Bouncy castles in the kingdom of God

The church council was girded for battle; the wardens had drawn the lines.  There was little the well-meaning, kind priest could do to stop it.  He was too young, too fresh, too loving, and the stakes were too high.  He didn’t have the cunning to avert the imminent bloodbath.  For weeks, tensions at Blessed Virgin of Loreto had been running high.

It all started with the dumpster.  The preschool that leased space from the church was overtaking the garbage with Snak Paks, fruit roll-up wrappers, and dirty diapers.  As much as they tried to reduce, reuse and recycle, those little “futures of our church” were filling up the trash too quickly.  Big discussion ensued:  4 cubic feet, picked up twice a month, 2 cubic feet, picked up weekly, what about the damage to the driveway with all those trucks, what about the ugly eyesore of a huge dumpster, is that the first thing we want people to see--the trash, make those damn teachers drive their trash to the dump, oh wait, those teachers are our parishioners, and on and on and on…  Debate outlasted the first vestry meeting and spread into the next week’s coffee hour.  Allies joined both sides; old grudges resurfaced to fuel the fire.

It had been quite some time since the last melee in the parish.  People had been pitching in, collaborating, communicating, and generally supporting each other--until the dumpster dilemma.  You see, a community can only take so much communing, before differences arise.  No matter how much time had passed, old grievances come back fresh.  The details of the disagreement don’t matter nearly as much as winning, and chalking a victory up for “our side” against the ones who “got their way last time”.

“Remember when THEY got the priest to agree to buy a new organ?”   “When SHE cleaned out the kitchen, she threw out my good tupperware and never even apologized?”  “Whose idea was it to buy new robes for the acolytes?  I should have known HE was behind it; he only wanted that color because it looks good on his daughter.”  "He's the one who said the acolytes shouldn't wear sandals.  I mean, if it was good enough for Jesus, why can't I wear open-toed shoes at the altar?"

Mrs. Clark, the leader of the 4 cubic-feet faction, soon drew to her side the Joneses, the Williamses, and the Lehighs (because everyone knows the Lehighs just follow the Williamses in everything.  They even bought the same car and the same breed of dog).  They also had unofficial support from the Davises, who were still mad at the Levingoods for their part in the purchase of the new altar rail, a big controversy.  The Levingoods headed up the 2 cubic feet faction, with support from the Murphys, who were probably just trying to curry favor to support their idea for a jazz service, and the Delafazios, who never walk away from a good fight.  Remember the Vacation Bible School debacle, the year of the parrots?  People chose sides and dug trenches for the long haul.

During coffee hour, ringleaders prepared their troops with versions of battle speeches, “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!”, and Fr. Joe waited nervously in his office.  He said a quick prayer, “Lord, help me find the loving grace of Christ, so I don’t punch someone in the face.  I am supposed to be a man of God, here, for your own sake, HELP me!”

A knock on the door, “Father, I need some help out here!”

“Not exactly what I was hoping for, God,” the harried priest thought as he opened the door of his office.  A huge, burly, hairy beast of a man in a soiled tank top greeted him.  The mountain man spoke through a black beard.

“I need some help setting up the bouncy houses for the carnival tonight.  My crew couldn’t make it and I’m doing this as a favor to Joyce.  I am cutting you guys a deal, but I can’t do it myself.  Have you got a few people to spare?”

“Sure, sure, let’s go get them.  We really appreciate the discount.  We’ll be glad to help.  It’ll be fun!”  Fr. Joe tried to sound enthusiastic; he only managed to sound weary.  The coffee hour crowd had petered out, so only the vestry was left, staring daggers at each other across the social hall and plotting their next move in the war.

“OK, guys, before we sit down to business, we need to lend a hand.  We’ve got to get the bouncy houses set up for the kids’ carnival tonight and Bart here needs us.  You know what we always say, ‘Many hands make light work”.  The sooner we start, the sooner we’ll be done.”  Fr. J’s lukewarm rallying cry met stares of unbelief, sighs, eye-rolls, and shrugs.  Quite possibly, the only reason anyone moved was because the coffee was cold, and some of the warring parties were hoping to get a chance to “accidentally” smack someone with a tool.  Still, they went to work setting up the bouncy castle for the kids.

Thirty hot, sweaty minutes, later, there was a giant, red and purple castle-shaped obstacle course on the church lawn, awaiting a hundred kids for the annual church carnival.  The church leaders surveyed their handiwork, amid the scents of rubber, sweat, and candy.  Bart wiped his moustache with his dirty shirt and said in a baritone chuckle, “There’s some time before the kids come.  Anyone want to bounce?”  Nervous laughter, more eye-rolls, more shrugs.  

Then, Allen Levingood murmured, “It does look like fun…”  He nudged Nolan Murphy, who smiled.  

“What the hell?  We set it up, we shouldn’t leave all the fun to the kids.  Race ya, sucker!” Soon, the other faction joined in.  Even Mrs. Clark slipped off her heels for a chance. Within minutes, the entire governing body of the church was racing each other, helping each other scale rubber walls, shouting encouragement to each other, and generally having a good time.  Seven middle-aged adults, flushed faces shiny with sweat and joy, forgot their frustrations and petty arguments in the exhilaration of the moment.  Moments ago, they had been locked in a tangled web of hurt pride, righteousness, and stubbornness.  Now, they laughed with delight, hugging each other while they caught their breath.

Fr. Joe looked on in wonderment.  Could it be?  Surely, racing in bouncy castles could not solve the deep-seated conflict between the group.  At the end of the day, they would still have to come to a consensus on the ever-important, thorny issue of the dumpster.

Bart walked up behind the puzzled priest.  “Yep.  Things look different when you’re bouncing.”  Fr. Joe sighed, shrugged, and shouted, “Hey guys, I’m coming in!”  

In the midst of laughter and childlike joy, the church vestry bounced.  The bloodbath was averted by bouncy castles in the kingdom of God.

**** Disclaimer:  This is in no way representational of my church or any personal experience.  It is merely an experiment to see if I can write fiction.  And, let's be honest, wouldn't bouncy castles improve just about any situation?  ****

Loving, not by chance

“Brothers, love is a teacher, but one must know how to acquire it, for it is difficult to acquire , it is dearly bought, by long work over a long time, for one ought to love not for a chance moment but for all time.  Anyone, even a wicked man, can love by chance.”  The Brothers Karamozov by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Love and marriage, love and marriage…  Sinatra (and the theme song for Married with Children), tell us that “they go together like a horse and carriage… you can’t have one without the other”.  It’s interesting that we talk about marriage as if it’s a rational choice:  weigh the options, make a plan, be sure about what you’re doing.  (All of which is good advice about buying a car, let alone making a decision that will affect the rest of your life.)  But, we talk about love as if it is an insurmountable, inexplicable, uncontrollable force.  Think about the phrases we use:  I can’t help falling in love with you, I love you but I’m not in love with you, we just fell out of love, you can’t help who you fall in love with.  We make our passion passive, casting love as a noun, something that happens to you, something you can’t control, something that is not your fault.   We talk about loving by chance.

Hollywood sells us on heart-breaking moment of a hard-fought confession of love, the kind of undeniable love, against which we cannot fight.  The moment when the long-lost boyfriend interrupts the wedding when the priest says, “Speak now, or forever hold your peace.”  The moment when the long-suffering best friend confesses his undying love to the object of his affection, and she realizes he’s been the one for her all along.  The moment when star-crossed lovers defy family and convention to be together.   We hope that after we fall in love, that love will take care of itself and always be there, that we will live “happily ever after”. Those moments make good movies (or sometimes really terrible movies), but a tear-jerking confession in a rainstorm does not a marriage make.  Marriage is built on the act of loving, not the phenomenon of falling in love.

My husband and I are soon celebrating our 13th anniversary.  Thirteen years is a drop in the bucket for many couples, who have celebrated three times or more that amount.  Thirteen years is also a long time, for those who haven’t had the fortune to marry, or haven’t had the fortune to stay married.  I am far from an expert; but we are muddling through our life together.  Thirteen years of real, imperfect, difficult, and wonderful lessons learned from love.

Loving someone is an action, it is a choice, it is something you DO, not something that just happens to you.  Loving someone for years means putting his needs first sometimes, and allowing him to put mine first sometimes, too.  It means showing gratitude for the little things he does, and accepting compliments graciously.  It means giving him space to be angry sometimes, and allowing myself space to settle down.  It means forgiving, and allowing him to forgive me.  It means keeping a sense of humor, as often as possible, with as much enthusiasm as possible.  Loving means noticing him, thinking of him when he’s not around, considering him in decisions.  It does not always come naturally, or without effort.  It is intentional, thoughtful, and sometimes difficult.  Loving someone means choosing him, over and over again, every day, choosing him as my partner, to support me, to challenge me, to love me, actively, not for a chance moment, but for the rest of our lives.

Joy in the Journey: A Church Relationship

Joy in the Journey: A Church Relationship: My church is a small one, and we love it very, very much.  Often, when members are tired from our flurry of activities, we say, "We ne...

A Church Relationship

My church is a small one, and we love it very, very much.  Often, when members are tired from our flurry of activities, we say, "We need more people.  Why don't people see the joy we find here?"  I am far from an expert in evangelism, but I know that wanting to "get more people" is asking the wrong question. I think we grow our church through the care we take for our members and our community.  Our faith, and our church, are built on relationship.  Without connection and relationship, it is too easy to come and go in a church.  Without getting to know the people, depending on them and having them depend on you, and working together on shared vision, it is too easy to avoid conflict and leave when things get tough.  Church is a voluntary organization.  If you don’t like something about your current church, you can head down the road and try another one.  

Society today is not like it was when my parents were kids, or even when I was a kid.  When I was a kid, most of my friends’ parents grew up in the same town.  Most of my friends lived in the same town their entire lives, even the same house.  It was rare to have a new student in class, especially someone who’d lived in a different state.  Kids from Philadelphia or Wyoming were exotic; I still remember when they moved in during 4th grade.  People tended to bloom where they were planted and they had deep connections to their town, their neighborhood, and their faith organizations.  

There was period of strife in my childhood church and I remember how it unsettled my family.  Like many other families, we’d been part of that church for generations; we had weathered highs and lows.  I remember how upset we were when other families left the church; families who had also founded the church, who taught Sunday School and youth choir.  I remember my mother weighing her options, too--stay with a minister whose theology goes against your ideals for the sake of the community, or leave and find another church.  Having no church was not even an option for my mom; I don’t think there has been more than a few weeks in her life when she did not worship on a Sunday.  My family decided to stay, and we weathered the storms.  I remember by grandfather saying, “This church was here before ‘so and so’ and it will be here after "so and so".”  Eventually, the troubles abated and eventually, the other families returned.  Would people today even give it a moment’s thought?  Would they weigh the options, leave and wait to return, or would they just walk out in a huff and find something new?

I know I sound very conservative and old-fashioned.  I don’t think things are worse now than they were 30 years ago.  In many ways, things are better.  There is more freedom, open-mindedness, and lack of judgment.  People do not attend church out of obligation, or in order to develop the right social connections.  The people who worship together on Sunday mornings show up because they want to be there.  With all of that freedom and open-mindedness, there are options--lots and lots of them.  There’s conservative, liberal, conservative theology with modern liturgy, liberal theology with ancient liturgy.  There are taize prayer services, jazz services, praise band services, solstice services, and meditation groups.  There is the ever-popular church of Starbucks.  People talk about finding a church as if they are picking out their next car:  shop around, make lists of “deal-breakers” and “must-haves”, do your research, weigh the options.  With all those options, what do you do when a problem comes up?

So far, I’m new to my church.  In a congregation where some people go back four generations, I’ve only been there for two rummage sales (that is how we measure time at St. Ignatius).  I am still bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, still hopeful, still enthusiastic.  I will be quite upset the first time there is conflict at church.  The first time I face criticism, or disagreement, some of the shine will come off the penny.  I have skills to deal with difficult situations and I know they will arise.  I really, really hope I have the strength to see the conflict through and persist with my church.  I really, really want to be in it for the long haul.  If church life is a relationship, I want a committed one; and I hope other people are committed, too.

It’s hard to make those commitments in this post-modern world.  People move around, change careers, change spouses, change faiths.  We have a wonderful amount of freedom to “find our bliss”.  So, when church is not “blissful” anymore, what is keeping us there?  It has to be the relationship, between the priest and the congregation, between the individual people, between every one of us and God.  I mean where else can I go to find connection to the Holy Spirit, mystical experiences with the Eucharist, meaningful theology, and beautiful music?  Where else can I meet my babysitter, my daughter’s dance teacher, and my dog breeder (who also happens to be the priest)?  Where else can I go to relate to God in a tradition that goes back 100 years in this place, and thousands of years in the world?

Thank you, Mom!

       Mothering is complicated, and daughtering (is that a word?) is complicated, too.  The relationship between mother and daughter always toes the line of dependence and independence.  How much do we need each other?  How much do we adore or resent that need?  How many women realize that they grow up to be just like their mothers (at least in some respects)?  How many women are happy about that? 

       I am one of the lucky, lucky ones in the mother department.  I have never once doubted that my mother loves me wholeheartedly, unconditionally.  She allowed us the independence to grow into our own persons, rooted in her high expectations for our character.  I am lucky to have learned much from her and I continue to learn from her every day.  Here are some lessons from Mom:

1. Work hard.  My mom can mow all the yards in the neighborhood, chop her wood (and the neighbors), paint the fence, and clean out the garage, all before noon.  She is an unstoppable force and I can only aspire to her work ethic.
2. Wake up early.  Mom says, “if it isn’t done by 8:00 am, it isn’t worth doing.”  I might amend that to 10:00 am, but I appreciate the “morning person” model she set, when my kids wake up before 6:00 am.
3. Be of service.  When someone asks you to help them and you are capable of the task, take it on with a glad heart.  I have many memories of my mother cooking food, remodeling houses, building swimming pools, lending money, and teaching driving lessons to our neighbors and family.  All of those favors were reciprocated ten-fold within our little community.
4. Commit totally.  I can’t think of a job, project, or favor that my mother undertook that she did not finish.  She puts her heart and soul into everything she does, whether it is painting the garage, splitting wood, or serving on the church leadership team.
5. Keep faith.  Through all the challenges in life, my mother looks quietly to the faith she was grounded in from the beginning.  I am sure her faith was tested, but it seems to have become stronger for the trials.
6. Always show your love.  No matter how angry we might have been in the moment, I never, ever doubted my mother’s love, or that she would be there for me in any crisis.
7. Set limits and insist on responsibility from your children.  I knew the expectations for my behavior and I knew the consequences when I did not follow through.  I hope I can give my children the same clarity and consistency.
8. Keep it real.  We have a family joke about Mom.  When she and my dad were touring an observatory, he was amazed at the science of astronomy.  He read a plaque comparing two things that said, “it would be like the size of an orange in the Grand Canyon.”  Mom says, “What on earth would an orange be doing in the Grand Canyon?”  My mother is quite intelligent enough to understand analogical references, but she has a knack for cutting through the rhetoric to the real deal.  No one can fool her with fancy speeches.

On this Mother’s Day, thank you for all you’ve taught me, Mom!

A lesson from my father

Most little girls worship their fathers.  Some of the lucky ones have fathers deserving of worship; I was one of those. I believe the sun rose and set in my father, for every day of the 30 years we had together on this planet.  I’m so grateful that my hero never fell, that my admiration was never misplaced, at least as far as I could see.  Two months shy of my 30th birthday, Dad lost his valiant fight with cancer.  It’s a regular-size tragedy, one that all families bear.  He died enveloped in our love and we are all OK.

I am OK, but not great.  It still sucks that my father is gone.  The pain didn’t really get better; I just got used to bearing it.  I got a little stronger to carry the grief, a little tougher to bear the hurt, a little more tender when I cry.  It still breaks my heart that I can’t talk to him.   I want to tell him that my oldest daughter can sing all the words to the Gambler, that she rode in a horse show at the age of 3, that she prays for him in heaven.  I want to tell him that my youngest daughter, my little spitfire, is just as charming as my adorable grandmother and just as cantankerous as my stubborn, lovable, grandfather.  I want to tell him about our new puppy.

There’s a special moment I want to tell him about, a certain lesson I’m just beginning to learn.  My family is big on the lessons; it seems our family motto is, “see what you will learn”.  We like to turn life experiences into “growth experiences”.  One of those lessons was a long, long time coming to me, and I wish he knew that I am beginning to learn it.  When I was 22, my dad helped me move from Ohio to Illinois to start a new job.  Stifled by small-town living after college, burning with ambition, I left everyone I knew to move 400 miles away on the promise of a career.  When the offer came, I didn’t give a second thought to anyone and anything I might leave behind.  Opportunity knocked and I nearly broke the hinges running out the door to meet it.  I was off to become a professional horse trainer and nothing was going to stop me.

On the drive, I thought of some of the people I may be leaving behind and said, “Dad, I just don’t know if there will ever be someone in my life who will make me change my plans.  I don’t know if there will be anyone that I will consider first.”  He replied, in his understated wisdom, “Squirt, I hope that’s not true, because that would be really sad.”  I didn’t know what to say.  At 22, brash, confident, with the world by the tail, why would I want to slow down for anyone?  I was chasing my dream, finding my bliss, and that was the way to happiness, right?

All these years later, I realize what my dad meant.  He meant that to put your own ambitions always first, however noble they are, is a lonely way to live.  He meant that the fire of driving ambition is a cold one, and that it burns out quickly and leaves you with very little.  He meant that the real meaning of life comes when you do consider someone else first, when you balance their needs with yours, when you put your effort into supporting them.  It took me a long time to see it, many years of marriage, a few disappointments, a few losses, and some wonderful, lucky, blessings.  

In the years since that conversation, I learned many things.  I learned how my mother could care for my father when his cancer paralyzed him.  I learned how a community could rally around a family, support their needs, grieve with them, celebrate with them.  I learned how my husband could care for me through infertility attempts, disappointments, treatments, and finally, two beautiful children.  I learned to negotiate the regular life of work, kids, and marriage, finally understanding what it means to change your plans for someone else.  I learned to find joy in giving, in waiting, in supporting, instead of pushing, demanding, and controlling.  

Dad, I’m a long, long way from mastering it, but I finally see what you meant.  You are right, without this lesson, my life would have been really sad.