Tribute to Pastor Kevin

Our pastor from our church in North Carolina, Reconciliation UMC, is moving on this summer. Here is a reflection on our experience of Kevin's ministry during our 3 years there.

It could not have been a more North Carolina Easter Day on April 16, 2006 when we brought our twin baby boys forward to be baptized into Christ's death and resurrection. It was hot, sticky, and the sun beamed down on us as one by one they were handed over by their sponsors to Pastor Kevin. I remember the look of surprise on Elliott's face, and that Dietrich seemed ready to play in the water and with the shell. It marked the beginning of their life in Christ though they had long been loved by the congregation at Reconciliation.

Each year while I was in seminary at Duke, Pastor Kevin was an integral part of how God was awakening me. Kevin was the small group leader in my "spiritual formation" group and he wasn't interested in having us feel good about ourselves and our sacrifices we made going to seminary. After a week or two of getting to know each other, he pushed our comfort with church as usual. We read articles that helped us check our assumptions about everything at the door; I began to ask questions about reconciliation in Christ -- which was what I came to Duke to learn -- that I hadn't even imagined. It wasn't long before Ryan and I began going to services at Reconciliation. Even that word -- services -- changed for me while working with Kevin as I began to see that reconciliation means service in Christ to each other.

My year as an intern under Pastor Kevin's supervision remains one of the most surprising parts of my seminary education. I would have never imagined being drawn into parish ministry when I started at Duke; now I cannot imagine ministry apart from the parish. Kevin faced the struggles of our church head-on while remaining humble. He followed through on the questions he asked and was a model for how to keep asking questions. He gave praise and constructive criticism, but I always felt that I was part of the church first, and that I belonged. But he always remembered to have fun, to smile, to keep on.

But a tribute to Kevin would not be complete -- would not be possible -- without a tribute also to Denise. When I came into a Monday morning meeting sick as a dog but with the exciting news that we were expecting twins, Kevin was excited for us. But it was Denise who gave me the reassuring look every time I saw her that it will all be okay. It was Denise who planned the best baby shower ever, and Denise who kept us fed in the early weeks with our babies. If there was ever a model of team ministry (without the compensation) Kevin and Denise would be it!

Thank you to both of you for your many years of sermons and salads, baptisms and baby-showers, honesty and hospitality. The amount you gave to this congregation cannot be measured, nor can the amount you will be missed. God's speed to you and your next adventure.

Ascension Day

Had it not been for a quick click on the Daily Text in my inbox, I would have missed this, but here it is, the winding down of the Easter season with remembering Jesus' going up. Something like a pianist after the final chord, after all the themes and repetition, crescendos and diminuendos, the rests, the scattered notes that are all pulled together into that final chord. And then she lifts her wrists, fingers falling softly underneath. Lifted up. The somewhere isn't even a thought because it is the music that is left behind that we hear echoed in our minds. Her wrists dangle there for a moment while she takes it in and breathes before the organized raucous of applause. So here it is, Ascension Day.

Yesterday I dared to pick up the winter coats from the lower hooks in the almighty coat closest and shuffle them over to the washer. Is this just tempting a last cold blast before summer swooshes in? After all it was just a couple of weeks ago that I sent the snow pants into the washer, dryer, and finally the attic. I first peeled off a sticker from Elliott's pocket that said, "I met a farmer today!". It came from an exhibit at the children's museum on the rooftop where we drank chocolate milk, petted baby pigs and sheep, and made crayons from soy beans before ducking back into the heated exhibits. His hidden pocket inside his coat held a long piece of purple yarn, rolled into a ball and a quarter along with the remnants of the last washing when a beeswax sculpture made it all the way through the dryer cycle.

Dietrich's sticker never made it off the waxy paper, and it read, "I voted today!" from what would have been a non-news election had it not been for the wild Wisconsin winter when a governor grabbed hold of power and whipped it around like a jump rope with a weight on the end -- no one, even the governor himself, knows where it will land and whom it will hurt. But we voted (or at least I did). Dietrich and Elliott were home recovering from another Kindergarten virus. He also had some string, just a short bit, and a stick that had no bark left on it at all. It barely fit into the pocket. I can see him struggling to squeeze it in, only to be left there for weeks, maybe even months. I found a black sweat band made my Grandma Carol to adorn complete his Packer outfit reminding me of the months (yes, months) that he wore yellow pants and a green jersey. The purple karibeener (sp?) I have no idea where he found, but surely had something to do with the yarn at one time, and will likely have some use when he finds it again in the pile of things on the laundry table.

Koen's fleece snowsuit goes into the load, too, though he has no pockets to empty. Just a veneer of baby chew from the velcro he liked to nibble while snuggled into the snowsuit, a hat, a carrier, then zipped underneath my jacket. By the end of the season his hands could actually peek out when the flap was flipped back, and the zipper was snug across his belly. The pockets will be here soon enough, and I wonder what they might carry?

In they go, washing away the haze of salt, the playground sand, and the wiped noses. I doubt they will fit next year, but I will keep them up with the snow pants, stowed, quiet, until old man winter whispers to us again.

Flash Mob Snow

Midnight and I am sitting in the rocking chair nursing Koen but just behind the blackout shades the city lights are as bright as a November afternoon, every night. I peek out to see if we are indeed getting rained on, or if the low pressure system shifted just far enough to whiten the streets. Rain, just rain, I see. Koen is amazingly efficient for a change and goes right back to sleep. My dreams shift between the mundane (but welcome) discovery that we did, in fact, save some of Dietrich and Elliott's spring clothes from babyhood and need not get new ones for the baby; to disturbing dreams of our city's shopping district turning red light in the face of a budget shortfall.

It seems like minutes before Koen is shifting around, but it is nearly morning and I am giddy with the knowledge that I've had a few hours of uninterrupted sleep. Knowing this is his last deep time of sleep, I dash to the bathroom before the back and forth sleep of the early morning hours begin. Something is different. There is no need to turn on a light in there and I know it before I even look out -- we've been hit by the snowstorm. I just learned that a flash mob can refer to a completely innocent and fun coordinated effort to show up, together, somewhere, and dance, or sing (I learned this from one of the few high school kids I know who knows just about everything in current trends). And that is what those soggy spring snowflakes decided to do. They just showed up! They were supposed to go north, we were below the "snow line", we were in the green, not the blue. But there was no denying it, we were snockered again (that should be a word if it isn't already).

I broke the news to my husband and household-snow-shoveler-of-the-year (while I take full advantage of having birthed a baby surgically as long as the snow season lasts). Once the sun was up, the sticky surprise offered the first of many contradictions that we are sure to encounter during Lent. It's a day we remember our fragility, a day that feels dark, a day we even accept ashes smeared on our foreheads. And yet it is beautifully blinding to be outside, every inch covered in more inches of snow.

Chase

We went out the front door, instead of squeezing out the side door, which, while energy efficient and directly up the stairs from the best edition to our house -- a closet -- is tight. Maybe that was the inspiration. Or maybe it was the stark blue sky and the moon rise, the reward of a clear, wind snapping January day. When we turned the corner towards the library (which turned out to be closed) we broke into a chase -- instigated by me, definitely something I have not done in nearly a year, maybe even more. In fact, I've felt unable to play, even unwilling, to play. A lot of that has to do with carrying a baby, first in my womb, now in a carrier. But the stars aligned and the pager cooperated that I could skidaddle out of the house late this afternoon. And so I chased those bigger boys, those boys who have looked sad with my reasons for not playing, for not picking up the football (but I can hike it w/ baby in the ergo). Down the street, down another street. Dropped off the books. Back up the street. One boy, then the other, then me. I no longer have to fake that I can't catch Dietrich -- I really had to work hard. We stopped to shop a post-Christmas sale, we grocery shopped. But it was the chase, the simple act of being in the game again, that delighted me. Does this mean I am going to start running again? Hardly. Does it mean I feel something like the sparkling crisp night that fell on us as we ran? Yes.

Tea time

There is nothing that takes away the sting of winter than a warm cup of tea, though hot chocolate is a close second, especially when made slowly by scratch on the stove. Yet there is something about the lightness of tea, the barely-there-ness of its taste, that balances the harshness of winter: wind that sneaks through gortex and fleece and down all the same; dry skin that cracks and opens and leaves a nagging pain despite the Norwegian formula-lotions, udder cream, even olive oil treatments; the pile of snowpants, boots, gloves, hats, neck warmers, scarves that collects at the bottom of the stairs (and the ensuing ripe odor that the pile leaves behind if not ushered off to the dryer right away); and the dark afternoons that seem to creep up just after lunch. A cup of tea, timed just right, can ease the elements.

Yesterday I stopped over at a friend's house who, along with her sister, makes cakes and bottles of soap and sends the profits to a local housing advocacy group and to the East Asia Institute, the organization started by Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea. I could have guessed from her website the scents of each variety, but she lives just down the block so I went to take a sniff before buying gifts for all the amazing women in our life. Of course she offered tea, and of course I accepted. Baby Koen snuggled and nursed while I let my to-do list slide to the afternoon and we all drank tea. I walked home with warmth: Koen under my jacket in his carrier, lightly scented soaps in my bag, and a cup of tea inside me.

At school, the boys have tea with their morning snack. They drink it out of earthenware cups and light a candle on the table. Dietrich isn't a hearty eater at school, though he does try everything, but he always drinks the tea. I can picture it calming him from the inside, out and preparing him for his outdoor adventures, his favorite part of the day. When the afternoon begins to drag on, I know that suggesting a cup of tea brings us all to the kitchen, gets us to sit down, and lets us regroup for the evening ahead. Its not that our tea times erase the hectic scramble of dinner-clean up-bath-bed, but as with the elements outside, it eases it somewhat.

And now the wimpers of that warm baby call, but maybe I will make myself some tea.

There are a lot of things having a new baby in the house makes hard to do -- writing this blog is clearly one of them. Yet I have so many fleeting thoughts throughout the day that I'd like to see what happens to on the page. Having a new baby somehow awakens the world around me in a new way too as if I, too, am seeing everything for the first time. I would like to write through the fog of the first weeks of Koen's life and how I had days of seeing through it clearly and days where the fog seemed to lift and fall all day day long. But there are so few moments when I have two hands to do anything.

Today Dietrich was picking at his peel-less apples while licking the peanut butter (into which he was supposed to be dipping) when he asked me to tell him the story of his birth. He watched my every word which made me reach for more details. It stormed that night, there were 28 babies born along with Dietrich and Elliott, we were so confused when who we knew to be baby B became baby A because, during my surgical birth, he was born first. He asked for it again, and again. When Ryan came home, he asked him to tell it so he could hear his version, his details. And then again, tell it again.

And then I heard the news, on facebook, that a professor from St Olaf died yesterday, too young, too much in the prime of his life, too great of a family to leave behind. The news of his death leaves a sting that reminds me the brokenness of this world runs deep. And so we need to tell the birth stories, the stories that give life and try even a little bit to describe that place where life happens -- not just the birth stories, but the times each day when something looks new or when we see something we've glanced before but for the first time really take a look, or give a listen. There are moments all day long ready to be birthed into our imagination and then told, and retold.

Blooming Vinca

We are in the midst of a low pressure system that has hounded us with rain and wind and now just more wind for the past three days. It feels like the beginnings of the hurricaines in North Carolina, only these winds promise to move out and leave behind them the crisp fall days that I have been quietly craving. When there are so many days of cold and damp and snow and ice ahead of us, I haven't voiced how I'd rather be cuddled up in fleece than still considering turning on the air conditioner. But now that fall seems up on us, I think it is safe to say I'm happy to see it, feel it.

Yesterday, however, the wind seemed to wear me down. So incessant, so loud. It was the first day that I really over-did-it since Koen has been born, and by the end of the day, I was spent. After finally reaching home, where I knew I would be for at least the next night and following day, I relaxed and shuttled Koen into the house. As I went back to get the boys, I noticed that our vinca plants were blooming. My dad and I had picked them up on a steep discount on a rainy day in late June. They did nothing all summer. They didn't die, but they didn't grow taller or show any color. They just sat there, plucked into the ground looking just as they had when I popped them out of their flimsy black containers. But yesterday, after a night of pounding rain and howling wind, they bloomed. One is purple, two others a fuchsia, another almost blue. I still hadn't had a great meal, and it would be a few more hours before sleep could overcome me, but these flowers welcomed me home, welcomed me to the end of a long day, and seemed to tell me it was okay to be spent, undone, unable to do it all. I went inside to our sweet baby boy, our tired but freshly showered big boys, and knew Ryan would be coming home in minutes.

I haven't checked to see if the vinca survived the winds from today. But I wouldn't be surprised. After all, they are only about 4 inches off the ground. Maybe they knew something we didn't back in June. Regardless, thank you, blooming vinca.