My cousin, my mom’s ‘baby’ sister (she is 89), my mom and me, with my uncle’s two daughters reflected in the window behind us. We gathered for lunch last week to celebrate my uncle’s life. He died last month. He was in the middle of these two lovely ladies, and was 90 years old when he died. My mom is 91.

* * *

I am privileged to be writing at A Deeper Family today, my monthly, first-Thursday post. I’m writing about my mom’s journey through dementia and about how I’m discovering some pretty unattractive things about myself as we walk through it together. Please join me there today and share your own stories of difficult journeys:

She cannot hold it. It floats by, tantalizing, intriguing, possible. But she cannot hold it.

I watch her try to think and the picture that comes is this: the rotating rack in a dry cleaning establishment. You know the one. The attendant looks up your order, punches in the number and the clothes start moving, almost by magic, until they stop. The correctly numbered slot is right there in front, and the cashier picks up the hanger, hands it to you and says, “That will be $10.00, please.”

But for my mother, the right number hardly ever comes up. She punches those numbers for all she’s worth, but someone else’s clothes land in her lap. And she truly doesn’t know what to do with them.

Watching a person’s mind unravel is a sad and terrifying thing. She is so old now, so frail, and yet, there is evidence that somewhere in there, my mom still lives and breathes. Sadly, that evidence is sliding away on a daily basis and I often find myself unraveling right along with her. . .

You can read the rest by clicking on this sentence.

I do believe my entire life could
be told in this phrase.

Maybe yours, too?

April greetings of love and laughter to you and yours —
and that’s not a note for fools at all.

I encourage you to check out this fun site, where poetic phrases and beautiful photographs can be endlessly combined to send small messages of love and courage to friends anywhere. It’s fun, it’s easy and it’s beautiful. A truly winning combo!

Cloudy, with intermittent sunshine on Friday.
Fog wisping its way into crevices and canyons,
then wending its way back to sea.
Ideal weather for such a portentous day,
this day of subtexts, sadness and sober reflection.

We must, as the truism goes, walk through Friday,
before we can get to Sunday.
I know this, I believe this, I choose to live this.
But it is always difficult.
I am tired by the time we get to this day.
Every member of a church staff is tired at this end of this week.
and yet . . .

. . . there is a weightiness that cannot be denied,
that won’t be ignored or trivialized.
Though many around us are oblivious,
those who cling to the Jesus story,
on this day will find some way to acknowledge
the cross,
the terrible, wonderful cross.

This week marks the endpoint of six weeks of Lenten journeying;
the culmination of all the readings and the wanderings,
the fasting and the praying and the giving of alms.

Friday, Good Friday, commemorates the descent of darkness,
true darkness,
as it spread its paralyzing tentacles over the earth,
oozing outward from the center,
that stillpoint on  a lonely hilltop,
outside the city gates of Jerusalem.

Our Service of Darkness provided opportunity
for remembering,
reflecting,
for being quietly grateful
and intentionally aware of the extent of God’s great love.

 Seven words.
Seven layers.
Seven levels of increasing darkness,
seven scripture texts, seven written reflections, seven songs.
And a repeated response:
Leader: Lord Jesus, you gave your life for us.
People: You suffered and died that we might be made whole. 

 Musicians and readers sat in the balcony this night,
hidden behind a black drape.
There was nothing to distract from the cross,
or the candles,
each of which was extinguished at the close of a ‘word,’
until there was only one light left,
our Christ candle,
tall, central, sputtering.

And then, it, too, was blown out,
and darkness enveloped the room and our hearts.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there?

Oh, yes. I was there.
I am there, every single year,
and I remember that body,
that blessed body,
where all the brokenness, the wrongheadedness,
the outright evil I have embraced in this long life —
all of it is absorbed.

I don’t pretend to understand this.
The writers of scripture struggled with it, too,
giving us multiple word pictures of
what Jesus accomplished on the cross:
ransom, substitution, example, exchange, offering, sacrifice —
each and all of these providing one facet of the jewel,
one small slice of the gift.
This gift, too wondrous for the confines of human language,
too beautiful for words.

And today, Holy Saturday, it is quiet.
The fog has settled in, cushioning the sounds of traffic,
of birdsong, of daily life.
It is as if a silent shroud has settled on our landscape.

I welcome this space,
this silence,
because this is the day that death dies.
Really, and truly dead —
that’s what Jesus was.
That’s what we were.

But tomorrow?
Tomorrow, we rise with him.
One.More.Time.

And because of tomorrow,
we rise with him every day,
every moment of every day
right into every moment of tomorrow.
Because this week . . .
this Maundy Thursday,
this Good Friday,
this Holy Saturday,
this Easter Sunday . . .
this week makes all of life blessed,
even the broken, beat-up pieces of it.

This week marks the dawn of a new age,
a new creation, a new way of living life.
Because of God-become-man,
God choosing to fully embrace the fragility and beauty,
the brokenness and sadness,
the miracle and wonder of being human —
we, too, are invited into a fully-lived humanness.

We, too, are Easter people.

This is Kingdom come,
right here, right now, in the middle of the mess.
Today, the Son shines,
redeeming and transforming our dust,
our star-dust selves,
making of us what we could not fully become
by ourselves:
human persons, formed in the image of God.

Oh, yeah — Sunday’s comin’
and we’re going to shout and sing and everything!

My thanks to Jeanne Heckman for creating a starkly beautiful space for this service; to Pastor/Dr. Jon Lemmond and Student Ministries Intern Anna Cornell for leading us in worship; to Dr. Marianne Robins, Dr. Greg Spencer, Dr. John Sider and Dr. Paul Willis for joining me as readers, and to Bob Gross, Jon Martin, Janet Spencer and John Sider for adding so much musical depth to the evening.
We are truly a blessed community.

Meditation for Maundy Thursday
Diana R.G. Trautwein
March 28, 2013
Exodus 12:1-4, 11-14; Psalm 116:1-4, 12-17; I Corinthians 11:23-26; John 13:1-17, 31b-35 

This is a strange day, in the midst of a strange week, in the midst of a very strange story. This story of ours, the one we know so well, and yet not at all; this story, which if I let it do its work, well. . . it just knocks the breath right out of me.

It’s a hard story and a beautiful one, a story that demands response, that can’t be entered into partially, that carries import we cannot always see. It’s a story told over time, lots and lots of time, and it’s a story that is never really over, at least as long as this old globe keeps spinning around the sun. Because we can choose to believe it every day — to tell it every day, to live it every day, to let it live us, live in us. We, such ordinary, falling-down, messing-it-up disciples — yes, we can choose to let this story be told through our everyday lives.

And tonight’s gospel message, piled on top of that Exodus reminder about a long-ago foundational event in the plot; embellished by the lyrical words of the psalmist-poet; set right up against Paul’s indelible record about the beginnings of our sacramental table — this story from John about finishes me. Because it is John’s vignette, his telling about Jesus loving his friends ‘to the end’ — a line which I love and why I changed the translation for tonight’s reading — it is this story that makes Holy Thursday holy; it is John’s story that makes this day Maundy Thursday.

Such a strange word to our ears, Maundy, and no etymologist has completely nailed down its origin. The likeliest way we got this adjective is this: the Latin word for ‘commandment’ is  mandatum which by some process of evolution became Maundy in English.

This is the day in which Jesus gives his disciples a ‘new commandment.’
This is the day in which Jesus models that commandment to the ragged band of followers gathered round the dinner table with him.
This is the day when Judas sneaks off into the night to begin the undoing process.
This is the day and the night when Jesus eats and drinks and touches and loves and prays.

This is the last time that Jesus is a free man.

John’s gospel never speaks of a ‘last supper’ like the other gospel writers do, so chapter 13 is the closest thing we’ve got. There is no mention of bread and cup in this passage. There is no admonition to ‘remember.’ Instead, there is a strong visual aid and there are these words:

“For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you. Very truly, I tell you, servants are not greater than their master, nor are messengers greater than the one who sent them. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.”

Even on the last night of his life, Jesus is beating the same drum: hearing is good, doing is better; knowledge is good, doing is better. If the story is to be told, it has to be lived.

This is the piece that we need to grapple with every.single.day, isn’t it? And, I am so sorry to say, this is the part that just stymies me all the dang time. Because there is a big, big difference between knowing and doing. There is a big, big difference between knowing about love and loving.

And most of us, if we’re truly honest, most of us cringe at the picture of love which is drawn for us around this dinner table in chapter 13. What Jesus does here is shocking, startling, unexpected, even unwelcome. What? An act of love, unwelcome? Yes, most definitely. Jesus strips down, grabs a towel, then bends over and begins, gently but insistently, to wash the dusty feet of his friends.

Now washing feet was an everyday occurrence in 1^st century Palestine. People walked everywhere. Dinner gatherings were enjoyed in a reclining position, and sleeping couches were often moved into a circle around the table full of food. Putting your dirty feet up on someone’s bed simply was not done, it was impolite in the extreme. Water, towel and basin would be provided to all, as an act of welcome, of hospitality.

For just an ordinary dinner gathering, guests would wash their own feet before climbing up onto the couch, and that is most likely what would have happened if Jesus had not grabbed that basin. If the homeowner was financially successful OR if the gathering was a truly special event, then a servant would be given this task. The host did not wash his guests’ feet. It’s a grungy, and somehow deeply personal, task, so it was given to the least personal member of the household: the servant.

For the Teacher, the Rabbi, the leader of the band, to ‘assume the position,’ to bend down and do the dirty work — well, it just was not done. It was an extremely humble — to the point of humiliating — act. And I imagine it was a humbling thing to receive as well. But here’s something you may have noticed about Jesus: he was pretty much all about doing those things that were not done.

And almost every time, he managed to re-define the socially unacceptable thing — from touching a leper to eating with a tax collector to re-interpreting the Sabbath command to honoring women and children —

Jesus was able to change the meaning, to tweak it in such a way that it could never be looked at the same way again. “Watch and learn,” seem to be his bywords. “Let me tell you the story in a new way.” And in this particular piece of the story, the action precedes the commandment. “Let me show you,” he says,” let me show you how to love one another. Then go, and do likewise.”

You know, life would be so much simpler if he had said something like, “Go and think likewise.” Or, “Go, and believe likewise.” But he did not. No, he did not. He said, “Go, and DO likewise.” And that is where the rubber meets the oh-so-resistant road in me.

Maybe in you, too?

I’ve thought about this faith stuff a lot. I’ve chosen to believe it, too. I’m constantly working on refining what I think and what I believe. But the actual doing part? Ummm. . . .not so much. That part is much tougher for me. I am impatient, I am cranky, I am judgmental, I am intolerant — with myself and with others. I do not always look for ways to ‘be the servant’ in a given situation (although I will add here that not every situation asks that of us nor is it always the best option). But. . . most of the time, in most situations, it is, and always will be, the best, the truest, the most-likely-to-line-up-with-the-story thing to do. BE THE SERVANT.

Not the doormat — Jesus initiates this action, it is not forced upon him, expected of him, or imposed in any way.

And not the disappearing act, the self-immolation thing, either — Jesus is still very clearly himself in this scene; he has strong words for Peter; he uses the moment as a teaching point; he never denies who he is.

Rather, he re-defines who he is:

I am the teacher who is also a servant.
I am the Lord who is also your slave.

These are not mutually exclusive categories;they are beautifully complementary — indeed, they are two sides of the same shining coin. It seems that LOVE is often best seen in humility and TRUTH can be better understood in the context of compassion. The story is told, the story is lived when we learn about and live into loving one another.

THIS, Jesus says, is how people will recognize you. This is your calling card in the world.This is how the gospel will be most effectively spread — when you love one another. Not when you ignore one another; not when you ask and answer the perfunctory, “Hi, how are you?” “Oh, I’m fine, just fine;” not when you browbeat one another; not when you pick and choose doctrines to use as weapons; not when you make it about outsiders and insiders; not when you demand a detailed statement of faith, with all the i’s dotted and the t’s crossed; not when you spout any kind of party line about anything. NO. The world will know you are mine if you love one another as I have loved you.

Pope Francis had this to say in his Maundy Thursday homily earlier today:

“Help one another. This is what Jesus teaches us. This is what I do. And I do it with my heart. I do this with my heart because it is my duty, as a priest and bishop I must be at your service. But it is a duty that comes from my heart and a duty I love. I love doing it because this is what the Lord has taught me. But you too must help us and help each other, always. And thus in helping each other we will do good for each other.” — Pope Francis, Holy Thursday homily

Now, that, my friends — THAT is a story. Amen.

Tonight we are going to invite you to do a couple of new things, things that we believe will help us to put flesh on this story from John’s gospel. You can see this magnificent table configuration that Jeanne Heckman has put together for us. On either side of the large table, are two smaller ones, with large basins on board. And here are some beautiful bottles, filled with water.

It seemed to us that people in California in the year of our Lord, 2013, don’t walk a lot of places. Oh, we take walks, with special shoes and clothes, but we don’t generally walk in open sandals from Goleta to Montecito. We do, however, use our hands for a lot of different tasks, some of them quite grungy in nature. And we tend to wash these hands of ours a lot. And, unless we are quite small or quite infirm, we always do it for ourselves. So, following the example of Jesus, we want to invite you, on this special night, to come to the Table of the Lord with clean hands, and to let someone else do the washing.

There will be friends here, your servants for this evening, three on each side. One will pour the water over your extended hands, the other will dry them before you come to take the bread and dip it into the cup offered to you by servant number three. You are invited to come down the center aisle, then peel off to the left or the right, extend your hands, and accept this ministry of water and reconciliation and love. Then you are invited to partake of the Lord’s Supper by tearing the bread and dipping it into the cup. You may return to your seats by going up the side aisles.

Joining with Jennifer and Emily this Thursday night.

It’s time for my story-sharing at Prodigal Magazine. I’d love it if you’d join me over there today for a reflection on threading love through the generations of a family. . .

She is not quite three years old on this day, looking around the circled family at this strange, new table, trying to find the thread that connects us all to one another. It’s a very long thread, actually, starting with the old woman on her right and weaving its way through the assembled group and beyond.

It’s a thread that shimmers with light and grace and shared history. But most of all, it’s a thread that sings when you pluck it — a thread that sings of love over time.

My mother married my father when they were young and wildly in love.

Both came from differently dysfunctional families, both wanted to create something brand new in their coming together, and they did it. Two children, two years apart, a girl (me) and a boy, and then another boy, almost 11 years later. They built a home that was far from perfect but was wonderful, warm and winsome nonetheless.

Faith was central, education was highly valued, music was ever-present, and laughter was required.

There were parties and camping trips, and Friday night movies with popcorn and Bubble-Up and Hershey’s giant chocolate almond bar. There were honest discussions, sometimes angry words, and more than a few tears. But under and around and through everything, there was love.

Lots and lots of love.

Then my husband and I got married when we were young and wildly in love.

We both came from far more functional homes than any of our parents and we, too, wanted to create something different, something unique, as we built our own home. And together, we decided that keeping what was good from our original family circles would be a high priority. So grandparents were a big part of our family story.

Our three children had all four of their grandparents actively involved in their lives until they themselves were married and had kids of their own.

And that, we discovered, is a very rare gift. . .

Hop on over to Prodigal Magazine to read the rest, won’t you? And leave me a note that says you did! Thank you.

 The shouts echoed off the city gate, ricocheting round the corners,
filling the space between the Mount of Olives and the city center.
The palms were waving, the clothes were thrown down across the road,
the people were in a party mood!
And they shouted out their joy,
their conviction that God had come to rescue them from the Romans
in the form of this interesting rabbi from Nazareth.

Each year, their cries echo inside my spirit,
reminding me of my own frailty,
and the mercurial emotions that can whipsaw through
an individual or a group of people.
Because those joyful shouts sound different when heard
through the hateful ones that were uttered just five days later.

Those folks in 1st century Jerusalem were not all that different
from people I know today.

Most especially, they are not so different from me.

Whether I’m engulfed in the busy-ness of life
or the monotony of it,
I, too, can shift from praise to fear to anger
with a rapidity that sometimes frightens me.

They did not ‘get’ Jesus, our pastor told us on Sunday.
And I do not ‘get’ him, either.
This odd celebration in the middle of building political tension,
strange miracles, super-sensitive women,
and behind-the-scenes machinations —
it never feels like it fits with the rest of the events of the week.
It’s a stand-alone, an odd duck, an almost unholy blend of
highs and lows.
Maybe that’s why it truly has two names — Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday.
And two long gospel texts to choose from — one for each name.

Personally, I think we need to hang onto a bit of both.

I need to remember that even when I’m ‘high’ on Jesus, and happy to praise him,
grateful for a long list of good gifts,
convinced that I’ve seen the hand of God at work in the world around me —
even then (maybe especially then?),
I must also remember the hateful, frightened cries of that Good Friday mob.
I must remember the garden.
And the trial.
And the long, torturous walk to the cross.
The earth shaking, the curtain tearing, the darkness encroaching.

Yes, I need to hold the two stories in tension,
making space for all of it, telling the whole truth.

I think if I had been there, I would have been so happy
to lay my cloak down on the road.
I would have cried out the Old Testament texts I had built my hope upon.
I would have waved those branches and maybe even danced a little.
Because I, too, celebrate that idea of a hero with clout,
a military junta expert,
a person of power in the way the world teaches about power,
willing and eager to overthrow evil rulers, establish a government
that lives up to my personal expectations and understandings about
justice and righteousness and freedom.
I think we all secretly dream of a Superhero God.

But the God we’ve got is not that, not at all.

Thank God.
Thank God, thank God, thank God.

The God we’ve got is contrary to every expectation,
sometimes mysterious in the extreme,
prone to doing the exact opposite of what the systems
of this world tell us about power, position, status, reputation, prestige.
The God we’ve got is
always, ALWAYS surprising us with  humility, graciousness,
acceptance and grace.

The God we’ve got chooses to climb down into the dust with the likes of us,
to walk the roads and tell the stories,
to listen to his mama – or not! – and to spend time with friends.
The God we’ve got says a clear ‘no’ to the systems of intimidation,
injustice, oppression and favoritism.
The God we’ve got jumps into the midst of
humanity, lives an ordinary-extraordinary life,
and then faces squarely into the sentence given to him
by the very people he came to love and to save.
It’s a mystery.
And a wonder.
And something about Palm/Passion Sunday captures all of that.

Because, as Pastor Jon noted on Sunday, Jesus did nothing
to stop the shouting.
Indeed, he refused to do so when asked.
He accepted their acclamations, their heart-cries of hope,
he did not contradict them, correct them, or explain things to them.
He simply rode that donkey and claimed that if
these people didn’t praise him,
the very rocks in the road would
cry out in joy.

And then he kept facing into Jerusalem.

 IF DEATH WAS TO be truly defeated, it was only by dying himself that Jesus believed he could defeat it. If he was to reach the hearts of men, it was only by suffering his own heart to be broken on their behalf that he believed he could reach them. To heal the sick and restore sight to the blind; to preach good news to the poor and liberty to the captives; to wear himself out with his endless teaching and traveling the whole length and breadth of the land—it had not worked because it was not enough. There had to be more. “He set his face to go to Jerusalem,” the Gospel says, and it was a journey from which he seems to have known that he would both never return and return always even unto the end of time and beyond.
– Frederick Buechner, The Faces of Jesus

Joining this with Michelle, Laura, Jen and Jenn tonight:

Lenten Meditation, Week Five
offered at Montecito Covenant Church
Wednesday, March 20, 2013
by Diana R.G. Trautwein

Isaiah 43:16-21, Psalm 126, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8

This is the last of our Wednesday night gatherings for this year, and, to tell you the truth, I have rather mixed feelings about that. I’m relieved not to be going out at night any more (except, of course, for next Thursday and Friday!), I’m glad to not have the weekly deadline, I’m glad that Easter is within view.

But I will miss these small spaces of quiet, of soft music, of scripture read aloud, and communion shared. The older I get, the more liturgical I feel and Lent just slides right into that whole aging process!

As we move through week five, readying ourselves for the events of Holy Week, the scriptures themselves give hints of both the darkness and the light to come. Isaiah speaks of a ‘new thing,’ a ‘way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.’ The psalmist sings about, ‘mouths filled with laughter’ and ‘tongues singing songs of joy.’ Paul writes such beautiful, earnest words to his friends at Philippi. He writes of wanting to gain Christ above all things, about knowing Christ — both Christ’s sufferings and Christ’s resurrection, about becoming like Christ and taking hold, and forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what is ahead. Paul writes about pressing on.

And that’s just about the perfect verb for tonight, it seems to me: We press on toward the hope of the resurrection, that’s what we do. We put one foot in front of the other, and we press on. But the small gospel story reminds us that we don’t do that alone, do we? We do it with Jesus — and we do it with one another, too. Mary’s gift, her loving, scandalous gift, united her to the heart of Jesus in a way that little else could. As we reflected together on Sunday, Mary was a true friend, an honest disciple, a woman who paid attention and who then reached out toward the Lord. The Lord, who was about to enter into those last, hard days.

We’ll look at the palms parade on Sunday, and Pastor Jon is asking some excellent, tough questions about that event and our response to it. And we’ll share a meal together in our Family Life Center on Thursday night, like the early disciples did on that long-ago Thursday. Then we’ll ‘sing a hymn’ and wander over here to the sanctuary afterwards, to finish the evening with water, with bread and cup. On Friday, we’ll walk through that last, long day with a service of increasing darkness, of special music, and reflection on the last words Jesus spoke as he was dying on that stick on the hill outside the city gates.

We’ll take this journey, like we do every year, and we will remember. We’ll be reflective and we’ll be confessional and we’ll be somber. And properly so, too. It’s a serious season, this Lent, this Holy Week.

But just like the changing seasons within which Lent falls — the movement from winter to spring — there are signs of life all along the darkening way. There are sprigs of hope, there are words of promise, there are pinpoints of light. And tonight, we are looking for that light.

It’s been a bit of a tough week for me. How about for you? Backed my car into a visitor’s truck — in my own driveway yesterday. Sigh. My mom is experiencing ever-worsening confusion and forgetfulness. My uncle, her younger brother, died this morning, bringing deep sadness, not just to my mom and her sister, but to me and my brother and our cousins. It’s not that we don’t expect a 90-year-old with cancer to die. It’s not even that we aren’t relieved and grateful that he is now free of pain and in a better place. It’s that we see the end of an era roaring at us. And we see our own end in theirs.

My mother has one remaining sibling out of three. And when they’re all gone, there will be no more ‘older generation’ in my family. When Dick’s mom dies, that will be the end in his family.

It will just be us. WE are the elders now.

And I surely don’t feel terribly wise, or even all that old, to tell you the truth. The clock on the wall and the calendar in my purse tell me otherwise, as do my joints and the color of my hair. But somehow, I don’t believe it.

I keep looking for God to do a new thing, I guess. And that’s not all bad, either. Because it takes looking sometimes to see it, don’t you think?

It takes a prophetic imagination, it takes a psalmist’s musical meanderings, it takes a traveling evangelist’s insights, it takes the bold and generous giving of a woman willing to take a risk to remind us that even in the midst of suffering, aging and death, God is doing a new thing.

“Now it springs up. Do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.”

Even so, come Lord Jesus!

Come.

Joining this small piece with Emily and Bonnie and Jennifer, too: