Mothers, Dear Warriors of Life

This is a repost from the past.  I've so many comments over the years that it bears another read.  Blessings to all mothers this week and all who "mother" in one form or another.

I get invited into some of the most raw and intimate moments of people’s lives.  I’m a pastor . . . a shepherd of souls.  The work sometimes breaks my heart.  Other times it breaks it open, expands it, makes it soar with wings I doubt I’d have found in any other way.  The work, frankly, is saving me from losing hope when there are so many reasons losing hope seems like the right thing to do.    

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Photo by James Goodman, 2012

Recently, I’ve walked with a mother whose courage is, frankly, pressing my face to the ground in awe—an awe-full sense that there is something at work in this woman’s life, and in this world, that is way, way, way beyond us both.    

It’s not the first time I’ve beheld a mother who’s found what seems to me to be superhuman courage.  Despite her doubts, her weakness, her tears, her prayers that there could be some other way to move forward, this mother is clawing her way toward a way to love the fruit of her womb, her very flesh and blood, when loving her child demands that all her hopes and dreams must die for the sake of her child.  It feels to her that a part of her is dying.  But she’s doing it anyway.  And I’m in awe.

Courage is one of the many things that marks motherhood.  Not all mothers, of course.  Some mothers walk away from the courage demanded of them, the fierce love needed by those they’ve brought into the world—those who need their protection, their advocacy, their fight for their children’s lives, those who need a warrior to champion the flourishing of life that is the divine right of us all.  Some moms can’t, for a number of reasons, do all this.  But, honestly, I can’t judge them.  Motherhood’s tough work.  Rewarding, yes, but let’s not lose sight of the real human courage that all mothers must find deep within themselves at various times over their lives.  

So, while there are a few mothers who are, well, real rats and scoundrels, the rest are trying, one way or another, to muster whatever courage they can to do what’s required of them.  And when you consider what wasn’t passed on to so many of them by their role models, and when you add the trauma and lack of support and pain so many of them live with, we ought to bow before them all in awe.  I realize that this might be really hard for some who’ve been so terribly neglected and hurt by those whose wombs bore them.  But regardless, today, I’m struck by the different degrees of courage all mothers—despite their hangups—have had to muster.  And I’m in awe. 

So, 

on this Mother’s Day, 

I’ll bend my knee

and bow my head 

in reverence 

before the mothers

of the earth.  

All of them.  

The good ones 

and the bad ones.  

Those who love children 

who are easy to love,

and those who weep over 

those who aren’t.  

Those who’ve given birth 

to their own flesh and blood, 

and those who mother 

the children of another.  

The mothers who’ve 

had to bury the child 

who ought to have buried them;

those whose children 

gather round them 

this Mother’s Day in praise,

and those whose children don’t;

those who rise 

to the courage demanded of them,

and those who won’t.  

Mothers, all, 

agents of life,

each and every one of you,

no matter what you’ve done

or haven’t done—

I revere you.

Mothers, yes, 

especially you mothers,

who’ve broken open 

the hardened places 

in your hearts, 

you who’ve dug deep, 

through pain

and confusion

and blinding longing,

and found the courage 

and selflessness

and fierce loyalty 

love requires—

despite your doubts 

and fears, 

your weaknesses 

and tears,

and done what you thought 

was too hard for you to do,

what you feared would undo you . . .

I salute and praise you,

Dear Warriors of Life.

Manifesting the need deep in our (pastoral) souls

"What are you looking for really?"

I've got this colleague who's trying to form a new clergy group.  She sent me an email today, asking me (and a few others) to describe the kind of small, professional group we think could be helpful to us as pastors.  I've had occasional experiences of clergy communities that were remarkably helpful, but they were short-term: the CREDO conference a few years ago, and a pilgrimage on the Isle of Iona recently, come immediately to mind.   

Her question got me thinking--feeling actually.  And I figured that what I'm hungering for isn't isolated to me or to pastors.  I'm guessing it's a common human experience and that you'll resonate with the yearning whether you're a pastor or not, Christian or not.  

Here's what I told her:

First, here's what I'm not looking for:

• A reading group (good gawd, I already have a stack of unfinished books I want to read)
• A therapy group (I already have a pretty good therapist, thank you)
• A let's-compare-our-congregations-and-who's-better-at-leading-them group (totally not useful)
• A drinking group (don't need that either; though beer or wine together wouldn't hurt)
• Superficiality
• Insecurity
• Banality
• etc...

What I am seeking is:

Leadership of any kind is tough right now.  Perpetual white water.  Pastors lead from the tattered edge of a genuine emergence, a birthing, and birth is always messy.  There's fear, uncertainty, and enormous hopefulness (in me and in many of the people around me).

I don't know what is to become of church, though I'm confident expressions of soulful community will always find ways of flourishing, even if under the radar of institutional forms of religion or in direct contrast to it.  As a pastor, I feel the need to find ways of hosting the religious symbols, rituals, practices, and texts that help people make sense of the experience of living and living it well with a deepening sense of the presence of the Divine.  That is, pastoral leadership, as I see it, is more mythopoetic than it is techno-scientific (though pastors can't ignore the latter).  What is mythopoetic?  Think George MacDonald in Victorian times, and in the 20th century, Tolkien or CS Lewis.  Today, there are a whole host of artists doing this kind of work; Travis Reed comes immediately to mind (a filmmaker, he did the video I link to at the bottom of this post.)

I need to know how to bring transformation to the organization of the church, respecting its heritage, but also allowing the freedom of innovation to flow with as little inhibition as possible.  

I like what Ed Catmull, President and CEO of Pixar and Disney Animation, says in his new book, Creative, Inc.  

About leadership Ed writes:

"I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them.  They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear."

"My job as a manager is to create a fertile environment, keep it healthy, and watch for the things that undermine it."

Ed's the kind of leader who can straddle the techno-scientific and the mythopoetic worlds artfully; Pixar is, after all, an organization driven by story and myth-making (and it's doing a bang up job of it to boot).

This is what I feel summoned to be and do.  But I feel can sometimes feel alone (as a leader).  It's downright tough to find others who view things this way, and once you find them, it's just as tough to figure out how you can spur one another on and get together face to face.  

So, I'd like to be a part of an intentional community of folks who are seeking wisdom and bravery for the era that's in front of us--the challenges and opportunities.  Folks we can be real and unguarded with about the way we see and experience the movement of the Spirit, who can express fears, and share dreams (real night dreams and visions, not mere vain wishing, but that which comes from the deeper places of the soul and can't be figured out in isolation).  Someone (I can't recall who) important once said, "we must dream our way into the future."  I believe that.  Thinking, frankly, is over-rated.

I don't know what this really will look like, but it'll take courage and humility to find our way into it.  It'll take a lot of unknowing, and a good deal of silent prayer rather than the kind of posturing-praying I can do when I'm in clergy groups.  

To use Brene Brown's language, I need a community where I can:

1.  Be me
2.  Be all in
3.  Fall, and get back up again, and find my bravery for the work before me

And Brene Brown's video manifesto at the top of this post puts what I'm looking for really well--not the bricks and bones of the structure, but the heart and soul of what I, and so many others need.

Why trees matter for our future

Jesus doesn't matter primarily because he somehow gets believers to heaven.  To believe that faith is some kind of ticket to a blissful afterlife is an ugly and dangerous corruption of the gospel of Jesus.  

Jesus, frankly, was more interested in earth than he was in heaven. 

The Incarnation of Jesus means that matter matters to God. 

So, let's not drink the Kool Aid and think (and act) as if what matters happens later--after this life.  No, the Kingdom has come.  And the presence of God is here and now, and that means that all life matters, in fact all matter matters. 

So, let's talk trees.  Yeah, roots and bark and leaves.  

What will life be like without trees, after we've cut them all down?  

Consider this . . .

Then go plant a few. 

Teach Us To Pray (A Poetic Invitation)

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Image by Nestor Galina

And this is what I saw—

Leviathan leaping,

full length,

in radiant delight,

up from the dark depths of Mystery.

The night sky, clear;

the moon full,

casting its silver light across

the whale-fractured sea.

And then

she crashes, full length.

A million silver shards

dancing their holy glee.

As she

disappears again

into the dark, silent depths,

to soak in Thee.

Why then

pray like some dead fish

in this, God’s sea?

Dance, fly,

play, plunge.

That’s what prayer is meant to be.

chris neufeld-erdman, from December 31, 2008

Injustice must not remain uncontested

I hear many Christians say that the church is not political; “We need to focus on the gospel not on public policy.”

Image by Scott*

I cannot read the Bible and the history of Christianity and go along with that. The prophets, and Jesus himself, were passionate about justice.  The church today must rise up, finding courage and freedom to address—from the perspective of the Bible’s vision of the flourishing of all creation—issues of gun control, immigration, the environment, poverty, war, corporate greed, and racism in America, among other things.

I want to be part of a people who are willing to grapple with such things.  Lord knows we won’t all agree.  But agreement isn’t what I’m after as a pastor.  Agreement can be too dull, too insular, too myopic.  What we need is vigorous disagreement, real wrangling with things that matter from inside a covenant community—that is, a people who love each other and seek the truth, loving and appreciating even those with whom they don’t see eye to eye.  In fact, they will love each other because they don’t see eye to eye and know that this is what’s important for helping them stay honest and moving in the direction of what God is up to in our world.

What I want to see in our churches is engagement—honest, open, passionate engagement.  Only out of that kind of wrestling comes a new vision for the way forward.

The Bible itself is our model for this.  The Bible is one great big wrestling match.  Hundreds of voices over a thousand or more years of wrestling with what they see of God and what they see in the world around them.  All of them trying to make sense of it and create a way for genuine human flourishing.

In a recent interview with seminary student, Mickey Jones, Old Testament theologian, Walter Brueggemann, moves us in this direction.  At the end of the interview, Brueggemann sums up a bracing vision for the way people, serious about the Bible and Christian faith, might awaken to God’s summons to live the justice of God: 

“The Gospel is a very dangerous idea. We have to see how much of that dangerous idea we can perform in our own lives. There is nothing innocuous or safe about the Gospel. Jesus did not get crucified because he was a nice man.”

The problem with Christianity today is that we’ve made Jesus too nice.  Our churches are too nice.  We’re too nice.  (But there are plenty of grumpy Christians, you say.  Yes, you’re right, but they’re largely grumpy about all the wrong things.)  All the while the world struggles, creation withers, human lives teeter on the edge.  Nicety may well be a toxic and demonic seduction in the American church.

This doesn’t give us license to be jerks.  Joy and generosity ought to characterize our lives, even in the midst of our struggle for all that’s just and good.  We ought to smile, even while we say: “No! That injustice must not continue; it’ll not remain uncontested—not as long as I’m alive.”