What do I need to be full?

Next Tuesday is the first day of summer. What does conjure up for you? Do you think of water? Sun? Long walks with the dog? Bicycles? No school? Vacation? Trips? Family sightings?

I was reminded this morning that nothing, absolutely nothing, works on empty. Even inanimate objects need to have a source of energy. My car has to have the required amount of oil, gas, clean air. My computer and cell phone have to spend the required number of hours plugged into electricity to charge their batteries.

Living things need energy as well. My plants need water and some sunlight. My dog has to have clean water, food and exercise everyday to be a happy dog. He has Addisons disease so he also needs regular shots at the vet and a pill buried inside a treat every-other morning. He needs people time and needs time away from people each and every day.

So, I wonder do you ever stop and ask, “what do I need to be full?” Every one of us needs rest, water, good food. We need time with friends, family and our faith communities and we need time away from our friends, family and faith communities. We need to take time to “plug” ourselves into the one true source of power and life, God. Some of us have health issues we have to take into account. Some of us need to take extra care with medicine or oxygen. No two person’s needs are exactly the same. We are all different members of the same body. But even our individual bodies have individual needs that need our attention too or we become sick or empty.

I am reminded of the hym
Fill My Cup Lord Lyrics

(Verse 1)
Like the woman at the well I was seeking
For things that could not satisfy;
But then I heard my Savior speaking:
"Draw from the well that never shall run dry".

(Chorus)
Fill my cup Lord, I lift it up, Lord!
Come and quench this thirsting of my soul;
Bread of heaven, Feed me till I want no more--
Fill my cup, fill it up and make me whole!

As I think about summer I know that I am looking forward to a slower pace. I know that I will need to spend more time outside and away from people. I need to honor some retreat time with the source of my being. I need this interior time with God in order to prepare for busier times of the year. I need some extra family fun time and some plain old rest and relaxation with some iced tea and a good novel. None of this costs extra money or will be elaborate. It is actually difficult to put into words how much I am looking forward to it.

As your pastor I encourage you to ask the question, “What do I need to fill my soul, take care of my body this summer?” I encourage you to speak it out loud to a loved one or write it in a journal. Then pray about it asking God to help you get what you need. If I run into you this summer I may just ask you, “How is the filling- up going?” I hope you ask me too.

Blessings.

First steps in our eight-week journey together

We begin this eight-week journey of finding time for quiet and solitude, twice daily.
We begin paying more attention to living in God's presence, individually and together.

So, this morning I sat in my office and shut my eyes. I said to God, "I am here. I am quiet."
Well for about 30 seconds and then my mind flitted to my last phone call. Thinking,
"Was that something I should have managed?" Then drifting off into more questions,
caught myself. "Be still and know that I am God."

45 seconds--- my computer dinged, NEW e-mail. My eyes popped open.
No, I will not check it, I thought. I will be quiet and still with God for 4 minutes
in a row. "Be still and know that I am God." I start again.

Planning for Christian Education for next year, runs across my brain.
I chase it with planning and plotting. Then, I stop myself. Open, my
eyes, say outloud to God in whose presence we live. "Sorry. I will be still."

Somehow after six or seven initial trys, I manage to be quiet, still, in God's
presence for a full five minutes. I read the poem again, "I have a need of such
clearence" is right. (Daily Office, Remembering God's Presence Throughout the Day,
Begin the Journey, By Peter Scazzero, Page. 2) How do I clear my head, my heart
for you. I think "I hope it is going better for everyone else!"

Easter worship was so much easier with its music and flowers and
people. Just the sense of anticipation.

Why can't I seem to clear enough space in my mind and heart for that
kind of anticipation for living in the presence of God on Monday morning?

The stop sign seems a good sign for me to consider this week:
Day one, prayer one, not so good for me.
This practicing what I preach, hard stuff o Lord,
Very hard stuff.

Heady Stuff

A new conference has started at the Seminary so there are new students here and some PhD students have left. Chapel is crowded as is coffee time. Many things are happening all at once so the schedules have changed. I am meeting more new people from more new places. Many languages around the table.

This morning I attended a presentation of a paper that was really examining the methodology behind the methodology of doing liberation theology. It was philosophy and theology and ........
heady stuff. The presentation was good and the question and answer time was helpful. The questions flushed out my questions which really were about content but that is not what the presentation was for. The thread gets difficult to follow.

More reading on Leadership in Context and more conversations about churches around the world.

This afternoon I have taken myself to a church, a big Baroque style Catholic Church. I went because I needed to walk and I needed to rest my brain. I went alone and navigated the public transportation into the city. I am getting better at it. Have a better sense of where things are in relationship to each other. Being a visual person it is important for me to do these side trips while it is still light out, so I headed out late afternoon.

I am always taken aback when I have to pay an entrance fee to get inside a church. I guess we could have our little church open during the week and Fran could take fees, it might help. [joking of course]. My concern is that what has happened to the church in Europe is happening now to the church in the West too. Churches are becoming museums of what was. Where is the life?

These questions are all tied up in what I have been studying, church identity, context, mission. How best to lead in difficult time? How to work at discipleship that is living and produces good fruit? Do we want to preserve the church of Jesus Christ or do we want to preserve architecture? The paintings were beautiful, the building and sculptures ornate, but it was just me and an Italian couple [I know because they spoke Italian to me] that were actually praying.
I am getting a better sense of where things are in these matters too. I am getting a better sense of who we are called to be. Study leave can be a very good thing. Sometimes it is what is needed to take oneself outside of oneself so that one can see.

Lots of things to ponder. Yes. Lots of things to pray over, yes, even more.
I look forward to coming home soon.
J

Contextualization

In every book and every article I have been reading on leadership the idea of CONTEXT has arisen. CONTEXT as a conceptual idea is tossed around in a lot of situations [contexts] but pinning down its meaning is like trying to pin fluid jello to the wall. This week however I have sat with three professors and 12 or so students and we engaged in an endeavor to do just that,
pin down the meaning of context. We asked questions like "What is contextualization?", "How does one determine one's context?" [also in the case of institutions and systems], "Who decides the questions?", "Who decides the answers.". It was all very heady stuff, hard to grasp and decidedly academic.

Always when I am in this type of setting, I am enjoying the heady, philosophical atmosphere of learning, but the other side of me is extremely pragmatic, "what does this have to do with real life?" or more importantly, "what does this have to do with the church and specifically our congregation?"

After the seminar I had more of these questions than answers so I decided to back up a bit and go to where I usually start on these sorts of quests for understanding; the dictionary.
The definitions of CONTEXT, varied more than usual from dictionary to dictionary, but I will paraphrase/combining what I read.

CONTEXT: a noun
1. the words or phrases around a word that help us grasp the meaning of the word
2. Situations, facts, environment, setting, of a situation, [or group of people say like a church]
that gives meaning, understanding to their identity

I thought that the definitions, varied as they were, really offer a good understanding of a word in context. Which also explains why I like to read a large bible passage than just a little one, because in its context we find broader meaning.

But the second definition, the one I was really after, wasn't so clear as a working definition.

For our church today [and I would guess most mainline churches also] context asks questions about who we are? Who we have been? What about our setting in a small town in upstate New York has influenced how we act, what we do, how we are church?

What seems to me to be part of the broader understanding of CONTEXT are questions relating to the setting, environment, community we find ourselves in currently? The context of our times, the setting of our day, the implications of our environment and reality of it's culture all have impact on who we are as a church but also who we are as individuals.

These are difficult questions of how our context affects our identity as a congregation. These are harder questions to decipher, i.e. Who are we? Who we seek to be? Who we will have to be in order to survive into this next generation?

I am going to be pushing us in this direction, seeking a clearer identity, asking what is our CONTEXT and how does that change or direct we should be. We will have to pray that the spirit shows us the way. But truly questions of CONTEXT, are going to be most important as we seek to grow in faith and service.

More work today, more prayers for the day.
God is good and always God is good.

Friends, I am back from two days in Germany. The weather was very, snowy and on Saturday there was thunder and lightening with heavy snow. It was very strange. Driving home on the Autobahn was scarey and my upstate New York driving-in-snow-and-ice skills came in very handy. I succeeded in getting us back safe and sound. Grateful. Very grateful.

This morning I wanted to stay in bed. The rooms are so cold here at night and they are used to using heavy blankets and saving energy. WE are not so used to it. Conservation and environmental responsibility are everywhere here. It is interesting as they consume so much less than we do to begin with and yet we do not feel the responsibility or stewardship to the conservation of resources. I wonder where our ideas about entitlement come from but I digress.

Today the theme presenting, purely by experience, is the whole idea of community. What is community? What does healthy, welcoming, open community look like?

In my life, I find myself so often times, way outside the box. I stand on tiptoe looking in through the picture window, because of my marriage or my beliefs or my gender, often I "do not belong."
Yes, I am tired and a bit homesick, but aside from that, this is a Christian Community, and it is a hard place to "enter". Pondering this all morning and applying it to the church congregational community has made me very empathetic.

It has to be so very difficult for someone outside of "our circle" to enter into it. First, even to make the choice or decision to try, then to actually come, then to put themselves out there to participate. Think of how hard it would be for a non-churched person, for whom our customs and traditions are totally foreign,[like living in a foreign land and speaking a different language],
to decide, well "I think I will go to First Baptist Church of Brockport, to seek God and community." Why it is almost impossible to imagine it. Then to actually enter, well, where should I park and what door should I go in? And what do I say if someone speaks to me? Where should I sit? What are these page numbers in this program for? Do I have to sing? How will I know when to sit or stand? How will I know how to sing the tune? What if someone hears my voice and it isn't good enough? Will people be looking at me? What should I wear? Where does God live here, I don't see Him....Her....? How do I pray?

Today, I went early to chapel to pray. It was quiet with a few others praying and only the piano man playing some hymns and choruses, some of which I recognized and some I didn't. Groups and alliances have formed, among the full-time students who are working on certificates in Theology and live here year round, among the returning and new Ph. D. students with each other and with the faculty, among the Russian speaking students, among the English speaking students, with the U.S. students, with the U.K. students, with the Eastern European students, etc. etc......Because I am early and have sat, not in my usual chair [ahhhh, yes, that familiar pew]
but across from the main door, by the piano, I have positioned myself to watch as all the students come in the door. Each enters, generally one at a time, but sometimes in pairs, the man or the woman opens the door, steps in, [we sit in a circle] their eyes move/dart around the circle and you can see when recognition comes: "oh, yea, there is a familiar person, there is a friend, there is safety, place for me."

Here again, I find the gender gap even wider than in the states. A very lot of men, only lecturers are men, and very few women students. I observe the dynamics of learning as a wide flow, as if a river of communication is here happening with the men. One can almost see the women attempt to enter the flow, as if fighting the power upstream. It is that way also with the times of fellowship. The men speak, the women listen; and when the women speaks, it is as if she has crossed the red sea. In other words, a woman either needs to be so strong as to have the miraculous power of God or a very large army. I am reminded again that tenacity has its own rewards and learning, real learning, always involves suffering of one kind or another. I am also realizing a new the great courage it took for First Baptist Church of Brockport to call a woman as it's pastor. And once more I am filled with deep gratitude.


Today in my studies I have found a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt that described in her words the three assets of her life: 1. She was keenly interested. 2. She accepted both the challenges and the opportunities to learn 3. She had energy and discipline. [or perhaps even discipline for her energy.]

I believe that I have one and two but need to work on three. It is very easy in this time in which we live to become dis-illusioned, and/or overwhelmed by both information and the realities of our time. This is where faith must come in. Also disciplined energy is hard work.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
On a different note: In chapel this morning we did what was called, "circle prayers". Prayers were offered corporately for different peoples and then we all said in unison:
Circle us O God,
Circle us with your presence.

Keep love within,
Keep trouble out.

Keep faith within,
Keep fear out.

That is my prayer for our congregation, that is my prayer today for the community of Brockport, the city of Rochester and even to the ends of the world.

Peace!
Shalom!