 I recently finished a beautiful little book of desert wisdom. In the book was a saying from Abba Anthony–one of the great teachers of the early Church. The saying reads: "The time is coming when people will be insane, and when they see someone who is not insane, they will attack that person saying: You are insane because you are not like us."
Abba Anthony said this in the fourth century. You'd be forgiven for thinking he wrote it last Tuesday. If you aren’t familiar with the desert fathers and mothers, I offer you a brief primer. In the third and fourth centuries, something unusual happened at the edges of the Roman Empire. Men and women–many of them disillusioned by a Christianity that had become comfortable, institutionalized, and entangled with imperial power–walked out into the Egyptian, Syrian, and Palestinian deserts to seek God in simplicity and silence. These weren't folks who were fleeing the world so much as they were refusing to be consumed by it. These ammas (mothers) and abbas (fathers) became teachers. Seekers traveled to sit with them, to ask questions, to receive "a word"–a short, piercing piece of wisdom meant to be carried and pondered. These sayings were eventually collected into what is known as the Sayings of the Desert Fathers (or Apophthegmata Patrum–say that three times fast), and they remain among the most startlingly fresh spiritual texts in all of Christian history. Among the most revered of these teachers was Anthony the Great, who left his inheritance at age twenty and lived most of his life in the desert. He is considered by many to be the father of Christian monasticism. And yet he was no recluse–he was deeply engaged with the world's problems, and he knew something about what it costs to hold a different kind of center. This particular saying from Abba Anthony might feel a bit like clever social commentary to us today. But it is far more than that–offering us both a pastoral warning and a spiritual gift. Anthony seemed to understand that there is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from living in a community–or a culture–where the dominant reality has quietly become the only acceptable reality. Where compassion gets called naïve. Where truth-telling gets called divisive. Where slowing down gets called laziness. Where simply not participating in the frenzy gets you labeled as the problem. In the shadow of such communal living, Abba Anthony names what so many of us feel but struggle to articulate: Sometimes what gets called insanity is just the refusal to go along. You know, I spend a great deal of time thinking about and reflecting on our congregation–a community scattered across five counties, often feeling like a minority voice in this area. I think about the people who come through our doors carrying the weight of being different in ways our culture punishes. I think about those who have been told by churches, or family, or the ambient pressure of their communities, that something is fundamentally wrong with them. And I can’t help but think that maybe the reason so many of us feel so different at this time in this place is because we ARE different. And maybe that’s not a problem to be fixed so much as it is a description to be claimed. In so many ways, we are the ones refusing to just go along with what is happening around us. Which, as many of us know all too well, comes at a cost–both communally and individually. And yet, not paying that cost has never really been an option for any of us. Because we know what Abba Anthony knew–that in a climate like ours, in an area like ours, when people call us the problem, it is not necessarily evidence that we are wrong. It is evidence that we are paying attention. Sometimes I need that reminder–and maybe you do too. That we are not crazy. We are awake…woke even. And that is not quite the 4-letter word people are making it out to be. In fact, it puts us in good company. Alongside people like Jesus, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Harvey Milk, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the suffragists, the abolitionists, and a fourth-century Egyptian monk named Anthony who walked into the desert and saw the whole thing coming. We are a part of a tradition that has always lived in the tension between what is and what ought to be. And learning to live in that tension without being crushed by it, is some of our most important work. So this week, maybe we can let the desert elders remind us again that the crowd has never been a reliable guide for knowing which way we need to go. We already know the way…we just need to walk it. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  Most days, I don't eat until late. I wish I could tell you it's because I'm fasting — how very Lent of me that would be — but honestly, it's usually because I'm working. I skip breakfast (except coffee — there is always coffee) and work straight through lunch without noticing, until my hunger pangs stand up, do a little jig, and belt out a desperate number just trying to get my attention. Only then do I realize: Oh. I am hungry. I have been hungry for a while now.
It turns out, that's not just a thing that happens to my stomach. In his famous work, Confessions, Augustine of Hippo said it better than I can: "You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you." That restlessness, Augustine suggests, is not something to cure or outrun. It is a doorway. And Lent is the season that invites us to stop and actually stand in it. By now we have likely heard the words. We have perhaps felt the smudge of ash, or the weight of what it means to say remember that you are dust. And now we are here–in the in-between, in the not-quite-yet, in the season that asks us to be honest about what we are actually hungry for. Augustine knew something about hunger. He spent years trying to feed it with everything except the thing that could actually satisfy it. Ambition. Pleasure. Philosophy. Reputation. He was, by any measure, a brilliant and accomplished man–and he was restless. Profoundly, achingly restless. Looking back on the broken road behind him, Augustine wrote those words, and named what had been true the whole time: We are made for something. Made toward something. The restlessness isn't a malfunction. It's a signal. Lent invites us to pay attention to that signal. We live in a world that is very good at keeping us distracted from our own depths. There is always another thing to scroll, another crisis to respond to, another obligation pulling at our sleeve. And we are not wrong to care about the world — caring is part of what it means to be people of faith. But even our caring can become a way of staying on the surface, of never quite getting to the question underneath all the other questions: What is my soul actually hungry for right now? That is the Lenten question. Not primarily what we should give up, or what we should do differently, but what we are reaching for–and whether what we are reaching for can actually hold us. We come to this season carrying all of it. The grief we haven't had time to sit with. The doubt we've been too busy to examine. The longing we can't quite name. The ways we have tried to satisfy a deep thirst with things that don't quite reach it. Augustine's restlessness is ours. And so, perhaps, is his discovery: That the longing itself is not something to be ashamed of or fixed or argued away. It is the shape of us. It is the mark of being made for more than we can manufacture on our own. One of the reasons Lent is my favorite season in the Church calendar year is that Lent doesn't ask us to have it figured out. It asks us to stop pretending we do.There is room here–in this season, in this community, in the practice of showing up and being honest before God–for the full weight of what we carry. The restlessness. The reaching. The not-yet-resting. We are in good company. Augustine got there eventually. Our faith tradition tells us so do we. So this week — find one quiet moment, even a brief one, to simply notice what your heart is reaching for. Don't fix it. Don't judge it. Just name it, honestly, as a prayer: This is what I am hungry for, Lord. That noticing, that naming—that is honest prayer. Which is, after all, just hunger with words. And that may very well be the most Lenten thing we do all week. On the Lenten journey with you, Pr. Melissa  Photo Credit: AFP I watched the Super Bowl this past Sunday and surprised myself by unexpectedly verklempt during the halftime show—the controversial one, apparently.
What struck me about the show wasn’t spectacle for spectacle’s sake. It was the sheer diversity of bodies, movements, rhythms. So many people moving independently, yet somehow together. Not uniform. Not flattened. Distinct—and still one. It felt like a visual refusal of the lie that difference has to mean division. And then, after the game ended, I saw Mike Macdonald, the Seahawks’ head coach, standing on the field just after the win (see photo of this moment). He’s looking upward. Confetti everywhere. His face open—unguarded. Awe, unmistakably. I have no way of knowing what it was he was taking in. Maybe the confetti. Maybe the roar of the crowd. Maybe he was saying a quiet prayer. Maybe all of it all at once. What gave me pause in that moment was that his expression wasn’t triumph. It was wonder. Perhaps it stood out to me because lately I’m far more accustomed to being amazed at how cruel people can be. How small. How mean-spirited. How quickly fear curdles into control. But that moment—on a football field of all places—reminded me that awe hasn’t disappeared. It just so often shows up in quieter, braver places. Places like the special library board meeting held in Oskaloosa on Monday. Many of us who spoke during the public comments portion of the meeting are used to speaking publicly. We know how to project, how to hold a room, how to say hard things out loud. But what undid me were the others. People whose hands shook as they read from notes on their phones or on a printed page in their hands. People whose voices wavered. In fact, one person said quite plainly: “I hate public speaking.” And then stood there anyway. These folks stretched themselves because keeping the public library a place that serves everyone mattered more than their fear. That, too, was awe. Not polish. Not performance. But a courage that costs something. Awe isn't always obvious. Sometimes it's wonder breaking through our cynicism. Sometimes it's ordinary people telling the truth, even when their voices shake. In the book of Acts, the Spirit descends at Pentecost—and it doesn't make people fearless. It makes silence impossible. It doesn't remove the cost. It just makes the truth more urgent than comfort. I don't know about you, but I don't want to lose my capacity for that kind of awe. Not in a moment like this. Not when fear keeps getting marketed as realism. Not when the loudest voices try to convince us that cruelty is strength. Awe is still possible. Wonder is still possible. And courage—real courage—often sounds like truth spoken with a voice that may shake, but refuses to be silent anyway. So this week, maybe we pay attention to where awe still breaks through. Maybe we notice the moments that stop us short—the ones that remind us that we are part of something larger than ourselves and larger than our fear. Maybe we just…witness. And maybe when we do, we’ll realize that awe hasn’t left us. It’s always there…just asking to be noticed. On a football field. In a meeting room. In a trembling voice that refuses to sit down. On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa  Monday morning did not go as planned. My truck wouldn’t turn over. Yes, it’s been cold, but it’s been colder. Yes, it has had some intermittent issues starting, but nothing to write home about, and it always turned over. But Monday morning–for whatever reason–all it had to offer me was a slow chug. The lights would turn on, but there was just no”there” there. I was pretty sure it wasn’t the battery—or at least it didn’t seem to be—and while I had at least some suspicion that made the starter was going out on the old girl, I had no way of knowing that was true (it sure didn’t stop me from asking Google anyway).
In the grand scheme of things, this was a minor inconvenience at best. We have another vehicle, my spouse didn’t need that other vehicle for work today, and if all else fails I have a bicycle and a relatively short commute to work. But on Monday morning, it didn’t feel that minor. In fact, it felt like one more thing piling onto an already heavy stretch of days. I called the towing company, I also called our mechanic, and then I set out to get the tow company paid and let the mechanic know who would be bringing the truck by. But at each stop, I found myself a little caught off guard. What caught me off guard was that the folks at the towing company were patient. The mechanic listened. No eye-rolling. No rushing me out the door. Just competence, kindness, and a willingness to help without making me feel foolish or burdensome. Ordinary decency, offered freely. And I was honestly not ready for it. After the events of the past several weeks—especially what has unfolded in Minnesota—I wasn’t prepared for that kind of care. Not because I think cruelty is the only thing left in the world, but because the volume of harm has been so loud, so relentless, that quiet goodness can feel almost disorienting when it is encountered up close. I don’t want to turn this into a feel-good story. We do not need forced silver linings right now, or reminders that “there are still good people in the world” as a way of softening our outrage or muting our grief. That kind of optimism asks us to move on too quickly and tidy up pain that is still very much with us. But neither do I want to ignore goodness when it shows up. Theologian Norman Wirzba writes that “care is not something we add onto life; it is what makes life possible.” Something about that feels right to me today. Care and empathy don’t fix the world. They don’t undo violence or restore what’s been lost. But they do somehow manage to keep us from becoming numb. They keep us from surrendering to the lie that harshness is the only reasonable response to a harsh world. And that’s not nothing. What I encountered this morning wasn’t some big huge act. It was quiet attentiveness. Presence. A refusal to treat another person as a problem to be managed. And in a moment when so much feels brittle and dangerous, that matters more than we might want to admit. Not because it redeems everything. Not because it balances the scales of justice. But because it reminds us what kind of people we’re still called to be. I don't know what the repair bill will end up being. I don't know if it's the starter or something worse. What I do know is that on a morning when I didn't have much margin left, two strangers made room for me anyway. That's not the whole story of this moment we're living through. But it's part of it . And maybe that's enough to remember: that even now—especially now—we get to choose what we add to the world. We get to decide whether we will meet each other with impatience or with presence. Whether we will treat one another as interruptions or as human beings worthy of care. The truck will get fixed or it won't. The hard days will keep coming. But so will the opportunities to show up for one another in ways that matter—not because they solve everything, but because they refuse to let everything be reduced to harm. That's the work. Not to pretend the world is fine, or to just “be positive,” or to “look on the bright side,” but to insist that we can still be people who practice tenderness in it…even on a Monday…even when the truck won't start. On the journey with you (but maybe on foot 😉), Pr. Melissa  This week, as we marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it’s worth remembering something that often gets left out of the story: King’s famous Letter from Birmingham Jail was not written in a vacuum.
It was a response. King was answering a public letter from white religious leaders who urged him to slow down, be patient, and trust the process. They weren’t cartoon villains. They were clergy. Moderates. People who claimed to support justice—just not this way, not this fast, not this disruptively. King’s letter is often quoted as a general call for unity or love. But it is, more precisely, a refusal. A refusal to accept delay as virtue. A refusal to confuse order with justice. A refusal to let “good intentions” excuse inaction. Looking back matters right now. Not because history gives us easy answers—but because it reminds us that moments of deep tension are not new, and that calls for calm, civility, and patience have often been tools used to maintain the status quo–during segregation, during the AIDS crisis, in the fall of Roe v. Wade, and in the ongoing displacement and erasure of Indigenous peoples—each time marked by urgent pleas to slow down for the sake of order. King didn’t write from comfort. He wrote from confinement. And he wrote because people of faith had told him he was pushing too hard, for too much, too fast. As we try to find our footing in these times, revisiting this exchange—the letter and the response—helps us ask a harder, more honest question: Are we more invested in peace, or in justice? (Links to both letters included below.) On the journey with you, Pr. Melissa A Call for Unity (White clergy letter) A Letter from Birmingham Jail |
Pastor Melissa enjoying time on her hammock.
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
March 2026
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