Diet Coke with Jesus

For a time when I was young, I hated the word devotions.  It sounds so pretentious and pious in a way that didn’t express what I was doing—or thought I should be doing—when I took the time to read my Bible and pray.  In my young adult years, the preferred expression was quiet time, but that sounds like a nap or what you ask your toddlers to enter when you have had enough noise for a while.  I suppose I could borrow from my new favorite daily cartoon strip Coffee with Jesus,[1] but I’d have to change it to Tea with Jesus, and I don’t always have tea:  Diet Coke with Jesus?  I don’t know.  So I am back to the word devotions; at least it’s shorter than daily prayer and Bible reading. 

So on my daily teuxdeux list[2] you’ll see devotions.  Is it awful to put something that should be personal and intimate and important on a teuxdeux list?  A task to be crossed off?  For me, it’s not so awful, because I also write down such “tasks” as make cookies with grandkids and walk with BFF and plan Mom’s 75^th birthday party.  To keep my life focused on the right priorities, even the personal, intimate, desirable, wonderful teuxdeuxs end up on my list.  I am easily distracted by less important activities such as Facebook Scrabble (which, to be fair to myself, I do at least in part to keep the aging brain sharp, which all the self-help articles tell us we must do to avoid dementia and—ooh, squirrel!), things that seem to happen even though they are not on the list.  That is not a reflection of their relative importance so much as their relative “automaticness.”  Or perhaps I am suffering the effects of too many years of multitasking.

Devotions is something I plan to do every day, although I don’t always get to it, even though it is on my teuxdeux list, waiting to be crossed off.  The days I don’t get to it become a sort of control group to compare to the days I do.  I have noticed, especially in recent months, that the days I get to devotions are better days than the ones I don’t.  I do not want this to be true, but it is.  Don’t get me wrong.  Devotions are about my relationship with God, and he does not punish me for “missing” my daily devotions by giving me a bad day any more than my husband does if I forget to ask him how his day went.  Regardless, the days that begin (and yes, the earlier the better, in my case) with devotions have a different feel to them, a different smoothness, a better light.  Why?

When I wonder about the quality of my relationship with God, I often ponder my relationships with people I love, with the hope of gaining some insight into how that vertical relationship might work.  For instance, the days when my husband and I have time together to talk, to play games, or even to work on household tasks or run errands together are just plain and simply more fun, more satisfying.  I work at home, alone, much of the time, and often I am more productive when my husband is physically present, even if we are not talking or interacting.  My best friend and I rarely see each other because of our busy schedules, and in between visits I sometimes forget how important our friendship is.  But when we are together, we can tell each other things that we cannot tell to a single other living soul, and our burdens are lifted and we remember how grateful we are for this friendship.  If I am worried about my children, even if I am regularly praying for them, the best cure for my anxiety is time with them:  playing games, running errands, doing craft projects, cooking a meal. 

Nothing beats physical time and space.  When I am actually present with the people I love, my days go better:  I am happier, more productive, freer, and calmer.  But still, I do not plan to spend time with them in order to get happiness, productivity, freedom, or calm.  I spend time with them because I love them, because I long for their presence in my life, because our lives are intertwined and we have committed to being responsible in some way for one another.  The joy is a bonus.

And I love Jesus.  I long for time with him, even though it’s a little more esoteric, harder to grasp, than when my grandkids come for a visit.  Our lives are intertwined.  He has given his life for me, and I have given my life for him in the best way I know how.  And when I spend time with him, my days go better.  I don’t think I spend time with him so that my days go better; but when I’m having a rough day, I look back to see what’s missing, and I realize sometimes it’s Jesus.

Again, don’t get me wrong.  My good days often have the same kinds of tasks and interruptions in them that my bad days have.  What’s the difference?

Yesterday started off with tea with Jesus.  The day was filled with both have tos and get tos, and even though some of the have tos were filled with purpose and delight, some such as folding clothes took up very little space in my active attention.  In the afternoon, after seeing a movie with my younger daughter, I returned my attention to a repeating task, one that requires some thought and concentration and creativity.  It presented some difficulties, and I had to re-do a portion of it before I was satisfied.  I had some interruptions, some of which were urgent.  I kept getting distracted. Small portions of the task remained unfinished at the end of the day.  (I’m big on closure, on getting things crossed off the list, so that could have been upsetting.)  And yet it was a good day. 

In my experience, I realized, the good day is not necessarily one that is perfectly productive or without interruptions or without problems.  My project did not go smoothly; it had bumps and fits and starts along the way.  I was occasionally stymied.  The difference was that I felt satisfied with the process and the progress.  I persevered.  The obstacles and setbacks felt almost necessary to the task, as if I were growing and changing and adapting as the task presented its difficulties.  The frustrations did not frustrate me!  They were part of the goodness of the day.

Jesus invited me into his presence a long time ago, and I accepted his invitation.  But on a daily basis, it’s as if he says, “Are you home today?” and I say, “Yes, please come over!  I have some things to do, but you are welcome to hang out.  As a matter of fact, I’d appreciate your help.”  And when he gets here, we sit down and have our coffee or tea or Diet Coke, we have our intimate conversation and talk about what’s on our minds; he might even suggest some changes to my teuxdeux list or give me some new things to think about, and I remind him of some of the things that are beyond my control that I need him to tackle.  Then we clear the dishes, and I pick up a hammer and he picks up a measuring tape and we get started on the tasks of the day.[3]  Maybe I’ll have to do some backtracking and redo some things, and maybe the work will go smoothly, and maybe it will present some frustrations.  But Jesus is here.  And it is a good day.

Actually, Diet Coke with Jesus does have a nice ring to it.

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[1] http://radiofreebabylon.com/Comics/CoffeeWithJesus.php; http://www.amazon.com/Coffee-Jesus-David-Wilkie/dp/0830836624

[2] www.teuxdeux.com; I don’t know how I ever functioned without it. 

[3] Computer and white board, dish cloth and broom, chalk and eraser, choose your own tool metaphors!

The Limitations of the Bird's Eye View

Last week my niece Lindsey and I decided to take advantage of what will probably be the last hot day of 2013 in the Pacific Northwest by heading up to Baker Lake for a few hours of sunbathing, swimming, and picnicking.  We chose the Swamp Creek Campground beach area, a site we had never been before, having previously chosen Shannon Creek or Panorama Point, other lovely locations; Swamp Creek has a much larger beach and swim area.  On a September Wednesday, when most people are back at school or work, we had the place almost to ourselves.

We set up our beach chairs and our picnic lunch on a little flat area a few feet above the beach, overlooking the sun-drenched expanse of Baker Lake.  From there we both noticed wide alternating ribbons of dark and light in the water, although neither of us mentioned it to the other.  I attributed it to cloud shadows, overlooking the fact that it was a perfectly cloudless day. 

When we finally soaked up enough sun to want to get into the lake, we ventured ankle deep into what looked like very shallow water.  But the sand there, unlike at other beaches in the area, is very soft, and we sank in almost up to our knees and started sliding toward a much deeper spot in the water—water which was cold, at least at first, so we didn’t really want to move into it quite that quickly!  We finally got safely all the way in and realized we could stand up straight with our heads out of the water. 

Lindsey wondered aloud, then, if she could swim all the way over to a log we saw some way out.  She is a good swimmer (a lifeguard, even) and I was sure she could do it.  So she started walking towards it until it got deep enough to swim the rest of the way.  Except it didn’t.

 

She walked until the water came up to her shoulders, but then I could see more and more of her.  The water was actually getting shallower!  Then deeper!  Then shallower!  Eventually I followed her, and we discovered that we could walk almost halfway across the lake without needing to swim more than a stroke or two every now and then—good news for a clunky swimmer such as myself. 

The “cloud shadows” we had seen from the beach were not cloud shadows at all.  They were the deeper trenches between shallowly submerged sandbars that extended in bands quite far across the lake.  It struck me that we had had the big picture, the bird’s eye view, but it had no meaning—or rather, incorrect meaning—for us because we had spent no time in the trenches, experiencing it at the water level.  When we got out of the lake to dry off and warm up, and we looked back out over the water, we realized what we were seeing.  The big picture couldn’t make sense until we had the little picture.

I think about how often I have ideas and opinions—about my own life, my church, my community, my country, my world, my neighbor, the person driving in front of me, the check out procedures at the library, the customer service at the local cable company—and I think I have the bird’s eye view, the big picture, and that my opinions are clearly logical.  I have answers!  (Truth be told, I often have judgments.) 

But I haven’t always walked in the trenches first to see which details of the bird’s eye view are actually relevant, important, meaningful, or even accurate.  How do I know how insurmountable the obstacles really are until I attempt the course?  How do I know I can handle deep water until I’ve tried it?  How do I know where the trenches and sandbars lie?  How do I grasp proportions and measurements and hidden dangers?  How do I understand the costs?  How do I know when I’m just plain wrong or when I’m seeing something other than what I think I’m seeing?  Having the bird’s eye view does not mean I have eagle-eye vision!  Or to put in another way:  knowledge does not equal wisdom.

The implications are many:  I need to be cautious with my untested opinions.  I need to spend time at the micro level, testing the waters myself, so to speak, before I offer solutions.  I need empathy for others’ limitations and awareness of my own.  I need humility regarding my own knowledge and observational skill.  I need patience and a willingness to get wet or cold or sweaty or dirty—or involved.  Then, perhaps, I can step back and make sense of the big picture and actually be of use—to myself or to others.   

Another implication is that I would be wise to take advice from those who have been there, done that, bought the t-shirt, instead of those who merely study from the vantage point of the ivory tower.  The ideal advisors, perhaps, are those who have tested their assumptions and hypotheses in the field, then returned to the tower to reflect and study some more and thoughtfully formulate their advice.  They wait until they have travelled before they write the travel guide.

Jesus modeled this.  He always has the God’s eye view, of course, and unlike our bird’s eye view, his view is perfect.  But he entered our story anyway, experienced our view, identified with us, suffered with us, and then offered us hope.  We were ready to listen, then, because he had walked our walk first. 

I have ideas, lots of them, about lots of things.  But age has taught me this:  ideas are cheap.  Until I’m willing to put feet under them, I don’t really know if they have any merit.  And putting feet under them requires engagement and testing at ground (or water) level, no matter how sure I think I am of the big picture.  It requires me to come alongside and enter in and identify with the problem I hope to solve.  Spectator seats have limited value in producing true discernment.

We need the big picture, absolutely.  But it’s more useful if we also have the little picture, then the big picture again, this time with the important details mapped.

Fuller Commencement

When I graduated with my M.Div. from Fuller Seminary Northwest on June 8, 2013 (Woohoo!  Finally!), I was asked to be one of the two student speakers.  My task was to reflect on my seminary experience.  Since some of my friends and family have asked for it, here is the text of my address.

I have been thinking a lot lately about the word home.  What is home?  Where is home?

My father was a military man.  By the time I was in kindergarten, I had lived on three continents.  I was conceived in Texas and born in Connecticut.  I was a crawler in Japan, a toddler in California, a preschooler in Colorado, and a kindergartner in Germany.  Elementary school took me from Germany to Virginia to Japan again, JH back to Connecticut, and high school and college to two different cities in Arizona.  My young adult life was spent in Phoenix, Arizona, with a husband and eventually three children. 

When I moved with my family from Phoenix to Seattle in August of 1998, I said to myself it would be the last move I would ever make.  Since then I have moved four times, the last time just this past October.  Graduation and a new vocation probably mean that we will be moving again soon, and not necessarily in the Seattle area.  When you move a lot, you eventually ask yourself the question, “Where is home?”

Early in my life, in some ways, home was wherever my parents were.  In other ways home was my grandmother’s house in Connecticut, because that’s where we always returned for a time between other homes.  But eventually Grandma followed us to Arizona, so “Grandma’s house” was no longer home.  As an adult, I sometimes think, “Home is where my children are.”  But now our six adult children are spread out across Washington, California, and Hawaii.  Which one is home?

I asked my Facebook friends to complete the sentence, “Home is where fill in the blank.”  Here are some of their responses:

Home is where the heart is. 

Home is where you belong.

Home is where each lives for the other and all live for God.

Home is where you hang your hat. 

Home is where your muddy boots can finally rest.

Home is where my family is.

Home is where they know you and love you anyway.

Home is where you can steal quarters from the couch cushions and feel totally justified.

Home is where I can take my shoes off.

Home is where we are all together with our tortoise and our espresso machine.

Home is where you can scratch where it itches.

Home is where you can be 100% yourself.

I like that last one:  Home is where you can be yourself.  The problem is that a few years ago I discovered that my house—the one where I lived with my husband and children, the people I loved—was no longer a place where I could be myself, where it was safe to be myself. I often felt like Cinderella’s stepsisters, who contorted themselves to the point of self-destruction to fit their feet into the glass slipper for the right to be claimed by the prince.  And as any woman who has worn a pair of killer high heels can tell you, it is very difficult to be yourself when your feet hurt!

I remember quite clearly the day when the counselor I had been seeing said, “We have to find a way to stop this abuse.”  

“Abuse,” I said.  “That’s a very strong word.”  

She said, “It’s the right word.”  

I had thought that it was all my responsibility to adjust:  if I could just be more selfless, more submissive, more supportive.  But in the attempt to do so, I had contorted myself beyond recognition, trying to fit into someone else’s idea of what I should be.  And there was no way in that context I could have heard a call to vocational ministry.

It took me another year to come to terms with the fact that, like Hester Prynne, I was wearing a big scarlet A on my chest, only mine did not stand for adultery; it stood for abuse.  It took time and new courage to name it:  I was an emotionally abused woman.  I begged God to change my situation, but it is the nature of God’s love that it doesn’t coerce.  So instead God answered my prayer, not by fixing my situation, but by removing me from it—from a marriage that had become oppressive and unresponsive in what should have been a quest for mutuality, growth, and love.

But now my scarlet letter was a D—for divorced. The church can be a lonely place for a divorced woman, no matter the reason.  I was told it would have been better for me to endure the abuse than to divorce.  I was told I could never remarry.  I was asked to step down from the worship team, the one task that gave me joy and hope.  And although people tried their best to love me, the church became a place where I could not be myself, where I was somehow too damaged to serve God in any meaningful capacity, where I was suspected of somehow not being enough, where I was no longer at home.

Yet God had a future for me that I could not have imagined for myself, would not have even dared to ask for myself.  Honestly, just learning how to breathe again felt like a great gift.  But God had plans to do a new thing, to remake home for me, a place where I could be myself.  It was going to be different and somehow better than it had been before, and maybe even more importantly, different than the way I thought God was supposed to act. 

He gave me a new neighbor, whose name was Darrel, and whose front door was mere inches from mine.  My new neighbor became a new friend, and we discovered we had many things in common:  we were both teachers, both Christians, both divorced for similar reasons, both with three kids nearly the same ages, and both of us were planning to remain single for the rest of our lives.  The surprise was that God gave us to each other, in a new marriage, and a new home.  From the beginning we have said to each other, “You never have to stop being who you are for my sake.”  And we discovered what God intended for marriage, and that in his kingdom reality, even in this already-not yet that we live in, crazy, happy love is possible.  And with the new marriage came a new church, a place that felt like home, where my past did not render me unfit for service in God’s kingdom.

So what does all this have to with seminary?

In the safety of this new home and this new community of faith, I began to hear God’s voice again.  I began to realize that there was yet another “new thing” for me, a next thing.  I began to pray about what it might be.  As I considered my career as a teacher and the things I most loved to teach, to write, and to speak about, I realized that I kept returning to spiritual themes.  I found the most joy in my work when it was about the truth of God’s sustaining love and his word.  I thought, “Maybe I’ll take a couple of seminary classes, so I can do those things with a little more accuracy and authority.”  I had no intention of changing careers or even getting a degree. 

My best friend’s mother was a pastor, and I knew she had gone to Fuller, so on my lunch break one day I Googled it, found the Fuller website, read the statement of faith and the statement on marriage and divorce, and filled out the application; that was the extent of my discernment process to decide where to attend!  Then I emailed my husband to say:  “I hope it’s okay, but I just applied for seminary.”  We had been married for less than a year, and our future was about to change even more than we expected.

I thought God was telling me to take a couple of classes.  For the first year I took one class each quarter.  But something happened.  I wanted more.  A longing for something new awoke in me.  I realized God was calling me to get an actual degree.  My pastors said, “Yes, do it, and we’ll set up your internship!”  I thought at my age it was going to take me until retirement to finish a degree one class at a time, but my daughter and her husband said, “It’s not the worst thing in the world to live on student loans for awhile.”  And my husband said, “It seems like God is in this; you better do it.”  So I left my career as a teacher to attend seminary full-time and begin my internship.

And some amazing things happened.  I found biblical language for my life, for my experiences with God, for the surprising ways he handled my circumstances, for his faithfulness and sustaining love that in one way or another I had always known. 

I learned that God called the children of Abraham out of Egypt, out of slavery, out of mistreatment and oppression and abuse, and into a new place where they could become his people. 

I learned that when Job cried out in the raw, honest, painful, unfair messiness of his life and demanded that God explain himself, God instead gave Job God’s very self, and that was the answer!  God himself is the answer!

I learned that when the people of Judah stopped living into their calling as God’s chosen people, when they rejected the “becomingness” that God had planned for them, and God sent them into exile, his plan all along was to create a new way for them to be his people.  God retains his freedom to act in new ways and to find new avenues of restoration for us.

I learned that the gospel is more than a get out of jail free card; it is the pronouncement that the kingdom of God is now at hand, that we are not bound by the domain of darkness and sin and death, that God is in the business of setting things right, and that Jesus in his life, death, and resurrection is the down payment on the rightness that is rightfully ours.  It is about finding true shalom in and among our selves, our communities, and creation.

I learned that Paul said, “If possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone,” because sometimes in the brokenness of this world it is NOT possible.

I learned that God’s forgiveness has been built into the fabric of human existence since the dawn of creation and it continues to echo throughout scripture.  I learned that God’s heart can be broken, and he weeps over our brokenness and our stubbornness, and he longs to gather us into his healing arms.  And I learned how to forgive, how to accept that the past cannot be changed no matter how much pain it has caused, how to respond with compassion to the brokenness in the cosmos that sometimes causes us to hurt one another.

I learned that it is all meant to be worked out in community, that iron sharpens iron, that diversity in its various manifestations can make us stronger and wiser and able to see more of God than when we choose to do it on our own.  I learned that I need you, all of you, professors, classmates, church mates, coworkers, friends, family, to see more of God than I can see on my own.

I learned that writing an extra credit paper for Systematic Theology 2 entitled, “Winter Isn’t Over Until Easter: Christological Motifs in the Film Lars and the Real Girl,” could actually have something to do with understanding the church’s role in addressing the deep pain of the world.

I learned that God does not name us by our failures but by himself!  We are not our addictions, our broken relationships, our missed opportunities, our indecisions, our perfectionism, our phobias, our short tempers, our laziness, our spending habits.  We are God’s children, and we are called by his name.  Our claim to fame is not that we love him or serve him, but that God loves us—with an extravagant, lavish, merciful, compassionate, forgiving, restoring, ridiculous love!  And only out of that abundance are we able to offer him ourselves.

I learned that God wants more for us than we dare to hope for ourselves.

I learned that God can use me to love and serve him by loving and serving others. 

I learned that God wants to make a pastor out of me—even though I’m too old, even though I am a woman, even though I’m divorced.

And I am daily learning all these things and more.  God continues to do new things and make a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. 

So where is home? Yes, home is where you can be yourself, but I have a new answer that works for me.  Home is where you can become your best self, where you can move towards becoming all that God has created you to be because of God’s great love.

I came to seminary expecting to learn more about God; I didn’t expect to learn to know God more.

I came to seminary expecting it to be instructive; I didn’t expect it to be transformative.

I came to seminary with a faint call from God to take a couple of classes; I didn’t expect to hear a much louder call from God to vocational ministry.

In Proverbs 24:3-4 we read:  "By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established; through knowledge its rooms are filled 
with rare and beautiful treasures."

So thank you.  Thank you, Faculty and Staff, for building with God’s wisdom the house that is Fuller Seminary Northwest, and for establishing us in understanding, for filling our rooms with rare and beautiful treasures.  Thank you for equipping us to shine a flashlight on the path for others, to give them a few more inches of light for their journeys, as you have shined a light for us.  Thank you, Classmates, for being partners on this journey, for shining your flashlights on my path; when we put all our flashlights together, the light is very bright and the way becomes quite clear.  Thank you, Church, for giving us opportunities to discover and practice our gifts, in spite of our histories, in spite of our flaws.  Thank you, Family and Friends, for walking alongside us and loving us and creating space for us.  Thank you, Jesus, for doing the new thing.  Thank you all for helping us move towards becoming all that God has created us to be. Thank you for being a safe place.  Thank you for helping me to hear God’s voice anew.  Thank you for being my home for a quarter, for a season, for a lifetime, for eternity, but especially for the last four years. 

I no longer have to contort my foot to fit into the glass slipper for the right to be claimed by the prince.  I have been claimed by the King! “He has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of his righteousness,” and he has given me the right to be called his child.

The Happiness Conspiracy: A Memorial Homily in Celebration of the Life of Alena Marie Hibbs Ehrhart

Richard and Sandra invited me here today to participate in this service partly because I am a pastor but also because I am a friend.  So that means I have two things I want to do here today.  I want to share some of my memories of Alena, and I hope to bring you a word of encouragement and hope. 

Alena and I went to high school together in Sierra Vista, Arizona, for one year—our senior year.  I already had a pretty tight knit circle of friends before Alena and her family moved to our town.  We were theatre rats, kids who found our identity in the theatre—in choirs, in drama, in musical theatre, in dance.  We were Glee before there was Glee.  We sang and danced and acted our way through high school. 

We took it as a compliment when someone called us “weird.”  For instance, we developed an annual celebration called the Merry Moose Marking Month Party.  We decided that July was Merry Moose Marking Month, and so we decided to celebrate.  Everyone who was invited to the party was instructed to bring a Moose Marker.  We gave no instructions as to what might constitute a Moose Marker, but everyone had to bring one.

There were prizes.  There were costumes.  There was theme food.  There were homemade virgin cocktails.  There was dancing.  And always there was laughter.  Now if you have raised children, especially teenagers, you probably understand how great it was that we had each other, as crazy as we were.  Kids who are busy planning elaborate theme parties and auditioning for musicals and rehearsing six days a week are too busy to get into others kinds of trouble.  We knew we were different, and we took joy in our differentness. 

And then Alena moved to Sierra Vista.  We met her in the concert choir during our senior year.  And I don’t know how it happened, but it seems to me now in my memory that it took us about five minutes to befriend her.  Or maybe it took her five minutes to befriend us.  But our lives were never going to be the same.  We already had friends, we were already a little crazy, we were already addicted to laughter.  But I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that there has never been a period of my life before or since when I laughed so much.  Alena was the funniest person I had ever met, and I already knew some hilarious people.  She had us laughing so hard we cried.  Let me tell you some stories.

For some reason the school choir director got it into her head that we were all conspiring against her to take over the choir.  I don’t know what it would mean to take over the choir, and I cannot remember the details, but I can tell you that all we wanted to do was sing well and have some fun.  But anyway, we thought, okay, she thinks we have a conspiracy going, we’ll get a conspiracy going.  We had t-shirts made.  We elected officers.  We made our own vocabulary.  We made a constitution.  We were, yes, a little weird.  The thing was, the choir director never made the connection between our t-shirts and the fact that she thought we were conspiring against her.  Let me read you what she wrote in my yearbook:

“Debbie:  It seems like we only met yesterday and that’s probably because we did.  We’ve come a long way even since February and I wish we were going to be together even longer to see what’s going to happen next.  These last few months have been the happiest ones in my whole life [Sorry, Richard, I know you thought her happiest months were with you, but apparently they were with me!] and I’m never going to forget that you were a part of it.  I want to keep in touch with you so you better help me do that.  Thanks for everything, and long live the Happiness Conspiracy!  Love always, Alena Hibbs.”  I like her version of it:  The Happiness Conspiracy.

One day towards the end of the year I had my yearbook confiscated by our government teacher because I had let someone sign it during class.  So Alena and I and the rest of our gang sat down together and made an elaborate plan for “liberating” my yearbook.  We had a list of needed supplies, such as gloves, rope, flashlights, night goggles, and a crowbar.  We spent hours on the details of this plan, and some little part of us hoped we might actually have the chance to implement it.  But of course all we really had to do was ask the teacher for it the next day.

Then graduation time came around, and we wanted to think of a really great senior prank.  Most classes did something stupid, like putting all the school picnic tables on the roof, or painting some piglets the school colors, blue and white, and letting them free in the courtyard.  We decided instead that we wanted to do something more creative and less destructive, something that would leave our mark on the school forever, but in a positive way.  We decided to sell the school. 

We wrote up a detailed classified advertisement, which mentioned the fully equipped gym, the spacious dining facilities, the ample parking, the newly installed computer room, the multiple rooms, the large private theatre.  For more information, interested parties could call Vince, who just happened to be our school principal.  It just so happened that Sue Ann, who was also part of our little gang, had a mother who was a city council member.  We figured that if she took the advertisement to the local newspaper, no one would question her.  They would accept the ad and put it in the paper.  And to our surprise, she agreed to help us with our little scheme!

She took the ad to the local newspaper office, and they accepted it and the payment, and we waited to see what would happen.  But someone got suspicious and did a little checking.  And when they discovered what was behind the ad, they refused to publish it.  But instead, they wrote a feature story about us and put it on the front page of the newspaper!  We had our moment of glory, even though the ad never got published.  Everyone knew that the Conspiracy had struck again!

Before Alena moved away, we had one more thing we had to do.  We had to do graduation in a big way. We decided that each of us, as our names were called and we shook the principal’s hand—the very same principal whose name we had put in the ad to sell the school a couple of weeks earlier—when we shook his hand we would place into it a ping pong ball.  And we were so excited about this idea that it spread, and we got every single one of the 400 hundred graduating seniors of the Buena High School class of 1977 to come to graduation prepared with a ping pong ball.  Old Vince must have gotten wind of it somehow because he had a cardboard box on the platform.  When it was my turn to receive my diploma, he looked me in the eye, said “Congratulations,” shook my hand, and with the ping pong ball I had oh-so-slyly deposited in his hand, he turned without a trace of rancor and tossed it into the box.  Our principal received 400 ping pong balls that night. 

There are many more stories I could tell—like the time Alena’s sister Sandra plucked Alena’s eyebrows so thoroughly that they practically disappeared—but I think you get the idea.  Two days after graduation a few of us met Alena for breakfast and said goodbye.  Then she and her family drove away, moving back to Portland, and most of us never saw her again.  I was lucky.  I moved to Seattle a while back, and about three years ago Darrel and I met Rich and Alena at the Rose Gardens in Portland to wander among the flowers together and relive old times a bit.  Facebook has made it possible for us and many of our other friends from the good old days to stay in touch.  Alena made us laugh, and she kept our memories of those days alive in our hearts.  She was one of us, and we missed her when she left.

I know many of you have stories and memories of the joy and laughter that Alena brought into your life.  Even though Alena suffered with many physical ailments and has been mostly homebound in recent years, she still found ways to be an encouragement to us.  Many people knew her only on Facebook, and she ministered to them even though she had never met them.  I was looking over her Facebook wall this week, and I see how often she posted things about strength, the need to be strong, the way we discover strength in ourselves when we think we have none, our need to depend on God for new strength.  Maybe that’s why she loved these Wonder Woman shoes so much.

 

Rich told me that he was lucky because Alena wasn’t a person who cared much about clothes or makeup or expensive gifts.  She was easy to please.  But when she saw those shoes, they spoke to her in a way that very few material things have spoken to Alena.  I think perhaps she saw in them the power to live that she had discovered already in herself, the power to rise above her circumstances, and to live a life of love, meaning, community, family, encouragement, and strength in the face of some difficult limitations.  And Richard made sure she got those shoes.  Yes, she was limited in some ways, but she refused to be limited in all ways.  And in the ways she wasn’t limited, she was strong.  Mighty strong.  An example to us all strong.  Wonder Woman strong!  Yea, though I walk through the valley of death strong!

And that leads me to our passage today, a passage that I’m sure almost all of you would recognize, the 23^rd Psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.


He makes me lie down in green pastures,


he leads me beside quiet waters,


he refreshes my soul.


He guides me along the right paths


for his name’s sake.


Even though I walk


through the darkest valley,


I will fear no evil,


for you are with me;


your rod and your staff,


they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me


in the presence of my enemies.


You anoint my head with oil;


my cup overflows.


Surely your goodness and love will follow me


all the days of my life,


and I will dwell in the house of the Lord


forever.

I want to share a few things I discovered about this very familiar psalm.

The Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing. 

First of all, the name of the Lord in the first line is the personal name for God, Yahweh, the one given to God’s chosen people Israel.  It means, “I am.”  The God who was, who is, and who is to come, is the very same God who is our shepherd.  We are allowed to call that God by name!  And because Yahweh is our shepherd, we lack nothing.  God gives us what we need for each day and for each season.  That doesn’t mean we will never experience hurt or pain, but somehow in the midst of it, God gives us what we need.  And we are hurting today.  We need something from God.  What is it that a shepherd gives that might make sense to us?  Think about what a shepherd does.  A shepherd spends all of his time with the sheep, 24/7.  He spends the day with the sheep, he eats with the sheep, he travels with the sheep, and he spends the night with the sheep.  We lack nothing because we have the shepherd with us, day and night!  The gift of God is his very presence with us.  And he is here with us now, sharing in our grief.  None of this escapes his notice.  And just as God was, is, and will be with us, he was with Alena, he is with Alena, and he will continue to be with Alena.

The Lord is my shepherd; I lack nothing.  He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside quiet waters; he refreshes my soul. 

The Hebrew words that are translated “quiet waters” literally mean “waters of rest.”  Oh, how our souls crave rest when we are grieving.  Sleep can be hard to come by, and even when we find sleep, we don’t always find rest.  But God promises us a comfortable and beautiful place to find rest, a grassy spot in front of still waters.  And when we arrive there, our souls will be restored. Although our memories will last, our grief will not last forever.  We will be brought back to liveliness and vitality. 

When I think about Alena, about the physical struggles she had in the last years of her life, about how hard it must have been for her to find real rest, real comfort, I rejoice that at last she has been returned to the health and vitality that God always intended for her.  We already knew the vitality of her spirit; and now she has a new, healthy, lively body for all that vitality to live in!  I imagine her telling stories with Jesus and making him laugh, the way she used to make us laugh.  We, too, will experience that renewed vitality when we put our trust in God, our shepherd.  We will experience it a little here on earth, as we learn to trust God more, and we will experience it fully in the day when we stand beside Alena, in the presence of our Shepherd.  We will laugh again!

He guides me along the right paths
for his name’s sake.
 Even though I walk
through the darkest valley,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me.

The phrase darkest valley used to be translated “the valley of death.”  It means a place of deep darkness or impenetrable gloom.  Alena has walked through some pretty dark valleys in her lifetime.  In recent years, her struggles with health were downright frightening.  There were days of impenetrable gloom.  But she knew who her Shepherd is, and so she looked beyond the gloom to the light.  I think of how her doctors told her she would probably spend the rest of her life in assisted living.  And she said, No way.  [Richard interjects:  I think she used a little stronger language than that!]  I will find a way to go back to my home.  And she did!  And I think of how they told her she’d have a trach for the rest of her life.  And she said, No way.  I will find a way to get rid of it.  And she did!  Just a couple of months ago, they were finally able to remove it.  She worked hard to get well enough to make that a reality, because she did not fear the evil that wanted to keep her down!  God was with her, and her family was with her, and her friends were praying for her, and Alena saw beyond the gloom of the valley and came out the other side. 

Do you feel like you are walking through the valley of death?  Either because of your grief over Alena or because of other circumstances in your life?  God is with you in this darkness.  Reach out and take hold of his hand, and he will lead you through the darkness into the light.  I Peter 2:9 says that God has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Will you answer the call of the shepherd?

The Psalm goes on to say:  your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.

A shepherd’s rod is just like you might expect, a stick used to guide and tend the sheep.  But it can also mean scepter, like a king uses. And the word staff in the Hebrew is a word that is used in reference to the aged and the sick.  Alena was the same age as I am, so I don’t like to think of her as aged!  But God was certainly caring for her in her illness.  We are comforted in our illnesses as Alena was, by the shepherd’s staff.  But the scepter also promises us that God reigns as king, and one day that reign is going to be perfected, and then every illness will be healed and every tear will be dried.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.


The word translated my enemies means literally the ones who are being hostile to me.  Now hardly anyone who knew Alena really well could be hostile to her; she just brought us too much joy. But she definitely had experienced hostility.  Sometimes people who didn’t know anything about her judged her, and at those times I would see something in Alena that made me really proud to be her friend.   She would seek justice not just for herself, but for everyone who had ever been a victim of someone else’s malicious gossip or taunts or judgments.  She wrote some beautiful essays, which I read on Facebook, talking about the need for us to give one another the benefit of the doubt, to avoid judging one another, especially before we even knew one another, and to accept one another in all our glorious personalities and bodies and strengths and weaknesses.  And now Alena is feasting at the banqueting table of her shepherd, and some of her enemies are going to be left scratching their heads.

You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.


The word anoint here means refresh.  God refreshes our heads, like putting on expensive lotion that smells good and feels good.  Yes, God is concerned with bringing us delight, so much so that our cup overflows, literally, my cup is abundance.  I have more than enough to drink.  When we’re walking through the valley of death, it’s hard to remember that God wants to bring us delight, but someday, beloved, someday soon, in a limited way here and now, and in a fuller way when we stand with the shepherd, our cup will be abundance.  Abundance of laughter as we remember Alena’s life, abundance of health when we aren’t disabled and in pain, abundance of love in our families, abundance of things that smell good and taste good and finally and perfectly quench our hunger and thirst.  God is about abundance, and Alena is living in the fullness of it now, and someday we can join her.

And then my favorite part of the psalm, which extends this idea of abundance.  Surely your goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.  God’s love—that’s a word in the Hebrew that is very difficult to translate into English, because its meaning is so much larger than what we mean when we say “love.”  It means lovingkindness, mercy, faithfulness, righteousness.  It means, as one scholar put it, “activity beneficial to the recipient in the context of a deep and enduring commitment between two persons, by one who is able to render assistance to the needy party who in the circumstances is unable to help himself or herself.”  That kind of goodness and love, that’s what followed Alena from this life into the next one. 

And the word follow means pursue or chase.  Imagine this.  We are walking through the deep darkness, and we’re looking forward so hard, looking for a glimpse of light, and the whole time, God’s goodness and lovingkindness are behind us, pursuing us, chasing us.  We’re so focused on trying to see into the future, that we don’t even see that God’s goodness is right around us!  God wants to pour his mercy and love into our lives, but sometimes we are running too fast to receive it.  My hope for you, for all of us, is that we will slow down and look around and see where God is trying to show us his love and mercy and goodness.  Who has expressed kindness to you?  Who has done the right thing when it would be easy to do the wrong thing?  Who has offered you sympathy or food or a handkerchief?  God’s mercy is pursuing us, if we will only notice!

The world is not a perfect place.  Things happen that we don’t like, that hurt us, that disappoint us, that make us uncomfortable.  But God is not absent. Like a shepherd, God walks us through the deep darkness.  There is still deep darkness that we must walk, but we are not alone.  We are not alone!  Let that be our hope as we celebrate everything that Alena was and is and will be to us, and we shed our tears of grief and joy.

Alena wrote a poem once that was published.  I’d like to share it with you now.

Daily Renewal

morning sunshine blooms

blossoms open to the sky

heaven's gift renewed

evening descends

all life enfolds 'til morrow

daily renewal

God's greatest gift

a daily miracle, yes

dance! sing! no sorrow

Alena’s words to us are:  dance! sing! no sorrow.  I have a little sorrow.  I love Alena and I already miss her, and I know that you do too.  But someday we will dance and we will sing and there will be no more sorrow. 

Richard has asked us to share this song with you, by Queen, called “Dear Friends.”  I think we can imagine that Alena would share this with us herself if she were here in body today.

"Dear Friends"

So dear friends your love has gone

Only tears to dwell upon

I dare not say as the wind must blow

So a love is lost, a love is won

Go to sleep and dream again

Soon your hopes will rise and then

From all this gloom life can start anew

And there'll be no crying soon

Let’s pray.

Loving God, your eyes are always upon us, nurturing us through all the days of our lives, sheltering us by your grace and preparing a special place for each of us in eternity. We give you thanks and praise this day, O God, for the life of Alena.  She brought laughter to a world that knows too many tears, kindness to places filled with hate, friendship to people who needed a shoulder to lean on and the support of an embracing arm. Welcome her, merciful God, into your joyous, eternal home.

                                   

We ask you, O God, to be with Alena’s family and friends as they walk through a valley of deep shadows where it feels as if the sun will never shine. Let the bright light of your love and compassion reflect into all the dark crevices of their continuing journey. Lift them from the depths of sorrow and pain. Allow their feelings of loss to be surmounted by comforting memories of good times spent with the one they love. Lead them by the still waters of peace, and anoint them with the oil of faith. We ask these things in the name of your Son, Jesus, who came into the world that we might have unending joy and eternal life. Amen.