silent saturday.

22 May
I have literally said three words all day. I said “no thank you” to the woman at the gym who asked if I wanted to use the remote. That’s it. Besides that short sentence, I haven’t spoken at all today. But that’s okay.
It’s been a good Saturday. A productive Saturday. I woke up early to the wind howling and rain pounding – the first real good thunderstorm of the summer. Read a few chapters in my book while drinking coffee. (The Ethics of What We Eat by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. It’s a educationally disturbing book about where our food comes from and solidifies my current decision to not buy meat.) Laundry. Cleaned. Organized. A walk to the gym. Blogged. (With a ring pop.)
The day wasn’t without a few sewing projects. I made a coat hanger organizer for my plastic and paper bags that used to simply occupy the floor of my closet. I finished off the bag pictured below; it’s made from clearance pillow cases I scored at Target. I didn’t have any fabric to match for the handles but while cleaning my bedroom, I found this tie from a shirt that I have; I wear the shirt but never the tie along with it. Sure. I think it works. A little strange combo but I like it.

hints of happy (part one).

17 May
Cloud nine. High as a kite. Right side of the bed. Call it what you will, life is good. Many people and factors play into my overly happy demeanor of late. Here’s a beginning list:
Hint #1 : Sunshine! After nine or so days of constant cloud cover and rain, it’s amazing the difference the sun makes!
Hint #2 : Potted plants in my window. See previous post.
Hint #3 : An Art Scraps visit this past weekend in St.Paul. Scored deals for VBS decorations and craft projects, not to mention a free large sheet of sticky glow-in-the-dark paper.
Hint #4 : I scrubbed my floors. Love that clean lemon smell.
Hint #5 : Strawberries for $1.50 at Target.
Hint #6 : Nearly perfecting my iced coffee technique with my french press.
Hint #7 : A delicious dinner that turned into a late night of socializing with my supervisor and his family.
Hint #8 : Trampolines.
Hint #9 : I wore a cardigan on Sunday to church – really, no surprise there. I walked into the confirmation room and Brandon greets me, “Pullover? Pullover? It’s a cardigan. Thanks for noticing.” (A quote from the movie Dumb and Dumber)
Hint #10 : It’s going to be a girl! Finally, in a family overridden with boys, my cousin, Marissa, is due to have a girl on October 3!

like mother like daughter.

16 May
I’m turning into my mother. Some people say this phrase with distain. Some with fear. I say it with neither but rather … surprise. Not that I was never like my mother. I think we are very alike in many ways but in this context, I’m referring to hobbies. To crafting.
I’ve always been crafty like my mom is crafty but we’ve been crafty in different ways. For the longest while, I was on a paper kick. Scrapbooking, stamping, book making. While I still enjoy all of those and will go well out of my way for a nice stack of heavy-weighted paper, I’ve turned my focus to sewing. To fabric, which is where my mom’s crafty realm has always been.
Pretty sure my mom continues to be a tad shocked when I choose to spend my free time at my sewing machine. Or when I go to Target and buy pillow cases on clearance because they’re cute and I know I can make them into grocery totes and give them new life. [The green and orange polka dots are the pillow cases; the pink and blue are sheet sets for quilts in the making.] But now, there’s more than just the sewing. My mom is an expert, intense and busy gardener. Eh. I’ve never had much interest. Planting and hoeing tobacco was always enough for me in the plant arena.
[interest sparked] I bought flowers yesterday – a mum and a daisy. Add that to the other seeds I had planted earlier and five larger pots now adorn my window ledge. I’m a tad sad that I still am not in a place in my life where I am in one location long enough to have an actual garden. I dream of planting veggies and having peonies and other pretty things in a garden alongside my gnomes.

an olive oil picnic.

16 May
I escaped to the Cities this past weekend to spend time with friends and enjoy some of the comforts of the larger city. The highlight of the weekend was easily the trip to Stillwater on Friday evening. I worked in Stillwater for two and a half years, living there for one year and commuting for the other year and a half from St.Paul. After leaving the area, I have realized that I didn’t take advantage of the town. So much to do, places to go and good food to eat!
We started our Stillwater evening at the new Stillwater Olive Oil Co. on Main Street. I had heard rumblings of this magical place on facebook and thought it sounded like a new and different experience. We walked into the store and found ourselves surrounded by metal vats of balsamic vinegars and olive oils in all different flavors and varieties. I saw another customer drinking olive oil from a small test cup and worried this was a bad choice … eww? … but was soon proved otherwise. It was the coolest experience. We did shots of olive oil – lemon, garlic, basil, butter. We tested combinations of vinegars and oils … so delicious. I ended up walking away with a small bottle of blackberry ginger balsamic vinegar. After Sara dipped a piece of bread in a sample of this one, she exclaimed, “It’s like candy!” So good. I have never cooked/ate/bought balsamic vinegar before but I drizzled it over my strawberries and yogurt last night with rave results. It will make mighty delicious salad dressings as well.
After drinking some olive oil, we walked further down Main to the River Market Co-op to buy dinner from the deli. Three years ago, when I was in Stillwater, most of the sandwich choices they offer would have made me turn up my nose – turkey with avocado, tomato, lettuce and sprouts? In wrap form = delicious. We carried our picnic basket and our sandwiches to sit by the river and enjoy. It was the perfect evening to be outside and enjoying the water and each other. The evening was further perfected by ice cream at Nelson’s and a visit to the Gieseke family. I love Stillwater and vow to make it a place of regular visiting once I return to St.Paul in four months.

my mom’s gnome.

15 May
I gave my mom and sister gnomes when they came to visit over Easter as something meaningful and poignant to remember their trip to Dawson, aka Gnometown. My mom’s gnome has been put to use, protecting and guarding a newly potted plant in her garden.

Ode to Wednesday Confirmation.

15 May
Seventh and eighth graders have confirmation on both Sundays and Wednesdays and, well, it was probably time for the Wednesday afternoon sessions to come to a close for the year. The twenty-four or so confirmands make their way over after school on Wednesday afternoons. They stop by Tammy’s office to buy chips and sugar and then make their way to the third floor click-clack room. (The click-clacks are the futon-like couches on which they lounge.) After a long day in school, they’re not always the most cooperative when it comes to listening, learning, and opening their Bibles (which they have forgotten at home, of course) and it’s just that point in the year when they like it even less.
Now they have found their relief. No more Pastor Lindsay writing on the white board. No more Pastor Lindsay asking them to be quiet. No more Pastor Lindsay quoting random movies they’ve never seen.
I’ve found mine too. I love the kids – honestly, I do – but it’s just that time of year when the kids are getting ready for summer and anxious to be out of school structure. No more picking up trash after the kids. No more confiscating cell phones when they are texting during the teaching hour. No more asking them to be quiet. Eight million times.
… but I’ll be sad next week. (Right now I’m in the slight celebratory period, the I-have-Wednesday-afternoons-free-now period but that will pass.) No more farming stories from Brandon. No more jokes from Kyler about my want of a Kindle, the e-reader. (“What? A Ken doll? A Kendall?”) No more teasing from Jake. This isn’t really an ode – no lyric poem here – but a tribute to Wednesday afternoon confirmation; I’ll miss it.

On a day like this –

11 May
Nothing like only five words to get that really annoying, I-could-never-actually-get-all-the-hand-motions-correct-because-it-was-too-fast camp song stuck in my head.
I was thinking about my day. Thinking about how it’s on days like this that I get NOTHING done. I came home from church around 6pm and had very little productive to show for my day.
On a day like this, I checked nothing off of my weekly to-do list. My list – which I compile every Monday morning and add to/work off of steadily through the week – is surprisingly short this week but still. No sermon written. No confirmation planned. No hymns chosen today.
But it’s on days like this that I love my job. I did work today, really, I did. The day included a staff meeting – always enjoyable. Thinking about VBS (or VeeeBeeeS according to Kendall) – an activity which will happily occupy my every day until June 16th, the fourth and last day of the summer program. Brainstorming a summer sermon series to possibly include a popular television theme song rewritten for stewardship purposes. I love planning like this.
Days like these are good days – big-picture days, brainstorming days, dreaming-about-what-is-to-come days – but I can’t have too many of them in close proximity to the others. A sermon will need to be written. Hymns chosen. Confirmation taught. Visits made. I love my job pretty much every day but especially on a day like this.

butter and saltine challenge.

9 May
After worship today, the youth board at Grace hosted a mother’s day buffet. It was very well received and it’s figured that we fed 200 people. That’s a great turn-out! The menu included meatballs and ham, potatoes, gravy, veggies, salads, bread and dessert. I heard many people say that the plates were not big enough!
They should have come back for more because there were leftovers. Bowls of salads. Roasters of meatballs. Pans of desserts. The board had planned for 200 to attend … but perhaps our idea of how much each of those 200 people would eat was a bit … off. Leftovers were packaged up and doled out to those who helped work and plan the meal. This is what I came home with:
Butter and crushed saltines. There were probably 12 take-out containers of butter on the counter and four and a half boxes of crushed saltine crackers. The crackers had – now prematurely – been crushed to make meatballs; had they not been already crushed, we could have returned them to the store but no luck.
I took the butter and the saltines with a challenge – using both ingredients, create a dessert for staff meeting on Tuesday. I accepted the challenge – really, I created it for myself but it was endorsed by my coworkers – and now I am accepting ideas/suggestions from you. A dessert including butter and crushed saltines … it’s on.
It kind of reminds me when Monica takes a job creating Thanksgiving recipes for mockolate … but not quite as severe. “This is what evil must taste like!”
(I’ve glanced at my favorite recipe website, allrecipes.com, and realize that this isn’t much of a challenge at all. With this recipe, what more is there to even think about? How delicious would this taste with coffee at 10am? And if I could make them into ball form, a la hamballs, oh how I would impress my coworkers. Golden.)

oh happy day.

9 May
It’s been a pretty slow blog week. Not much to report. But I’ll try.
… I’ve been recovering from a cold for the past week. The lock-in and only two hours of sleep did me in. I’m still sniffling a fair bit but the sore throat has made its leave. Combine the cold with the rainy weather and it’s been a good week to hibernate at night, go to bed early, or cuddle up with a new movie. Which leads me to –
… I’ve been pretty disenfranchised with chick flicks of late and haven’t been a fan of the ones I have recently seen. But I’ve always been attracted to the Irish accent and landscape so I rented Leap Year via itunes on Friday night. I may or may not have watched this one twice in my 24 hour rental period. Friday night I was completely engaged and then again over breakfast on Saturday morning. I love Amy Adams and the man with the Irish accent wasn’t bad on the eyes in the least. If you have seen the movie or do see it, I’m interested to know your opinion of the ending – that was where the movie and I parted ways. Not simply because it was over but because I disagreed. On a related note, renting movies from itunes may become a new weekend habit – so easy and convenient.
… I was led to rent Leap Year because I saw a trailer for the movie during my on-demand viewing of last week’s episode of The Office. (Applause for the show once more – I thought it was a great episode. “Isn’t it too early for ice cream?” “No. It’s never to early for ice cream. And this is mayonnaise and black olives. *takes bite* Ick.”) The trailer for the movie featured a song whose singer sounded so familiar but I couldn’t place it. Googled it. Snow Patrol. A Snow Patrol song I hadn’t yet downloaded. Love Snow Patrol. Yet another thing of beauty to come out of Ireland. (In addition to the accent and the landscape. We’ll throw men on that list too.)
… Before you even begin reading the paragraph that follows this ellipses, I warn you that what I will continue to write is a pointless story. It’s my month to lead the Friday communion services at the care center and assisted living facility in Dawson. The afternoon begins with a service at the care center and I then walk the 100 feet to the assisted living facility and do the same service over again. (It was a rainy and windy day on Friday. I lost quite a few pieces of Jesus, er, wafers in my journey outside.) After the second service, I stick around for lunch (coffee and bars) with the assisted living folks before making communion rounds at the care center. While having lunch, one woman seemed to be having the sniffles too. She pulled a kleenex out of her sleeve to attend to her nose and I thought to myself, “How cute is it that old women keep kleenex in their sleeves?” She’s not the first woman that I have seen do that. I preached this morning and thought I would try my hand, well, forearm, at such a strategy. I stuffed a kleenex up my sleeve and before I began to preach, right as people were singing the gospel alleluia, I tried to find it. Couldn’t find it. I looked all over the floor behind the alter. No kleenex. I grew worried it had fallen out elsewhere and that I looked like a ninny who was losing her marbles. Hmm. I preached. Served communion. Shook hands. No kleenex. I went to teach confirmation. Rolled up my sleeves. Pink kleenex on the floor. I told this same story to the fifteen confirmation students who were present. Yeah. It was a waste of their time too.
… My sister went to prom this past Saturday and was voted as prom queen! Woot!
… I preached this morning (see the post previous) and always consider it a small victory when I can make the congregation laugh. Check. There is a clear difference between our first service and second, the traditional and contemporary split, noted also in the volume of laughter. The first service typically just smiles loudly. My supervisor is usually pretty mum with sermon feedback for me; he finds value in me learning to self-evaluate. I understand this but always wonder what he is thinking. Today he told me – positive feedback brings me warm fuzzies. Check check.

sermon: making plans.

9 May

It has been a fair bit of time since I have posted a sermon and I’m not certain that you even enjoy reading what I’ve preached. If you do, here it is; if not, feel free to skip ahead.

Text: John 14:23-29

Jesus is making plans for when he leaves. He tells his disciples that he is telling them these things while he is still with them. Our reading today is only a fragment of this conversation. In these verses and the ones previous, Jesus is giving his farewell, his goodbye. He knows that his time on earth is coming to an end and he is saying goodbye and giving instructions to his disciples before he leaves to go to the Father.

We try and have the best laid plans for when we leave too. When a teacher knows they are going to be absent from school, they leave detailed lesson plans for the substitute teacher to follow. When we are going on vacation and leaving our pets behind with a dog or cat sitter, we leave the best plans we can, along with extra food, just in case. Or, when we or someone we love is reaching the end of his/her life, plans are made. Plans for the type of care given as life ends, plans for the funeral, plans for what should be done with the material items that remain. This may be the result of old age or an unexpected event. These plans cause anxiety, sadness. They’re not fun plans to make but plans nonetheless.

As we think about mothers today and thank God for our mothers, I think about the things that my mom has told me, how she has prepared me, how she planned for the days as I grew up and planned for the time when I would leave home. I’m certain we all may have stories of the words of wisdom, the advice, the way in which our mothers prepared us for adulthood. Maybe something like – don’t wear white shoes after labor day. My mom always used to tell me when I was pouting that if I kept my bottom lip stuck out like that, a bird would come along and poop on it. Or maybe we remember how our mom passed on a family recipe. We may have our mothers’ sense of humor. Mothers, all in their own way, raise us to be the people we are and though they may not want to think of the day when their child leaves home, moms plan and prepare their children to grow and become independent.

I left my parents’ home at age 18. If you had asked any of my high school classmates or family at this time, they would be the first to tell you that I was a home-body. That I would probably live at home and commute to college. In fact, for the senior awards of my graduating class at Edgerton High School, I was voted “most likely never to leave Edgerton.”

Three months after graduating from high school, I moved three hours away from home. My mom and dad and I drove the station wagon with all of my things to Decorah, Iowa. I remember moving my things into my dorm room on the second floor of the west wing of Brandt Hall, meeting my first roommate of two, and then going to the Center for Faith and Life with my parents for a welcome orientation. Sitting between my parents, I cried. After the program for the freshmen was over, the parents were supposed to leave. I remember gathering with other freshmen on the library lawn and wiping away tears as my mom and dad left.

The tears eventually stopped. I got through that first day, the first month, four years at Luther. My parents had prepared me to be an independent young woman. I successfully lived on my own, beginning with those years in Iowa. But I remember, before my mom left on that fall day, she helped me in one more way to be an independent young adult without her constantly around. She continued to prepare me to live on my own. Before she left she handed me a sheet of paper with parting advice – that last bit of knowledge to impart to her daughter as a nervous college freshman. The sheet of paper had three lines that read like this – Darks wash/rinse cold. Whites wash hot. Sheets and towels wash hot.

Now really, my mom had done much more to prepare me for life on my own at college than just a laundry cheat sheet. My parents – like all parents – had done their best to raise their children with morals and values, to teach what is right and wrong, how to behave with manners and to impart their wisdom of life. They also, by loving me, showed me what it was like to love other people, to respect others, and to live in relationship with people around me. But then, as I turned 18 and moved to Iowa, they trusted that what they had taught me in those first 18 years would serve me well. That I would be reminded of their guidance and continue in the ways they had taught. My mom and dad knew that eventually I would leave, even if my high school classmates disagreed. They knew that eventually they would no longer be with me every day.

Jesus knows he will be leaving soon. He is saying these things – assuring the disciples that he will not leave them orphaned – while he is still with his followers, still able to communicate what is about to happen. Jesus knows that his time on earth is coming to a close but this does not mean that his ministry is coming to a close. Jesus tells his disciples that to love him is to keep his word. To keep Jesus’ word is to continue to live in love. Love for Jesus is really love in action. Loving others.

The disciples will not face the future alone. The gift God has given to them in Jesus will not end as Jesus goes to the cross and then ascends to the Father. God will send the Advocate. Under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the disciples will continue to live out God’s commandments to love. To live out the word that Jesus brought. Jesus says that “the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said.” The disciples will not be alone but the Spirit will guide them, reminding them of their lives in Christ’s love. Reminding them of the love they have been given to share.

Jesus promises that the Father will send the Holy Spirit in his name and also promises his peace. “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.” This peace that Jesus offers is not world peace as we think of it or the end of conflict. Jesus offers his peace. He says “my peace I give to you.” The peace that Jesus leaves is the being of his life, his joy, his love. This peace comes from the heart of Jesus’ life – his life in which he taught, healed, loved. We share this peace in our lives and in worship. “The peace of the Lord be with you always.” “And also with you.” Often times, the pastor then invites you to share that peace with others. We are sharing the peace of Christ – the forgiveness, the grace, the love that we have been given.

Jesus tells his disciples to not be afraid. Do not let your hearts be troubled. Jesus tells the disciples this but we are afraid! Our hearts ARE troubled at the thought of someone leaving us. Someone who we love, someone who has been a guide, who has been preparing the way for us. As a college freshman, alone, three hours away from home, I was terrified. Losing a grandparent or friend after a long battle with illness does trouble our heart. We are afraid and feel unsettled at the thought of people leaving us. These people may be our aging parents. Grandparents. Friends. We put off discussions about death – we don’t want to think about it because it brings fear and sadness into our hearts. Or maybe it’s not death – maybe it’s moving to college. Maybe your parents are divorcing and your mom is moving away. A family member is called to active duty in the military. For the disciples, this person they loved was Jesus. And now he was leaving.

Though I seemed to be alone on the library lawn on my first day of college, I was not orphaned. When someone close to us dies, we’re not abandoned. If we haven’t made plans for life’s unexpected moments, we may feel stuck. Unable to move. But Jesus prepares the way for us. Jesus is going to the Father and he tells his disciples that if they love him, then they will rejoice in where he is going. We have the Holy Spirit, sent by the Father. We have the promise of peace. Not the peace of this world, but the peace of Christ with us and within us. Jesus prepares his disciples and prepares us to live in community. A community of Christian love. Where together, we feel the love of Christ and share it by loving others. A community where we uphold each other with the love God has first given us. Where together, the Holy Spirit guides us to welcome all people to share in Christ’s peace. Where we are never orphaned, abandoned or alone but Christ prepares us to live in love. May the peace of the Lord be with you all. (And also with you.) Amen.

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