Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

28 Mar

Lenten meditation on John 5

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

I wish I were blogging every day for Lent!  But my colleague Carrie Finch started a wonderful daily Scripture meditation for the Lenten season, which is great reading.  Here’s a link to it:  http://finched.tumblr.com/

It seems, though, that my thoughts this Lenten season are especially attuned to death and new life.  My grandmother recently passed away, and some people close to me are dealing with the death of parents and grandparents as well.  In each case, the dying person had been ill for some time, and at some point had ceased to seek healing in a strict clinical sense (through medications, surgeries, etc.)

So I offered these thoughts on healing during our weekly Lenten mediation at First Presbyterian on March 23.  I used John 5:1-9,which was the daily Gospel reading on the PC(USA) lectionary webpage:  http://gamc.pcusa.org/ministries/devotions/

(Since we preach without notes at First Pres, these are notes, not necessarily complete sentences!)

***

During Lent we often focus on themes of sin, cleansing, repentance, making ourselves ready to receive new life.  We give up ice cream or caffeine or whatever as a symbol of our internal process of clearing out everything that stands in the way of new life.  In addition to focusing on repentance, it is also appropriate to consider the issues of death, healing and new life in light of Christ’s journey toward the cross.

There are three ways of dealing with human suffering:

  1. Wallow in it.  Some people have accused the man by the pool of being a malingerer, someone who enjoys being sick and receiving other people’s pity.  They look at his complaint about not being able to get in the pool, and see a whiny person.  I’m not sure if that is the case with him, but it certainly happens with many people.
  2. Deny it.  My husband is a funeral director.  He sees a wide variety of responses to grief.  Certainly there are the families that overdo it and seem to wallow in grief.  But then there are the families that act like nothing happened at all.  And then there are the families trying to cover it all up with happiness.  It seems just as odd to him to bypass grief as to get stuck in it.  Anyway, can you truly wish grief away?
  3. Seek healing.  This is the often the most convoluted way to respond to suffering.  But it has the possibility of truly closing the door on sin, death, and suffering.  This man had lain at the pool for thirty-eight years, longer than Jesus had been alive. He was considered useless, a burden.  No one came to visit him and take him for a dip in the pool.  Sometimes he never even made it in.  Surely a healed, renewed life would be a blessing to him, but also would open a potentially scary wide door of possibilities.  What to do now?  How to make a living?  Go back to family?  He has the chance to take on responsibility — will he jump at the chance or run from it?  Jesus was very perceptive in asking him if he wanted to be healed.

If we wish to receive the new life offered by Christ, we must ask ourselves the same question:  do you want to be healed?  Healing isn’t a quick fix.  It may be a long process.   It may open more doors than we are ready to investigate, and bring up more questions than we are ready to ask.

Yet, in some sense we were born ready.  Although we are mixed up by sin, and taken down the wrong path from time to time, we were made in the image of God.  We were created to get up and walk.  If we allow Christ to dwell within us, then we live in the fullness of being who we were created to be.  That’s the ultimate goal of healing.  When the chance comes for that healing, for that return to our full self, may we say yes!

23 Mar

Don’t Know Much

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized. Tagged: , .

When I was taking Russian courses in college (yeah, I know.  And I can’t remember more than three words now!) we used to sing this goofy song called “I Don’t Know.”  It gets stuck in my head all the time.  Here is the English translation:  “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know anything, it’s good, it’s good.”  Trust me, the Russian is more fun.

The song returned with a vengeance a while back as I listened to some guest speakers at our campus ministry meeting.  Some of them were so refreshingly honest about, well, not knowing much.

You see, I had invited the members of one of our church’s young adult groups to speak to the undergraduates.  I specifically invited the folks in the “older-young-adult” category (is there such a thing?):  folks who had several years’ experience with work, relationships, family, and so on.  I invited them to share their faith journey and reflect on the challenges of being a young Christian adult.

I thought they would give a bunch of sage advice to the undergrads, but they gave them something even better.  They reflected on what it’s like to travel the path of not knowing.  They shared experiences of relationships gone sour, job plans not working out, and worries over life’s big questions.

As I sat there listening, I couldn’t help but be a little stunned.  All of the guest speakers were highly educated, eloquent, thoughtful people.  How could they feel that they didn’t know much?

I think part of the answer is that we are all too focused on know-how.  If you’re an average American child or teenager, everyone asks you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, and they are looking for nouns, not adjectives.  Throughout public school, you take a bunch of career assessments and classes that produce tangible results (i.e., scores on a test.)  Even the most elite among us, whom you’d think could afford not to worry about a career, are obsessed with getting their kids into the top medical schools, law schools, and investment firms.  Everyone worries about knowing how to succeed, how to make an A, how to get results.

But what do we really know?

Even in church we are hampered by the allure of know-how, and cheated out of our quest for knowledge.  One of the guest speakers at our campus ministry night talked about how she couldn’t really get started on a rich journey with God until she joined our church, where she learned it was OK to ask questions.  Apparently, previous churches had taught her all the know-how of getting a ticket into heaven and being a good girl.  Problem was, they stopped there.

Here’s one thing I do know.  If you try to go it alone, this journey toward knowledge is like trudging through a bog.  Our lives are a mixture of independence and interdependence.  No matter how many blogs and books you read, or how many inspirational podcasts and songs are coming though your earbuds, you need some traveling companions to help you find a clear path.  Another guest speaker talked about how he knew he couldn’t do everything on his own, especially after becoming a father.  I wish I could bottle his words and give them to every person who tells me they don’t need any help from anyone else (or from God.)

As I plan for next year’s campus ministry events, the idea of knowledge rattles around in my brain, just like the goofy song.  I hope I can help some students find their traveling companions.  I hope I can help them see past the world of know-how, and into the great mysteries of what it is to know.

25 Jan

Spirituality, Scripture, and the Art of Being Irrelevant

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

Here it goes again.  Someone in my church universe just tossed the word “relevant” into the conversation.

That’s a word I hear pretty often.  The church needs to be relevant, people say.  I’m not exactly sure what folks mean by using that word, but I guess it means not looking old, or never saying something that seems foreign.

News flash:  the church is old!  The church is foreign to every time, place, and culture, because the gospel is a stumbling block to anyone who’s not one hundred per cent connected to God.  If you think about it, something about the church or its holy text has been labeled “irrelevant” somewhere along the road of history.   Consider these:

  • Galatians 3:28?  Irrelevant.  No one cares about females or slaves. (Except Jesus.)
  • Deuteronomy 24:19?  Irrelevant.  No one farms anymore.  (But we still have hungry people, right?)
  • Genesis 3?  Irrelevant.  No one likes to talk about sin.  (But what if I have sinned, and I can’t find anyone to talk to about it?)
  • Classical music?  Irrelevant.  No one finds any meaning in it.  (Except at Christmas.)

You get the point.  Everyone, even if they don’t want to admit it, takes in Scripture and faith and worship through a filter.  My question is, what’s relevant:  the filter or the stuff trying to break through it?

Along the path of spiritual development, particularly Christian spiritual development, one must confront the seemingly irrelevant stuff.  True spiritual development is stunted when we are content to surround ourselves with scriptures, prayers, and experiences that we like.  Somewhere along the way, if I want to grow in faith, I need to ask myself …

  • What does it mean to feed the hungry in 2011? 
  • What does it mean to be free?
  • If I feel connected to God in an expensive environment (plasma screens, poinsettias, orchestras, exquisite guitars) and not in a run-down country church, what is that saying?
  • Why do I sometimes feel that God isn’t there, but other times I feel God all around me?

Perhaps others find answers to these questions in their current cultural/economic/social situation.  Me, I have to go back to the old stuff.  Nothing speaks to me like words I’ve heard a thousand times in church, repeated just one more time for my ears that day.  Nothing brings me out of my bubble like a throwback to some ancient way of doing things.

I think it’s about time for those of us trying to be the church to claim our irrelevance.  Let’s be old, awkward, and weird.  We may just find God that way.

18 Jan

Trust: Part 2

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized.

The issue of trust in God has been a huge factor in my faith formation and in my work as an ordained minister.

When I was sixteen, the first Gulf War began.  I had a good friend in high school who had been born in the U.S. to a Pakistani family.  Her entire family was Muslim.  She wore a head scarf every day.  No one ever said anything to her about it until that war began, when random people at the school began yelling “Terrorist!” at her.  She and her family were here in the U.S. to make a better life for themselves, not to participate in terrorist plots.  They renounced all radical forms of their religion, just as Christians have (or should have) renounced the Crusades and other forms of fundamentalist violence.  Walking through the halls of our high school was scary at times (I wondered if a mob would try to attack her), but I walked with her and sat beside her on the bus.  That was the first time I truly understood the mob mentality, as well as the helplessness of one person in the light of world events.  I had to make the decision to trust in God; otherwise, I would have been swallowed up in fear.

When I was twenty-six, with one year of ordination under my belt, we went through 9/11.  Following that, two wars, two recessions, and a decade of hostility almost everywhere.  Sometimes I pout when I pray, asking God why I was led to this time and place.  Why couldn’t I have been a minister back in the 1950s when everything was hunky-dory for average Presbyterians?  (I would have had to be a man, but pouting and feeling sorry for yourself isn’t always logical.)  Sometimes I don’t feel up to the task of ministering to people who are very afraid and depressed.  In fact, sometimes I feel as if I am in an alternate universe.  My peers and I have an abundance of cheap material goods, so much more than our parents or grandparents had in their mid-thirties, and yet we seem much more anxious than they were.  Our creature comforts are not addressing the deep anxieties we have.  I’ll have to admit, it’s hard to address this issue in 15-minute sermons or 2-minute prayers.

So I’ve had to relinquish a lot of worry in the last ten years.  I’ve been pushed to a decision point:  take the foggy-looking door out of a sense of trust, or take the clear-cut door of cynicism and fear.

Taking the trust door isn’t easy.  I can’t see anything past the door frame itself.  On top of that, I know that once I cross the threshold, much will be demanded of me.  If I’m going to live a life of trust, and preach trust to other people, I will need to work hard.  As I mentioned in my last post, I don’t like the “ain’t it awful” game, but it sure is easy to play.  If I’m going to trust, I cannot allow prejudice, hatred, fear, ignorance, or laziness into my sphere.  If I’m going to trust, I will need to train myself to see past all the mess people have created, to see the world as God sees it.

A few years after college graduation, a friend called me in tears.  Turns out he had trusted that his expensive college degree would rocket him right up to the top of the working world.  Yet, he found himself at the bottom, a regular working stiff.  He vented for a while, and then we talked about ways we could find reshape the story.  Now my friend is still in the business world, and I’m in my church world, but we have changed where we look for guidance and trust.  I keep that conversation in mind as I go forward, seeking to deepen a radical trust in the One who is faithful and true.

17 Jan

Trust: Part 1

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

Late last year, someone offered me some unsolicited advice.  “You’d better enjoy life now, and enjoy life with your daughter,” he said.  “When she grows up, she won’t even know what freedom is, because the world’s being taken over by Muslims.”

I wish I could think more quickly in situations like that.  I stood there with my mouth hanging open for a few seconds, and then went on about my business (I was thirty seconds away from officiating a funeral.)

That ridiculous comment has weighed on me for several weeks, and it came back to me early this month.  My mother-in-law has posted some old family photos online, which are a delight to peruse.  Her family came from the Azores (islands belonging to Portugal), and settled in Rhode Island about one hundred years ago.  Here’s a picture of her mother and uncle as teenagers:

Here’s why I thought about the “Muslim” comment as I looked at these photos:  the two people you see here were victims of discrimination.  Not anything approaching the cruelty of Jim Crow laws or the Taliban’s regulations, mind you, but discrimination nonetheless.  Blue-eyed “white” people living in the Northeast used to think of Portuguese people as servants.  No self-respecting Anglo at the time would invite a person of Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, Greek, or any other southern European origin to a civic club or dance or business meeting.  Brown-eyed, olive-skinned people were supposed to live in separate areas of town and silently show up for work with their aprons or coveralls on.

When I look at the photo, I see people who decided that discrimination wasn’t going to get the better of them.  They chose to have a little trust.  Admittedly, I never met these two people.  From the stories I hear, though, it seems that they were tough and determined people.  My husband’s grandmother went on to move to North Carolina, raise a family, own a business, and own a home.  Folks may have looked at her funny down here in N.C. (“Where you from, anyway?”) but she didn’t let it bother her.

I choose to have that same attitude for myself, and for the sake of my little daughter with the Portuguese heritage, for the sake of my Muslim friends, and for just about anyone’s sake.  I refuse to spend my life worrying about bad apples.  I choose to trust that God can overcome.

I choose to trust in a God who can overcome poverty … discrimination … hatred … oppression … misinterpretation of holy words … poor decisions by governments … lack of economic opportunity.  I choose to trust in a God who brings people out of the desert, out of the lion’s den, and out of the grave.

I choose to trust in a God who can show me something new, and help me overcome my own prejudice.  I choose to trust in a God who works through “foreigners,” tax collectors, lepers, prostitutes, widows, orphans, and anyone else whom you might not appreciate if you have blinders on.

I refuse to give in to the twisted comfort of the “ain’t it awful” game.  It’s so easy to sit around and moan about how the world is going to the hot place in a handbasket.  I trust that God will give me a role to play in making the world better!

And you know what?  Even if the world is turned upside down by some hateful people, I trust that God will not abandon us.  Paul didn’t write Romans chapter 8 for fun.  Political power is always temporary, guns run out of ammo at some point, and warmongers meet the sharp side of the sword sooner or later.  God is forever.  I choose to trust in Him.

May the smiles on these two young people’s faces be shared by all, no matter what obstacles are placed in their way.

6 Dec

Advent Day 9: Kung Fu

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , .

Advent Day 9

In Him there is no darkness at all
The night and the day are both alike
The lamb is the Light of the city of God
Shine in my heart Lord Jesus.  (Kathleen Thopmson, 1970)

I’m rather late getting this post going today — Monday morning sabbath.

Anyway, as a follow-up to yesterday’s post on counting your blessings, I want to share some thoughts on what we do with the “curses,” or the negative things we experience.

In my view, there are two key points to letting go of negative things.

  1. Imagine what you would like to have happen instead.  Recently we rented the remake of The Karate Kid and I just loved the scene at the end when Dre says he’ll continue to fight the bully, because he doesn’t want to be afraid anymore.  Not that fighting is always the answer!  But he needed a chance to say, “I gave it my all,” rather than, “I ran away.”
  2. Help the negative things travel on to another destination, outside of your mind and body.  In the past, there have been some cruel rituals for banishing sin from the person and/or the community, such as leaving a person to die in the desert.  I certainly don’t advocate cruelty, but I can see what these people and communities were trying to do.  Anything that separates you from God will continue to do so unless you get rid of it.  Anything that drains life will find ways to disguise itself, so you’ll keep on pouring your life down the drain.  (Many of the stories I hear in my office about addiction begin with a person who was angry or scared and didn’t know how to express it.)  Surely there is something we can do to free ourselves, short of being cruel to animals or other humans.

Here are a few ideas for banishing sin and other negative things.  All these seem pretty tame, so if you try them you’ll need to ask the Spirit to give them the power they require.

  • write a letter and tear it up
  • go to a body of water and lay your sins upon small pebbles or twigs you find on the water’s edge, and toss them into the water
  • imagine a jar with a hole in the bottom.  You keep trying to fill it with negative things, but they fall out.  (You can also imagine a second container for blessings, that keeps filling up and expanding.) See Morgan’s book on the “Resources” page for more details on this.
  • vent with a friend and then have a prayer together.  I know a guy who sits in his church every Sunday before services, ready to have anyone come vent and pray with him.  He doesn’t advertise at all, but people know about it and they refer their friends.  He is rarely alone during this time.
  • write, write, write in a journal.  Then go back and read it weeks or months later.  You may experience some release as you write, and an even more complete release after you sit on the issue and revisit it.
  • get a punching bag.  Really.  Women especially need a safe physical outlet for anger, because we don’t have a lot of socially acceptable ways to express it.
  • try saying what you mean, without cruelty, for one day.  When the boss asks you to work late for the umpteenth time, and she hasn’t asked anyone else, calmly tell her you don’t understand why she is doing this, and tell her honestly whether you can comply.  (Scary, I know!)  You may find out that you’re the only one she trusts.

Today’s daily Scripture readings from the PC(USA):  http://gamc.pcusa.org/devotion/daily/2010/12/6/

28 Nov

Advent Devotional: Introduction

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized.

A while back, I went searching for devotionals for young adults that I would be happy to recommend to members of my church and campus ministry group.  I’m still looking, but so far have come up empty. 

At the same time, the members of the campus ministry group I direct were talking about ways they live out their spiritual life.  Spiritual practices, you might say.

So I decided that for the Christian season of Advent, a period of about one month, I would post one idea for spiritual practice per day on this blog.  You could call this little adventure a “devotional,” I suppose.  Some of the ideas are things you can do immediately, and others may require some planning.  Regardless, I hope something written here will speak to you.

If you do choose to take on some spiritual practices during Advent, you might want to keep a journal, or get some candles that you can light every day as you spend time with God.

For more information on the books I’ve used, please visit my “Resources” page (which I will add soon) and also look at my blogroll for more blogs on spiritual life.  (There are a ton of blogs out there on faith, spirituality, Bible study, and et cetera!  Happy reading!)

I have a few disclaimers as well:  few, if any, of these are original ideas.  This is simply a collection of ideas I’ve picked up along the way.  Many of these ideas appear in more than one source.  I have given credit wherever possible, usually from wherever I happened to find the idea.  If you have corrections or further details please email me.  Also, I have tried to avoid any “church words” that you may not know:  let me know if you have questions about something written here.  Finally, please note that I’m not an expert on spiritual disciplines or spirituality.  I just wanted to pass along some ideas that have been meaningful to me.

I sincerely hope you’ll find something here that leads you toward some of our great present-day teachers on Christian spirituality, and toward a deeper spiritual life. 

In faith,

Kerri

2 Nov

let’s go shopping

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized. Tagged: , , .

My daughter has a new fascination.  She picks up an old purse I gave her and says brightly, “Shopping!”

I was mortified when I first saw this.  Then I thought about it:  what do she and I do on the weekends?  We go on walks, go to playgrounds, eat, color, and shop.  My weekends are Fridays and Saturdays, so every Friday morning I make a grocery list and we head out to stock up for the week.  During the summer we make an additional trip to the produce stand or farmer’s market.  Sometimes we have additional trips to pick up diapers or finger paint.

This probably sounds terrible to you.  “What kind of parenting is going on here?  They shop all the time!” you might say.

Before you quit reading, however, let me ask you:  do you know what your grandmother, or great-grandmother, did when she wasn’t cooking or cleaning?  I’ll bet she shopped.  In fact, I’ll bet your male ancestors did a lot of shopping too.

For millenia, women, men, and children would grow stuff, make stuff, and journey to the local market to buy and sell stuff.  These were daily and weekly activities.  Many parts of the world still have strong traditions of farm and market.  Central to this older way of life are the acts of browsing, choosing, trading, haggling, and getting to know one’s partners in commerce.

Over time, people all over the income spectrum have lost the connections of the marketplace.  Hardly anyone in America knows where their food, clothing, furniture, dishes, or curtains were made.  Few Americans have to interact with anyone when they pick up their basic necessities.  If you need bread, you can ring up your own purchases at the self-checkout.

As Christmas approaches, I feel a return of that old anxiety about shopping.  Shopping is materialistic, we pastors cry every December.  I feel obliged in the coming weeks to deliver the annual rant about the evils of malls, credit cards, and Santa Claus.

Generally the pastors’ advice has been to consume less and donate more.  I think that’s fine advice, given that many Americans have way too much stuff and overwhelming debt.  Yet … may I go ahead and say that shopping at Christmastime could be a good idea?

What would happen if we went “to market” during this shopping season?  What if everyone who could get to a real bakery, deli, or artisans’ workshop actually went there and purchased things?  We would get to know our neighbors, and we would provide income in our local communities.  We would have a chance to investigate the quality of the product for ourselves, and to complain to the actual producer if something wasn’t right.  We could even provide the accountability we are currently missing in our mass-produced culture.  (If I bought dishes that were made far away and painted with a poisonous glaze, how could I complain and be sure my objection was heard?  But if I visit one of our great North Carolina potters and find my coffee mug to be gross–an unlikely scenario, but bear with me–I can go right to the source.)

Of course, not all Americans can afford the prices and gas money required to visit a local producer, and that’s part of the problem.  The real market isn’t accessible to everyone.    Yet I can do my small part to turn things around.  I’m not wealthy enough to keep all the local merchants in my hometown in business.  But I can think about where I shop before I crank the car.  I can sacrifice somewhere else in my budget in order to buy less junk.

Next time, my daughter and I will get our purses and head out to shop local.  I just found a store downtown that sells actual cloth diapers, and while we’re out we’ll visit an art store to get good crayons.  After that, we’re picking up our holiday pies at a real bakery.  See you there!

 

29 Oct

rock

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized.

My mom loves to say the Apostles’ Creed during Sunday worship.

Really? you may say. Usually people say their favorite part of a worship service was the prayer or singing or even the children’s moment that is popular in mainline churches.

Yeah, she likes the creed! It’s a touchstone for her, a place to stake her claim once a week in this crazy little thing called life. It’s a ritual that brings meaning and light.

I understand a lot of people resist creeds and religious rituals, worrying that if they participate in those things they’ll lose their independence. I understand the fear of indoctrination.

What I have trouble understanding is why people would resist having a touchstone or foundation in their lives. “I don’t need a crutch,” people sometimes say to me. Well, tonight I read a passionate essay from a punk rock artist who has rejected the idea of God– yet he writes about studying world religions and finding a home in music. He writes about growing up, and about what grounds him in his adult life. Sure, I wish he’d rethink some of his claims, but I appreciated his honest story about searching for something solid and meaningful.

At some point we’re all going to feel the ground shifting beneath us, literally or symbolically. It may even feel as though the ground has disappeared. Why would anyone reject a ledge to cling to at such a time?

It doesn’t bother me at all to use words that someone else wrote as part of my foundation. Honestly, I think if you polled people who say they feel grounded, you would find they are using words or ideas or traditions they didn’t create. When I really feel groundless, going back to Scripture or poetry or even good old theology texts renews my thinking. What dulls the blade for me is constant preoccupation with my own opinions (this blog not withstanding, wink wink.)

So where’s your rock? It could be right under your feet, but you were too busy looking for something more impressive, so you didn’t notice it. It could be a rock someone else already used and found to be steady. Why not try it out?

20 Oct

let’s talk

Posted by Kerri Hefner in Uncategorized.

Today I had such a great day, because I got to talk to people.  I had at least half a dozen meaningful one-on-one conversations, and that’s what makes the day for me.  I had the opportunity to talk to students, church members, and even to a radio host to promote the upcoming CROP Walk for Hunger.

You just can’t beat a good face-to-face conversation. I love writing and I’m having fun with this blog, but without “face time” I think my writing would be meaningless.

I get nervous with a lot of email, texting, online comments, and what not.  Yes, it’s the way of the future.  However, if I can’t look into your eyes, hear your tone of voice, or read your body language, I really don’t know what we’re talking about.  I may misinterpret your tone or your posture or your gestures, but I think I can get it right the more we talk.

That’s why I feel so privileged to be a pastor.  I can take time to have real sit-down conversations.  And if I’ve had a conversation via phone or internet with someone and I don’t feel right about it, I can say, “Let’s meet face to face,” and people usually say OK.

Perhaps there are others who don’t thrive as much on face time as I.  And that’s OK.  I just hope they understand when I say, “Let’s talk.”

(PS:  I don’t have a lot of readers on this blog, but if you’re one of them, do me a favor.  Think about a good conversation you’ve had recently.  Think about what made it good.  And try to re-create those good elements next time you sit down and talk.)

 

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »