My Lord Katie

On Saturday December 20, we honor the festival for Katarina Von Bora, who became Mrs. Martin Luther. She waws born to an impoverished nobleman and was 5 when her mother died. She was sent to live in a convent and took vows as a nun, but later escaped the convent in a herring barrel at age 24 so that she could go join the reformer Martin Luther. With Luther, she had 6 children and cared for other children as foster children. For Luther, she was a trusted partner, gifted manager of the household while he pursued more theological pursuits, and a partner in prayer. Luther often called her the morning star of Wittenburg, because she rose so early to tend to the home and farm. He also jokingly called her "my Lord Katie". I love the stories about Katie Luther, because they show us a woman who was strong in her faith and grounded in her care of those she loved. There are stories that Katie once took the study door off its hinges to bring a meal to Luther because he had been locked in his study for days working on his writing and had not stopped to eat. Katie worried that he had died and so took down the door to check on him. She also was known for her staunch belief in Luther's reforms. Often, men like Luther or Calvin or others who led the Protestant Reformation are noted, but Katie gives us a reminder to look beyond the headlines for those who also influenced our faith traditions.

Silent Night

Sophia just recieved a book from her Sunday School teacher that has the words to Silent Night in it.... So far this Christmas Season, we have focused on learning Away in a Manger, Jingle Bells, and Come on Ring Those Bells. But the Silent Night book has her singing phrases of it in strange order on her own as she sings to her dolls. It struck me as I read it to her how little silence we all have in our lives. The phones ring, the TV is on, music is playing all around us. There is so much to do that we rarely take time for silence, with presents to wrap and cookies to bake and cards to get out and trees to decorate... Do we stop for silence in the midst of all this? Do we stop to appreciate, to wonder? It is so easy to get caught up in the do do do, hurry hurry hurry, mindset of the holiday season. Have we lost the silence of that Silent Night? How can we capture even a moment of silence each day?

Stir up....

Many of our prayers in Advent begin with the words: Stir up your power and come!
One retired pastor once joked that Advent is the time of the cowboy prayers, the "Stirrup" prayers. Yet, Advent is characterized by that prayer. Stir up your power, O God, and come!
Stir up the power of your peace , so that violence may come to an end. Stir up the power of your comfort, so that those who mourn and live with sorrow daily will not be overcome by it. Stir up your power and give us hope, so that those who see with despairing eyes can catch a glimpse of your promise. Stir up our hearts so that we can see you in our world and in our lives. The prayers of Advent express such longing for God to come and make our world a better place. They express a longing for God to be present among us, with us, in tangible ways. How do you long for God's power to be stirred up in your life this Advent?

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?