Montclair Presbyterian Church

On my refrigerator is a magnet that has a stunning picture of a much older woman (in her mid to late 80’s it would appear) in a swimsuit and swim cap looking lean and fit. The caption on the magnet is “Growing Old is Not For Sissies.” Every morning I see that magnet and the deep truth behind it confronts me yet again. You have to be as tough as nails to grow old, no matter what age you might be at the moment.

Consider a child who is transitioning from nursery school to elementary school. Any child who has made the transition will tell you that while they may enjoy elementary school, they sure miss nursery school at times! Fewer children, more teachers, better snacks, time to rest, amazing art projects, circle time, and shorter days are all things that contribute to a kind of wistfulness about nursery school. When a child is in elementary school, more is expected, more is demanded, homework becomes part of daily life, there are many more kids on the playground with which one has to negotiate, and not all of the teachers are as friendly as the ones in nursery school.

Just when an elementary school child feels as if she or he is on top of the world, the transition from elementary school to middle school occurs. After working in a middle school for three years I saw firsthand the terror on the faces of the incoming 6th graders. To be fair, the terror was mixed with a great deal of excitement and anticipation (after all, they get to change classrooms every period in middle school!), but the terror was real. The eighth graders seem so intimidating to 6th graders and the teachers make it clear they are not about to hold anyone’s hand in order to get work completed. The message to those entering middle school is that it’s time to start growing up.

The message to grow up becomes as loud as an incoming train when the transition from middle school to high school happens. Imagine going from a school of 400 students or even 600 students to a school with 2600 students! The immediate fear is “how will I know where I’m going and how will I ever get there in only 6 minutes for the passing period?” Students who were able to be themselves in middle school (using a rolling backpack despite how out of fashion they were or wearing unusual clothing or dying their hair or playing musical instruments during lunch or looking at card collections or carrying a lunch box of one sort or another) find themselves doubting everything once they get to high school. They no longer want to take a lunch because it’s not cool even if it means going all day without food. The pressure to fit in might be heavier during this period of one’s life than in any other period. As soon as students graduate, they realize how much time and energy they wasted on something that really isn’t all that important given how quickly one changes, physically and emotionally, at that age.

The next really difficult stage, particularly these days, is after college and when one is trying to live independently. Finding a job that will enable one to live independently is more difficult now than it was in previous generations. At this stage and age, the dreams and hopes far surpass the reality of living much of the time. One feels almost invincible and yet is reminded often of how easy it is to make mistakes or fail in one way or another. The image of a butterfly trying to painfully emerge from the cocoon has some similarities. Throw in there parents’ confusion about whether to rip open the sack or leave it alone completely and the image has many similarities!

Despite all of the transitions listed above as well as the transitions to love and partnership and/or family, nothing compares to the experience of aging beyond the age of retirement. So many of us work hard at planning and controlling our lives to the extent that it’s possible without seeming neurotic. At some point, though, we recognize in a visceral way that there are many things beyond our control. We may carefully monitor our diet and exercise and yet we still get diagnosed with diseases that have grave outcomes. We may do all we can to stay in shape and yet various parts of our bodies begin to break down as though they are cars with excessive mileage. We may engage in emotional and spiritual growth over the years and yet nothing prepares us for the hormonal changes that feel as if something or someone else has taken over our bodies.

So much of my work is with people who are live in various stages of growing old. Growing old is as much a spiritual journey and discipline as anything else we experience. How can we do it with grace no matter our age or circumstance? One of the things I love about being a part of an intergenerational church community is that we get to see firsthand the various ways people are growing old. In the Montclair Church Family we seem to have an abundance of people who could themselves be on refrigerator magnets about growing old! As their pastor, I know many of them are enduring a great deal of pain, emotionally or physically, in exchange for more time. Thanks be to God for a community that will not let them grow old alone.

A few people have asked me recently to preach on what is going on in the world. My response to one person is that I am not sure what to say yet. Surely I don’t need to run through the list of all of the traumatic events in the US and beyond. Surely I don’t need to point out how our government and system of democracy has become a sham. Surely I don’t need to reiterate how the rich are getting richer while the middle class becomes poor and the poor become destitute. Honestly, what is there to say? Should I be honest about the fact that I don’t know why we have not taken to the streets and shut everything down for days? Should I issue a call to mass protest across the country? Should I comfort everyone with words about how God is bigger than the world’s problems and can handle whatever happens? Should I call the church to task for being mostly irrelevant in what is at its heart a struggle for justice? Should I facilitate lamenting so we can all simply air our cries together?

In the movie “Twister” there was a great scene where the main character (Helen Hunt) was in the eye of a storm and she used a belt to strap herself to a huge pole and she held on for dear life as the storm threatened to tear her apart limb by limb. She held on with all of her might and it took every ounce of energy she had to simply hold on. Sometimes it feels that way when it seems as if the world might unravel completely. I find myself holding on for dear life and wanting everyone else to do the same. Who can hear words in the midst of the tumult?

Maybe all I need to say is that I don’t know what to say. Like you, I pray daily for wisdom, for courage and for the sense to risk whatever is needed to create a world where all are provided with basic needs. May God give us the wisdom, courage and sense to be co-creators in our beautiful though troubled world.

What is going well for you right now? Where is the good news in your life? What makes you feel like celebrating tonight? As you go through your day, what brings a smile to your face or adds lightness to your step? When you think about all of the things you are “doing” currently, which of those things gives you energy?

Sometimes when the waves of bad news are crashing around us, or the wind of fear is whipping through our hair, or the beat of the drum of doom is constant in our ears, or the taste of the bile of tragedy is in our mouths, sometimes when it seems as if the world might finally be spinning off of its axis we simply have to stop. Sometimes we have to turn off all forms of news and only listen, watch, search and plug in to our lives. The questions above are good ones to ask when we need to get our feet back on the ground and our heads back on our bodies and our hearts back in our chests.

Another way of asking those same questions is to wonder where God is in your life in the midst of the news that seems to say God is nowhere to be found. God is never nowhere. God is always somewhere. We forget that sometimes and we focus on all of the places where God seems to be missing instead of focusing on the places where God just might be.

When the news gets to be so bad and it feels as if humanity doesn’t have a prayer in the world for survival, that’s the time we need to open all of our senses to find God again. Most of us still think of God as “out there” and we forget that God is in us and a part of us. We forget that God counts on us to leave footprints and handprints and heartprints here on earth since God relies on our feet and our hands and our hearts.

If you haven’t smiled in days, what do you need to differently in your life? If you can’t think of any good news, how are you going to create some? If you feel drained and out of energy, how can you access your passion?

While the stock market is diving down and the financial markets are in trouble and houses aren’t worth much anymore and people we love get sicker every day, I am here to tell you that God is somewhere to be found. Yesterday God showed up in the body of a friend who is one of the most courageous individuals I have ever met. Yesterday God showed up in the conversation and the meal cooked by new friends. Today God showed up in a colleague who constantly says yes to working for justice. Today God showed up in a staff member who knows when to forgive me for being crabby. Today God showed up in a young person who is caring beyond her years. Today God showed up in new possibilities.

Open your eyes, open your hands, open your ears, open your hearts. Good news is all around.

Recently I spent a week at a conference center at Lake Tahoe. The beauty of the lake and all of its complex colors evoked awe in me once again. This year Lake Tahoe is particularly stunning with the snow capped mountains surrounding the multi-hued water. Sometimes I pretend I am a photographer and I try to imagine what shots I would try to get and why. One of the reasons I do that now and then is to get myself to notice things I might not otherwise notice.

While I was at the lake, I was invited to go on a boat ride. The driver of the boat took us in to the Tahoe Keys which is a winding pathway of houses right on the water, most of which have docks that extend from their backyards and lead to their array of watercraft. One of the mind-pictures I took was of a very expensive house that for some reason had the entire neighborhood’s goose population. I kid you not, there must have been 20 or 30 geese that were gathered for a convention in this one backyard and had perhaps been gathered continuously for a while. The goose poop was thick enough to actually be considered mounds or hills. I could barely see the name of the boat written in beautiful script on the back because there were several geese who had made that back ledge their roosting spot. If there had been a “for sale” sign in the backyard that I could have photographed with the geese in the foreground, it would have been a great shot! As we drove away in the boat, I couldn’t help but think that when we are not present in one way or another, poop happens!

Another mind picture I captured was of a tree that looked like it had been struck by lightning. The trunk was enormous and the top half of the tree was missing. At first, I didn’t notice it was missing its top half. It wasn’t until I had walked past it and then turned around that I realized a huge branch had grown out of its side and then up way past where the trunk had been severed and had become the new top of the tree. My initial sight of the tree was of a huge tree with beautiful green branches that stretched like a cat in sunshine up in to the blue sky above. When I finally saw the edge of the trunk and realized the tree was actually just an extension of the branch growing out of the side of the trunk, I was inordinately happy. What I realized was that the tree was a perfect example of how we can go through radical changes and disruptions and traumatic events and then adapt to our new reality and grow even stronger and more beautiful than before the radical change.

Jesus told stories in word pictures about what the world was like in the new realm that God was creating. Jesus was able to take images and experiences from everyday life and then use those to illustrate the new world that God was creating where all would be loved, accepted, and called to seek justice. I wonder what Jesus would have said about goose poop and a tree that loses half of itself. What do you think the realm of God is like? How would you describe it in word pictures? Try to slow down enough to notice some things you haven’t noticed before in the world around you. What do you see? What is the realm of God like in your words or pictures?

Last week my wife and I went to “Family Camp” with 75 people from the church. We spent a glorious week up at Lake Tahoe and if you haven’t seen the snow covered mountains on a summer day up at Lake Tahoe, be sure to put it on your list of places to go! The church has been doing “Family Camp” for more than 30 years and it is a most amazing tradition. Some people camp in tents, some people in RVs, while others rent a cabin or stay in the lodge. In the mornings there is a program for a couple of hours, the afternoons are free and often there is something fun planned a part of the evenings.

This year we decided to keep all of the generations together for the program time, rather than having the kids do a separate program and the youth do their own thing. We used the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy as our theme so each group was broken up into a fellowship. Our youngest participant was 6 and 1/2 years old and our oldest was 84. I remembered why there is usually so much resistance to keeping the generations together! It is very difficult to plan something meaningful for a 6 year old, an 80 year old, a 13 year old and a 49 year old. Admittedly, there were probably moments throughout our program when someone in one of the age groups was bored…but every person survived.

When I was explaining my decision to keep all of the generations together to some of the participants, I told them that as a society we are doing less and less together across ages. We tend to cater to the “kids must be entertained” mindset and the “adults just want peace and quiet” mindset and the “teenagers are a species all unto themselves” mindset and we live and move in separate universes as a result. The church is one of the few places where we can bring all the ages together and it makes sense!

One of the most touching moments was watching the groups struggle with an exercise in which they had to get every person in their group across a fictitious river. I glanced over to see one of the groups using their three children to “anchor” each one of the adults in the group as they crossed the river. I guarantee you it was a high point for the kids who were able to be so helpful and for the adults who knew they could count on the kids.

So often I hear adults (particularly older adults) bemoan their inability to talk to their grandchildren or great grandchildren with whom they feel they have very little in common. One of the things we accomplished with our intergenerational “Family Camp” is that the generations really talked to each other. As difficult as it is to make it happen, the experience between the generations is invaluable. Hopefully they will all experience church differently now as well.

The church I grew up in was a fundamentalist Presbyterian Church. We heard a great deal about hell and what we had to do to escape it and how we would find ourselves on the fast train down. The three biggies I can remember as a child who was “taught” was that if we drank, smoked or had sex before marriage, we were guaranteed a hot spot. Not far behind was swearing. To this day I have a difficult time swearing! We were told “the Bible says” you can’t have sex before you are married, smoking and drinking are wrong. I am still looking for those passages…

In that same church, I don’t ever remember hearing about the poor or oppressed or the injustice in the world or being peacemakers. Everything we were taught was from the perspective of how we could “win” people to Jesus so that they would be saved (and not go to hell). What is remarkable to me now that I am older is how absolutely everything was presented. The interpretation of scripture that was presented was the ONLY interpretation possible.

As I have grown up and matured and listened to people from all faiths and backgrounds, I have come to realize that as soon as someone claims to know the mind of God or claims to have the “right” or “only” interpretation of scripture, they are dangerous. One of my pet peeves is when I hear people talk about obeying the Bible and yet they are choosing which parts are to be obeyed in this day and age. Seriously, if you are going to tout obedience to scripture then at least be consistent and cover your heads and don’t eat shellfish and follow the cleanliness laws and be sure women never speak in church, etc…

Honestly, how can anyone live in this world of ours and think for a second that God is easily understood and manageable? How can anyone stand up in a pulpit anywhere and tell people exactly what constitutes truth? Do they really think the God who created double rainbows and the solar system and cultural diversity is really that simple and one-dimensional (as if God’s sole desire is that we should be saved and tough luck for the poor and oppressed)?

Is God so limited that there is only one way to understand truth? At Montclair Presbyterian church we care as much about the Bible and Jesus and truth as anyone else. The difference is that we believe God is multi-dimensional and that we may never arrive at a place we call “the only truth” or “the only way.” We believe this life is about the journey of discovering God and being able to see God in each other more than it is about arriving at a place called “God” or “truth.” If you want to journey with us, you are most welcome.

While I don’t often rant about politics, there are times when I just cannot help myself. Politicians are people, too, and I try to look at them with compassion because I know what’s it like to try to please a group of people who at times all want very different things from me. Politicians are similar to pastors in that their constituency feels a sense of ownership or as though they are the employers. Most of the time I can empathize to an extent, even with the politicians with whom I disagree the most. My true confession is that I was unable to feel compassion toward George W. Bush and I am equally unable to feel compassion toward Sarah Palin. While I am not proud of my absolute lack of compassion toward these two human beings, I am also aware that it comes from a place of deep compassion for those whose lives they have torn asunder. While George W. Bush’s atrocities are more obvious because of the length of his term as POTUS, Sarah Palin’s are the ones I would like to highlight.

As a woman in a profession that is still largely a man’s world, I am incensed by Palin’s insistence upon representing herself as an intelligent woman, capable of leading this country. If she wants to be taken seriously, she needs to learn when to choose silence over speech, when to say she does not know, and when to say she was wrong. Her inability to do any of those contributes to her foolishness which results in people wanting to pat her on the head and tell her she’s real cute, as though she’s still four years old. That is exactly what intelligent women have been working to change for the past 60 years. When she misspoke about Paul Revere, the mature and intelligent avenue would have been to simply say she made a mistake. The media would have let it go at that and perhaps that is why she continued to insist that what she said was true. Maybe she is just a supreme manipulator which is also not doing anything to help the image of women.

The other group of which I am a part that she has harmed in a variety of ways is the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Palin is against gay marriage and has publicly said homosexuality is a choice. She claims at the same time not to have anything againt the gay community and says she doesn’t judge us. The problem is she is in a position to influence a great number of people (as surprising as that is) and her stance against gay marriage tells people she believes my love for my wife is somehow lesser than her love for her husband (scary thought, that). Her comment about the fact that she wouldn’t “choose” to be gay is not just ignorant but destructive. Think of all of the parents of teenagers who are gay who hear a comment like that and feel justified in sending their teenager to a gay reparative therapy camp. The harm done at those camps is sometimes never undone. You can’t imagine the painful conversations I have had with people who went through that experience earlier in their lives. She makes comments like that with no thought regarding the repercussions. Or, maybe she’s fooling us and is making those comments hoping for the repercussions…

If I had my way, Sarah Palin would be honest about the fact that she wants to be an entertainer and make lots of money and stop pretending she wants to be a serious contender as a leader of this country. Even I could deal with her as an entertainer because she will do much less harm if people know not to take her seriously. Those of us in California learned the hard way about mistaking entertainers for politicians. We should lead the way in warning the rest of the country.

The first “graduation” I experienced with my children was when our oldest daughter, Emily, “graduated” from pre-school. It was an alternative pre-school so the word “graduation” was never used, but my goodness, there was certainly enough “ceremony” to go around for the day. Pictures had been taken of each child throughout the year and then each family was given the task of making a “memory” book for a different child than their own from the pictures that had been taken all year. On their last day, what I referrred to as “graduation” day, the memory books were presented to each child. The ceremony was followed by a festive potluck lunch out on the playground. The children were happy and sad all at the same time because many of them were going to different schools for kindergarten so they realized this was their last play time together. For our younger daughter, Anna, it was even more poignant as we moved from one town to a different town when she finished pre-school. She knew she wouldn’t see any of her pre-school friends in her new school.
The “graduation” scene happened again in 5th grade since middle school is 6th-8th grades. When they left the 5th grade, the school had a long graduation program with speeches and certificates and the whole nine yards. Of course when they graduated from 8th grade it was an even longer program with more speeches and music and speeches from an adult and an even larger party afterward. Honestly, by the time our older daughter graduated from high school last year, it was a bit anti-climactic. Or was it that she was just so glad to have survived high school and be moving on to where people might care more about your thoughts on global warming than your thoughts on the latest fashions?
Surprisingly enough, I am not one of the parents who think graduations at every level are ridiculous and should be banned. On the contrary, I am a lover of ritual so I have always appreciated the ritual that accompanies each and every transition in our daughters’ lives. Okay, maybe I didn’t fully appreciate the 6 speeches in 5th grade in two languages, but the overall ritual I did appreciate!
In our North American anglo culture, we do a lousy job of acknowledging the major transition times in our lives. Other cultures are much more intentional than we are about ritual at various times in one’s life span. Rituals are a way to invite people into a deeper experience of an ordinary occurrence. A ritual can also engender reflection on a particular time in one’s life such as a quincinera or a graduation or a bar mitzvah.
Long after we graduate from a school of one kind or another, we continue to go through significant transitions. How can we develop rituals that both celebrate and mourn the transition (similar to a graduation that celebrates the accomplishment of the past and acknowledges the moving on to the future)? How about rituals for divorce which some traditions are doing? How about rituals for children leaving home? How about rituals for entering and finishing menopause (one of the wildest journeys in a woman’s life!)? How about rituals for becoming grandparents? How about rituals for changes in health? How about rituals for moving from one’s “home” to a new place for living out the rest of one’s days?
Our lives are constantly changing and I believe we would help ourselves and others cope and adapt more readily if we would develop intentional rituals to help the community surround the one who is experiencing the changes. One of the most meaningful rituals I have ever participated in was on a Sunday morning at my former church when we created a re-naming ceremony for one of our transgender members. What a powerful ritual for every person who was there that day! We spoke of the past (the old name and life) and we celebrated the future (the new name and life) and there were very few dry eyes in the place. Imagine what it meant to the family members of the one who was transitioning from female to male to be surrounded by community and to have their major life change be incorporated into a meaningful ceremony. So I say, “let them all graduate” and may we find many more ways to ritualize life’s long and winding roads!

One of the best songs of all time is the song from South Pacific called “You’ve Got to Be Carefully Taught.” It talks about how before you are six or seven or eight years old you have to be taught to hate people your family hates or to be afraid of people who are different from you. The idea behind the song is that children are not born hating and fearing others. They literally have to be taught. I was reminded of this last weekend when our dear friends came over with their two children.
Their oldest child is a four year old boy. He is as cute as a child could be and I have loved him since the day he was born. His mom has skin the color of soy milk and his dad has skin the color of dark chocolate. His mom was telling me that recently he pointed to Michelle Obama and said, “That’s you, Mama.” He also did the same thing with Shakira! She then went on to say that when he sees picture of men with very light skin, he seems to see his Daddy. She has been marveling at the fact that he does not seem to see any differences in their skin color. In other words, he doesn’t identify them by their skin color or even notice it for that matter. He easily sees his Dad in all other Dads and his mom in all other moms, regardless of skin color.
Our conversation quickly went to how sad it will be when someone tells him that his mom doesn’t look like Michelle Obama and his Dad doesn’t look like some of his friends’ dads. Will he feel the need eventually to decide which color of skin he prefers? Will he wonder about his own skin color and how his compares with other kids? My heart breaks to think that this beautiful little boy who does not know how to think about or categorize people in terms of skin color might some day be taught to fear or hate.
When parents do such an amazing job of teaching their children to love everyone, no matter what might be different, how can we continue that teaching? Schools often attempt to, but because there are always students who HAVE been taught to hate and fear, it seems it spreads like wildfire. In our church, we are intentional about trying to teach all of the children who come through our doors that differences are nothing to fear or hate. We talk about kids who have two moms or two dads and kids who are bigger or smaller and kids who have different color hair and kids who can sing or kids who are good at sports. As parents we have to choose church very carefully because there are many places where hate and fear are still alive and well and being taught to children, if not overtly than certainly covertly. We aren’t perfect here at Montclair but we are willing to learn from our mistakes and we are trying to teach Love and how to value our differences. We’d love to have you come and check us out. If you hear or see something you wonder about, let us know. We want to be a part of creating a whole new world for our children.