Leaks

It is no longer raining.

This is a LEAK.

Someone call the Landlord.

Tell Mother Nature to call her plumber.

Fix the caulk. Stop the LEAK.

Rain is a DRIP.

Turn the faucet to stop the

d

r

i

p

In that joint where sky meets earth

the rain carved a crevice.

The LEAK entered earth.

Poured out all over the place.

Poured out for you and for many.

Carve a crevice for GRACE.

Not a DRIP we seek.

But a LEAK.

A downpour.

A huge crevice in that joint

where heaven meets earth.

Someone call the Landlord--

Tell the Goddess

We're Thirsty.

Crevice, please?
--krr, 6.28.07

Reality: TV

Disclaimer: Troy and I do not have human children so at the outset, I acknowledge that sometimes you have to do whatever you have to do to get by as a parent. Is this one of those times, though?

It's difficult to write today's blog post--I'm just not sure quite what to say. Maybe I don't have to say anything. This picture tells it all. While having dinner tonight, a few tables away from us sat a mother, father, possibly a grandparent and a child. With curiosity and amazement, we watched a child who was watching Elmo on a portable DVD player as the adults had dinner and "talked." Every so often, they stopped and smiled at how cute the kid looked watching television.

Is this the picture of how our society does life together? It's no longer "Reality TV" that's our problem; our problem IS the reality that TV has become the good, pacifying, nurturing parent. And the bad cop-parent is the real adult who tells the kid that it's time to turn the tv off. But how can parents tell the kids to turn the tv off when we are the ones turning the TV on to be the babysitter at the dinner table?

This past Sunday, the senior pastor at my church spoke on how Jesus loved the children and because Jesus loved the children, we are called to love them too. He lamented the loss of the family who eats dinner together. He pointed out that families sit mindlessly in front of the television; all in the same room without saying a word to each other. He described the glow and flickering of the campfire in generations past where families shared stories and children learned who they were by sitting among the elders and listening to the family history. And now this flicking light is replaced by a different kind of light--that of the HD television screen that is mounted on the wall and flickers bright into the late night. ---Look at this kid's face? His face is lit up by the light of this television screen.

As Troy and I wondered out loud about what this means, trying not to pass judgement because that is another place where our society falls short, we thought of reasons why these parents chose to have their child sit in front of a television screen while the adults talked at dinner. Maybe they were with their child all day playing interactive games and telling stories and making puzzles and playing with toys and this is the only 1.5 hours of the day the child watches tv...maybe the child began having a tantrum right after they placed their meal...maybe they both worked all day and were tired, exhausted and all they needed was just a little of what they would call normalcy.

Or maybe, just maybe, our collective memory has forgotten how to be in relationship. We have forgotten that our kids, no matter how articulate or not articulate they are because of age, they are learning from us what will be their habits for communication and engagement. And maybe we have forgotten the commitment we make as adults when we bring children into this world and the sacrifices we have to make in our "adult" ways so that we can raise these kids to be who they were made to be in this world.

Like I said, I'm having trouble with this blog post. I don't want to pass judgement on this particular family or other families who will be reading this blog and would choose to do the same thing. I just want to hold up this slice of life and ask, "Can we as a society do better?" And to make this slice of life more tangled, our waitress tonight was a classmate of mine from Rider High School in Wichita Falls. She was bussed to my school under the desegregation act in the 1970s that even in the late 1980s Wichita Falls was still violating. She is now married, has a 12-year-old and a 13-year-old, and works 2, sometimes 3, jobs to help better her family. This summer, she will take custody and guardianship of her cousin's two kids, age 15 and 16, after her cousin died suddenly. She loves her cousin's kids and feels so thankful that she can help them through their grief. She's glad to have them come live with her. As she talked, with the flickering light of the DVD player in the background, my heart broke for her knowing how hard she must work to keep it all together.

I guess these parents did one thing right--They tried not to let the kid sit too close to the screen, lest the kid hurts his vision. At least that's what my mom told me if I sat too close to the television screen--it will hurt your vision. What we witnessed tonight hurts more than just physical vision; I can't help but to wonder what kind of hurt vision we have as a society because we have forgotten the sacred contracts we hold in the embodiment of our children. These are not our children; they are God's. Are we holding up our end of the contract with God? Time for a reality check?

The Dog Days of Summer

Sarah, the Catahoula-Pointer Cutie, shines in her "Dog Days of Summer" video. Enjoy the sunshine!

If a Plymouth voyager can make a statement, so can I

I don't want to pretend that I'm smarter than sociological demographers who planned suburbia in the 1950s but I'm guessing that they didn't account for the 1-2 hours of life people would trade to live in suburbia and work in downtown. Or, maybe they saw that day far, far in the future when people would trade 1-2 hours of their life EVERYDAY for sitting in a car so they created a side company making bumper stickers so that people could at least feel like even in their car, they can make a statement and "be somebody" and somehow feel like even though they live in the land of lost-identity, they, at least their car, still takes a stand.

The person who drives a 1990s Plymouth Voyager mini-van with the above two bumper stickers really took a stand. I'm not sure what they are standing on, perhaps a pile of dung, but they took a stand. Good for them.

As I drove behind this person today on Pearl Street in downtown Dallas in the rain, I thought about the different statements I was making and specifically considered the statements I'm making about UrbanLife, my new ministry at First Church. Am I making a statement about what I'm going to do or how I'm going to do it? Keep in mind, mainline denominations have been failing for more than 30 years simply because they haven't figured out how to be the church for the 22-35 demographic. (Anyone want odds on my success?)

A colleague asked me today, "What are you going to do, Kathryn?" and without thinking, this came out of my mouth: "I want UrbanLife to create community and deepen spirituality among urban professionals while helping them achieve their highest God-vision for their careers, finances, relationships and self-development." He replied, "Wow, that's good." And I said, "Give me a pen. Let me write that one down."

Maybe this is part of the mixture. I'm not sure what the right ingredients will be to give me 2-1 odds of winning this race. I even learned today that the Dean of my Divinity School now calls this demographic an "endangered species" in mainlines churches.

I like that...maybe I should change my job title to "Minister of Endangered Species."

Go live that life

Today was my second Sunday at First Church and words cannot express how thankful Troy and I feel about serving and being a part of this congregation. The church has given us such a warm welcome and we are finding our way around the place.
Theme today: Life is life and it will be what it is. It is how you handle, or maybe not handle, all that life is that makes life worth living. My favorite theologian, Kenny Rogers, expressed it well on the first 8-track I listened to in 1980: "You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run."
Today's slice of life is worth this blog post: I had a 2-hour window of time late this afternoon. Because I'm feeling a need to have my office "together" as if somehow my office is being graded by my worst internal critic, I thought I should squeeze in a trip to IKEA, now 45-minutes from where I work and live. Even as I got ready to leave home, something in me didn't want to drive to Frisco to walk around a pre-planned store that views its customers as cattle which need to be led through stalls and gates.
When I unlocked my car in my parking spot, I found my journal in my hand. That's strange--I can't imagine some profound insight worthy of journaling to come in the middle of IKEA.
The profound insight came way before I made it to Frisco. Didn't even get out of the neighborhood before God put the big stop sign in my way (no, it wasn't the Texas "DQ" stop sign). It was the message board out front of a little neighborhood Presbyterian church that read, "Taize Service in Courtyard: 6:30 pm June 24." I knew that's where I needed to be.
So I stopped, pulled into the parking lot of the park next to the church, spent 45 minutes sitting on this old, large tree that is made for climbing and journal-ed. That's why I needed my journal....God is funny in how things like this get planned. I shared with God and the tree the story of my first week. And at 6:25, I walked over to the church and sat through 45 minutes of music and prayer that kindled in my soul the flames of being a child of God that so easily burn away the distractions of who or what I think I need to be.
The service wasn't flashy; they were Presbyterians. And it is easy to believe in predestination when you see how much Presbyterians look like each other, almost like God said, "I'm going to make a special group of people who will never be on the cover of Vogue but they will be my people and I will be there God and I will call them Presbyterians."
We sat in folding chairs, in the church's courtyard, a mixed-group of people who were so excited to have a visitor and then so sad to hear that I work on Sunday mornings--we sat and we sang and we listened and for a tiny moment, I heard the kingdom of God.
My 2-hours that could have been hurried chronos time rushing to IKEA became simple kairos time that took my mind and reminded me that inside me is a soul wanted to be embodied. "Go live that life," God said.

Wishing for What We Think Should Be

Life doesn't always work like out like the ending of "When Harry Met Sally" or "Cinderella." I wonder about that craving deep down inside that wants this kind-of-perfect-ending for life's situations. Where is that craving located in our bodies and souls? I think for me it is located around the corner from my spleen and down the hall from my liver in the Office of Fake-Reality-that-Really-Should-Be Real. You know Mr. Jones?--He heads up that office.

Certain life rituals put this particular Office into frantic overtime trying to produce as much energy as possible to override reality's particulars and instead paint a picture of what this office would prefer the eyes to see. Weddings are one of those big work orders. A friend's stepdaughter is getting married soon and even though this family has blended itself in several different ways, the tension between what this young bride always wanted--the "ideal" life story--and the reality of what is--stepparents et al--this tension is playing itself out in the traditional question of "Who gives this woman to be married to this man?"

It would be easy enough to answer the traditional, storybook way, "Her mother and I do," and yet, there are more people than just her biological mother and father who give this daughter away. In not wanting to make any one person in the family examine foundation-level feelings, the temptation is just to gloss it over and pretend like we are one big happy traditional family. Office of Fake Reality, job well done. You pulled another one out.

As I begin UrbanLife at First Church, the squeaky question that is spoken of with raised eyebrows, is this: What is church for the urban young professional with career as priority one in life? What is church and are we willing to suspend what we think is church and pretend that someone outside the church might offer insight into our question that scares us like the monster who hides under the bed.

Where in the church does tension get played out between the "ideal" church story and the reality of what church is? What would it mean to acknowledge and breathe through those tensions instead of glossing over the question and simply answering, "Her mother and I do?"

"The smarter a person is the more he needs God to
protect him from thinking he knows everything."

-- Native American
proverb

5 months and 19 days

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

My dad is a civil engineer and worked for the state of Texas his entire career, beginning at the age of 20 as an intern, and in 2 years, will retire at the age of 62. The last 30 years have even been in the same office. One benefit of being a state employee is you get about 100 different, odd "holidays." Growing up, it seemed like at least once a month dad had a day off because it was "Celebrate the Honey Bee" day or something similar.

One of those holidays for state employees was (and I believe still is) today, "Juneteenth." Whether or not this is accurate, this is how Wichita Falls explained this day to me: This is the day that the slaves in Texas received word of the Emancipation Proclamation. In other words, this is the day they heard they were free.

So for 5 months and 19 days, people kept working as slaves even though they had been set free. The delivery of this news then is about as efficient as today's delivery of corporate strategies through the company's ranks.

I thought about this as I walked to yoga this morning. Just around the corner from my condo is my yoga studio that wakes me up and gets me moving every Tuesday and Thursday morning. Today, as I walked to yoga in my flip-flops, I must admit I was a little grumbly, wishing for just a little more sleep simply because my brain cells are working on overload assimilating my new job and church.

As I turned the corner to the studio, right in front of the studio, was an old-run down Ford Thunderbird, painted "primer" color, hubcaps missing, windows rolled down and seats reclined cradling two people, most likely in their 30s but aged by their living well into their 40s and 50s. They had not arrived early for yoga and decided to grab a little shut-eye; they slept there all night. I didn't want to stare and I didn't want them to wake-up and ask me for money either. Here I am, ready to claim my inner peace, and the reality of homelessness, hunger and poverty sits right in front of my yoga studio.

When the first car pulled into the parking lot, the driver woke-up, got his senses to him, started his car and he and his friend drove away. They never asked me for anything. They didn't even say hello or good morning. Of course, why would they, I didn't say anything to them either. Maybe they didn't want to talk to me as much as I didn't want to talk to them.

I believe our society is living in the very-long age of "5 months and 19 days." The truth has been announced and yet we haven't heard it. So we keep living in our own personal slaveries, we keep enslaving others and in so doing, enslaving ourselves. These two lives have been labeled and they are in a spiral that most likely is stronger than their ability to calm the storm. Who knows where they drove to after they left. And who knows where their car is parked tonight.

What truth has been announced that you have not heard? God has made a proclamation and the truth will set you free. Do you hear it?

You can't go home again

The first picture from the first day on my new job is this picture, taken at the end of the day at Lakewood's historic Dixie House where Troy and I had dinner with the Rev. and Mrs. Wally and Stell Chappell. Wally is pastor emeritus at First Church and a member with me in the Wesley Study Group. It is only fitting that this picture be today's blog photo as I remember the letter Wally sent to me last September offering his condolences on the death of my maternal grandmother, Mrs. Rachel Dawson Self.

In his letter, Wally included a quote from Thomas Wolfe's, You Can't Go Home Again, part of which speaks to what I felt today at First Church. The quote:

"Dear Fox, old friend, thus we have come to the end of the road that we were
to go together. My tale is finished--and so farewell....Something has spoken to
me in the night....saying: 'To lose the earth you know, for greater knowing; to
lose the life you have, for greater life; to leave the friends you loved, for
greater loving; to find a land more kind than home, more large than earth....--a
wind is rising, and the rivers flow."

Everything in life is change, and we are all giving up something to take on something else. (Trade-offs, anyone?) Sometimes our transits are large, life-and-death transits and others are small, like new job transits. What we all want is for our transits, big and small, to be losing something incredible, only to gain something even more amazing. This is what we crave--deepening of internal spirit and broadening of external reality.

At First Church today, as I worshiped with my new colleagues, met my new church family, and just tried to find my way around the building, I realized that I had found a greater knowing, a greater life, a greater loving, and in my own little corner of the world, a new home. God's great gift to me this morning was in the sermon, given by Dr. John Fiedler. If he only used Greek words, that would have been enough. (A little spanokopita??)

But he did something else: he let God speak through him.

For those of you who listened to my Lent sermons in 2006, you remember how I fixated on the Palm Sunday scriptures and you got four weeks on Jesus' entry into Jerusalem and what that means. It was not until Lent 2007 that I figured out what that was all about, how it was my soul working out the tension that up until Jesus' entry into Jerusalem, you could be a by-stander, off to the side of the road, peaking over the tops of others' heads, and still follow Jesus. But once you get to Jerusalem, things change. You have to stick closer to Jesus, lest the crowd press in and separate you from him. Once you get to Jerusalem, you have to really want to absorb his message of complete life transformation, of giving before receiving, and of letting go of shoring up your own life at the expense of someone else. Once you get to Jerusalem, you have to decide: am I in control, or, am I ready to let God be in control? In Lent 2007, I felt like 31 years standing at the city gates trying to decide whether or not I want to follow him into the city was long enough. And I'm not sure exactly all it will mean, but in this year's Palm Procession, I followed him into the city. Surrender.

So get this, here is how God spoke through Dr. Fiedler. His sermon today was on Jesus' life and teaching in the city AFTER Jesus enters Jerusalem, leading up to the confrontation with the powers that be that ultimately brought him to his death and to his LIFE.

You can't go home again and I can't go home again. But you, and I, we can trust that for every leaving, there is a greater knowing, a greater life, a greater loving...and even as great as this beginning is, one day it too will be an ending and there will be something even greater, until that day when you, and I, until we find that land more kind than home.

Thanks Wally and Stell for a great dinner.
Thanks First Church for a great welcome. Now, let's get to work in the City.

Did you get everything you need today?

June 13, 2007

Ever have that passing moment when someone comes to your mind, maybe a friend you have not seen in a while? What do you do with that moment? Dismiss it or follow it?

I followed it this morning and called my friend, the most holy Rev. Brian Burton (fyi--that's my title for him, not his). Brian shared a story with me of something that happened to him yesterday at his job at The Wilkinson Center, an east-Dallas cooperative parish serving the working poor. Returning from lunch, he crossed paths with a woman on the sidewalk outside of the Center. She had several grocery bags given to her at the food pantry. Brian saw her sorting through her bags and asked her, "Did you get everything you need today?"

She looked at him, and with a deep intensity as if she had come to the Center that day at the end of her rope, she said, "Thank God."

Brian said her desperation combined with her praising God for literally this daily bread reminded him of the very real presence of God wanting to meet us in our daily needs, as in the verse from Lamentations, "morning by morning new mercies I see..." Yet, we work so hard to structure our lives so that we don't need anything.

Can you imagine at the end of your day today, God coming to you, and asking, "Did you get everything you need today?"

"Don't understand the question."

-You know, need, did you get what you needed today."

"Hmmm...I got what I wanted today: a good breakfast, gas for my car, talked to friends on my cellphone, scheduled a mover, met a friend for lunch, cleaned the house and had dinner with my husband."

-What did you need today, though?

"Need?" Hmmm...

-Hmmm...

Wow. Thank God.

Vote for your favorite color in my new office

Tuesday, June 12--2nd post

I'm needing some interior decorating help. I have 3 colors I can choose for my new office color. The wall is split with trim, so I'm planning on using color on the top half of the wall. The first picture shows the large wall where most of the color will be, then the color will also be above the bookshelves and across a high ledge opposite this main wall.

The second picture shows the red-pink and the sky blue. The third picture shows the green in the forefront and in the background, you can see the red along the bottom half of that wall. I really would have preferred an adobe red, but that's not an option, so let me know your favorite choice. Fyi, that office will soon have a mustard/camel-colored sofa so the paint color needs to coordinate....not sure if that sofa will go along the main wall or in-front of the bookshelves.

Decisions, decisions...so necessary to kingdom work!

Thanks to all the St. Andrew people who are checking up on me, making sure I'm doing good on the job. Some of you have called and some have stopped by...only to find that my start date is June 17. I promise, I'm keeping out of trouble...

"And We're Back"

Tuesday, June 12

Can you name the movie where today's headline is used? If so, you now know my favorite Tom Cruise movie. Not that I'm a big Tom Cruise fan, though. His Scientology would have been enough to turn the tide, but his choice of Katie Holmes did me in. (Here's why...if your inquiring mind wants to know...if not, skip to the next paragraph...When I was in North Carolina attending the best seminary in the world, I spent the night on the Wrightsville beach watching "Dawson's Creek" be filmed. As the actors were walking off the set, this little girl, who had waited and waited and waited to see Katie, was totally brushed aside by Katie's bodyguard who stood between her and Katie, blocking her view, and saying to the little girl, "Katie is tired of being looked at." Rough life.)

And we're back from Sedona, Arizona, and a 3-day Ayurveda cleanse. My friend Christine, who is a spiritual guide to me and now knows my deepest secrets, joined me on this journey. What is an Ayurveda cleanse? -- Click here for Wickipedia's answer. Kathryn's answer: literally means "wisdom of life," and it is a healing principle centered around digestion originating in ancient India.

Sedona is so beautiful. We stayed in the home of my dear friend and spiritual mentor, Patricia Berger. It was the perfect complement to a busy week of St. Andrew goodbyes and Methodist Annual Conference meetings.

There is so much to share about this trip and probably one of the most meaningful moments for me came from Sophia, the daughter of the yoga instructor Sherie. Sophia told me all kinds of stories about what happens when you die (you eat mice eggs to die), what happens when baby mice see their mommie mice die (they cry tears from the tree branches) to what happens if you have not been nice while on earth (you get to watch someone else who is nice to learn how to be nice). Sophia, 5-years-old, asked me if I liked what I told her. I said, "Yes, Sophia, I like your stories. Sophia replied, "I'm not telling you stories. I'm telling you the truth of the world." When my first book is written, Sophia, my wisdom-guru, will be thanked as this is now my statement for who I am as a writer and what my writing will be about--telling the truth of the world, God's world, that is. And that's the first bit of truth. This is God's world, not ours.

More than meets the eye

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Look at the details of life. And see that there is more to the picture the deeper you look. http://www.games4work.com/games/swf/supercoolpic.swf


I'm leaving on Thursday for Sedona (Pic above: My spiritual mentor, Patricia, and me with the rocks April 30, 2007). My friend Christine and I are going there to soak up red rock vibes and experience yoga, ayerveda treatments and rest. Will be back early next week and moving into my office at First Dallas.

Everything about the past 4 months of my life has been about the details. And as I have witnessed God bring together some details that really are incredible, I have gained such a deeper trust and lived in a bolder confidence of God's presence in my life. God spoke clearly while in China in March, "Digest your life." I'm trying my best to listen and follow.

I want to thank St. Andrew for such an incredible outpouring of love this past Sunday. Wow--what a day. Thank you to those who gave generous financial gifts for UrbanLIFE ministry at First Church. If you need to mail a gift, the address is: FUMC, 1928 Ross Ave., Dallas, TX 75201.

Here's to the good news: "He never failed me yet!" So let's keep moving forward in confidence, looking deeper into the picture God paints for each one of us.

It just goes by so fast

June 5, 2007

This is Methodist ministers week here in North Texas, which means all the Methodist ministers and all the Methodist lay people get together and read reports. Every now and then, we give a nod to Jesus. Mostly, though, we are reporting about how we are hoping that the Lord is working among us.

I had a reality-check moment on Monday when one report included a video of this young-blond who just graduated from seminary and she was ready to go out and serve God. Watching the video, I realized that was me EIGHT years ago at the age of 24. (By the way, the picture at left, I'm 2 years old.)

Wow...there was so much possibility in my world and I had no idea back then all I was capable of doing. (I'm walking on thin ice trying to avoid being cliche in my blogging at this moment--you know, I don't want to be gathering ye rosebuds while I may.) After conference on Monday, I asked Troy if I was too old right now to do young, urban professional ministry. (Just so you know, Troy was a good husband--he told me I was still young, pretty, talented, blah, blah, blah...)

What my age crisis left me with was a passion to go and do this ministry--UrbanLIFE--at First Dallas as if today, this month, and this year is the only opportunity I will get to influence people's lives in powerful ways. In just a few years, I will be older than this target audience...no longer a young, urban professional but a mid-life urban professional (for all my mid-life friends, there is nothing wrong with mid-life...just not sure what it will be like to be there.)

Do you just go from young-to-old overnight? Is it possible to live today so that I know it is today? Or, it is part of life's very fabric that you can't realize the textures of life until the weaving is done?