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Feb 22
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Friday Friendship Tips: Let Go

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FFT2

 

About Friday Friendship Tips: Friendship is often overlooked in our society, dropped down the priority list below our partners, children, other family members, and even our career. We often underestimate the power of friendship as a source of encouragement, strength, and joy in our lives, yet we often feel its lack in our lives. I am frequently asked, “How can I find more friends? How can I make the friendships I do have more fulfilling?”  Through this series, I will be offering small meditations that I hope will help you turn your attention toward friendship and help you to prioritize it.

Jul 06
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Sermon: A New Thing

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I led worship at Redmond UMC on July 3rd, 2011, while our new pastor Cara took the weekend off after having spent the previous weeks at Annual Conference and moving her family of five from Seattle to Redmond. The Matthew passage from the Lectionary spoke well to transition and discernment in times of change, so it was easy to adapt to where the people of Redmond UMC are. This sermon was very much directed at the people of Redmond UMC, but I believe that if you can impose examples from your own life as you listen, there will be wisdom for any listener in how we can discern whether changes are good, and also how we address psychological roadblocks to needed change.

Click to listen

The actual sermon is from 0:22 to 31:25. The first 20 seconds is me apologizing for accidentally reading a portion of a scripture that I didn’t plan to read. The end is me describing, praying over, and inviting the congregation to join in a Love Feast. Yes, that does mean the sermon is over 30 minutes long.

Well, I may be biased, but I think it’s worth 30 minutes of your time!

If you’re still not convinced, here’s the basic outline of the main points. The sermon is so much more, however:

Three ways to discern whether the new thing is good

  1. Faith Like a Child — curiosity, openness, innocence, but also hardship and vulnerability. Trusting completely in God
  2. What criteria will we use? — Human criteria or heavenly criteria? “Wisdom is vindicated by her deeds” and “by their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:16). Fruits of the Spirit (Galations).
  3. Test everything, hold onto the good (1 Thessalonians 5:21)

Obstacles to embracing the new thing, even if it is good

  1. Fear of unknown; fear of failure and Success (Marianne Williamson quote). Courage is not the absence of fear. WE do it together.
  2. Love for the “old wineskins” (Matthew 9).
  3. Being too comfortable, building up wealth, not wanting to relinquish our social power
Dec 18
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Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

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When I was a child my family would often talk about other family members in terms of them being optimists or pessimists.  According to my family, being an optimist was better than being a pessimist.  The idea was that pessimists were unnecessarily negative, expecting the worst, and not enjoying life.  Optimists made the best of things, worked hard and found ways to be happy with their lot in life.

Eventually, I grew up, and as usually happens when folks grow up, I began to question these ideas.  It began to make less and less sense to box people into one category or the other, and both seemed to have obvious pros and cons to me.  So when I stumbled across this cute cartoon, I knew I just had to share it with you:

I like this because it stretches us beyond the optimist/pessimist dichotomy, and anything that stretches us beyond rigid binary thinking is a good thing.

Do you have any rigid beliefs that could use a little gentle stretching?

Jun 02
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Tea & Empathy June 2010 – Turn, Turn, Turn

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“To everything, turn, turn, turn / There is a season, turn, turn, turn” says a popular Byrds song.  Is your life turning?  Perhaps you or a family member are graduating preschool, high school, or graduate school.  Perhaps you have recently begun a new job, or lost an old one.  Perhaps you’ve been diagnosed with a new illness, or an old illness has gone in remission.  Perhaps a new relationship has begun for you; perhaps one has ended.  Our lives are often in flux, and my guess is that most of you reading this are experiencing a turning somewhere in your life.

The Byrds song is loosely based on Ecclesiastes 3:1-8, which reads:

3For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:
2a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
3a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
4a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
5a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
6a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to throw away;
7a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
8a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

I find this scripture both challenging and comforting.  It is challenging in the sense that it reminds us that there is a time for both things that are pleasant and things that are unpleasant; time for things that are joyful and that are painful.  It reminds us that our joys and pleasures are temporary, for a season of mourning will come too; this challenges us to enjoy and savor those moments when they come.

It is also comforting because it reminds us that even when things are painful, or scary, or very difficult, we are in the midst of a season that will, truly, pass.  Sometimes in the midst of a deep depression or an excruciating grief, we may forget there was ever a time of joy and have a hard time believing there ever will be a time of joy again.  This passage in Ecclesiastes reminds us that all of these times pass eventually.  If now is a time for weeping or mourning or loss for you, take comfort in knowing that there will soon be time for laughter and dancing and seeking.

You are invited to a Transitions Workshop, led by Katie, on Saturday, July 17th from 1:00-3:00pm in the Fellowship Hall.  We will examine the ways that we experience all of life’s transitions, large and small, joyful and painful, and learn strategies for coping with the painful aspects of transitions.  A free will offering will be collected for the counseling scholarship fund.