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 "I could have just kept sleeping." These are often the words I mutter as I turn my alarm off on Monday mornings and begin shuffling my way to the bathroom to splash some water on my face. I'm not sure what it is about Sunday nights, but I always sleep so hard and so soundly during them--so much so that getting up and going makes Monday mornings EXTREMELY difficult for me. The difficulties don't stop at getting up either. I'm slow to brush my teeth, I'm slow to pop my contact lenses in, and I'm slow to get dressed in warm clothes for my morning walk with Hank. Heck, my Monday morning coffee cup (yep, I'm that person) is one that I got at the St. Louis Aquarium, and it has a sea turtle on it with the words, "Slow until I get my coffee" printed across the front. The struggle is most definitely REAL. Once I'm outside, one might think that the struggles are over...not so. As Hank and I start our way up the hill from our house, the negotiations begin: "Okay, I'll just go up the street, then I can turn around." "We'll just go around the block--the small block--no, the bigger one--then we'll head for home." "I'll go until something hurts." Over and over, new negotiations happen, and over and over I keep walking--one foot, then the other. Lather, rinse, repeat, as needed. And before I know it, as if by magic, I've walked my 30 minutes with Hank and we're heading for home--our walk doing what it always does: Improving my mood, getting my stiff joints gelling, and getting a little energy burnt off of Hank. As great as that outcome is, however, it is NEVER enough to get me going straight out of bed. I'm pretty sure it never will be. There is no amount of motivation that will ever psych me up enough to move when morning comes too soon, when my osteoarthritis has spent my sleeping hours stiffening what seems like every joint in my body, or when Hank has snuggled into that sweet spot behind my knees on a cold morning. Motivation waxes and wanes. It is not a sustaining force. The only thing that sustains is the repetition of showing up. Consistently--morning by morning. But it's more than just consistency, it's also learning to re-frame the way I view my Monday morning resistance. So often, I view the slowness and the stiffness and the negotiations as obstacles, but they are not. They are not things that I need to overcome or experiences that I must train myself to lay down. They are not evidence of some moral flaw or of something that I lack that super together people (whoever they are) have in spades. Rather, they are simply part of the process. They are neither for me nor against me...they simply ARE. Whether I accept that they are, well, that is up to me. Fr. Richard Rohr says that “All of life is grist for the mill. Paula D’Arcy puts it, 'God comes to us disguised as our life.' Everything belongs; God uses everything. There are no dead-ends. There is no wasted energy. Everything belongs.” This doesn't mean that transformation isn't possible. It most absolutely is! It just means that it will not come through our willpower. It will not come through sustaining an unsustainable level of motivation. It will not come through self-judgement or spending our lives wishing away what is. Transformation will come as we accept that everything--our resistance, our negotiations, our sore muscles--EVERYTHING--belongs. And it doesn't just belong, it is precisely where God works. In our ordinary lives. In the quiet moments before we resign ourselves to getting out of bed. Every step we take. Every moment that feels like an obstacle. Every experience of resistance and negotiation. God is working--using our very ordinary lives and our very regular experiences to bring us somewhere new...to make us new. So friends, what is it in your life that belongs that you continue to fight? A busy time at work? A longer-term health issue? The ramifications of growing older? How might God be showing up in it? How might God be coming to you disguised as your very own life? On the contemplative journey with you, Pr. Melissa Yesterday morning on my way to work I noticed my truck making a moaning noise. The noise was quieter when driving and idling, but sounded like a baby calf crying for its mother when turning in either direction. Thinking it sounded like something with the truck’s power steering, I turned toward our household’s auto repair shop instead of making the turn to work. Once there, the mechanic confirmed my suspicions: It indeed sounded like something related to the power steering system. What that was couldn’t be determined by simply listening and taking a quick preliminary look. My truck would need to go in for an appointment, and he didn’t have any openings until the following week. At first glance, however, the mechanic did see that the power steering fluid level in the reservoir was low, so he went back into the shop, retrieved a funnel and some power steering fluid, filled the reservoir to the appropriate level, and the moaning stopped. My mechanic must know me well enough to know that I am skeptical of the quick fix because upon hearing the moaning cease, he looked at me and told me that topping off the fluid took care of the symptom, but not the problem itself. He couldn’t be sure where the fluid was going or what (if any) parts might be needed. All he could be sure of is that having the right amount of fluid was the best way to protect the power steering pump from burning up. With that, I followed him into the shop to make an appointment for the following week. And I wish I could have left it at that…but I couldn’t. I didn’t. Because as soon as I crawled back into my truck I was already asking Google what could be leaking in the power steering system and where the fluid could be leaking if not on the ground (at least not that I’ve noticed). On my lunch break and again in the evening, I feverishly searched the internet, YouTube videos, and Honda Ridgeline forums looking for answers to my power steering fluid woes. And I found answers…LOTS of answers. Maybe not to my specific problem, but to ALL KINDS of power steering problems and issues–with dollar amount estimates for the fixes ranging anywhere from $100 to thousands of dollars to fix. The more I found, however, the more I kept wanting to find. So I just kept looking. If you had asked me yesterday what I was looking for, I would have told you I was looking for THE answer. But I know now that because of my limited knowledge of vehicles (I mean, I can change the oil, change a tire, change the air filters, change headlight bulbs, and check for fluids, but not much beyond that) I wouldn’t necessarily know the answer if it hit me in the face. No, what I was looking for was certainty. I wanted to be certain of what was wrong. I wanted to be certain that we could afford to fix what was wrong. I wanted to be certain that we could handle whatever was coming our way. I don’t think I’m alone in this practice. A lot of us, I think, find ourselves in situations where we think we are looking for answers, but are really looking for certainty. We get our test results in the My Chart app before our appointment with the doctor to explain those results, and we feverishly begin “researching” online or among friends what those results mean. All the while being less concerned with the science of it, and more concerned with what it means for our lives, for the quality with which we live our lives, or for how long we might yet have with the one we love. Or we’re offered a different job within our organization, and we think taking that different job would be good for our careers and our bank accounts, but we aren’t sure how it would affect the rest of our lives. So we start polling our friends for feedback, and start looking up articles about what a good “work-life balance” looks like. We calculate how the salary increase would impact our 401k’s and if it will make it easier for us to retire. And we do all of this thinking that we are merely doing our due diligence so that we can make an informed decision, when what we’re really doing is hunting down certainty. We want to be certain that this new job won’t adversely affect our families. We want to be certain that the salary increase will be worth the increased stress. We want to be certain that we won’t come to regret the day that we agreed to accept the new role. The thing is, we’ll never find what we seek. Though we might fool ourselves from time to time, nothing is certain–at least, not certain in the way we are hoping for–and this leaves us vulnerable. As a general rule, we human beings don’t like feeling vulnerable. We don’t like feeling that there is much beyond our control and much that we don’t know. So we Google and research and poll our friends and family trying to keep ourselves from feeling vulnerability–thinking that somehow if we don’t feel vulnerable, we won’t actually be vulnerable. We won’t feel that pit in our stomachs that tells us we’re running out of options. Our brows won’t furrow with worry over what the next turn holds for us. We won’t feel as if we’re on a rollercoaster, barely able to breathe and on the verge of losing our lunch with every new obstacle we encounter in our path. I’m sad to break it to myself and to y’all that there is not enough control or certainty in the world that will allow us to outrun or out-research vulnerability. A great deal of our lives we are asked to take on faith. Not faith as in faking some sunny disposition that everything is going to be okay when every fiber in our being is screaming that it is not, but faith in its truest sense. Faith not for overcoming obstacles, but for experiencing them—all the way through (paraphrased quote from Richard Rohr). So between now and next week’s truck appointment, I’m going to work more on keeping the faith, and less on Google. I’m going to trust that this vulnerability might feel like it’s going to kill me, but it won’t actually. I’m going to focus my energies on what I can do, and work my hardest to leave the rest behind. I’m going to do what I can to experience this obstacle all the way through, and I’m going to invite you to join me in doing the same with obstacles of your own. Keeping the faith with you, Pr. Melissa On Tuesday morning I had to go to the hospital to have some routine labs drawn prior to my annual physical. This is no big deal most of the time, but on Tuesday morning, a thin layer of ice had glazed the cement, making walking somewhat precarious. Wishing not to do damage to my body (or my ego) by falling, I dug out my ice cleats, strapped them on my shoes, and took off for the hospital. That’s the thing about falling: Once we’ve done it a time or two, we tend to take extra precautions to prevent it in the future because we know the cost of an untimely fall. A couple of years ago, I fell on our driveway while shoveling because I didn’t see the sheet of ice under the freshly fallen snow. I landed on what I now refer to as my “bad knee,” and cut the skin of my joint clean open. And that’s mild compared to other falls so many people in my life have had. This is why, I think, so many of us walk around like penguins in the wintertime–shuffling and waddling from our vehicles to our places of employment, the church, or back home at the end of the day. We would rather risk looking somewhat ridiculous than we would run the risk of falling and hurting ourselves and/or someone else near us. The only problem is, we don’t necessarily leave this approach to falling on the ice. It doesn’t take many years of living before each of us learns for ourselves what it feels like to fall: To fall in love, to fall out of love, to fall short, to fall apart, to fall from that pedestal our families have put us on, to fall from grace, to fall back, to fall in, or to fall behind. And after we fall a few times, we figure out that it doesn’t feel great to fall. In fact, we figure out that it doesn’t feel great to be in a place where there is even a risk of falling. And so we start shuffling and waddling through our lives–metaphorically wrapping ourselves in bubble wrap–convinced that with the right amount of protection, and the right amount of restraint, and the right amount of abstinence from risk, we will keep ourselves from falling. And if we can keep ourselves from falling–in all the ways that falling can and does happen–then we won’t get hurt. But the truth is that–in avoiding risk and avoiding the fall–we avoid some pretty great stuff too. We avoid the thrill that comes from falling in love. We avoid knowing what it’s like to have our friends catch us when we fall back or fall in or fall apart. We avoid the lessons that bring us to a place of deep knowing, like the truth that there is nowhere we can fall that grace cannot find us. Sure, we’d rather not fall, but what if falling is just part of living? I think sometimes we look at falling like it is somehow outside of the human experience…but what if it isn’t? What if falling is fully a part of what it means to be human? What if keeping ourselves from falling was never the point? What if the point is that life is risky and love is risky and we live and love anyway, knowing that when (not if) we fall it will likely hurt like hell, but the hurt will not have the final word. The hurt will not break us beyond repair…even if we walk with a limp for a while. I’m not sure how you answer those questions, but for me, the answer is that I would rather fall a million times in a million ways than to be walking around in bubble wrap all of the time–never risking, never trying and failing or trying and succeeding, never knowing the terrible and wonderful feeling that comes in the free fall just before hitting the ground. I would rather know beyond a reasonable doubt that I am not simply waddling and shuffling and calling it a life. How about you? Slipping, tripping, and falling my way toward being more fully human 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
April 2024
Categories |