with spinach and yogurt.  Perhaps I have been avoiding eating because it reminds me of these meals that will go unshared?

I slept with the windows open that night; that's a tradition I've been keeping on the night before my birthday for at least 20 years.

On my birthday, I went into town and read for awhile after I hiked some of the backtrails on campus.  I went to evening prayers at St. Mary Convent, and met a community of women who immediately became special soul friends.  Also one man (a priest), who is dedicated to their Benedictine way of life, but lives nearby with his wife.  A huge storm blew up during prayers.  The sky had that greenish cast that all Kansas schoolchildren fear, because it means one thing:  tornado.  The poor little convent dog, Penny, cowered under the kneelers.  I waited out the storm and walked home.

The next morning the air was fresh and the ground was spongy.  My prayers had a theme of peacemaking and reconciliation.  Ouch.  It can't be forced, can it?  One of the appointed readings was 2 Corinthians 5:18-19:  "All this is from God, who reconciled himself to us through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people's sins against them.  And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."

All day long I pondered:  how does it all fit together?  Peacemaking, forgiving, forgiveness, reconciliation?  Is there an order to it?  How do I know that I have forgiven someone?   I went to the noon office, and - surprise - 2 Corinthians 5:18-19 was the reading from the Office.  Am I getting the message?

I went into town to read at the coffee shop again.  Over the speaker:  "There will be an answer:  let it be."  Ah.  Ask forgiveness, and there will be an answer.  Let it be.

That afternoon, I went to hike the Perimeter Trail around the edge of the Sewanee University property.  I got about five miles in and realized I had completely lost the trail.  The daylight was fading.  No phone, no map, no compass, no flashlight, no water.  Why did I think this wasn't going to be a big deal!?  It wasn't too cold, and I wasn't too panicky - yet.  I found a gravel road that I was sure must lead somewhere.  Followed it about a mile.  Then, I was rescued by an Episcopal priest and her husband, out for an evening jog.  They were the first people I had seen in miles.  I realized that I don't have time to waste in asking forgiveness.  I got home, showered, got the feeling back into my hands, went into town, and tore into a huge order of fish and chips.

The next day, my last day, I went for morning Eucharist at the convent and shared spiritual conversation with the sisters (and father) over breakfast.  Sister Hannah gave me the literature about becoming an oblate.  Either they felt the same thing I did, or they just really need some more oblates.  Either way, the place already feels like home.

As I drove home that morning, I felt fresh and alive.  It felt as if it had been winter in my soul when I left, and that spring had come into my heart in those few days.  I did get lonesome, and bored, and my mind was too loud.  But I think that was the point.  Only once I learned to endure through those sensations, did I receive any insights.

of water and the spirit (on baptism day)

Today is my baby girl's baptism.  People at church have been asking me essentially since the day she was born when we were going to have her baptized.  I never felt any real rush.  See, my parents never had my brother, or my sister, or myself, baptized as babies.  Instead, we waited until we could make a profession of faith on our own (at about twelve for each of us).  In our United Methodist Church, this is totally acceptable. 

I get a fair amount of people who call me in my pastoral office, wanting me to baptize their children immediately.  The youngest child I ever was called about was two weeks old.  I was impressed that the mother felt like she could have an event like a baptism - I don't think I left my bedroom for two weeks after the baby was born, much less the house!

At the heart of this urgency is a misunderstanding of baptism, I think.  See, I'm not having my baby baptized as some kind of insurance of salvation.  That is, I don't think that without baptism God's grace doesn't rest on her.  Instead I see a twofold symbolism in the water that will be dribbled down her forehead this morning:  the recognition that God's grace has been enveloping and enfolding her since the moment she came earthside; and the promise that we will raise her within a family of faith, with the baptism as the inititation into that family.

I don't believe that the unbaptized are destined for damnation.  First of all (whole other post), I can't say with certainty that there is a hell, what it is like, or who you might find there.  Secondly, baptism isn't some kind of magic that changes the person that you are.  Before baptism and after it, we continue to be people who try and fail.  And get a new chance.  And try harder and fail better. 

But the difference is that you are a person who tries and fails and gets new chances within a community of faith that is all oriented in the same direction (more or less).  You have people who have your back.  You have people who show you God's face of mercy and love and accountability over and over.  And you have people who can remind you that God's grace extends outward and over all of us - every part of us - all the time.  Whether we realize it or not. 

This is why the age of your baptism is immaterial.  Does a seventy-year-old understand the mystery of this sacrament any more than a seven-month-old?  The manner is also inconsenquential.  Wanna be dipped?  We can do that (we just have to go to a river or lake or a Baptist or Disciples church).  Wanna be dripped upon?  We can do that to, out of lovely little ornamental fonts.  The water is just a sign.  It's a powerful sign, one that participates in a reality greater than itself, but it's still just a sign. 

So today, we celebrate God's grace toward all of us, and the fact that our baby will be beloved and raised in faith by this congregation, and many others, in her life.  She is blessed, we are blessed, and God's grace abounds.

the sacred and the mundane

I haven't had a dishwasher in almost three years.  I love to cook, and we eat at home frequently.  My husband doesn't do dishes.  Thus, I spend a lot of time washing dishes. 

I have a secret.  Shhh, don't tell anyone . . .

I like washing the dishes. 

There is just something about pulling on my rubber gloves, getting the dishrag soapy, and diving in that makes my soul feel peaceful.  The immediacy of the results (I can see the clean dishes stacking up so quickly!) helps me feel like I'm really accomplishing something.  And the fact that I don't have to use my higher brain to do it frees me up for a little daydreaming.  Since we've been without a dishwasher, we've always had a window above the sink.  So I get to spend a little time gazing into middle distance. 

As I was washing some things last night, my mind drifted back to a great book.  I spent some time in a hard winter in 2005 reading this with the fabulous Prof. Bender:

Eliade helped me understand washing the dishes as a sacrament.  Not a capital S sacrament, like baptism or communion, but the same concept carries.  "By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding milieu."*  When I pray over the bread and cup, "Let them be for us the body and blood of Christ, that we may be for the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood,"** I am asking God to help me recognize the dual nature of what appears before me.  Bread and grape juice = profane.  Body and blood = sacred.  At the same time!

And so washing the dishes is my daily sacrament.  It is such a profane, mundane act.  But it is more than what it appears.  It transports me to a different place in my mind, and allows me to unlock thoughts that may remain hidden otherwise.  I participate in a double reality when I was the dishes.  And I don't think I ever want a dishwasher.

*Eliade, Mircea.  The Sacred and the Profane.  New York:  Harcourt, 1957.  P. 12.
** The United Methodist Book of Worship, p. 38.