A Little More on Three Years

This three-year journey with Mom and her illnesses which are making her weaker and more frail has been intricately linked with my journey with the 2016-2019 United Methodist General Conference cycle.  Mom’s first health crisis came in June 2015, the same time I was elected to the 2016 Virginia General Conference delegation and ended up having this role of chair of the delegation.  Two days before the first delegation meeting in July 2015, my cousin, Regina, and I took Mom to the ER at Roanoke Memorial. Mom was hospitalized and it became clear that she couldn’t return home to  care for herself.  The move to Culpepper became one of not just a short-term rehab stay but a long-term care situation. Yesterday morning, Mom was sure I was Gina and we were in the Roanoke hospital.

I left the hospital in Roanoke late on Friday afternoon that July weekend to return to Glen Allen for our first delegation meeting to prepare for the 2016 General Conference. I’ve walked these journeys with one foot in both worlds. Since beginning this reflection Thursday night/Friday morning on these past three years, I have seen very clearly once again the beautiful, amazing connections of this denomination that I hold so dear.

The very first person who took communion to Mom when she arrived in Culpeper is very involved in the Wesleyan Covenant Association.  One of the first people I heard from on Friday is the spouse of a staff person from our UMC General Board of Church and Society.  Those of you who are United Methodist automatically know that those two groups are pretty much always at odds with each other because of our differing understandings of what it means to be faithful in living out our Wesleyan call to holiness of heart and life, works of piety and works of mercy.

Folks who have called, emailed, posted messages and sent texts this weekend have been from churches large and small across the Virginia Conference. They are folks with very traditional and very progressive understandings of marriage  and ordination - and everywhere in between. They are not churched and of every church. Expressions of love and care have come from people that I have loved and valued from very early in my life until today, people who represent every part of the spectrum of understandings of our relationship with God and of how we are called to be Christ in the world today. 

Some of those who have sent expressions of concern this weekend have traveled with me since second grade when our schools in Henry County were integrated. That ‘s when my friend Ronnie was the first to walk me home from school - the original inspiration for the title, “Walking Martha Home.”  That day we were black and white 7-year olds, each living on the edges of the color dividing line of our little village, walking together with no recognition of why people were looking at us strangely.  That journey took many turns over the years, including 3 friends who died from complications of HIV/AIDS. Among those who have reached out this weekend are friends who have strong feelings about the cause of those illnesses and friends who have dedicated their lives to ministries of compassion in AIDS clinics.  

Among those who have reached out are women whose journeys took them through ordination and into pastoral church leadership at the same time I was being told there would be no support for me to enter that process.  And there was love shown from churches where sadly I know a female would still find great challenge toward acceptance.  

There are people who have reached out and loved our family who will never be able to understand how I reached a point in my faith journey where I believe certain things that are so very opposite their strong held beliefs. There are people who have reached out this weekend who would never walk in the same places that I walk, who would never reach out to some of the same people with whom I love to spend time.  There are people who called and cared for us over the last few days who will never change their minds on anything - from presidential politics to what to have for dinner, but I love them all just the same. The one thing I know for sure is that I don’t want to be a part of the church where all those voices are not represented.

Unique people from all places and backgrounds with different understandings of who God is and what it is that Jesus calls us to model in the world today are what has made me who I am.  All this has made the United Methodist Church the place I love, the foundation that has shaped and formed me. I can’t imagine being a part of a church, a meal table or a family gathering where the variety of voices, the divergent opinions, are not present.  

I would not be the person I am today if all of the different voices had not been a part of my learning and understanding. I wouldn’t be the person I am if it hadn’t been for the potluck dinner offered by a Pentecostal Holiness group when I was a teenager which included a very long prayer in a variety of tongues before we could eat. Of course, all of us teenagers opened our eyes and looked at each other like we were totally scared to death but that’s a part of my faith journey. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if my world religions professor in college hadn’t made us go visit in the home of a Hindu family, participate in a Buddhist retreat and a sent us off to experience a variety of other religious traditions. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if I hadn’t followed one of my social work graduate professors to River of Life Church for a conversation about releasing the demons of addiction from persons who were dealing with alcohol and drugs.  Yes, an authentic conversation about releasing demons. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if my mother hadn’t told me over and over as I was growing up to - and yes, this is totally politically incorrect but I’m going to say it just as she did - to “be nice to the drunks, the prostitutes and the mentally retarded.” I still can’t figure out the prostitute part of that....

I certainly wouldn’t be the person I am today if God hadn’t seen fit to point me in directions where I have had wonderful relationships and opportunities to be with people in all kinds of faith communities, in all kinds of places.   So I cannot see this three year journey of concerns around Mom’s life and the future of our United Methodist church as separate. They are woven tightly together.

This weekend was to have been spent with fellow Lay Servants at the Conference Academy focusing on lay pastoral care and with the congregation at Grace UMC in Manassas celebrating Older Adult Sunday. An awesome clergy and lay team took over the Lay Servant course.  Late last night I received a note from the class letting me know they were thinking of me and our family.   They practiced what they learned very well! The team at Grace UMC cared for today’s message while one of them reached out to me multiple times to let us know we were covered in prayer.  As I drove back to Culpeper very early this morning - going by and thinking about all of those gathering later in United Methodist Churches along my route - I offered God thanks for how my life was connected to each person in those pews and all the saints before them.  

When I was given the opportunity to suggest hymns for the service at Grace today, I chose a favorite. Every time I hear the words I am called once again to the Great Commandment and my understanding of Jesus’ instruction to love God and neighbor.  It calls me to the community of believers that I want to be part of and gather with around the world. 

Mom cried earlier when her doctor of Indian descent told her she could go home. I cried when I read a note from one of my elementary school friends from the “other side” of the Fieldale color dividing line. I pray that our understanding of church can grow wide enough that we can all continue to journey together as faithful disciples with differing understandings but so much to learn from and offer to one another.  I’ll cry then when that decision is made...or when it’s not.

Much love and thanks to all who have cared for us these past few days and in the words of that hymn sung at Grace and in many other places this day...

Here in this place new light is streaming

Now is the darkness vanished away

See in this space our fears and our dreamings

Brought here to you in the light of this day

Gather us in, the lost and forsaken

Gather us in, the blind and the lame

Call to us now and we shall awaken

We shall arise at the sound of our name

We are the young, our lives are a mystery

We are the old who yearn for your face

We have been sung throughout all of history

Called to be light to the whole human race

Gather us in, the rich and the haughty

Gather us in, the proud and the strong

Give us a heart so meek and so lowly

Give us the courage to enter the song

Here we will take the wine and the water

Here we will take the bread of new birth

Here you shall call your sons and your daughters

Call us anew to be salt for the earth

Give us to drink the wine of compassion

Give us to eat the bread that is you

Nourish us well and teach us to fashion

Lives that are holy and hearts that are true

Not in the dark of buildings confining

Not in some heaven light years away

But here in this place the new light is shining

Now is the kingdom, now is the day

Gather us in and hold us forever

Gather us in and make us your own

Gather us in, all peoples together

Fire of love in our flesh and our bones

“Gather Us In” by Marty Haugen

Three Years

A little more than three years ago I sat in a hospital room in Culpeper with Mom as she battled pneumonia.  On her worst day, she continually questioned why God had not taken her, why she was still living.  My response was that none of us know when God may take us - in a minute, tomorrow, next week,10 years. Mom responded with a clear, “Three years.  It will be three years.”

She’s never been too far off with her “premonitions”  and feelings.

Tonight I sit with her in a room at the same hospital, just across the hall from where we were three years ago.  Between her dry coughing and attempts to remove the oxygen from her nose, she dreams. I’m trying to figure out the stories as she mumbles words and phrases.  “Upstairs,” “Bring them all in,” and “Thank you, darlin’” are the most clear.

As I watch her struggle with the monitor wires and way too large hospital gown, I wonder who she is seeing in those dreams. And I remember, “Three years. It will be three years.”

Three years ago I ended that blog post with these words:

“As you read this, take a moment and pray NOW.  Pray for those in your family who need to feel the love and care of God’s hand.  Pray for your friends and neighbors.  Pray for your church and community.  Pray for our denomination and its leaders.  Pray for our country and the world.  Pray for the Republican Presidential candidate debate, or for the Nationals to come back up in the MLB standings, or for the end to the wild fires in the West.  Pray that every life matters.  Pray that the shark attacks off the coast of North Carolina have ended. Just pray. NOW.”

Isn’t it amazing how some things never change and how much other parts of life do?  One thing is constant: pray NOW! 

The Most Important Question

I have come to see Sister Joan Chittister as one of the great sages of faithful aging, a prophet for all of us as we attempt to walk the second half of life.  Chittister begins the chapter on religion in her book, The Gift of Years: Growing Old Gracefully, with these words:

“Religion is not a topic, not a course, not simply a body of beliefs.  It is a process of becoming.  The major error where religion is concerned is the assumption that having one dimension of it – topic, course, and body of beliefs – we have it all, and if a person does not share this dimension with everyone else, they have no real religion at all.  Those judgements can be fatal – both for ourselves as well as for the effect of such ideas on others.”

As she closes that chapter, Sister Joan goes on to add:

“In old age…the arguments about who is right and who is wrong, what is true and what is not, begin to give way to questions of what is good and what is not, what is life and what is not, what is important and what is not….Religion becomes what it was always meant to be: a search and a relationship with the Spirit who draws us on.  Always on.  Even to the point where ‘on’ is unclear.”

My email inbox is full these days of messages on every side of the current conversation in The United Methodist Church about LGBTQ+ inclusion. 

• Just this morning there was a message from the recent For Everyone Born conference sponsored by the Love Your Neighbor coalition.  
• There was also a forwarded email from the Institute on Religion and Democracy’s UMAction declaring that the General Board of Church and Society was “seeking to comprehensively rewrite and replace the entire United Methodist Social Principles.”  There was no mention in that e-blast that the General Conference had approved that task as part of our work to live into being a more global denomination.
• There was a request to speak at what I know is one of our more traditional churches and one to speak at what I know is a more progressive church. Yesterday I had a conversation about a presentation at a church where we’re not quite sure how the congregation feels.

Someone asked me last week if my name had ever been placed on one of the “hidden” lists of nominees to support as lay delegates to General Conference from Virginia.  Yes, actually my name has been on those illegal lists for both ends of the theological spectrum....Never have been able to figure that one out except that people do know I listen to them intently.

Discernment about whether to continue in this journey with The UMC further than the Called General Conference session next February has taken center stage in the last few weeks.  Conversations with family, trusted friends and advisors have filled many hours.  There’s a part of me that wants to just say “No. I’ve had enough.”  There’s a part of me that can’t let go.  There’s a part of me that loves The United Methodist Church to the deepest core of my being.  There’s a part of me that recognizes the denomination has to be transformed.

All of me knows “the arguments about who is right and who is wrong, what is true and what is not” have given way “to questions of what is good and what is not, what is life and what is not, what is important and what is not.”

Deep in your heart and soul, what is it that is vitally important to you in this conversation within the church?

For me, it all comes down to a question of what type of disciple Jesus is calling me to be – now and for the rest of my journey. 

• Can I live my life as an authentic follower of Jesus if anyone is excluded from the table – progressive or traditionalist, rich or poor, tall or short, stout or thin, come here or born here? 
• Can I find a safe place for my continuous questioning of my relationship with God and growth in my understanding of being a part of the Body of Christ if people with varied theological understandings and perspectives are not traveling with me?
• Can I risk being absent from the conversation? 

“Beware the religion that turns you against another one. It's unlikely that it's really religion at all.”  - Joan Chittister, God Speaks in Many Tongues: Meditate with Joan Chittister