The Children's Preacher as Poet and/or Teacher of First Year College Students

My writing time is a bit short today--between Lutheridge Music Week festivities and my final essay exam for my seminary class due this week, my writing time might remain short.  Still I hope to record a few insights here and there.  No, I hope to write some in-depth posts, but if not, I'll hope to make note of a few insights.

Yesterday, on the way over the mountains back from the church in Bristol where I am a Synod Appointed Minister (SAM), my spouse and I talked about sermons, as we often do on the drive back.  He is wise enough to be gentle in his critiques of my sermons.  Of all the humans I know, he has the most interest in a sermon that's intellectually rigorous.  My adult sermons sometimes hit that mark for him--well, at least, parts of my sermon do.

He is more approving of my children's sermons than I expected.  With a children's sermon, I've had less training and less experience seeing them in action.  Most of the churches I've attended in my life haven't done them, and so far, my seminary studies haven't included a class in how to craft a children's sermon.

So, I study the Gospel for the day, and I look for part that is most important for a child to hear and remember.  In a later post this week, I'll say more about some specific content from my past 6 weeks of children's sermons.  But today, before I go up the hill to the chapel for morning worship, let me record what I'm realizing.

My training and experience as a poet is serving me well as I try to create memorable children's sermons.  Just as when I'm creating a metaphor for a poem, I do the same in a children's sermon:  I'm trying to create something that makes people see the world differently, to see an object or a concept in a way that they never have before, and that each time in the future, they'll think of what I did in the poem or the children's sermon.  

My training as a teacher of first year college students is also serving me well, and it's training that goes back to my days as a drama kid.  I've always been good at improv and thinking on my feet.  I've always been good at projecting my voice and finding ways to engage the people watching me.  I'm good at making connections which often only come to me as I'm teaching or presenting the material.  I am happy to make a fool of myself if it will lead to memorable moments in teaching or preaching--because if I don't care what people think about me, I'm more likely to reach people, and it's more likely that I'm not going to make a fool of myself.

So, if that means putting my head through a styrofoam yoke to make a point about easy yokes and light burdens, I'll do it.  If that means having children move to a different part of the church, I'll do it.  And I suspect the adults watching may be learning just as much as the children.

Fourth Festivities Week

It's been an interesting week to have a house in the mountains--in all the good ways.  This past week has felt like summer has finally arrived, but it's the type of summer that I remember from my first two decades of life, where it's warm/hot during the day, but it cools off at night.  It's also felt like summer because Lutheridge (the camp where my residential community is located) celebrated the Fourth of July, which at times, felt like falling into a Norman Rockwell painting--in a good way.  There were decorated cabins, people wearing festive clothing and body decorations, and a parade (but everyone was on foot).  One of our neighbors who has a beautiful back yard, invited us all over for barbecue and other treats, like homemade ice cream.

Photo taken by Sally Lingle

Here is a picture of the parade, taken from a far enough distance that people's privacy is protected.

I didn't get pictures of the fireworks.  My phone isn't as good as the ones that others have, so my ability to take pictures at night isn't great.  Plus, we didn't stay long.  I remember finding fireworks enchanting as a child, but as an adult, they seemed noisy.  We drove down to the lake, which seems unwise in retrospect--too many pedestrians on very dark streets.  Next year we'll go up to the loft to see what kind of view we have from our very high windows. 

My favorite memory of yesterday may end up being this one:

What on earth?  We were making props for my children's sermon on Sunday.  The passage talks about yokes being easy and burdens light.  I don't have an old-fashioned yoke, so I asked my spouse if he had ideas.  He gazed at the pile of construction debris in the back yard.  Soon we were cutting the styrofoam that had recently cushioned the ceiling fans that we just installed.

Another significant event from yesterday that has no pictures:  I chose our new health insurance plan.  We got notification that the group that offered the plan we had, Friday Health, would be pulling out of the state, so we had until August 31 to choose a new plan.  I had thought of putting off that decision, but yesterday I found myself on the website and decided to proceed, while it was all working (website, internet, brain).  So far, I've found the Healthcare.gov website much easier to navigate than I expected.  And so far, we've gotten health insurance coverage that has cost us far less than it cost when I was getting insurance through my employer.  Thanks, former President Obama!

Speaking of former employers, I found out that City College has discontinued its Vet Tech program and rather suddenly.  I'm not going to say much about it here, but it's news that my brain comes back to periodically.  The program was very expensive to run, but once upon a time, it was the most popular program, the one with a waiting list.  Post pandemic, I don't know the statistics as clearly.

I am grateful to be here, up on the mountain, safe from the heat that is scorching most of the planet.  I feel lucky to be part of this community here.  I feel lucky to have the opportunity to preach at the church in Bristol.  In a few hours, we'll leave to meet my parents in Bristol.  They're going to church with us tomorrow on their way to Lutheridge for Music Week.  More gratitude for this abundance.

Delivering the Mail and So Much More

A few months ago, our residential community had a request for a volunteer to be the mail delivery person to campers for the summer.  So many of us volunteered that we're sharing the work/joy.  This week has been my turn, and I'll deliver two days next week, and then the following week.  

Above is a picture of me leaving Pioneer A, the cabins for elementary school kids.  I was a camper there once, with terrible homesickness, finding comfort from reading a book under a tree.  It was The Little Prince, a book my mom packed in my suitcase for a surprise. 

Originally, I thought I would walk the mail route and get my exercise that way.  One of our residents has said that we can  use her golf cart each week.  This week, with the end of my Social Justice and Cinema class for seminary, using the golf cart makes sense.  Plus, it's so much fun driving the golf cart!

So far, this week, we've had mail that I could have carried by hand, but if there are packages, the golf cart makes even more sense.  But really, I'm just justifying my desire to drive the golf cart around camp.  It makes me want to buy one of my own, a yearning which really makes no sense.  We don't work year-round at the camp.  We don't need a gasoline-free way to zip from place to place.

Still, I must confess that I've gotten a sense of deep peace as I've zipped from place to place, leaving mail for campers in each cabin's mail box, seeing this camp from a slightly different perspective than the one I've enjoyed across decades.

On Tuesday, I could hear the faint strains of music as I drove away from Wilderness, the area of camp closest to the pool.  Could it be?  Yes, it was John Denver singing "Country Roads (take me home, to the place, I belong)."

Not for the first time since moving here did I think, yes, I really have come home:  home to a place where my mom was one of the first camp counselors, where my grandparents' church came for a summer Sunday picnic, where my dad saw the job advertised in the Columbia newspaper (that a Music Week participant gave to him) that would become one of his more long-lasting jobs and the last one, to the place where my family has gathered for Thanksgiving family reunions for almost 30 years, to the place that has nourished and sustained me when I've come for retreats.  I am lucky indeed.

Fourth of July Recap

I woke up this morning feeling more tired than usual.  It wasn't a great night for sleeping--lots of fireworks lasting late into the night.  At one point, I did get up to see if I could see any of them, but I couldn't.

I woke up feeling like I hadn't gotten anything done yesterday, but that's not true.  I went grocery shopping and did my volunteer duty delivering mail to camper cabins (more on that tomorrow).  I loved seeing Fourth of July decorations at some of the cabins.

I watched both of the movies that we'll discuss tonight in my seminary class, Social Justice and Cinema.  The first was Wadjda, a movie I had never heard of and wouldn't have discovered on my own.  It follows a spunky girl who lives in Saudi Arabia and yearns for a bicycle.  Later in the day, we watched Now, Voyager, a Bette Davis film that surprised me with its levels of nuance.

Getting caught up on my film viewing took 4 hours, so it's not surprising that I didn't have lots of time for other things.  We will do more Fourth of July celebrating on Friday, when Lutheridge celebrates with fireworks over the lake, and before that, we're going to a barbecue feast at our neighbor's house.  There's also a parade of sorts.

I also got in a walk in the morning.  I'm having fun looking for blackberry vines, now that I have a sense of what they look like.  Here they are before they turn into blackberries:

At various points yesterday, I thought I was finding lost parts of my self, the naturalist Kristin looking at leaves and identifying birdsong, the camp counselor who takes care of campers, Kristin who plans holiday celebrations with ice cream sundaes and Cracker Jacks.

Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor

It's Independence Day, the Fourth of July, a day that sits differently with people.  I understand the despair, the anguish, the anger--and yet, I still find this holiday hopeful and a reason for hope.  I am always inspired by those men who signed the Declaration of Independence on this day in 1776. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor, so great was their belief in what they were doing.

I realize that those men were committed to freedom for a much more narrow section of society than many of us would want to believe. It's good to remember how slowly those freedoms came for the majority of us, a good day to remember how much effort (and money and blood) it took. It's a good day to think about our commitments, our values, what we hold most true.

It's also a scary day, to be sure.  It's hard to sit with the fears that we're sliding back to a past that most of us don't want to relive.  Sure, angry people might make us believe that a majority of our fellow citizens would vote to reinstate slavery along with a variety of worst practices from the past, but that's simply not true.  Angry people are very loud in our current society, and it's easy to neglect those of us doing good work to make a more inclusive society, the way we always have done.

It's the kind of day where we might wonder if we're headed to armed insurrection, which hasn't been unknown in our country, which, after all, was born out of an armed insurrection.  I don't think that we are.  Some might argue that we're already in a state of armed insurrection, with mass shootings a daily occurrence now.  But that kind of violence is different than a civil war, different than a war to fight off colonizing imperialists.

I also know people with collapse-of-Rome fears.  But the collapse of a civilization usually comes much more slowly than one person's lifetime.  I do think we're headed to a very different future, but will it be a post-U.S. future?  Not any time soon.  I am much more worried about what climate change is going to do to countries and empires, but most people won't be talking about that future on this day.

I can't resist posting this picture of me and my dad, dressed up as colonist and British soldier, standing in front of a painting of British soldiers:

I have always been amazed that the rowdy colonists could pull off this defeat of the greatest empire in the world at the time. I don't think it's only that they were fighting on their home territory that helped them win. Plenty of people fight to defend their homes and don't win.

My reading of history has always taught me that the unexpected might happen--and yet, it often doesn't.

For all of the attempts to divide us, communities have found ways to stay together.  For all attempts to shred the Constitution, we've been knitting it back together again. May we continue to do so.

Home Repairs Then and Now

How the seasons have shifted.  Was it just last week that we had to turn on the heat to take the chill off the air in the morning?  And this morning, I turned on the AC, just for a minute, so that I won't sweat through a second set of clothes before 7 a.m.  I realize that our mountain heat is very different, so I won't complain.  But I am glad that we decided to invest in the ultra-modern HVAC system for our mountain house.

I have shifted the washer/dryer delivery for Monday, July 10, instead of this Friday.  Suddenly, this Friday, we have invitations and festive events to attend, like a Fourth of July parade at camp and later, fireworks.  Last year I was sad that we wouldn't get ourselves moved in time for the festive events.  I don't want to miss them this year because I scheduled a delivery on that day.

We have made good progress on house renovations in the past week, but we are at the point where I am tired, tired, tired.  The last time we did major home renovations, I went off to work every day.  That, too, had a stress level, but it was different.  I had a break from the home repair chaos every day.

Of course, I also had work stress.  As I recall, those were months of a boss telling me that if I had had more business classes like he had, maybe I would be a better manager.  Maybe I should think about an MBA?  I asked if the school would pay for it and never got a clear answer.  But as I researched the requirements for an MBA, I felt this absolute despair over how much the degree did not interest me at all.  I thought, if I'm going to do this much work, I'd rather be at seminary.

Little did I know, back then, as 2018 stretched into 2019, how many changes were about to come barreling my way:  a pandemic, the sale of the school, the yes we will keep you in your position or maybe we'll promote you or no we will not dance.

Today I'll finish writing my paper for my seminary class and do some "training" for some Lutheridge tasks that are upcoming--mail delivery duty and being a Bible study leader for middle schoolers in August.  I'll also enjoy this day with family since they leave tomorrow.  I will remember that we can get all of this done.

Writing in the Remodeling and Rewiring

Today I will head over the mountains to Faith Lutheran Church in Bristol, Tennessee, as I've done for the past four Sundays.  But this morning, I'll drive by myself.  My spouse will stay here; his sister and her electrician fiancé are here for a few days to help us rewire the house and install lights and ceiling fans.  Going to Bristol takes a significant amount of time, so I will go, and they will stay here to make progress.

They are an amazing team, so I'm happy to head out by myself and leave them to the work at hand.  Yesterday they got the undercabinet lights installed, along with some of the overhead lights.  They figured out a strategy for hanging the ceiling fans in the two bedrooms where there is no existing overhead light.  They made initial cuts.  They ran wire.  My spouse did some framing in the loft where we hope to add a half bath.

They were done in time to have dinner and play a few rounds of Sequence, the game that is both a board game and a card game.  Then they headed back to their hotel, and my spouse and I collapsed into sleep even before it was fully dark (not an unusual bedtime for us).

The more we work on this house, the more amazed I am at what a solid house it is, probably the most well-constructed house we've ever had.  Why is this amazing?  In part, because it was built to be a summer cottage at a church camp, which is the kind of house where builders might have been on a budget.

I can't really help in many of these home repairs, so I sat at my desk yesterday, working on my sermon for today and on my class paper and Powerpoint presentation for seminary class on Wednesday.  I am amazed at what I was able to accomplish.  And yes, I did sleep a bit better last night, in part because of my sermon being done and printed.

I am looking forward to today's drive across the mountains--such beautiful country I drive through every week.  I am looking forward to some alone drive time--it feels like it's been forever since I did that, even though it's only been 6 weeks.  I am looking forward to being with the congregation.  And I'm looking forward to coming home to see all that has been accomplished without me.