ThPM celebrated Rosh Hashanah last week…at least our own mutt-like version of it. A friend of a friend was there, Erika, and she’s Jewish. That always give me pause, because we mess with the traditions SO MUCH. But then again we mess with our own Christian traditions as well. We aren’t trying to be disrespectful; we’re just trying to make it real, to find meaning in our histories. Hopefully that comes across in our practices. (Erika seemed to think so.)

At any rate, we stepped into Rosh Hashanah in order to express gratitude for the season which we have just passed through (summer) and to look forward to a new beginning in the season that is fast approaching (fall). Part … {read more…}

Eden drew this picture. “Tell me about this picture Eden.” “It’s what is in my heart Mommy.” There she is on top of the heart marrying Justice, her friend from preschool. Her best friend Rosie is on the left. Inside the hearts are GigGig and Bompa peeking out of the heart windows. Paul and I are there in the bottom left hand corner (that’s me with the flippy hair.) Everything else is “rooms Mommy, for all the love that people can live in.”

I tell you, this child is my priestess.

A few days ago Eden came and sat next to me on the couch. “Mommy,” she said “I did centering prayer in my … {read more…}

Tuesday was Cate’s fourth birthday. The child development specialists say that 4 is like a window on what your kids might be like when they are 14. Apparently there are similar cognitive, social, and emotional developmental patterns. When Eden was 4 she threw herself down on the couch and said, “You just don’t understand my life!” Cate on the other hand has been feeling really frustrated and saying, “I feel angry!” Yesterday she came into my room and announced, “I love black! I only wanna wear black from now on” Then she went in and put on a black turtleneck and a black velvet skirt. It was 83 degrees out side. Watch out teen … {read more…}

I am the pastor of Room 203. It’s my job to bring these kids the love of Jesus. These are my stories. (You should all make the two-toned sound from Law and Order in your head now: domp-domp)

Lex Rox!

This is me. And this is a mountain and sea of love over me. And I’m thinking that this is what I bring to Room 203. ‘Cuz, you know, incarnation… Jesus… love..I’ve got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart…all that stuff.

Lex painted this for me and it pretty much broke my heart. Lex is my favorite kid in Room 203. I call him Lexi-Loo, which he hates, so I’m trying really hard to stop. Lex has a headful of black curls that are perpetually too long, too tousled, and too tangled. Lex has the soul of an artist and green eyes that could see through your skull. (Don’t bother trying to BS this kid)

Lex is also in trouble a lot.

I’ve made it my duty to touch base with Lex every single day. Sometimes, I commiserate with him when he’s in the Uncooperative Chair (which is often). I was playing with my hot wheel (sniffling) and it was my dad’s hot wheel (a bit hysterical now, because dad doesn’t live at home) and it went in the 176 box!(wailing) (The 176 box is the place where things go and you can’t have them back until the last day of school–day 176.) Sometimes I intercede for him with another kid. Natalie, you say Lex stepped on your toes and he says he didn’t step on your toes. Since its morning and we’re starting fresh let’s just dust our hands off and start fresh okay? No one needs to talk to Mr. C. It’s all good right? Sometimes I try to cut him off at the pass before he gets busted. Lex, karate chopping hands are not for the classroom, right kiddo? But mostly I just tousle his hair and smile at him.

Then one day, he made me this picture and my heart melted.

Later that day I called his Mom and Lex’s voice was on the answering machine. So instead of leaving a message for Mom, I just told Lex how I’d had a great day with him and that I thought he was a great kid. His mom, who I’ve never met, called me back to thank me. I was afraid she would think I was a total weirdo kid-stalker, but instead she said that Lex really needs that right now and that he looked really proud when he heard the message. Then she and I had a great talk. I like her. She’s got spunk. Must be where Lex gets those eyes. That kid slays me. I love him so much!

The Quiet Corner

There is a child curled in the Quite Corner behind the folding screen. She is sobbing, fat tears rolling down her cheeks. I know this child is perky and bright, bilingual but doing better than the other bilingual kids and eager to help them along, a natural leader. I also know her home is very fractured. A step mom and infant brother in another country with grandma. A step dad and birth mom expecting and other baby here soon. Free breakfast, free lunch. Thing are complicated. Today she is crying because last night she broke something of her older sisters: a ceramic ring that sits on top of a light bulb and spreads scent through the room. My mom yelled at me. And she sayed a bad word at me. And she kept saying the bad word at me. And my Dad was watching TV and he just keeped watching the TV. And when we went to bed I sayed to my sister ‘I’m sorry,’ and she wouldn’t say nothing. The heartbreak, betrayal and abandonment in that short paragraph were so big. It floored me, frankly. So I prayed silently. I prayed the same thing I pray often for my own children, “Lord, heal the hurts of this day.” And we talked about how hard it is when a family member isn’t ready to forgive you. I and finally I said, I know someone who helps people forgive one another, and I’m going to ask him to help your sister forgive you and for you to be friends again, okay? I’m going to ask my friend to carry some of the hurt and sadness you are feeling so it won’t feel so heavy to you. I’m going to do that all day, and then you can tell me about it later. The little girl just nodded and held my hand and I patted her back until she calmed down.
About a month later I was in the classroom, roaming around talking to this kid and that kid, when the little girl came up to me and said, Remember when my sister was mad at me? Well we’re friends now! I’m sure they had reconciled long ago, but she suddenly remembered and wanted me to know. It reminded me again about how ministry works. We think we are serving “the world” and “the world” is really blessing us.

Mr. C’s Cheerleader

Room 203 has a male teacher. This is pretty rare, a male kindergarten teacher. Rarer still that this successful MBA would decide to go back to school to learn how to teach five year olds
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What if the women had been able to tell the story? What if Eve had been the one to describe God, to give the divine a name? What would have rolled off her tongue, what would my mothers have inscribed if their hands have been taught to write?

Why do we know so little of our mothers? Why were they silenced and by whom – and how different is that really from the way women’s stories are silenced now because they are different than the rest? Is it so different now, when these new sung tales are feared and quieted because they are something other (in manner if not in substance) than what heretofore had been told? (It makes me … {read more…}

A year ago I was having my house painted by this really neat guy named Jim Henderson. He used to be a pastor at a mega church. Now he runs Off the Map (very incarnational evangelism/missional living stuff). His day job is painting houses. (Email me if you live in Seattle and have a painting project to hire out — I’ll hook you up!) Anyway, last Summer I had just started out on the adventure that is ThPM, and frankly, I was splashing around a lot. My coworker, Bill, had already advised me to attach myself to Jim’s hip at the earliest possible moment. So one day, I stood on my front lawn and looked up and Jim on his ladder and asked him if he wanted to go to lunch.

“Are you asking me to lunch?” he said.

Uh oh. Had I crossed some sort of gender boundary or something? Yikes!

“Yeah. I’m asking you to lunch.” I replied.

“‘Cuz ten years ago no pastor would invite me, a housepainter, out to lunch to talk about church planting stuff.”

(laughing) “Well, Jim, I’m pretty sure ten years ago no pastor would have invited me, a woman, out to lunch to talk about church planting stuff either.”

So. We two misfits, we went to lunch. And that was the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Jim spent the whole summer painting the house. We stretched it out as long as possible because I liked having him around for counsel and conversation, and it worked out well for him because he had to “push pause” (as Cate would say) on painting in order to travel for OTM conferences. Cate was only 2 at the time and couldn’t say Jim’s name right so he became Missser Geeem — a much beloved jack-in-the-box appear in windows in paint spotted overalls. We instantly fell in love with his wife Barb as well and now we feel weird if we don’t have some sort of contact with one or the other of them every week or so.

This morning, the girls and I were doing encircling prayer. We make a circle with our hands and imagine that some part of our world is inside the circle. Today we were imagining our neighborhood inside the circle. Then we pray, “Encircle us Lord with your love, keep….within, keep….without. For you are love and within your love we stand.” The girl take turns pretending to pick things up and put them inside or outside of the circle. (Keep making friends inside, keep fights outside. Keep playdates inside, keep robbers outside.) After we’d done that for awhile, Eden asked to email this to Mr. Jim:
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I spent the morning on my knees. Nope, I wasn’t praying, at least not in the typical sense of the word. I was on my front sidewalk with a package of egg-shaped colored chalk marking out these messages in opposite directions from my front door.

It’s Eastertide, Solstice, a season of light. The light in me greets the light in you.

May the blessing of light be on you, may the blessed sunlight shine on you like a great fire.

In the middle there’s a big, poorly drawn sun with the world ‘elohim’ under it in little tiny letters. Some would say that I should have just skipped the ‘elohim’ all together, but some are not me; and me, I’m Jesus-y (as Anne Lamott would say) so the ‘elohim’ stays.

Here’s a little aside for you: I read somewhere recently that ‘elohim’ is term used to represent the feminine side of God’s nature and that it fell out of favor for the more masculine “yahweh.” (I really really hope that this was not in the DaVinci Code, because it would be really lame to quote that particular piece of fiction as though it were a textbook. Please please let me be thinking of Susan Monk Kidd or something.) I wonder if that’s true, about ‘elohim’. And if it is true, why did we abandon one for the other? Probably because of whom the story tellers have been in the past. But now women are starting to be story tellers again, in the public realm, so maybe the stories will change. Maybe we could start telling elohim stories. We were standing on the sidewalk, admiring my handiwork when I said this to my housemate, and then I added, “Or we could just be pissed off.” And Sharon, who is the gentlest person I know, said, steadily, “Yeeeees, but sometimes you have to be a little pissed off so that you get to the point where you are telling the stories.” As the Brits would say, “Right.”

Anyway, I am totally obsessed with all things light related. …
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I love the stuff of ritual, and liturgy, and holy spaces. I love the high holy seasons. If I had any time after my family and ThPM, I would try to make a living consulting with churches and teaching them how to listen to their artists. I would try to show them how to let someone other than the worship team direct worship once in a while. I would show them how to reclaim our historical traditions and breathe new life into them. I would help them discover what the Jews mean when they say that every one of them has actually lived the experience of the Pass-over. I would release the worship of … {read more…}

ThPM wrapped up around midnight last night and Cate crawled into my bed shortly before 7am. (Yawn.) I told her she had to lay quiet until “7 zero zero.” As she cuddled up next to me I started praying a blessing over her and wondering if we were teaching her enough about the Bible, Jesus, and our story — since she doesn’t go to Christian school or Sunday School and we are kind of hit-or-miss with the whole praying at bedtime and reading Bible stories thing. Right about then Eden came into bed. Without being prompted she told about this waking dream she had just had before she came into my room.

Eden and Jesus’s Castle

I saw a messy castle and … {read more…}

A couple of people have asked about how I/we use centering prayer, so I thought I’d write about it here a bit. The centering prayer guru, as far as I can tell, is M. Basil Pennington. He has a simple, thin book with instruction on centering prayer and lectio devina entitled An Invitation to Centering Prayer. (And now a pitch for a new friend…you can order it from beanbooks.com for 25-30% below list price. ISBN #07648072X, Liguori Publications) There’s also another book on contemplative practices which I’ve found helpful. It’s directed at youth, and too “I’m soooo postmodern” in its layout” (if you ask me), but it’s simple and you don’t have to wade through a bunch of theory to get to the practical bits — which, as a tri-vocational person, I really appreciate. It’s called Soul Shaper by Tony Jones (ISBN 031025101X, Youth Specialties)

The basics presupposition of centering prayer is that you aren’t asking for anything. In this sort of prayer, you aren’t going to God for instructions, marching orders, a good rotor rootering of the soul or anything of the sort. You are just setting aside some time to be present to God. Now, when you are present to God, sometimes some of that stuff happens. But in my experience, it’s not usually that direct. That stuff happens later, because I’ve been present to God. But during centering prayer, I just get to be with God, which is so very counter to the evangelical culture, as I’ve experienced, that this form of prayer seems completely nutso.

I love it.

So, the basic practice of centering prayer is:
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