Tag: Christianity

There’s No Present Like the Time

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

My new alarm clock is the bomb diggity. I love how the sound fills the room, and the fact that I can use it as a speaker phone as long as I have my iPhone or iPad attached by Bluetooth. In fact, as long as my iPad is connected to Wi-Fi, everything that goes to my phone goes to it automatically. For some people, this would be a dealbreaker. For me, it makes it where if I leave one or the other upstairs, I do not have to make a mad dash from the porch to my room trying to catch the phone before it stops ringing. The only thing that I need to change about it is how it wakes me up. I have it set to FM radio, because I used to like to wake up to NPR. Now I realize that with the amount of sleeping medication I take, NPR doesn’t cut through my dreams easily enough to actually wake up when it goes off. Sometimes, I am alert enough to catch it on the first try. Some days, I’m just not. The soothing voices of the commentators are more likely to make me sleep deeper. 🙂

I should change my alarm clock to Bluetooth and set it to the same ring my phone makes. There is no snooze button on that. With my ringtone, I tend to shake awake immediately (another gift from my father passed on genetically) because I don’t know who’s on the other end of the line. It’s a gift because pastors often get very serious calls in the middle of the night, and the last thing my father wanted in a parishioner’s time of need was for people to think that they woke him up. They had enough to worry about, you know?

I feel the same way. I do not want any of my parishioners to apologize for waking me up as if it’s inconvenience to take their call in the middle of the night when their son has just died. I come from a long line of jobs where I’ve said, “this is Leslie Lanagan, how may I help you?” Being a pastor is not really that different, except the calls you take are rarely scheduling an appointment at 3:00 AM. If someone calls in the middle of the night, it’s never something good.

Someone has died, someone has been rushed to the emergency room, someone has been arrested, someone needs to go to the bedside and administer last prayers. In the Methodist church, there are no true “last rites,” but in the hours of someone passing away, they need their pastor more than ever…. or perhaps the family is Methodist now, but they come from a church where there *are* last rites and want them to be administered anyway. When that happens, you don’t want the chaplain on duty. You want the person that has been the everpresentlovingkindness that you’ve been every Sunday since they started attending.

The phrase “there’s no present like the time” comes from a jeweler’s commercial whose name I now forget, but it sticks with me all the time.  There are other commercials that stick out almost as clearly, like when PBS came up with “the channel that changes you.” That first one, tho……

What better present could you give anyone but your time? I am at the space in my life where I do not need more material things. I have pared down to the basic essentials. If you want to give me a gift, the best thing you could offer is cooking for me or taking me out to dinner just to look at you, face to face… perhaps reaching across the table to touch my hand or afterward, giving me a sincere hug and kiss on the cheek. Pri-Diddy had to reschedule from Tuesday to Friday, so my anticipation of seeing her has had a chance to build. She is not giving me anything but her presence, but it is worth more than anything she could give. I hope she feels the same way about me, because Prianka is one of the people who has crossed over into that friend in which I can confide anything without judgment. Like Bryn and Argo, we’ve not been afraid to delve into the deepest parts of ourselves in order to move forward. Though Pri-Diddy is younger, she has this way about her that makes me think she was an Indigo child, wise beyond her years. My guru in a tiny body, born in the same hospital where Mother Theresa worked in Calcutta. She shows me YouTube videos of the gurus she likes, and is impressed that I worked at the Graduate School of Social Work at the same time Brene Brown attended. But, of course, then she was not Brene Brown, Trademark. She was just one of the students in which I had to help with her computer problems, just like everyone else running to complete a paper.

I take pride in her success, not because I was the one that got her through grad school, but because I take pride in all of “my students” that have gone on to do great things. Also, because I helped the administration as well, the director said that I had an open invitation to attend. WOW it was a big mistake to leave for Alexandria, but I learned lessons that couldn’t have been learned any other way. I was young and STUPID in love with my girlfriend, and there was no way I wanted her to move without me. Although looking back at my life, I should have let her. I got really sick with depression being A) far from home and missing school and 2) not having the right medicines so that I went from a little bit depressed to completely batshit crazy in no time at all. Although, truth be told, I did not miss class as much as I missed working at UH. My bosses were kind and supportive in a way that I haven’t had since… except for Randy, who tried to take me under his wing and I couldn’t lean into that pure, white, professional love because of the hurricane swirling at home.

I did find a church, though, and that helped mightily. Kathleen and I both loved it, and invested to the point that we helped install the tile labyrinth in the floor and Kathleen joined Brian’s “Make Your Own Stained Glass” class. It turned out beautifully, and it hung in our bathroom window so it could get the most sun.

In the end, though, it did not help my depression enough, and after 18 months in Alexandria, we’d both had enough of each other. We stopped giving each other the present of time. Kathleen joined a softball team and when I went to support her, she made a point of touching men intimately, like brushing their hair out of their faces a little too slowly right in front of me so she could make it clear that her intentions with me were over. We broke up in August or September, and by October she’d met the man she was going to marry.

It gutted me like a fish, and my dad came to our townhouse when Kathleen wasn’t home and just said, “leave all the furniture, get the small things you want to take, and let’s go home.” He did all the driving as we pushed through from DC to Houston, drinking coffee and listening to Tony Robbins, whom I’ve come to love.

I don’t care what you think of him. In my need, what he gave me was priceless, which is the ability to build myself up. The thing he said that gave me the most pause is that sometimes we are frozen with the paralysis of analysis, and that sums me up to a great degree. Although, there was another truly great line that I carry with me as well, which is that we learn more when we’re pondering rather than partying.

That has been true for me in the breakup with Dana as well. We did a lot of partying when we should have been pondering, and that was a theme we carried through our relationship a lot. It was so much easier to get along on a best friend/partying/sex level than it ever was to truly connect with each other down to our souls. When I started to peel back my own layers, and this is solely my opinion, she wasn’t ready to peel back hers. It may not be her story, but it is mine. The deeper I delved into myself, the more I wanted to know about her. We were handfasted in a truly shitty club in terms of our childhood, and I wanted to know every detail, some of which she could talk about, and some she couldn’t because she didn’t know the answers herself.

It was at that time we began to pull away from each other, because I didn’t act the same. In fact, she made the point of telling me that my eyes didn’t look like home anymore, and even though I excused myself to go to bed not to up the ante, it was a direct shot into my soul, an arrow I have not extracted and won’t for a long time. I didn’t want to know why she felt that way. I just went to bed and cried myself to sleep, trying to self-soothe and tell myself I was worthy of love, even if it wasn’t hers.

I gave thanks for our separate bedrooms, because even though we were still married and dedicated to each other, we had different processes in terms of trying to fall asleep. Many people thought that was the beginning of the end, and told me so. I told them to shut that down, because it actually made our relationship better. We liked having our own huge amounts of space in the house, and room for our electronics on the other side of the bed. It seems crazy, but it worked. Having the space to spread out made us sleep better and because of it, fights didn’t seem so important the next day. Besides, at the end of the day we were too tired for sex, anyway, so the naughty neighbor complex was probably the best thing ever, in my opinion, anyway. For us, there was something intimate about looking at each other, holding each other, falling in love and connecting in sunlight and energy rather than the part of the day where we just needed rest. We gave each other the present of our time when we were the most jazzed to see each other, and not when we were out of it with exhaustion.

One of the other reasons we liked separate bedrooms is that I tended to write to you at night, and I didn’t want to interrupt her sleep with the sound of my fingers clacking on the keys. At the time, I had a 17-inch Mac desktop in my room, and it was “my place” to wind down. On the other hand, it gave me too much privacy with Argo, where Dana wouldn’t read what I’d sent until the next day and couldn’t do anything about the fact that I was “over the line, Smokey. Mark it zero…….” I’d give anything to take that back, the ways in which I sent Argo things I shouldn’t, thinking I was brave and crazy and trying to push her away all in one breath. I loved her mind, AND I wanted to continue being married. Those two things battled in my brain to such an enormous degree that I told Argo it was getting harder and harder to look at myself in the mirror anymore. In love on the ground and “in love” in the cloud made it where I truly felt shame, deep and abiding. I could no longer give myself the gift of my own time, because if Dana didn’t want to be with me, it was nothing compared to how bad I didn’t want to be with me, either.

The difference is that Dana had a choice to leave me, and I didn’t. I had to sit with my pain and confusion and work it the fuck out. I had to dig myself out of the hole I’d dug, and it was deep enough to compare it to burying a body.

It was at about that time I saw a link to an article on Facebook that I read about a woman who saw an empty grave at a cemetery and jumped into it, laying down on the bare earth. She talked about feeling death, feeling where she would go when she died, and how it made her less afraid of dealing with her own problems because she dug herself out of the earth physically, which changed her mindset completely. She’d laid there long enough to really see what was important and what was not, and arose a different person than the one she was when she’d just lay there, alone in her own thoughts and shortcomings.

In that article, she gave me the present of her time, which allowed me to look at things much more deeply than I ever had before. I started to forgive myself. I started to feel my own worth. I started to realize what was important to me and what wasn’t.

The most important thing, to me, became mending my relationship with Argo because I’d intentionally caused her to run away, treated her like crap so she would. I made my narrative so angry, when in reality it would have meant more to me than anything in the world to have the present of her time, if only for a few minutes.

In her last missive, she used words like probably and maybe rather than always and never, tears running down my face in astonishment because Good Friday had become Easter once again. Even if nothing ever happens in the future, because we both want peace without and within, I stood speechless in front of her, laid bare by her grace. It took her time to write that e-mail, a present of time so great that it is the e-mail I keep in my Kindle case and lean on it when I feel unworthy and unloved.

I walk taller with our resolution and the future doesn’t matter. What matters is that in my need for peace, she gave it to me with her whole heart. In the moment, it felt like a sacrAMENt, a blessing to move forward with grace and mercy for others. There is nothing so sacred to me than passing those presents along.

My invitation to you is to think about this: there’s no time like the present to make the present your time. What are you going to do with it? What relationships are you going to heal? What present of time are you going to give yourself?

Amen.

Learning to Fly Solo

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have approached this church differently from the beginning, not joining as a parishioner (although I will), but telling them from the second Sunday I attended that I needed continuing education just as much as I needed their blessings as my leaders.

I am also now in the choir so that I have a sense of normalcy to my world.

Just as an aside, it was my mother that convinced me I needed to join the choir, and not necessarily internal drive. She didn’t tell me anything in terms of parenting. She just said that it’s hard for her to sit anywhere in a church but the piano bench because that’s the place that feels like home. Her words hit deeply into my smallest place, the one that says, “I feel that way, too.” I don’t play the piano, but it’s hard to sit still in the pews knowing that it’s not really my “place.” If I am not in the choir, I am wishing I was up there, just as much as I tell myself that I don’t. I can do this. I can sit in the back and make notes.

I tell myself that, because it’s true right up until it isn’t. I can maybe attend a church for three services before I realize that I have to join the choir, because singing in the congregation leads people to turn around and say, “you have such a GORGEOUS voice. You should join the choir.” I get embarrassed and I blush and I don’t know what to say. Standing with the other singers is a way to avoid that moment, really, because I don’t stand out. I’m just one of the crowd.

I want it to be the same way in terms of my theology. I want to listen to Matt (senior pastor) and Gloria (associate) until I am ready to take on the large dreams I’ve created for myself. The still, small voice of God is what called me originally. Creating a legacy is what keeps me there. I don’t want to be famous, but I do want that for my church. I want people to know St. James and All Sinners like they know Riverside Church, or Cathedral of Hope, or any one of the churches in the United States that are familiar even to people who don’t live close geographically.

I can hear you asking why.

Because I want to be a church that is capable of giving more, doing more, seeing more in the name of Christ than is currently available. There are pockets, but my mission is about STEALING BACK OUR WORDS. When you hear the word “Christian,” what kind of imagery does that bring up in your mind? Conservative, “pull yourself up from your boot straps even when you don’t have shoes ‘faith'” is fucking bullshit (there goes my Jesus God flipping tables anger again…. sorry). You don’t preach with power over. You preach with power in the middle. Shared hope. Shared faith. Shared ability, the fruits of the spirit in perpetuity. I don’t create all of this by myself. I empower you.

Now is the hour in which I begin my journey, but now is not the hour where I step out on a ledge. I have schoolwork to do, along with clinical rotations in pastoral care. I have to walk with the homeless and feel what it is like before I can step up and say I can help care for the problem. I have talked a lot about “you don’t get to see Jesus. Have some wine.”

Party on, Wayne.

When it’s time to join me, you’ll know.

I am including the text of the first e-mail I sent Matt and Gloria, because I think it is important to record here.

Hey Y’all (you can take the girl out of Texas…),

Just wanted to say how much I am looking forward to being a part of the life of this church. I asked Matt if I could send him some of the stuff I’ve written/preached over the years, so I thought I would include you, Gloria. I am interested in all the possibilities we have the ability to create now that I really feel I have found a *home.*

As a writer and preacher myself, I have no doubt that I will move on to my own church someday, but that doesn’t mean I don’t need a home base right now, a church to love that will love me back in all the right ways until I am ready to fly solo. I originally wanted to be ordained an Episcopal priest, but then I realized that I wanted to be able to *write* liturgy rather than turning to page 355.

Thank you so much for your grace and kindness. Many blessings. Many, many blessings, and thanks so much for reading.

Pax,

Leslie

———————————

These are sermons originally preached at Bridgeport United Church of Christ in Portland, Oregon:

Sermon for Lent 4B

My Very First Sermon Ever- July 21, 2003

These are things I’ve written for my web site:

My Jesus (Mar. 2006)

Sermon for Advent 3B: The Messiah? Jesus? Really? He Eats Paste.

Sermon for Pentecost 2, Year B: It’s Not You, It’s Me

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

[Editor’s Note: The reason I’m publishing my sermon early is that I want me to be me and Matt to be Matt. For those just joining us, Matt is my pastor at Christ Congregational Church, and I never want him to think that I’m just stealing his ideas. However, I don’t mind in the slightest if he steals mine. :P~]

There are some times when I’m reading the Lectionary and I just bust out laughing. Like, snot and tears everywhere and choking to keep it together. This week it was the conversation between Samuel and God, where Samuel is talking to God about the people rejecting him as king. God tells Samuel clearly that it’s not him they’re rejecting. It’s God. Then my sermon title came to me in a flash and I nearly fell out of my desk chair, just shaking with the hilarity of the moment.

Last week, I preached on Isaiah being called to serve God, and his emphatic “HERE AM I, SEND ME.” This week, the focus is on what to do if you stand up and the people say, “not so fast…” Or worse, the people have been happy with you for a long time and now, they just aren’t. But instead of being willing to stand in the rain and get wet, they just want the relationship to end altogether.

Does this in any way resonate with you? It should. It happens all the time. I am still reeling from it happening to me, so as you can imagine, I cannot help but take these scriptures personally and try to learn from them. The scriptures put together by the Lectionary are all designed around this theme, because it repeats over and over. Congregations get unhappy with their leaders just like they do with politicians. People also run away from their leaders because they know they’re right and hide in shame, anyway. Both of these things are equal in their power to disrupt leadership, but at either end of the spectrum. Let me give you a few examples taken straight from our scriptures today:

  • In the Samuel reading, the people get so mad that they just stomp off and follow someone else.
  • In the Genesis reading, Adam hides from the God who created him because he is so ashamed that he and Eve have done something that God expressly asked them not to do. He is not unhappy with the leadership so much as he is unhappy with himself. It reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail… “is there someone else up there we could talk to?”
  • In the Mark reading, Jesus has come home to a large crowd that thinks he has lost his ever-loving MIND…. that he has Satan in him because only Satan can cast out demons. Jesus tells them in no uncertain terms that they have lost their minds, instead. No wonder Jesus said of his hometown, “can anything good come out of Nazareth?” because his own people were the first to become unhappy with him. [Editor’s Note: NOTE TO SELF]
  • In the Corinthians reading, Paul is heading into such strong opposition that he fears he is failing spiritually, ecumenically, grammatically…. perhaps even physically. The context of this passage is that he can feel he is near death (some believe this is due to epilepsy), and his words have urgency. Please, people. Believe. Carry my message forward. PLEASE!
  • In one of my favorite Psalms of all time, David pleads with Israel to wait upon God… to believe that God’s leadership is right and true. He knows this to be the case as he as often walked in darkness himself, and even though his time is long before the Christ, has seen redemption through Jehovah, the God he loves.

As you can see, it’s a pattern that will repeat until the end of time. The question for pastors in these scriptures is, “NOW WHAT?” How do we deal with both the people’s feelings of unworthiness in reaching out to God for help, and at the same time, seeing the flaws in our own leadership? Because come on. Leaders aren’t always right, and are sometimes too proud to see that reality. They are reticent to see the times when God isn’t speaking through them so much as they are taking too much license with what they have been given.

If you are not religious, think of all the politicians that claim God is speaking through them, and yet their policies clearly scream ego… that if they were really listening to God and not themselves, it would clearly be a different calling to ministry- using that term because politicians all over the world are called exactly that- ministers.

Again, where is the balance? We’re all in this together, in a sense. Both the religious and the spiritual, the born again and the atheists, because it’s all the same problem. Issues in the church are just a microcosm of what happens in the electorate, and that is true for the United States as well as all other countries who have democracy, and those that have monarchy.

You might think, “no. You are totally wrong. It’s not my problem. It’s my leaders. They’re the ones with the problems. Not me.”

Are you sure about that?

If you are religious, how are you running away from your leadership? If you are not, I ask you the same question in a different context. Are you expressing your unhappiness? Are you sitting in your own unworthiness? Are you hiding from the fact that you do have power to promote change… it’s just that you’re not using it? Are you just tuning out because it’s easier? Someone has to stand up and say, “HERE AM I; SEND ME!” Will it be you?

If you need real-life examples of  this, let’s look at the Catholics. I am flabbergasted by all the changes since Pope Francis came into power. He listened to the people’s distress with all of the problems inherent in the leadership trying to live in a 21st century world with a 19th century attitude and said, “enough is enough.”

I am waiting for the Anglicans to have that sort of revelation, because they are the ones that stomped off mad. They are the AntiFrancis. They are content to sit in their own stubborn beliefs that are eventually going to lead to their demise. They are secure in their own authority, the one that says the Bible doesn’t change as we do. They have ceased to look at the Bible as a living document, and their stagnation is evident… maybe not in terms of their numbers, but in the way that their views are slowly becoming antiquated and they are coming down on the wrong side of history. I mean, come on. They have a problem with women bishops. Please. If ever there was an example of leading through ego and not leading through God, it’s them.

Pope Francis is determined  to stop that kind of death, and the people are heartened and strengthened by it. The church is showing new life as more and more parishioners see that faith does have relevance in their lives as long as it moves forward with the context surrounding them. When the people cry out for change, they’re leading from the back, and because of Pope Francis, it is working.

So again, what kind of leader are you?

Do you believe, in the one true edge… by fastening your safety belts and stepping towards the ledge? Or are you content with letting your leaders decide your direction without your input? Worse, are your leaders crying out to you because you are wrong- either in the church or in politics, and you are forcibly running away from conflict? It’s not unprecedented. People have left churches, left countries, left relationships because they didn’t have the fortitude to get down and dirty and figure it out. How do we know when we are speaking from a place of soft power, and when we are broadcasting God as ego? That is not limited to leaders. That is everyone, everywhere.

If you are not religious, how are you rejecting President Obama, or any other president that comes to power? By rejection, I do not mean that you have to like your leaders. Affecting them is not committing to liking them. Affecting them is a call to leadership whether you agree with them or not. Rejecting them is not hearing them at all. I am using President Obama as an example not because he is the politician I like, but because he is president right now. There will be others, but we are talking about right here. Right now. Are you affecting change, or rejecting it?

If you are religious, how are you rejecting God? How are you rejecting the life lessons we have to learn from Samuel, Adam, Mark, Paul, and David? How are you mistaking your own ego from the light of Christ shown through you? How are you not submitting to the higher power that runs through us all? Because in the end, in order to lead, you have to get your own ego out of the way.

Are you willing to listen when God says, “it’s not me. It’s you?”

To me, that is the very essence of the Pentecost season. Pentecost was revealed to us through fire. Our job is to learn not to throw water at it, but learn to walk in it without getting burned.

Andy Doyle, my bishop in Texas, wrote a gorgeous prayer with which I’ll close that talks about this very thing. I ask that you sit with it for a while, because it brought me the fortitude to keep walking my path; to be a leader inspired by Christ and not by myself:

Gracious Father,

We pray for thy holy Catholic Church. Fill it with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt, purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior.

Amen.

Blogging for Jesus

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I have so much to write about that nothing is really sticking in one place. I am about as stoned as one can get on OTC medication- real Sudafed and Zyrtec together was a bad idea. All morning I’ve felt like I am walking through wall-to-wall Jell-o. I can’t pick a flavor. What seems right for a Friday? Leave it in the comments. Oh, wait. It’s peach. Friday peach (inside joke just for Meg [holla!]).

I should have bought the Sudafed PE instead, but in the past I have always told people it says, “does not work” right on the box. It is the deodorant crystal of sinus meds. But at the same time, I think it works better than the credit I’ve given it in the past. For instance, it does not suppress my appetite, and in my case, that’s a bad thing. I’m trying. I really am. For breakfast I had two pieces of rye toast smothered in margarine made of coconut oil because we don’t have any coffee. If you don’t get the reference, I thought it might be a good compromise for Bulletproof Coffee. If it doesn’t taste right, I’ll get the Kerrygold and a jar of real coconut oil. Everyone I know who drinks it is an evangelist (sometimes literally [shout-out to Casey, a real evangelical pastor]).

As I have said before, I feel better when I eat vegan food, so I’m trying to buy it more often. That’s not to say I’m a true vegan. I ate the hell out of some ribs and chicken on Memorial Day. I just pay for it later. Something’s not right with me, and I am going to make an appointment to see an internist to re-do the urine and blood tests for rheumatoid markers since Jacob isn’t my doctor anymore and I need to establish one here. It’s time. I can’t be passive about it. I have been out of fear of finding out what’s wrong with me. It doesn’t make any sense at all except that I’m scared of the reality of being sick. Samantha was brave enough to face her treatment plan head-on. The least I can do is follow her lead.

I watched her get angry, really really angry. Sobs and screaming to such a degree that I thought she’d gotten fired or something. If only she had been, because it would have been better news. Her dad said, “I thought you’d gotten engaged, won the lottery, or gotten pregnant.” Again, if only. I don’t want to share her diagnosis to protect her privacy, but I think she’s starting to write about it herself. If she does, I will link that bitch up. She is almost as funny as I am. 😉

Back to you, Bob. Let’s go to the phones.

Getting over Dana has been so much easier with you guys. I can vent, I can cry, and you’ll still love me afterwards. Of course, you’re not here for the crying part, but I know there are parts of my writing where you know I’m feeling something. My hope in writing about this mess is that it continues to let me bless and release this relationship without being bitter and angry. It has gotten me nothing in the past. I really do go out with joy in terms of Argo and Dana, because I know I was the problem in many cases, not just one. At the same time, though, it is feeding me to feel joy that the relationships happened in the first place, rather than being an angry asshole that they ended. Not every relationship is supposed to be lifelong. Nothing is stopping me from sending good energy so that if they come here and read something that strikes as true, we can pick up later on. I do not have hope, but I do have peace, if that makes any sense at all. I just know that if they show up, they’re not going to be received in anger. That’s the best I can do in a situation like this, because they both mean so much to me that it doesn’t make sense to hold on to the bad feelings. It makes sense to hold on to the good. Not that it will make them any more likely to show up or not, just that I have peace within myself and the direction I am going without them.

I workshop all my feelings to go back and find what is truth and not what is said in the moment. In the moment, I say things that may or may not ring true later… that’s why you see so much difference in the way I feel day to day, and sometimes they’ll give you cognitive dissonance unless you hold on to the fact that it’s just a snapshot and not the whole picture. Timestamps MATTER. It’s kind of like walking the Bible, in a way. That’s why there are opposing views in it, too. You have to know when the books were written and in whose voice to really understand it. The difference between my blog and the Bible is that there’s only one voice, and in the Bible, there are many.

I just had an epiphany. “Stories” is my blog. The Bible is theirs. Moses, Mark, Luke…. Pick a voice. They’re writing what they see in that date and time. Interesting. It may not matter much to you if you’re not a God person, but it struck me as important. Like, the Pentateuch is Moses’ blog. To me that is accurate AND hilarious.

Paul is the biggest blogger of them all. He writes letters to every church you can possibly imagine. Ephesus, Corinth, Caesaria Phillipi, you name it. Paul was ON IT.

Man, that was a shot in the arm of energy. They wrote their books of the Bible. I’m writing mine. What makes us think that our words about the works of Christ in our lives (or Moses, for that matter) are any less sacred? They may not make canon, but neither did Tobit, and yet, his words are accepted by some congregations, anyway. Still meaning to read Elaine Pagels’ seminal work on the gospel of Judas that didn’t make it, but it’s on my to-do list. Also, I am going to read every word that Karen Armstrong has ever written, because I’ve seen her on TV and I think she is one of the best theological minds in the world. She posits that the reaction to the divine is more important than the divine itself, and has been since the beginning of creation. It’s why you can forget about disproving God with science, because science and religion feed different things. I feel sorry for the Biblical literalists that can’t see it, because I think they’re being left behind in this realm, much less the Rapture (still giggling over “Come the Rapture, This Car Will Be Unmanned” and “Come the Rapture, Can I Have Your Car?” Didn’t write ’em. Still funny.).

They’re being left behind because they are taking an ancient society and trying to fit their rules into ours. Will it Blend? I think not. The best we can do, and I got this line from Susan Leo, is to take the Bible seriously, but not literally. The Bible is the lens through which those people saw their world, and we can use it as a living document, much like the Constitution. As the UCC so eloquently says, “God is still speaking.” I’m just trying to figure out what God is saying to me. I have a lot of work to do. Knowing the direction you need to go and knowing the concrete steps to get there are two different things. Putting one foot down on holy ground was asking Starbucks to donate coffee….. but where does my other foot go? I am not afraid. I am confused. There’s a difference.

Luckily, I have people who believe in me that I can go to for help. Like you. Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep listening. Keep praying for me. Keep supporting me. Keep seeing the vision, and if you want, ask me how you can help. I will put you to work, that’s for damn sure. I can’t do this alone, and I’m not. When I put myself out there, people listen. I’m not used to that sort of thing, but I’m getting there. I’m taking back my power from the weakling I’d become due to my own unworthiness.

You have no idea how much you’ve helped to erase that feeling. All your donations, all your love notes, all your prayers and PRESENCE. Presence is the biggest thing. If God works through us, then I see God in your eyes. You matter to me, Fanagans. You gave me self-esteem and confidence at a time in my life when I desperately needed it. You reached into your own godspaces and treated me with everpresentlovingkindness that stemmed from your own willingness to give of yourselves.

As Gracie Allen so famously said, and another slogan adopted by the UCC, “never place a period where God has placed a comma,”

My comma is happening right now, in this very room. Downsizing into staying in someone else’s house so that I could manage less and think more is propelling me into a different Leslie than you’ve ever seen before. I still slip and slide through life what with my cerebral palsy and ADD and running into things, both literally and figuratively. At the same time, though, I am thinking through different things than I ever thought I would. I have a bigger capacity for growth. That only happened when I let myself into my innermost secrets.

I am so glad I decided to invite you along for this glorious ride. We’ve been through the valley together. Let’s go to the mountain top. I’ll bring the champagne. You bring the hugs.

Amen.

Sermon for Pentecost, Year B

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

It’s not often that a scripture hits me as hard as the Gospel did today. I actually shed a few tears as I was reading when I got to the part about “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.” Because he’s right. I cannot bear anything right now that means Jesus is further away. I do not want Jesus to preach from the cloud. I want him HERE. I am in the place in my life where the Mediator, Advocate and Paraclete means so much to me that there is nothing more I want to do than touch the hem of his robe and be healed. To have Jesus turn around and say, “who touched me?” To be delivered from my distress, and there is a lot of it. In the past few years, I have lost a lot of friends, most notably my precious Argo and my precious Dana. They both carried me, sometimes kicking and screaming, into a new reality, one that I knew I needed but was reticent to give hope. They are my Holy Spirit Incarnate, which is a big phrase, but apt in this case.

I don’t normally do confessional sermons; they seem self-serving instead of serving God. But at the same time, the story of this Gospel and the scriptures set forth by the Lectionary are too personal. They got under my skin, the words tattooing themselves in the deep, dark recesses of my mind. There are just so many.

Why in the world would I say that Dana and Argo are my Holy Spirit Incarnate? Hear the words of Luke in the book of Acts:

When the day of Pentecost had come, the disciples were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

They were so disoriented that Peter had to stand up and tell everyone they weren’t drunk. It is in direct opposition to Jesus’ message, or at least, it is to me. Jesus is telling the Disciples that if they don’t let him go, they will never know the peace he has to offer. The peace? He is a member of the Trinity. Hearing about the Holy Spirit just does not compute.

Luke writes that the Holy Spirit is like the sound of “a violent wind.” Where could they possibly meet in th middle? They just don’t……….. unless?

Whoever said that the people didn’t NEED to be shaken out of their complacency? I once said of Jesus that he doesn’t so much comfort me in my distress, but distress me out of my comfort. Perhaps I was putting emphasis on the wrong entity? When Peter preaches, he quotes the prophet Joel:

In the last days it will be, God declares,
that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh,
and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
and your young men shall see visions,
and your old men shall dream dreams.
Even upon my slaves, both men and women,
in those days I will pour out my Spirit;
and they shall prophesy.
And I will show portents in the heaven above
and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.
The sun shall be turned to darkness
and the moon to blood,
before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.
Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

I know this is old language, but there is just so much here that is relevent to progressive Christianity. The first thing is that Joel is all-inclusive. Sons, daughters, slaves. It doesn’t matter. We are all going to be taken forcibly out of our comfort zones because what is right side up will be upside down and vice versa.

In my own story, Dana and Argo were my violent wind, taking me forcibly out of my comfort zone and forcing me to accept my own upside down and right side up. Dana and I were married for seven years. We got comfortable. We created our own family dysfunction and because it seemed normal, we stayed there. Lost in our own little world. The sun turned to darkness and the moon to blood when our dysfunction showed even to us when Argo came into our lives. She became a catalyst for both of us to look at ourselves and see the patterns we’d developed over time, both positive and negative. As time progressed, Dana became a mighty wind herself, because she could see the catalyst happening within me and shook me up as well. Both of them were justified in their anger at me. I said and did things that haunt me to this day, because a month ago I took their anger and let it motivate me. I took their Holy Spirit warnings and realized that their work wasn’t done. I had to believe them, I had to submit to them, I had to internally accept what I had done, and the violent wind I’d become in my own right. I also shook them up, in a way for which they did not ask.

Whether I motivated positive change or negative, I do not know. I am not entitled to their opinion unless they want to give it. However, I can accept that getting me out of their lives might have been the best thing for them. I can accept that my blood and fire was unwelcome. It is a situation we all face at different times in our lives….. whether we can own it or not.

The question now is whether we can recover from it, and if so, how in the hell do we do it?

By reaching out. By reaching up. By accepting the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day. Most people think of that day as The Second Coming. I do not think that in the slightest. To me, the Lord’s great and glorious day is when we reach inside ourselves, own our sins unto other people, and ask the Paraclete to make us whole……

Do you see what I did there?
Do you see it?

There’s the meeting of one and another. The violence and the promise. The internal struggle and the need for comfort as we face it head on. Moses gave us the Caduceus, now used as the symbol for doctors the world over. It is no accident that hundreds of years later, Jesus was called The Great Physician. You go to a doctor when you need a cure. The Great Physician can heal your heart, but only if you make the commitment to ask. To keep asking. To see the violent, mighty wind coming and ask for help.

After the storm comes the rainbow. What does that rainbow look like to you? In my own life, it is prayer. It is the constant joy of speaking out loud and believing that someone is listening whether they are or not. Believing in God is not a requirement for prayer. Believing in prayer is a way to channel your own distress into prosperity. The longer you pray, the more you listen to your self, your inner being, your godspace.

When I realized that I was a person even I didn’t like, submitting to the power of Jesus’ messages of hope, redemption, relief, and comfort gave me strength inside myself to take the violent, ugly changes in my life and walk away from them so that I could forgive myself and be the person I wanted to be. I did not want to participate in violence. I did not want to add to the mess I’d already created. I wanted to be whole.

When I touched the hem of Jesus’ robe metaphysically, my mental health changed. I started to feel a peace I hadn’t felt since childhood. An ever-present rage went out of me and I started to send both Dana and Argo constant prayers of safety, comfort, relief, atonement for the things I felt they’d done and wishing for their peace as well. Wishes became reality when I realized that I did not need their forgiveness, because it had come from sending the prayers themselves.

Christ gave me an invitation to peace once the violent mighty wind had passed and the raging storm became the calm he said he would give.

I ask that wherever you are in your journey, that you are given peace as well. That you are able to reach out in distress and metaphysically touch Jesus’ hem as well. Because he preaches from the cloud, he won’t have to ask who touched him.

He’ll just know.

Amen.

To This Day

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ 1 Comment

Dana and I were just having the most interesting conversation about Doctor Who and the Bible, because the canons are strikingly similar. The conversation started when we remembered The Master.

I said:

I hope they show The Master as a little boy, looking into the schism for the first time. You know who it reminds me of? Moses and the story of the burning bush. God actually tells Moses not to look at him because the sight is too overwhelming. When The Master looks into the time vortex, it’s like getting an answer to the question “what would have happened?” Keep in mind that since I am not a fundamentalist, I am not talking literally. There’s just a lot of wisdom in looking at them together.

And Dana said:

The Doctor is a Christ allegory because in dying for our sins, he’s still protecting us to this day. For years, the story has been that the doctor is atoning for the sins of killing all of his people and the canon has changed to now having locked them in a slice of time so that he can rescue them one day. And he’s over 2,000 years old now.

My eyes started to bug out of my head.

I love being married.