over and around the rainbow

Ten reasons to sign up for all or part of the church retreat the weekend of September 20-21.

Paul Rudy and Lana Maree

1. We will be writing and recording a song with internationally-known composer Paul Rudy and educator Lana Maree. Paul thinks this song has potential to have a long life. I’m pretty sure it will go viral AND have a long life. So if you want to get famous, this might be your chance.

Do I really need to come up with nine more reasons?

2. We will talk about favorite sounds from childhood, nature, family, home, etc. Come prepared!

3. We will experience a Sonic prayer! (This is not a prayer sponsored by the Sonic restaurant on SW Blvd.)

4. Some might choose to go on a sound walk in order to record and/or notice various sounds of the neighborhood.

5. We will eat. We will eat A LOT of good food. IF YOU DON’T SIGN UP FOR ANYTHING ELSE, SIGN UP FOR THE CATERED LUNCH ON SUNDAY. (Monday September 15 is the last day to register for the meals.) sign up for all or part of the church retreat

6. On Sunday we will hear Paul Rudy reflect on scriptural soundbites. When you think of the power of sound what biblical stories or passages come to mind?

7. You might get to know someone at the retreat who will change your life (hopefully for the better).

8. You might experience a new-found hope and courage in the various moments of sound-making and silence. Your faith might be stirred.

9. BASKETBALL

10. And perhaps the best reason of all? According to Paul, “IT’S GOING TO BE A HOOT!”

I’m working with the sense of sound/hearing this week and the ways we employ and celebrate that sense in our search for the Divine.

Obviously not all of us hear or hear to the same degree. To that end, I’m afraid churches aren’t always very hospitable to the hearing impaired. Perhaps this is why I was so drawn to this set of lyrics by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette put to the music of  NETTLETON (“Come, Thou Fount of Every Blessing”). The last stanza reads as follows (I especially love the acknowledgment and affirmation of the third line in bold):

Bless the talents we are bringing, for we offer you our best.
If our gifts are not for singing may our joyful noise be blest.
If our world is ever silent may we sign to you above. Touched by grace, may each one present offer back your song of love.

You can see the full text of this hymn here: Text by Carolyn Winfrey Gillette.

The other thing I’m thinking about this week is that sometimes the most treasured and sought-after sound is silence. I was reminded of this while attending the opening performance of the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra “Heroes and Landscapes.” After the intermission and right before the performance of Beethoven’s “Eroica”  music director Bruce Sorrell gently and yet assertively encouraged the audience to hold their applause until after the fourth movement. I regret not writing down exactly what he said, but basically he thanked the audience for being enthusiastic during the first half of the performance. (Unfortunately sometimes this applause occurred between movements which is a big no-no.) Sorrell went on to talk about silence being “golden” at times and that the silence between movements is part of the beauty of the piece. “Waiting until the end of the fourth movement to applause will be worth it,” he said. It was indeed worth it. Perhaps this is why we sometimes have the following phrase in our church bulletin: “Please save expression of appreciation until community building time.” It’s a way of encouraging a moment of golden silence.

There are many scripture texts about sounds, listening, and silence. The one I have chosen to work with is found in John 10: “My sheep hear my voice.” Here people are compared to sheep (not the brightest of animals) who may or may not listen for God’s voice. As I consider this text I find myself wondering:  For those of us who do have the sense of hearing, what are the sounds we associate with God/Divine? Or what are the sounds that we associate with freedom, joy, grace, mercy, compassion, etc? And what would it be like to listen with our whole being for those sounds of freedom, joy and justice?

Last night the Worship Committee reflected on the following quote by Janet R. Walton:

“We come together as worshipping communities, not because we are perfect but precisely because we are not. So, week after week, we gather to draw the holy into life. We expect to hear, to taste, to see, to touch, to remember, and to imagine God in our lives.”

We as a committee talked about some of the sights, sounds, moments of touch, smells, and tastes that we associate with worship, church and scripture.  We wondered: Do we really “expect to hear, to taste, to see, to touch, to remember, and to imagine God in our lives?” Do we really “gather to draw the holy into life?” What does that even mean?

For the next couple of months these are the questions we will consider during worship. And by way of preparing for this “Sensing God” series, I’ve been reading a book with that title by Roger Ferlo. Ferlo reminds us that early congregations of believers lived in “a deeply sensuous world, one in which the presence of God was experienced by means of all the senses working together–the taste of bread and wine, the smell of incense, the touch of the laying on of hands in prayer.” He goes on to suggest that Scripture would have been incomprehensible outside these bodily sensations of hearing, touching, tasting, seeing and yes, even smelling.

Unfortunately, as he argues, we in the west have too often treated scripture as an information manual, as our source for facts and rules. As a result, we often miss the sense of it all. In other words, we are impoverished if and when we don’t develop regard for the cross- sensory interplay when reading and understanding scripture.

And so as we prepare to gather on Sunday, I’ll leave you with these thoughts printed on the back of Ferlo’s book:

Think of all the senses you use when you pick up a Bible. What do you see? What do you smell? What do you touch? Reading scripture attentively is more than a matter of sight. Most of us have been taught to think about God in visual terms, yet the very subject matter of scripture–our relationship with the fullness of God–makes irresistible demands upon all of our senses if we are to begin to understand anything about God…Just as a printed recipe cannot substitute for a mouth-watering feast, so the Bible must be brought to life through the senses. Its stories must be seen, heard, touched, smelled, and tasted. Only then…can we truly begin to encounter in our lives the Word of God to us in scripture.

Feel free to comment on the sights, sounds, moments of touch, smells, and tastes that you associate with worship. (Rosi claims that each church has a distinct smell and that she could be blindfolded and still know which church she was in, just by the smells. Someday I might just have to test her on that claim.)

This is the final drawing by Jesse for our “Am I doing this right?” worship series. If you look closely you can see the question embedded in the tree.

On Sunday we are going to bury the question “Am I doing this right?” Perhaps we won’t bury it once and for all (the question has a way of never dying), but we will stop making it so front and center in our worship service and hopefully in our lives. We’ll bury the phrase much in the same way as some Christians bury the word alleluia during the season of Lent.

Of course there is still much to explore with this question and as usual, this preacher’s mind is swirling with many scripture passages, images, questions, concerns, doubts, and insecurities.  It’s the “simmer point” of the sermon preparing process.  A lot of ingredients are in the pot right now, interacting with each other and cooking and I’m hoping that the meal doesn’t burn.

Here’s just a few of those ingredients.

From Matthew 5:48:  “Be perfect/teleios, therefore, as your heavenly father is perfect/teleios.”

The Greek word for perfect is teleios, which most often means complete, mature, or whole. Doesn’t teleios sound way better than perfect? Striving for completeness, maturity, and wholeness, while no less daunting, sounds more appealing to me than striving for perfection.

I tend to side with Anne Lamott, who writes this about the bad word that is perfection:

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won’t have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren’t even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they’re doing it.”

I guess you can’t quote Anne Lamott with a few salty words mixed in.

Another quote (or should I say spice) that is in the sermon pot right now is this one from Madeleine L’Engle:

We become whole by being all our ourselves, including the aspects of ourselves we like least as well as those of which we are able to approve. When we try to approve of ourselves (rather than to love ourselves) we tend to lose both our senses of humor and of wonder. Only if I retain the irradiating joy as I see the first trout lily in the spring, the first bright red of the partridge berries in the autumn, can I become a ‘grown-up.’

And finally I share this lovely spice/quote that I spotted on Facebook: (I wish I knew who to credit!)

“Discovering who you are involves learning the difference between accidental limitations which it is our duty to outgrow and the necessary limitations of our nature beyond which we cannot trespass with impunity.”

In other words, to become whole means to accept ourselves as we are, and at the same time, to expect more of ourselves and seek greater wholeness Accepting who we are and yet expecting more is hard yet HOLY work.

Therefore I invite you to prepare this meal with me. Feel free to comment or share other quotes or reflections either of your making or the making of others.

I’m not always at Rainbow on Saturday mornings, but today I was and boy am I glad! I went mainly to say goodbye to the group of senior highers and sponsors who will be spending the next 24 hours at Camp Mennoscah. Since I’ve been on so many of these trips (too many to count), I often wondered what it would feel like to be the one staying behind waving goodbye. Maybe I was secretly hoping they would invite me along but that didn’t happen:)

I thought I’d be at Rainbow for 20 minutes at most. (Jesse was preparing breakfast for us after all.) Then more cars of parents and teenagers started pulling up. “We are looking for the garden,” they said. I then saw our master gardener Aaron Barnhart and realized that it must be a work day with the Youth Volunteer Corp of KC.  The last I saw, at least 10 students had come to work in the hot August sun, alongside Aaron, who is a masterful gardener and educator.

Not 10 minutes later, more cars began to pull up to Rainbow. I then remembered the Kansas City chapter of the  American Guild of Organists was meeting at Rainbow.

The place was buzzing with life, and all before 10 am.

Many churches don’t see a full parking lot except on Sundays or for other special events like funerals or weddings. Not so at Rainbow! Sometimes I’ll pull in to our parking lot on a Tuesday and can’t even find a spot. (This happened on August 5 since we are a neighborhood polling place.)  I’ve started to repeat a phrase I have heard many others say, “You never know what’s going to happen at Rainbow!”

Yes, my breakfast was cold by the time I got home, but I didn’t care.

Drawing by Jesse Graber

My framework for thinking about baptism and church membership was pretty clear-cut growing up. Basically the two were tied together. You don’t get baptized outside the context of a church community, and you wait to be baptized until you can make that decision freely. Once you make that decision you stand up or more like kneel during worship on Sunday, and declare your faith and in turn, the congregation pledges their support to you and welcomes you as a full member. In my home church, this meant I could finally partake in communion and it meant I could vote in meetings and receive scholarship funds. Hooray!

During college and post-college I would quickly learn that this framework for baptism and church membership is not the norm in Christianity, if there is even such a thing as a norm.

I became more in tune with different baptismal and membership practices when I was a hospital chaplain on the labor and delivery ward in a Chicago hospital. Weekly, if not daily, I was asked to perform a baptism. Sometimes it was the parents requesting it for themselves, sometimes it was a parent requesting it for their baby, sometimes their stillborn babies, or sometimes for their babies still in utero. At times, when I was too far outside my comfort zone, I would call for help and I would accompany other chaplains as they performed these baptisms. I gladly participated in some of the litanies and prayers. Of course there were times when I was the only chaplain on call. If and when I received a call in the middle of the night from the Labor and Delivery unit, I went. I sprinkled water on many a child, and that water was often mixed in with the parent’s tears, sometimes mine. I prayed that God would work to transform my discomfort into care and that the words of my mouth, the rituals I performed would be pleasing to God and a piece of people’s healing story.

Years later I would take great comfort in the words of United Church of Christ pastor Lillian Daniel who writes this about baptism and church membership: “It’s a good thing God’s love is not limited to our various understandings of baptism and church membership. And it’s good to remember that in God’s story, we have already been joined, one to another.”

Lillian Daniel, in a chapter titled “To join or not to join,” (The book title is Tell it like it is: Reclaiming the practice of testimony) reminds us that one of the most confusing, off-putting and awkward conversations for many is how, or even why, to become formal members of a church. Decisions about membership and baptism, she reminds us, “are often very intense for people and that the church could do more to understand the many nuances of that discernment.”

Good food for thought.

In that spirit, the invitation to join Rainbow and/or be baptized is seldom heavy-handed or even urgent, and I hope it remains that way. That being said, I don’t want to treat baptism and membership too casually either. These can be important, meaningful acts whereby we commit or renew our commitment to walk in the way of Jesus, along with a community.

Now I want to believe that there are many ways one can join this Way, this way of life. There is no one size fits all approach to joining this Way. And yet, through the ages, baptism remains an important step for many. We can bicker day and night about why this is important, and what it really means, what kind of water to use, how much water to use (I SAY A BIG, HEAPING HANDFUL-what I have come to call Sporing-somewhere in between sprinkling and pouring), what age you should be, what happens to those who do not choose baptism. But in the end I hope not to lose sight of the larger project or purpose that Jesus initiated and embodied—that being the way of peace. If baptism or if church membership can be a step toward that end, I’m all for it.

And so we at Rainbow will keep inviting people to participate in this church, whether you become formal members or not, whether you ever get baptized or not. And we will keep baptizing those who are able and willing to make such a commitment. In fact we will celebrate three baptisms at Rainbow this coming Sunday August 17.

Hopefully we will keep pledging our support to one another in a whole variety of ways and all the while, I hope to remain sensitive to people’s unique stories and nuanced discernment. And finally, I pray that a sense of awe will come over this place as we baptize Carl, Danny and Anna and seek to walk in the way of peace.

Today was the first day back to school for many including our Rainbow Head Start.

Backpacks are back in style (unlike fanny packs I’m told).

I didn’t realize school was back in session until 1) seeing all the back to school photos posted by proud parents on facebook and 2) driving by Frank Rushton Elementary School and watching the children in their brand new shoes running toward the school. I actually love the fact that driving by a school is part of my daily commute. In fact, I have turned this into an opportunity to pray for the younger members of Rainbow, whether they are already in school or not. If and only when I’m stopped at the light or stopped in a line of cars, I take out my handy little car notebook which has all of the names of Rainbow children on it. It’s a good way for me to pray for our young congregants (and learn their names:). Don’t worry this is WAY safer than texting while driving. Oh and please let me know and please forgive me if I don’t have all the names.

School can be exciting and scary both for students and for those who drop them off by the front door. Some parents/students can’t wait for summer to be over and others dread the start to the school year.

Recognizing this is an important time of year for many people and families, some churches have started to have “backpack blessing Sundays.” Might we try that at Rainbow? We invite anyone going to school (any age!) to bring their backpack or brief case  (just no fanny packs) to worship on Sunday, August 24. NOT THIS COMING SUNDAY BUT NEXT. Caitlin Linscheid will talk to the kids about school and learning and maybe even have a special gift for them to attach to their backpacks. And then we’ll join in the following prayer written by Rod Stafford for backpacks:

Wise and wonderful God, we dedicate these backpacks and bless the students who carry them. Accompany the students to school. Strengthen their minds and their bodies. As they grow in knowledge, may they discover the gifts and passions that you have entrusted to them. May they learn kindness, creativity, and care. Bless their classmates, their teachers, and their parents, we pray. Amen.

PS: I want to be clear that I do not discourage anyone from wearing fanny packs. It’s simply that I have people in my life who might disown me if I start wearing one again. I wore one off and on throughout college and well, my friends made fun of me. They were probably jealous.

Drawing by Marina Kaufman. Thanks sister Marina! I especially love the lurking creature that has bled through from the other page.

I have a friend who calls me “Preach.” I don’t mind it in the same way I didn’t mind when Jesse’s grandpa Ransom used to call me “Pumpkin.” (On one occasion, after he called me that in front of congregational members, I did clear my throat and say, “That’s Reverend Pumpkin to you.”) “Rev” is another popular title given to me among my family and friends.

If and when people give any thought to what pastors/reverends/pumpkins do with their time, many people think about preaching or the giving of homilies, or “talks,” or “essays” or “meditations,” or my personal favorite, “medication.” (I’ve seen meditation misspelled as medication many times in many bulletins including when I was preaching as a chaplain in a hospital.)

This tendency to equate pastor with preacher is actually what almost scared me away from seminary. Up until that point I felt more comfortable dribbling a basketball than speaking in public.

I went ahead with seminary and the thought of preaching only got scarier. In my first class on preaching I was told that many pastors spend one hour prep time for every minute of a sermon delivered. This time formula was held up as the ideal much to the shock and disbelief of us students. It’s not that we didn’t WANT to spend that much time in study and preparation. (Ok, maybe a little.) Our shock had more to do with how we would fit that into our weekly schedule when there were equally important things to do like  pastoral care, service in the neighborhood, worship planning, administrative tasks, etc. Not to mention exercising, getting sufficient sleep, doing laundry, eating, and spending time with family!

I have since come around. In fact, when I met with the Rainbow search committee I told them that 20 hours of prep time remains the ideal for me, and like all ideals, I sometimes fall short or it is altogether impossible to reach. And yet, the reason I still hold this as an ideal is that if I am going to be entrusted with a microphone, I want to be prepared. I want to have spent quality time thinking, reading and praying hoping that the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart will sparkle with some kind of beauty, hope, wisdom, etc. It’s not going to be perfect and at times the sparkle might be pretty blah. Still, it is something to shoot for.

Of course how I spend that 20 hours of prep time has changed over the years. In my first couple years of preaching I would shut the door and bury myself in books and commentaries. I would shut the world out (and sometimes that included my poor husband) in order to prepare my sermon. I don’t know what explains the shift, but this year my approach has been a little different. I have started to spread out my learning and study time throughout the week, learning how to save and document what I’m learning  and reading. Sometimes what I read and save only find expression in sermons down the road. In fact, I keep a file folder called “Someday sermon.” In other words, that 20 hours of prep time is providing a well from which I hope I will continue to draw from year after year after year. I am trying to heed the advice of Leroy Seat who said that even on his busiest days, he found it helpful to start each day reading, if even it was just 20 minutes. I find when and if I do this, I can absorb what I read and draw from it as I go about the many tasks of a given day. Thank you Leroy!

I am like all pastors, still learning and growing as a preacher. There are often times I wonder, “Am I doing this right?” There are days I despair and wonder if the time spent preparing and delivering sermons is really worth it. Then I remember something my dad told me once: “Sermons are like meals. You don’t remember every meal you eat, but they still nourish us. And once in awhile, you eat a meal that is so exquisite, you never forget it.”

And so I will continue to preach and I will continue to encourage others who want to learn the art of preaching. In fact this week I will be coaching Hannah Unruh as she prepares her first sermon to be delivered this coming Sunday at Rainbow. It’s been almost a year since she told me that she wanted to preach as part of her baptism commitment. This means she has put way more than 20 hours into this sermon!

Let’s hope and trust that it will sparkle on Sunday and let’s join together in saying: “Preach it sister Hannah!”

I had the privilege of officiating at the August 3 wedding of David and Leah Gaeddert. The wedding was held in the Flint Hills near Elmdale, KS.

There we were in the GREAT company of grasshoppers, bumblebees, prairie grasses, limestone, and mosquitoes. There we were under the open sky, gazing out into the open horizon. (It must have been in the Flint Hills where someone came up with the KS motto: As big as you think.) And there we were, an amazing assortment of people, from a variety of places, ready to offer support.

While I’ve attended many outdoor weddings, I’ve never officiated at one. This means I had to think through what bug spray to wear, what dress to wear that wouldn’t blow every which way, and how to assemble my notes in such a way that they would be protected from sudden gusts of wind. And yes, I had to be prepared for what I thought would be THE WORST scenario: A bumblebee would land on me and make this pastor go screaming and running for (away from?) the hills. Thankfully that didn’t happen.

I received permission from David and Leah to post my wedding reflection. As you’ll notice, I am no stranger to the Flint Hills. In fact, I keep hoping to offer a Flint Hills hike some Sunday afternoon for those interested at Rainbow. It would be about a two hour drive, but look where we would end up! Stay tuned for details.

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Wedding reflection:
David and Leah, here we are your wedding day, a day that you have looked forward to for some time now.

Here we are surrounded by some of your closest friends and family.

Here we are in the glorious Flint Hills of KS, a place that is infused with natural beauty: open sky, open land, unending horizon,….

And here we are to celebrate your beautiful, ever growing, ever deepening love  

And here we are to give thanks to God, the source of all love.

I don’t know if I ever told you this but I have spent a lot of time in these hills. A couple times a month our family would drive 15 miles east of Marion for walks and horse rides. And so as I prepared for this day I thought about what what this place, what these hills might have to teach us about God, relationships, and love.

During hikes in these hills and in order to keep up with my parents, I would often have to look down just to make sure I didn’t fall. And so from an early age I began to notice all of the delicate beautiful flowers and grasses, this understated beauty that you can only see close-up. As I got older I learned that prairie grasses, such as the great Bluestem, have an amazing underground web of roots. These roots sometimes reach 10 feet into the earth. It is this hardy system of roots that allow these grasses to survive in the harshest of conditions, especially drought. The prairie grasses are tougher than most of us realize. They persist year after year after year because of their hardy root system.  

And so what might this place, what might the Bluestem teach us?

I singled out the Bluestem because I think the two of you are keen observers. You seem to value beauty that isn’t just flashy, but beauty that has more substance. You have an appreciation for what is going on beneath the surface. Another reason I thought of prairie grasses is that my prayer for you is that you too will keep developing a hardy, sustainable, nourishing root system as individuals and as a married couple. I pray that you too will be able to withstand the droughts: the disappointments, the failures, the heartaches. I pray that you too will have roots that will help you weather the extreme conditions of life; roots that will help you grow in healthy ways; roots that will be life-giving providing you the necessary nutrients all year round, so that your relationship will also persist year after year after year.

Fortunately you both have had many people who have nourished your root system. You both have been nurtured in healthy soil with lots of nutrients. Many people have made it possible for you to be standing here today. Many people have taught you about what it means to grow and mature.

Now as a married couple you will begin to tend these roots in your own, creative way. You will find ways to nurture these roots making sure they get the necessary nutrients. You will find a way to surround yourself with friends and community and hopefully these friends or this community will help you to not only tend to the material or obvious things of life, but will help you see what might be below the surface, beyond what we can immediately see or know.

Over the centuries and generations, people have looked in part to Scripture as they develop this hardy root system. This of course is not the only source for developing roots that will last, but it is an important, life-giving dimension for many. And so in closing, I would like to share a passage from from a letter to the Ephesians. I think whoever wrote this must have had plant life around him or her.

I pray that, according to the riches of God’s glory, God may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through the Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love. I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. -Ephesians 3:16-19