Pastor Ann's OT Blog

We have a crappy lawn. There are lots of bare spots and other areas where the grass is very thin. We figured it was because we have so many trees and the grass is not getting enough sunlight.

So we got an expert to evaluate our lawn to see what might be done. We were hoping it might be as simple as new seeding. But his diagnosis revealed a deeper problem: we have insufficient topsoil to grow good grass. To bear this out, he pointed out most of our trees that have roots showing the through the lawn. He said this is mostly likely the result of construction junk or other filler under the topsoil which prevent the roots from growing as deeply as they should. So the roots grow outwards and the root system remain fairly shallow.

Which leads us to worry about whether a good strong sustained wind might blow our trees down onto the house. But that’s a worry for another day.

Shallow roots are generally not a good thing. It’s not good for the tree and it’s not good for the areas around the tree. The tree is not as well-grounded as it should be and while it may look healthy, the shallow roots can limit its growth abilities and its longevity.

How deep are our roots? In what values, history and relationships do we ground ourselves? And if we feel our roots are too shallow and that a good strong sustained wind might blow us over, how can we change that?

One of the great gifts (I think) of belonging to a 500+ year old denomination, which proudly traces its roots back another 1500 years, is that sense of rootedness. How amazing is that we sing songs that are 1000 years old or that we recite creeds that are 1700 years old or that our congregation has been witnessing to Christ for 162 years in Perrysburg!

This is not to say that new stuff isn’t great and valuable too. But as we assimilate the marvelous new ideas and technologies and knowledge of our 21^st century, let us do so without dismissing or forgetting 2000 years of rootedness.

You may be aware that Zoar has started a Cherish Our Children ministry which seeks to protect and educate believers about the horrors of sexual exploitation of children.

Did you know that the Super Bowl is the single largest event in the US for human trafficking? That thousands of enslaved women and children will be shipped to Indianapolis to satisfy the unhealthy sexual appetites of football fans? It is the dark side of the Super Bowl. Read the article below for information on the subject.

http://theresurgence.com/2012/02/02/sex-trafficking-at-the-super-bowl

And then read what Indiana is doing to try to prevent a repeat of what happened in Dallas and Miami. From Sojourners magazine:

The seamy underside of the Super Bowl is the increase in sex trafficking that accompanies it. Like any large gathering of people, it attracts traffickers peddling their victims, many of them minors.

Over the last few weeks, 11 orders of Catholic sisters, joined by students, compiled a list of the managers at 220 hotels in the Indianapolis area. They then began calling, asking questions to see if the managers were aware of the sex trafficking issue and whether they wanted materials to help educate their staffs. The information included how to recognize the signs of trafficking, and whom to contact if it is suspected. Two-hundred managers answered questions; 99 asked for materials, while 45 others already had trained or planned to educated their staffs about trafficking.

Another citizen effort is training cab drivers about how to recognize sex traffickers. Valerie Schmitt, coordinator of a human-trafficking outreach effort, told cabdrivers, “You’re our eyes and our ears … You meet a lot of people and overhear a lot of conversations that might be helpful in recognizing someone involved in [sex] trafficking.”

The Indiana state government also responded. On Tuesday, Daniels signed into law legislation designed to tighten loopholes that have made the prosecution of traffickers difficult in the past. The new law makes “recruiting, transporting or harboring anyone younger than 16 for prostitution or other sexual conduct a felony punishable by 20 to 50 years in prison.”

Abigail Kuzma, the Indiana attorney general’s designee on an Indiana Protection for Abused and Trafficked Humans taskforce, said: “We have to be alert to protect these children. We probably will never know how many people are trafficked here because it’s so easy to hide the victims.”

You can learn more about preventing human trafficking by joining Zoar’s Cherish Our Children initiative or check out the International Justice Mission.

January 31 and it’s going to be 53 degrees today. Amazing. The weird warm winter weather we have had this month and last has confused my perennial plants. All along the creek bed behind my house the early spring irises have begun to grow, as have some daffodils. Even when the weather has been snowy and seasonably cold, those little shoots have remained stubbornly green in the midst of the brown grass, leafless trees, and gray skies.

Sometimes I’m like the irises: confused about what to do, and then when it becomes clear that I have made a mistake, stubbornly refusing to admit it. Granted, the analogy is a bit of stretch, since irises have no choice about growing or not growing. Still, my way of viewing the world as a source of theological analogy lets me ignore such inconvenient flaws in my quest for material. Ah, there’s that stubborn refusal to admit my limitations again!

Life is confusing, even for the faithful. Unexpected stuff comes along and we are not always sure how to respond to it. Often there is not a right or wrong response, and many times there is not criteria by which to determine if our response is right or wrong. And if you are even half as stubborn as me, if it turns out your response was off target, it can be hard to admit our mistake.

But we do the best we can to be faithful in the midst of life’s unexpectedness. And like my stubborn, confused irises, God will see us through. The irises will survive the cold and will bloom at the appropriate time in spite of their early appearance: God has designed them so. We will survive our mistakes and confusion too for God will be with us to see us through. We may still be confused, but God’s hand can ensure that we will still bloom at the appropriate time.

My irises on January 28

I got a new I-pad for Christmas. I bought it for myself, so it’s not really a gift, although I used Christmas gift money to buy it. I also got a new smartphone. I spend a lot of time on one or the other of these devices, reading books, playing games, surfing the internet, sending messages. My husband Michael says I’m addicted. Perhaps he’s right. Perhaps not.

I wonder…can you be addicted to technology? Addiction is usually a physiological event—chemicals and enzymes and such related to putting things into the body. When someone’s addictive substance is removed, the body goes a bit haywire with shakes and headaches and illness and other sorts of unpleasant physical reactions. I think if you took away my I-pad, probably none of those things would happen to me.

Still, I do spend a lot of time with my “toys.” What WOULD happen if they were taken away? We lost internet service at the church this morning and all had to shut down our entire computer network in the office while the IT fellow fixes things. We all felt a little lost and frustrated without our technology. We were up and running again in less than an hour, so we managed to make it without too much trouble. Still, I wonder how much more frustrated would we be if our devices were taken way for a longer period of time?

One of the arguments against technology, especially social media, is that it takes the place of true relationships. Perhaps that is true for many but for me, it’s the opposite. I play interactive games and send messages and email to friends and family with whom I would otherwise probably not have very frequent contact. And each time I take my turn on Words With Friends, for example, I think about the person who is my opponent and sometimes we chat in the game and I realize that because of this game, I am having a conversation or interaction with this person that would otherwise not happen. I like that. And I like that they are thinking about me too. I think our relationship is strengthened by this. Or maybe I’m simply justifying my addiction. Addicts are good at justification.

Ann the Preacher

I got a lot of “good sermon” type comments on my sermon yesterday. That felt good. For those who were not present, the sermon was about why we come to church and included a bit of self-disclosure that sometimes I’m not fully engaged in worship, that I’m just going through the motions. One kind soul even told me it was probably one of the best sermons he’d ever heard. That was very flattering.

Still, I didn’t think it was one of my best. It was a decent sermon, but not all that outstanding. Perhaps it was the self-disclosure that drew people in (Oh, the pastor is a person like us after all!). Or maybe it was someone finally voicing what we all feel (Church doesn’t always inspire us).

There are times when I know a sermon is good. I feel it in my bones and I am enthusiastic about preaching it—even preaching it four times—and the response from the worshippers is usually very positive.

Not every sermon is like that. And I am always bowled over by people’s reactions to what I think is a mediocre sermon. Inevitably a few folks will say that ‘mediocre’ sermon spoke to them in a profound way. Each time that happens I am reminded that the sermon is not my product—most of the time. It comes from the Holy Spirit and therefore even though it may not speak to my spirit, it can still speak to someone else’s.

After all, it’s not all about me. I just sometimes fall into thinking that it is. Silly me.

There’s a Home Depot commercial on television that has the tag line “every project has a story.” The premise is that if you do a fix-up project around your house, there is a story to tell about how you did it and that others would be interested in that story.

This past week I went to a retreat where the speaker talked about our personal stories. His premise is that in “the olden days” our stories were basically inherited from parents, communities, and church. We knew who we were through our life story—most of which was given to us by previous generations.

Now, he says, with digital communication, we can choose the story of our lives. No longer are we limited to the inherited stories of our forebears, but we can learn about other ways and other lives and other stories and take the pieces we like from each and create our own unique story.

This is both blessing and curse. The blessing is that we get choose who we want to be—a great gift not available to most people throughout history. The curse is the overwhelming amount of information through which we must sift in order to create that story. (The presenter said that most Westerners receive more new information in ONE day than people in the Middle Ages received in a whole lifetime. Wow!) What criteria do we use to choose the story of our life? What information and experiences and knowledge shape us?

The story of our lives is also the story of the church. And because our personal stories are evolving into something new, therefore the story of the church is changing too. This is why the church is in such turmoil: people’s stories are changing in profound ways and the church’s story is changing too—in spite of the efforts of many to stop it.

So I ask you…if every life has a story, what’s yours? What events and experiences and information have you used to create your life story? And how does Jesus’ story and the story of the church intersect or inform your story?

Comments welcome.

I have a decorative scarf that my daughter gave me for Christmas. It consists of a dozen or so strands of yarn—different types, different colors—that are knotted together at several places. No weaving; no knitting; no crocheting. Just knots. I like it a lot. It’s pretty, colorful, and unique.

When I saw it, I thought to myself: I can do that! As a knitter, I have two kitchen garbage bags full of scrap yarn. It is all perfectly good yarn. There’s just not enough of it to make anything. I keep it thinking one day I will use all those scraps to make a multi-colored afghan but I never do. Now, thanks to some creative person, I have a simple way to use my scrap yarn—and maybe gifts for all my friends and female relatives for some time to come.

Every life has scraps of stuff—leftovers that often just sit there being useless. What if you were to take your leftover stuff and make something beautiful and useful with it? What new possibilities might be open to you? And if you succeed is getting rid of some of those leftovers, there might just be room for some NEW stuff.

Which is one motivation I forgot to mention for making these “scrap scarves:” when I’ve made enough of them, I’ll have all that room for new yarn.

My new scarf

Pastor Ann’s Blog just became Pastor Ann’s OT Blog.

 The OT stands for Observational Theology.

I was very enthusiastic when I started my blogging nearly two years ago. I wrote an article pretty much every week. I spent rather a lot of time on each article and after several months, found it to be harder and harder to carve out 2-3 hours a week to write a new article. I’m a bit of perfectionist, so I struggled with sentence structure, vocabulary, and so forth. Then I would search for pictures and paste them in and fiddle with placement and size and how it looked next to the text.…it just took a long time.

If I found an error after I posted an article, I would correct it immediately out of some misplaced fear that someone who saw the typo would assume I’m an idiot who can’t spell properly. Then I would search for pictures and paste them in…it just took a long time.

So I’ve decided to change the format up a bit. I plan to write short articles 2-3 times a week without all the fuss and falderal. My thinking is that I all those things in the world that I notice as I go about my life and ministry will become theological fodder for the blog. Sort of a Seinfeldesque way of experiencing the world.

In addition to simplifying the whole blog writing task for myself, I also hope to invite you into seeing the world in a similar way: through the eyes of faith. What does the world teach us about God, about ourselves, about our faith walk with Christ, about life.

So check back a couple times a week and see how I’m doing. Also, some of you have expressed difficulty in the past in being able to comment. I had problems too, but IT guy par excellence Vince messed with a couple of things and I can now comment on my own blogs. Can some of you try again to comment on this blog and let’s see if the issue got fixed? You have to go to “log in” along the right side and set up an account with a password. Lemme know how it goes.

I wrote a few blogs back about my new puppy. Layla is 9 months old today. She’s completed her training classes—actually they were training classes for me—and we are in the period of reinforcement of all those commands: sit, down, come, heel, stay, stop, leave it, and a few more.

I am not always a patient person. Layla is teaching me patience—the hard way. She’s a smart dog and she learns quickly. But she’s also a puppy and is easily distracted. Squirrels, blowing leaves, other dogs, joggers…everything distracts her. She will be going along just fine, walking beside me in perfect heel position and then she sees a plastic shopping bag blowing across the yard of a house ahead of us. Suddenly, she’s pulling on the leash, the fur on her back is standing up, and she is completely ignoring my commands to heel, sit, stop or anything else. All her attention is on that stupid bag.

In those moments, I have to work very hard at being patient, not losing my temper, and not over-correcting her. After all I am the pack leader, and I have to show my leadership. I know what’s best for her. And runny willy-nilly after every plastic shopping bag or blowing leaf or barking dog is NOT what is best for Layla.

And because I want what’s best for my dog, that means I can’t lose it when she ignores me and does what she wants. So when she misbehaves, I have to remind myself that she is still a puppy. I have to tell myself that she is still learning. I have to say to myself that she will get better. I need to correct her, but with calmly. Above all, I must be patient. And as I said before, that’s not my best trait.

I find myself thinking that I am a lot like Layla sometimes. And I marvel at God’s patience with me. I too, can be easily distracted by unimportant or even useless things. I, too, ignore the commands of my pack leader. I, too, can be going along just fine and then suddenly veer off course for some stupid reason. It is amazing that God doesn’t overcorrect me or even punish me justly for my misbehavior. After all, God knows what’s best for me and through Christ, has told me what that is.

And unlike Layla, I KNOW that God knows what’s best for me. But also unlike my relationship with my puppy, God does not force God’s will upon me. If I did not force my will on Layla, she’d be running after that shopping bag or leaf or other dog and eventually she would be hurt or killed for her disobedience.

But God does not do this. Instead, God has shown me what is good for me and allows me to choose to obey or not. And God does not punish me for my wrong choices, other than to allow me to live with those consequences. And no matter what I do or fail to do, God still loves and forgives me, even when I am disobedient. God’s patience is amazing.

What plastic shopping bags are distracting you these days?

God of all those who yearn for a glimmer of assurance on the long journey home to you, come! Come with a vast storehouse of renewed dreams, hopes, and peacefulness.

God of hope, come! Enter into my memory and remind me often of the yearning of the people of history. Stir up stories of how the ancestors hung on to your promises, how they stole hope from tiny glimmers about you, passed on from age to age. Help me to hear the loud, crying voice of the prophets who proclaimed that a new age would dawn.

God of hope, come! Enter into this heart of mine which often loses itself in self, missing the message of your encouragement because I am so entangled in the web of my own while of life. Enable me to not lose sight of the power of your presence or the truth of your consolation.

God of hope, come! Enter into the lives all those I hold dear, the ones whose lives are marked with pain, struggle, and deep anxiety, those whose lives bear ongoing heartaches, those whose difficulties threaten to overwhelm them with helplessness and despair. Come and gift them with a deep belief about you and your never-ending faithfulness and companionship.

God of hope, come! Enter into every human heart that cries out for a glimpse of your love, for a sign of your welcoming presence, for a taste of your happiness. Be the one who calms the restless and gentles the ache of the human journey. God of hope, come! Enter into the Advent season with the grace of joy and laughter. Fill faces with smiles of delight and voices with sounds of pleasure. Let this gift come from deep within. Replenish all with the joyful blessings that only your peace can bring.

God of hope, come! Be the Morning Star in our midst, the Light that can never go out, the Beacon of Hope guiding our way to you. Come into our midst and make of our lives a home, where your everlasting goodness resonates with assuring love and vigorous hope.

-Joyce Rupp, OSM, author