Crossroads

It has been said that the church is a crossroads - a place of intersections. It is the place where daily life and eternal life overlap. The place where fear and faith and doubt and dreams all meet.  It is the cross road - the place where we  pick up our crosses and follow Jesus, and where we lay them down. The place where we are reminded that there is One who makes the load lighter; One who gives hope and light and love. 

All the of following are taking place at my church this week:

• Confirmation 
• Pre-school graduation 
• Job interviews
• A wedding 
• Celebration of a retirement 
• An end of school picnic 
• A funeral 
• A last day of work 
• Meetings to plan for summer
• A special Eucharist 
• Teacher appreciation
• Last day of regular Sunday School

At the same time, people are experiencing:

• High school and college graduations
• Traveling relatives
• Surgery or health issues
• Babies being born
• Applying for summer jobs
• Houses being sold or renovated
• Kids coming home from college
• End of school year events
• Vacation and camp preparations
• News of great sadness or great joy

Weeks like this can overwhelm families. Come to the crossroad and rest with your baptismal brothers and sisters. Come and refresh at the font, soak in the familiar and the family, float in forgiveness and love - if only for an hour. It will put everything in perspective.

Forgiven

As a child I was taught to ask forgiveness for my sins each night when I prayed. I was also pretty clear about what those sins were and why I should feel guilty for them. I didn't have to spell them out aloud, but neither was I allowed to sing-song through that section of prayers with no apparent thought.  That was half a century ago though and many children today have never been coached to examine themselves for sin. Judging by the kids I see in confirmation, they are either oblivious to sin, or obsessed by it. There seems to be no healthy medium in this area.

So, if like me you think that neither of these places is good for your kids, you may wonder how to approach this with your kids. Here are a few practical ideas for your consideration:

• First, think about your personal reaction to the word sin. Does it sound foreign? Condemning? Old-fashioned? Scary?
• What do you identify as sinful? If you're not completely sure - ask your kids what you hate most - they know!
• What do you think will happen to your kids if you ask them to look over their own behavior at the end of the day?

Those questions, by the way, make good journal fodder.  The more you write, the clearer it will become. You'll unearth things long since forgotten. Some of them will entertain you. Some will help you understand your own behavior better and a few will make you really mad at someone (which will require more time with a pen in your hand to work through.)

Now that you know where you stand, you're ready to introduce this to your kids. If you're Lutheran like me you can point at the general confessions we use in worship for clues about what needs to be forgiven: 

• what we have done, 
• what we have left undone, 
• not loving God with our whole heart, 
• not loving our neighbors as ourselves. 

With your freshly prepared heart you will have fun discussing this with your children. I know that my own children were pretty clear about what they had done wrong, but found it harder to identify what they had left undone. They also, being children, were much more inclined to love with their whole hearts and so I was enriched by them in the whole business of loving God and neighbor. 

One important thing remains - you have to explain that God will forgive their sins. You may have to wrestle with this yourself first because if you don't believe it, they will smell it. God will forgive their sins and yours. Period. End of subject. 

Confess. Ask forgiveness. Receive forgiveness. Done and done. We have a great and loving God. Share that gift with your kids. Let them know that just as nothing can separate them from your love, nothing can separate them from God's love. 

Unforgiven sin can divide people from one another as effectively as a river divides two banks.  So it is with God. It is not the sin that separates us, it is the unforgiven sin. Forgiveness builds the bridge that brings us together again. Going to sleep knowing you are right with God and world makes for a much brighter morning. Help your kids build a bridge!

Fair Trade

As every parent knows, "that's not fair" is a regular refrain from most middle-school-aged members of the family.  It tends to be an irritant for parents and teachers alike. In the midst of this refrain though, we get a small glimpse of the kingdom of God.  Humans were created with a fairness meter inside of us; society spends years trying to dismantle it. 

This finely tuned Fair-o-meter also knows a good thing when it sees it.  Last night my confirmation class was treated to a lesson about fair trade chocolate. The presenter explained first how chocolate was made.  Then she worked backwards to how cocoa is grown.  The students were very surprised to learn that children were being forced to work for low pay in the cocoa business so they could enjoy low cost candy bars.  Next she explained about the four conditions required to make something fair trade: No child labor, good stewardship of the land, democratic participation by members of the cooperative, and fair and just prices.  All of this taken together helped them understand why fair trade chocolate products cost more.  Then she suggested they use social media to challenge the big candy companies to use fair trade chocolate.  The kids liked the fair-ness of this.  Later in class we made fun foam turkeys which will be sold at exorbitant prices to provide turkeys to families in need for Thanksgiving.  They understood again that it was a fair exchange.

Imagine my surprise when during my morning blog-surfing I came across another young person thinking about chocolate, but from a different faith and fairness perspective. Cindy McPeake is living and working in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, for a year through ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission. The following is excerpted from her blog entry Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. . . and Jesus:

At the beginning of the movie, after the Golden Ticket announcement has been made, Charlie receives his birthday present- a bar of chocolate. This will be the only bar of chocolate he gets all year. After opening the chocolate and NOT finding the Golden Ticket, he begins to share his chocolate bar with the rest of the family. His mom tells him not to, it's his only chocolate bar, it's his birthday and he should enjoy it for himself. Charlie says, “it’s my candy bar and I’ll do what I want with it.” He proceeds to break off a piece for each family member. And each one does something different with it. One inhales the delicious aroma of chocolate, one takes a large bite, and one savors the flavor slowly. For me it was obvious to make a parallel between this moment and our call as Christians. We have received a great gift and we are called to share that gift, the love of Christ, with those around us. We are Charlie.

The Kingdom of Heaven runs on a different economy.  It is fair; actually it is beyond fair.  It is generous as only a child knows how to be generous - sharing without worrying about tomorrow, having less so that others can have a share.

I think that's a fair trade - teaching our kids about the world while they teach us about the kingdom!  I am guessing that God planned it this way.

Go Bears!

I read a great story today.  It seems that a woman who works at Baylor University was watching news of the Bastrop wildfires and began worrying about the kids.  Over 1,500 homes have burned leaving around 5,000 people without a place to live.  So she started researching ways that the staff, faculty and students at Baylor could help.  That's when she discovered that the Bastrop High School mascot was the Bears.  Same as Baylor!  So she organized the Bears2Bears drive which hopes to collect a teddy bear for every displaced kid in Bastrop.  This kind of thing just makes my heart sing.  When a whole bunch of people come together to offer what they can, big things can happen.  I'll be watching to see how they come out, but I expect it will be successful.  How could it fail with all those cuddly elements!

At my church, we're working with all the kids on a project we're calling Sock-It-To-Me.  I rolled it out last week for the parents and they put it down on their to do list and I was sure we'd get some socks.  Last night I rolled it out for my 8th grade confirmation class and was delighted to see how the challenge energized them.  They were told that they could buy socks out of their allowance, beg socks from their friends, swap work for socks, or pretty much anything else they would like to do but that there were people without socks depending on them.  "That's EASY!" one of them said.  "Can we bring more than 12?" was another student's question.  And, as I expected, "Who doesn't have SOCKS?"

No donor fatigue here.  Generous hearts are dancing at the call.  Maybe it's not as efficient to give socks or teddy bears as it is to give money but I think we miss something in the exchange when we just write a check. The kids most certainly do.  Giving goods makes the recipient real.  Knowing that some child's toys burned up in the fire is something a kid can imagine.  Visualizing an empty sock drawer is easier than conceiving of a life without a sock drawer.  This awareness sparks both generosity and gratitude in kids.  It puts them on the path to being compassionate adults.

In the current economic climate we tend toward scarcity thinking, focusing on what we don't have or can't buy rather than on what we still have in abundance.  We are in the midst of deep drought here in Central Texas, but our neighbors to the east are getting flooded.  Maybe there IS enough, it's just not evenly distributed.

Whatever need cries out to you, find a way to respond.  Take your kids along and let them help you help others. Tell them why something makes your heart hurt, or why you want to help in this particular situation.  You will be helping people for generations to come. The Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver.  What isn't explicitly said is that God loves the person in need too - and you're the "bear-er" of that love.  Go Bears!

True Gift

Have you ever met someone trying really hard to be someone they're not? It's painful to watch - especially if you know the person well enough to see their true gifts.

Each of us has a unique mix of gifts and talents. Sometimes it is hard for parents to see their child's true gifts. So many things get in the way. We have expectations: musical families expect musical children; athletic families expect athletic children. We aren't necessarily seeing this gift in the child; we are expecting to see this gift in the child. Another thing that blinds us to our child's true gifts is the child's behavior. It's often hard to see past constant wiggling or incessant talking to a child's creative or leadership abilities. We are distracted by what the child does, especially when the behavior irritates or embarrasses us. Our own dreams for the future or failure from the past can also color the way we see the child. We've probably all known someone who wanted to "go pro" in some field but didn't, for whatever reason, who is now pushing a child to "go pro". It's obvious - in other people. One more thing that can get in the way is the hectic pace of daily life. When children have no time to experiment, they miss out on a lot of self-discovery. Downtime is a child's laboratory.

Here's the good news. Failure to recognize the gift doesn't kill the gift, and parents are not solely responsible for helping a child find his or her gifts. When researchers at the Youth and Family Institute started looking at what factors were present for children who "succeeded" (stayed in school, stayed off drugs, had healthy relationships, etc.) they found 40 common factors among successful kids. One of them was especially pertinent to this topic; they found that successful kids had at least five caring adults in their lives. Every caring adult will see different things in the child - gifts that they recognize because they share them, or because it's something they prize in a person or simply because they are seeing the child through fewer layers of emotion.

So where do you find these caring adults? Like so many things with your children, it's simply a matter of paying attention. There are people all around your child cheering him or her on through life - teachers, coaches, scout leaders, choir and band directors, your friends, grandparents aunts and uncles or step-parents, even the person who sits behind you in church and plays peek-a-boo with your toddler. Make time for your child to be with these people. Listen to what they have to say about your child. Notice what they notice and learn to encourage those qualities in your child.

You can help your children be who they are created to be. Trust that their unique gifts will serve the world and support them in finding and using those gifts. They may wind up in a different pond from you but, with the help of other caring adults, you can still teach them to swim in their own baptismal waters.

Whose rules = Who rules?

Parents - you should be proud!  Last night at confirmation I asked the students to break up into pairs and write rules associated with a photo they received in an envelope.  Knowing these students, and the nature of middle school students in general, I expected to have lots of silliness with it.  To my surprise, they took the exercise quite seriously and wrote some very good lists.  Most groups came up with 8-10 rules in three minutes.  One group had a picture of a car.  Rules included "wear a seatbelt", "no drinking and driving" and "no one under 16 drives a car."   Another group had a picture of a trophy.  Their rules included "No cheating" and "good sportsmanship" and "be a team player."  The most amazing thing about this exercise was how well they all understood rules as something good.  At their age I think I found most rules to be quite confining, but, for this group of kids, teaching the commandments as GIFT was an easy task.  They have clearly been taught that rules are for their own good.

The only downside to this was that last night's lesson was about Jesus the rule-breaker.  And I never really got the point across.  In the lesson, Jesus heals a bent-over woman on the Sabbath (Luke 13).  The leaders of the synagogue were indignant that Jesus should do this "work" on the Sabbath. Jesus says the rules should free us, not bind us, so he freed the woman from her condition.  And this is where the wheels fell off: the kids didn't think the Sabbath rules should apply to anything. They don't believe in Sabbath.  They don't believe in rest.  They are 14 year old workaholics.  When I asked them how they spend their free time the most relaxing response I got was reading.

This is particularly striking because last Sunday I subbed in an adult class where I ran into a similar lack of concern for Sabbath.  Most people, in both groups, think that Sabbath is no longer applicable to their lives. Yet, it is one of the ten (only TEN) Commandments God gives us for living together peaceably or, as Jerome Berryman puts it, "the ten best ways to live."  My kiddos last night collectively came up with 62 rules around 8 photos.  A couple of them were thrown out (no kicking sand on your sister was deemed too specific) but by and large they could all agree to probably 55 rules without hesitation.  Yet they couldn't agree with God's ten rules.  I suspect the adults would have gone exactly the same way.

I have to confess that I'm really uncomfortable with this. I embrace Jesus and grace ahead of mindless following of rules. I recognize that rules from Leviticus about hand washing don't apply to me. I can vigorously defend the idea that Sabbath looks different today than in the time of Moses or Jesus.  Still, when I can get 100% agreement that good sportsmanship or wearing a seatbelt is more important than Sabbath rest, I am left to wonder what God we are serving.

Thoughts?

To Live Among. . .

This week I was struck by the phrase "live among God's faithful people" in the baptismal and confirmation liturgies of my denomination. "To live among" is different than "to live with" isn't it?

Those with whom we live form us. Our values, assumptions, skills, and responses were mostly formed by the people we lived with as children. Our circumstances were shared; our observations of cause and effect parallel. We loved the same people and knew the same places. We shared a world view.

The people who we live among, on the other hand, re-form us. They challenge our values and assumptions. They rank our skills on a different scale and make us wonder why we respond to certain stimuli in particular ways. They love different people and different landscapes. They have had different experiences and see the world differently because of them. This broadens our perspective and re-forms our vision of the world.

I think this is a good thing. My family of origin was an exceptionally loving place. It has taken me a lifetime to realize that not everyone was so fortunate. On the other hand, unlike most of my peers, I never lived anywhere where I could go to school with cousins or other relatives. Still, most of the people my family lived among welcomed us into their lives and made us part of their community. When I moved to Austin as a 20-something I learned to better appreciate living among God's faithful people.

Austin, unlike the small towns of my childhood, did not welcome me just because I was someone new. In fact, in 1982 people were driving around with bumper stickers that said "Thanks for visiting, now go home" and "Native Texan". I didn't feel like I was living among, I felt as if I were living outside some charmed circle. There was little southern hospitality extended - even some of the churches I visited were unwelcoming. It was an unsettling experience.

Then one Sunday I walked into the congregation that became my place to live among God's faithful people. It was friendly but not desperate. I was allowed to settle in at my own pace and find my own niche. When my children were born I promised to help them live among God's faithful people; and I did. For more than 25 years I have had my assumptions challenged, my perspective changed, and my world-view broadened by God's faithful people.

I am remarkably re-formed by this experience because living among doesn't mean just brushing shoulders with others. It means living connected: comparing our stories, lightening each others burdens, celebrating and sorrowing together, and building a collection of shared experiences. It means arguing about God's intended messages in scripture and gathering together at table like a family. It means being God's faithful people to other children from other families.

We don't send our children to go swimming without a buddy. We know that they are safer swimming with friends. Likewise, we shouldn't send them out to test their faith alone. Even as we are forming their values we need to bring them to live among God's faithful people and be re-formed. They'll swim more safely in their baptismal waters if they aren't swimming alone.