Relationships

The Devil in Disciple’s Clothing

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“What was the devil up to in the wilderness? He offered Jesus success without suffering and a crown without a cross. How alluring that must have been. Of course, that would have come at the cost of bowing the knee to the devil. In the end, Jesus rejected the lure.

Three years later, it was his own disciple, the man who would be the rock upon whom he would build his church, who was encouraging Jesus to pursue the crown without the cross. Peter wasn’t intending to lead Jesus astray; he was only using human logic and seeking to look out for his friend. Which reminds me that even our Christian friends, pastors, and counselors can at times lead us away from God’s path. They would, like Peter, do it unwittingly, but with real consequences. And we might be Peter for someone else, leading them astray without intending to do so. When we’re thinking only human thoughts, we’ll often counsel against the hard path, the way of suffering.”

Rev. Adam Hamilton, “Simon Peter: Flawed but Faithful Disciple”

Rev. Hamilton’s words above have caused me a moment of pause. As I write these words, I have had a difficult few days in a good way. Two of my three children have been in town for winter break and my normal routine was almost immediately tossed to the side by their presence.

I have baked more cakes in the past week than I have in the past two years. I had some apples towards the end of their shelf life, so it has been apple cake after apple cake in our house. Burgers, smoked chicken, macaroni and cheese, hot dogs, and all sorts of things that I generally do not cook for myself.

It is different to take time to cook, once again, instead of taking time to walk in circles around a sanctuary memorizing the sermon. It is different to listen to kids playing video games instead of spending time focusing in silent prayer. Everything seemed out of sync and strange.

It has been a blessing to have a few moments of what my colleagues with children would see as normal life. It has also been a bit guilt-inducing as I have had a few moments of wondering how far I would be on my to-do list if I had a babysitter. Even taking an hour to care for my body by weight-lifting without kicking myself has been challenging.

It is strange to think that this might be far more normal and a far more regular occurrence if I had listened to different voices years ago. Instead of burying myself in work and poor choices, I could have listened to the people who were expressing concern. Instead of listening to the voices telling me that the Christlike thing was to dig deeper and do all things through Christ, I could have actually stopped to ask God if I was supposed to be fearful all the time. Instead of coping poorly, I could have actually asked if I was meant to stand on my own too feet alone long before things went so far off course.

Can I go back in time and change the decisions I once made? No. Can I decide to trust God and ask for help moving forward? Absolutely. I can confess my sins and make amends for my past as best as I am able, but I can’t change the past.

What’s more, as a person who has a role in the lives of others, I can do my best to be aware of the fact that my actions can have consequences in the lives around me. Have I caused others to stumble? Possibly, but I think the more productive thing to do is to take note of the possibility and do my best to not do it again. I may intend to do no harm, but I need to remain aware of the fact that I have the capacity.

Our church is offering a short-term Bible study for the season of Lent. While many studies for the season traditionally focus on spiritual practices or on the stories of holy week, this year we are reading “Simon Peter: Flawed but Faithful Disciple” by Rev. Adam Hamilton. The idea of the study is that we might consider how we follow Christ in our lives while considering the life of this flawed follower. These blog posts are designed with a principle I have learned from recovery work: “We identify with the stories of others and try not to contrast.” We grow more and live with greater serenity when we look for what we share in common with someone with whom we might otherwise disagree.

Expectations and Disappointments

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

“Christ always shows a very slender appreciation of any act of religion or of ethics which does not reach beyond the stage of compulsion. What is done because it must be done; because the law requires it, or because society expects it, or because convention prescribes it, or because the doer of it is afraid of consequences if he omits it, may, of course, be rightly done and meritoriously done, but an act on that level is not yet quite in the region where for Christ the highest moral and religious acts have their spring.”

Quaker Theologian Rufus Jones, 1916

What does it mean to have an expectation of other people? Is expecting them to do their best an empty expectation doomed to failure? Is expecting them to live up to their principles and their vows an expectation based upon madness? Is expecting someone else to keep their word the very same as building a house on shifting sands? Do we actually expect it will stand when the rains come?

Sadly, experience tells me that trusting others is perhaps an act of folly. At the same time, while there are times when promises fall flat and it can be insanity to trust other people to do what they say, it is perhaps best to consider the fact that none of us are precisely and perfectly sane all of the time. The religious way of stating this has been that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. If we expect others to be perfect, then we are expecting a perfection that we ourselves know we are incapable of executing. While we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us, most people in the faith I truly respect understand that they are going towards perfection and are not actually absolutely perfect at the moment.

So, how do we know whether or not we should trust others? How do we know whether or not we should place our trust in someone after our heart is broken or promises tossed aside as chaff? I think that Rufus Jones had a wise thought that applies here. Jones points out in “The Inner Life” that there are people who legalistically attempt to live up to the rules of religion. In particular, he takes umbrage with those who take the passage about going the second mile too literally. Surely any religious practice that is willing to literally go another mile without going deeply into the meaning behind the request is looking only at the wrapping paper on the present of Jesus’ words.

Is it good to go the extra mile? Probably! Still, Jones points out a grievous reality within that obedience: “But there was no spontaneity in his religion, no free initiative, no enthusiastic passion, no joyous abandon, no gratuitous and uncalculating acts. He did things enough, but he did them because he had to do them, not because some mighty love possessed him and flooded him and inspired him to go not only the expected mile, but to go on without any calculation out beyond milestones altogether.”

Doing things because they’re just enough is valuable at some level, but that’s not the goal. Similarly, keeping one’s word just because one must or because a person is commanded to do so by some sort of authority is not nearly the same thing as doing something because you are motivated by spontaneous love, free choice, and the gracious life that comes from Christ. There’s a distinct difference between doing something right because one must and doing so because one’s being is expressed through those actions.

This perspective is valuable to me as I continue to question my own ability to make commitments after a past of difficulties. For neither love nor money can I convince someone from my past to give me appropriate access to my children despite their best interests. To be entirely honest, the court system seems equally impotent at showing her any sort of accountability to a standard of behavior. It is like the wild-west to be anywhere near the person from that relationship and it is safer to be out in the desert than walking down the street with all those tumbleweeds.

At one level Jones’ words seem inapplicable. There’s what Jones suggests as Christian behavior, what Jones sees as legalistic behavior, and then there’s just that level of behavior we’re dealing with where both Jesus and the Pharisees would likely shake their heads in disgust. “Go and sin no more” seems like a bit of an understatement.

At another level, consider the fact that the person I want to trust in my life has done none of the things my former partner has done. She has acted honorably, charitably, and graciously. She does things like ask me for my consent and lets me admit that I am just broken without treating me like someone from the isle of misfit toys. She’s doing all the right things and she’s doing them because it comes from the heart and not some pharasitical set of rules. At the moment, she’s the whole package: someone who I like, adore, and who would be an awesome blessing to me and someone I want my children to know.

So, how do we learn to trust? I think the only answer is the one I learned in recovery. We choose to trust one day at a time. When things don’t add up, we remember our own past and the mistakes of our past, consider our own part in things, and, whenever possible, try again. We make consensual amends when our character defects harm others and we are willing to let others make consensual amends to us. We choose to care and to try while understanding that the person we meet today or tomorrow may not be the person that we once met in the past, especially if they are literally not the same person who broke our hearts.

“For everyone born, a place at the table…”

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

I went to bed humming in my heart last night. Just before I drove away from my girlfriend’s house, we posted a picture together for the first time. I had brought a delicious acorn squash pie with gingersnap crust for dessert and spent the day getting to know her family a bit better. I met her mother, sister, nephew, and niece. Her kids were a riot to be around as usual.

She’s in a different space than me in her life with grown kids, but we share a lot of things in common. She knows what it is like to go through a troubled marriage and a divorce. She knows the value of having space at the table. She let me be there with her through all the Thanksgiving stuff that every family has and even let me kindly invite her to simply be in the moment with me and her family.

In other words, I felt like I belonged yesterday. As I wake up on the sixth birthday of my littlest turkey today, I know that I won’t see her for over another month at this point. I had to ask her sibling to have her call me as the phone number I have for my child is never answered when I call. J says the tablet has power issues and barely works. I can’t help but think of the new tablet sitting on a shelf here that I bought for her months ago only to be told that the broken tablet she has is good enough even though I can’t contact my child through it. I asked her while I talked with her if she received the postcards I sent my kids while traveling. I sent six. Their mother let them see one of them. I can’t even write cards to my kids with the expectation they will receive them. Joint custody apparently means I can’t even write them…

My eldest still won’t talk to me and the answer remains: an hour a month for virtual therapy to rebuild a relationship is too much time in his busy schedule even as he applies to a foreign exchange student program. He has time to travel the world but not time for an hour a month with his father.

I’m thankful J still obviously loves their father and takes the time to talk with me on occasion, but it shouldn’t fall on a thirteen-year-old to be the adult in a family of a single mom, a fifteen-year-old, and a six-year-old. It especially shouldn’t be so when there are grandparents and other relatives around who should be able to speak reason to power. It would be wrong of me to ask J to be the conduit for conversation and J shouldn’t have to be put in that position. Unfortunately, when you can’t even write the other kids with the expectation they’ll get their mail, the option seems to be to put your child in an impossible situation or lose a relationship with all of them.

There’s a difference between what I experienced yesterday and my experience even of married life. The feeling of actually being accepted and having my girlfriend’s mother ask about my children was heartbreakingly kind. I mean, there are two Halloween gifts waiting for them on the shelf upstairs from my girlfriend’s mother who decided my kids deserved love before she even met me. They welcomed me so warmly and all I had to do to belong was just be me: someone who cared for someone at the table who also cared for me.

It is such a different experience than getting phone calls about church members being concerned that I was being yelled at in a gas station or hearing complaints about my partner arguing with PPRC members in a local restaurant when they said something she disagreed with. It is sad that it took me years to see they weren’t just complaining about someone they didn’t like: they were scared for me. In hindsight, I get it. I wish I had understood then.

People tell me to keep trying and to not give up, but that’s pretty hard advice to actually follow. Perhaps someone would understand if they were actually in my shoes. I’m exhausted and tired of pretending everything is fine. Heading down south recently on the Civil Rights pilgrimage and seeing the evidence of people who knew what was right and who were willing to get in good trouble… I wish I knew how to advocate for myself and others in the way that they did with such power, presence, and moral authority. I wish I could change things, but that’s a long journey I don’t know how to travel. It is literally easier to walk thousands of miles in a year than to know how to handle things. I can say that one from experience.

In the meantime, yeah. I baked a pie, I shared space, and I allowed my cold heart to open a little more to actually living life. Is the “cold still in my bones?” Yeah, they’re cold and brittle, but there’s also something else: that faintly glowing fire… (Yes, that’s a Five Iron Frenzy reference: “Blizzards and Bygones (All Frost and No Thaw Version)” is a gem that has been my unofficial soundtrack while walking the wintry woods over the past few years).

Original recipe: https://www.thekitchenmagpie.com/acorn-squash-pie/
Adaptations: For the filling, I used fresh ginger and grated nutmeg into slightly larger pieces than the powdered stuff. For the crust, I processed the gingersnaps through a grinder for uniformity and then melted a little more than the specified butter (2 extra TBSP) in the glass pie dish in the oven. I then poured the butter into the crumbs and brown sugar only after swirling the pie plate so that the entirety of the crust had a buttery layer to keep the crust from sticking. That process also made certain each bite had a touch of buttery goodness. I also used a dough blender to uniformly break up any buttery clumps and to make certain the brown sugar spread throughout the crust instead of being in chunks.

Let Us Ramble: On Split Animals

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

So, after the busyness of the Lenten season and a week taken away to provide childcare for my three children during their spring break, I am back in the saddle again. In the next few weeks I will be preparing for the next session of the Academy for Spiritual Formation and then it is time to prepare for Annual Meetings, so you can guess the direction of posts as those events draw closer.

In the meantime, in between changing diapers for my smiler and breaking up youthful hijinks between the two elder gooseballs, I have been pondering a passage from the Book of Genesis. In particular, I have been thinking about the nature of covenant.

As a pastor, I am surrounded by covenantal relationships. I have a covenant with God in my own personal spiritual life, a covenant with my wife to remain faithful until death parts us, a covenant with God to care for the children I have been entrusted with as a parent, a covenant with God to care for the people I minister with in my appointment as a minister, a covenant with the Maine Federated Church to support this local church, a covenant exists between the United Methodist Church and the Maine Federated Church that sets the guidelines for how the church cares for me and the parsonage in which I live, a covenant with the United Church of Christ to minister on their behalf in this community, a covenant between myself and other United Methodist Elders in my Conference’s Order of Elders, a covenant between myself and all pastors and deacons that serve within our common denomination, and finally a covenant with myself. Like I said, there’s a lot of covenant relationships in my life.

If that run-on sentence above doesn’t prove the point that it makes sense that I think about covenant a lot, then let me just assure you that I do think seriously about covenant and covenantal requirements often. Covenants are often conflicting and challenging. Which covenant takes priority on a daily basis? Do I spend another night away this month at another meeting or do I spend time with my children who sometimes don’t really see me except an hour a day some weeks? Do I sit in the office and wait for someone to come by the church or go visit people who cannot leave their homes? Do I blog about the nature of covenant or do I spend another few hours writing letters to church members? Covenants are complicated.

Genesis 15 lays out a sign of the covenant that is quite gruesome. Animals are split into two pieces and in the midst of the night a flaming torch and a smoking fire pot pass between the two lines of animal parts. It seems a bit gross, but the reality behind the imagery is even more frightening. In covenantal language, the promise is made. May I become like these animals (split in two) if I break this covenant. The severity of the response to a break in covenant is intentionally graphic, intentionally troubling, and intentionally recorded for the people so that they understand the importance of their covenant with God.

So, being surrounded by covenants, what do we do? Do we look at our relationship with God as being so important that we might be divided in two if we were to break it? Do we look at our relationship in the marriage covenant as being so powerfully binding? I have never been divorced, but many of the people I know who have been through the process refer to it as being a traumatic and spiritually violent process—almost as if they were torn in two. Do we look at our relationships we share with our beloved family in the church the same way? I know few places where a falling out can be as traumatic as in a church. Hearts break in those circumstances.

In honesty, where I found myself pondering covenant a lot this week was while thinking about the United Methodist Church. Are we facing a breaking in covenant as a whole? Have we been so brutally biased in our approaches to each other, to the looming conversations, and in our application of church politics that we have missed basic concepts such as loving each other? Has a lack of love led to a breaking of covenant? Are we tearing ourselves apart in some literally testimony to the concept that broken covenant leads to torn relationship and a torn body split in two?

As we go through this season of resurrection, what does it mean to go forward in covenant with a God who moves past death into life? There is much to ponder this Eastertide. I pray that we all go forward with love and peace.

Let us Seek: Blessed Relationships

/ Robert D / Leave a comment

For me, today’s readings from the Revised Common Lectionary are falling on blessed ears. In particular, I feel very blessed by one verse in the selections. 1 Peter 3:8 immediately drew my attention when I read through the readings this morning. In the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, the verse says “Finally, all of you, have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind.” The New International Version translates this passage “Finally, all of you, be like-minded, be sympathetic, love one another, be compassionate and humble.” The old school King James Version translates this passage “Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another, love as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous:”

While I don’t often read The Message, 1 Peter 3:8-12 is a good read as well:

Summing up: Be agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble. That goes for all of you, no exceptions. No retaliation. No sharp-tongued sarcasm. Instead, bless—that’s your job, to bless. You’ll be a blessing and also get a blessing.

Whoever wants to embrace life
and see the day fill up with good,
Here’s what you do:
Say nothing evil or hurtful;
Snub evil and cultivate good;
run after peace for all you’re worth.
God looks on all this with approval,
listening and responding well to what he’s asked;
But he turns his back
on those who do evil things.

I was drawn to this passage today because I was reminded of the value of loving others yesterday. I had a good long conversation with a colleague who has been slowly becoming a friend since the creation of the Upper New York Annual Conference. We talked about the future of the church over a delicious Persian lunch and talked about our own journeys in her church after the meal had ended. Our time was a blessing.

It reminded me of many conversations that I have had with other colleagues and friends over the years. The time together reminded me of late night debates and conversation in the dorms, dining halls, and at BT’s with my friends from Roberts Wesleyan College. The time together reminded me of sitting at study groups at a diner on Route 104 and over the bookstore counter in seminary at Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School. The conversation reminded me of the relationships I have built at Annual Conferences with my sisters and brothers in the United Methodist Church first in Buffalo as a part of Western New York Annual Conference and then at the OnCenter in Syracuse with the Upper New YOrk Annual Conference. The time in fellowship reminded me of the deep conversations that took place and the relationships we have built at Silver Bay and in Rochester through the Annual Meeting of the UCC which I shared with newfound sisters and brothers over the past few years. I was reminded of all of these blessed ministries through time with a colleague who is becoming a friend.

The next two weeks are going to be very busy for me as a pastor. There are a lot of meetings to attend for both of the denominations that I serve. There are a lot of things that I will need to get done in order to do the very best I can in those situations. While I imagine that the UCC Annual Meeting will not likely be very stressful for me (due to the very congenial and loving nature of the folks that I generally have experienced during those meetings), I know that the UMC Annual Conference will definitely have moments of tension and stress. I am entering a very busy time in my year, but occasions like the one I engaged in yesterday remind me that there are blessings ahead.

The Message tells us to snub evil and cultivate good. How does one cultivate good? You cultivate good in the garden world by taking good care of your soil, maintaining healthy plants, and keeping pests (and pets) away from your plants. In time, plants grow because you care for them. I imagine that the next few weeks will have many opportunities to cultivate relationships. I pray that I take the time to cultivate good in the midst of all of the challenges.

One of our zucchini plants in hand-tilled earth!

The King James Version reminds us to have compassion for one another. In situations of stress and challenge, can be easy to desire victory at any cost. The act of having compassion is an act which can be a blessing in situations that naturally lead to division. The act of receiving compassion is an act which can be a blessing in situations that naturally lead to withdrawal from relationship. King James Version of this verse reminds us to enter into a reciprocal sharing of compassion. Compassion passed around a circle of folks just like we pass around the cup during communion. The body and blood of Christ for everyone around the table–the compassion of sisters and brothers for all in the family.

The New International Version binds together compassion with humility. In this translation we are reminded to go beyond compassion for others. We are invited to enter into humility. We are invited to humility when we live in a world where there are groups calling for win/lose scenarios. Humility in victory might mean not letting it go to your head. Compassion and humility in victory might mean sitting in grief with those who believe different than you. Humility in loss might mean taking the long view of matters instead of taking it as a critique of your position, your belief, or your character. Humility and compassion in loss might remind you to look beyond yourself even as your grieve. Hopefully, humility and compassion might lead us to seek situations where there are no winners or losers. We might be led to places where we are family instead of combatants.

The New Revised Standard Version reminds us to have tender hearts. This challenge might be greater than any other challenge for those of us who have been in the trenches of denominational squabbles for years. I am reminded by my friend and colleague that there is room for tenderness and growth in relationship even when everyone at the table has had challenges in their past. There is still room for love and growth in hearts that often wear suits of armor into challenging meetings. If we can risk being vulnerable, there may be places where even hearts broken with grief and loss can find new life.

I am thankful for this verse today and for all the colleagues and friends who have shared love with me over the years. I am grateful that love still rests at the heart of what it means to be Christian.