10/7/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

The apples in a brown carton marked “Momma” seem almost too precious to eat.

They were picked for me in an orchard in Hendersonville the weekend before Helene hit.  They were picked by my children, father and sister on an annual apple-picking trip I missed out on because duty called. I was hosting a Regional Elders meeting at our church on the Saturday morning they were picking apples and after all, I would be going up there for a family visit the very next weekend - or so I thought.

The pictures coming out of western North Carolina have been so full of destruction, so full of the world torn upside down by raging water that it is almost impossible to process.  The man who clung to a tree in the middle of a river for hours then lost consciousness and was swept away right before the eyes of his family. Entire towns vanishing in a matter of hours, swept away by usually docile rivers and streams. Mudslides careening down mountains taking trees and houses with them, blocking road access for people trapped above with what little food and water they had in storage. 

And yet the human spirit is strong and heroic images are there as well.  The man who tied a rope around his waist and dove into the river to rescue a woman whose house was floating downstream with her still inside. The people of the town of Black Mountain riding lawn mowers and walking to the town square for a public meeting to organize aid for isolated residents. The convoy of trucks headed into the disaster zone loaded with water and food donated by generous hands from across our state and nation. 

The grief has been strong, but so has the determination to come together and do what we can for those whose lives have been torn apart.  The apples look up at me from my counter.  They are a long way from the orchard where they ripened, and that orchard may not even exist anymore.  But inside each precious apple is a cluster of seeds - and inside each seed, hope.

Grace and peace,

Beth

9/30/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

When the remnants of Helene blew through, Marty and I were on the 11th floor of the Renaissance hotel in downtown Asheville. Marty was attending the annual meeting of the North Carolina Psychiatric Association; it was immediately canceled when the electricity went out and the siding started blowing off the hotel, but by then it was too late to do anything but hunker down and hope for the best.

When the winds died down there was an eerie silence in downtown.  No traffic sounds, no footsteps hurrying on pavement - just the sound of emergency sirens in the distance.  Only later would we learn the extent of the damage as houses came off their foundations and floated down Tunnel Road and the River Arts District was completely swallowed by the French Broad River. Conference attendees gathered in the lobby to encourage each other along and pass on information when someone ventured out and heard this or that; I comforted myself with the knowledge that at least I was surrounded by psychiatrists if I started having a mental breakdown!

On Saturday morning the Asheville police came to the hotel to tell us I-26 South was open for evacuation but we had to have enough gas to make it to Spartanburg. Thankfully, Marty and I did.  We crept home with broken hearts for the daughter and son-in-law we were leaving behind.

Danny and Ellen are fine; they have food and bottled water and things are slowly starting to come back on.  They have been able to regularly get to an open spot on higher ground where there is enough cell signal to text us updates. Ellen is considered emergency medical personnel for Mission Hospital and therefore cannot evacuate. 

First we lost power, then we lost cell service, then we lost running water. But we gained the reminder that when we have each other safe and sound, we are blessed beyond measure.

Grace and peace,

Beth

9/22/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

Last Thursday evening I had the blessing of hearing my sister Jennifer sing with a choir from the organization “Able to Serve” which is an organization allowing folks with special needs opportunities for service, continuing education, and fellowship. The song they sang was “I’m So Blessed” by CAIN and I will confess to a few tears rolling as I watched my sister wave her hands with her friends and sing “On my best day I’m a child of God, on my worst day I’m a child of God; oh every day is a good day and you’re the reason why!”

Some days are better than others. As a matter of a fact, some days are just hard to get through.  Over the years I have learned sometimes we all can use a little help from our friends, so I have compiled what I call a “Grace” file.

My Grace file is a file in my filing cabinet filled with things like drawings given to me by children in Sunday School, greeting cards that have a special meaning for me, and things that have been said to me that touched a special place in my heart so I wrote them down and filed them under “Grace”. These things come from family, from friends, from children, from my church family and sometimes even from strangers.

Because hard days come, and on hard days it is sometimes difficult to remember how much we are loved.  My “Grace” file is my secret weapon against the enemy’s weapons of self-doubt, hopeless resignation and despair. One glance through this file and God uses the love of my community to remind me even on my worst day I am a child of God, and with this reminder gratitude and hope return.

I hope you have a Grace file, or something like it, because so many times our God says “I love you” to us through the human voices of family and church family and friends.  Because we all sometimes need reminders to raise our hands and sing at the top of our voice with our friends “On my best day I’m a child of God, on my worst day I’m a child of God; oh every day is a good day and you’re the reason why!”

Grace and peace,

Beth

9/15/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

  It was fortunate for our church that the family of Charles and Eloise Adams scheduled their estate sale only a couple of weekends before our yard sale, because that meant what didn’t sell in their sale was donated to us for ours. It also meant I was in the right frame of mind to clean out my own house in preparation for our sale.

I went over to Eloise and Charlie’s home the first day of the estate sale to see if there were any nativities from Eloise’s collection available, especially the ones she displayed and invited groups from the church to come over and see. There were several of us who wanted this reminder of Eloise, and there were indeed several for us to choose from.

I couldn’t stay long though - just long enough to go in, locate the nativities, and head back out.  It was just too hard to be in their home with all the memories of happy times spent there to then see it with their personal items, household goods and cherished art collection laid out for people to pick up and pilfer through.

It’s not that I expected their family members to adopt all of their things - I have been a part of cleaning out five different homes of beloved relatives including my own mother and I know all too well how everything cannot be absorbed into our already full houses. And it’s not that I thought we were somehow disgracing their memory - without Charlie there to open the door and Eloise to call “Come on in!” those roof and walls were just another house.

No, I think my problem was the in-my-face reminder of Luke 12:15, that life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. So many times we all live like a big house beautifully furnished with extra in the garage is what life is all about - and of course it is not.  After our last breath is drawn our cherished things will lie around like castoff toys the day after Christmas. Passing by Eloise’s jewelry laid out on a card table and Charlie’s tools lined on his workbench was just a stark reminder that we are only passing through this world, and what matters as we go along is not what possessions we accumulate but what love we share.

And what love we did share - our church family with Charles and Eloise Adams.  What memories of working in the vineyard together, what fun times getting ready for Advent and church celebrations!  I brought my new nativity home from the house at 2044 Deer Trail both as a reminder of this love and a reminder of the Christ child who came into the world to be laid in a borrowed manger - the same one who later said “life does not consist in an abundance of things”.  I put it with the Christmas things in the cubby hole at the top of the steps and immediately began filling up my car for the church yard sale, so as to lighten my life and therefore have more time, more energy and more resources to give away as I make memories with my family, share my life with you, and serve our community.

Grace and peace,

Beth

9/1/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

Now is the time it becomes abundantly clear most of us have too much stuff. One quick look inside the fellowship hall ready for the church yard sale and we have to wonder where everything came from - didn’t we just clean out two years ago for the last yard sale?  Is there anything even left in our houses?

Despite the amount of cleaning out that has been going on, I strongly suspect there is still plenty of stuff left - I suspect this because I know that there is still plenty left in my house, even after spending a whole day loading the car with donations!

And yet we realize we have too much stuff and often jump at the chance to get rid of it. Several months before the yard sale, the yard sale committee began asking people to please not bring in their donations before the 18th of August because we have limited storage and we need the fellowship hall clear and ready for church events and family needs, especially if there is an unexpected funeral. Of course exceptions were made for people cleaning out in preparation for a move or settling an estate, but people who fit in neither category immediately began explaining to me and the committee why they also needed to be an exception to this request: “I can’t keep storing all of this and it is really good stuff, trust me, you are going to want it“…“once I box it up it is leaving my house whether you take it or not”…”I just have to get it out of my way PLEASE let me bring it in!” And my personal favorite,“Where is the key kept to that back room?  I’m bringing mine in at night. Just pretend like you don’t know who did it.”  

Now please don’t misunderstand -  the church is very grateful for all of the donations as we go through our biennial process of turning castoffs into cash for the church budget.  But in the midst of collecting donations for this good cause, I detect almost an air of desperation - a people weighted down and tired from traveling through life shackled to so much stuff.  Stuff that has to be organized, stored, kept clean and protected. Stuff that we really don’t want but hang onto anyway “because we might need it one day”.  Stuff that we can’t bear to part with because it belonged to a beloved relative.  Stuff that, once we bring ourselves to decide to get rid of it, we can’t wait even a few weeks to get it gone.

In our desperation to get out from under our accumulations, the words of Jesus come to mind - “do not store up for yourselves treasure on earth where thieves break in to steal and moths destroy, but store up treasure in heaven.” In other words, focus less on material objects and more on spiritual gifts. Less stockpile and more spiritual treasure. 

Hopefully the hoard in the fellowship hall is a very good sign that we actually are turning loose of earthly treasures - because the next words of Jesus are a direct warning:  get rid of it and refocus, because where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Grace and peace,

Beth

8/12/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

A dear friend confided in me recently that she thought her late father considered her to be a bit lazy.

It was gnawing on her nerves because in our culture to be considered”lazy” is one of the worst possible insults.  Acting like a jerk?  Your parents must have spoiled you. Unfaithful in your marriage?  Things happen.  Neglectful of prayer?  We all do it.  But lazy?  Heaven forbid!

Perhaps it is yet another religious hang up we inherited from our Calvinist Puritan ancestors. Perhaps it is the societal result of being direct descendants of frontiersmen, colonists who had to work constantly to carve life out of the austere conditions of the New World or face fatal results. 

At any rate, while our our obsession with constant work, endless productivity, efficiency and time management may be good for some things, it becomes the tail that wags the dog when it determines how we live all of our lives. We have chronic sleep issues. We take more anti-anxiety medication per capita than any other nation on earth. We think vacation means going somewhere new with the same old “to do “list.

Emergency room physician Dr. Matthew Sleeth writes in his book 24/6 (a book about slowing down and keeping Sabbath) of a lobster fisherman who continued to work after severing three fingers in his boat winch.  “You continued to work like this?”  the amazed doctor asked, unwrapping the bloody stumps. “Yes, I only had about 45 minutes more to go” was his reply.  And he wasn’t the only one.  Dr. Sleeth writes “I’ve seen similar cases of patients walking out of the door in the midst of a heart attack because they were worried about a business deal.  I’ve seen wealthy parents leave sick children to fend for themselves while they go off to earn more”  (p.127).

What if being lazy at times is actually the key to a balanced life?  What if there is a time and place to work, and a time and place to be lazy?  The Bible certainly seems to think so:  the fourth commandment indicates we are to honor the Sabbath Day and do no work for we are no longer slaves in Egypt. Psalm 46:10 commands us to “Be still and know that I am God”. 

Many people use the ancient meditative practice of subtracting one word at a time as they pray Psalm 46:10, so it reads like this. Give it a try:

Be still, and know that I am God.

Be still, and know that I am.

Be still, and know that I.

Be still, and know that.

Be still, and know.

Be still, and.

Be still.

Be.

And yes, I went as far as to tell my friend that if her perception were accurate, maybe her father was actually giving her a compliment!

Grace and peace,

Beth

8/5/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

In the book 24/6, writer Matthew Sleeth pens a line that jumps off the page right into the face of our prosperous lifestyles:  “No one ever found the Lord on the day they won the lottery.”

He writes this in the context of making the argument that prosperity can be as dangerous as poverty to our souls.  The impoverished can fall into despair; the prosperous run the risk of beginning to believe the blessings we enjoy are not really blessings but the results of our own cleverness and hard work.  “It’s mine; I earned it” says the person who has lost sight of the community that supports their business, the infrastructure that provides safe roads, protection from crime and public education so that we can read, work and travel, the gift of physical health that allows us to work, and so many other blessings without which despite our fiercest intentions we would not prosper. 

The crowds follow Jesus into the wilderness hoping to witness a miracle.  They witness one all right, but it is one easily misunderstood.  As they took their place on the green grass (green grass in the desert?  remember - the desert will come to life at the coming of the Messiah) and Jesus blessed and broke the 5 loaves and 2 fish, there was then food enough for 5,000 with twelve baskets left over!  (12 baskets?  Yes! 1 for each of the twelves tribes of Israel - enough for all of God’s people to be fed.)

The same crowds frantically searched for him the next day, and he called them out for apparently believing the bread he served them yesterday in the wilderness was bread that had to be resupplied every day.  Bread for their bodies.  “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life” he taught them.

What is this bread of which he speaks?  Spiritual bread that comes only from God.  Bread our spirits must have in order to be healthy because we are created in the image of God.  Yet we are just as guilty as the crowds in trying to feed a spiritual hunger with material things: things available to the prosperous, things that slowly begin to move us from an awareness of our hunger for God into idolatry.

On some level we know that material things do not nourish us - yet still we persist in collecting material possessions even though it leaves us worried about thieves and anxious about the stock market. We feed our appetites for addictive substances with what our bodies crave, even though we know this only creates bigger appetites.  And we even find ourselves believing that other human beings can meet all our emotional needs including our spiritual need for God - resulting in lifetimes of broken relationships, staggering dependence and perpetual disappointment.

Enter Matthew Sleeth with a word of advice for our frantic, consumer-driven, lonely lives.  Prosperity can be as spiritually dangerous as poverty because we believe we can accumulate and provide for ourselves the things we need to fill our spiritual hunger.  But nobody ever found the Lord on the day they won the lottery! Go on your knees and open your hands for the bread of life - the bread for which nothing else will satisfy. 

Grace and peace,

Beth

7/29/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

Have you ever noticed we are a people who love to complain? When it’s hot we complain about the heat; six months later we complain about the cold.  We complain about gas prices. We complain about the crowds at the beach, the stock market, and the grocery store being out of our favorite brand.

Somehow we have gotten the idea that life comes with some kind of guarantee that we are entitled to ease and convenience. Unfortunately this is just not true. 

What is true is that there is joy to be found in every moment, even moments when we are inconvenienced or moments that have brought on great sadness.  The key is to be grateful for the life we have rather than complain about the life we do not.

To constantly comment on what we don’t have or how tiresome things are is to let aggravation squeeze out gratitude.  Gratitude that we are breathing.  Gratitude that life is short and we have been given this moment.  Gratitude that we have lived to see the experience we are having, and gratitude that there is hope for tomorrow.  

There is a Jewish prayer that comes to mind that reads in part like this: “Days pass and the years vanish and we walk sightless among miracles. Lord, fill our eyes with seeing and our minds with knowing.”(My Grandfather’s Blessings, by Rachel Naomi Remen.)

Last weekend I celebrated my 61st trip around the sun by slipping away with my family into the beautiful Smoky Mountains to sit around a table in a little mountain cabin where good food filled the space, laughter shook the rafters and loving voices told family stories one on the heels of another. We took a long hike together around a little place called Dollywood (just ask my sister Jennifer, she’ll tell you all about it!) 

Also, we got caught in a horrific traffic jam at Buckee’s in Sevierville and in a horrible rain storm that about washed us away coming home through the Triangle. 

So I have a choice to make.  I can float in the memories of family, love and so much fun, or I can grumble about the traffic and the rain.  Depending on the choice I make, I will have feelings of gratitude that sink deep in my heart or I will have a peevish attitude that will show on my face to everyone I meet. Very simply, I repeat:  the choice is mine to make.

May we all choose gratitude so that we begin to see clearly the miracles unfolding before us every day.

Grace and peace,

Beth

7/15/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

Recently I was a part of a discussion on the virtue of “patience” with a group of clergy who are reading together The Character of Virtue by Stanley Hauerwas.

The discussion leader pointed out that there are three things in our lives that significantly deter our growth in patience:  clocks, electricity, and cell phones.  The clock robs us of long periods within which we are unaware of the passing of time.  Electricity robs us of rest - did you know before electricity people typically went to bed at dark and woke up with the sun? And the cell phone robs us of time free from interruptions.  According to the research platform dscout, the average cell phone user swipes open their phone 2,617 a day, with heavy users topping 5,000!

All these things become an issue because they are used in service of “productivity”.  When it comes to learning to be patient, one of our greatest enemies is the idea that every activity we engage in must have a measurable outcome. Anything that does not achieve immediate or long-lasting results is considered “wasting time”. So no more sitting on the porch quietly contemplating the sunset- get out that phone and check email!  Scroll through Facebook in order to see… um … whatever we think we have to see!   Be “productive”.

Yet upon the altar of nonstop productivity we sacrifice the very things that allow us to develop patience. Things like being still before God in recognition that God speaks to us in God’s way and in God’s time, and the best way to perceive it is to set aside times when the only thing we “do” is be still and silent. Things like being mindful of living in the moment in grateful appreciation for what is taking place - not planning the next moment, not analyzing the moment or photographing it for future reference - just being in it. Things like praying for situations over which we have absolutely no control yet lift them up anyway in recognition that in some situations we simply wait for God to act.  These are the things that teach us to live without seeking to be “productive” - in others words, things that teach us patience.

Paul writes to the Romans that patience is important because it schools us in becoming hopeful people (Romans 5:3-6). When we learn to patiently endure, we also learn to place our hope not in our own “productivity” but in God. It is patience of all the virtues that rises to the occasion when it finally dawns on us that the time is coming when we will have no control at all over our lives, no matter how productive we have been throughout them.  These are the moments in which our hearts finally cry out the words of Psalm 62: “For God alone my soul waits in silence, for my hope is from the Lord.”

 Grace and peace,

Beth

7/8/24

Pastor’s Ponderings 

We are called - commanded - to love one another as friends. And I’m not talking about Facebook’s definition of friends – you know, the whole “I haven’t spoken to you in 30 years but Facebook wants to make money so we are ‘friends’ ” – I am talking about friends in the sense that Jesus calls us to be friends.  On the night which would be the last night Jesus spent with the disciples he said to them “ I command you to love one another as I have loved you.  And no longer do I call you servants but I call you friends.”

There is something very intimate about the way Jesus speaks to his disciples in this passage, something a little different from the sense we get when we are instructed by him to do to everyone as we would have them do to us and to show love as the Good Samaritan to anyone who has need.  Here Jesus is speaking to disciples who have lived and worked and argued and stuck together through the good and the bad, and he reminds them to continue doing this:  continue loving each other as He has loved them, continue loving each other in deep and holy friendship.

The disciples could not know that this would be the last time they spent time together in the closeness and love of this setting. But later – after the long night of trial, after the horror of Golgotha and the stunning realization of Easter morning – after they realized Jesus still lived among them in Spirit and they still had each other –then would they surely have remembered these very words and the call to love each other as Jesus loves them – as friends.

What that meant to them and what it means to us is that we have been given to each other as gifts – gifts of friendships that are special friendships, holy friendships – friendships capable of sustaining us throughout our life-long walk towards home. It's as if Jesus is not just saying to us “Lo I am with you always even unto the end of the age” but also “ You are going to need each other.  Love one another as I have loved you.”

What a contrast this is – not “church” as a building where people stop by to have some personal time with Jesus and by the way a greeting or two for the folks who happen to be dropping by at the same time – but ‘Church” as a group of people tied together in deep and Spirit-filled friendships – holy friendships that laugh sometimes, pray sometimes, fight sometimes but always stick together as one massive support system to face life faithful to the Gospel together. 

On the night which would prove to be the last night Jesus gathered in intimate conversation with his closest friends, he said to them “This is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you.”

May it be so.

Grateful to call you friend,

Beth

7/1/24

Pastor’s Ponderings

When the rain finally came Sunday afternoon, I thought long and hard about going outside and dancing around in it. There is much despair with the loss of so many of this year’s crops and the extreme heat.

Still, it is summer time in North Carolina; specifically the first week of July.

Despite the drought, farm stands are full and overflowing with Better Boys and Big Beefs, Cherokee Purples and Brandywine Pinks, and what everyone wants, of course, the German Johnson tomatoes.

Cucumbers, squash, cantaloupes and watermelon.  Peaches and piles of snap beans. Blackberries and scuppernongs and blueberries.  

Long summer evenings for walks, sitting on the porch, and conversation with friends and family. In yards the geraniums and the hydrangeas, phlox, black-eyes Susans and impatiens bloom and rebloom and bloom again.

In the skies the fireworks boom and  twinkle as we celebrate our nation’s founding. 

Whatever our struggles, whatever our heartaches, we know that gratitude creates happiness.  Therefore we take a deep breath, hold on to each other, and give thanks to God.

It is a good time to be alive.

Grace and peace,

Beth