Wisdom from a 3 year old

From a friend of mine who is parenting a 3 year old:

Who needs seminary?

Wisdom I've learned so far from my three-year-old son about handling the ups and downs of parish ministry:
Sometimes when you're badly behaved and otherwise stubborn and difficult, all you really want is to be loved.
When you're hungry, eat.
When you're full, stop.
When you're tired, sleep.
When you're awake, play.
Everything else is for special holy days or else reason to complain.
Playing with water is enormous fun.When confronted with babbling, all you need to do is listen. (And if you can't, at least pretend.)
Owies need band-aids. . .LOTS of band-aids.
Look folks in the eyes when you want their attention.
Keep it short and to the point.

Sometimes do it in a messy way.
Order is overrated.
Never get between me and my mommy.
Sometimes it's better to go to your room and shut the door than to stay and say something mean.
The packaging is much more fun than what's inside.
Breaking routine takes herculean effort.
Don't expect that to change.
If you want it to happen, keep pestering until it does.
The most fun about getting dressed is choosing your own clothes. . .. . .the less fashionable, the better.
The fastest way to get nothing done is to try pushing harder.
Kicking and screaming are a form of honest communication.
Table manners are important. . .but only when the food is worth it.
If you aren't being heard, say it again LOUDER.
Read to each other. It's so much more fun than reading alone.
Put pillows down before jumping.
Take your favorite toys, just in case.
If a space is empty, fill it.
If things are put away, get them out.
If it belongs here, move it over there.
If somebody wants something, hide it.
Amen is a great response to every prayer.
It's also a great way to stop a prayer that's too long (especially before a meal.)
If in doubt, sing.
Ignore what you don't like. If it persists, ignore it more.
Be wary of people who think they know what you want.
Sharing is a great idea, especially when somebody else has something you want.

Discovery - maybe it's old age

I have come to realize that nothing has to "turn out well" for me to be happy. Less and less is it even necessary for people to "behave themselves" for me to love them.
It feels enormously freeing. Love and happiness completely separated from outcomes.

A humming spirituality

I can find it incredibly difficult to sit still. I am always doing many things at once, and generally find it easier to pay attention when I am knitting. I really admire people that have a practice of sitting meditation or centering prayer. The times in my life when I have sustained these for any length of time, I was rewarded by feeling more grounded, and more able to notice God's presence in and around me.

But other times in my life, it just feels impossible. Lately, on mornings when no one joins me in Epiphany's chapel for Centering Prayer (commercial: Tues/Thurs 9:05-9:25), I find it so hard to sit and practice centering myself in God's loving presence. Inevitably, my mind wanders to my to-do list, and before I even make a conscious decision I have stood up and started back to the office.

Because I find it so difficult to STOP, I have become more mindful in the state of GO. I truly believe it is possible to attend to God's presence in moments of action and interaction. But, of course, it’s easy to forget to pay attention, in this kind of spirituality. That's the difference between automaticity, and flow--between acting without thinking and doing, and feeling a harmonic intentionality throughout one's day. Fortunately, when I slip from mindfulness to automaticity, God does something to get my attention-- a friend calls me in need of some theological reflection, my husband does something really generous, or something really weird happens.

Yesterday, I walked purposefully to centering prayer with my head down, anticipating that I would sit down for some quick prayers and go back to work, if no one showed up. Then I heard a chirping on the path to the chapel, it was a hummingbird, hovering about 3 feet in front of me. I stayed there for more than five minutes. I watched it with such a sense of awe, mindfully noticing everything about it--it had a shiny magenta dot on its neck. Being so close to that amazing creature (which also never sits still), I had no thoughts of my to do list. Thanks for waking me up, God.

"The body of Christ tastes like onions."

The case of Eucharistic Giggles I had this morning at church seems to be in perfect keeping with the stated themes of this blog: someone, I am assuming accidentally, purchased Onion flavored pita bread for communion. After Gail elevated a pita and tore it in half, I tore a piece off and gave it to her saying "the body of Christ, the bread of heaven". Then she did the same for me. I chewed, swallowed, and took the chalice, suddenly realizing what had seemingly happened-- onion bread. I whispered to Gail "The body of Christ tastes like onions." And she laughed quietly. This was already after the other blooper: we had lost the missal book between services and didn't have the words to the prayer printed in the bulletins.

As I walked to the other communion station, I thought about how I was going to give a piece of that onion bread to many unsuspecting people. I started cracking myself up, and gave communion to many people in the room with a huge smile on my face-- I was told I seemed particularly friendly and welcoming, but really-- I knew they were going to get a mouthful of onion.

I guess the irreverent epiphany is this: why can't the body of Christ taste like onions? Or maybe is that a case of the giggles can serve to bring out the humanity in a sacrament of table fellowship so ritualized it no longer feels like a meal?

It would seem particularly Christ-like if the body of Christ tasted different every week-- keeping us on our toes so that we might think to look for Christ in all sorts of unexpected places and flavors in life, and reminding us that God can become present in pretty much anything.

Polar Bears and Inconvenient Truths

On St. Francisc day, when Epiphany showed An Inconvenient Truth, I found my heart aching for the computer animated polar bear with a sad fate, intended to illustrate that polar ice is melting and polar bears are indeed drowning. In the very same documentary are pictures of human beings being swept away in natural disasters. And yet, I could still cry when I think about that sad looking polar bear.

We talked about it in youth group, about how we have been formed by a society so that Disney-like images pull at our hearts, but we cannot let into our souls the magnitude of human suffering in the world, so we become desensitized to the real-life pictures of humans in distress. Is it compassion fatigue--? No. It's fear. Plain and simple. Pictures of other people that illustrate the truth about our human existence: that we are weak, infirm, and will die, scare us to death. We would rather not think about such things, and many of us are privelegd enough to avoid having to admit it, until disease and death break into our comfortable lives.

I am still thinking about how I plan to respond to An Inconvenient Truth, I acknowlege I am quite afraid about global warming, especially when I saw my Mission, SF neighborhood submerged, in another graphic.

But it seems to me that in noticing my empathy for an animated polar bear and not a human being, I have seen something sinful about myself. As a Christian, when I succumb to fear and try to protect myself from the truth about my human weakness, I have given sin and death much power over me. Being a Christian means finding a way to believe that the powers of death will not win, it means finding a faith in all kinds of resurrections, even when we experience illness, loss, and face death. When we act out of fear, especially our unacknowleged and very deep fear of death, we deny the very core of our Christian Faith: Christ has defeated that death, and made it possible for us to experience the fullness of God's life in and around us forever.