Roots

This particular contemplative reflection was inspired by the day I spent walking around Skagway, Alaska.  My Great Grandfather on my dad's side of the family spent time in Skagway before heading out on the Chilkoot Trail during the days of the Yukon Gold Rush.  We still have his diary of his days in the Yukon and I was able to read it before our trip to Alaska.  My day walking the ground he potentially could have walked got me reflecting on my own sense of rootedness and how it has developed.  

This poem seems a fitting way to end my journey back over my week in Alaska finding well established roots and creating some new ones as well.

Roots

Some have roots in place.

Some have roots in the passing of tales.

Both create a connection that draws one

Deep into a sense of belonging.

My roots come in the passing of tales.

These tales I pass on to my daughter,

Helping her to create her own roots.

These are more than stories.

They are the DNA of our family core values.

The DNA of

                     Hope

                     Faith

                     Strength

                     Risk

                     Tenacity

                     Family

It is these things that hold strong in my center.

That are my guides,

Even with out my awareness.

Having had my feet in the place of ancestors and history,

my awareness of my own rootedness dawns clearer and deeper.

With the awareness comes a settledness that I have not known before.

No more regret for rootedness of place.

Instead a prayer of thanksgiving for a rootedness that can go with me

Where ever life may take me.

Coming into the Family of God

In an earlier blog post I mentioned that I was participating in a discipleship class with my daughter. Only I was not leading the class, I was present as my daughter’s mentor. Each day we had a bit of reading and discussion from the book we were using, “Baptism Ahead.” We met for five weeks with a two other kids and their parents. This has been a wonderful journey to be on with C. I am humbled to admit that it was not only C that learned on this journey. I discovered that I too had much to learn. I had to learn to step back and let her guide me and by doing so we went to some amazing unintended places off the curriculum path discussing about diversity of our world and the image of God as male and female, to name a couple. I was blessed to hear some of her deepest thoughts and wonderings. I was also blessed to rediscover some of the simpler, pure, faith filled answers that can come only from the eyes and heart of a child. More than once in this time the phrase “and a little child shall lead them” came to mind. This preparation experience was a sacred meeting of the place where my role as mother meets my experience and training as clergy.

Even at the tender age of seven it became very clear that she had a deep understanding of what it means to be disciple and so I was not surprised when she told us that she was ready to accept Christ and be baptized. I found myself appreciating this at an even deeper level having been present to some of her innermost thoughts coming to this decision. What I was not prepared for was the way my soul jumped and sang with joy as she asked me to be the one to baptize her. Our church has a tradition of doing baptisms in a local lake and parents or important mentors being in the water with the baptism candidate and our pastor. We were to get the privilege of being the ones to do the baptizing. Even knowing this would be what would happen, it was nice to have C acknowledge that she wanted me to be an integral part of this sacrament.

Today we celebrated her baptism. Before we went to the lake we sat down as a family to give C a family blessing and equipping. Her Grammie and Boppa, my parents, gave her a Bible, my husband gave her a CD of music familiar to her from worship, and I gave her a cross that had been given to my mom, who gave it to me when I was in need of a cross. We each spoke words of why we were giving her these gifts, these tools for her faith journey. I spoke about how these were more than just gifts, but our way of equipping her for her ongoing path of discipleship.

Even at a young age, she gets the importance of ritual and how important this day is to her. This was deeply evident by her words in the car to the lake. She spoke about how excited she was to gain so many brothers and sisters in Christ. To hear her connect so deeply to this gaining of family gives me pause. To have such words of welcome and belonging being spoken by her reminds me of the many ways church has been family to me. Hearing it from her, nudges me to remember that more intentionally.

Standing in the water listening to the words of baptism I remembered the day my own father, also an American Baptist Pastor, baptized me and marveled at how I was blessed to do the same for my daughter. The ritual of baptism, as we practice it, is simple in and of itself. When you add the layers of family and church tradition, it becomes more than a simple ritual, it becomes a sacrament beautiful and life giving. The baptism began with our pastor speaking the words of baptism, my daughter making her profession of faith and my husband and I laying her back into the water and bringing her up out of the waters with a glowing, smiling face to the celebratory clapping and cheers of her church family who is so important to her. And much like Mary, I cherished all of these things in my heart.

The service concluded with communion. I was blessed to serve my daughter her first communion. I was even more blessed to be the first person she served communion to. To the accompaniment of Amazing Grace I watched her serve our church family communion with her other newly baptized brothers and sisters in the faith. I got teary and my heart grew just a bit more knowing I was once again in that holy place where my motherhood runs smack into my ministry. I am left with no deep theological thoughts, only deep, deep awe at the grace that runs so fully in this place.

A Portable Christmas

Seeing as how we have not yet reached Epiphany, another Christmas post seems very appropriate to me right now. We have traveled to Hawaii several times, but have always wanted to travel there at Christmas time. So this year we packed up the family – mom, dad, kiddo and grandparents – and went to Hawaii for Christmas.  In order to do this some things had to be different. Most different was that there were no under the tree presents, the trip was the present. 

           

When one is taking your family Christmas celebration on the road, it takes quite a bit of planning and thoughtfulness. I found myself sorting through all our traditions and saying is this is a tradition because it is truly important to how we celebrate Christmas, or is it a tradition because we have always done it this way. This thought pattern helped me determine what was truly important to our celebration this year.  So the “stuff” of Christmas we took with us was our Christmas stockings (an important tradition four generations old), a picture of the nativity that my daughter colored on the airplane and our version of a portable Advent Wreath, once again colored by my daughter. There was no tree, no lights, no extra trappings. It was our most important traditions, our Bible on the iPad with the Christmas Story and us together as family.

Attending Christmas Eve services is an important ritual in our family, but being unfamiliar with churches in the area we decided to do our own. Easy to do when you are a chaplain and grandpa is a retired pastor. We cooked dinner in our condo and ate it on the lanai with colored nativity and Advent Wreath with electric candles adorning the center of the table. After dinner we read the Christmas story, talked about the word for the day from the Advent devotional we were following and “lit” the wreath. We ended by singing “Silent Night” and Joy to the World.” My father reflected how to him our service was reminiscent of the Jewish tradition of family worship at the table after a meal.  It struck me as a very appropriate way to celebrate the birth of a Jewish child that was the Christ Child. I have been at many Christmas Eve services, many of them very moving and special. But this in its bare bones simplicity that focused on the Christ child due to lack of trappings held a deep, deep meaning to me.

Christmas morning we got up early (3 am) to drive up Haleakala (the volcano on Maui) to watch the sunrise. There is only one way to describe the experience of watching the sunrise on Christmas morning from the top of the world. Holy Amazement. The whole time as I was fighting to stand upright in the bitterly cold wind (we were above 10,000 feet) all I could think of was the first two verses of Genesis; “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters (Genesis 1:1-3, NIV). And also John 1: 1-2, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning” (NIV). On the top of that volcano with about 200 – 300 of the closest strangers, as the sun rose, it became reverently quiet. To see such beauty of Christmas morning breaking with the words of scripture echoing in my head was humbling to say the least and deeply holy at the heart of the experience. It was worth every hour of lost sleep and is an experience that will forever more shape my experience of why it is that I, as a Christian, celebrate Christmas.

That afternoon we spent playing in the water on the beach. The gift of fun and laughter was very much at the center of the afternoon.  As was the gift of humility as I attempted to bodysurf and provided great entertainment to my family and any watching from the beach.   

We may have spent Christmas in a very exotic location, but it was actually far from exotic. Instead it was beautifully simple giving me something much more profound than I could have ever expected. Christmas this year was something so much more long lasting than the few special trinkets I received in my stocking. It gave me a deeper connection to my appreciation of the Christmas story and the gifts of Advent of Love, Hope, Peace and Joy. It gave me time to deeply connect with my family, away from the distractions of the busyness of a home Christmas. I experienced Christ in a whole new way through those that choose to serve us weary travelers on the blessed day of Christmas. This portable Christmas in many ways, gave the spirituality of Christmas back to me in a whole new way. For this I am deeply grateful. 

Mommy would you just be with me: Navigating the doing vs. being of family life

When it comes to just being in the presence of people and not feeling like I have to be doing something, I knock this one out of the park as a chaplain. However, at home it’s a whole other story. Fall and into the Advent/Christmas season tends to be a busy creative time for me with multiple birthdays, Halloween and the requisite costumes, and other tempting seasonal projects. I can get a bit create-obsessed, and it is usually creating for someone I love.   

This is all well and good, particularly when my creating obsession leads me to coolest mom ever status by my daughter because I had created the absolutely perfect “Frozen” themed napkin rings for her fancy birthday dinner. Or more recently as my husband and I spent many hours painting and decorating her newly re-done room, that she has dubbed perfectly her and thus launches us once more to coolest parent status.

But there are other times when my penchant for creating leads me to having blinders on and I then miss what my family is really asking of me. The light dawned one night after “spending time” with my daughter earlier this fall. She was watching a movie and I was sewing something for her. I asked her how the evening was, and in her young truthful way, she told me it was not what she had hoped for. She had really just wanted me to sit on the couch and watch the movie with her. To just be with her, not doing anything.

Let me tell you this was a very humbling moment. It was at that time that I realized the very thing I pride myself on doing so well as a chaplain was the one thing I was really failing at, at home. It is never a pleasant experience having your child call you out on something, especially something so crucial as being fully present to her/him. Fortunately I believe in grace, both giving and asking for it. In this moment, I found myself asking my daughter for grace and forgiveness for missing the mark completely on her need. I was blessed to receive it.

But the thing is, this lesson only works if I make the changes my mistake pointed out to me. So I find myself questioning, why is it so hard to just be with my family? Is it the stack of dishes sitting in the kitchen, the laundry that needs to be done, the to-do list a mile long that drowns out the more important needs of just being quiet and without distraction with my family. Perhaps. Maybe, though, it is more the case that at certain times my priorities get out of whack and I lose perspective on what is truly important. And this is why I am grateful for grace and a very smart daughter.

So as we enter the season of Advent, a time of preparing our hearts for Christ’s birth, I also recognize we are entering a season of busy. The parties, the gifts, the decorating, the baking, and the list could go on. I am trying something new this year I am simplifying and letting my very smart daughter guide me on the experiences of the season that are important to her. I’m taking a brave step and letting go of the seasonal to do list and having faith that the most important things will get done. Hoping that by the time my family is gathered around me on Christmas Eve and Christmas I have given them the best gift of all, my time being fully present with them.

There is one other very important lesson I have learned, sometimes the things you do the best at your job are the hardest to do at home. Because either you are worn out from doing it all day at work, or maybe even more importantly because you can’t really be the chaplain for your family.  But then, that’s another blog for another day.