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Faith Matter- “The Healing Power of Love”
Sitting atop a Sausalito hillside watching a sunset in Winnie and Eike’s beautiful home, the world quiets down. The dog is resting from a walk to town that always involves an uphill in which I carry her part way and she walks part way. Simple pleasures balance the daily news, and help me to avoid despair.
On Wednesday nights while I am here in Mill Valley, I am driving to San Francisco Comedy College for classes. For a dozen years, I have wanted to take a stand-up comedy class. This one fit my schedule exactly, and when I introduced myself as a preacher who teaches people about sex, they gave me a tuition discount. On our first night, the teacher asked if any of us were going to make a career out of stand-up. I didn’t raise my hand. But I do think it will help me–and hopefully the audience– to just let loose and laugh.
Life is genuinely funny, even in this crazy-making time. I recently watched a PBS show on the American Experience program featuring Jewish composers and lyricists who shaped and defined Broadway. Their immigrant stories were written into narratives about star-crossed lovers (West Side Story), soldiers in foreign lands (South Pacific) and the universal challenge of keeping the tradition alive in a new land (Fiddler on the Roof). Their stories make us laugh and make us cry. Broadway musicals are unique to American culture. Thanks to Jewish immigrants who brought their talents to Broadway generations of Americans have celebrated the resiliency of the human spirit. “Forget your troubles c’mon get happy, you better chase all your cares away” (written for Judy Garland by Ted Koehler, lyricist, in 1950).
Next Sunday, I will be talking about the healing of trauma through loving relationships. And I’ll try to not get you all mixed up with my stand-up audience. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this quote as much as I do:
“If you can sit quietly after difficult news; if in financial downturns you remain perfectly calm; if you can see neighbors travel to fantastic places without a twinge of jealousy; if you can eat whatever is put on your plate; if you can fall asleep after a day of running around without a drink or a pill; if you can always find contentment just where you are: you are probably a dog.”
— from Jack Kornfield, A Lamp in the Darkness: Illuminating the Path through Difficult Times
No offense intended. See you in church.
Pastor Karen
Faith Matter- “We are Sojourners”
When news broke this past week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would begin knocking on people’s doors to arrest them, I recalled the story of a scholar I met a few years ago. He had completed his doctoral education by writing a dissertation on the signs and symptoms that went unnoticed in Germany’s political landscape at the time when Hitler’s rise to power unleashed the Holocaust. He said, “I know too much to pretend that it couldn’t happen again.”
In the New York Times last Saturday, a reporter said that Department of Homeland Security officials hoped that images of children and parents being hauled out of their homes would discourage other people from entering the United States illegally. I do not believe that inflicting trauma will deter the thousands of people who are fleeing even worse persecution and death in their homelands.
This week at church, I will be preaching a third sermon of four about Christian perspectives on trauma and healing. Our focus will be on a dozen scripture texts about treating strangers with welcome and kindness. After all, Jesus was from a family of refugees.
To address the arrests of illegal immigrants, non-profit groups are urging those who are at risk of deportation and arrest to not open their doors. I recall that Hmong families in Laos who were fleeing for their lives after assisting U.S. soldiers in Vietnam found safety in Christian homes. They knocked, doors opened, and they were feed and assisted.
I know a woman who was a child in England when German planes were bombing her city. And I know a person from Poland whose parents hid in a basement before their escape. And another man whose Russian family fled for their lives as their town burned. Most of us don’t have to go very far back in our family stories to find a time when someone experienced a terrifying knock on the door. Many were saved by knocking on a door where hospitable strangers helped them.
I am on my knees about this turn of events. I’m thankful for churches who are willing to shelter asylum seekers along our borders, even when they are now being fined by the government and threatened with the loss of their non-profit status. I’m thankful for a married couple in Phoenix Arizona who started a warehouse for clothing, strollers, shampoos, diapers, bikes, lamps, couches –the things refugees need to establish a home with their children. They are United Methodist’s, by the way, and they have been given a closed school building in which to store and distribute needed items. My sister and her church friends all volunteer there, sorting packaged underpants and pajamas by sizes.
When we stay focused on the good we can do, we are more likely to stay out of despair. A donation for a hygiene kit is a wonderful way to do that. I invite you to join your church community in giving generously. And since Jesus may be in the heart of someone knocking, let’s be ready to open our doors. See you in church,
Pastor Karen
Faith Matters
There is a story about Methodism’s founder, John Wesley, and his influence in England. It goes like this. A stranger passed through a small town a few years before John Wesley preached there, and before they had established small groups that served the poor, visited prisoners and cared for widows and orphans who lived among them. That same man returned some years later and was amazed by the differences he saw in the community. He saw less poverty, observed more friendliness, and felt more welcomed as a stranger to town. He could see how they loved each other! They had been transformed by love and grace.
That is the power of Christian community, and why, despite a million other things we could do on Sunday mornings, many of us gather at church instead.
When your pastor Kim invited me to come to preach among you for the months of July and August (while she’s been standing in Wesley’s pulpits in England!) I had a hunch that I’d be warmly welcomed. Pastor Kim has a deep love and regard for you and I know that you have honored and loved her too. I have come to see, first hand, how you love each other, and sure enough this was evident to me right away. My husband and I have been given a beautiful home in which to live, and we were warmly welcomed in worship and fellowship. People have asked, “Is there anything we can do for you?” many, many times.
As we study, pray, and reflect on scripture together I am certain that many blessings will be exchanged. As we keep our eyes set on Jesus, we will also find work to do, healing take place, and new hope in this oftentimes crazy world. Maxine Hong Kingston said, “In a time of destruction, create something.” So, let’s continue to love each other and think of new ways to increase our love throughout these summer months.
See you at church!
Pastor Karen
Faith Matters-
Greetings!
I’m happy to be joining the pastoral staff and preaching at Mt. Tamalpais this summer. I’ll introduce myself through a story. A month after I closed out my private practice as a pastoral psychologist the phone rang and an editor with Fortress Press asked me to write a book on trauma. Luckily, I’d quit my usual “day job.”
While writing the book I realized that I had witnessed many kinds of trauma in my years of parish ministry, chaplaincy, and in my work as a therapist. There were people’s stories I not only recorded in my brain, but also in my heart long after my work with them was finished. Among them were a little girl whose social worker came to me so that together we could tell her about her mother’s sudden death, a young man whose girlfriend died after a drug overdose, the parents of wounded soldiers, those who had survived horrendous car accidents and shooting incidents, and many people who were sick and suffering. I was blessed to walk with and support many people, but since I had also taken in their pain, it was time for me to turn my thoughts to joy and pleasure in early retirement. I started by reading The Book of Joy, a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu.
In the Buddhist tradition there is a method of prayer called Tonglen. During this practice meditators take in suffering through contemplation and deep breathing. And then, they release this suffering with outward breaths while wishing others great compassion. Jesus had this ability – the word compassion means, “to suffer with,” and he courageously offered himself to the sick of mind, body, or spirit. With his loving approach in my thoughts, I completed the book on trauma, and I opened my heart to the call of God. It came via my colleague and friend Rev. Kim Smith who suggested I come to Mt. Tamalpais for the summer.
I am greatly honored to fill in the very big (not literally) shoes of your pastor Kim. I know how fond you are of her and of her fondness for you. She is very good at caring for others and self-care, but I am happy that she also has this time away for rejuvenation. This is her time for breathing out. This summer she is nurturing her mind, her heart and her soul, and temporarily letting go of her obligations while trusting us to look after the church while she travels.
I look forward to these weeks with you. I know that church leaders and committees also need to take breaks now and then, so we can think of this as “time out” from church goals and plans. Instead, we can come together for renewal and rest as we look to Jesus and God’s word among us. For the month of July, I’ll be reflecting on aspects of trauma from my new book, When Trauma Wounds: Pathways to Healing and Hope (Fortress Press), and then in August we’ll take a look at the history of sex in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Pastor Kim tells me that you love to laugh, and so do I. These sermons on sex are bound to keep us giggling as we reflect about God’s wonderfully made bodies and the gift of love.
See you at church,
Karen
Peace Camp Sunday
We’re just wrapping up another Peace Camp, our annual week-long camp for kids at Mt. Tam Church. Normally, we’ve had between 12 and 17 kids each summer. This is our 6th year (at least) of holding Peace Camp, which we developed after holding a more traditional Vacation Bible School the previous years, and we’re up to 26 kids! I’m actually writing this before Peace Camp week as I know I’ll be in the middle of it all, but I trust I can report it’s been a joy-filled, fun and meaningful week.
As I develop the curriculum for the camp each year, I never know if what we’ll be doing will have any impact on the kids at all, but on the weekend following camp, I reflect on all we did and the children that were there and am filled with gratitude for the experience. I still don’t know how these years of camp will transform the children, but I trust God is at work. And as I look back on my own life and how my experiences shaped me, I am hopeful that these children will remember a story, or a song, or a tool for living at just the right moment in their lives.
And we all have the opportunity to be a peacemaker, each and every day. Every little action counts!
I hope you’ll join us on Sunday to hear about the week and to listen as the children share the special music – the music of peace, hope and love.