How to Have Better Family Holidays

As the leaves change and the light grows softer, many of us begin to make plans for the coming winter holidays. While these annual events stir up images of good food, travel, family, and friends, they can also raise anxiety as these very same events dump added stress on old relationships that may have years of unsettled conflicts baked into their patterns and don’t change easily. 

You may be going to see your family weeks after you have announced a new partner, a pregnancy, or an impending move or divorce. What will your parent say when they meet you at the airport, what smart remark do you anticipate from your younger sibling about your body or relationship, what anticipated struggle over food choices or sleeping arrangements make you less than relaxed as your holidays approach? 

Participating in milestone events like holiday visits with our families of origin raises some expected and automatic emotional reactions. We don’t always manage to be our best selves. Anxious and stressed, we may become defensive and reactive, trying to dodge the discomfort that spoken comments or obvious body language raise up. We may begin to mind read, assuming we know what someone thinks; we might withdraw and engage only with the relationships in which we feel safe. It’s then quite easy to blame others for misunderstanding us or nursing a grudge over some long-ago hurt, while finally discussing it directly seems almost impossible. 

If we have a partner, we also may feel pressure to manage their emotions. Our partner may feel isolated, and needs us to support them, even while we feel stressed and unseen by these life-long, important, but imperfect relationships. The pressure on your couplehood may increase as each of you tries to navigate the waters of these familiar family patterns and people. It is no wonder these holiday events can make everyone feel unheard and unseen while being surrounded by people! 

What can we do to make these important extended family events better for ourselves and others? Is there some magic wand we can wave to make everyone more calm and connected? 

Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to feeling more at ease with these intense occasions. Because the truth is, we don’t have control over how others behave. All we have is the capacity to adjust our own thinking and behavior, a difficult enough, life-long task. It’s the challenging, very personal effort of self-awareness, grieving and accepting the truth of what has been, while developing ideas about how we want to grow toward a healthier emotional life. 

What can we do to help ourselves manage these high stress family events with greater peace of mind? Here are a few ideas to help you manage your part of family events. 

  1. Lower your expectations. The build-up to trips or vacations can set all our hopes a bit too high. Remember that a key to managing these kinds of occasions is to expect them to be a real mix of highs and lows. 
  2. Become a family observer. Ask yourself occasionally: How does this group normally function? Who leads, who follows, what role do I play in the family system? Is that something I would like to change? 
  3. Remain as present as possible. When things aren’t perfect, it can be very tempting to check out and just drop your attention into your phone or laptop. What emotions make you want to withdraw? Could you pay attention to what is happening in a way that helps you understand rather than avoid? 
  4. Reflect every day in a journal or with a trusted other. Daily private reflection can make a big difference in our ability to adjust and sustain our emotional connection to family members and to our own behavior. 
  5. Get physical exercise, preferable outdoors. Make sure you have time to be physically active every day to move your body and clear your mind. Eat as well as possible, and limit alcohol. 
  6. Focus on individuals and a bit less on the group. One of the best ways to step out of group behavior is to focus on having individual conversations with family members. It is probably the only real chance people get to be themselves, be heard, and to learn about others in real time. 
  7. Work on creating new memories. While it can be fun to reminisce about the shared past constantly, it’s far more fulfilling to create new memories together. A new board game, a trip to a theme park, even making a new recipe together can pull us into the here and now.   
  8. Bring your sense of humor & humility. You didn’t choose this group of people to be your family, but somehow it’s part of who you were and have become. As they have influenced you, you have done the same for them. You are on a team, and you can have a better time when you are less demanding about yourself and others. 
  9. Have an exit strategy. Even bringing your best intentions and good emotional habits to your family event doesn’t always change how you feel, behave, and respond. Your parent may still be the same deeply arrogant person at 70 that they were at 30. Know when to take a break, seek support, or even leave. It’s better to manage your stress than to never return again. 

And when good self management doesn’t work well, this is where good therapy can help. When we bring these repeated and unhelpful experiences into our private conversations with a skilled family counselor, we can better develop a capacity to observe our beliefs, our emotions, and our behaviors. Observing our own patterns gives us the distance and ability to imagine how we might behave differently. We begin to see that we have some choice in how we function, even during intense, important, or occasional family events. 

Growing ourselves up into the people we want to be may not solve your familiar family fights over who manages the kitchen, or the alcohol, or the children. But it will give you increased resilience for the times when it is important to connect, to speak up when conflicts arise, and the capacity to accept, and perhaps even to forgive, those imperfect souls with whom you are intricately linked. 

(Written originally for Lineage Counseling blog, New Hope, MN)

Why is It So Hard to Make Adult Friendships?

This article was written for Lineage Counseling (lineagecounseling.com), a private therapy practice in New Hope, MN.

Here in Minnesota, land of lakes, prairies, MaltoMeal, and Post It Notes, we pride ourselves in our understated neighborliness. We are a down to earth, mostly friendly sort. When I first moved here 45 years ago, it was something that I noticed right away: the “Minnesota Nice” attitude, a kind of quiet, calm sense of community. Yet, at the same time, I also noticed that it didn’t always extend much farther than that. That old joke, that Minnesotans will gladly stop and give you directions to anywhere but their own home, seemed all too true.

Even with the new community created by my seminary classes, it was hard to get traction in creating new friendships. Many of my new acquaintances had lived in the area all their lives, had friendships they had maintained since high school or college, and still had most of their family here. Nearly everyone around me seemed content with the relationships they already had. Out of the classroom I often felt like a social afterthought.

Perhaps you have had a similar experience moving to a new community or trying to make some new friends as an adult. The folks who study social trends in culture have been reporting that as our social habits have changed over the last half century, we have become a much lonelier and disconnected people. What at one time consumed our free time as well as placed us in regular, in-person contact with diverse neighbors – groups like bowling leagues, youth sports, church activities, art, music, and local civic groups – have all had less participation as we spend more and more of our free time at home. Working hard and commuting farther, we spend very little time talking with people we don’t know well. Leisure looks increasingly like individual video entertainment on our screens, whether they are large televisions, 15” laptops, or our even smaller cellphones.

In a recent large cross-cultural study, large numbers of us report that we have no close friends. The numbers vary across genders, age, educational level, and population density, but up to 25% of Americans report that they are socially isolated and feel chronically lonely. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy sponsored a 2023 report called “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” an important document containing results from studies across the country, available on the web. It’s worth a read.

As socially connected beings, when we don’t get the amount of positive social interactions we need or prefer, we’re subject to mood problems like anxiety, sadness, anger, and self-harm. We become physically susceptible to higher blood pressure, infectious diseases, and a shortened life span. In search of an answer to our invisible despair, we may even be enticed by the extreme rhetoric of political leaders, disturbing visions of prophets and preachers, or the worldview of violent hate groups that offer a clear enemy, self-righteous purpose, and tight community.

The core message in all this social science is that we are a culture that has become increasingly isolated from one another, with the effects visible everywhere: from the aging grandmother unvisited in a nursing home to the angry middle-aged man sitting at this home computer fueling his grievances. It’s a systemic issue, and we can’t rewind the clock on how our free-time choices have changed with technology, variable work schedules, or an urbanized culture. So, if loneliness is this large an issue, what’s a person to do? How do we make and sustain friendships at a time when social structure doesn’t do much to support us?

Without the relationship opportunities that different social customs gave people generations before, it’s up to us individually to foster our own emotional habits to create and sustain adult friendships. Here are 10 of the most important ideas to consider if you’d like to increase the number of people you call friends.

  1. If you assumed a therapist would first tell you to think about your own unique circumstances, you are right. Such an important gap in your emotional life is worth some serious reflection. Ask yourself some questions: Who are my friends? Do I have enough? To whom do I feel most close? How did you make this friend? How focused are you on maintaining the time and energy needed to keep the relationship positive and honest? Are there friendships that you once valued that seem to have soured? Can you identify the circumstances of that change? How much energy and time are you willing to spend to increase your friendship circle? How open or interested are you in people who are younger or older than you are?

This kind of inner reflection can help you know what you already understand about your personal circumstances and how interested you are in making change.

  1. Because so many friendships begin with people coming together in new circumstances (think: the new freshman class; the start of a new soccer season) the primary way you can help yourself as an adult to get open to new friendships is to seek out and put yourself into new positive social settings.   
  2. Keep it local. By keeping these group connections closer to home, we are more likely to have multiple points of connections with people already in play, like your favorite restaurant or your children’s school. Additionally, you are more able and more likely to re-connect with new people if it is easier to get together.
  3. Look for groups of people that meet regularly over time. Is there a hobby you do alone that might be fun to share in person? A running club, a puzzle group, a choir that has a regular schedule and is open to new people? Over time, shared experiences and common ground can lead to great conversations and invitations to gather in some different way.
  4. Show up in person. While many of us have created real friendships while online with gaming or other interest groups, real-time, real-life interactions with people more fully satisfy our social and emotional needs. Without the technology barriers, we more fully feel and read one another’s faces, body language, energies, and attitudes. Having more of this emotional data helps us better evaluate one another’s mood and interests and develop personal connection.
  5. Grow your tolerance for feeling awkward as you navigate a new social situation. This is some of the hardest inner work for creating adult friendships. It takes some confidence and courage to step into a group of people you don’t know. In a situation where everyone is new, everyone feels as awkward as you. But when entering a well-established group, you will want to bring your best version of a warm, open attitude. (And no, alcohol is not a great substitute for social courage. Invariably, you underestimate how impaired you are, and overestimate your charm. Save the drinks for time with established friends and a safe ride home.)
  6. Develop your natural interest in others. What does that look like, socially? It is demonstrated by two core communication skills: asking interested questions about the other person’s life and perspective; and actually listening to their answers. It’s quite a special experience when someone asks you about your life and listens to you without argument or interruption. Many of us never have that as a regular experience. People are attracted to others who make them feel positive and calm.
  7. Don’t expect everyone to be a best friend. We need all kinds of friendships that support us: social friends, work or sport friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. The neighbor who you occasionally help shovel snow or get their mail? The classmate from college who you talk to every once and awhile to catch up? Your sibling, the one who you see every holiday, but who has shared so much of their growing up with you? All of them form a rich emotional system. And we do the same for them. They all matter.
  8. Stop keeping score. While the most intimate relationships, including our best friendships, need to feel mutual and balanced in effort and vulnerability to remain close, if we want to have friends, we will need to create more opportunities for us to get together with others. Are you the one who more often is asking to get together for lunch, to see a ball game, to take a trip or grab a beer? Do you feel that you are the one who is always having people over? The more you generate opportunities to gather with others, the less lonely your life will feel. And the more you model hospitality to others.
  9. Express yourself. The key human ingredient to feeling known and cared for is being real, honest, and vulnerable with those we care about. Let your friends know they are important to you. Be honest about your life and struggles and listen as others share hard things with you. Celebrate and grieve together. Stay flexible with your expectations and be open to change. Find things to share and laugh together. Sharing this human experience is what friendships are all about.

When it comes to our social and mental health, the key is to never stop making social connections. Not only do our individual lives improve, the more we have friendly connections beyond our doorsteps, the healthier and more resilient are our social and political lives. And even here, in friendly Minnesota, we can better learn to be curious about people we don’t already know well. And perhaps, on occasion, even to give them directions to our homes.

© 2024 Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Last Newspaper Column

I found out just as you did: I saw the headline that our paper was folding. No warnings, no large appeals for renewals, no publisher writing with their regrets. After 27 years of writing essays meant to inspire critical thought on issues of faith and life, I found out with all of you that I’m done. And so are those professionals who worked for our papers, had dedicated their education and livelihoods to the study and practice of journalism, some of whom had just begun working for the paper last month.

You wonder if you’ll miss the small weekly? We’ll no longer have a single place for obituaries, celebrating our youth events, or the opening of new businesses. And no independent reporter will be sitting at our town council meetings where zoning, taxes, roads, and development projects are controlled. No reporter seeking public records and discovering corruption, no journalist sitting through the first part of the school board agenda to report on staffing concerns, campus security, curriculum changes, or book bans. And no place where we can easily read interviews of those running for the elected offices of school board, town committees, or sheriff.

Can the StarTribune expand its coverage? Can the New Prague Times step in? Will our seasoned local journalists rally to create an online newspaper like Eden Prairie? We live in an area with deep financial resources; is there not anyone resident who is willing to organize and fund such a project? Here’s a serious plea: If you know of any journalistic entrepreneurs with a knack for raising up investors, please tell them of the opportunity in Savage and Prior Lake. We need the next version of local journalism to rise up!

As for the rest of us, the serious spiritual work of healthy community remains. The changes that technology has brought, which include losing our small-town newspapers, has let many more of us slowly slide into resignation and suspicion. Sitting on our phones and seeing hours of algorithmic-generated content every day has just increased our current social and political divisions. If we want to stop the erosion of community, we need to encourage one another to embody the core values of respect, collaboration, and support that neighborhoods thrive on. You know that has never exactly been easy; nothing worth doing ever is.

Reflecting on my years in print, I think there are twin threads that run through all my essays. The first is my effort to speak about the Christian faith as the lens through which I have come to experience God, a God of mercy, forgiveness, peace, and creativity. A God who joins us in this human life, coming close to us in loving relationship, and not as some remote, rigid divinity pulling our strings. The second is my deep conviction that we participate with God’s version of power, God’s “kingdom” or “reign,” when love for the neighbor is our ethical cornerstone: when we feed the hungry, heal the broken, and work for justice. God’s kingdom is present when we use power well and resist the pull of human evil, when we uphold human dignity, and protect the weak and vulnerable. Jesus lived his brief life devoted to God’s kingdom power. He invites us to follow and find abundant life.

Thank you for sharing these Spiritual Reflections with me. Occasionally I would receive an email or personal comment about my columns, and those connections cheered me on. (Once or twice, they even spurred an angry letter to the editor!) May we continue to do the work that God gives us to do in the world, each of us a unique expression of that creative and generative God we seek to know and love. Let’s keep striving for a more just, compassionate, and loving world. I’m cheering us on.

Written for last edition of the Savage Pacer 4/27/24

The Cosmic Clash of Jesus’ death

We know what it’s like to wait for something to happen, to feel that that familiar internal pressure and energy of a pending experience. This was the emotional atmosphere that developed around Jesus as he journeyed from Galilee toward Jerusalem for the annual Passover holiday. He had warned his disciples it would mean a deadly confrontation, and it’s these events the Christian church around the world remembers each Holy Week.

Passover celebrates the day, centuries before, when Israel escaped from slavery in Egypt by the miraculous intervention of God. It was a religious as well as political holiday that for many Jews held powerful connotations for their present day: would God ever help them rise up to cast the Romans off their backs? Provided by Rome with social and political stability but at enormous human cost, Jews were heavily taxed, forcing many into poverty. Would God one day raise up a new King, who would defeat the massive empire, just as young king David once felled Goliath?

Tensions in the city were high. The entire region was part of the Empire, and locally controlled by a governor named Pilate. Rome allowed local religious authorities some measure of influence and control, and in this city, that was the Jewish council who oversaw religious life. The strained version of peaceful power maintained in the city was easily threatened by upstart charismatic leaders like Jesus.

Jesus chose to enter the city on the back of a colt, in stark contrast to the warhorses and chariots of Roman armies. As he approached, people tore palm branches and laid them down as carpet, shouting welcome and Hosanna (Please save us!) as he rode. During the next few days, he went to the Temple and overturned the money changers in the courtyard who cheated the religious pilgrims. He taught his followers in public. He met with his core disciples for the Passover meal and asked them to remember him later with bread and wine. As the pressure built, he laid awake in prayer through the night, begging God for a different path. And then one of his central followers betrayed him to the Jewish leaders for a bag of silver.

That betrayal then cascaded to a confused arrest, beating, and questioning by Pilate, who by then anticipated rioting. Placing the beaten and silent Jesus before the mass of pilgrims gathered outside his palace, the crowds cheered for his crucifixion. That Friday before the Sabbath, he was executed by Rome, nailed to a cross through his wrists and ankles. There he rapidly bled, suffocated, and died, a warning to the nation to fear the power of empires, religious and political. His remaining friends took his body and buried him in a borrowed tomb. It seemed such a violent and senseless defeat.

For centuries since, people have pondered why Jesus was killed. The one who healed so many: couldn’t he have saved himself? With his followers present, and all the political resistance to Rome, why did he not call for a revolt, or at least shout his innocence? If he was the Messiah, why did God not intervene somehow? What was the point of his life if it led just to this?

Quite early in the Christian proclamation, his death was understood as a human sacrifice in the same way that animal sacrifices were made at the temple for generations. Trying to make sense of this loss, early confessions of the church declared that Jesus was a substitution for human sin, to satisfy God’s demand for our righteousness. You can read this confession in various parts of our New Testament and preached vigorously everywhere today.

But Jesus did not remain dead. Something so impossible happened that his disciples were completely changed and declared that this dead one was now alive again. Incredible! What in the world just happened? They called a resurrection, and that experience changed history.

What if a better way to understand this mystery is to proclaim instead that Jesus’ death and resurrection was a cosmic clash between human power and God’s kingdom? Between the brutal will to own and dominate verses the eternal, expansive power that love creates? This is how I have come to believe what is celebrated in both the cross and empty tomb. That in this failure to grasp his own power, Jesus chose to surrender himself to God’s kingdom. He allowed human power to destroy him, and God’s mysterious power to resurrect him.

This is the Christian proclamation of Easter: love is stronger than death. God’s kingdom of mercy, healing, and love, while seemingly vulnerable to human powers, is the eternal light that overcomes darkness. All the brutality that humans do to one another – betrayals, wars, genocide, all of it – is not the last word. God’s love is bigger than human hatred. This is the central confession of our faith: Jesus has died, and Jesus is alive. The power of love overcomes all death. Amazing! Thanks be to God.

Prayer : What is it, exactly?

One of my therapist friends just received frightening medical news following her first colonoscopy. I know what that kind of call from the doctor feels like, how the mind resists such unwanted information, how it changes everything in your life.

She shared her lab results, told me about the developing treatment plan, got fast tracked to surgery. While I’m too far away be any practical help, I offered one thing: Ill pray for you every day, I told her.

I speak her name to God. I added her name to the concerns I pray about: victims of war, violence in the world, climate change, wise leaders, domestic politics, my children and husband, our community and myself.

What are we doing when we pray? It’s such a familiar impulse to many of us that we rarely stop to wonder what prayer is. How would you define your experience of prayer? What forms does it take and how has it changed over time? Do you pray alone or with a community? Are your prayers from your books, memorized over time, or inspired by the moment?

Essentially, I think of prayer as an internal conversation we have with God. It’s a personal dialogue that shifts our emotional focus to God, a kind of discussion in which I think of God as a loving Mother, patiently attending, listening, feeling our concerns, joining that divine heart to ours.

Rarely does that infinite, loving power directly respond. Instead, that internal dialogue makes us participants in God’s sacred kingdom, a spiritual realm already at work in the world for our good.

Neuroscientists who study spiritual experiences have found within our brains observable energy patterns when we are in meditation, prayer, or spiritual reflection. Humans have evolved with an innate ability to imagine, focus, and link to an experience of power beyond ourselves, to moments of awe and wonder.

We seem to be able to connect with this spirituality through such diverse practices as dance, ritual, story, body postures, visual arts, the natural world, architecture, literature, chant, poetry, music and song, food, or silence. The way we understand this impulse is first modeled by our family of origin, then by our larger culture, as well what we choose individually to develop and practice.

Like so many inborn traits, the spiritual impulse for prayer can grow stronger, and just as easily grow weaker. It’s more likely to fade when prayer is practiced only in extremes, when all else fails and we feel desperate.

Want God to heal your cancer? A certain televangelist will sell you magical healing water to motivate God’s power. Afraid of dangerous weather? Famous preachers will assure you that specific prayers will change the course of hurricanes. Still others shout their certainty that God is only close to certain political parties, countries, religions, or genders.

Nothing in my experience tells me God responds to prayer like that. Yet religious hucksters continue to draw crowds, always preying on the vulnerable.

If prayer is the innate impulse in the human brain to connect with a life power beyond our physical selves, a pull toward experiences of timelessness, presence, awe, and wonder, what if anything, can we say about how it moves God? How might it influence the physical world?

I see prayer not as some emotional campaign to spur God to specific action, but as an experience of drawing us toward God in relationship, and in strengthening the bond between God and us, seeking the in-breaking of more healing, hope and renewal into this fragile world. In other words, I think of prayer as participating with God in the most powerful experiences of life: of hope, connection, healing, relief, and love. What many call God’s realm or kingdom.

The life of Jesus shows me that God is already close to those who suffer. I believe in a God who weeps when we weep, rages at the evil we do to one another and joins us even in our death. When we pray, I don’t think we tell God anything new at all. Prayer draws us to God’s heart and that holy practice can shape us into people who can offer our best selves to this world.

I will continue to pray for my friend, that God stays close to her in every way, that she be less afraid, find peace and renewed health, and trust in her future. I know that this healing is possible, even if a cure becomes unlikely. I have practice enough with prayer to trust these are already the desires of God’s for all our world.

(Written for the Savage Pacer, published 2/3/24)

Grief is Love with Nowhere to Go : Therapy

One of the privileges of my therapy practice, quite distinct from many of my colleagues who work in large counseling clinics, is the ability to have long-term relationships with clients. I have several clients with whom I have worked with for over a decade. That longevity is not the norm for most therapy experiences, of course. Most of us access therapy to find help for mind/body problems that can find a great deal of relief and resolution in a few months’ time. My practice is a bit different; while I do see clients for the many common psychological problems humans have, my work is centered on our experiences within our families.

Families are how human beings form loyal connections, raise children, share culture and manage change. No matter what form our nuclear family took, we are each a product of our parents’ genetic lines, and their emotional outlook on the effort of living. The decadeslong development of human children means we are subject to the personalities, resources and behaviors of those we live with. Then in adulthood, most of us form intimate partnerships, creating the next generation of our family. The continuing influence and problems that this large network of relationships creates for each of us is the focus of family systems therapy.

A couple of weeks ago, I came close to another aspect of life families manage, death. One of my wonderful clients — a person of faith, so passionate for her spouse and children, a devoted professional, loving neighbor, co-worker, and friend — lost her life to an aggressive cancer, smack in mid-life. We had talked together about her personal challenges for over 10 years, and when the cancer that had been quiet for a while rose back up with force this spring, I knew that our remaining time would be precious and short.

I know how to walk with those at the end of life as a pastor. I know how to provide spiritual care at this mysterious, liminal passage. But I had yet to grieve a client who had been in current therapy with me. As her last difficult weeks passed, even our brief conversations had to give way to more critical ones with physical medicine providers. One of my client’s final acts of grace toward me was to put her pastor in touch with me, who could share her experience and keep me informed of funeral plans. Then my client died as she had hoped, quietly in her own home. Her pastor as well as her husband lovingly reached out to me later with the funeral plan.

On a hot Friday morning, I drove to her church. Hundreds of us came together to grieve and remember. I was an anonymous mourner, known by sight to only two people in that large sanctuary. And yet, I belonged. It was perhaps one of the best funerals I have ever attended. Gorgeous music she chose; loving, true words spoken about her; and God’s gracious love for us spoken and shared in word and sacrament filled the sanctuary with quiet hope. It was a wrenching, heartachingly joyful service for someone gone too soon from those who needed her and need her still. Need her still.

We live in an increasing isolated culture, each stuck in our pockets of neighborhood, home life, children’s activities, workplace, political concerns and a thousand small but essential obligations. While there may be so many times in your life when you feel unseen, forgotten or left out, I want to remind you of the power of your most essential relationships. Human beings hold one another together, and while it may go unspoken so much of the time, we are the world for one another.

And yet, we don’t often say it. Or believe it could be true that we are that important to others. We have so many hundreds of thoughts and concerns we manage just to get through each day. We have deep cultural belief in the myths of individualism and independence; we may live quiet, solitary lives. But, as this experience of loss has reminded me again, our lives are so unique and irretrievably short. We don’t know the length of our lives, and yet we barrel on as if we can live forever.

Nothing matters more than love. Loving ourselves for our own mental and spiritual health, loving our neighbor for the sake of our shared world, loving our friends for the deep and varied connections they make and loving those who share our daily life in family. What is that beautiful and true saying about grief? Grief is just love with nowhere to go. May you love with breadth and abandon and may you know that deep love in return.

Written for / published in the Savage PACER 9/30/2023

Called to Generosity

Not long ago our small congregation held a potluck lunch. While thinking about what to bring, I decided to bring Helen Swanson’s rice pudding. It’s a food I cherish because it brings back memories of my life as a young rural Wisconsin pastor. I found the recipe that she had written for me in my recipe box and set about to make it.

Helen died over a decade ago, but seeing her handwriting and lying under the crocheted blanket she made me brings her presence back to me. What I remember most about her, though, is that she lived a generous Christianity. As she understood our faith, to be a Jesus follower meant to be someone who both rested in the love of God and embodied that love wherever she could. As I prepared her recipe, I felt her spirit, how she welcomed me, a newly ordained pastor, into her life and the life of her family, and what a quiet witness to the love of Jesus she was.

What is the essence, the core, of being a Christian? Who is that preacher Jesus, whose life so changed the course of the western world, and to whom so many confess loyalty? The New Testament gospels tell four different versions of the story of the historical Jesus, written to different audiences and in different decades following his first century death and resurrection. Each has at its core the religious message that the creator God loves the world and yearns to have all human persons know that love and forgiveness. Each tells of young rabbi Jesus seeking people out on the edges of Jewish culture for conversation, healing, teaching and friendship.

And the people Jesus most sought out were the vulnerable and cast aside of his time: the mentally and physically sick, women, children, the elderly, widowed and the chronically poor.

Jesus was also a prophet to his religion, speaking words of criticism and anger at those who labeled themselves of God and used it to cloak their own grasping for security, power and ambition. It was this same group of religious men who demanded the Roman occupiers to put Jesus to death as a threat to Jewish life and to the supreme power of Rome. In three short years his preaching, healing and growing band of followers became so threatening to the entrenched powers of the empire, he was crucified in order to be silenced.

So little has changed in the human condition: as the centuries pass, the principalities, powers, and empires simply put on different clothes. Today in America, a large portion of those who claim Jesus as their spiritual guide or savior use that label to cloak and mask all kinds of abuses of human power. Using scripture as a weapon, and under the guise of the Christian church, they promote a malignant individualism, a poisonous masculinity, unbridled greed, deep racism, love of warfare and military-style weapons, a biblical gender and sexual hierarchy that enforces their disdain for women and anyone who questions this worldview. They have aligned themselves with political power, winning elections and writing laws in every corner of the country. Does this sound like Christian discipleship to you?

I believe that to follow Jesus is to trust the love of God for my very life. To daily remember I belong to the living God, and to take that unearned grace and apply it to the challenge of living in the world with others. Jesus called this the Golden Rule: to love the neighbor as ourselves. One of the many conversations described in the gospels has Jesus responding with a parable to this very question: just who is my neighbor?

Your neighbor is not just the family that lives on the other side of your interior wall or property line. Not just your difficult brother-in-law or your classmate. Your neighbor, teaches Jesus, is also the one you have trouble seeing. The one you want to walk by, the one you can’t quite understand.

June is Pride month. A month that recognizes and celebrates the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity across the human experience. It is a hard won, bitter battle for those who don’t feel they fully fit into the heterosexual or male/female either/or that we have baked into our culture. To finally be freer to be themselves, to live their life without fear of shame, fear of even death. LGBTQIA people are your neighbors. They are among those we are called by Jesus to see, to understand, to support, and to love.

Christians are always called to decide: to align with the principalities and powers that promise a return to old values, old beliefs, security and belonging; or to know what power is for and to live as best we can with compassion and curiosity. To live with concern for the natural world, for the life of all our neighbors, for well-being of the weak, the left out, and the vulnerable.

God in spirit calls us who profess the name of Christ to know what that can look like in our time and place. I know this is how Helen lived her faith. May it be the way you proclaim Jesus, too.

Written for and published in the Savage (MN) Pacer newspaper, June 25, 2022. 

AI : Would God save us from our technology?

“An all-powerful, infinite, unchanging, masculine God who could but won’t stop holocaust, cancer, mental illness, mass shootings, nuclear war or climate disaster is of no earthly use to me.”

Technology: what a wondrous thing. Generations of human-designed machines and systems have taken away so much of the repetitive, exhausting labor of life. Washing our clothes, heating our homes, transporting us over water, land, and sky, and now connecting us to every possible source of information we have ever wanted, a whole universal library at our fingertips.

But our technologies, like human beings, are not entirely benevolent. They contain the potential for destruction, whether we mean mechanical failure, political disinformation, or nuclear war. This week, I have been distressed by the warnings shared by information engineers that Artificial Intelligence (AI), the growing capacity of our complex machines to understand and recreate human thought, images, and speech, is developing in ways that parallel and potentially surpass human reasoning.

Science fiction’s imaginings are no longer just fiction. During recent congressional hearings on AI, senior computer scientists testified that their systems have now collected so much human information they no longer simply play chess or fly planes better than we do, they could potentially become a form of independent life that threatens humanity. The inventors of AI are worried that we may have created technology that overtakes us. They call for increased self and governmental regulation of their companies as they forever race to be best/first/biggest in the marketplace.

These dire warnings have been the background hum of my thinking lately. Exactly what kind of world will our children and grandchildren inherit? How do we, how can we, mitigate the worst of human behaviors? Can AI be controlled by those who created it? And what will stop Putin and his devastating lust for Russian empire? Or the chaotic violence of Central American countries that force tens of thousands to rush our southern border? Or the extremist rhetoric that has made even necessary Congressional compromise impossible?

There is a strong current in Christian theology that has always answered these difficult questions with rigid certainty, the unblinking belief in God’s infinite sovereignty. This declaration that God is over and above the things of creation – unchanging, all powerful, all knowing – rings out from pulpits everywhere. And in being so powerful, can save us from ourselves. This old, intuitive theology has been repeated so long that it supersedes other common talk about God. No wonder so many reject belief in that theology. An all-powerful, infinite, unchanging, masculine God who could but won’t stop holocaust, cancer, mental illness, mass shootings, nuclear war or climate disaster is of no earthly use to me.

There is another way to think about God. Instead of infinite power, I agree with those who believe the central characteristic of God and God’s sovereignty is creative love. I call myself a Christian because I see God demonstrating through Jesus what embodied love can do. Jesus taught, prayed with, healed, encouraged, fed, freed, and raised up the dead. He sought out the people without power to include them. He railed against human arrogance, exclusion, and empire, responding to hate with love.

Jesus had such a short public life. When power began to push back at him, this creator God didn’t stop the disciples’ doubts, fears, and betrayals. Didn’t stop the political and religious wheels from spinning. Didn’t intervene to prevent Jesus’ arrest, his beating or public crucifixion and death. God let that death hang over the world until that Easter morning when renewed life enlivened cold flesh.

This is the God I trust, long for, complain to, and exhaust myself trying to describe in words. God as an in-fleshed God. Creating human life along with us, a God whose spirit is close as breath and skin to us. Whose earthly power is revealed when we challenge our own lust for control, for certainty, and for all those death-dealing empires we create. God is known when we risk our comfort for the sake of the other, the powerless, the hungry, and the complex creation in which all life exists. God is visible when love defeats hate. That’s the kingdom Christians pray for.

If this along-side us God is real, and the all-powerful, yet indifferent god is not, I must conclude that God is creating divine relationship with us as we go along, and will be known in love, renewal, and wonder, and when assisting us to intervene on ourselves. That description of God is one I can believe in. As we pray for our nation and for the world, let us pray for God’s spirit of wisdom to infuse all those who work at the edges of technology and invention. Heaven knows we need that kind of power.

(Written for / published in The Savage Pacer newspaper, May 27, 2023)

Praying for the Death of our Enemies

When an evil leader destroys countless innocent people, does Christian ethics allow me to pray for their death?

If I strive to love my neighbor as I love myself, is it ever right to pray for the death of an enemy?

As we bear distant witness to the continuing outrageous war that Vladimir Putin wages against the people of Ukraine, I’ve been thinking about the power of destruction and death that one person can control. The unprovoked war is approaching its first-year anniversary, and Putin’s military continues to ruin the nation, leveling so much to rubble. Schools, apartment buildings, power stations, airports, markets, train tracks, hospitals: all have been targets of Russian guns, bombs, missiles, and drone attacks aimed at killing civilians and demolishing infrastructure. Putin is hell-bent on destroying the very land he covets, and that seems like certain insanity.

He is the Destroyer. I keep praying that his own people would grow sick of him draining their resources to build weapons, rage against him conscripting their own young men to kill mothers, grandparents, and children in their name, and topple him from power. I seethe at the way the Russian Orthodox Church continually blesses the Putin regime and its leaders. He is a terror to the world, saying he is willing to launch nuclear weapons, and yet is afraid of his own inner circle.  Putin has become a singular threat to millions of exhausted, traumatized Ukrainian children who may not live to have a normal life. And still the Ukrainian people battle on, fighting the giant to their north who wants to destroy them. We send them money, weapons, food, as do European allies. And we watch.

I struggle with my hatred of a man I don’t know, whose behavior is so deadly to so many. He is just one man on a long list of megalomaniacal leaders throughout human history, consumed with their own importance, legacy, and dominance over others. But unlike the others, Putin controls a vast country historically tolerant of such power and he has innumerable weapons of mass destruction at his command. It’s a frightening combination.

I notice that each time this war comes to my mind, I pray for an end, and increasingly, I believe that end means Putin must die. No one seems able to end his ruinous rule, and while I pray for his victims, I pray for his death. I fool myself thinking that Jesus would understand. As a Jew under first century Roman occupation, Jesus grew up under an empire much like Russia’s. It was that same Roman empire that considered him a local threat. But my savior was willing to be killed by empire rather than meet force with force. His power was unfailingly one of love, the very model of the heart of God. It’s that power, the power of love, that I believe is what creates, enlivens, and enlightens the world.

I admit I still can’t puzzle this riddle out: what would Jesus say people of faith should do when faced with the unchecked evil of a dangerous dictator? This is the same question that Christians asked themselves during World War II when confronted with the reality of genocide by the Nazi German government. I have come to settle alongside the arguments, theology and ethics of a young Lutheran pastor named Dietrich Bonhoeffer. He spent years working within his German Lutheran church to raise the alarm about the genocide, teaching, writing, traveling through Europe and finally to the United States, to gather support for the Allied resistance from our churches and our government. So many wanted him to remain in the US, safe from the war. But he returned.

And this young theologian returned to join a plot to assassinate Hitler. Yes, he wanted Hitler dead so many others could live. The plot failed, and in 1943 he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to prison, and then Flossenburg concentration camp. It was there where he was hanged on April 9th, 1945, just 3 weeks before the collapse of the Nazi regime and Hitler’s suicide.

Perhaps it is too broad a stroke to say that love compels the death of evil, but I think it does. It is love for the stranger, the vulnerable, the powerless, the innocent that compels us to forcefully resist evil human beings. History teaches repeatedly that evil is not some abstract force outside of us, some weird spiritual animated devil competing with God, tempting us to step outside God’s path. Evil is human power turned inward, consumed by the self, feeding on hatred, aggression, and power to destroy other living things. We see it in American school shootings, car jackings, domestic violence, child abuse, murders, domestic terrorism. We see it in Putin’s violence.

I think of these things when I pray in Jesus’ name. For the end of Putin’s power, one way or another. For evil to be cast down. For war and violence everywhere to end, for love to win, for justice to be for all living things. For God’s kingdom to come. God help me.

(Published in MN SW Media / Savage Pacer 1/28/23)

Why Call Yourself a Christian

A couple of weeks ago our small congregation held a potluck lunch. While thinking about what to bring, I decided to bring Helen Swanson’s rice pudding. It’s a food I cherish because it brings back memories of my life as a young rural Wisconsin pastor. I found the recipe that she had written for me in my recipe box and set about to make it.

Helen died over a decade ago, but seeing her handwriting and lying under the crocheted blanket she made me brings her presence back to me. What I remember most about her, though, is that she lived a generous Christianity. As she understood our faith, to be a Jesus follower meant to be someone who both rested in the love of God and embodied that love wherever she could. As I prepared her recipe, I felt her spirit, how she welcomed me, a newly ordained pastor, into her life and the life of her family, and what a quiet witness to the love of Jesus she was.

What is the essence, the core, of being a Christian? Who is that preacher Jesus, whose life so changed the course of the western world, and to whom so many confess loyalty? The New Testament gospels tell four different versions of the story of the historical Jesus, written to different audiences and in different decades following his first century death and resurrection. Each has at its core the religious message that the creator God loves the world and yearns to have all human persons know that love and forgiveness. Each tells of young rabbi Jesus seeking people out on the edges of Jewish culture for conversation, healing, teaching and friendship.

And the people Jesus most sought out were the vulnerable and cast aside of his time: the mentally and physically sick, women, children, the elderly, widowed and the chronically poor.

Jesus was also a prophet to his religion, speaking words of criticism and anger at those who labeled themselves of God and used it to cloak their own grasping for security, power and ambition. It was this same group of religious men who demanded the Roman occupiers to put Jesus to death as a threat to Jewish life and to the supreme power of Rome. In three short years his preaching, healing and growing band of followers became so threatening to the entrenched powers of the empire, he was crucified in order to be silenced.

So little has changed in the human condition: as the centuries pass, the principalities, powers, and empires simply put on different clothes. Today in America, a large portion of those who claim Jesus as their spiritual guide or savior use that label to cloak and mask all kinds of abuses of human power. Using scripture as a weapon, and under the guise of the Christian church, they promote a malignant individualism, a poisonous masculinity, unbridled greed, deep racism, love of warfare and military-style weapons, a biblical gender and sexual hierarchy that enforces their disdain for women and anyone who questions this worldview. They have aligned themselves with political power, winning elections and writing laws in every corner of the country. Does this sound like Christian discipleship to you?

I believe that to follow Jesus is to trust the love of God for my very life. To daily remember I belong to the living God, and to take that unearned grace and apply it to the challenge of living in the world with others. Jesus called this the Golden Rule: to love the neighbor as ourselves. One of the many conversations described in the gospels has Jesus responding with a parable to this very question: just who is my neighbor?

Your neighbor is not just the family that lives on the other side of your interior wall or property line. Not just your difficult brother-in-law or your classmate. Your neighbor, teaches Jesus, is also the one you have trouble seeing. The one you want to walk by, the one you can’t quite understand.

June is Pride month. A month that recognizes and celebrates the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity across the human experience. It is a hard won, bitter battle for those who don’t feel they fully fit into the heterosexual or male/female either/or that we have baked into our culture. To finally be freer to be themselves, to live their life without fear of shame, fear of even death. LGBTQIA people are your neighbors. They are among those we are called by Jesus to see, to understand, to support, and to love.

Christians are always called to decide: to align with the principalities and powers that promise a return to old values, old beliefs, security and belonging; or to know what power is for and to live as best we can with compassion and curiosity. To live with concern for the natural world, for the life of all our neighbors, for well-being of the weak, the left out, and the vulnerable.

God in spirit calls us who profess the name of Christ to know what that can look like in our time and place. I know this is how Helen lived her faith. May it be the way you proclaim Jesus, too.

Written for and published in the Savage (MN) Pacer newspaper, June 25, 2022.