When it’s in process of being made a different house, that’s when.

We’ve been in the throes of preparing to re-model for almost a year now. Making plans with our architect has been slower and more meandering than the last time we did a major house project. Don comes up with a new idea – or we do – or our contractor does – and things begin to morph.

It started with peeling paint on a cabinet. “Sure should do something about that nasty looking door, shouldn’t we?” Well, yes. But that was about . . . 5 years ago! Then the microwave oven and the fan/vent over the cooktop died. “Well, just get a cheap countertop model – you know we’re going to remodel this space someday anyhow.” That was about 3 years ago. Finally, about 15 months ago, we asked our architect to step into the process and help us think about how we could redo our kitchen space to make it work better and look better.

“Hmmm…I think raising the ceiling to match the one in the living room would be great. Then let’s open up that wall between the two rooms and hang some beams. And you know, while we’re at it, let’s open up the doorway to the family room. That narrow door is a dead giveaway that this is a garage conversion.” That was round one.

Then we decided it would be really great if we transformed our small laundry area into a walk-in pantry. Well, then, where shall we wash the clothes? Hmmm… that family room is way too big and there’s all that wasted space behind the sectional. Let’s build a laundry room in there! Great idea – but that meant ripping out all the built-in storage in that room, which we have used completely for the last 10 years of residence in Santa Barbara.

Then one afternoon, while standing in the yard, looking at the house with both the architect and the contractor present, one of them said – “You know what would really be a great idea? Let’s make this carport into a garage while we’re doing all this other work!” Well, my husband LOVED that idea – cover the cars on all sides? And gain back some of the storage space we’ll lose with the laundry room/family room work? This is good stuff!!

By now, about 8 months had passed since the first meeting with our friendly architect, and the boxes you see in the picture above had begun to be packed and readied for storage during the duration. I began to make the rounds at cabinet makers, tile stores, plumbing supply shops, flooring experts, appliance vendors. And we began to realize that all this remodeling stuff -while not adding a single square foot to our house size – would be extraordinarily disruptive – basically shutting us out of any entertaining or normal home usage for a good long time.

Just in the last couple of months, we realized that with the carport enclosed, we could put a door from where we’ve always parked the cars directly into the back of the family room. That meant we could eliminate the large French door structure on the side of our kitchen – the one we have used as a primary entrance/exit all these years. And we could replace it with a bay window – complete with seat! – and leave our dining room table in the window for small groups, turning it around and opening it wide for large ones. Cool!

So now I’m also ordering windows and getting estimates on garage doors. Whew! What a mammoth project this turned out to be. Hopefully, we’ll be able to live here and enjoy all this for a good, long time. But as we have learned all too well, there are no guarantees in this life. So we’ll take it a step at a time and see where it all ends up. Demolition is scheduled to start next week – just in time for Thanksgiving – which was, ironically, our expected finish date when conversations with the architect and the contractor first began! Maybe we’ll be moved back in by Easter? We’re praying in that direction!

For almost all of my life – since about the age of 5 – I have sung in choir, beginning with children’s choirs at church and at school. Singing harmony strongly has always been a part of my life. Maybe because I grew up in a home where music of all different kinds was part of the fabric of daily life. My dad was a marvelous pianist (he learned Rhapsody in Blue by checking it out of the Los Angeles Main Library and memorizing it in chunks and he also accompanied Billy Graham’s very first ‘tent’ crusade in LA in the late 40’s) and he filled our home with his own beautiful music, and recordings of all kinds of things.

Although I have never attended an opera, or even a light opera, I heard La Boheme, Madame Butterfly and all of Gilbert and Sullivan by the time I was 12. Then, I joined the choral group at my junior high school. And I LOVED the fabulous choral music program at Glendale High School under John Key in the 1960’s – 10th grade choir, 11th grade Choraleers, a women’s group which required an audition (oh, how scary that was!), 12th grade A Capella Choir, with duets sung in public for the first time.

While a student at UCLA, I also auditioned for and was accepted by the A Capella choir there, under the direction of Roger Wagner, and sang through Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana in Royce Hall at the tender age of 17. I sang lead in a barbershop quarter at the Hollywood Bowl that year as well, as part of the annual UCLA Spring Sing, and I continued to sing – in Roger’s choir when I could fit it into my schedule – or in a women’s choir when the load got too heavy for the A Capella schedule – all four years, even after I was married in the middle of my senior year.

As a young mom, I sang with our church choir at Glendale Presbyterian Church, under the direction of Don Fontana (who later went on to Crystal Cathedral fame), until I became pregnant with number 3 and the director refused to cut me any slack with sick kids. Then we moved our membership closer to our home in Altadena when our kids were 3, 5 and 7. And I began a 21 year collaboration with Roland Tabell and the music/worship program at Pasadena Covenant Church. PCC was not a large church, but they had a 30 member choir and enough instrumentalists to field a small orchestra for concerts and a worship band for Sunday mornings.

Roland nudged and encouraged me in many directions during those years – to sing solos, to produce musicals, to organize worship liturgies, to plan portions of entire services, to chair the very first Worship and Arts Committee in the early 1980’s. He was, and is, a trusted and admired friend, a gentle soul with enormous gifts with which he has lovingly and creatively served the church. Even in retirement, he is active at PCC, now singing in rather than directing the choir.

Every Thursday night for almost all of those years at Pasadena, I was at choir rehearsal – singing every part from 2nd soprano to 1st tenor – depending on the vocal make-up of any given year, or as needed on any given piece. I even sang a powerful rock/pop duet in several different concerts during those years, never feeling entirely competent to do so, and most certainly feeling completely untrained and surprised by it all. I started and sang in a women’s trio that performed for teas and sang in worship from time to time – and I loved every minute of all of it, even when I was sick and/or exhausted, even when I was pulled by the demands of family or community. It was my safety valve, my personal time, the place where I worshipped most fully and joyfully.

Then I answered this strange call to attend seminary. Didn’t know what was in store when that started, that’s for sure. And singing in the church choir got a little harder to do, although I kept it up most of that time. I also sang with a small group of seminary students who formed a choir during certain seasons of the year, and I enjoyed learning a Mozart duet for two sopranos while I was studying and working at Fuller.

For three years after I graduated from Fuller, I worked at PCC in an unpaid pastoral position, while jumping through the hoops required for ordination in my denomination. (I also joined the Ministers’ Chorus at our annual denominational Midwinter conference for a couple of years, but gave it up when my voice got tired from singing everything in the tenor range because there weren’t enough women for us to learn music in anything but TTBB format.) I became an avid John Rutter fan during my Fuller years and filled my balcony office with the sounds of Rutter/Robert Shaw/Chanticleer/Anonymous 4. I worked alone up there, and could crank it up ’til no one could hear me singing along!

For as long as I can remember, singing and/or listening to sung music has been at the core of who I am as a person and who I am as a follower of Jesus. From Brahms’ How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place in high school, through dozens of masses at UCLA to anthems, hymns and praise choruses of all kinds all through my life, song has sustained me, nourishing me in ways nothing else quite does.

When I moved to Santa Barbara, however, all of that changed. There was no regular choir at my new church, only an occasional gathering of singers with sporadic attendance and excellent – but voluntary – leadership. It wasn’t a priority, it wasn’t a value. During most of my tenure here, we met for worship in a gymnasium, with terrible acoustics. Even a crowd of 400 could disappear into the rubber floor and the vaulted ceiling. Not exactly built like a cathedral – nor even like the strangely arranged worship space at PCC. Most of the sounds we made together stopped in front of our faces and for almost 9 years, I never felt that I could sing at full volume for fear of standing out rather than blending in to the glorious sounds of a singing congregation.

But for the past 18 months, we have been enjoying our lovely new worship space, with its clear acoustics and it’s lovely structure. And our little choir has begun to meet just a bit more frequently. And our new (well, almost new) senior pastor loves (and is very conversant with) choral music and great hymnody. Joy, oh joy.

So tonight I write because I have just come back from one of our seasonal choir rehearsals. Only about 15 of us there tonight – and heavy on the tenors, of all things! – but oh, what a grand time we had! We worked through an easy Bach piece for Thanksgiving week and we looked ahead at a beautiful Christmas Eve possibility. And we sight read in the hymnal! I don’t think there is anything more satisfying than sight reading 4-part harmony. It’s a challenge, it’s invigorating, it’s worshipful, it’s wonderful. And our hymnal is an absolute treasure trove, filled with gems of all different kinds, from complicated 20th century harmonies, to the simple melody lines and clear harmonies of African American spirituals. And we finished it off with one of my favorites, “Trust in the Lord,” a call and response chorus written and arranged by my friend, Roland Tabell, and filled with good memories and happy associations for me. And even though my voice is old and out of shape (much like every other part of me, I guess), I was able to sing fully, soulfully, worshipfully and gratefully. What a gift.

The cliffs at Shoreline Park, Santa Barbara CA
My life feels a bit like the edge of that cliff sometimes…
only I can’t see what’s down there.
So, I ask myself…what comes next?

I wish I knew the answer to that question. For many months now, I have been contemplating the future – wondering what the next phase of my life will look like. At this stage of the game, I am not much nearer to an answer than I was when all this pondering began.

My husband, on the other hand, has been making his plans – at least for the transitioning-to- the-next-stage part – for a very long time. On March 28th of next year, my husband will be 65 years old, and for about the last three years, he has been preparing himself, and his colleagues at work, for his retirement. He has worked for the same company (although it has been bought and sold 4 times and has a new name as of the last transaction) for the last 35 years – very skillfully investing money for individuals, non-profits, and corporate profit-sharing funds. Over the course of his long and honorable career, he has realized more and more that what he does is more of an art than a science, that choosing equities for investment purposes is often a matter of educated intuition and grace more than it is a skill set to be learned by rote.

He has worked hard to build a team of like-minded folks, people who show an aptitude for both investments and people-contact, so that his own departure from the firm will be as smooth and painless as possible. One of the primary reasons he began to plan so far ahead of the game was because of the nature of the last buy-out – by a large, eastern financial institution with its own peculiar set of bureaucratic hoops to jump – and his desire to ‘make room’ for the next person coming down the pike. So two years ago, he cut out one day of work per week, with a matching cut in salary. This year, he took another day and another matching pay cut. The plan was to be fully retired by March 31, possibly returning a few days per month as a consultant. The latest twist to the design has been moving the retirement ahead to June 30, with no part-time involvement after that date.

A primary motivating factor for that decision – which came to him as a ‘vision’ from on high in the early morning hours a couple of weeks ago – was my decision to re-visit my own professional commitments in June, 2007. The last few years have been a time of almost constant movement in my life, changes in every corner, from kids to career. Some of that has been wonderful, encouraging, exciting and fun. Some of it has been difficult, awkward, confusing and painful. All of it has been unsettling and served to compound my own inner sense of confusion and uncertainty during a life-stage that has eccentricities all its own. A little background might be in order.

My call to pastoral ministry came late in life. I was nearing 50 when God confirmed in my heart and mind his call to serve him by serving the church. My four years in seminary were a revelation, a time of pushing, pulling and stretching, a time of affirmation and growing certainty that God had something new and different in store for the second half of my adult life. My kids were raised and married, grandkids were beginning to be born, my husband was ready to make at least a short geographical move, and at the end of 1996, I found myself in Santa Barbara, working 3/4 time in an associate position that covered the gamut from worship supervision to adult ministries to pastoral care to regularly scheduled preaching and teaching.

Throughout the twists and turns these years have brought, God’s call on my life has always been remarkably clear – “you are to serve me here, at Montecito Covenant Church, loving these people for as long as I leave the door open for you to do so.” So far, the door has been open, the call unchanged. The circumstances have morphed – multiple times! – with changes in staffing and workspace coming regularly -and the job description has changed all along the way, but the call has remained clear and strong.

In September of last year, after a particularly exhausting two-year interim period, I cut back from 30 (usually more like 40) hours per week to 20 (now usually more like 25) and limited the scope of my involvement to match. A year ago this month, with a new senior pastor on board whose dreams for the future of this place didn’t seem to include a position like mine, I offered to retire by January of 2007 . By mid-year 2006, however, a number of different factors converged to make me seriously question that decision, so I asked my boss (whose own dreams were morphing right along with my own) if we could re-evaluate everything at the end of this current school year. He readily agreed and that brings both my husband and myself to that previously mentioned June 30th date. Dick is ready to call it quits, to look for new avenues of service, to travel more and be with grandkids more. The question is – am I? Part of me says ‘yes,absolutely, that all sounds great!’ but part of me says ‘well, are you sure??’ Part of me wants to know if God’s call has changed, if it’s time for me to fold my tents and withdraw from active ministry, to make room for the next person coming down the pike.

My senior pastor is encouraging me to step back, take a long view and decide what exactly I would like this next phase to look like. Do I want to pursue training as a spiritual director? Well, maybe. Do I want to continue to preach on a fill-in-as-needed basis? Yes, please. Do I want to offer some well-planned, creative opportunities for folks to go deeper in their faith, to practice spiritual disciplines, to re-discover Jesus as the center of life? I think maybe so. Do I want to engage in one-on-one conversations with people about things that matter to them? Absolutely. Is spiritual direction the best – or even the only – way for those conversations to happen? Hmmm…I wish I knew the answer to all these questions!

At my advanced age, I have to admit that I am not a particular fan of birthdays. Oh, don’t get me wrong – I love the attention, the loving gifts and notes, sharing good food with people I care about. It’s the aging part I’m not so crazy about. It’s a young world out there in church leadership land – to be young, cool and with-it is desirable. To be old, decidedly un-hip and on the edge of the technological revolution is definitely not. The party part I love, it’s the numbers I have mixed feelings about. Every January 23, another one gets added to one of my vital statistics, all of which are much larger than I might like them to be.

So last week, I was delighted to be able to share a birthday with someone I loved who was reaching the smallest milestone possible for a natal day – our grandson Griffin Stenzel turned ONE! His actual birthday was on the 23rd, but that was a Saturday this year, and weekends are tough for us to be away from Santa Barbara and Sunday responsibilities. So we celebrated on my days off, enjoying a yummy, home-cooked meal on Wednesday night the 27th. Griffin was happy as a clam during dinner, thoroughly enjoying his meal – especially the rice, which stuck to every crevice in his adorable face.

After dinner, we brought out the cake(s – chocolate for the rest of us, a large piece of white cake for our birthday boy. Perfect I thought, white cake for one-year-olds, decorated with a bright blue birthday rose for boys.) Immediately, a crease of worry crossed Griff’s face. Candles on food? Then we sang, and the alarm level raised another notch. “Everyone singing together, loudly, with lots of giggles at my expense? What is this?”

But once the candle was removed, he did test the waters (or the icing, as the case may be.) He tentatively explored the terrain of sweet stuff by dipping his fingers right into the center of that blue rose. And that’s when the real tears began!

“What have you done to me?” his anguised cries seemed to ask. “My skin is changing color right before my eyes! Wahhh!” And he would not be consoled. The birthday cake was abandoned, the party was over.

Smart boy, that Griffin. There is something fundamentally alien, at least in our culture, about getting older. Try as we might to put ribbons and bows around it all, I see little evidence in the culture at large that being an elder is a desirable and worthy thing. Even within church circles, people over a certain age are most often viewed with at least a tad of suspicion. As in so many other ways, we humans tend to think in categories, categories that too easily can become stereotypes. It is sometimes helpful for me to remember that in the grand scheme of things, NONE of us is particularly old – or particularly wise, or hip, or with-it, either. All of those labels are ones we have created in an attempt to build up our own self-image as human creatures. Remembering that all of us, whether one or sixty-one, are children of God, called to fellowship and to following in the way of Jesus, can help to keep things in perspective. At least sometimes. Just not around the 23rd of January. :>)

Three of our grandsons are living with us for the weekend – and then we will live with them for 2.5 days so that they can attend school. It’s the first time we’ve done an extended, hands-on, prepare meals, provide-structure-and-a-little discipline, make sure everyone is fruitfully occupied kind of childcare since we had 3 kids of our own. We’ve done a lot of helping-out-when a-new-baby-arrives, living in and running errands, etc.; we’ve kept anywhere from 1 to 6 kids for an evening or an afternoon, but this is a first and it is an adventure! These particular 3 are the children of our eldest child, daughter Lisa, and her husband, Mark. They’re currently in NYC, visiting Eric, Rachel and Grace for a few days before Lisa begins a heavy-going, deep- immersion masters’ program at CalStateLA in special education. The kids themselves are:

Ben (aged 15, photo on the right) avid – and excellent! – photographer, biker, obsessive project maker – especially when cameras are involved, charming, kind and a bit flaky from time to time (per the cell phone in his pocket when he jumped into our pool this afternoon :>) This picture is nearly two years old – taken at Disneyland for Joel’s 6th birthday;

Luke (aged 12, dreamer, scholar, reader, pianist per excellence, humorist, thoughtful writer, hard-to-budge when preoccupied, gifted with the ability to see the absurdities of life) Again, the photo (to the left) is old.

and Joel (soon to be 8, good-spirited, funny, helpful, a bit of a roughneck – wouldn’t you be if you were the youngest of 3 boys?, curious, good learner, very loving and affectionate). This picture taken last month at Sea World when the whole clan gathered for a week of Monopoly, tourist travels and just generally catching up.

It’s an interesting thing to be responsible for others whom we love, to temporarily step back into the parenting mode from the much more indulgent grandparent one, to remember to think about what they need, as well as what they want. For example, we figured a dinner out at Ruby’s with huge burgers would be perfect … except that the older two had major adjustments on their orthodontia this week, and are finding chewing and opening their mouths very wide somewhat difficult and painful to do. So, I’m on the lookout for soft foods to eat – hence tonight, we feasted on a variety of ripe melons and a home-grown, macaroni-and-cheese based casserole a-la what I used to make for my own kids many years ago, followed by fresh berries and ice cream. It’s likely Sunday dinner will be a breakfast of scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns – with fruit, of course – unless mouths are healed and appetites are more normal.

These boys are full of energy, really do love one another, are anxious to please us and are great fun to be around. They are messy and careless by nature, but can easily be reminded to pick up clothes, close doors and clear the table. In fact, they are delightful and dear, a gift to us. I highly recommend grandparenthood – you get the best part of child-rearing without the incessant fatigue and responsibility. Our house is in upheaval due to a pending remodel, so there’s no real table available. Nevertheless, it’s fun to be five for dinner again.

Today was a strange day, with that odd catch in my chest coming at several different times, for distinctly different reasons – that odd catch in my chest that tells me I am close to tears. I found myself today alternately filled with gratitude for my life and my loved ones and my work, and bent under the weight of sadness for so many suffering people, people I know and love and people I likely will never meet.

I sat by the ocean quietly for 20 minutes at noon, reading and praying and wondering about my life in particular and life in general. Like a gift direct from the hand of God, I was reminded, in the space of just a few seconds, of the beauty of the world, the sweet faithfulness of my husband, the intelligence and integrity of my grown children and their spouses, the uniquely charming character of each of my grandchildren and the rewarding camaraderie I share with my colleagues in ministry. Gratitude washed over me like the waves at the base of the cliff below and for a few brief moments, my heart sang with joy at the experience of life, in all its strange beauty and complexity.

Literally minutes later, I found myself in my office at church, sitting at my desk, listening to a voicemail message describing the pain of a marriage newly fallen apart. I read an email prayer list from halfway around the world which contained heartfelt prayers by children stricken with AIDS. I left a message for another dear sister whose husband has recently left her, and I cried at a bittersweet message from a friend and parishioner whose elderly mom is now slipping away physically, even as she has been slipping away mentally for many months. And once again, a wave washed over me, this time a wave of grief, of sadness, of quiet anger at the suffering which permeates all our lives for one reason or another.

Most days, I am, at best, only dimly aware of the multi-textured weave of this life on planet earth – of the moments of joy thrust up against the moments of sadness. Today I was sharply aware of it all, sort of quivering inside, like a string being tuned, tuned into the full orb of our human condition. And that sharp awareness came as a welcome wake-up from the more phlegmatic mindset I’ve been experiencing for about eighteen months now. It has felt like I have been living inside a fog of sorts, a cocoon of fatigue and indifference and weariness, with little energy to spare for tackling new projects, meeting new people, undertaking new challenges. It is good to be reminded that I am still capable of a variety of emotional responses, that I am not lost in the fog forever.

I am studying in the gospel of Matthew this week, preparing to preach on the temptation of Jesus, as he was drawn by the Spirit out into the wilderness, immediately following his baptism in the Jordan River. And as I read and wonder, I am reminded of the ever-present voice of the Liar, the Temptor, the Accuser in my own life, my own wilderness. That voice that bends the truth and distorts reality, that voice that subtly questions and misleads. That voice that tempts me to question God’s trustworthiness, God’s faithfulness, God’s call to endure suffering in the short term for the sake of glory in the long term. Long before Jesus walked into the desert, still dripping from the waters of baptism, the fledgling community of Israel, wandering amongst the cliffs and crags of that barren land between Egypt and Canaan – Israel faced these same temptations, these same tests, and Israel failed miserably. But Jesus, fully human Son of God, says a firm and scripturally insightful ‘no’ to the voice of temptation. He passes the test, steps into his assigned and assumed role as the Servant Savior of humankind, and ushers in the reign of God with quiet power and a fully orbed assurance of who he is.

I think that’s what this strange and interesting day may have been about after all, a reminder of who I am: a much-loved child of God. I am a woman called to both family and ministry, a human person capable of a whole range of very human emotions, one who so often stumbles over and into both frailty and sin. But most importantly, one who is redeemed and reminded by that starving man in the desert that the ultimate test has already been met, the beautiful plan of salvation has been let loose in the world. Even the misery, the pain, the grief, the chaos that can so quickly overwhelm me, whether I’m reading the headline news or my own email messages, none of it can negate the powerful and unexplainable presence of grace and goodness in the midst of it all, in spite of it all. For it is the beauty at work in this world, the graciousness, the kindness, the courage, the strength of character, the resolute willingness to endure hardship for the good of another, the generosity and the gentleness that keep breaking through the messes we make and the messes we find – it is these things that speak to me of God, that remind me of the Galilean who stepped into the water and out to the desert in order to firmly and finally identify with us strange and interesting human creatures before putting on his sandals and walking into the towns, villages and hearts of his world. Thanks be to God!