Loving Impossibly

Love is patient, 

love is kind.

It does not envy, 

it does not boast, 

it is not proud.

It does not dishonour others, 

it is not self-seeking,

it is not easily angered, 

it keeps no record of wrongs.

Love does not delight in evil 

but rejoices in truth.

It always protect, 

always trusts, 

always hopes, 

always perseveres.

1 Corinthians 13:4-8

Going with a classic this morning, to mark 'the' Day.

Except it bears mentioning that, even though these words are widely used at weddings, it wasn't originally set in that context.

Go with me on this, because it helps affirm the 'beyond couples' thing I feel needs emphasizing every Valentine's.  

Paul is writing to the church in Corinth about a number of challenges they were facing as a congregation.  One of them was how snippety and superior some folks were getting based on the gifts and abilities the Spirit had given them to serve one another.  It seems to have turned into a competition of sorts, with egos pressing forward to be stroked.  Power struggles ensued.  A whole lot of insecurities seemed to be in play, with people more concerned about status and credibility and power than anything else.

But hey, Paul says, it's not about that.  Love is the more important thing.  And love is not like that.  Instead, it's like this...

And he describes the love that should be driving everything about how we live, and how we serve one another.

Of course, as beautiful and poetic and, yes, wedding-like this text is, it's also quite the daunting list. It might make us decide it's too unrealistic so we could give ourselves a pass.  Human relationships are complex.  Living in community is just hard.  Love actually hurts sometimes so...

Except, on the other hand, we all know people who do love like this.  We've seen it in friendships and marriages and teams and communities of faith who do indeed seem to have taken Paul seriously, and have let love be the first thing.  Sometimes against impossible circumstances.  

So this Valentine's Day, can I just say something to anyone who is loving impossibly?  All the friends and spouses and congregations who love like this? 

You are truly beautiful and brilliant in ways that show us God. 

Beautiful and brilliant.

Far, far beyond hearts and roses.

May God grant you the grace to keep showing us the way.

Love Like You Won't Get Hurt, But You Will

"God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer,

that your love may abound more and more

in knowledge and depth of insight."

Philippians 1:8-9

Still on this love theme, leading up to Valentine's Day, and likely spilling over for the whole week. Why not?

This morning, as I often do, I am reflecting on the both/and bit when it comes to forging the kind of deep bonds the Bible talks about when it talks about 'one another' kinds of love.

Paul felt it big time. His calling took him to so many places, investing in so many communities of Christ-followers. You'd think he'd sort of harden himself against it all, keep a safer emotional distance. He only got to stay in one place for short periods of time, after all. Better not let people get too close.

But he did. This piece from his letter to the Philippians is but one example of so many expressions of longing for the people he loved but couldn't be with at the moment. Pastor Paul loved deeply, and it often hurt him.

I don't know. I might be inclined to say that missionary pastors have more of an occupational hazard in this than others. But I know for a fact that this isn't true. Simply following Jesus' example of all out love for people who, for various reasons and various ways, will certainly end up causing you pain, is not by any means only the calling of the clergy. I know too many of you who love like Jesus loved and have both the joys and the sorrows to prove it.

Seems there must be a connection between love and courage.

I'm leaving it here for today. I'm tempted to reflect more on the other connection that seems to be presented in these verses -- between love abounding 'more and more' and 'knowledge and insight' -- but that's an entirely different thought. Intriguing though.

If your love is causing sorrow this Valentine's Day, for whatever reason, you're in good company.
Let's walk this together.

Real-Time and Everywhere On Purpose

1 John 4:12

No one has ever seen God;
but if we love one another,
God lives in us,
and His love is made complete in us.

Yup. I'm on a Valentine's theme this week, with Wednesday being February 14 and all the red and pink of it being something I so want to celebrate.

But not just the romance bit.

Romance is great, and I'm so glad for a life-long sweetheart. Our story is a good one, and I hope I am known for repeating it often.

It's just that I am thoroughly convinced that we miss out on the enormous scope of love when we make it about couples only. Are you kidding me? The vastly different loves of my life in the full spectrum of my relational world, bring a depth and breadth and wildness and wonder I can barely articulate.

Hard to describe, probably because, according to John's first letter, there is some manifestation of the image of God made visible in how we love one another. This is a sense of our human connections somehow "making complete" the love of the Divine.

How is this even a thing?

The invisible become visible.
The mysterious mesmerizes.
Like clouds in formation,

and forget-me-nots

sending not-so-secret messages.

Except, unlike these totally-untouched captures that I took with my phone camera, nothing about our love for one another is wispy or accidental. Quite the opposite. I would have to say that all the beautiful richness of my love life has been, in various degrees of intensity, on purpose.

What if, this week, and every week for that matter, we just told the people we love that we love them? What if we did it on purpose-like, in ways they love to hear it? What if we, on purpose, went about creating and bolstering and refining the invisible, eternal love of God, by engaging with each other in visible, tangible ways in real time?

Grateful for a Monday morning full of love.
It's everywhere.

Remembering Joe

One year.

These things feel like forever and yesterday all at the same time.

An astonishing man.
Unfaltering in spirit even as his body unsteadied itself.
As if each loss physically was a gain spiritually,
but only because he fiercely chose to make it so.

How is it that he was the one to crack the jokes, cheer us up, make us laugh?
How is it that he could be so generous with himself even as so much was taken from him?
How is it that even as the disease made its claim, he never let it define him?

If you need to know what tenacity looks like, remember Joe.
If you need to know what forgiveness looks like, remember Joe.
If you need to know what gratitude in the face of adversity looks like, remember Joe.
If you need a good joke to cheer up your heart, remember Joe.

Joe, we miss you so much.
Can't wait to worship with you again one day.
Bet you'll be on the drums.

Tossed Glove Freedom

Here's a story.  I heard it so long ago I can't properly give credit.  If anyone recognizes it and can give me the source, I would totally appreciate that.

The way I remember it goes like this.

===========

A young woman of modest means saved up enough to buy a pair of fine leather gloves.  This was in an era where gloves were very much in vogue, and just the right pair would speak volumes about one's status and position.  

She loved those gloves.  They made her feel well-dressed, like she was finally a 'somebody.'  She'd worked hard and sacrificed for them, earned them honestly.  It felt so good when she could finally go into the store and make the purchase.  Such luxury was not in any way part of her childhood, growing up in 'that' part of town.  At this time in her life, for all these reasons, the gloves were, to be honest, her most precious possession.

An opportunity came to visit a friend in the big city.  She would be gone for a month.  And not only would this be her first trip beyond her own village, but this would be her first experience riding the train.  Not a modern rail line, not back then, but a proper train with a platform and stairs up into the carriage, and windows that opened.  

Unfortunately, on the day of her departure she arrived late to the station.  She stood anxiously in line at the ticket window, and hurriedly took one glove off to reach into her purse for her fare.  Feeling very rushed she did not take the time to put that glove back on her hand while she ran onto the platform and hurried up the stairs just before the train pulled away.

Breathless, she placed her bag in the rack above her and settled herself down into the seat, taking off her scarf and tucking her purse in beside her.  That's when, with a gasp, she realized she only had one glove.  Frantic, she searched her pockets and her purse, but just then glanced up to look out the window.

There on the platform where she'd dropped it lay her beautiful leather glove.  Just one.  In her hand was the match.  

The train was leaving.  There was no going back to fetch it.  

It only took a second, that's all she had.  With determination she slid open the window and tossed the other glove onto the platform.  It landed several feet away, but still within sight of its mate.

An older woman seated across the aisle saw what happened.  "My dear, whatever are you doing throwing your glove out the window like that?"

"Now the gloves are still together," she explained, letting out a slow breath.  "If I'd kept the one and someone found the other, what good would that do either of us?  This way, someone can have a beautiful pair of fine leather gloves."

===============

I think this story has stuck with me because I am pretty sure I would not have been quick enough to think of that myself.  I'm fairly certain, actually, that I would have held on to that one lonely leather glove for a long, long time.  I'd have had a hard time parting with it, as unmatched and impractical as it would now be.

I'm afraid I would probably have kept the focus on what I had lost, rather than what I could give.  I think I would have held on tighter to what I still had, rather than be free to let it go.

There is so much freedom in letting go, though!  So much more freedom in being able to focus on what someone else might need than what I want to hoard.  

We're doing a major purge of the house we've lived in for more than 35 years right now, so this is on my mind a lot.  It's likely what prompted the memory of this story, come to think of it.  These days, I'm evaluating almost everything I own and asking hard questions about what I actually need, what's important to me, and why.

But the story goes a little further, I think.  Like the gloves represented a bit of status for this young woman, it's not just about material things.  In some ways, that's the easy part.

More insidiously, it's also about tossing onto the platform my ego, my pride, my need for approval, my need to be right, if it means someone else can gain in status, receive the attention, hear the affirmation, have the last word.   

A well-honed others-focus, if I can foster that, helps me make decisions about how I will speak and behave within all my relationships, and how quickly, how freely I toss the other glove onto the platform.  

For someone else to have.

Lord, give us the grace to throw away the other glove.

When You Can't Be There But You Are

 A vivid memory from my second trip to Thailand, and my first time actually staying at Hot Springs, happened after all the goodbyes and I was sitting on the plane waiting for take off.  In all the ways something can 'grip your heart', it actually felt like that in my chest.  And all I could think-scream inside my head was, "What have you done!?"  I was about to leave and go very, very far away from people I had hopelessly fallen in love with.

So.  Far.

Half a world away.

It's an occupational hazard, I guess, for those of us who find ourselves between the spaces because of what we've been called to do.  Or, more simply perhaps, it's the reality for lots of families.  You are irrevocably tied to people you love who are very, very far away on the planet, but very, very close to your heart.

I have been oh so blessed to have my own, DNA grandchildren so close.  We live literally 6 minutes and 10 minutes away from each other.  They are over here all the time.  We are over there all the time.

And.

I have other grandchildren, who do not carry any of my DNA but who belong to my heart also.

I'm feeling that distance particularly today because over the weekend Bell graduated from high school.

And I wasn't there.

Bell is Suradet and Yupa's own daughter, sister to Bee who was tragically taken from us at the age of 20 by motorcycle accident.  Bell was two that first visit, when I first played 'round and round the garden' with her.  She happily doesn't remember any time in her life when I wasn't part of it.  

She has grown into a strong young woman, kind and intelligent, and full of the kind of joy that every parent or grandparent wishes for their children.  Because of the unique opportunity God has given her to attend an English-based school in Chiang Mai, she is thoroughly bilingual.  This has led to her serving as my translator starting when she was about 14 or 15 years old.  We have formed a strong bond working and speaking together, and just being together as family.

And I would have loved to have been there in those moments when she marked this important rite of passing.  It's a little achy for me today to see the pictures, as proud as I am.

I'm not meaning to complain, really.  Because the thing that's foremost for me emotionally today is a deep, deep gladness.  This achy thing I've got going this morning is actually evidence of a profound gift.  Love is like that; risky that way.  When you open your arms and your heart and yourself to embrace in ways that matter, it's going to be awkward and sad and even messy sometimes.

And sometimes you can't be where you want to be, but you can be 'there' because of love.

And thank God for all the ways we can oh so more easily connect now than we could back then.  I'm so glad to get the pictures so quickly.  And I told Bell over Facebook how proud I was of her, and how much Pa Ken and I love her and are praying for God's grace over the next steps in her future.

Way to go girl!  

For the abundant riches of my life, I am unspeakably grateful.

A Day for Cake

It was chilly in our family room that day.  That explains the blanket.  The hat and scarf, though, were newly opened Christmas presents, and he agreed to put them on for a picture.  I didn't know then, we never do, that this would be the last picture of Dad and I together.

I might have asked to take off the blanket had I known.  Or maybe it's fine that I didn't.  He looks comfy.  And smiling.  

I don't have pictures of his 83rd birthday less than six weeks later.  Not sure why.  Sometimes in those later years, little gatherings could be very short and sweet, and also awkward for all the reasons life in a wheelchair when you're 83 is awkward, so maybe we didn't get a chance.  And at my ordination a few weeks after that we weren't really doing any specific photos that day.  And I remember we had to get them back to their rooms at Westmount pretty much right after the service.  So no pictures there.  I would have liked that I think.

But overall, this last one is lovely.  

Today is his birthday, so I woke up remembering these things.

And in remembering my Dad I think the best thing is how it was pretty amazing in the end.  How a very complicated relationship ended up being so redemptive, somehow in the midst of the chaos of those last 11 years of care after the stroke.  How we got to say so many good and healing things to each other as we moved through the initial event, then all the therapies and transitions and decisions and such.  So many good conversations later, as things settled into a new normal and I did his nails and cut his hair and sang him songs when he asked me to.  So many important moments in those long and frequent waits in ER that always turned into a hospital stay.  

And such a holy thing, really, in those very last hours, to have him take his last breath with my hand on his chest.

Not every daughter gets this.  I am grateful with not enough words to say it all.

Perhaps we shall have cake today.  Dad did love cake.