Elizabeth of Hungary

Sometimes when we think of holy people, we think of those who lived long lives and grew into holiness over many years. There are many saints who fit this description. But there are also other saints, who knew God's love and lived lives of faithfulness at a very young age. Elizabeth of Hungary is one of those people.
On Monday, November 17, the church celebrated her feast and she is remembered as a renewer of society. Elizabeth was a princess in Hungary who gave large amounts of money, including her marriage dowry to the poor. She founded hospitals, cared for orphans, and used the royal family's own food supplies to feed the hungry. She had the support of her husband, but her acts of generosity and charity did not earn her support within the royal court. After the death of her husband, she was driven out and she joined the Franciscan Order to continue to care for the poor. Her legacy of generosity and courage is inspiring, especially considering that she died at the age of 24. Many hospitals are named in her memory.
Elizabeth reminds us that all of us, regardless of our age, our gender, our backgrounds, are called to lives of service and holiness. No matter who we are, no matter where we are, we can see people in need all around us. There are people in need of food, people in need of hope, people in need of love, people in need of comfort, people in need of rest. How do we reach out to those in need around us? How do we show God's love to them?

Getting ready for Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is about a week or so away and many of us are beginning to shop for our traditional Thanksgiving dinners. Our shopping lists include turkeys and corn, stuffing and cranberries, pumpkin for pumpkin pie and sweet potatoes most likely. These foods are so powerfully attached to the celebration of Thanksgiving for us that it hardly would seem like Thanksgiving without them. When I was in Belgium for a year studying with 30 other American students, our advisors promised us a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner. The menu included squash soup, fried potatoes of some sort, a meat that they claimed was turkey (but looked more like a red meat of some sort), no cranberries, no sweet potatoes, no stuffing. I think I remember dumplings and a few other side dishes added in as well. To 30 homesick American college students away from home for their first Thanksgiving, this was not the traditional feast they were expecting. So after dinner, we all made a stop at McDonald's. This moment taught me how important memories and tradition are as well as the symbolism of food for us in celebrations. But did you know what the original pilgrims most likely had to eat? When the Wampanoag people and the Colonists sat down to their three-day feast to give thanks, they dined on lobster, fish packed in salt, dried and smoked meats, and freshly caught wild game. They did not eat corn on the cob (as Indian corn was only good for making corn meal, not eating whole) or eat pumpkin pie or cranberry sauce since sugar, yams, or sweet potatoes had not yet been introduced to the New England region.

So, as we prepare our Thanksgiving tables, let's remember how traditions help us connect to our history, but let's also make new memories, new legacies of thankfulness to pass on to future generations.

Gratitude

Melody Beattie once said:
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity.
If can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

Sometimes we struggle with gratitude. Our society has created a sense of earning things ourselves and being rightfully entitled to them. We tend to take so much for granted. Perhaps that is why we see so much confusion and chaos, anxiety and worry. During this month that leads up to Thanksgiving, we have a chance to work on our sense of gratitude. May that gratitude make sense of our past, bring us peace for today and give us a vision for tomorrow.

Great minds

Eleanor Roosevelt once said:
"Great minds discuss ideas; Average minds discuss events; Small minds discuss people."

If you look at Jesus' teachings, he discussed ideas, visions, great perspectives on God's kingdom.
If you look at great leaders throughout history, they focused on ideas, dreams, hopes, plans to create a new and better world.
What do we discuss in our conversations?
Do we spend time discussing great ideas, like justice and peace, like wisdom and faith?
Do we focus most of our time on discussions about events, like the election or the economy?
Or do we spend large amounts of our time talking about people? There is a danger when we focus our conversations solely on other peope, for it does not take long for our talk to become competitive or critical or sharp tongued. How do we speak about others in ways that are charitable and encouraging, open-minded and compassionate?

Confirmation

Today at worship, we confirmed 4 young women who are now full members of our congregation.
The wonderful thing about confirmation for me is to watch young people who have studied their faith and put in hours of community service finally stand up and speak for their faith themselves.
It is a moment when a congregation and families look at the spirit and commitment and enthusiasm of the young people and pray for God's gifts to be poured out upon them.
In the prayers of confirmation, we pray that the gifts of the Holy Spirit will be stirred up in them, that God will confirm their faith and guide their lives. Really those are prayers that can be spoken for each of us each and every day. "God, stir up in me the gifts of your Holy Spirit. Confirm my faith, guide my life." Amen.