Stand Up, Keep Fighting

I can't believe it's already been five years. That day is still so vivid in my mind.

But it's been five years since a neighboring pastor called to tell me he had just heard a news bulletin on NPR: Senator Wellstone's plane had gone down in northern Minnesota. Rescue crews were on their way, but there was little hope that anyone had survived the crash. "I noticed your bumper sticker when you moved here," he said. "I. . .I just thought. . .that. . .you'd want to know. . ."

I hung up with him and immediately called my mother. "Please tell me it isn't true" I blurted out as soon as she answered. I heard her start to cry, which unleashed the tears that I was barely holding back myself. She clung to the thinnest veil of hope: "They haven't officially declared anyone dead yet. They might have made it." But within the hour, it was confirmed - all six passengers had died.

That was one of the loneliest days of my life. It was a Friday, both Jeff and Barbara's day off, so I was alone all day to stew in my grief. I was devastated, but the rest of Washington was oblivious to the great tragedy that had occurred. It was just another Friday to them - as well it should have been - he wasn't their Senator, the plane didn't go down in their state. The news was just another blip "up on the TV, between a rerun and another war."

But that only added to my sorrow, to be grieving alone. I wanted nothing more than to race down to Sea-Tac and hop on the next plane to Minneapolis, but I couldn't. I couldn't have afforded the last minute airfare, and I couldn't have just taken off like that. But, however irrational it may have been, I certainly wanted to. I wanted the comfort of sitting with others who were just as heartbroken as I was. It was a harsh lesson in the cost of this discipleship, a lesson I have continued to live out in my call here: people you love will die while you tend to the ill, the dying, and the bereaved thousands of miles away.

The next day offered some relief, some sense of being part of the community of the grieving. First, there was a knock on the door, and the postman handed me a box. It was a VCR tape full of non-stop coverage of the crash and its aftermath by Twin Cities media. My friend Melissa had gone home, thrown a tape in the VCR and just hit record. When the tape stopped, she took it out, boxed it up, and overnighted it to me. Later that night, Garrison Keillor paid a beautiful tribute to Senator Wellstone on A Prarie Home Companion. That Sunday after worship, several members of the congregation, having finally figured out what the bumper sticker on my car meant (apparently many thought I was advertising some kind of product!), offered their condolences.

Life went on, as it always does. Mason Jennings wrote a song, I finished my internship in WA, moved back to MN to finish seminary, then on to PA. Along the way, I have paid the price of this discipleship several times over, losing more and more people I love, including two grandparents, while I tend to the souls I am charged with hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away.

And today it's five years later, and I see a country that needs Paul Wellstone now more than ever. Who is standing up for justice, even when it's not a politically popular point of view? Who is speaking up for those who have no voice, who broker no power in our society? Who is looking out for those who so easily fall through the cracks in our communities? Who is keeping kitchen table issues on the front burner of our national agenda?

If we would be true to his legacy, true to his vision, WE should be the ones standing up and speaking out. It's what Senator Wellstone would want, what he would be working for if he were still alive today.

I am ashamed to admit how often I fail at this. I conveniently argue that my job is too taxing, that I simply don't have the time. But the truth is, often I don't MAKE the time.

I'm gonna try to do better at that. Because this is certainly no time to be sitting down and checking out.

This is a time to stand up, and keep fighting.

Shalom,
Catrina

PS - I can't get the Mason Jennings link to go right to the lyrics, but from the main page, click on "Music," then "Use Your Voice," then "Ballad of Paul and Sheila."

Write What You Know

There's an old adage that is oft spoken to new writers: write what you know. It's what all the best authors have always done - a story grounded in one's own experience gives it an air of authenticity that can make even the most seemingly mundane moments of life, moments of a narrative, sparkle.

I've seen two movies in the past two days that have made the truth and the wisdom of that statement almost painfully obvious. The first movie was Aurora Borealis. It was actually written by a guy from my hometown, and a main part of the plot is about losing a grandpa to Parkinson's and dementia, so it hit close to home on two counts, and I've been wanting to see it ever since my grandma sent me the article from our hometown paper interviewing the screenwriter, Brent Boyd.

Overall I thought the movie was pretty good - solid script, well-cast, well-framed, with some beautiful shots of the Cities. It was a story about growing up, coping with loss, being pushed outside yor comfort zone, taking responsibility for yourself and others. Duncan (the lead) is chronically unemployed, has been piddling his life away since his dad died ten years ago. Though his life is not perfect (constantly losing jobs, his successful yet philandering brother always borrowing his apartment for rendevous' with the mistress), there's a certain level of comfort and realibility to the places he inhabits and the people he inhabits them with. The growing up is precipitated by his spending more time with grandma and grandpa (who is daily losing ground to Parkinson's and dementia), and falling in love with grandpa's home health care nurse.

There are two geographical details that I'd quibble with: first, there's no way the grandparent's apartment could have THAT view of the Minneapolis skyline AND a view of the St. Paul skyline (a couple times, characters in the movie claim that it does); second, it is highly unlikely that people living that close to downtown would drive all the way to the Mall of America to do their Christmas shopping (though I realize the MOA is probably more recognizable to a national audience, and a more lucrative "product placement" than, say, City Center or Nicollet Mall). But, unless they have a highly attuned sense of the geography of the place, the average viewer isn't even going to pick up on that.

What the movie did very well - to the point that I have been feeling kinda homesick ever since watching it - was capture the essence of life in Minnesota, even down to nuances, like the fact that people who live in Minneapolis don't often venture across the river into St. Paul, and vice versa. Brent Boyd took a people and a place that he knew, that he understood very well, and he wrote a beautiful story about them - a story not uncritical of them - but a beautiful, authentic story all the same.

The movie I watched today was called Searching for Bobby D. It was a comedy about four actors from Brooklyn who are sick of being typecast in bit background parts, so they set off to make a movie of their own script, starring themselves. Through various connections, they get a meeting with Robert DeNiro's production partner, who is willing to look at the script, but says they have to raise at least $500,000 to make a decent indie movie. The lead's cousin moved to the Poconos and claims he's got a rich investor who will front the money for the movie - so the four actors take off for PA to raise the funds. Let the hilarity ensue. . .

Except, that it really wasn't that funny. I mean, I realize it was meant to be a stupid comedy, so capturing the nuances of life in rural Pennsylvania was not exactly their top priority. But every character from PA was so two-dimensional - the vast majority were portrayed as dumb hicks, and half of them spoke with Southern accents (hello! we are ABOVE the Mason-Dixon line! there IS a distinct accent and speech pattern in rural PA, but it sounds nothing like a southern drawl)!

It felt completely like a parade of a New Yorker's worst stereotypes of rural people, which was ironic considering the plot-driving goal was for the characters to prove that Itailian-Americans and African-Americans are more than just goombas and thugs. I did try to give them the benefit of the doubt for a while, thinking that maybe this is a really sarcastic commentary on stereotypes in the movies (they do have a scene where they play into their worst sterotypes in order to raise some of the funds) - but then I realized, no, this movie is not that deep.

So, a thumbs up to Aurora Borealis, and a disappointed thumbs down to Searching for Bobby D. And screenwriters, please, for the love of all that is good and true in this world - write what you know. And if you're going to write what you know nothing about, please, at least put a little effort into some research, and don't write your most shallow stereotypes into the script. Is that too much for this humble country paisan to ask?

Peace,
Catrina

How Can I Keep From Singing?

"My life flows on in endless song;
Above earth’s lamentation
I hear the sweet though far off hymn
That hails a new creation. . ."


The past couple of weeks have been. . .intense.

They were already going to be pretty intense, since I was in charge of the CROP Walk last Sunday, and we were supposed to have the new carpet laid in the fellowship hall Monday-Wednesday, and we were trying to finish up "Free in Christ to Serve the Neighbor" (aka sexuality study part three) so that we could get our comments in to the ELCA by the November 1 deadline, and I had two concerts with the Susquehanna Valley Chorale in two different performance halls, which meant beaucoup rehearsals, not to mention the concerts themselves.

Then two members of the congregation died on October 4th. And our organist's mother died on the 5th. Which just ratcheted the intensity up a couple more notches, because now there were three families in grief to care for, two funerals to plan and preside over (our organist's mother was a member of a sister congregation), a substitute funeral organist to find, and a carpet installation to reschedule.

And some people still think pastors only work an hour or two on a Sunday morning. :)

So like I said, it's been an intense couple of weeks.

And I have to admit, Monday night I was kinda cranky on the bus ride up to Williamsport for our first rehearsal with the orchestra and soloists. I was exhausted, I had already been through the first funeral, had plenty more to prepare for the second the next morning, and I was not looking forward to two hours of working out all the kinks and cues and balance issues in the hall.

But the music and texts on our fall program are so deliciously rich. . .it's impossible to remain in a bad mood when you're singing Vaughan Williams' "Five Mystical Songs," Tschesnokoff's "Let Thy Holy Spirit," William Payn's "With What Shall I Come Before the Lord," and Dvorak's setting of the "Te Deum."

I rode up to Williamsport annoyed at the imposition that the midweek concert was on my schedule. Turned out, this music was exactly the grace I needed to carry me through the week.

". . .Through all the tumult and the strife
I hear the music ringing;
It finds an echo in my soul—
How can I keep from singing?. . ."

We capped these crazy weeks off in a major way in our final peformance at the Weis Center last night. We just had an awesome concert - the chorale was on, the orchestra was on, the Weis Center is by far the nicest space we have sung in since I have been a member - it was so uplifting to be part of this group of musicians, to be singing this gorgeous and inspiring music in a beautiful hall, to walk outside when all was said and done and breathe in the crisp, cool autumn air. . .

And adding to my joy this morning, those sneaky buggers in my congregation surprised me with a lovely "pastor appreciation day" reception in the very newly carpeted fellowship hall - a celebration that included my favorite treats, and the coolest gift ever: somewhere in the developing world, goats and pigs that were given in my name are running around, providing sustainable food and income for families living in dire poverty.

It's been an intense - and an incredible - couple of weeks.

". . .No storm can shake my inmost calm
While to that rock I'm clinging
Since Christ is Lord of heaven and earth
How can I keep from singing?"

Peace,
Catrina

PS - Your inner church music nerd wants to know that the hymn verses interspersed above were written by Robert Lowry, who happened to be a professor at Bucknell, and a pastor in Lewisburg, for many years.

Here is Irony Embodied. . .

the Luddite starts a blog. Eight years ago I was handing out copies of Wendell Berry's "Why I Will Not Own a Computer" as if it were a religious tract, but today, I am willfully (and happily) using the Internet as a primary means of communication.

It's not that I'm a full-out Luddite, mind you. I appreciate technology, I really do. I just question whether our culture is becoming overly dependent upon it, and how healthy that can be for us in the long run.

Take spelling, for example. I used to be a pretty decent speller. Now, thanks to spell check, I am a pretty lazy speller. In fact, thanks to automatic spell check, I rarely even realize I am misspelling a word. Which is all well and good until I go to write a real letter, and have to keep looking up the words I commonly misspell so I don't come across as an idiot.

Ok, obviously, a misspelled word here and there isn't the end of the world, it's the bigger things that I really worry about. Like, what happens to a person who is overly reliant on fast, microwavable foods? Not just what happens to their body (the medical data, the statistical rise in heart disease, diabetes, obesity, etc, tells us that story), but what happens to their soul? What happens to their relationships? Food is a language and a medium of love in my family, I have spent many hours bonding with both my grandmothers in their kitchens, where family stories were passed down along with the family recipes they were teaching me to make.

But what happens to a world whose grandmothers have forgotten how to cook? Such are the questions that keep me up at night.

And such are the kind of random musings you can expect to find on this blog. Observations about what I'm reading, watching, listening to, thinking to myself, talking about with other people. . .in short, about life as it is experienced by a Lutheran pastor serving in Central Pennsylvania.

Given that the nature of my job is very public and proclamatory, I should probably add the following disclaimer: the thoughts and opinions contained herein are my own, and are in no way to be mistaken as official positions of the congregation I am serving, nor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Capisce?

And to those who are curious, the blog title is a nod to Wendell - I can't abandon him completely! - and my favorite poem, which he happened to write. You can read it below.

Alright, I'm off to spell check. :)

Peace,
Catrina

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won't compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millenium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion - put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie down in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn't go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.