Wondering about a few things tonight...

Well, the T-ball season is over for another summer. The kids won their first game this morning but lost the second. It was a fun season! Zach will move up to Pee Wee's next summer. He is really excited about that. Hannah... well we will see. She really is not very competitive. Maybe she will just want to cheer her brother on?

I am wondering if I will ever get my history final done? I really need to just make myself sit down and do it. Maybe well I get done writing here, I can try and get through a few more questions. I have four left. It really is just a matter of getting started.

Tomorrow will be another day on the boat! It is supposed to be 87 and sunny! We have been on the lake a lot in the last week which is wonderful! I am getting my vitamin D stored up for the winter! I think it will be just us tomorrow. We can swim and tube and probably use our first place prize from the Fourth of July boat parade to eat supper out.

Exciting news, we have decided that Zach and Scooby will both go on the Guatemala trip this October! It will be such a wonderful experience! Wish Hannah could come too, but she is just too young. Zach is mature enough to handle the new culture as well as the physical labor. I am really excited!

I am working at getting my focus and balance back at work. I have allowed myself to let a few situations and people get me off balance. The trick is finding focus once again that doesn't included the situations and people, but instead includes God and the ministry at hand. The Guatemala trip, the trip to New Orleans next summer, formation of a youth and family ministry board will be great focuses! Part of me actually wants to just run away and not fight to get the focus back, but realize that running doesn't really get you anywhere in the end. Fighting to get my focus and energy back will be more rewarding, it will be a great learning opportunity and in the end will be successful!

I am wondering tonight too about how I will work at contextual ed to be a new experience for me. I look forward to seeing what new ministry opportunities there are at Trinity that I can experience, lead, learn and grow from. We shall see!

Well, we have a family movie playing tonight so I am going to sign off to watch a little of the movie as I sort through some church history.

Until next time...

All Registered for Fall classes

Got up early this morning to get registered for Fall classes. I will be taking four classes this fall. One of the classes is a half class and the other three are full classes. I will be studying the Demonic in Christianity. Yep the devil!

A class that will focus on spiritual practices with some studying of Luther and Bonhoeffer. This is an independent study class that a few from our cohort worked hard at getting set up with Dirk Lange while were at Luther for summer classes. It will be a great class for me as the focus will have a self care component within the spiritual practices. I am learning very early on and in some cases not early enough that self-care which is helpful when it included a spiritual practice is really important! So I am looking forward to the class. It is only open to 15 students so it will be a nice smaller group and I imagine will mostly include folks from Cohort 4.

One of the core requirements in a Synoptic Gospel in Greek so the Gospel for the Fall is Luke. Professor Barreto who taught us Greek on line last Fall is teaching this class. I look Luke in English in the Spring, so it will be fun to go back through Luke with a Greek focus this time. I hope all the work in the English sections pays off! I think it will!

Then I will be taking Foundations of Pastoral Care. The professor is Janet Ramsey and I have heard great things about her! I think he may be retired or almost retired so was glad to be able to take this class with her now, because when it comes up for us in our scheduled time to take it, it most likely won't be her.

Now the next exciting step is to wait for the course books and syllabi to be posted! I love ordering course books!!

I have three projects to finish up yet from summer session in June and then it will be nice to be able to do some reading for fun for the month of August! Or NO reading at all!!

That's all for now.

I wonder if I will make any progress on my history final today??

I wonder if there will be more days like today yet this summer...

WOW! What a great summer day it was today! We worked around the house this morning and then headed out to the lake to take the pontoon out. We tried fishing a little but that turned out to be a disaster. So the kids jumped on the tube and away we went. The sun was shining and it was warm! Hannah came in first off the tube because she got water in her eyes. Then it wasn't too much longer and Zach waved to come it too. He was cold. We fished a little more and went to comes friends on the lake's place and had a BBQ. It was a beautiful night to be on the lake. The kids each took a turn at driving the boat. Now it is time to hit the hey and start again tomorrow.

Church is at 8:30 so that means we will have to rise and shine early. I have to work for a while at the Lion' million dollar sale tomorrow and then a funeral in the afternoon.

Until next time...

Lots to wonder tonight...

Just got back this evening from two weeks at Luther Seminary for summer intensive classes. I took three classes in two weeks! WOW! The easy part was sitting in class for 7 hours a day, the works now begins! Each class has a final paper due sometime between July 10th and August 15th. I better get started right way or I am sure I will be pushing the August 14th time frame!

For two weeks we learned about early church history. We studies Augustine, Aquinas and Anslem; of course there were a lot more ... but I think they have already left my mind... Professor Sundberg was fantastic! His passion for the church and its history was obvious and made it fun to learn from him! We were given a list of 12 questions at the beginning of class. The answers to all twelve questions were given in the lecture and powerpoints over the last two weeks. The task now is to answer six of the twelve questions by writing a three page paper on each. I did two questions earlier this week so I have four to go and better get to that sooner than later!

Then I took Mission 1 which was mission of the Triune God. Basically an introduction to mission in the church. This was a good food for thought class. Most churches (or at least the ones that I have had experience in) really don't have much mission. Mission isn't the occassional mission trip or left to the missionaries the church may or may not support. Mission is about reaching outward. Mission is about share the love of Jesus with our neighbors, friends, families and others that don't know Him or His love. For the final for this class we had two choices. The first was to pick a topic related to mission and right a research paper. The second and the one I picked, was to interview 5 - 10 people in your congregation on mission. There will be some data collection on the history of the church, the interviews and then reflecting on the findings. I decided to so the congregation study because I am not sure that the church I service in now is very "mission" oriented. We are embarking on a long awaited renovation project and all resources, time and energy are (and have been for a long time) focused inward on our own project. I hope to invoke some interest and curiosity within the congregation on how we can start to turn more outward, even as we are building. Why wait? There have been mission trips in the past and there are a few very mission minded folks in the congregation, but the congregation as a whole I would say lack any kind of mission mind. I wonder what I will find? I am looking forward to sitting with folks and interviewing them on this very important aspect of Christianity and the church! I am be very surprised! I hope to get interviews set up this week!

The third class I took was Mission 2 and it was World Religions with a focus on African Traditions. It was a great class! We were blessed to have about 7 international students all from Africa in our class! We took a trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts one day to spend time with African art. We were to find a piece of art that brought about a reaction. What drew you in or scared you? How did you feel? What were you thinking? It was really a great experience! We did case studies and the group I was in had to make a decision about whether we would marry a couple that came to the Protestant Pastor as a compromise. The bride is Roman Catholic and the groom was a form Christian but now is practicing traditional African Spirituality. They was some of the traditional African rituals to be a part of the ceremony. There is a lot to think about here. What I learned about myself through this case study is that I am pretty liberal! Our final project is to find an African community and interview someone from the community about traditional rituals with the hope of possibly being invited to experience a ritual or practice. I am thinking that unless I drove to Duluth, there will be no such community near Cook. I asked the professor if I could visit the Native American reservation near by. I hope this works out and I know I can experience a Pow Wow, but hope to be able to see some other rituals and traditions too. I have started making contacts for this project already so hope by early next week to have something set up!

I am LOVING school, the learning, the stretching of my mind and self discovery that is happening! I think I would go to school for the rest of my life if I can!

There is a lot of wondering and wandering to take place the next few days as I continue to process all the information from the last two weeks.

A very big loss for not only our faith community, but for the community as a whole has happened while I have been gone, so there will be a lot of wondering going on the next few days as we prepare to celebrate the life of a very loving, caring and gentle man. What a tragic loss.

It is time to turn in! It was so great to be greeted tonight will lots of hugs and loves from my family! I sure missed them and boy will my own bed feel great tonight!

I wonder if I can sleep past 6:37 am tomorrow? My guess is YES!!!

Until next time...

I wonder...

Well, the semester is coming to a close! It is hard to believe that we only have two more weeks of postings and then on to the final papers. I wonder how these weeks have managed to go by so fast! I have learned so much this semester. Three full classes has been a lot of work! Good, fruitful work nonetheless!

There is so much going on at work as well. Change, change, anxiety, change, transition, anxiety... The congregation has filly got their "real" pastor. It has been three Sunday's now that the "real" pastor has been with us. An interim. Sorting through the hurtful label of what the opposite of "real" is (FAKE), has been tough. Giving my heart and soul to the congregation, making every effort to lead worship with respect, reverence, maturity, an enormous love of God and them, and get nothing but a slap in the face about how offering will rebound as well as attendance as soon as the "real" pastor arrives. Well.... I wondered how long I could keep that in. If they only knew how much it hurts. I guess I am just chopped liver to them.

I wonder if I will look back and think about how great of an experience this was and how much I grew from it? Or I wonder if I will always be bitter when looking back? I found some permission to let myself be hurt. I have found permission to feel angry and even feel sorry for myself. I have always figured that I should have done something different or tried to be better so it must be my fault. Instead, I am trying to allow hurt and pain so that I don't carry bitterness.

I wonder if there is any chance my first call will be to a congregation that respects, loves, prays for, embraces, that will walk along side me? I pray for the congregation that happens to be my first call. I don't know who you are, but I pray for you. I pray that we will be ready for one another. I pray that we will have mutual respect. I pray for you...

I wonder what the next few months will bring. My heart is heavy and today as I say in worship, I wanted to pack my office, and slip out the back door where no one would have noticed. I wonder if things will improve of the next months? I wonder if I am just in need of a true vacation from the office?

I know though, that I don't have to wonder about God's love for me. I know that I am a child of God and that nothing or no one will ever take that away from me!

~Blessings this Holy Week...

Life is hard

Life is a hard thing. I was at a meeting today and got hugs from some great colleagues and friends! I describe how things were in my life currently as finally having the top of my head starting to poke back up from under the water. I went on to say how I looked forward to my eyes finally surfacing so I could get some vision back and then finally my nose to start breathing again.

Between school, filling in a church and now my husband on midnights for a few weeks, I am tired. It actually all started when my dad got really sick in January. He spent a month in the hospital and the doctors tell us we was dying when he arrived and they are amazed he pulled through! Praise God! As we study Creation and the Triune God in systematic theology, I am more sensitive to the places and situations that God reveals himself to us. Really if you pay attention to what is going on around you, God is everywhere! I believe these are the places that we can and do see God face to face here on earth!

And the Trinity... what an idea to believe that the Trinity is in us and we in the Trinity!! What do you think? I think it is a beautiful image! We can never be like the Trinity, but to be in such close and intimate relationship with the Trinity, it makes sense that we dwell within each other. To read more about that idea/concept/theology read Kathryn Tanner Christ the Key.

Life is hard... so much brokenness, darkness, sadness it makes you wonder about hope... And then you are reminded about our Creator God, who created us in His image and called his creation very good. Our hope lies in Christ who died and was buried and on the third day rose again. Our hope hangs on the cross. Our hope comes in the arms of Christ who carries us through the brokenness, the darkness and sadness. He carries us back into the light.

Ash Wednesday sermon ~ unpack your bags it is Lent...

Grace and peace to you my brothers and sisters in Christ. Grace and peace to you.

A sign that winter has over stayed its welcome might be when my five year old starts looking at pictures that show sunny skies and green grass and says “mommy I want it to be that day again” I long for those days as well. I dream about packing my bag and jumping on the next plane to somewhere warm and sunny. How about you?

When is the last time you had your bags packed and were off for a weekend gateway? A trip with the family? A trip for your self? For some of us it wasn’t too long ago and for others of us, we are still waiting.

We all know there are many kinds of trips and journeys we can embark on. We also have baggage or luggage of many kinds that we can pack for those trips. Does your luggage have a bright pink baggage tag or a flashy red ribbon tied to it to easier identify it? I have a red baggage tag on mine that has Luther’s Rose on it and it says Because all Lutherans have baggage.

Yes we all have baggage. And you know I am not just talking about your favorite suitcase or luggage, but the stuff that keeps up down.

When I return from a trip away, I hate unpacking my bags. I have had my luggage bag sit in the corner of my room for days, because I just can’t bare the thought of unpacking, sorting, tossing, sifting through it. Usually half the things I pack, I never even wear and then there is that one bag that is only for carrying about 6 pairs of shows. Maybe you don’t mind unpacking your bags, but I bet there is something that needs tending (the dishes, the floor, the laundry, the bills..)something needs tending and at the moment it seems like putting it off til later is a good choice. Well your probably right not doing the dishes tonight makes room for 30 minutes of extra tv, another chapter in the great book I am reading. However, in the morning – the dishes are still there and now breakfast has just added to them. You get the picture. We all in one way or another put things off for a later time only to discover more work in the end.

This brings me to my favorite little yellow Old Lutheran tote bag that I have: it says ~ If you think this is cool, you should see my emotional baggage. Or spiritual baggage. We all have baggage. So many times along the journey in life we decide that it would be better to “deal with it” later. The hurtful words we used, or were used on us. We know how to heal the situation, but choose instead to stuff it away. To come back to it later. We are broken, we are hurt, we are grieving, we are in pain, we long for love, we feel alone. Over the years, our bag gets full, we feel heavy hearted. We can not even think about beginning to sort through the baggage. Unfortunately we can’t really tie that hot pink ribbon around it so that it can be easily identified among all the other bags. Instead our stuff just gets stuffed down deeper and deeper. Sometimes to the point that we don’t always even remember it is there.

We may not be packing our suitcases and heading for the airport tonight, but we are here this evening as we begin the journey of Lent. We are reminded that we are dust and to dust we shall return. We come before God and confess our sins known and unknown and then spend the next six weeks reflecting inward on our selves, our actions, our faith .

There is no better time than now to hear the trumpet blown, to hear the sound of the alarms going off… for the time is near. Ash Wednesday we are reminded that to dust we shall return. We are mortals and tonight and the next six weeks, we have the opportunity to sort through our baggage with God by our side so that everything old can be passed away and reconciled in Christ and on Easter morning see that a new creation has come to be.

What kind of bag did you arrive with tonight? Is it just a small purse? Or a little bigger maybe a back pack or how about a carry on. Sometimes, until we actually start unpacking we don’t know what size we carry around. We may think that we don’t actually have baggage until we give ourselves permission to look for it. I have a feelinga mine is the largest suitcase they make and I may have even had to have one of my kids sit on it in order to get it to close all the way.

So here we are Ash Wednesday dragging our oversized bags filled to the brim with unfinished business, sadness, loss, grief, brokenness, hurt, questions, frustration, wonder, loneliness. How do we start? Where do we start? I don’t actually know where or how to start. But I know someone who does. God.

God waits for us each day and wonders if today is the day we will turn to Him so he can carry our heavy bags. God waits each and every day for us to turn to Him so he can reach out his loving hand and help us along the way.

We all come to the Lenten journey with different sized baggage. We all come to Lenten journey with different ways in which we will arrive at the same destination. I am not sure what kind of baggage you are carrying with you tonight. I don’t know what mode of transportation that you are going to take over the next six weeks as we travel towards the cross and ultimately the empty tomb.

There is no better time then Lent to start unpacking your bags. A time to be still, to reflect, to seek forgiveness, to find God in your brokenness. For God is right there in our bags. God is in the middle of our grief, in the middle of our sadness, God is there so we don’t have to feel alone and God is waiting for us to come seeking forgiveness, looking for His love and then leaving with Him our baggage. God will wash our sins away. God will create in us a clean heart. God will for God is

This Lent, let yourself be freed in Christ. Free from sin, free from guilt, free from slavery that is most often slavery to ourselves. Let Christ carry your baggage for you. Over the next 40 days imagine how light our bags could be if we worked at letting go and giving to God just one burden. One situation that has your heart heavy. Give it to God Imagine how free and light you would be. Imagine the room in your heart that could then be filled up as we rejoice and celebrate the ultimate gift God gives each of us. His Son resurrected.

God invites us to Be still and know that He is God.

God invites us to Be still and Know him.

God invites us to be still and know

God invites us to be still

God invites us to be.

God's invitation to be is never ceasing and always open. May you find peace in the stillness Lent offers. May you find freedom in letting go what keeps you bound. May you find God in the midst of your brokenness and be prepared to be made new the day we come to the tomb and discover it is empty.

Amen.

I wonder...

I wonder if I will find any other ways to procrastinate writing the paper due today for Pentateuch.

I wonder if the snow will ever melt this winter?

I wonder if it is a good idea to make this blog public and link it to my facebook page?

I wonder why it is snowing outside AGAIN?

I wonder if it is possible to see God face to face these day? (I think so, do you?)

I wonder a lot these days as I study the Pentateuch, Creation and the Triune God and the Gospel of Luke. Quite a combination that somedays all together make my head spin! Great things to wonder about as I wander through the Old Testament, a Gospel and the Triune God. So much to think about. So much to wonder about and so much to just take in.

I am loving these classes and look forward to one's to come. Most of all though, I belong to a great cohort! A cohort on the same track, in the same classes, wondering the same things, but most of lifting one another up in this journey. The journey that has taken us from so many different careers, experiences, families and places in the world to one place and one journey. It is amazing that God calls each of us to this special place and special journey and I am privileged and honored to be a part of it.

I hope to share stories from seminary. Questions as I wonder. Experiences as I enter contextual ed and other pertinent or not so pertinent thoughts.

Today was camp Sunday at church! It was awesome! A Sunday set aside to celebrate outdoor ministry and more specifically Voyageurs Lutheran Ministry. It was great to have staff leading worship today! For me it was a nice break to sit in the pew and worship! Thanks VLM!!

Well, I need to write a paper of Pentateuch, work on the Ash Wednesday service, clean the house, finish the laundry! But first, I need to stop procrastinating!

~ peace to you