Our human condition lends itself to staying in comfort zones.   We like the familiar.  We don't handle change too well.  I am a creature of routine.   Perhaps we all are.  But those of us who rate high "J" on the Myers-Briggs Temperament Profile have a high propensity to structure, routine and closure.   Closure and things like written lists give us a sense of control in life (psuedo though it may be).   If I am to be spontaneous, and open to change, then I will write "be spontaneous" on my list.

One of the inevitable downsides to being overly structured and unwilling to shake routine, thereby attempting to avoid change, is that it stunts growth.   No stretch, no growth.  No resistance, no strengthening.  I read some time back an interview with a young man who dives for exotic fish for aquariums.  He said one of the most popular aquarium fish is the shark.   He explained that if you catch a small shark and confine it, it will stay a size proportionate to the aquarium.  Sharks can be six inches long yet fully matured.   But if you turn them loose in the ocean, they grow to their normal length of six to eight feet.

That can happen to us in life too.   Perhaps you've seen the cutest little six-inch Christians who swim around in the same, comfortable, small puddle.   Yet, if these same believers reach out into a larger arena, into the whole world, only then do they truly grow and promote Christ and His Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

One winter season our family had an unwanted and a surprise guest in our house.  A mallard duck somehow made her way into our chimney but could find no passage of escape!  The contour of the chimney made exiting impossible and the glass covering the fireplace opening prevented exiting in that direction....thankfully for the home dwellers!     One early morning Karen and I were abrubtly awakened by a horrible racket seemingly coming from our living room.   As we got up and further inspected, we noticed this fowl in our fireplace!    So, what to do?!  We finally came up with a plan.   Karen would open the glass covering while I would move in with a blanket and capture the bird.   It worked!  I grabbed the mallard, which was exhausted by this time with lack of food and water coupled with repeated efforts at "prison-breaking," and took her to our front porch.  As I opened the blanket she spread her wings and headed in flight toward a nearby lake.   Finally she was free.   At last she was liberated.  Yet, without outside intervention she would never have made it.

As we wait this Advent Season....waiting for Christmas, and more specifically waiting for the arrival of Christ, may we be reminded that we, imprisoned in our addictions and idolatries, cannot liberate ourselves.  Jesus comes to set us free!  God, thankfully and graciously, invades our world and our egos in order that we might be liberated and rescued!  This is the joyous anticipation of Advent, even in the very center of waiting and wondering.......Jesus...Immanuel....God with us....Savior of the world.....is coming to our world....to live in our hearts....to rescue us from sin and self....to set us free!  As I remember and reflect upon the beauty of the mallard taking flight after being freed, I am given a picture, an image, that deeply encourages my soul!  Our deliverer is coming!  Help is on the way!

I will always remember with great fondness a former church member of mine by the name of Paul.   Paul was filled with gratitude.  His signature statement was, "It's great to be alive!"  And he truly LIVED  each and every day.   And, I remind myself, his life was not always easy.    Toward the last part and season of his life his wife had alzhiemers disease.    He kept Bea at home with him as long as he possibly could.   But there arrived the day when he had to place his mate of more than 60 years into a nursing facility.    That was an enormously difficult day!   With tears in his eyes and a positive faith, Paul made the trek and did the gut-wrenching but necessary action.

For years Paul made the trip from home to nursing home, twice each day, to feed Bea her meals and to lovingly speak to her and to comb her long, silver hair.  He would often speak words of love and encouragement to Bea as he stroked her hair lovingly with his hand; saying words like:  "Bea, I'm so glad God gave you to me!"     "You are the love of my life!"  "It's great to be alive and to be here with you!"   And the times that I was privileged to enter into this sacred space with two faith-filled and positive personalities I was encouraged and inspired!  Often at these visits with Paul and Bea, after visiting and sharing together and after a word of prayer, Paul would hand me an offering envelope for our church, which contained his tithes and offerings to help enable and sustain ministry, frequently saying: "Pastor, God has been good to me and Bea.   Life is a blessing!    It's great to be alive!  Please take this offering to the church."     Gratitude seeped from Paul!  Thanksgiving and gratitude contiually generated his generosity in every aspect of his life.

We can so easily miss out on seizing the moment because we are either looking back at yesterday or anticipating tomorrow.    Sometimes we seem to be living on cruise control and not really absorbing nor realizing the beauty of  the here and now.   In this fog and funk we begin to refer to life as mundane, ho-hum, and ordinary.

Not long ago my wife Karen and I refected upon this "ordinary" trap that can so easily snare all of us human beings.    We had several folks in our congregation who were going through serious health and medical trials and treatments.    We discussed how these particular folks would simply long for and treasure a so-called ordinary day!     How their lives had changed from one day to the next when they received these medical diagnoses.   Suddenly, ordinary day became a longing.
Earlier this month I experienced a wild and chaotic day.    I took our daughter, Anna, to the college campus she attends for her classes.   As we drove onto the school grounds a policeman flagged us down, telling us to vacate the premises because the college had received a bomb threat.      Later that same day we experienced an earthquake.    Our church staff was seated around a conference table as the earth shook!     That evening a hurricane hit our Eastern coastline.      A bomb scare; an earthquake; and, a hurricane...all in the very same day!      I wondered what would be next!     I was thinking I should be alert for the locusts to come ravaging!       I can surely tell you that I welcomed ordinary after that wildly eventful day!
May we truly have our eyes open to the gift and beauty of each day!    May we recognize the special opportunity that every moment of each day offers.     And, in doing so may we see the extraordinariness of ordinary days.      Seize the day...right now!   Don't wait for tomorrow or some day.
Leo Buscaglia shares (submitted by one of his students):
Remember the day I borrowed your band new car and I dented it?   I thought you'd kill me, but you didn't.    And remember the time I dragged you to the beach, and you said it would rain, and it did?     I thought you'd say, "I told you so."   But you didn't.       Do you remember the time I flirted with all the guys to make you jealous, and you were?      I thought you'd leave me, but you didn't.     Do you remember the time I spilled strawberry pie all over your car rug?     I thought you'd hit me, but you didn't.    And remember the time I forgot to tell you the dance was formal and you showed up in jeans?   I thought you'd drop me, but you didn't.    Yes, there were lots of things you didn't do.    But you put up with me, and you loved me, and you protected me.   There were lots of things I wanted to make up to you when you returned from Viet Nam.    But you didn't.

May all your days be extraordinary! 

This week my wife, Karen, and I observed and celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.    I am incredibly blessed to have such a loving and giving and patient spouse!    In some ways these past 30 years have seemed to fly by.   In other respects, when I reflect upon all the experiences and life journeys that Karen and I have experienced together....hey, it adds up to a lot!

One thing I am reminded of as I reflect upon thirty years of marriage.....a strong, lasting relationship (of any sort) takes a lot of time, investment, patience and nurture.   In fact, I Corinthians, chapter 13, often referred to as "The Love Chapter" when describing love begins this way:  "Love is patient; love is kind...."    Whenever I read these characteristics of love, along with the fourteen additional descriptors of true love, I get convicted.    How often in my 30 years of marriage have I not practiced patience!    How many times did I not engage in kindness!    And on and on.    Ah, but then I read (I Corinthians 13:5b) true love "keeps no records of wrong," and I am given renewed enthusiasm and hope for my marital relationship (and any other relationship)!    Forgiveness!   Grace!   Mercy!    When we've received it from our Creator we then can share it with others...and with our significant other!      
I am so grateful that Karen is a grace-filled person...she would have to be to be married to me!     I am thankful that she does not keep a record of my wrongs done against her.   And, I also want to reciprocate and  practice that same grace toward her.     Yes, a lot of patience....a big dose of kindness and a ton of forgiveness....From God and from one another......has enabled us to reach thirty years together and counting!    It is a gift.   This relationship I count as a treasure.    And to Karen is awarded The Purple Heart Award for sticking it out...lo these thirty years.   Of course, she has no choice.   I have told her on more than one occasion, "Karen, if you ever leave me...I'm going with you!

On this Independence Day weekend I give thanks for the opportunity and privilege of living in a land with so many freedoms.   There are many on this globe who do not enjoy these same liberties.   May our prayers go out to them, especially those living under totalitarian and oppressive governments.    May we also remember and show our gratitude to those who stand in harms way so that we may be the recipients of such great freedoms.

I believe and affirm that our Creator God created all human beings to be free....free from oppression; free from inhumane ways....and, freed for shalom  - - a wonderful and rich Hebrew word filled with God's pro-active peace consisting of, not just the absence of war/conflict, but filled with the justice and mercy of a loving God.

This is where our deepest and best freedom comes from.....God's shalom!   God frees us from our sin and from our self.   We humans are broken and self-centered and sin-ridden...hubris (or selfish pride) eats away at even our best laid plans, thoughts and actions.   Yet, God, in and through Jesus Christ makes a way to restore us....to set us free...to truly liberate us.   Romans 3:24 celebrates:  "By the free gift of God's grace all are put right with him through Christ Jesus, who sets them free."     

We on the Wesleyan Branch of Christianity are a movement which celebrates and emphasizes God's grace......amazing grace!    We often speak in United Methodist circles of God's same grace manifest in at least three manners:  Prevenient Grace;  Justifying Grace; and, Sanctifying Grace.      We cannot escape God and his grace.  It is all around us.  It surrounds us.   It invites us.  It woos us.  It even protects us.    This is God's prevenient grace.   The grace that seeks us out.  The grace that convicts us.   The grace that first loves us...so that we may even love God.

While Prevenient Grace does not require a human response, Justifying Grace does.   In Justifying Grace we admit our need of God.   We agree with God that we cannot solve our sin and self problem.    As we admit/confess our need of God and God's grace, God offers us reconciliation...salvation......redemption.    We no longer attempt to be self-sufficient.   We no longer try to prove ourselves.    We rest in God's amazing, forgiving, healing justifying grace.  What liberty!   What freedom!

While Justifying Grace frees us from our self and from our sinful ways, Santifying Grace frees us to walk the Christian journey.    Sanctifying Grace is a shared project with God in which we accept God's guidance for our life and living.  It is living our life so as to look more and more like Jesus.    As one Wesleyan theologian puts it, Prevenient Grace speaks to us as Barely Human;  Justifying Grace as Truly Human; and, Sanctifying Grace as Fully Human.

God is offering us total and complete freedom....both now and forever!     As we give thanks for our temporal national freedom may it remind us of a deeper, permanant and universal freedom in and through Jesus Christ. 

This time of year we often think family....Mother's Day (May);  Father's Day (June) and Festival of the Christian Home Month (May).    Family is that place where "iron sharpens iron."    It is not always easy.   Sometimes being family is downright tough.   Yet, if we allow and do our fair share in terms of responsibility and participation family can be a pretty special and cool deal.  And in that specialness we are being shaped and formed for life and living.   I often quote American poet Robert Frost's line which says, "Home is the place that when you go there they have to take you in."  Why?  Because you belong.    This is the way it should be.  This is the way it is intended to be.   My heart and compassion go out to those houses where it is not truly a home and where dwellers therein do not really pereceive and feel that they do belong!

It takes work.   It takes commitment.   And, above all it takes unconditional love to make a functional family (as some have quipped dysfunction is a relative matter - - pun intended!) and a wholesome home.    Proverbs 24:3-4 tells us:  "By wisdom a house is built, and by understanding it is established; and by knowledge the rooms are filled with all precious and pleasant riches."

Following are some wise words - - for building a healthy home - -  from writer Dorothy Nolte.   They apply to all God's children, big and small:

If a child lives with criticism, he learns to condemn.
If a child lives with hostility, she learns to fight.
If a child lives with ridicule, he learns to be shy.
If a child lives with shame, she learns to feel guilty.
If a child lives with tolerance, he learns to be patient.
If a child lives with encouragement, she learns confidence.
If a child lives with praise, he learns to appreciate.
If a child lives with fairness, she learns justice.
If a child lives with security, he learns to have faith.
If a child lives with approval, she learns to like herself.
If a child lives with acceptance and friendship, he learns to find love in the world.

May our families and homes be places of nurture and healthy relationships so that we may reach out and make the world a better place.   Take and make some time to nurture your family!

  

I called Mom last night.  Each Thursday evening I usually do this.   Each of us siblings takes a different evening to call Mom, ever since Dad died last year.    During our conversation, amongst other topics, Mom and I reminisced about our many Easter sunrise services attended as a family through the years.    Some of our favorite were those on top of Long Meadow.   Long Meadow is just as its name suggests - - - a long meadow on top of a mountain, almost 5,000 feet in elevation.     Members of our small country chapel would drive up to this meadow early on Easter morning in time to watch the breath-taking sunrise from high atop the mountain meadow.    What an awesome vantage point for an incredible sunrise view!

As an early teen I recall one Long Meadow sunrise in particular.     As we were gathered on the ridge in the early morning darkness, just prior to dawn, watching the beginning of the sunrise, suddenly a jet plane and its long vapor jet stream appeared on the horizon.   What a contrast!  Divinity's sun was rising in the east, while at the same time hunanity's invention was soaring across the sky in front of our view of the sunrise.    Humanity seeking to interrupt Easter sunrise!   And, yet, the jet along with its vapor exhaust soon dissipated but the sun remained high and strong in the skies.    Easter would not be stopped.   Sunrise was not to be interrupted.    May you and I be reminded and assurred this Easter and always:  Easter will not be stopped.    Son rise will not be interrupted!  Have a blessed Easter!

The Season of Lent invites us to come clean before God.   I find that in order to do this necessary "house-cleaning" of the soul it is good and right to carve out some intentional time for reflection and introspection with Holy Spirit guidance.     Genuine introspection will lead us to honest confession which, in turn, leads to a liberating of the weighted soul.

While I am aware that my soul requires this reflection time, there is a problem:   I am a type-A personality.     Folks like us, in the interest of time attempt to multi-task.    We have been known ,for example, to brush our teeth, read the newspaper and go to the rest room simultaneously!    We have things to do and the world to change.     Who is going to "tend the store" if we are away or if we aren't vigilant?     So, we continue to ignore and avoid "sabbath time."    Authentic  sabbath time, which facilitates and fosters solitude and silence, gets displaced and abused by too- busy people.    We end up caught up in a noisy exterior and a noisy interior....even our alone thoughts are fast-paced and loud!

It requires intentionality and personal discipline to step off the treadmill in order to reflect and renew.    But the results of taking and making the time to do so are like fresh air to the lungs!     As a person and as a  pastor, I know that I need to come apart before I come apart.  I have finally learned through my mind thick and dull (and with the help of some good spiritual guides) that if I do not spend some regular and extended periodic time with God in solitude and silence, then I am not equipped nor prepared to share with nor lead the people God has given me to lead and nurture.    The under shepherd must be nurtured and led by the Good Shepherd.    You must be fed in order to have something with which to feed others.

This week I will again take a mini-spiritual retreat...to come apart so that I do not come apart.    It will be a spiritual and a physical challenge for me, once again, to practice solitude and silence.   Even though part of me resists these spiritual disciplines, my soul craves this time.    And, as a type-A personality, I will once again spend the first portion of this "retreat" working my to-do list (getting it, hopefully, out of my neurotic system) -- engaging in this "human doing" stuff, so that I may spend the final portion in the therapeutic, nurturing time of just being with my Creator...so that I may be re-created for God's plans and purposes.  

May our Lenten journey include time of solitude and silence that we may hear and heed the still small voice of God. 

A lot is said and shared this time of year (February and Valentine's Day) about love and relationships, so I figured I would add my own two cents.  When I think about healthy relationships and the work that a healthy, nurturing relationship requires, I often think about my Dad's reflections and advice concerning this topic.    Dad passed away April 26th, 2010 after forty-seven years of practicing medicine as a Family Pratictioner.    He had a passion for a more general practice of medicine - i.e. Family Practice, etc. - in part because he was an advocate for wholistic treatment, affirming the interrelatedness of body, mind and soul.    Aware of my work as a part time marriage and family therapist, Dad would sometimes share with me about his work with couples (especially pre-marital couples) whom he sometimes counseled at his clinic.   He told me that he would present to them the 3-C's of a nurturing, positive relationship.    I find them to be very helpful, straight-forward, and full of common sense,  although common sense isn't always so common in these times in which we live.
Here are Dad's 3-C's:

Commitment:   Any relationship which hopes to be strong and secure needs trust.    This is the bedrock of any healthy and nurturing relationship.    When a person knows that the other person will be with them through the ups and downs; through good times and bad times...whatever comes their way ....this breeds a security that enables and empowers a love to not only grow, but to blossom, in all its fullness.

Communication:   There is poor communication and there is positive communication.   We communicate ALL the time, no matter what we are doing or saying.   Here we are speaking, of course, of positive communication.     Positive communication consists of two general headings/practices:   Active listening and assertive sharing.     In active listening we not only hear physically (with our ears) but we also seek to listen emotionally (with our heart), that is, we seek to understand what the other person's words and body language are saying.  To do this we ask a lot of questions.   We inquire of the other person for clarification and explanation, staying focused upon them and their sharing....NOT our agenda.    You might try a simple (but difficult) exercise for active listening to another.     Listen to someone share for a few minutes and then repeat back to them what you heard them saying.   This is a great way to stay focused upon their words and their thoughts and feelings.   If you truly practice this you will not be focused upon your thoughts and what you will say in response to their words.   Then there is assertive sharing in order to practice healthy communication.    Assertive sharing is telling the other person for what you wish.   It is expressing your true feelings and thoughts and wishes to another in a non-threatening, non-demanding style.   And, it can avoid a lot of passive-aggressiveness in a relationship, because you are telling it like it is, instread of hiding feelings and thoughts.    Active listening and Assertive sharing are two essentials of positive, healthy communication in a relationship.

Complimentation:    Everyone needs and desires to know that they are valued and appreciated by significant others in their life.     Sharing compliments, whether pertaining to another's physical, mental or emotional attributes/qualities, goes a long way  in nurturing and strengthening a relationship.    Here I would add another quality with a play on words.    Both COMPLIMENTATION and COMPLEMENTATION are necessary for a growing, functional relationship.     While complimentation involves words/expressions of valuing and appreciating another, complementation includes affirmation of, and realizing the need for, variety in a relationship.    The strongest of relationships complement one another, where each person recognizes they have strengths and weaknesses, and that they help balance and support one another when they complement each other.

So, these are Pop's 3'C's, which I find worthy of passing on...and, I hope you find them helpful in all your relationships.  Growing and nurturing healthy relationships is not easy.  There is required work.    But I believe, along with Dad, that commitment, communication and complimentation can provide the tools and the framework that is needed for good, strong relationships.