God of springtime emergence, these servants of Minnesota come together with tired eyes from late nights, but with hearts full of the urgent work you call forth in these final days of the session.
Continue reading “MN Senate Opening Prayer – May 9, 2024”
Not long ago, my husband Javen and I had the chance to see “The Color Purple”—a dramatic staging of Alice Walker’s classic novel at Theatre Latte Da. It follows the life of the main character, Celie, who suffers through a lifetime of forced servitude to abusive men. Celie takes at face value what they say about her, that she is ugly, powerless, and good for nothing but endless labor. We see her virtue in repeated acts of generosity and compassion, but Celie struggles to believe that her life is lovely or valuable. Musical numbers lead the audience along a journey of Celie’s self-discovery, gradually shifting to more hopeful melodies, until a climactic moment near the end. In a showstopping performance, Nubia Monks as Celie declares with operatic conviction, “I am beautiful!!” The audience would have been lifted from our seats by the swelling music, had we not already jumped to our feet, calling back to the stage, “YES!! You ARE, you ARE beautiful!!” I don’t know if every performance has the electricity of the preview night we attended, but it captures for me the affirmation and essence of Easter itself. You are beautiful.
Continue reading “Raised”Again and again when tempted to believe in the utter stupidity of someone else’s position, or buy 100% my own passionate convictions, I come back to the wisdom of this Sufi philosopher and poet from the 1200s. Rumi helps me leave enough cracks in the walls of certitude that the Other–the one with whom I disagree, even my sworn enemy–might have something of value for me to learn from. Let my actions and words strongly claim the truth as I know it, and yet hold open space for the humanity of someone on another other side, so that one day we might picnic together in the field of transcendent grace.
Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
Rumi
There is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
The world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
Doesn’t make any sense.
I first heard this perhaps twenty years ago in a sermon. I love how the speaker refuses to accept the definition of “outsider” that would be imposed by another. The poet doesn’t even seek to establish a counter-definition: “No, you’re the outsider!” Instead, this leads us from the usual paradigms of “us” and “them” to a place that Rumi called “beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing”, transcending such categories altogether by the power of Love.
He drew a circle that shut me out—
Edwin Markham
Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!
In particular this Holy Week, I’m recalling how Jesus sat for his final meal with the betrayer Judas and all the deserting disciples, who would disavow knowing him just a few hours later. Nevertheless, the table of mercy and grace draws a circle that includes all, no matter what.
Michael Coffey’s poem “Art of Reformation” uses the metaphor of clay on a pottery wheel, describing how the original unformed block can be shaped “into a dove or a fish or a water bowl”. I’d not thought before about the choice that comes to the potter next—to
put it in the kiln and fire it
preserve its beauty in brittle perfectionor keep it supple and soft, wet and moving
so that when the times require creative reformation
you can give thanks for the dove, the bowl, the vasethen reimagine what this poetic mud can be
If God is a potter and we are clay (as the biblical metaphor goes), God has decided not to fire the clay at a given point of supposed perfection, not to freeze out the possibilities of change, movement, and growth. What a gift—that the church has freedom to keep changing, growing, and reimagining what it means to be mud in the Potter’s hands, serving God’s desires in new ways.
We experience the change-ability of church in the building this weekend at Edina Morningside and Linden Hills UCC. The sanctuary has been transformed into a set for Morningside Theatre Company’s intergenerational production of “Beauty and the Beast”, and worship with communion will take place on that set. This means disruption for those of us leading and participating in worship—where to stand, what microphones work, how to project, whether technology will come through to include folks on Zoom, etc. I can imagine (and have felt myself) occasional dismay that the things we church folk count on to stay the same are shifting instead, requiring extra energy to meet the changing moment. But I also know, trust, and have experienced that what “church” means in the 21st century must morph if we are still to serve God’s people, many of whom are not participating in our traditional forms. I’m proud of how we are practicing flexibility and change, working through discomfort to catch the wind of Spirit. We navigated tech challenges last week with gracious humor, then spent a sacred ninety minutes in the sanctuary afterward sharing our dreams for faith “within, among, and beyond” the church. This Sunday, we will set a communion table right there on the changeable sanctuary stage, a metaphor for all our life together.
I hope you’ll come to see the production that many in the church and community have worked hard on for months. Marvel with me at the gift that a “youth ministry” spirit from a summer theatre camp years ago has morphed into the present moment, where dozens of intergenerational actors and stagehands from the church and neighborhood sing, dance, and create joy for audiences of hundreds. Thank you for trusting the precious gift of this faith community to one another, to me, and to a future church on whose behalf we practice such divine endeavors. Above all, in the poet’s final lines, we trust the “animation of the potter Spirit keeping all things fluid… freeing our joints to be the art of God’s desire”.
Pastor Oby Ballinger 