What We Can Learn from Funfetti Cake

     I was never able to break my mom of the habit of buying food at discount dollar markets.  When you had to raise three kids on a small income, it taught her the thrill of the hunt — finding that one bargain others missed.  Now in her eighties, I mainly worried she would get expired food that would make her sick.

     Well, I was wrong; she never did. 

She has recently decided to stay in assisted living, so one chore we have started is going through her late-seventies olive green upright freezer out in the garage.  The door does not seal completely, so it is held closed by a worn red bungee cord looped around the handle and attached to metal shelving next to the freezer.  Sure enough, it was stuffed with bargain treasures like peppermint chocolate from some long-ago Christmas and meat frozen so long I was unsure of its cut.  But the shelf that captured my attention the most was filled with boxes of cake mix — white cake, Funfetti, chocolate, carrot.  She had mentioned these to me.

     “I’m sorry I have to leave my cake mixes behind,” she said on the phone as we talked about things that needed to be done.  There are not any ovens in her new digs.  “Be sure you take them if you want them.” She could not see me because we were on the phone, but I narrowed my eyes at this comment; I suspected she had hit the discount store.

     But, like the good son I am, I pulled them out one at a time to check them: Expiration date February 20, 2017; June 12, 2017, and a very faded expiration date of 04/06/16.  Not one of the many boxed cakes had expired less than three years ago.  Sigh… to be honest, given my weight, I was not so sure I needed a Funfetti cake anyway.

     The reality is life catches up to all of us at some point, and we have to leave things behind.  Sometimes it is because we age out of our homes and are forced to downsize; sometimes it is for more sudden reasons like a fire or a death.  In my case, if I had to suddenly leave things behind, my kids will probably find shocking amount of duplicate toiletries.  I always have an extra shaving cream waiting, and the minute I need it, I pick up the next one.  Sometimes it gets out of hand.  I get confused and end up buying stacks of extras.  I mean, does anyone really need four extra sticks of Gillette Arctic Ice Men's Deodorant or three spare 1.5-liter bottles of mouthwash?  (Yes, I just went into the bathroom and counted.)

     Part of this has made me want to do a little clearing out of my own house.  I have not cracked those German books from my college days in four decades, so it is a safe bet I could live without them.  I do not want my own kids to have to rummage through things and exclaim, “Why in the world did he keep this all those years?!”  Could I live with just one extra deodorant instead of four?  In my autumn years, I would like to walk a little more lightly on the earth.

     But there is another part of me that thinks about how my years have gone by quicker than I could ever have imagined.  Maybe the lesson is we should not wait so long to make that Funfetti cake.

It’s the End of the World (of course)

“… the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. “  — Mark 13

     So, with the very justified fear of the Covid-19 virus, the disruption in our lives, the loss of jobs, and the over 200,000 deaths worldwide, it is beginning to feel a little bit like the end of the world.  And of course, it is… just not quite in the way modern doomsday prophets tend to think of it.  

     Did you know there have been 173 formal public predictions of the end of the world since Jesus left?  On average, the end has been predicted every eleven or twelve years since the first century.  More religious leaders than you can count have predicted the date of the end, including Martin Luther, the Shakers, Wesley (the founder of the Methodist Church), the Millerites (they predicted it four different times), the Jehovah's Witnesses (twice), Pat Robertson (twice), and Jerry Falwell (twice.)

     One of my personal favorites has to be Mary Bateman who lived in Leeds, England.  In 1806, a hen of hers began laying eggs on which the phrase "Christ is coming" was written.  Eventually, it was discovered Mary had written on the eggs in a corrosive ink so as to etch the eggs, and then reinserted the eggs back into the hen's oviduct.  Yikes!

     Of course, the all-time winner of this bizarre competition has to be the late Harold Camping.  He predicted the end of the world on six different dates: Three times in 1984, once in 1985, and in both May and October of 2011.

     Despite all these predictions, this old world, and the little spiral galaxy we call home, and the universe itself continues on its course.  Spring follows winter; the autumn harvest is brought in.

     The Jews knew what it was like to have their entire world changed overnight, destroyed.  Their nation was destroyed and they were taken captive into Babylon around 423 BCE.  That is why the apocalyptic language Jesus used in Mark 13 was so well known.  It had been used by their greatest prophet Isaiah and by those prophets they knew well: Ezekiel, Daniel, and Joel.  When you lose everything; when your entire world is destroyed, it can feel like the sun and moon have been darkened, stars are falling from the sky, and earthquakes are shaking the whole world.  That is how it feels for so many right now.

     But if we stop and think for a moment, this is not the first time the world has ended for many of us.  Most of us have lived through the end of the world as we knew it at least once; some of us have lived through it a number of times.  Maybe it was because you lost a job or lost a relationship.  Maybe the end of the world came when you lost your home in a fire.  Maybe your world ended when you lost the dearest person on earth to you.  Suddenly, the world you had to go into was nothing like anything you knew, and you found yourself wandering as a stranger in a strange land with no familiar landmarks.  You were lost.  In my case, it has happened three times: The first time was at age eighteen; The second when I was thirty-two; and the latest time was when I was forty-nine.

So, how do you keep walking?  How do you keep hoping when it feels like the world is coming down around your ears?

     Oscar Romero, the Roman Catholic archbishop in El Salvador who was martyred for his stand for the poor and for peace in that violent and corrupt country once said,

"It helps, now and then, to step back and take the long view. The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is beyond our vision…  We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work.  Nothing we do is complete...  No statement says all that could be said.  No prayer fully expresses our faith.  No confession brings perfection.  No pastoral visit brings wholeness.  No program accomplishes the Church’s mission… This is what we are about: we plant seeds that one day will grow.  We water seeds already planted, knowing they hold future promise.  We lay foundations that will need further development… We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.  This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.  It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for God’s grace to enter and do the rest.  We may never see the end results...  We are prophets of a future not our own."

     How do you keep going?  How do you keep hoping when it feels like the world is ending?  For people of faith, and for people of no faith, I think the answer is the same:  We accept not everything is about us.  Like Oscar Romero, we accept that we are limited… our time on this earth is limited.  So, we do what we can today, and recognize much of the meaning and joy in life is found in serving others in our own day, and those in the distant future we will never meet. 

     If right now, it is feeling to you like the stars are falling from the sky and the earth underneath you is shifting, that is ok.  You are just human.  So as a limited human being, we do what we can in our time.  We can do our dishes; we can take care of ourselves and others; and maybe, just maybe, we can plant seeds of hope and kindness and justice.  Some of those seeds may grow quickly, but many will lie dormant, ready to bloom in some far-off better world.

Whose Story am I Telling?

No matter how bad a day I have had, I make time to set up my coffee for the morning.  I tell myself, “I can face anything as long as I have coffee, first thing.”  I get up at 5:00 a.m., get my coffee, and say morning prayers, but then comes the next step in my ritual that derails my day: I read the news.  There is usually not much news in the morning.  Not much new happens while most of America sleeps.  But I am a news junkie.  As I progress through my local newspaper, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and 

Facebook (in that exact order) I get absorbed in the story of the latest political crisis I already knew about yesterday, but it is always nice to have a fresh take.  I read the stories of the tragedies of others — they can make me cry.  I become completely fascinated by a recipe for a simple five-ingredient Asian dinner I can make in just fifteen minutes in my wok.  And before I know it, I have burned through the entire morning.

It used to be easier when I had to rush off to work.  I did not have time for this.  Now, with the physical distancing required because of the danger of the Covid-19 virus, most of us are finding we have a lot of time on our hands.  To be honest, I have never done well with unstructured time.  I have always liked going to work.  It gives organization and purpose to my day.  Yeah, I admit I am not very spontaneous... well, I can be, but I have to plan for it.  I do that by sometimes leaving empty spaces in my calendar... but I admit those blank spaces make me nervous.  I used to think I was lazy, but the truth is I am very motivated when I am truly committed or interested.  It is just when I do not have a plan for work or a schedule of what I want to do, I have these default time-sucking behaviors I go to: read the news, read a book, nap.

What I have begun to realize is much of my life has been spent telling stories, but not my own.  I am telling the stories of others when I become engrossed in a political story.  I am telling the stories of others when I am moved to tears over the report of a family’s tragedy.  I am telling the stories of others when I do not take time to critically think through some clever meme on Facebook.  And while I am busy telling the stories of others, I am not telling my own.

Now, in general, there is nothing wrong with telling the stories of others.  For thirty years as a teacher, I told the story of an institution, public schools.  My story was the importance of an elementary education.  For eight years as a representative of the teachers’ association in my state, I told the story of the importance of teachers and students in our society.  For fourteen years now as an Episcopal priest, I have told the story of another institution, focused on the meaning of the church and faith and community.  To be fair, the stories of institutions like the school system, the teachers’ association, and the Church became part of my life, and I still believe in them.  You too have institutions you believe in whose stories have become entwined with the story of your life.

Unless you allow yourself to become a complete narcissist, it is also important to tell the story of the sufferings of others and the need for justice as we stand for what is right.  You have to be able to tell people’s stories and have empathy for their lives.  The problem comes when you begin to spend your whole life telling stories of others, but your own gets lost.  Sadly, I have often treated my story — my personal life and goals and values — as less worthy of being told.  Sometimes it comes out in simple ways: My desk at work is spotless, but my desk at home is a disorganized pile.  Sometimes it comes out in deeper, more complex ways: I have not pursued dreams I have had since I was a young man because those other stories — usually about work — were more worthy of being told than my own.  I am afraid I have been so busy telling the stories of others, I hardly recognize my own some days.

The last thing I want to do is give another person a step-by-step list of how to begin to tell your own story; I am just beginning to learn to tell mine.  But I know the place to start is by realizing every morning the most important story you can tell is your own — not the newspaper's, not an institution's, not your boss's, not a politician's.  What you value and how that shapes your time and attention is a critical story the world needs to hear. 

There are a lot of important stories to be told in this world, stories of bravery and suffering, of triumph and defeat, of courage in the face of despotic power, and so many stories of love and compassion that feed our souls and make us better people.  Still, your story is just as worthy of being told and is as important to our world as any other, but only you can tell it.

$17.00 in an Envelope

     I snuck into the Church office at 5:30 a.m. on a Thursday to complete the last grim ritual of retirement… cleaning out my office. What with the Covid-19 virus and the importance of physical distancing at this time, I was not going to take a chance on meeting someone.

     Going through my drawers putting things into boxes, I discovered a couple things: First, I am apparently a pen hoarder (or worse, maybe I stole them from others.) No single human being needs that many pens in that wide a color selection — blue, black, green, red, even orange and purple. Second, in the lower side drawer, I found a nondescript, white envelope with $17.00 inside.


     It took me a moment, but then I remembered. This used to be Barbara’s envelope. She was an

elderly woman who lived month-to-month on a meager Social Security check. Like many folks who make a marginal living, things often got tight toward the end of the month before her check would arrive. As her priest, she would approach me for help, always embarrassed, always grateful. She never asked for much… one week it would be $5.00, maybe the next, $10.00. I told her she didn’t need to pay me back, but she would not accept it unless I agreed that she could. She had her pride, and I was careful to honor it.

     But the bookkeeping! There is not a church of any stripe I know that has not had an issue with money going missing somewhere in its past. For that reason, churches tend to have pretty strict policies about dealing in cash. I would give Barbara whatever she needed, but I had to put in a form to be reimbursed from my discretionary account. When she dutifully paid me back, I had to fill out another form and make a deposit. It got to be an awful lot of paperwork. Finally, I decided just to keep a Barbara envelope with $20.00 in my desk. When Barbara needed a little help, I had the cash; when she paid me back, it went back into the Barbara envelope.

     I had not thought of Barbara in years. She traveled on to her greater reward long ago. But just for a few moments, I sat there alone in my empty office at the end of my career and thought fondly of her. And I know when I see her again, and we are surrounded by the angels in glory in that place outside of all places and in that time outside of all time, her first words to me will be, “I owe you $3.00.”

The north wind is blowing...

“But still the clever north wind was not satisfied. It spoke of towns yet to be visited, friends in need yet to be discovered, battles yet to be fought…”   — The movie Chocolat, 2000

    Most often in life, the Holy Spirit does not appear as a blinding flash of light.  Rarely does it work

like it did when Jesus barreled over the future Apostle Paul on the highway into Damascus with a flash-bang, knocked him off his donkey, struck him blind, and then gave him a new purpose in life.  No, for most of us it is just that quiet sense of a new wind blowing through our lives.  That is how the Holy Spirit is often described in Scripture... as wind.  Sometimes it is the hurricane-force winds of Pentecost, but most times, it is just the soft, gentle blowing breeze outside of Elijah’s cave.  It is a feeling hard to pin down, a yearning, a gentle nudging.

     Now, after twenty-four years journeying with you, the wind is blowing again in my life.  Decisions such as retirement are difficult, especially when you are a person like me who is even intimidated by the towering shelves of butter at my grocery store — there are just too many options.  But I do think sometimes we hesitate to make a choice because we worry too much about making the exact right one.  While there are always obviously bad choices in life, and we have been given brains and wisdom to think about the pros and cons, still, it seems more likely we have ten or more perfectly good choices branching out from any given moment.  Some choices may be better, some worse, but all are equally blessed by God.  It is my impression God may nudge us with the Spirit, but then is curious… which way will we choose?

     With my retirement this Easter, the wind is nudging me into a new phase of my life where I plan to focus on two things I love:  Playing cello and writing.  I have kept this blog since 2009, but have been terrible about updating it in the past few years.  I hope to change that now that I will have more time.  You can follow my latest scribblings here, which will certainly not all be about church stuff.

     There are no words to express my love and admiration for all of you.  You gave me a spiritual home here at Trinity over two decades ago, and we have walked together beside still waters and, at times, through troubled ones.  After a long pastorate, the Church asks priests to step away from their churches for at least a year both to give the new person a chance and to help us let go.  But I’m not leaving Reno.  As Jonathan Livingston Seagull once said, the whole point of our faith is we are overcoming time and space.  And when you do that, all that is left is here and now.  And in the middle of here and now, don’t you think we will probably run into each other once or twice?  Love each other.  Be kind.  Keep the faith.  And what blessing is mine to give, I leave with you.

The Wisdom of the Pinyon Pine

"The most serious charge which can be brought against New England is not Puritanism but February.”

— Joseph Wood Krutch,       .

American writer and naturalist

February is not an easy month to love.  Average temperatures in Reno range from lows of 26° to meager highs of 51°.  In February, you can expect just about the same amount of precipitation as you saw in January, except by now, you are really tired of it.

In Nevada’s winter, trees and plants go dormant.  Even our hardy pinyon pines slow the process of photosynthesis in favor of resting and conserving energy.  If trees and plants tried to force growth during the winter, it would damage them.  The roots of all plants and trees, however, never truly go dormant but are in a resting state called quiescence as they watch for signals — longer days, more moisture, higher temperatures — that tell them it is time for new growth.

Americans are a hard-charging lot.  We make grand resolutions in January, and try to forge ahead relentlessly.  The drive is always to produce more, get ahead, set more goals.  When asked how we are doing, many of us are likely to answer, “Busy!”

Perhaps we could learn something about living in February from the wisdom of the pinyon pine.  Isaiah writes, “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”  This kind of thing does not come naturally to many of us.  What would our February be like if we focus on returning and rest, on quietness and trust.  God assures us our roots are never quite dormant; it is okay to just rest and return to God.   There is plenty of time.  Sitting quietly in the presence of our loving God, we gather strength and Spirit for the next vibrant green, growing season of our lives.

Slowing Down for Advent

     A few days before Halloween, I went grocery shopping, and there were aisles of Christmas
ornaments, tree lights, banners, and wreaths being stocked by somewhat frantic store elves.  I thought to myself in irritation, "It's not even Halloween!"

     For much of our lives, we never live in the moment because we are too eagerly anticipating what comes next.  I remember when I was younger thinking, "When I am 16 and can get my driver's license, then  I'll be happy."  And then after I got my license, I was thinking, "When I graduate from high school and get to college, that's when life will really begin for me!"  And then it was, "When I graduate from college... when I finish my masters degree... when my kids are a little older... when my kids are out of college..."  And so it goes.  Sound familiar to you?

     If you are like me, then Advent, that begins Sun., Dec. 2, is a season tailor made for you!  It is the time when the Church urges us to slow down, wait, rest... something wonderful is right around the corner.  We try not to get too busy or  distracted by all the ads and the tinsel and the parties.  For Episcopalians, it is a quiet time of joyful anticipation.

     While we still put up our Christmas lights and trim our trees and shop, we balance all that with peace and waiting... because we know there is a great miracle right around the corner, and we don't want to miss it.