 I had to double check the calendar. Had we somehow all scrunched into the Delorean and used our plutonium-powered flux capacitor to head back to the year 2020? Great Scott! It sure seemed like it.
My “Back to the Future” moment came as news stations were reporting toilet paper shortages at places like Costco. Sure enough, I went out to the Costco app to check out the situation for myself, and found that I was not able to order toilet paper for delivery as we usually do. This seemed weird to me, as just days prior I had managed to easily and seamlessly place an order for this very same product for my parents. So, like we do in this year of our Lord 2024, I went to Google to figure out what was going on. As I’m sure many of you are aware, a labor strike (now over) at a major US port had been going on long enough that consumers were beginning to get nervous. So nervous, in fact, that some old habits we saw far too much of during the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic began to reappear. Chief among them were panic buying and hoarding. One post I saw online spoke to the situation uniquely: “All Clear. Port Strike Over. Time to retreat to your TP fortress and reflect on what you’ve done.” I chuckled at the statement–internally agreeing–then took a moment to ponder why it is that we act this way. I think we panic buy and we hoard resources out of fear. And I think that fear often comes from a place of genuine and deep discomfort with uncertainty. And while it doesn’t often make the news, I think there are many ways that our discomfort with uncertainty shows up in our lives that go well beyond bathroom tissue. In the face of uncertain times, a scarcity mentality is often quick to emerge. Something happens–a relationship ends, a loved one dies, a job is lost, the car breaks down–something happens that rips the rug out from under us and causes us a great deal of pain and discomfort. We’re uncertain about what our lives are going to look like going forward. We aren’t sure that we’ll have what it takes to make it through. We doubt that we’ll be able to figure out how to fix the car, how to land a new job, how to move forward in the face of debilitating grief, or even how we’ll love again. In the uncertainty, we often find ourselves coming to a place of believing in our bones that there simply isn’t enough–not enough time, not enough money, not enough skill, not enough love available to us. And so we hoard–in some way, shape, or form. Thinking that if we can gather up and hold onto “enough” of whatever it is we feel is scarce at the moment, our world will somehow be set right on its axis once more. We hoard our presence, believing that separation is somehow our safest bet. We hoard our problems, electing to “rob Peter to pay Paul,” and circulating debt between credit cards, believing that it’s far too risky and vulnerable to ask for help from another. We hoard the energy that we bring to our work, deciding that we’ll never again put all of our efforts into what we do for a living so that we’re never disappointed if it ends. And we hoard our friendship and even our love–coming to the conclusion that if no one knows us, then no one cares about us, and no one can break our hearts by dying or by leaving us in some other way. I think what we often find is that hoarding does work–at least for a moment. In the end, however, it is less effective. Almost always we will run out of whatever it is we are storing up for ourselves. The only way to truly have enough is to do the very opposite of what our knee-jerk reaction tells us to do: We must lean into community and relationship even harder than before. I have to wonder if this is what John the Baptist was getting at when he said, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.” Like, maybe John understood that the person with two shirts might eventually be someone who runs out of their own food and will need support from someone with extra food, so it’s a good idea for the person with two shirts to share their extra shirt because it will, in the end, benefit the community and–potentially–them self. Could it really be that our way out of scarcity is to share that which we have an abundance of ourselves, so that others are free to share that which they have in abundance? I just can’t shake the notion that John started with simple, concrete items like extra shirts and extra food so that we’d grasp the concept enough to bring it into other areas of our lives. Like, if we can share extra shirts that we have with others, then we might be able to share less concrete things too. We might be able to better share our presence–knowing that someone else has no one present for them in a particular way. That person might have a connection to a job opening that they can share with someone who lost their job and is looking. The person looking for work might have so much love to give and time to give it more freely, that they be a sobering and steadying presence for another who is grieving or who is shutting down following a break-up. And the cycle goes on–each person doubling down not on scarcity, but on abundance–as they share what they have and receive what they lack. So the next time life brings you to a place where you want to hoard–toilet paper or love or something else–I pray that you might consider a different way of reacting. Perhaps a way much like the Way John the Baptist pointed toward out in the wilderness–the Way that asks us to respond to uncertain times by leaning hard into community and sharing what we do have to share, so that others might be freed to share what they have too. I’m willing to try fighting my knee-jerk reactions if you are. Pr. Melissa  This past weekend I had the opportunity to travel to Omaha, NE for the Joint Annual Meeting (JAM) of the Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota Tri-Conference. It was a weekend filled with connection, worship, business meetings for each conference, and workshops to equip churches, laity, and clergy. It also held an opportunity to hear a keynote address from the General Minister and President of the national United Church of Christ, the Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia A. Thompson.
If you Google Karen Georgia (that is her full first name), you will find out quickly that–amongst other things–she is a poet and published author. During her keynote address she shared these pieces of herself in 5 movements–each one beginning with her poem. I cannot tell you the title or the content of her poems–I wasn’t taking notes except mentally. But what I can tell you is that our General Minister and President cannot only write meaningful poetry, she can also deliver a poem in ways that move a soul. What I do remember is something Rev. Dr. Thompson said during the Q & A portion of the keynote. When asked what is one thing she would say to the churches of the UCC at this time in history, Karen Georgia answered with a story about traveling with a group overseas, and the way in which she saw transformation for one individual she was traveling with happen before her very eyes. Karen Georgia concluded her story by saying that transformation is real, and many times it requires us to do only one thing: “get out of our bubble.” Those words continue to rattle around my synapses. For myriad reasons, many of us cannot simply decide to travel overseas, and even if we could, there’s no guarantee that we would allow ourselves to get outside of our bubbles once we arrive. Sure, the landscape may be different, but generally, the bubble each of us works so hard to create would likely be the same–our ideas, our commitments, our viewpoints, our experiences–all holding us in these delicate orbs of our own making. Which leads me to believe that if we want to get out of our bubble, we’re going to need to do more than just change our scenery. Because the truth is, no matter where we go, there we are. We bring our bubbles with us–yes, even through TSA security checkpoints–and we tend to view even the newest of landscapes with our same old eyes, through the membranes of our same old bubbles, through the lenses of our same old ideas, commitments, viewpoints, and experiences. To get out of our bubbles will require more than just a new address–no matter how brief–it will require the removal of the bubble itself. The thing about bubbles is that they only stretch so far before they burst–their walls and boundaries failing completely–their remnants falling to the floor. In fact, from inside our bubbles one need only to outstretch their arms in order to stretch the membranes so far beyond their limits that the bubble ruptures and is no more. No matter the place, no matter the time–this remains true: The walls of our self-containment cannot contain us forever…but we must stretch out our arms. This looks different for each of us. Sometimes this looks like traveling to a new country and really allowing ourselves to be absorbed by the people and the culture of this new place. Other times it looks like a willingness to eat food that is NOTHING like we would normally eat. Sometimes it’s taking the opportunity to read and study about something we know very little about. Still other times, it looks like listening to all perspectives before rendering a verdict, actually forming a relationship with someone in a community served by a ministry or mission we’re a part of, or staying in on a Friday night when it seems like “everybody” is out. We stretch out our arms, opening ourselves to all that might be in any given situation with any given person or group of people, and in that stretching and opening–our bubbles burst–they have to. And when they burst, transformation happens. So this week, friends, I wonder if we might listen to the wisdom of Rev. Dr. Karen Georgia Thompson and get out of the bubble–whatever the bubble is for each of us? Maybe we can all sign on to do one thing that opens us up–that helps us stretch beyond what we’ve always done and what we’ve always eaten, who we’ve always talked to, and what we’ve always believed. And maybe, just maybe, a few of us might even stretch ourselves enough to burst that thin film that has stood for far too long between us and change–between us and transformation. Transformed people transform people. And people who have been transformed transform the world. Getting out of the bubble with you, Pr. Melissa  The other morning I woke up a bit later than usual, which meant that I ended up walking my dog, Hank, a little later than usual. Instead of it being dark and quiet like it usually is when we walk, the sun was up and the streets were alive with people driving to work, garbage trucks running their routes and, of course, school buses shuttling children to school.
On part of our regular morning walk route there is a school bus stop with a rather large number of children who get on the bus there. As Hank and I approached this bus stop along a busier thoroughfare in town, I noticed a mother who had just gotten out of her vehicle. She was parked along the street on the opposite side of the road from the bus stop, and had gone around the back side of her SUV to open the rear passenger door. Out slid her daughter–or who I presumed to be her daughter. The little girl was tugging on her backpack that appeared to have fallen between the seats. Just as her mother was bending down to help free the pack, the little girl gave it one final tug on her own and the bag was freed. She promptly flung it onto her back and slid her arms in the straps, then appeared to look up at her mother’s face. In one motion, the girl’s mother closed the door of her vehicle and dropped her hand. Her daughter’s hand easily found hers, and mother began guiding daughter around the vehicle to the street’s edge. In tandem, the two looked both ways–up and down the street–with almost exaggerated motions of their heads. It appeared to me that the little girl was still learning to be aware of her surroundings, so everything her mother did was a bit more pronounced in an effort to get the point across. Then, with one last look both ways, the little girl’s mother guided her across the busy street. They didn’t run. They didn’t even look hurried. The little girl never seemed to hesitate or quicken her steps. They simply moved–together–until they safely reached the other side. As Hank and I continued to walk I found myself wondering why the scene had caught my attention. I mean, presumably, it was just a parent and a child, doing fairly routine parent and child stuff, right? But maybe that is what was so attention-grabbing about it for me. Could our lives together really be as simple as that? I suppose they can be, I just don’t know that they always are. If I’m being honest, I don’t know the last time I was content to simply get to the other side of whatever I was facing. I’ve been in a hurry to achieve success (whatever that is). I’ve been in a hurry to reach the day when I finally have everything figured out (I’m still waiting on that day). I’ve been in a hurry to reach my goal weight, to stop missing the people I love who have died, to be more secure in my relationships, my job, and my finances. I’ve twisted, I’ve contorted, I’ve broken a sweat–literally and metaphorically–all to reach some magical day or feeling or number that I think will finally make me happy or content or…something. And I can’t help but wonder if you have too. I don’t know about you, but with all of that hurrying and twisting and contorting, I’m fairly certain I’ve missed a lot of outstretched hands along the way–hands that were desperate to find another hand to hold during a difficult time–hands that sought to be a comfort to me as I have struggled. In the traditional language of the Lord’s Prayer, we say the words, “Thy kingdom come.” Richard Rohr points out, “to pray and actually mean ‘Thy kingdom come,’ we must also be able to say, ‘my kingdoms go.’” And I can’t help but wonder if what was striking about the mother and her child crossing the street that day was that they offered me a glimpse of what it looks like when God’s kingdom comes and our kingdoms go. Maybe God’s kingdom comes every time we drop our personal agendas long enough to care about another–ensuring that we both safely reach the other side of whatever road we’re walking. Maybe God’s kingdom comes through a steady rhythm of hands offered and hands taken. Maybe God’s kingdom comes in the blessed reassurance our presence offers another–that we can do what frightens us, that we can become what we are not yet, that we can make it through what we think will certainly kill us. Maybe it’s as hard as all that…but maybe it’s as simple as all that too? So this week, may our prayer each day be, “Thy kingdom come, and my kingdoms go,” and may that prayer free us to see more clearly the hands reaching out toward us–waiting to entangle their fingers with ours–as we all learn to simply move toward the other side together–whatever the “other side” is for each of us. Learning to let my kingdoms go with you, Pr. Melissa  While visiting my dad a few weeks ago while he was in the hospital up in Waterloo, I noticed this pole plastered with Visitor and Patient name tags. The pole is located at the road crossing from the hospital building to the parking lot. The name tags are a mandatory part of visiting this hospital. When patients arrive, a “Patient” name tag is given to them in order to clearly identify them before they are officially checked in and receive their hospital bracelet. The “Visitor” name tags are provided to each visitor every time a visit is made to a particular patient, and oftentimes have the patient’s room number written on them just under the word “Visitor.”
When leaving the hospital, there is a receptacle for used name tags to be properly disposed of, however, if a person isn’t thinking about it, it is very easy to leave the hospital wearing your name tag–not realizing it’s still on until that receptacle is far off in the distance. I imagine this is how this pole began to serve as a “second chance” receptacle for the name tags. Of course, like with most things, once one or two people have done something, it becomes easier for others to follow suit. The pole–once bare metal–has become a kind of monument to the lives lost, saved, and forever-altered by all that has taken place within the hospital walls. It is a testimony to the love that surrounds us–particularly palpable in times of dis-ease and distress–as well as to the sheer number of hurting people–either physically, mentally, emotionally, or spiritually–that have walked this same road–either separately or together. The pole might look like graffiti to the untrained eye, but to me it is evidence of people wishing to leave their mark–even in some small, perhaps annoying way–and let others know “we were here.” My friend Joe Scallon’s visitation was Saturday, and I spent the day driving to and from Iowa Falls to take part. That afternoon, plus the funeral service the next day, were all focused on the mark Joe left on this world, his community, his church, his family, and the countless numbers of people who were lucky enough to call him a friend. The mark Joe left was one of humble service to others, hard work, and a deep and abiding love for God, family, and community. But the weekend was also laced with an undeniable message: Joe has left his mark–now make sure to leave yours. I have mulled over those words in my heart and mind since then, and have pondered what that means in my own life. What mark am I leaving on the world? How do I know? As a person of faith, like my friend Joe was, I think the best way to tell if we are leaving a mark and what kind of mark we are leaving, is by looking at the condition of those around us. Jesus seemed to agree. Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged “good, religious people” to move beyond their insistence on upholding the letter of the Law in favor of moving toward living the spirit of the Law. Jesus understood the Law to be interpreted by love, and not the other way around. In Matthew 25, Jesus shares the parable of the sheep and the goats, and in that teaching says, “Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’ “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’” The report card of our lives, it seems, comes from those around us and, in particular, from those who are worse off or struggling more than we are. People who can’t “pay us back” for whatever good we do, but rather, those who can only pay it forward in the aftermath of our kindness to them. In this way, the lives of those around us that we have impacted become a living testimony to the love and nurture we have shown them. Their lives reflect the mark we have left on their hearts and on their lives–a monument to the lives impacted by us–understanding that our lives were first impacted by not only someone else–or a whole chorus of someone else’s–but by Christ. We love because Christ loved us, and that love has shown up through people making food and dropping it off after a death, through rides that have been given to us when we needed one, through hugs and knowing smiles, through phone calls and prayers and shopping trips. It is, after all, the simplest things that leave a mark on a soul. And those are marks that do not die with us, but continue long after our earthly bodies have died. So, my challenge to y’all this week is to look at the world around you. Are your fingerprints on it? Is there dirt under your fingernails from working to make it better for someone else? Are you living in such a way that your life is an unmistakable monument to someone else’s love? I know I’m sure working on it in my own life–a life that is a living testimony–a monument to all the love that has been shown to me thus far from many people–including a guy named Joe. Leaving a mark of love with you, Pr. Melissa  Cool Hand Luke. There’s a lot wrong with this 1967 film, but there’s something so right: The famous, often misquoted line, “What we have here is failure to communicate.” The line is spoken by the character Captain, right after hitting Paul Newman’s character and pushing him down a small ravine. In the movie, the line comes on the heels of Luke’s (Newman) smart alec reply to Captain, after Captain tells Luke that the chains he is wearing (Luke is a prisoner on a chain gang) are for his own good. Luke’s comment? “I wish you’d stop being so good to me, Captain.”
That line was on my mind as I walked my dogs this morning in the early, autumn-like air. They were on the scent of only God knows what, and were zigging and zagging in random fashion all over the sidewalk and the easement. At one point, Hank decided to zig and June decided to zag, and somehow their retractable leashes (yeah, I know, their short leashes would likely be better for morning walks, but here we are) got wrapped around my body. In an instant I paused my True Crime podcast on my headphones, did a kind of twirl and jig to get untwisted, and started to chuckle as the quote flashed like a lighted sign in my mind, “What we have here is failure to communicate.” As I’ve reflected some more about communication and communication failures, I found myself wondering about all of the ways and for all of the reasons communication tends to break down. There are communication breakdowns that happen in an email, a text, or on social media because tone and facial expressions are absent tools that are helpful in interpreting what’s being said and how it’s being said. Communication breakdowns happen with our spouses when we make assumptions that the other person will take care of something else. Sometimes we think we told a co-worker or a partner about a meeting we have at a particular time, but it turns out that message never made it from our “To-Do” lists into an actual conversation. We fail to communicate effectively with our kids, sometimes forgetting that listening–truly and deeply–is as much a part of communication as speaking is. And we even have communication failures that happen inside of us without any other person involved. That last one, I think, is somewhat trickier to identify, and yet it carries a weight that is so profound that it impacts nearly everything else in our lives. It is a communication failure between our heads and our hearts. You would think that with all of the body’s sophistication, failures to communicate would be few and far between, and yet they are nearly as common as breathing. We get an illness that might slow us down a little, and our brains try to reason a way out of it so that our hearts won’t have to be resigned to acceptance and taking the necessary rest. Our hearts will remind us that someone we love is dying, but our brains will try anything to force by sheer will some different outcome. Our schedule will look impossible for the day, and our brains will tell us that we’ll still be able to get it all done and be able to make our child’s sporting event, or be able to keep dinner plans with our friends or our spouse, but our hearts hold the deeper, disappointing, truth that we won’t be making anything of the sort. Our brains tell us that we can multitask in order to make it all happen–that we can be bigger, stronger, faster, and maybe even still look smokin’ hot doing it, while our hearts hold the wisdom of our true capacity. Even in grief, denial is usually our first step–our brain’s feeble attempt to protect our tender hearts from feeling the shock of a loss. It’s like we get it through our heads, but we just can’t bear to break it to our hearts. In Matthew chapter 3, John the Baptist calls us to change our hearts and lives, or to repent. While this word has gotten a bad rep from some who have misused it as an action that reminds us how terrible we are, I can’t help but think that it might have a very useful application to help with communication failures. Maybe our failure to communicate–whether with others, with God, and within ourselves–is crying out to us from the wilderness of our own lives the way John called out from the wilderness in our sacred stories? Could it be that a communication failure between our heads and our hearts is asking us to change how we’re living or how fast we’re living? Could it be that a communication failure with our children is our invitation to make a change from listening in order to respond to listening in an effort to understand? What if we practiced letting our heart work as intended, and not calling it “broken” during times of loss and grief? What if communication breakdowns aren’t the end of the story we are writing as people, as partners, as parents, and as professionals, but instead are the beginning of a transformative story? OUR transformative story–the beginning of our very own repentance–a complete change of OUR hearts and OUR lives? Well, I don’t know the answers there–at least not for you. But what I do know is that when communication failures happen, what we have is more than just the failure itself. What we also have is an opportunity–to turn back to God, to turn back to one another, and to turn back to the image of God we were created to be. For it is in the turning and re-turning–in the repentance–where transformation and change are born. Learning to turn someplace new with you, Pr. Melissa |
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
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