My (crazy) Aunt Olive

As I was growing up, I heard about my Aunt Olive [actually my father's aunt, so my great aunt].  She was never talked about much, but she was always considered a bit odd.  I didn't know much about what this oddness was, but heard rumours of how my grandfather had to support her because she never made enough money to support herself.  My aunt [father's brother's wife] went to visit her once and told us she eat 'weird' food - things like stewed strawberry tops. 
  As I got older, I started to get a better sense of what Aunt Olive was doing:  she was doing mission work among the latino workers in Southern Florida.  She ate the 'weird' food, because she lived frugally and made use of everything she bought, even the strawberry tops.  When our first child was stillborn, she sent us a lovely card, one of the few my wife saved.  It was, I think, a recycled Christmas card, to which she had added Scripture verses and heartfelt greetings for a great-nephew and wife whom she had never met at a time of great loss.  At a casual glance, the card was 'crazy,' but if you looked past the format, you saw a true expression of Christian love.
  Sometimes in talking to people about our planned trip to Guyana, some do think it is crazy to go without prior experience to the poorest country in South America, to a church we know nothing about, except that they are Lutheran.  But as Vivian and I look at the situation, we feel compelled to seek an experience of the Church outside our comfortable North American context.  We may not know these people, but they are people, Christians, Lutherans with whom we share ministry, regardless of whether we have ever met them or not.  Why Guyana?  Because Guyana was the place presented to us at a time when we were receptive.  The next two years may not be authorized by the ELCIC, we may be moving outside the box, but those things do not make the ministry less valid.
  The theme the ELCIC has been using for the last several years is 'In Mission for Others.'  Wherever we go, we are in mission for others.  We look forward to be in mission in Guyana.

Peace like a River

At a recent conference we sang a hymn I have sung and loved many times before - 'When Peace like a River.'  What amazed me in this instance was the concept in the third verse:

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul! 

The message here is that as I approach the cross with my sin, Jesus takes it from me.  It seems a simple and meaningful concept, but it is quite different from what I was told as a child - that my sin made Christ suffer more on the cross, that I was responsible for Christ's suffering, that every sin I committed drove the nails deeper. This is what Luther called the terror of conscience, giving the Christian an extra burden to which they have no solution.  But rather, the song talks about giving over our sin to Christ, that he can bear it and make things Right.  The latter is Gospel, the former is Law.  The great pity is that the club of the Law that Luther wrote against was perpetrated on me by a Lutheran body -- The Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.  I have since connected with other Lutheran bodies that are more Gospel centered.  Blessed be the Name of the Lord.

Remembrance

Sorting one's live does sometimes yield surprises.  I ran across a small song book: The Worker's Quarterly - Songs for Now.  This contains several memories.  The Quarterly was a small periodical published for youth workers of the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod.  But because its name was simply 'The Workers Quarterly' it was once listed as a subversive publication by the US House Committee on Unamerican Activities. But the more important aspect of this particular issue was that it was my introduction to Christian folk music and African-American spirituals.  The LC-MS was, and generally still is, a very conservative and very white, upper Midwest Church, so this little publication was a revelation to youth of the 60's who had never heard this sort of music before -- songs like Sons of God, and Lord of the Dance, and We Shall Overcome.  A radical education for we who were young and looking for some excitement in worship.  As I looked thru the pages, noticing the graffiti, the upside-down printing, the hand lettered verses, I remembered how radical the changes we wanted were. And how we tried to drag our parents from the drab 50's into a brave new world of unregulated creativity.   And how quickly most of us abandoned those radical ideas for a steady job in the 70's.
  But worship and our whole approach to the Faith changed in ways we didn't anticipate and never reverted to that old and staid past.  We may not have changed the world, but we did change the Church, at least a little.

New Beginning

"Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end."  -- Semisonics 'Closing Time'

And so it begins.  The blog and the journey.  Moving to New Amsterdam, Guyana, South America.  Time to remove 37 years of accumulated stuff - donate, give away, sell, store what's left.  Once we got our heads around the notion of getting rid of most of it [pretty much anything that we could reacquire if needed on our return], the actual doing should be easier than deciding what to keep.
  And today is Mashramani in Guyana -- the national celebration of independence.  Otherwise known as carnival, a good excuse for a party.  I think it's good we miss it this year, so we will know more when it comes around again next year, but from the youtube vids it looks like a good time. 
  We have moved before, but this is different.  Different culture, different climate. Different, I suppose, only by degree, because we are moving from one Lutheran parish to another.  So the ministry will be different, but the mission will remain the same: to proclaim the Gospel - preaching and sacrament, word and deed. 
  We all think about the new place; sociologists call it 'anticipatory socialisation.'  It can be very helpful, as long as you realise that it's not likely to be the way you imagined.  But now it's time to stop imagining and start again with the packing, donating, etc....