Once again I’m holding the Covenant Book of Worship (1964 edition) that belonged to Rev. Roy Olson, late father of our friend Julie Bromley. What a blessing after his passing that she put it in my care. I take it with me often when I visit with many of you in your homes or at the hospital. I do this for a couple reasons: first, because I love some of the old cadences of language from years ago that seems more poetic; and second, and much more importantly, I am deeply comforted to recall faithful ministers who have prayed for and with God’s people through time. Servants like Roy who gave his life to loving and leading people through life’s journey.

I love the underlines and check marks and half erased names and frayed page markers that reflect his work. For instance, in the funeral service order, among many scriptures of comfort, he checked two of them indicating their most used status:

“The Lord is my light and salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)

Jesus said…, “I am the resurrection and the life; he [or she] that believes in me, though he [or she] die, yet shall he [or she] live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.(John 11:25-26)

Further on, in the “scripture for visitation” section, one verse is repeatedly underlined:

“Thou dost keep them in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because they trust in thee.” (Isaiah 26:3)

and this one had to be a favorite, because Roy writes in in, running out of room at the page bottom:

“Teach me thy way, O Lord, that I may walk in thy truth; unite my heart to fear thy name.” (Psalm 86:11)

To see these marks, and to read these words of hope settles me, and bids me to take my place in the long line of those who have held the book before. The call for us is to be faithful in our short span of living years in handing down the faith. What a responsibility! And What a blessing!

What books do you have that are all marked up by loved ones gone before? Bibles or hymnals or devotional books? Find them, and hold them, and connect with whoever held it before — and be strengthened to keep the faith, and pass it on!

Peter Hawkinson

Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

For the past several weeks in adult Sunday School, we have been working through a series called “The Possibility of Pain.” Not “the Problem of Pain,” as my brain keeps wanting to call it – the name of one of CS Lewis’s most famous books – but “the possibility” of pain.

And one of the things we’ve been reflecting on together, with the help of videos and discussion guides from The Work of the People, is just what those possibilities might be. (And no, it’s not a coincidence that I decided to work through this series during the season of Lent, a season we start by staring our mortality in the face and then spending six weeks reflecting on our sin and brokenness.)

One of the things we talked about in class yesterday was how pain can lead to growth. Like the pain of tearing apart muscles during a challenging workout to then grow them back stronger. But a key element of pain leading to growth, and not just to hurt and lingering reminders of what was lost or broken, is facing up to it:

Being honest about it. Finding spaces to express that pain, and really feel it. Allowing ourselves to fall apart, because then and only then can we be put back together into something even more beautiful – like a mosaic made from shattered glass.

And one of the first things we, as a group, were honest about was this: we’re not all that comfortable with pain. Maybe it’s our Scandinavian roots, maybe it’s our North Shore culture, maybe it’s a lot of different reasons – but we don’t tend, as a church community, to spend much time with our pain. We’re all “fine,” if you should ask.

Our Blue Christmas services are often sparsely attended. We wait perhaps thirty seconds during our confessions of sin before rushing headfirst to the assurance of grace. We don’t dwell in the psalms of lament.

But it doesn’t mean the pain isn’t there.

Perhaps some of that tension is why I’ve been so drawn over the years to people who name their pain loudly and unapologetically. To theologians who examine the problems and the possibilities of pain. To writers and memoirists who tell of their pain and acknowledge it, because as our Sunday School video speaker Marlon Hall said, you must first “create spaces for the crap that fertilizes the flower of possibility.”

Pain can tell us that something needs to change. And at times it can force us into pursuing that change, because the alternative is more uncomfortable and painful. It can offer us possibility and not just problems, if we admit that it’s there and that we need some help, some time, and some grace to get through it or even learn to live with it.

I can’t think of a better reflection for Lent. It’s a short stretch of time, all things considered, when we might start to grow a muscle for sitting with our pain and acknowledging it. A limited-engagement liturgical season where we can explore what it might mean to name our pain and fall apart a little bit.

It seems like a safe place to begin – trusting, as we can, that Easter is coming.

I hope you, too, might try this on for Lent: exploring the possibilities of pain.

(And if you need a community, join us on Sunday mornings in the Upper Room, where we have one more session of this series before it’s time for something new.)

yours,

Pastor Jen

Here it is February 21, and it’s sixty degrees outside! What a mild winter it’s been, so much so that the creation seems a bit fooled. Early this afternoon I raced home to get a little bit of the warm air and walk bear at the same time. He seemed to sniff with extra vigor, making me wonder if some of the spring smells are cutting loose already.

Just before we made it back home, in a neighbors yard he and I saw a yellow winter spark of ground cover that seemed in every way to jump out at us whose eyes have been now for while formed by winter’s gray. Bear barked at it, our toward it, as if to say “Wow! Look at that!” Then he wandered over and greeted the color in a whole other way. I’ll leave it to your imagination.

I’m sure that by now you’re tired of hearing me pine about winter and my longing for spring’s light, and summer’s warmth, and autumn’s colored lingering. Winter, meh. I will rejoice greatly when we get to March 9th and spring ahead! I will gladly endure the seasonal allergies that hit me from Memorial Day until mid-July. And I won’t complain a bit when hot and sticky August Melts me. Can’t get here soon enough.

In the meantime, creation signals spring’s soon coming. Yellow winter sparks say something, along with bird choirs and trees mistakenly budding. Perennials just can’t quite wait. and spring training is in fact under way! I know, too, that these warm winters as delicious as they are find creation giving us a warning cry. Our planet is warming up too much and too quick. We must be aware and concerned about how to help our planet heal.

But now, just for today, I open my window and let the fresh air blow into my life’s stale space. And I’m reminded still in mid-winter of the blessed days to come, even while my snowblower will still sit at the ready, and even though those bright yellow flowers will likely get buried under fresh snow before too long.

And I’m thinking about how even during lent we are still easter people, how stark repentant days give us reminders of all that’s yet to be. Consider The Hymn, “In the Bulb There Is a Flower” (Covenant Hymnal 752):

In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed, an apple tree; in cocoons, a hidden promise, butterflies will soon be free! In the cold and snow of winter there’s a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

Today, I saw it…a little. Life, relentlessly, will come again!

Love From Here

Peter Hawkinson

This morning I was writing in my journal and in an effort to tie together my thoughts I wrote, “And so it goes”. I caught myself laughing a bit in the understanding that I didn’t come to that phrase randomly. And though Billy Joel sings a wonderful song by that name, that’d not where I caught on to the phrase. No, as I write it, and read it on the page, I can hear my grandfather Eric’s voice, and see his penmanship.

“And so it goes” was by far his life’s most famous phrase, spoken with just a hint of his childhood Swedish lilt, and written in at least half of his “Letters to God”, which were his own journal entries over decades of time.

I’m reflecting on this morning of that little phrase which for me is strong and settling. Not a denial of the ups and downs of life or its expressed journey, and not meaning to shut down the thought process, the saying seems to welcome and accept life as it is. It is what it is. Things are as they are. And so it goes. Looking across the room at the last picture I have with Eric before his death in 1984, I realize that there’s so many things I wished I would have asked him about that weren’t on my mind as a twenty year old. His immigrant experience as a little boy, his combat in the Argonne of World War 1, His arrival on Foster Avenue and North Park College in 1918, his life in pastoral ministry. How I wish.

But I have never thought until today that I would have loved to hear his reflection on his summary life phrase, “And so it goes.” How did he come to it? why did it stay with him? And what does it mean for him? Someday soon in glory!

Beyond that I’m fascinated with how powerful genes are. Physical characteristics and Body movements, thought processes, and even uses of words and phrases seem to naturally be passed along without us even aware. My kids note how I rub my hands together in a certain way just like my dad did. The first time Bonnie met my brother Eric at the airport she knew him because of the way he walked. And today I wrote “And so it goes” before I reflected on it as an inherited gift.

On may days when feeling anxious or upset about some ministry something, when calling my dad, he’d say “Remember now, the Kingdom of God was around before you arrived, and it will be here after you’re gone.” In my earlier years I would take it as a rather harsh comeback, but by now in my life it’s a gift, an invitation to let go of the burdens I don’t need to carry. Even though dad’s been gone for 13 years, I still hear his voice and that word when I need to.

So I’m grateful for generational family sayings that live on. I wonder what mine are and will be. What gifts have you gotten, and what words will you leave behind?

And so it goes.

Peter Hawkinson

Today’s blog post is written by Pastor Jen.

Well, friends, it’s almost here again: the season of Lent.

A season that for many hundreds of years has been marked by confession, fasting, and penitence, and more recently by new spiritual practices, intention-setting, devotional habits, and more. This year it all begins on Valentine’s Day, a somewhat bizarre juxtaposition of hearts, flowers, and chocolates with marking each other with ashes and reminding ourselves of our mortality.

Who isn’t excited about this?

Well, it’s okay if you aren’t. Personally, I’ve been in a bit of a rut recently. A little midwinter funk, maybe, or I’m just really lined up with the liturgical calendar and ready for this somber season.

Last week, I was talking to a clergy friend about this, who normalized everything I’ve been feeling (note: find yourself a friend like this). It’s February, she said. What are you going to get excited about – Valentine’s Day? I don’t think so. It’s okay to be sad. There’s so much going on in this world that’s heartbreaking. It’s a good sign that you’re paying attention, if you’re feeling this way.

The truth is that she’s right. But that there are times when it feels much easier to hold the awful and the wonderful together, and right now it feels hard to do that. So my first instinct, when it feels hard, is to bury those difficult feelings and rush past them.

But something, lately, has stopped me from doing that. Some of it might be forces beyond my control, and some of it is a new habit I’ve chosen lately: reading poetry.

I have great aspirations of being a person who reads poetry (and maybe even recites it, at opportune moments) but I don’t often make time for it. Poetry is meant to be read and savored, not rushed through – so as a voracious reader, I turn more readily to novels and other books that I can devour.

But lately I found myself stuck between books, so I picked up a volume of poems, this one by Mary Oliver and titled Dog Songs. And every night I read one – maybe at the very most two – of these poems and I linger over them. I let the words hang in the air, and I feel the beauty and the poignancy and the pain of them. I experience the delight of spring which she describes as “one of the forever gifts,” and the heartache of when she says of her dog who has died,

“She roved ahead of me through the fields, yet would come back,

or wait for me, or be somewhere.

Now she is buried under the pines.

Nor will I argue it, or pray for anything but modesty, and not to be angry.”¹

These poems are reminding me how good and important it is to feel all of these things – not to rush past them, not to stuff them down for later, but to really feel them. The highs and the lows. The roses and the thorns.

I expect the Psalms might do the same, or any other sort of poetry out there. For me, right now, it’s Mary and her dogs. But while the text might not be sacred, I’ve come to think that the act still is: that my spiritual practice right now is to be where I am, and feel the beauty and the pain of all that is going on. It’s a sort of prayer, too. Sitting in it, sitting with it, and finding God is present with me.

If you’re looking for a new practice for the season of Lent, this is one I can recommend.

yours,

Pastor Jen

1. “Her Grave.” ↩︎

February 8, 2024

Denise Johnson

Love Trumps Hate

Now Jacob loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; . . .But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him. (Genesis 37:3-4)

Thus begins the story of Joseph. What unfolds is an ancient tale of family deceit and dysfunction which God ultimately uses for good. In the month we celebrate love, might we branch out beyond hearts and flowers to love’s transformational power to overcome hate.

The story of Joseph is familiar to many of us. Jacob’s favoritism for his youngest son causes jealousy among the brothers. They want to kill him but settle instead for selling him to merchants headed for Egypt. They then lie to their father saying he was killed by a wild animal.

Through coincidence and twists of fate, the brothers reunite. Joseph, now Pharaoh’s top advisor, has oversight of food distribution during a famine. His brothers travel to Egypt in search of food and wind up pleading their case before him. Though they do not recognize Joseph, he recognizes them, tests their loyalty, and discovers changed hearts from the old days. During the big “reveal,” Joseph discloses his identity. Rather than offering hate, he offers love, telling them though they intended harm, God intended good. 

Our world offers plenty of hate: hateful speech, hateful violence, hateful politics. The hot spots and perpetrators shift, but there seems no end to it with plenty of blame to go around. It’s daily before us. While our biblical story shows what happens when baser instincts overrule better judgment, we also witness God’s transformational power in turning a story which begins in hate to one that ends in love.

Can we do the same? Can we transform our own stories? Look beyond our own beliefs, prejudices and fears and actively seek paths toward love? Love, it has been said, is more than emotion or a warm feeling but an act of will. A determination that no matter what, love trumps hate. This we are called to do. This we must do.

Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow

Praise Him all creatures here below

Praise Him above, ye heavenly host

Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost.

If I remember right, it was the late summer of 2008, and the folks were in town. That means golf! So Paul, and Brian, and Dad and I found ourselves on the 6th tee of the Bittersweet Golf Course in Gurnee. A rather short but devious par 3, 125 yards, surrounded by water on three sides, with two sand traps guarding the only terra firma portion on the right side. No matter where the pin is, you are best served to look for the middle of the green.

I honestly can’t remember who went first, or how the shot was. What I and we who were there will never forget was Dad’s shot, and what happened afterwards.

Backing up a bit, dad had the habit of breaking into song, and not just any song when he found himself rejoicing in spirit. It was the doxology, and he was bidding, no forcing those who were around him to join him in celebrating the moment. Though this happened in many contexts, it was most prevalent on the golf course. One time while playing with us three sons and saving a par at the “Diablo Grande” (big demon) golf course in Patterson, California, he started blaring it out, and was startled when the foursome on an adjacent green joined in!

But I digress. Back to Bittersweet and the tough par three. Dad’s tee ball was shanked — meaning it missed the club face and hit the hosel — and screamed off straight to the right, headed deep out of bounds, except, except — it boinked the lone power line pole and came back, straight left across the hole in front of us, this time surely headed for the pond, except, except — the ball hit the lone Canadian goose standing at the water’s edge in the backside, sending it into the water, and the ball was left in the green grass, about 20 yards short of the green. Whoa!

It wasn’t a second before he began to sing/shout, looking at each of us until we joined in. Luckily no other golfers were nearby. One lone hiker stopped and looked at us as if to ask if we were okay.

In the years since dad’s death in May of 2011, I have thought about that shot so many times, and this recurring habit of his public shows of affection for God. Did he really believe that God caused that ball to hit that pole, and that goose? Of course not. It must be that he was celebrating life itself, over and over again, especially those moments never to be forgotten. Everyday was a gift, and dad dragged us (sometimes kicking and screaming) into saying so with him.

I honestly don’t remember if he got up and down for what would have been his most miraculous par ever. It was that shot and the celebration after that will always travel with me. It is his happy spirit that I miss everyday.

Three years later mom was in hospice care, and one day our conversation was especially tender, pondering death and looking toward resurrection life. Trying to break the heavy conversation a bit, I asked mom what she thought about her reunion in glory with dad. After thinking a bit, and laughing a bit, she said with a kidding smile, “Well, what I’m most afraid of is that the first thing he’ll do is make me sing the doxology!” We laughed, O we laughed, until she followed up: “But I’m thinking there in that great glorious place I’ll be glad to sing.”

The lingering challenge, of course, in a world of sorrows and pain a plenty, is to ground ourselves and our days in praise and thanks through it all.

Love From Here

Perter Hawkinson