Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi

My mother in law arrives this afternoon. This means that, after doing VBS this morning I have only two more hours to whip this house into some semblance of order. If you've ever been in my house, you know that "semblance" is a very, very vague concept around here and "order", well--let's just not even go there.

My husband tried to reassure me last night. He said his home growing up was far from spotless. I reposited that this was because he was one of ten children and I didn't have that excuse. He hypothisized that being a working mother of two was perhaps equivalent to being a stay at home mother of ten. Only a Dad would say such a thing.

The thing is that, working mom or not, I am just not hard wired for tidiness. I'm not lazy, but my house/apartment/dorm room has always been a combination of disaster area and public health hazzard. I don't care what Tom Cruise says, if there were a drug I could take to make this go away, I would gladly take it.

When we visited my sister in Mobile, my kids expressed the desire to move to her house. "Everything here is clean and smooth!" said my five year old daughter. As opposed to our place, I suppose.

"Use the Force, Luke" Well, I'll try. At least maybe I can find the clean sheets before the plane touches down.

Funniest vacation moment #3

The kids stayed with Mom on their own for a few days so I could attend a pastor-theologian conference in Santa Fe. One night after lectures, etc. a bunch of us headed out to a bar down the road aways. They had a really good blues band and quite an eclectic clientele. We'd each had a few drinks when a really, really eclectic looking guy came in wearing a colorful cowboy jacket covered with fringe and sequins. Definetly not something that wanders into your average mainline church on your average Sunday. As we pastors-who-don't-get-out-often-enough are trying to figure our where to put this guy in our mental file-o-fax, Jeff the California Lutheran peers over his beer mug and says, "The guy's name is Joseph and he's got eleven big brothers who are about to come in here and kick his ass."

Well, it seemed mighty funny at the time.

Vacation Observations

Things there are more of in Pensacola than in Portland:

George Bush bumper stickers
Gulf Shrimp
Sweet Tea
Women in full make-up
People who call me "ma'am"
American Flags
Sun rooms
Fried Mullet
Country music stations
Baptist churches
Sunny days
white sand beaches
Mosquitos
Men in uniform
Live oaks
Flip-flops
Air conditioners
Christian book stores

funniest vacation moment #2

Visits to my parents' church are some of the few opportunities I get to pew sit. This is the church where I was confirmed at age twelve, where I was an officer in the high school youth group many moons ago. My old pastor from back in the day retired about seven years ago. His successor has led the church in a more evangelical direction--enough so that if I were to relocate here as a layperson, I might well choose to go somewhere else. Today he preached a Promise Keepers-inspired sermon about the importance of christian fatherhood. I allowed my mind to wander just a tad, checking out how old my former Sunday school teachers look these days, admiring the new pipe organ. The preacher began to drive home his main point: fathers have a sacred responsibility to provide their children an example of a godly life. At that instant I glanced over at my own father----who was providing me a godly example by sleeping soundly through the whole thing.

funniest vacation moment #1

So we are standing on the river walk looking out over the main square in the French Quarter. My son is very impressed by the huge statue of a man on horseback that has pride of place in the center of the plaza.

"Who do you think that could be?" I ask him.

"Abraham Lincoln?" he guesses.

"In New Orleans? I don't think so, sweetheart."

"I'll give you a hint," says his aunt. "This place is called Jackson Square. Now do can you guess?"

"Jackson Pollock?" he asks.

(Brief interlude while my sister and I help each other up off the ground where we have collapsed in hysterics.)

"Actually, it's Andrew Jackson." I tell him.

"Oh."

And play some more

My uncle once told me our family was descended from royalty. He did not specify which branch.

Never in my life have I watched an episode of Survivor.

High school was eventful. I went to three different high schools in three different countries.

I'll never forget my grandparents.

I once met a guy who used to date Madonna before she got famous.

Once in a bar in Kosovo I told elephant jokes to some cute Albanian guys.

By noon I'm usually hungry.

Last night my cat sat at the foot of the bed an whined until I let her out.

If only I had a dishwasher.

Next time I go to church I get to sit in a pew and doodle on my bulletin.

When I turn my head left I see cabinets full of snack food and stale cereal.

When I turn my head right I see a sinkful of unwashed dishes. (See "If only I had" above)

You know I'm lying when I say I'm going to start getting more excersize.

Everyday I think about my relatives in far places.

By this time next year I will probably have a different job.

I have a hard time understanding why anyone thinks George Bush is a good guy.

You know I like you when I tell you the penguin joke.

If I won an award, the first person I would thank would be my family.

My ideal breakfast is lox and bagels.

Song I love but don't have: Home By Another Way by James Taylor

If you visit my home town I suggest you get a rail pass. I've lived so many places I'd have a hard time picking just one.

Why won't anyone fix the healthcare coverage debacle in this country?

If you spend the night with us you will have to wait in line for the bathroom.

I'd stop my wedding to bitch slap a truly annoying wedding photographer.

The world could do without lima beans.

I'd rather lick the belly of a cockroach than the belly of a republican

Paper clips are more useful than most committee meetings.

And by the way, have you seen my keys?

Last time I was drunk was in the company of lots of other pastors.

And with that, folks, I leave for vacation! Maybe some remote blogging as well.

Okay, I'll play

Book meme:

How many books do you own? Lots and lots. Too scary to contemplate counting.

Last book bought: The Kingfisher Dinosaur Dictionary. Okay, this wasn't for me. It was the last Scholastic Book Order of the school year.

Last book read: Barbara Rossing, The Rapture Exposed

Books that mean a lot: The whole Little House series, Chaim Potok, Madeline L'Engle, mystery novels--especially ones starring clergywoman slueths, MFK Fisher, other narrative style cookbooks, Jane Austen, Susan Howatch

Tag Five People: Okay, y'all are it.

What magazines do you read regularly: Christian Century, Books and Culture, Theology Today, whatever is on the table in the waiting room at the pediatrician's office.

Aren't we missing something??

Thanks to Sarah Dylan Breuer for pointing us to this interesting quiz:
http://quizfarm.com/test.php?q_id=44116 What theologian are you?

I came out as Jurgen Moltmann, which is fine with me. However, I couldn't help but notice that there did not appear to be any female theologians among the possible results. What's up with that? It appears, from the quiz farm home page, that anyone can invent a quiz on any topic. (I.e. "What kind of gay man are you?" I have not taken this one yet, but I'm interested to learn my results.) Could we come up with one for girl theologians?? I don't have much time in the next few days. I have to wind up my kids' school year, finish an academic paper and pack for a trip to South Alabama/NW Florida to visit family. But maybe some of you are on vacation already and could work on this? Who shall we include? Hildegaard of Bingen? Theresa of Avilla? Catherine of Siena? Please--share your ideas . . .

Pomp and Circumstance

We graduate from pre-school this week. Really. Stick a fork in us, we are done. Next fall Little Princess will head off to kindergarten with her second grader brother.

Both my kids went through the little co-op preschool that rents the basement of our church. Mostly this has been wonderful, though there were some dicey moments when there were Landlord/Tenant issues and I had a foot in both camps. In a way it is providential that the end of my kids' preschool years and the end of my time at this church will come out roughly even. But it means that, in one fell swoop, I'm losing both of my primary communities. That is making me feel anxious and fearful.

This happened once before. I did an interim stint at a church which ended six weeks before my first child was born. This was great in that I didn't have to decide whether to quit work or not--I was unemployed already. We did decide that the ride would be smoother if I didn't seek a new call right away. So there I was, a new Mom. Separation ethics prevented me from going back to the church I'd just left. We needed the extra income from me doing pulpit supply, so we couldn't take shelter in a temporary church home until I took another call. My husband was at work all day. My clergy woman friends were at work even more than that. We did have a few non-churchy friends, but most of them were childless and baffled by our new lack of spontenaity and late-night stamina. It was really pretty awful. "My God," I thought, "How do people live like this?" It gave me a new perspective on church. Christ-centered community is really THE thing the church has to offer in our atomized, disconnected culture.

So I am facing graduation day with some fear and trembling. I doh't like working without a net. We'll see what happens.

up a creek

I'm just back from a weekend at "Mom and Me" Camp with my 7 year old. Beautiful weather on the Oregon Coast, lots of fun camp stuff. If you've been doing camp for 30+ years, you forget how truely amazing it all seems to first and second graders experiencing it for the first time.

On Saturday afternoon we headed to the ye olde boathouse for a little R&R on the lake. My son raced over to a green canoe and began to jump up and down, speaking in tongues. I'm not an expert canoer by any means, but I know one end of the paddle from the other. I figured there was no actual danger in the two of us embarking on a brief cruise. We set off. The breeze was at our backs, we had no particular destination in mind so it did not matter than the kid's random, enthusiastic paddling was causing us to take a zig-zag course across the water. We saw birds, water bugs, fish, etc. Lovely stuff.

After twenty minutes or so, though, we were ready to head in. Now the wind was against us--and it had picked up. We had a goal in mind: the dock. Suddenly it was important that the kid follow my instructions on wielding his little paddle. But no. Twenty minutes on the open water and he considered himself an Olympic canoer. He had theories and opinons. We drifted farther and farther off course. We hit a partially submergerd tree. Finally I screeched at him to PUT HIS PADDLE DOWN AND SIT STILL. Sulking, he did. Five minutes later we pulled up to the dock. The lifeguard remarked, "I was thinking I was going to have to come out in the camp boat and get you!"

"Yeah," replies kiddo. "My Mom's not a very good rower."

After collapsing onto my bunk that night I reflected that perhaps this little excursion could teach me something about my spiritual life right at this juncture. I seem to have hit a patch of choppy water, yet I'm still up front paddling wildly--full of theories and opinions on how to get back to shore. Maybe at this point I'm meant to pull my paddle out of the water for a bit and let God chart the course.

What do you think? Does God sometimes hand us the paddle and say, "See where you can go with this . . ." And other times screech, "Put that paddle down and sit still for crying out loud!" And how do you know which instructions you're getting at any given point?

How to choose a seminary

There is an article in the current Christian Century listing the top reasons people pick the seminaries they pick. It's an interesting list. I'm glad to hear that so many people choose seminaries for such profound reasons. But for anyone considering seminary who might wonder if they are capable of such nobility, I offer my own list based on the system I used, with mixed results, exactly twenty years ago.

1. Eliminate the seminary your Mom wants you to attend. You are twenty-one years old and this is your life, damnit!

2. Eliminate the seminary your home church pastor urges you to consider. He only has thirty years of wise and fruitful ministry to his credit. What does he know??

3. Eliminate all seminaries which ex-boyfriends are attending or planning to attend. If you spent your college years dating your fellow religion majors, this is going to cut the list by quite a lot.

4. Barely manage to hide your disgust when two of your favorite professors suggest that, as you are already carrying significant student loan debt, you might want to focus on seminaries with healthy endowments that can offer generous financial aid packages. Those middle aged sellouts!!! How dare they suggest that something as worldy and tainted as MONEY would influence such a spiritually important decision.

5. Conisder which cities best suit your current self-image as a daring, hip seminary chick on the brink of greatness. Apply to schools in these cities. Choose the one at which a recent alum of your college is Director of Admissions and therefore knows exactly what to say to convince you that this school is the only logical next step for you.

6. Create a plausible story to tell the Committee on Preparation for Ministry: you want to attend an interdenominational seminary since you have attended a denominational college. You want to attend an urban seminary because you are interested in urban ministry. Both these things will be true, but they are entirely besides the point, really.

The seminary you attend will not be the one you probably should have chosen, but you will have a wild ride and learn a lot, though not necessarily about ministry.

Good Luck!

If I forget thee O Jerusalem

I had lunch yesterday to share woes with a couple of other micro church pastors. One of them commented that one barrier to creative thinking about renewal in these churches is their members' intense connection to THAT community in THAT spot in THAT building. The desire for growth/renewal gets all mixed up with the desire to preserve the particular congregation and their, (almost always), historic building. Instead of longing to build the body of Christ, it gets to be all about marshaling resources to save the institution and its real estate.

I agree up to a point. As my own congregation first explored options for the future, they quickly skipped over options that would mean leaving our building in favor of options that centered on staying put. So yes, their self-identity as a particular group of folks in a particular spot stymied what might have been some creative thinking about other possibilities.

But, you know, there is a deep and ancient part of our spirituality that IS about a sense of place. "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth," as the Psalmist laments. "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept when we remembered Zion." There is something true and old about finding joy in worshipping in the spot your grandparents worshipped, about bringing your own child there to be baptized, about your heart lifting when you see the place where you have met God and God has met you year after year after year. It runs counter to modern sensibilities, to be sure. It's not efficient or pragmatic or adaptive or any of those things we need to be to get along in this culture. But I'm not quite ready to hit my people up-side the head and tell them to just GET OVER IT already. I think this is part of the human spirit we don't want to dump overboard just because it weighs us down a bit.

Reality, Presbyterian style?

I don't watch much Reality TV--or much TV at all for that matter. But my sister is into it. Once when she visited I watched the final segment of The Bachelor with her. The premise of this show is that dozens of lovely single women compete to be chosen by the handsome Bachelor who proposes to one of them on the final night of the show. So I'm watching this and I'm thinking, "How degrading! How awful! How---OH. MY. GOD. ---How exactly like the call process in the Presbyterian Church. "

Now stay with me on this. The Bachelor starts off with dozens of women meeting the bachelor of the season at a large party. After this party, he narrows the group down to around a dozen ladies he'd like to know more about. This group then goes out on group dates--boating, bowling, etc. after a few of which events he further narrows the list to five or so chicks he really digs. He goes on individual dates with each of these girls, then cuts the list down to two he thinks he could have a real future with. He spends an entire weekend with each of them and then we watch breathlessly as he goes through the agonizing task of deciding which one he will pop the question to on stage the last big night.

Consider. In the official PCUSA call process, a congregation's Pastor Nominating Committee receives dossiers from dozens of pastors. They read through these and narrow their list to a dozen or so they feel have real possibility. They may send these pastors a series of questions to answer, or have a committee member give them a call to "get a feel" for how the real person compares to the person on paper. At this point, the committee will cut the list to maybe five or six serious contenders. These folks will do a phone interview, send sermon tapes, and submit references. As the excitement mounts, two or three of these candidates will fly/drive in for a whole weekend of interviews, preaching in a neutral pulpit and psuedo social events with the committee. Then, finally, the committee meets to decide to whom they will issue a call to serve as their pastor.

Coincidence? You tell me........

On the Market

Whatever my little church decides to do next one thing seems pretty clear. They can't afford to pay me for more than another couple of months. Which means ..............Yippy Skippy! I'm out in the job market again. Not that I'm totally devestaed, mind you. Even if the church's finances weren't in Toiletsville, I was beginning to feel those little stirrings that hint maybe it's time to move on. Actually several good, long-time friends and colleagues whose judgement I trust a great deal have been practically screaming this at me for months. However, things have gotten manifestly more complicated than they were the last time I was "out there" seven years ago.

1. Back them my husband was in a job he didn't mind walking away from. Now he is in a job he likes a lot and in which he is valued by the higher ups who are hinting at greater things. We need to be within a daily commute of this job--or be willing to set up two households and commute between them. Ick.

2. Seven years ago I had one child, a toddler, who didn't care where we lived. Hey, when you're a baby every day is a new adventure, right? Now I have two school-age kids with social connections that are important to them. I moved frequently as a child so I'm ultra-hyper sensetive to the impact of relocation on kids. I contemplate it only with fear and trembling.

3. I'm forty instead of 33. I'm acutely aware that I don't get as many "do-overs" at this stage of life. It seems like there is a lot more a stake this time.

Combine this with the reality that, in spite of all the social changes of the past 25 years, the call system in the Presbyterian Church still pretty much assumes a one career household willing and able to move anywhere in the country. If you are a pastor in a two career household needing to stay in a particular metro area, you are at a huge disadvantage.

So, I don't know. Maybe God has something wonderful in mind--or maybe I'll end up selling sweaters at Target. We'll just have to see.

Memorial Daze

Okay. I'm back. More or less. Spent most of the week in sort of a funk about what's up with my church. Finally, as the long weekend approached I started to lift a little. I think I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and help my folks think creatively about what comes next. I think there are a few things we could do rather than simply close in defeat and despair. The danger right now is that folks are discouraged and mad and seeking to cast blame somewhere so there is the big chance they won't pull together to look at possibilities. Some of the options I see, (cooperative venture with a larger church, closing but using assets to start fund for community ministry, use our location as base for developing a new kind of congregation) are options I've held out to them before the situation got this critical. However they are fiercely independent folks and prefered to pursue options that held out the hope of continued autonomy. Maybe now that this is truly and obviously impossible, they'll be able to be more open to these alternatives.

My parish associate and I are preaching on the Genesis lections this summer. I'm going to point out that many scholars agree that Genesis went through its final edit during the exile--during the time when the children of Israel were struggling to cope with the loss of their land and temple and everything that had given them their identity. Examining their beginnings was a way of trying to find meaning and a way forward. Maybe this can help us as we look to a very different future.

Okay--different subject. I know I'm not the most tech savy person in the universe, but I can usually figure computer things out if I apply myself. However, after repeated attempts, I can't figure out how to make the links part of this blog thing work. I think I'm following the directions correctly, but still no dice. Any advice or instructions from veteran bloggers?

So what's with the name

Pure Christian I Think is one possible interpretation of my full name. My first name means "pure", my middle name means Christian, my last name is Latin for "I think", (or so I've been told--I took German). I've always thought it was the perfect name for a sort of quirky, half Jewish Presbyterian. (The Italian last name is really an Italianization of the Jewish last name my grandmother was eager to jettison upon arrival in the US following WWII). Probably the reason I hung onto the last name after marriage--even more than wanting to make some big feminist point. My husband's last name is Becker, which means either Baker or Beeker,(as in a one of those big beer mugs), depending upon which name book you look in. Pure Christian Beer Mug has sort of a ring to it, but .............

Whiney Pastor Comes to Visit

Every so often, I run out for coffee and return to discover that Whiney Pastor has dropped by in my absence. Sometimes she even turns on my computer and starts blogging. . . . .

My little church is running out of money. We've gained members in the six years I've been there, but not quite enough members and mostly folks with limited means-- single moms, retirees, etc. Our century old building is a veritable cash vacuum; the sewers are old, the wiring is antique, there are oddly positioned stairs and landings all over the place making handicapped accessibility an astoundingly expensive prospect. The denomination keeps upping dues for participation in medical benefits. I understand they don't have much choice on this, with the cost of healthcare blazing out of control as it is, but it's still a huge burden on small churches. The upshot is that, despite the fact that we do, in my humble opinion, amazingly strong and creative ministry for a church as small as we are, we are probably facing closure in the near future.

There's more tragedy to this than injustice. The truth is that most of our creativity and energies are inward focused. Sunday School, liturgical arts, wonderful fellowship events, music. The passion for outreach and deep change that would need to be present for dramtic growth just aren't there. And we are living in times when, for tiny struggling churches, nothing but dramtic growth really helps. Modest growth, or simply replacing members who die or move away can't keep up with the bills and the cultural pressures working against you. There is a great deal of optimistic church literature out there saying that any church can transform itself if certain principles are applied--but you know, I'm just not sure that's true. I do believe in the power of the Holy Spirit--but somehow the Spirit does not make command performances.

Most of the little neighborhood churches in Portland were founded just before the rise of the automobile. The assumption was that everyone needed a church they could walk to. The error of this assumption was masked for a few decades at mid century by the great flowering of post-war church attendance. There were still enough active church goers and kids hanging around to mostly fill all the neighborhood churches and Sunday schools. And churches in good locations with a decent percentage of affluent members and the good fortune to avoid any major pastoral leadership debacles did really well. But somewhere around the late 70's folks began to realize there was a problem. Not as many folks were coming to church and the ones who were could hop in their car and go to any church they wanted. There was no compelling reason for them to go to the little church in their neighborhood with their limited programs and turn of the century buildings that were beginning to show their wear.

Maybe at this point someone should have shouted, "Hey! Strategy change, everybody! We have to rethink this whole business of trying to run a traditional church in each and every neighborhood. The world has changed, big time!"' Maybe someone did. I was too young to be paying attention, and anyway my family was busy hopping in the car every Sunday to leave our neighborhood amd drive the bigger church five miles down the road.

Instead, we started publishing these books promising every small church that it could grow if it just tried hard enough; that if they weren't growing there was something wrong with them. So now we have hundreds of tenacious, faithful folks in struggling churches feeling guilty as all get out. And of course they were not as adaptive, innovative, passionate and bold as they should have been. But you know what? Most churches aren't. Most Christians aren't. It's just that in small, urban churches this is a more immediate disaster than in larger congregations.

Can you say "Canary in the Coal Mine?"

Sad Pentecost

I spent the afternoon of Pentecost at the dissolution service for congregation in my presbytery. Everyone was putting on their bravest possible face for the occassion. We read the lections for the day. We talked about how the Holy Spirit is always on the move, always creating the church anew so that, when one particular manifestation of the church passes from the scene, we can be sure that something new and wonderful is taking shape somewhere else. We talked about how this congregation is not dead--it lives on in the places all over the world where former members live faithful lives and tell the story of Jesus to their children and grandchildren. We gave thanks for nearly one hundred years of ministry. But mostly it just sucked.

The congregation in question is like thousands of small, struggling congregations in cities all over the place--including the one I serve. These folks were not unfaithful. They were not a bunch of ridiculous church ladies sipping tea and knitting doilies for the bazzar. These folks fought the good fight: they tutored neighborhood kids, they stood up to city hall when something threatened the well-being of their community, the experiemented with new forms of worship, they shared their sanctuary with an African-American congregation--they really tried. But in the end it wasn't enough. Financial difficulties, member burnout and some serious crises in the life of their Pastor were enough to tip the ship.

For presbytery it was like an ecclessial re-enactment of the Terry Shaivo case. When do you decide there's no hope? When do you pull the plug? When do you say that to hang on is just causing more suffering?

In a moment of dark humor, another small church pastor and I tucked our bulletins from the service into our coat pockets. "We may need to know how to put together a service like this." we mused ruefully.

What a wierd Pentecost.

Pentecost Lists

One of my favorite things about Pentecost is watching the poor hapless soul who has signed up to be liturgist that day crash and burn on the list of nationalities present in Jerusalem when the fire came down from heaven. How is it that we each hear in our own language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, and Phyrgia and Pamphylia......" Even brave little engines that chug along through the Medes and the Elamites are completely undone by Phyrgia and Pamphylia. If I were a really good pastor, I would sit down with these folks before church or write the whole reading out for them phoenetically. But normally I only mention the week before that they might want to read through next week's lessons beforehand for real this time. Then I sit back and watch the fun.

Am I the meanest pastor on earth? Possibly. But here's the thing. There is something so true and holy in hearing the miracle of Pentecost proclaimed by someone who is so obviously not speaking in tongues, who's getting it all screwed up and mispronouncing everything. It's like an auditory icon. Hear that? That's what we sound like on our own. That's what happens when we wing it with our own resources. For the gospel to sound like wind and flame, we need something more.

Mother's Day Ascension

Mother's Day began for me a few minutes past mid-night when my husband woke up, ran to the bathroom and barfed up everything he'd eaten the previous day. There's a stomach flu making the rounds in Portland--no big mystery there. He was up several more times before the night was over, so by morning I was groggy, feeling guilty for being the healthy one, and also faced with the prospect of taking the kids with me to church right off, rather than going early by myself and having T. breeze in with them just in time for Sunday school.

They were not delighted. Last Sunday T. was at a trade show in Seattle, so they had to endure tagging along for my pre-church routine that day too. On my list this morning was making copies of a hymn we were singing that is not in they hymnal. Hmmm, I considered. Which is the safer bet? Cranky kids in the room with the expensive copying equipment or cranky kids temporarily left to their own devices in the fellowship hall? I chose door number two. When I returned ten minutes later my seven year old son was lobbing his space shuttle flying disc at his five year old sister. She was sobbing, he was unrepentant. I confiscated the disc and put it on top of the refrigerator in our church's little kitchen, way at the back and out of kid reach. The phone rang and I went into the next room to answer it. Wrong number. Meanwhile the scene in the kitchen had deteriorated. In my absense my son had pushed a stool up to the fridge in an attempt to liberate his flying disc toy. Instead of retrieving it, he had managed to knock it off the side of the refrigerator where it was now lodged in the quarter inch space between the fridge and the wall. He was wild with anxiety that the toy was now lost forever and it was ALL MY FAULT!!!!!!! Funny how that works.

Through diligent efforts involving a wad of masking tape on the end of a yard stick, we angled the thing out by the time the rest of the gang arrived for Sunday School. Alls well that ends well, I guess. Let's just say that I wasn't in the most centered of places spiritually when I climbed into the pulpit to proclaim the Ascension of our Lord.

The language associated with Ascension can get to be a bit much, if you ask me. It's all heavenly thrones and celestial realms and divine majesty and crowns and dominions and clouds of glory. This can get on your last nerve, especially if you happen to be having a really shitty week. This is when it is a gift of pure grace to me to remember that in German the Ascension is called Die Himmelfahrt. I'm sure this doesn't sound a bit funny if you are actually a native German speaker. But if you are a barely post-adolescent American seminarian, as I was when I first made this discovery, it's just about enough to make your day.

Twenty years later, it still helps. It helps because it reminds me that the Ascension is the last scene of the last act of the Incarnation. This miraculous and mysterious event through which the presence of Christ becomes available to everyone across time and space is still clothed in the awkwardness of humanity. Just review thefamous paintings of the Ascension scene. Even the great ones can't disguise the magnificent ungainliness of a fully grown man floating heavenward leaving his disciples flat-footed and slack-jawed. In the Ascension the awkward messiness of humanity is somehow drawn into the life of God--made sacred and transformed. And that's the gospel truth.