I so enjoyed reading Pastor Kristie Finley’s blog about “Play”.  I agreed very much with the lost art of play, with joy and sorrow dwelling in the same space within my heart as I read it.  

Here’s the “Joy” side of the coin. Play was very much a part of my life not only as a child with other children, but throughout my relationship with my Mom. We were very silly “sisters” indeed, always doing something fun. Rainy days brought out board games of strategy. Sunny days were spent on bicycles, swings, slides and teeter totters, hopscotching on the various chalk lines we would come across on our long walks together, or breaking out in spontaneous and hilarious public dance move challenges, random “red light – green light” or Simon Says games that broke up boring chores, or engaging in pretend scenarios that we would create for ourselves when at home or in public.  “Oh, let’s be posh British world travelers today as we lunch” I’d say, and naturally she’d play along and we’d create these characters, accents in tow throughout the meal and point out how this or that was, compared to our hyperbolically vast mansions back abroad. Once we pushed past the exit doors of the restaurant, we’d explode with laughter at our little secret. 

Mommy taught me, or rather showed me that the ability to play was God’s precious gift to us all to create, and imagine and connect. It was healing. Like air to breathe, and water to drink. Throughout these exchanges she and I had with one another, I learned how to laugh at myself, and be comfortable with knowing that the playful spirit was always within my reach if I would just reach for it, and not care what anyone thought. Joy!  The world didn’t give it, and the world couldn’t take it away. Hallelujah!

But now.

Those things we did  –  those things we would still be doing – just a few years ago have abruptly stopped. With her passing, my childhood friend of these decades, the challenge to find play now feels ever elusive. Distant. These memories of play are almost like an echo. That is the “Sorrow” side of the coin in this healing process I hope by God’s grace to break through one day. To reach again. Just like these little ones that have taken over our church campus for these few weeks – Imagine Day Camp –  there is still that childlike little person within me, desperate to laugh, and jump and to play! To find new games, and to fellowship with others. Especially now, in a world of ever increasing vitriol and uncertainty, I think it’s important that we remember how to play.  Play keeps us young, and keeps our spirits filled with joy, as I suspect God intended it to. I hope that we can. I hope that I can. I pray for this daily. May God help us all to play, and play well.

Blessings,

Susie Lofton

Play, its something we all need but as we grow up we fill our time with “more important” things. As an adult it is a blessing to have an excuse to play with abandon. I get to do that every week when I spend time with my 2-year-old grandson. 

He woke up the other day, found a pirate hat and Ninja Turtle sword in his room and he was off.  I usually just chase after him, but he demands that I stay in character. He flies down the street on his scooter, that has transformed into a pirate ship, and the adventure begins.

I remember taking my son, his father, to any open gym he could find to shoot hoops. I was the rebounder and we didn’t talk much, but it sure was fun. To just run, and throw was wonderful.

Oh, to be able to totally immerse ourselves in the world we knew as children. Games like hide and seek, capture the flag, or water fights allow us to escape from the stress of what is happening in our adult world. To breathe deeply and laugh sets us free. We can connect with ourselves, our children , and each without an agenda.

I have taken groups of young people, and adults to Covenant Harbor for retreats. I haven’t been to Covenant Point, but I think I understand why these camps are so precious to the congregation. You are immersed in nature and able to return to that joy of play. Within that freedom you are able to clearly feel the Holy Spirit run with you and your cares flow off your shoulders like water.

Play is restorative. Your endorphins kick in and you can’t help but smile. So, I wonder, why do we relegate play to the back of the closet where our old mitt, field hockey stick, or deflated basketball reside? 

There is a lot of research about the benefits of play for both children and adults. Marie Montessori is often credited with claiming the “play is the work of childhood.” It is how we all first learn. Play is a natural stress reducer, stimulating creativity, enhancing brain function (really good for us adults,) and strengthening relationships by building trust, empathy, and social connection. 

While in seminary I spent a week at a camp for racial and economic reconciliation with middle schoolers. Much of what divided these children melted away as they swam, canoed, ran sack races, and prayed together. Playing allows us to connect with our neighbors in authentic ways that dissolves what divides us. 

So, maybe wait until the weekend when it’s cooler, grab someone you know, a kid or adult, and go out into God’s glorious creation and play with abandon, like the child you still have inside.

Kristie Finley

This past Saturday came a Peterson family wedding in Beloit, Wisconsin. Bonnie’s family, as you know, has welcomed me so fully into their clan, so I was excited for the gathering, and of course to celebrate Anna and Nick’s love and the promise of unfolding life together.

The weather was stunningly beautiful, as it has been of late. Driving west toward Rockford the puffy white clouds seemed endless in the bright blue sky. The sun was warm and the breeze was cool.

Following a lovely wedding ceremony at the Church, we made our way, following the crowd to the country club, where the reception began on the vast veranda overlooking the golf course. Yes, my mouth was watering — wishing for the chance to get out there as much as for all the appetizers and fizzy summer drinks.

It was all just as expected, and wonderful. Except, that is, when I found a childhood friend I hadn’t seen in a long time, who I didn’t know was a close family friend of the bride’s parents and so there for the celebration. Greg and I spotted each other and did the awkward, non-verbal “I think that’s you, but is that really you?” thing — finally smiling at the same time realizing it was so, and moving toward each other in embrace after all the years.

Thankfully we had the strength and will to get through the surface things — the weather, the cubs and bears, and the beautiful spot — and what followed was a half hour of reminiscing, of remembering, or re-connecting and of risk-taking. Shared experiences of the “remember when” brought us laughter and joy. Family updates about parents and siblings led to many other memories and caught us up. But then, just when it could of well ended with “so nice to see you”, it didn’t. We shared some of the challenges we’ve each faced over the years, some sorrows and griefs, of relationships still undone and distant. Greg shared with me how he wished our own friendship could have been closer years ago, and I responded in like mind. Dynamics of “in crowds” and cliques that hurt fifty years ago were remembered. We both shared how powerfully those realities from long ago still affect us. It all ended with a long hug and mutual blessing.

Home now a few days later, I am moved by that encounter. It came as an unexpected gift. It’s a reminder that we never know what potential a moment holds for remembering’s power when it comes to life’s present moment reflectively. Our summer book discussion last Thursday evening focused on vulnerability. The author, Rachel held Evans says “So perhaps wholeheartedness does not mean reductive thinking that clings to the idolatry of sharp contracts between black and white but rather a recognition and acceptance of the reality of the vast and beautiful landscape of grays.” (Wholehearted faith, p.45).

Greg and I were able to risk getting into the grays of strained teenage relationships and hurt feelings from fifty years ago, and it seems this was so healing for both of us. Surely the Spirit was there in the conversation. Here’s to the vast and beautiful landscape of grays.

How long has it been since you have remembered life way back when with a childhood friend?

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Coffee cup is in hand this morning. The first cup of the day is always a special moment, for a few reasons. There’s the caffeine of course, which helps me continue the process of waking up. There’s the drip sound, and the delicious smell that fills the kitchen. Alongside at some point come the morning greetings and the “How did you sleep?” and “How does your day look?” catch up check-ins. There’s the morning rub with bear, whose always first up and ready to go.

But today as I open the cupboard and rifle through the mugs, I realize why we have so many. Almost every one of them recalls memories — some of places we’ve been, others of moments we’ve shared, some of most memorable days with family and friends, and others literally created, formed by the hands of those we know.

There’s the Yosemite mug my brother Eric and wife Patty gave to me last time we were there. It maybe the most beautiful spot in creation I have yet seen in this world. There’s the big yellow lab mug that Hannah, Sarah and I brought back from palm Springs for mom when we were grieving the loss of Silas. I’m drinking from it just now. Oh look, there’s the Country Music Hall of Fame mug I got for Stina at the Goodwill store for Christmas as a kind of joke, but it’s no joke, because it’s my favorite these days. Steamboat Springs calls out from the upper shelf, bringing memories for Bonnie of her years living and skiing in Colorado. The cubs, the bears and the bulls represent, as does the Masters. Others bring memories of seminal places in our life memory — Bethany Covenant Church, North Park University and Seminary, Chicago, Cape Cod, Seattle, and Stockholm. And then many beautiful, seemingly benign beautiful blue potted mugs, that are most treasured because they come from the creative and careful hands of a friend as gifts.

I could go on and on as I look over the shelves. No wonder we have so many mugs and can’t let them go! I’m left with an overwhelming sense of how blessed Bonnie and I have been over these last thirty-three years, and how we hope for so many more to come. I’m thinking about those we’ve lost and those who’ve come into our lives, the places we’ve been blessed to live and work, the communities we’ve been a part of, the vacations we’ll always remember and treasure, and the friends we have and love. And all on a shelf!

What stories and memories do your coffee mugs hold? Take a look, remember, and give thanks!

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Praying  (by Mary Oliver)

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

I don’t know about you, but I struggle with prayer. Always have, and I’m afraid, always will. Or maybe the struggle is to come to grips with what we’ve decided counts, qualifies, and what is effective in the end. I’ve always taken comfort in those disciples who begged Jesus, “Lord, teach us how to pray.” (Luke 11:1). In their imploring is both a confession of struggle and a longing for new strength and understanding.

Me too! Me too! Both the struggle and the longing. How about you?

Like so many of Mary Oliver’s poems, this one about praying invites me into a more hopeful space. Maybe she’s right – that the secret of a praying life is accepting the grace of what “it doesn’t have to be.” If you’re like me – and you don’t usually find the exquisite and profound words (that would be the blue iris!), and the truth is you often have no words at all; if your secret prayer closet habits, would they become public, cause you to shutter with fear; if doubt and questions haunt you into feeling that your faith is, after all, inadequate; then I say, welcome, welcome. Your struggles are mine.

But what if Mary is right? What if prayer’s invitation is an open door into a whole new world, or put bluntly – what if prayer is God’s primary way to speak, and for me to be quiet – simply to open the door of my life, and receive what God has to say, to give. What if the contest is about who can be quiet, and still, who can listen and wonder…these are hopeful and inviting words.

Read the poem again. Better yet, a few times. It’s short enough to memorize, and then you and I can pretend the Holy Spirit is speaking to us, again and again, reminding us that it’s not a contest, but an invitation, should we desire a shared life with the God of the Universe. Now that sounds hopeful!

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

On Pentecost Sunday, following our own worship service where the dove flew through the sanctuary, we sang of the Spirit of gentleness and of the living God, and reflected on how this Spirit that came at Pentecost helps us as Christians today live lives filled with the Spirit’s fruit, I attended the Pentecost service at Iglesia del Pacto Evangélico de Albany Park. I clapped along with an amazing worship band, followed a hand-out filled with passages about the Spirit’s presence, and was greeted in Spanish and through hugs by members of the community. Ninety-five percent of the service was in Spanish. I did my best to follow the sermon, sing along, and greet my neighbors in the language I grew up learning from elementary school to college. But, it’s been eight years or so since I took my last Spanish class, so I’m more than a little rusty. 

I went to college at Michigan State University. I was drawn there for their top-tier education program, and began college as an elementary education major and Spanish minor. I felt called to ministry the summer between my freshman and sophomore year, and so after 3 semesters as an education major I switched my major to sociology. The Spanish minor was one of the longest minors there was and so, to ensure I’d graduate on time, I dropped it. I miss it, and now that I’ve concluded my seminary studies, I hope to dedicate more time to practicing my Spanish again. 

I’m ruminating so much on the language here because, while at my second Pentecost celebration of the day, I realized how wonderful it was that I got to worship that day in both English and Spanish, with both hymns and a worship band, with dancing and clapping, and while watching Pastor Pete fly the dove over my head. All of these expressions represent the true spirit of Pentecost. 

In Acts chapter 2, when the Holy Spirit came and settled on the believers, everyone began speaking in languages other than their own. Every person and people group present that day heard their language spoken and witnessed their culture being expressed, all because of the Spirit’s presence and power. Many believe Pentecost to be the beautiful reversal of the story of the Tower of Babel, found in Genesis 11. In that story, the people ignored God’s command to be fruitful and multiply, to spread out over the whole earth, essentially, to become diverse and create different cultures. Instead, they spoke one language, and to avoid being spread out throughout the world, they built a tower and city for themselves. But God, not to punish them for disobedience per se, but to fulfill the intention that always was, mixed up their languages and spread the people across the land. See, God loves and intentionally created different languages, cultures, nations, and people. Every single one reflects a part of who God is and who God has created us to be. By expressing our own culture, we honor God. But solely prioritizing and witnessing only our own cultural expressions, limits God and we end up missing out. 

At Pentecost, the Spirit came to all people and all were asked to speak another language and cross cultural barriers. In the ways that you can during this season of Pentecost, the longest of the entire church year, I invite you to learn about a different culture, speak a different language, break bread with those across cultural lines, and also, celebrate your own culture, but de-prioritize it too. One tangible way we can all do this this summer, is to attend a picnic on July 18 that our Becoming Neighbors group is hosting for Winnetka Covenant Church and Iglesia del Pacto Evangélico de Albany Park. We hope you can come, to have fellowship together, break bread, practice your Spanish, and become an even better neighbor. 

Con amor, 

Pastor Lynnea

The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

God’s loyal love couldn’t have run out, his merciful love couldn’t have dried up. They’re created new every morning. How great is your faithfulness! (The Message)

This foundational scripture, a kind of stubborn and defiant declaration of faith, comes in the midst of lament, of self-reflection around life’s brokenness, pain, and sorrow. This is a reminder that our faith journey can be most deeply formed by moments, days, and even seasons of struggle. Can be….realizing of course that life’s struggle and pain can also deeply wound our trust and dependence on God. As always, God gives us freedom to journey on together or not, and reserves the right to stay with us whatever we decide!

When struggles come, I find myself latching on to Hymns of faith, and especially the comfort they lend often found in their great cadences. Throughout this summer, I’m going to blog about what some of these are for me, hoping you’ll consider your own “top ten”.

Waking up last night with nature calling, I noticed that before I even was aware I was humming the tune to Great is Thy Faithfulness (Covenant Hymnal 78), and finding that delicious and inviting phrase which is which describes so beautifully how I long to live, with a spirit that finds “Strength for today, and bright hope for tomorrow.” The wonderful thing here, “blessings all mine” as the writer describes it, is that in our present moment and unfolding future God is with us, holding onto us, blessing and keeping us, and will never let us go. If this be true, then all is well even in the midst of the sorrows and sufferings we know.

A bit of history here, regarding the hymn. The text was written in 1923 by Methodist pastor and poet Thomas Chisholm as he reflected on the text above. He had faced many challenges of poor health which had forced him to leave active pastoral ministry years ago, which he loved and deeply missed. He sent the text to his friend William Runyan, who was a music professor at Moody Bible Institute, who matched an uplifting and enduring melody to the text, and the rest is history.

As a church family these are days seeming to trend into a season of death, and it’s lingering grief. Columbarium committals and memorial services are lining up our summer Saturdays like the jet planes descending into O’hare airport. It’s hard to imagine life without so many of these dear friends who have been at the center of our life, ministry, and Church family for years and decades.

Yet still and importantly now we are invited to hum the tune and sing the song that grounds us in faith. Faith that God — our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer — will give us the strength we need for today. “Peace that passes our understanding” is the way St. Paul says it. In this Pentecost season we greet the news that the Holy Spirit fills us up and knits us together into the Body of Christ. And so we we experience the real presence of Jesus through each other, as we share and bear each other’s burdens. I and my family know that healing balm through these days because of you who are our Church community.

And then there is bright hope for tomorrow. “I have loved you with any everlasting love” is what God says to his people Israel through the prophet Jeremiah, and we hear the resurrected Christ say “because I live, you also shall live.” Bright hope indeed!

Together these things — God’s presence and promises — really can carry us along with a real and lasting hope. I’m reminded of my mom’s mantra, which became even more prevalent and pronounced through her journey with cancer….”One day at a time.” One day at a time God’s people live with strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

And this indeed is a most blessed life.

Whatever the journey of today and tomorrow are holding for you just now, may the words and the tune go along with you.

Pardon for sin and a peace that endureth, thine own dear presence to cheer and to guide, strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine with ten thousand beside. Great is thy faithfulness, great is thy faithfulness, morning by morning new mercies I see, all I have needed thy hand hath provided, great is thy faithfulness Lord unto me.

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

Hello WCC Friends, and happy summer!

I am very excited to begin our Memorial Garden Book Discussion — each Thursday 6:30 p.m. from June 4 to August 20. If the weather is too hot or rainy, we’ll meet in the narthex.

We’ll be reflecting on Wholehearted Faith by Rachel Held Evans (Harper One, 2022). Small, engaging chapters allow you to join when you can. I have a stack of the books available for $10. Here’s a taste from the prologue:

“For better or worse, there are seasons when we hold our faith, and then there are seasons when our faith holds us. In those latter instances, I am more thankful than ever for all the saints, past and present, who said yes and whose faith sustains mine. They believe for me when I’m not sure I believe. They hold on to hope for me when I’ve run out of hope. They are the old lady next to me in the pew and the little kid behind me who recite the entirety of the Apostle’s Creed on my behalf on those Sundays when I cannot bring myself to say all those ancient words wholeheartedly — is that what I really believe? They pray for me when the only words I have to say to God are words that I refuse to allow to be printed on this page, because they would make even my most foul-mouthed friend blush.

I’ve come to believe that wholehearted Faith isn’t just about coming to terms with the heart that beats inside me. It’s also about understanding how God has knit together my heart with the hearts of that old lady and that little kid. Wholeheartedness is about seeing and comprehending my place in a bigger family of faith, just as parenthood has transformed my understanding of my role in a biological and social unit. It is about risking hurt and confusion for the sake of the thing that so many of us seek: belonging...I join in the long, glorious, and sometimes painful chorus, that song sung over the millennia by the hopeful and the brokenhearted, by the downtrodden and the seemingly forsaken, by mothers and teachers, by survivors and activists, by saints and pastors, by disciples and friends. I say yes because they said yes.”

Please consider joining the circle of reflection on Thursday evenings — just come when you can! — and pick up a book on Sunday or stop by the Church office. I so look forward to being with you!

Peter Hawkinson

All over the gospels, there’s a common occurrence, when Jesus, who claims to be the Messiah, is eating and having fellowship with “sinners” – Grumbling. Grumbling. And Jesus is trying to get the religious folk to understand the grace of God, and that it’s only by grace that they can find life with God, and that by grace they CAN find life with God!

In our early Covenant Church days, there was a man in 1871 identified only as “L. Peterson from Princeton, IL”, who ruminated on this gospel moment that comes frequently in a letter to a friend, as they were considering grace together. The letter ends with this prayer:

May God,

from whom all grace comes,

fill our dead, cold, lukewarm,

empty, narrow, sluggish,

careless, false, hypocritical,

unfaithful, doubting, frivolous,

erring, godless, corrupted,

dispirited, depressed, sorrowful,

GLAD hearts.

I’m struck by that prayer, how it seems celebrative and hopeful, even though it contains an exhaustive and exhausting list of confessed sins. Guilty as charged! Honest to the hilt! Yet gladness remains, a glad heart, only because of grace, and the activity of the God from whom all grace comes. I have experienced it in others, and myself have struggled mightily with the nature of grace, that it can only be accepted, never earned, that it can only be received through an honest confession of utter underserving, and that it is precisely this honest confession that makes grace understood and thus gladden the heart.

I knew another old man a hundred years later in 1971. I’d watch Milton during the weekly time of congregational confession for an obvious reason, because the same thing happened every week: he’d lay his head down on the pew in front of him, hands folded above him, often with tears, as if in agony, and then raise himself up just in time to hear the pastor’s words of assurance – “In Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven” – suddenly smiling broadly as if to someone up in the rafters, taking a deep, deep breath. Just like that, every week.

Honesty, I think, gets a bad rap, especially when it comes to being honest with God – God is, after all slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and more than anything else, filled with grace. As my maternal grandmother used to say, “Sometimes a good cry is the best thing!” So consider a brutal honesty before God as the way to a Glad heart.

All Thanks be to God!

Peter Hawkinson

What a fellowship, what a joy divine, leaning on the everlasting arms. What a blessedness, what a peace is mine, leaning on the everlasting arms. Leaning, leaning, safe and secure from all alarms; leaning, leaning, leaning on the everlasting arms. (Covenant Hymnal 83)

I remember it to be a favorite of pastor Bob’s that we would sing often, with his reminder that we sing as though we really mean it.

Robert Dvorak faithfully and with great joy pastored our Winnetka Covenant Church from 1987 to 1998. We remember his Great expansive gift of pastoral care, taking shape from early morning until late at night; for his love of church music, especially the old gospel hymns of the church, and his musical acumen which often found him leading from the piano or organ; for his habit of working while standing up, typewriter on top of the file cabinet in his office; for his exquisite penmanship, and his love of writing notes of care; for his impeccable attention to detail; for his love of worship in the church and forming its liturgy; and for his taste for Kolaches and his Czech heritage.

His ministry found him becoming my primary mentor, as I came to be youth pastor in the fall of 1989, and spent the next four years watching and learning from Bob, and Dottie too! Together their deep love for the congregation was so naturally evident. I remember Bob’s recurrent word that “ministry is about presence and relationship. Ministry is about presence and relationship.” Indeed, it was. Countless stories still are told about pastor Bob’s presence at a hospital bed, or with a knock at the door, almost as if he possessed some kind of spirit-led instinct to find us even before our own awareness of need for care and companionship. This was his primary gift — of companionship — with his broad smile, his deep focused eyes holding compassion, and his friendship and care which brought such comfort along life’s journey.

I will be traveling to New Hampshire for his memorial service which will take place this Friday at 10 a.m. cst. You can find the link to join the gathering here:

https://player.castr.com/live_072610a01ac511f0a8aad3bab9433cc3

Please join as we together we remember God’s faithful servant who blessed us so.

May Robert Dvorak’s memory be a blessing, and may he rest in peace and rise in glory.

Peter Hawkinson