A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the GS29 Forum…

Yes it did.  I’m back.  With vengeance.  Okay not with vengeance, but with perspective.

From the end of sabbatical to the full-immersion return into pastoral ministry.  In other words, out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I’m attending our denomination’s national-setting biennium gathering, General Synod (#29) in Long Beach, California.  Roughing it, I know.  I’m serving for the first time at one of these events (this is the 4th Synod I’ve attended) as a delegate – a voting representative of the conference I am serving within, the Rocky Mountain Conference, of the United Church of Christ.

This exponentially amps up the responsibility of simply attending as a visitor or guest of the Synod as committee meetings and business sessions are, pretty much, required.  And I can tell you, as a visitor, I don’t believe I made it through a single business meeting without leaving early.  This will be a test of faith…and patience.

I arrived yesterday and today the fun began in a sabbatical-esque fashion.  I thought I was serving a committee for a resolution to study a reframing of conference boundaries, but then discovered the number of that committee didn’t coincide with the number of the resolution that I was supposed to be sitting on a committee for.  Sound confusing?  We’re not even halfway through the fog.

To make a long story short (too late, Greg, too late) I’m serving on a totally different committee than the previous two numbered resolutions had eluded to.  I’m serving on a committee that’s discussing comprehensive immigration reform.  It’s a resolution calling every level of the Church, the National, the Regional, the Association, and the local Church to action – to stand up for immigrants’ rights and, maybe more importantly, their safety and well-being.  The latter of which I strongly feel called to as a Christian with empathy – one who feels for another.  I care.  Not all Christians, as we’ve most likely experienced, care for others.

As it pertains to me personally and to the local church I serve in Fort Morgan, Colorado, the resolution is quite personal.  Immigration is and should be a rather important issue to those in my church.  Immigration reform and how we, as a Christian body, respond to our neighbors seeking citizenship is crucial to our own history of being a people primarily from “another place.”

Immigration is biblical – our earliest Israelite ancestors were migratory.  Immigration is historical – populations move.  Immigration is global – there isn’t a single country that isn’t effected by immigration in some way, shape, or form.

For some people immigration is the culmination of dreams while for others it is or was an unwanted passage.

With one southern border being (still being raised) a large steel wall, reminiscent of the Berlin wall only broken less than 30 years ago, we may find ourselves close to repeating history…and not the kind of history we want to repeat.  We can do better.

Over the coming days I’ll be sitting in more educational meetings about this resolution and preparing more blog entries (sans family, RV, neurotic cat, hospital stays, etc.) to do my pastoral duty in something I truly believe in – covenantal relationship.  Simply this – I must communicate to the local Church and communicate the local Church to the larger Church setting.  That’s my job.  This week, it’s overwhelming.

So far, however, I’ve reconnected with friends from across the states, some from our stay in Portland, Oregon, too.  I’ve also made new friends and discovered more about the wonderful, diverse tapestry of American Christianity that I have come to love.  Here our “church” is much less generic and much more colorful in a way I believe every Christian should experience.  Grace abounds no matter who you are or where you are on this journey of faith you’re on.

I’m happy to be back to this blog.  I’m also happy to have a 6-month old, without a feeding tube being as chipper as any father would want them to be… pictures to be posted soon…  Thanks for returning to this with me.

 

Love Me a Good Roller Coaster

I love a good roller coaster.  I lived in eastern central Florida for four years, close enough to enjoy the amusement parks and their entry fees and long enough to realize you’d need to visit all the theme parks in Florida to equate to one in the midwest – Cedar Point.

Don’t blow your top.
A view of Mount St. Helens from the Hospital.

Universal Studios Island of Adventure has one or two.  Sea World has one.  Disney World has one or two.  Busch Gardens has beer… I mean, two or three good ones.  But Cedar Point is the end all, be all of roller coaster, puke-your-guts-out glory amusement.

I took a group of Coloradans to Cedar Point.  Meh, they first thought, we have Elitch Gardens!   I told them to just wait and see.  On the ride home from Cedar Point they wouldn’t shut up about how lousy Elitch Gardens had just become.  Cedar Point, HELL YEAH! became the motto for the rest of the trip.

Life presents itself in a variety of roller coasters.  Some are kiddie rides – boring, unless you’re 5 years of age when 30 feet in the air seems like 30,000.  Some are tilt-a-whirls – eat before you ride and you’ll be sure to lose your lunch.  Some are the heart-in-your-throat rides that you are glad you just had the chance to get off…until later, when you want to ride it again for the sheer thrill of it or the line is only 20-people long.  The others are like that except you don’t ride them ever again.  Cedar Point only has one of those for me.  That wooded one in the back.  The one that gave me an instant headache from the incessant shaking – like those machines that mix up paint.  I haven’t ridden that one again.  I don’t plan to, either.

I’m on one of those right now.  After 11 days in two hospitals and a doctor telling me there may be yet another week of hospital stay, I’ve got that headache that tells me I’m pretty much done with this ride.

If a lot of lava and ash was under St. Helens, what’s under the Hood? (Did you catch that one?)

Stop the ride.

I want to get off.

I’m going to vomit.

Of course, this is my own bowl of pits I’m spitting into.  This roller coaster of life hasn’t dealt me a blow like this before.

With all the serene beauty of this region and everything I’ve seen and experienced in this life, this little “kiddie ride” isn’t going to get me out of the amusement park.  There’s too much salt water taffy yet to be eaten.

My little girl is making baby step improvements.  For an impatient father, this isn’t going fast enough, indeed.  I’d like the doctors to prescribe something that propels healing into hyperdrive like the Top Thrill Drag Roller Coaster.  The ride lasts a whole 20 seconds long.  0 – 120 mph in three seconds.  ORDER UP!

What has helped keep me moderately calm are the virtual prayers, the family support of hundreds of immediate and distant relatives (hell, we’re all distant relatives, just ask Kevin Bacon), and the flashes of brilliant smiles my little girls shows here and there.

I keep thinking of the movie What About Bob? and baby steps.

Baby steps.  

Baby steps.

Cedar Point is big and the lines even bigger.  To wait sometimes 2 or more hours for a 20-second ride isn’t exactly efficiency, is it?

So, too, is life.  The thrill I’m seeking will come.  I do have to wait a bit, but I can handle it.  There are people all around me making sure I do handle it.  Holding my hand, praying, simply talking or listening.  They are all around.  Besides, Portland is a beautiful place.  Lots of great people and scenery to pass some of the hardest times, as you can see from the above photos.

Yeah, I’d like to get off this ride for its made me a little sick.  There are other ones I’d like to try.  Soon enough.

Soon enough.

(P.S. – for Portland roller coasters, simply attempt to drive the Portland area freeway system.  I understand building anything on the side of a mountain is difficult, but, holy crap, these engineers were either on acid or roller coaster freaks.)

My Greatest Symphony

It was a dark and stormy night…  which has nothing to do with this post, it’s just that I have always wanted to write that.

The map is beginning to fill in! 5 states and counting!

For 392 miles I have been thinking of what to write for this post.  There is much ruminating in my head after a busy weekend in Vegas with friends – A trip to the Hoover Dam and a Las Vegas Wranglers hockey game, too.  Made for one tired little 13.5 week-old daughter.  And mother.  Okay, and me, too.  So by the time we arrived in Buellton, California, I had this idea…

I love music.  I would think that I have a deep appreciation for music that didn’t stem from my Music Appreciation 101 class in Junior College.  My family, in varying degrees, have all been into music.  My oldest brother even worked for a time as a radio DJ.  (But he makes an even better high school english teacher)

I’d move to Tennessee just for this plate.

My father and mother both sing, as do my older brothers, although one doesn’t admit it.  Even my wife can carry a tune in a bucket better than some I’ve heard.  But she doesn’t believe me.

With all this music in the family I, too, was immersed into a creative culture of tunage.  My first concert was Harry Chapin at the Welsh Auditorium in Grand Rapids, Michigan.  I was 9.  Way before that I had my father’s headphones on listening and memorizing words to Chapin’s tunes with greater efficiency than any early elementary student could.

One of my favorites was this song called Six String Orchestra.  In case you’re too busy to listen to it, here are the words to the chorus…

And so I’d dream a bass will join me,
and fill the bottom in.
And maybe now some lead guitar
so it would not sound so thin.
I need some drums to set the beat
and help me keep in time.
And way back in the distance,
some strings would sound so fine.

And we’d all play together,
like fine musicians should,
And it would sound like music,
and the music would sound good.
But in real life I’m stuck with
that same old formula,
me and my monophonic symphony,
six string orchestra.

This is my vision for what I do in ministry.  I dream a bass would join me, and fill the bottom in.  There’s nothing like having the unconditional support of one’s congregation, family, friends, peers – for whatever it is you do.  That’s that bass line – dependable, always there in the background and, if you’ve got a great sound system, when your support is there you can feel it in your gut.

And maybe now some lead guitar.  Oh, I wish I could solo like some of my friends could – shred the fretboard with, as Jack Black would say, “mind-melting riffs.”  I play guitar…but not like Eddie Van Halen.  These are the people that aren’t afraid to come forward to lead something.  Anything.  When something needs to be done this is the person who jumps forward to rip a solo and take care of awe-ing the crowd with their abilities.  Let’s face it:  we all have strengths we can use.  Even in a church-setting.  Don’t know yours?  Maybe you should ask someone like me.  In ministry we call this process discernment.  We pastors simply don’t use it enough.

I need some drums to set the beat.  I grew up playing the drums.  Since I was 11 I was keeping time on my brother’s drums while listening to my favorites with cassette tapes (omg – I’m old) and, more contemporary but still out-dated, a portable CD player.  In the 31 years that I’ve been playing I have come to learn that being too busy on the drums can be a bad thing.  Rhythm isn’t just keeping time.  It’s knowing how important and crucial silence is between the beats.  Yes, silence.  Without it, you can’t have rhythm.  A decent drummer knows when to play hard and when to lay back or even stop altogether.

In my early 20’s I attended a drum clinic with Liberty DeVitto – drummer for Billy Joel.  This is the guy that taught me how drums do more than just keep the beat; they can shape the whole song.  Listen to Billy Joel’s Downeaster Alexa  and tell me you’re not feeling the peak and trough of the high seas on a fishing boat.  Or, better yet, listen to Pressure and tell me your anxiety isn’t rising with the progression of the tune and the heartbeat-like thump of the drums.  You need someone to drive that music, right?  Prayerfully, they’ll drive it while knowing what the tune is really all about, like Liberty.

And way back in the distance, some strings would sound so fine.  StringS.  Plural.  Not one.  Not your guitar solo and not your rockin’ 12-minute drum solo by Dr. Neil Peart.  Many hands make for light work, right?  I love a good string background.  Without that element some music can sound just empty.  It’s the same in our churches.  Without people to help with the work flow…well…so many things stop dead in their music track.  Compare a half-filled sanctuary to a filled sanctuary on Easter and you’ll understand the difference.  There’s an energy present that can only be describes as “spirit-filled.”

And we’d all play together, like fine musicians should…

I once heard Church described like this:  Imagine a great concert hall.   The kind of hall where grand orchestras and symphonies jam out the classics like Mozart and Bach.  Some would say that to compare this venue to a church God would be the conductor, directing the pastor, who is the orchestra, and the audience are the people in the pews.

That works…in most dying churches today.  I’ve overheard some people say they just want to show up, be fed, and be left alone.  Really?  This is why you go to church?  Why bother?  You’re missing the point.

I think the analogy works better like this:  The pastor is the conductor.  The people in the pews are the instrumentalists, and God is the audience.  Now… what music are we going to play for the audience?

Like any pastor, I want a congregation that’s willing to play.  I want a congregation that knows each and every one of them has a part to play in this great symphony of life.  It’s simply a matter of finding the right instrument, the right music, and the right conductor.  Then the music begins… melodies so rich and full.  And when you listen carefully you can hear the individual artists playing their part.

I want to direct the greatest symphony.  I want you to be a part of my orchestra – either nearby or far away.  I want to conduct a tune that makes the world go ’round.  A song that makes hearts sing and leaves a person with a sense of accomplishment and a better world.  And here’s the thing – you do have a part in this.  I don’t care if you don’t follow Christ or if you’re so cynical that the words you say may offend me or anyone else.  I don’t mind if you use salty language or if you consider yourself Jesus’ next of kin – YOU have a part in this symphony.

I personally don’t want to be stuck with that same old formula, if you catch my drift.  Nope, no monophonic symphony for me.

Dinner before a Las Vegas Wranglers hockey game.

Now, I realize not all will want to play along.  That’s okay.  It really is.  To each his own… or in this case, her own.  That hockey game we went to this past weekend… there was at least one who did not want to play along.  With obnoxious voice and a crass vocabulary that would make Pope Francis blush, she wasn’t going to go quietly into the night, no, she had to play her own tune over and above everyone else’s.  She even played it right over my very tired daughter.  Of course, that’s why you have the bass support of arena security – they fill the bottom in.

There are some that need a little more directing than others.

Still, there is a symphony to be played.  I hope and pray that those of you who follow this will want to play along with me.  Create a little beauty that may leave someone humming it’s melody.

And it would sound like music,
and the music would sound good.

A little more…