During our Ash Wednesday service this year, I asked those present to write a word on a stone representing what they wanted to see less of in themselves by the end of their Lenten journeys. I then asked those present to place their stone somewhere in the spiral of smaller stones displayed on an altar in the back of the sanctuary. The purpose for this is because seeing less of something in ourselves almost never happens in a single, miraculous moment...it always happens on the way. It happens on the way--on the journey--inward toward that light each of us carry. That light that makes us who we are at our core. That light--a spark of the Light--in which we all live and move and have our being. Our Lenten journey is nearly done, and I suspect most of us might have seen less of that certain something we wrote on our stones. Or--if you're like me--you may not have seen less just yet, but were aware of the presence of that something more. I wrote "anxiety" on my stone. Every week I walked by that altar and I saw the word scrolled on my stone. And every week seeing that stone reminded me to begin to notice when anxiety was present and to get curious about its presence in certain situations. What's making me anxious? What's the story I'm telling myself right now? Is it true? What is the evidence for this being true? What is the evidence against this being true? What else could be happening here? Who would I be without this story I'm telling myself? This week, I am asking those who wrote on their stones to take them home. After this Sunday, Palm Sunday, the altar will come down as Holy Week begins. I have no illusions that my anxiety is gone or ever will be. But it IS a part of my journey. Just as whatever you wrote on your stone is a part of yours. It isn't bad or good, it just IS. What I do with it along the way is up to me. How I let it shape my journey is up to me. Just as what you do with and how you let whatever you wrote on your stone shape your journey is up to you. Seeing "less" of something in ourselves may not actually be the goal...it may just be where we started on the long path of integration. I can tell you that I am not the same person who entered the spiral of Lent nearly 40 days ago--as I'm sure you aren't either. My awareness of anxious moments is greater. My heart is a little more soft. On the journey toward less, I think I've found more. So, this Sunday, before we wave the palms and shout Hosanna, take a moment to stop at our stone altar one more time. Retrieve what you placed there on Ash Wednesday, and then keep moving. The stones were never meant to weigh us down to the point of stagnation. The spiral draws us in, then pushes us out. Over and over and over again, until the day our lights in this life go out, and to dust we shall return. I'm placing my stone somewhere I can see it--daily--to continue my journey of integration. I pray you'll join me in continuing to move forward in faith. Pr. Melissa As I walked with my dog Hank this morning, I found my mind drifting (as it is prone to do in the wee hours of the morning) to another time and another version of myself. I was reflecting on places I had lived, people with whom I have worked, mistakes I have made, injuries I have nursed, those I’ve tried desperately to earn the approval of, and a host of other factors that have paved the road of my journey thus far. My mind lingered on a knee injury in 2022 that then led to a back injury requiring countless sessions of physical therapy, mornings spent in traction, and days of wondering if I’d ever really feel or walk normally again. It made its way to having to say goodbye to one of my favorite beings in the whole world–my dog Murphy–and how that loss brought me to the realization that every loss–both human and otherwise–holds both the power to diminish us and expand us all at the same time. My mind went to one of the deepest betrayals in my life, and I noted how the sting of it still rattles around in the pit of my stomach, although not to the same degree it once had. “The body keeps the score,” the story goes–and my body is evidence that it truly does. As I made the turn toward the last quarter mile of my walk, the faces of so many people in my life appeared in my mind. There were teammates from high school sports teams that I had so hoped would like me enough to befriend me. There were adult coworkers who LOVED my sense of humor but weren’t crazy about going too far beyond that in getting to know me. There were friends who I allowed to use me, friends who brought out the best in me, and mentors who still offer wisdom and gentle pushes when I call them up to explain my latest predicament. There were women I had dated who had broken my heart, and there was the human who finally gave my heart a home–all of it a broken road of circumstances and relationships that wound their way to this morning. This walk. This place. This version of me. I imagine you’ve made a trip or two down roads like this as well. As the warmth of my breath hit the cool air of the morning, I thought of all the opportunities I had been presented with along the way to NOT move forward. To stop. To steep in my hurt or my grief. To sit down along the side of the road somewhere and simply never get up again. And yet, that hadn’t been my story. I was never cured of whatever was causing me dis-ease (hyphen intentional), but I had–without really realizing it–managed to heal. Our scriptures are filled with healing stories, and far too often we Christian folk read them as stories about cure. But they aren’t. Healing and curing are inherently different. Curing means "eliminating all evidence of disease," while healing means "becoming whole." The former, I have come to realize, has much to do with the latest medical technologies and therapeutic interventions, while the latter is very much dependent on me. This is oversimplifying it of course, but at the end of the day it would seem that we have much more to do with whether or not we heal–or become whole–than perhaps we do with whether or not we are cured of that which causes dis-ease within us. The other day I read a post shared on the inter webs by someone named Tracie Watkins that claims we owe it to ourselves to heal–to become whole–even in the face of disease or dis-ease. The post seemed to suggest that healing can beget healing, and yet, our healing is not contingent on whether or not those around us have healed or worked to become closer to whole. Our healing is contingent only on the steps we are taking to become closer to whole–regardless of circumstance. Here’s the post: Heal. Your mom may never apologize to you, because she has conditioned herself to believe that she did right by you. She hasn’t healed. Heal. Your father may never apologize to you, because he can only see what he’s done right. He hasn’t healed. Heal. Your family members may never apologize to you, because toxicity is what they were raised on. They haven’t healed. Heal. That “friend” may never apologize to you, because he/she isn’t sorry. He/she hasn’t healed. If/when they reach their healing, they may seek your forgiveness. Be so healed that it won’t even matter. Heal. For you. You owe it to yourself. So this week, I’m not just looking back, I’m looking to heal. I’m looking for opportunities to move myself closer to wholeness. I’m not looking for a cure–I’m not looking for opportunities to eradicate painful experiences and life circumstances from my life. I’m not interested in making wishes for things to be different. I’m interested in taking steps to BE different. More human. More fully alive. More than all of the people and predicaments that have diminished me, and more than any disease or dis-ease I have faced. I’m looking to become more whole–day by day and little by little. And I pray you’ll join me because--by my estimation at least--the world could use a little more wholeness and a little more healing. Healing with you, Pr. Melissa On Sunday St. Paul’s church council met for the first time in 2024. As is customary at the first meeting of the year, I led our opening prayer/centering practice to begin our time together. On this day, I chose to ask our church leaders to engage in a brief session of smile yoga. Smile yoga is something I learned about in a book I’m reading by Tarah Brach, Ph.D. titled “Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of a Buddha.” In the book, the author introduces the concept–shared widely by Thích Nhất Hạnh–and speaks about its practice. “Smile yoga” is what Thích Nhất Hạnh most often refers to as “yoga for your mouth.” The zen master shares that holding a smile, then releasing it, and then repeating the practice several times a day is one way we can open our hearts and improve the quality of our breathing. So often, the zen master teaches, we experience pain of any variety–through stress, grief, hopelessness, and trauma, to name a few–and our bodies begin to close off from the outside world. Our breathing becomes shallow and our heart becomes dammed off. Smiling changes those realities. Thích Nhất Hạnh has been practicing smile yoga for much longer than I have, but I have noticed that the kind of smile I put into this practice matters. When I engage a smile that is more of a forced grin–the kind of smile that I use to respond to others to try to make it seem like everything’s just fine–the openness doesn’t seem to come–or at least not as fully. But when I close my eyes and smile the kind of smile that I share with someone I love, or the kind of smile that can’t help but erupt into laughter, I feel it in my whole body. The tension in my shoulders is released. My breathing moves from those shallow upper lobes of my lungs down into the depths, until it feels like I’m breathing from the center of my body. And my heart–my heart that is often so closed for fear of feeling the full sting of whatever pain that is present with me–begins to open–gently, slowly, chamber by chamber–like an iris blooming in the springtime. It all starts with a smile. It sounds easy enough, I know, but truthfully, sometimes a smile simply doesn’t come. Or it does come, just not easily. If you live long enough, you’ll know these times occur far more frequently than we would like. Which is why I like that smile yoga is a practice. Something that can be done anywhere at almost anytime with anyone–during one’s commute (eyes open, of course), while lying in bed in the morning, in the shower, balancing the checkbook, while typing your 100th email of the day at work, alone or with a friend, with someone your own age or someone far younger or older than you are now. Smile yoga can be done to help us open our lungs for deeper breath, our bodies for deeper connection, and our hearts for hearing deeper truths. And yes, I know we aren’t Buddhists, however, as John Shelby Spong once wrote, “God is not a Christian, God is not a Jew, or a Muslim, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist. All of those are human systems which human beings have created to try to help us walk into the mystery of God. I honor my tradition, I walk through my tradition, but I don't think my tradition defines God, I think it only points me to God.” If this spiritual practice helps point me or any one of us to God in deeper and fuller ways, certainly it is a practice worthy of our time and our attention, regardless of its origins. Because when it boils right down to it, life is full of pain in its many forms–the kind of pain that closes us, curls us in on ourselves, and separates us from anything other than that pain. And if there is anything that–in the presence of such pain–keeps us pliable, opens us outwardly, and draws us further from our isolation and into the mystery of God, then I don’t know about you but I’m leaning into it. I’m going to practice opening toward it. I’m going to smile. Smiling my way into openness with you, Pr. Melissa Last weekend my parents came down to visit, have lunch, and celebrate 16 years of remission with me and my spouse. During the visit, my mom pulled out a pottery project I made in first or second grade–a mug–kind of. She was giving it back to me after years in her loving care, as my nephew (her grandson) had begun playing with it and filling it up with water–or at least that was the excuse she gave me for returning this gift I had given her so many years ago. I can’t say that I truly blame her. I mean, as far as mugs go, this one had some pretty fatal flaws–chief among them being it wasn’t sealed in a way that made it safe to actually drink from it. But there was a lot more wrong than right with the mug. The picture doesn’t quite do it justice, so let me paint a picture for you: The mug was made of a reddish clay that had been wrapped around an old aluminum can that we had been instructed to bring to art class. The lines from the aluminum can are actually visible when looking inside the mug. At the bottom is a circular piece of clay that had been joined to the top part of the mug through pinching and smearing the pieces together. I never really got this part right, so the mug sits at an angle. The top rim of the mug is irregular in shape, thickness, and constitution, while the handle, arguably the best part of the mug, gives testimony to what so often comes of one’s best laid plans. The mug is painted with various colors of glazes that–it’s clear–turned out to be something other than what I was going for after being fired in the kiln. Across the face of the mug, the following message is engraved in the clay: MMOM! Evidently I didn’t think my mom would notice the extra “M” that I didn’t bother trying to smooth out in the clay, and, evidently, the exclamation point gave nod to my apparent desire for her heart to be strangely warmed every time she looked at the engraved message and imagined the sound of my voice yelling for her. The pottery mug is as imperfect as my love for my mother. It has voids where I wish voids were not. It leans away when I wish it would sit plumb. It has lines and divots and mistakes–permanently etched in the contours of its body–signs of being shaped and formed by immature hands. And yet, even with its imperfections, and even though it can’t hold liquid at all, that mug is still a vessel. It still carries evidence of my desire to tangibly show love to the one who birthed me. It still carries evidence of the hard truth that desire only gets a person so far. It still carries evidence of the budding relationship between a girl and her Mom (or MMOM!), and the ways in which love gives of itself imperfectly, as well as the ways in which love receives just as imperfectly. It is a vessel filled with good intention, poor execution, and the knowledge that love is always big enough to hold more than one thing at the same time. That mug is a vessel…and so are we. Sometimes, though, I think we’re vessels who judge ourselves too harshly–focused only on what we can’t hold or what we aren’t made to do, rather than what we can and what we are. I think we often look at our own lines, divots, and mistakes as permanent flaws, instead of hallmarks of our journeys to becoming. I think we look at the love we have received that wasn’t what we needed or wanted or how we needed or wanted, and we discount the desire of the one who extended that imperfect love to us. We are vessels, living testimonies that love is, in fact, big enough to hold more than one thing at the same time, and that we needn’t reduce ourselves, others, the world, or God to either/or, black/white, right/wrong, binaried thinking. We can find solace in a moment AND hope for something better than what the current moment holds. We can hold onto a beautiful memory AND live fully in the present where future memories are made. We can receive the love that has been extended to us AND name that, at times, that same love was insufficient. We are vessels–living, breathing, complex, and beautiful vessels that, although imperfect in our execution at times, are perfectly equipped to live and love here and now. We may not hold what everyone always needs us to hold or what we think we should be able to hold, but always we carry within us evidence of the One who first held us, whose fingerprints are all over us, whose love is found in the depths of each void, every perceived imperfection, and every mistake we’ve ever made. And perhaps that’s plenty for one vessel to hold. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa This past weekend I stopped at a big box store to pick up a few items we needed at the house. The day was cold and dreary, with a strong northwest wind that felt as if it might blow even the strongest person over. There had been a rain/snow mix the day prior, and puddles riddled the parking lot–water and ice filling the voids in the asphalt. As I sat in my truck putting on my hat and gloves, steeling myself for the cold burst of air that was waiting to greet me, I saw an elderly couple making their way across the parking lot heading into the store. I’m not certain why, but I stopped and watched them for a moment–drawn to the way that they moved together. Their heads were down, as if to cut through the stinging wind, and they each had an arm wrapped around the waist of the other. I noticed that one–or maybe both–of them were a little unsteady on their feet. But I also noticed that every time an unsteady step was taken, the pair righted themselves by leaning into one another. Just before getting to the front doors of the store, a puddle was in their path. Without missing a beat, the man gently guided the woman around the puddle with nothing more than his wrinkled hand on the small of her back. The woman didn’t fight this gesture, in fact, she leaned into it–the two of them moving together in easy rhythm–the product, I supposed, of years learning to move together. Observing that couple move together burst my heart wide open. In their movement across the parking lot that day, I was filled with an overwhelming sense of how the Spirit must work with us. How we are, at times, guided through and even around the obstacles that lay ahead of us. And how, at each turn, we make the choice whether or not we will fight against that guidance, or whether or not we will lean into it. In their loving care for each other, I saw the possibilities for steady movement forward when we lean into one another–allowing ourselves to be righted and steadied by those around us. I saw the easy rhythm between them–give and receive, guide and be guided, hold and be held–and I understood that rhythms like that in our lives of faith are not born one random Sunday morning. They, too, are the product of years learning to move together–as one community, one human family, one body of Christ. One body who has prayed together for years. One body who has cried together for decades. One body who has celebrated together, weathered storms together, felt lost together, and got found together. One body–composed of a beautiful symphony of people God so loves–serving together, planting together, and tearing down together, learning to move in easy rhythm–together. To move in this way takes time. It takes practice. It takes dedication and courage and a willingness to keep showing up. To keep leaning in, maybe not because we need it at this particular moment, but because someone else is relying on us to help steady them. I’m not sure where you are today–whether you are someone ready to hold, or someone needing to be held. I’m not sure if life has brought you to a place where you are desperate for a guide, or if it is calling out to you to do some guiding. I don’t know if you are in any position to give of yourself in some way, or if your hands are outstretched simply longing to receive. But I do know that we need each other. Week after week. Year after year. We need each other to help steady us when the cold winds blow. We need each other to gently guide us around the puddles and voids that threaten to swallow us. We need the body of Christ to help each of us move through this thing we call life so that we, too, might find our way into easy rhythm. Learning to move together with you, Pr. Melissa |
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen
Rev. Melissa Sternhagen was called as the pastor of St. Paul Congregational UCC in June of 2020. Prior to her call to St. Paul, Pr. Melissa worked as a hospice chaplain in the Ames, IA area, following pastorates at rural churches in Central Iowa and Southern Illinois. Pr. Melissa is a second-career pastor with a background in agribusiness and production & supply operations. She received her M.Div. from Eden Theological Seminary in St. Louis, MO, and holds a MA Ed. in Adult Education and Training, and a BA in Organizational Communications. Archives
May 2024
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