An Explosion of Color and Texture

It’s been almost two weeks since the phone call came. He introduced himself as a police officer from a small town about three hours from where I live. He explained, as gently as he could, that he had been called to do a welfare check on my cousin and had found him dead in his apartment. It appeared to the medical examiner that his heart just stopped working.

Because of a variety of circumstances, I was the only member of his immediate or extended family who had the time or willingness to do the work of wrapping up his affairs. I spent most of the last ten days sitting in his apartment, going through his things. His life, a box at a time, a shelf at a time, an envelope at a time.

I got help from unexpected sources, and I got refusals of help from unexpected sources. My cousin was a man about whom few people were neutral. He had friends and neighbors who were fiercely devoted to him. One neighbor stopped in to tell me that Jeffrey had taken him grocery shopping every week because the neighbor could no longer drive. With tears in his eyes, he asked if he might have some small thing to serve as a remembrance. I offered a few ideas, but soon realized that my wisdom was not sufficient for the task of choosing such a remembrance. I invited him to look around, and he settled on a set of refrigerator magnets in the shape of dogs. It seemed to represent their shared affection for the pets they had each known. Another day, a 95-year-old man described my cousin, young enough to be his grandson, as his best friend. It was an honor to entrust the care of his favorite Christmas cactus to this friend.

My cousin’s apartment contained many items of furniture from the home of our mutual grandparents. While I might have wanted to take it all, I am recently  retired and trying to downsize, so that just couldn’t happen. One of the best gifts I received was the name of an antiques dealer who loves his work and knows that every piece in his shop represents a story from someone’s life. (If you are ever looking for an antiques dealer in eastern Iowa, here’s an unsolicited recommendation for Hoppy’s Primitives in La Porte City.) Dave Hopkins and his helper Nick spent hours helping me sort through the things in the apartment. They purchased many items for their own businesses, and they made daily trips to donation centers in the area to drop off things that I couldn’t keep and didn’t have time to sell.

In the end, though, I was the only one who could sort through the boxes (and boxes and boxes!) of photos, memorabilia from family members, and notes from my cousin’s extensive genealogy research. The landlords had been as generous as they could be in giving us time to vacate the apartment, but there was only so much that could be done. Finally, the choices were stark: Keep or throw. Take on the work of caring for this item, or let it go and realize that a tiny slice of our family’s history goes with it.

It would have been easy to step on the slippery slope of trying to preserve everything, and several times each day I was tempted to do just that. The question I settled on to keep me focused was this: Two weeks ago, I didn’t know that this thing existed; has my life been less for the lack of it? Sometimes the answer was yes; my grandfather’s cribbage board, the vehicle for many enjoyable hours of conversation and some memorable lessons in the art of gamesmanship. But other times, the answer was no; photos of family members I don’t recognize, even though I can see the family resemblance.

Someone else doing this job might have made very different choices about what to keep and what to throw. Someone else may have had the luxury of space to store everything while they worked through it more gradually. Whoever was doing the work, whether it was compressed into a week or spread out over months, would still feel the burden of the decision: keep or throw. As it is, neighbors in his apartment setting are gratefully making use of his furniture, his food, and his things. Family members will choose whether to remember the baby placed in the arms of his adoptive parents one autumn day in 1959, the hurt and angry adult who never learned how to let go, or the lonely soul who desperately wanted acceptance.

As I sorted, I thought often of the words I have said to hundreds of parishioners on Ash Wednesday each year: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” The bags and boxes of things from Jeffrey’s life are just that: things. Ashes and dust. Adiaphora (a Greek word meaning “the little stuff”).

Jeffrey was a complex person. He experienced much pain in his own life; and he caused much pain in the lives of others. Some people will remember Jeffrey as mean-spirited, delusional, and angry. Others will talk about his warmth, his sense of humor, and his gentle manner. And they will all be correct; Jeffrey was all of those things. He was not merely the bags and boxes that we carried to the dumpster and hauled to the donation sites. He was not completely his worst self, and he was not completely his best self. The truth that will remain is this: Jeffrey was a child of God, claimed in his baptism, “a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own flock, a sinner of your own redeeming.”

Rest eternal grant him, O Lord, and let light perpetual shine upon him.

 

I’ve been thinking more about my ordination day this year than I have on any of my ten prior “ordiversaries.”  Maybe the fact that I’m transitioning (gradually) from full time ministry to retirement is making me more reflective than usual. I have some thoughts about the eleven years of ministry that I’ve been able to serve since then, and I’ll share those with you in another post. Today my mind is on the path that got me there in the first place. It was a rather long path, so this might be a rather long post.

I was not a likely choice for ministry; I didn’t have any of the usual credentials. There’s only one person in my family tree who is a pastor; I didn’t major in religion in college; and I hated my weeks at Bible camp as a kid. Still, God is not in the business of fitting in the boxes we build. So one day in college, my campus pastor told me that I should consider attending seminary after I graduated. I thanked him for the compliment; but privately, I was pretty sure he had me confused with someone else. And my life went on.

Over the next 30 years, I continued hearing (and ignoring) the same message from other people. (God is nothing if not persistent.) One Sunday, I was driving home from church after an encounter with someone who told me – again – that I should be a pastor. I was on Interstate 35W in Minneapolis, near the 35th street exit, when I reached into the back of my mind to pull out the list of all the good reasons I shouldn’t go to seminary. I came up empty. And so it was decided, that quickly. No drama, no harps, no angel voices, not even any angry car horns (I had actually managed to stay in my own lane). I changed at my core, from being a computer software trainer to being a future pastor.

For the next few years, God opened the doors that needed opening and closed those that might have distracted me. I moved into campus student housing and enrolled as a full-time student. In the spring of 2007, I was assigned to the Southwestern Minnesota Synod of the ELCA to pursue my first call. After interviewing a few places, I accepted the call of Minnesota Valley Lutheran Church and Borgund Lutheran Church to serve as their pastor. I would be living just a few hours away from my home town, where my elderly mother was living. I began making plans for my ordination to take place at St. Mark Lutheran Church in Sioux City, where I had grown up, so that Mom would be able to attend.

The next few months were a roller coaster of events, from sublime highs to lose-your-lunch drops to the lowest of lows.  I don’t think I’ve ever again been able to look at one of those magazine articles that lists life events and assigns points, in an attempt to tell you how stressed you are.

The church that had been my home for over 30 years was Central Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. It was considered one of the “big steeple” churches, a reflection on both the church’s imposing architecture and its reputation in the larger Lutheran world. Every year on “Seminary Sunday” in the spring, a graduating senior was invited to preach at the Sunday services. That year, the invitation came to me. I had preached in other places, but there was something about that pulpit in that worship space, with its history of great pastors and preachers who had stood in the very same spot. I was struck by how big this calling really was.

At the end of May, I was back in that same worship space as one of 178 people graduating from Luther Seminary. I got to share the day with two of my favorite study-buddies,  Meredith McGrath and Wayne Gallipo. We had all met on the first day of my first class in seminary, we’ve supported one another through all kinds of life “stuff,” and we’re still the closest of friends.

After graduation, I took some time to spend a few days with my mother. While I was visiting her, she fell and broke her hip. She was recovering well after surgery, and was to be transferred to a rehab facility in a couple of days. She was determined to be strong enough to attend my ordination in July. She bought my red ordination stole as a gift for me, and she had even picked out what dress she was going to wear. With everything looking so hopeful, I felt safe heading back to my seminary apartment to start packing for my upcoming move. Sometime over the weekend, there were some questionable (probably even irresponsible) decisions made about Mom’s medications. The new (unnecessary) meds knocked her flat on her back and pinned a “Pneumonia Welcome Here” sign to her chest. When I had left, she was walking up and down the hall to build up her strength, and three days later she was in the ICU. I still harbor a lot of anger about the medical “care” she received. She died just three weeks before my ordination date.

The next few weeks were a blur of tears and travel, of packing my things to move for my first call and packing Mom’s things to be sold or donated, of planning Mom’s funeral and planning my ordination service. I’m sure there were points when I couldn’t have told you my own name.

My ordination day was… I’ve actually started this sentence about a dozen times and backspaced over all of them. There just aren’t words (even from a wordsmith) to capture the ways that I was carried along by all the circles of community in my life. The people of that congregation, whose fierce love for my mother had brought us together in grief just three weeks earlier, gathered around me with equally fierce love to bless me into my ministry. People from my Minneapolis church family, people from my internship congregation, family members, people from the synod where I would be serving, a motorhome full of people from my new congregations, pastors who had welcomed me into their text study groups, my internship supervisor, my Sunday School classmate and friend who had been my parents’ pastor for about three decades, the Bishop of the synod where I would be serving, one of my seminary best friends and one of my long-before-seminary best friends… we all gathered to worship and sing and pray and grieve and rejoice.

 

There are some big moments and some funny details that stick in my mind from that day. I remember kneeling with a score of pastors surrounding me and laying hands on me… and I remember wishing that the kneeling pads were a little thicker because my knees were sore from kneeling for a long time. I remember that one colleague had just finished a graveside service for a member of her congregation, so the funeral director brought her to church in a hearse. I remember the bittersweet moment when my mother’s pastor presented the red stole that my mother had purchased for that day, and we both wept a bit at her absence. I remember another pastor-friend working absolute magic from the organ bench and my internship supervisor’s sermon wrapped around a story about sharing the light we’ve been given.

Most of all, I remember being carried along by a cloud of witnesses surrounding me, filled with love and joy and hope. And song… oh my, did we sing:

“Gather us in, the lost and forsaken.
Gather us in, the blind and the lame.
Call to us now, and we shall awaken.
We shall arise at the sound of our name.”

Gather Us In, words and music by Marty Haugen, © 1982, GIA Publications, Inc.

 

 

SELRES_b9c822e9-2cda-4a6e-b2b8-c7a9105634b5SELRES_e94ef793-d697-4d1e-84a0-516057e25d67SELRES_9df5d44a-10bf-4f9b-875f-3cfdbf8cfa26RevGalBlogPals SELRES_9df5d44a-10bf-4f9b-875f-3cfdbf8cfa26SELRES_e94ef793-d697-4d1e-84a0-516057e25d67SELRES_b9c822e9-2cda-4a6e-b2b8-c7a9105634b5is an organization dedicated to the mission of creating community for female clergy. Their website (www.revgalblogpals.org) has new content every day. One of those features is a weekly column called “The Pastoral is Political.” Here is the column I wrote this week:

I have served almost exclusively in small-town and rural congregations in the Upper Midwest. Each of those congregations has a quilting group that makes dozens, sometimes hundreds, of quilts each year. Today I’m thinking about two of those groups. In one group, one of the members made it her special ministry to cut up the donated fabric into standard size squares, pin the squares into bundles so they could be sewn together into strips, and ordered the strips into a pleasing design of colors and prints. The tops were stitched together, batting was added, and a coordinating backing added to the quilt. The other quilters occasionally grumbled about her high standards, but the quilts they produced were lovely, and sturdy, and warm.

In the other group, the phrase I heard most often was “It’s just for mission.” The quilts were usually made from donated bed sheets. Fitted sheets had the elastic cut off, and the corner seams cut out. Some other random-color fabric was used to patch the empty corner. A second sheet, or perhaps a donated tablecloth, was used as the “batting” and another sheet (similarly patched in one corner) was used for the backing. Newcomers to the group who asked about finding coordinating colors for the patches were quickly reminded that such effort wasn’t necessary. “It’s just for mission.”

Hearing the phrase “It’s just…” makes me cringe, every single time. It has also taught me to listen for the occasions when the word “just” is used to demean and dehumanize those whom we claim to care for, to excuse a lesser degree of caring for our neighbor.  How often to we think or speak the word “just” as we provide lesser quantity or lesser quality items to be given to those in need. Anyone who has volunteered at a food pantry can tell stories of donated items with expiration dates several years in the past. A few years ago, I helped to organize a drive to gather shoes to be distributed through clothing “free stores” in a several county area. Despite our requests for new shoes only, we filled a few shopping bags with well-worn (and sometimes aromatic) shoes to be discarded.

I have sometimes found it difficult to encourage members of my congregations to consider their “it’s just…” words. Sometimes they are proud that they can donate more pairs of shoes if they buy inexpensive, inferior brands. My spirit resists that quantity-over-quality reasoning. Still, it’s important that I keep raising the question. “It’s just” language can grow roots and turn into “it’s just” attitudes. “It’s just” attitudes can create a background against which “it’s just” actions can flourish. “It’s just” a refugee, a poor person, an LGBTQ+ person, a woman, a child, a person suffering from mental illness. “It’s just” someone we can ignore, someone we can make assumptions about, someone we can separate from their families, or imprison, or kill, without ever actually seeing them as God’s beloved children.

A number of years ago, I learned a lesson from a friend and mentor. In one of our “coffee and wisdom” conversations, she told me that when she looks in her grocery cart or her cart from Target, she doesn’t want anyone to be able to guess which items are for her family and which are to be donated. I hadn’t thought of it in exactly that way before. But ever since that conversation, I have made it a practice to shop for donations from exactly the same stores and brands that I shop for myself.

Buying Campbell’s soup instead of a house brand isn’t going to end poverty and discrimination or stop police shootings of people of color. And it may not even make a huge difference in the life of the person who gets that can of soup at a food pantry. What it does, however, is change me. It makes me more aware of the recipients of this food as individuals with names and lives and families and stories to tell. It’s not “just” for the food pantry, or for mission, or for disaster relief. It never is.

Barbara Bruneau is a retired Lutheran pastor, living in southeastern Minnesota and currently serving in interim ministry. She is a knitter, a weaver, and a very occasional blogger at An Explosion of Texture and Color.

RevGalBlogPals encourages you to share our blog posts via email or social media. We do not grant permission to cut-and-paste prayers and articles without a link back. For permission to use material in paper publications, please email revgalblogpals at gmail dot com.

 

Over in the RevGalBlogPals Facebook group, Monica Thompson Smith brought this week’s Friday Five questions: 

1. What is your favorite Halloween candy?
Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups

2. What candy lingers in the bowl because it most definitely is not your favorite?
Good & Plenty, or any black licorice

3. Will you participate in trick-or-treating this year?
I’ll be giving out candy and glow sticks.
Maybe it’s because I don’t have kids that I’ve never heard of the Teal Pumpkin Project. It’s a movement to offer allergy-safe Halloween treats, instead of or in addition to candy. A teal pumpkin is a sign that you have allergy-safe options to give out. I overheard a woman in Target talking about it last week, as she put a teal pumpkin in her cart. I tried to be subtle as I swooped over to the shelf she had just left; but there were only orange pumpkins left. But thanks to Target’s website and their free Halloween delivery, I now have two teal pumpkins to go with the orange ones on my front steps.

4. Do you like to decorate your home for Halloween?
Not extensively. I have a few things by the front door to welcome trick-or-treaters.

5. What was your favorite costume when you were a child?
Honestly, I don’t remember what costumes I had as a child. So I really hope my parents didn’t spend much time or money on them.

 

Over in the RevGalBlogPals Facebook group, my friend Julie Woods Rennick offers today’s Friday 5:

It’s mid October. In the northern hemisphere the days are shortening, leaves are falling and the earth is getting ready for a winter sleep. The season of comfort foods and bedding down is here! What are the things that qualify for comfort and ease in your life? Are there routines that you look forward to at this time of year?

Here are my five. Please share your responses in the comments below, or on your own blog (with a link here in the comments, so I can go read your five).

1. The feeling of crawling into bed the first time I make it up with flannel sheets.
2. The morning air, cool enough to give energy, and not yet cold enough to bite.
3. A Crock-Pot simmering with soup or chili and sending its tempting aroma throughout the house.
4. Sitting in my favorite chair with a quilt on my lap, and watching the first really big snow storm swirl outside (as long as I don’t lose power). And then my dog Sadie’s sense of amazement the first time she steps outside and the snow comes almost up to her belly.
5. Cold weather foods from the cookbooks and kitchens of my Swedish relatives: potatiskorv (meat and potato sausage, homemade when i was growing up), rice pudding (the baked custard kind, with raisins), kringlar (think of it as a Swedish bagel in the shape of a pretzel), and julglög (mulled wine with brandy and vodka for extra anti-freeze properties).

Those are my five. I’d love to read yours, either in the comments below or on your blog.

When I was a student in seminary, one of the requirements for graduation was that we take part in a cross-cultural experience of some sort. There were rural immersion experiences for “city kids,” urban plunges for those who grew up on farms, and opportunities to visit many places in the world.

I chose to spend two weeks in Mexico, not in the gated resort communities where people go to spend their vacations, but in the neighborhoods where the poor lived and worked and improvised in order to get from morning to night every day, where they supported one another in prayer and in action, where they knew that their only hope was in Christ, because all other hope had been snatched away.

On one of our first days in Mexico, our group traveled to the historic central area of Mexico City. One of our stops was Temple Mayor, an archaeological site of an ancient Aztec temple that had been destroyed by the conquering Spanish forces in order to build their own cathedral on top of the ruins. One of the shrines at Temple Mayor was to Tlaloc, the rain god. Worship of this god involved sacrifice of children, in order to persuade the god to allow rain to fall. Dozens of children were sacrificed, many of them sold by their own parents. On the way to the top of the pyramid where the killing would take place, the children were threatened and physically hurt so that they would cry and scream, the louder the better. It seems that children’s tears, in addition to their lives, were demanded by the rain god.

What was your reaction as you read that last paragraph? Did you have the same reactions I did, that this was horrific, brutal, barbaric. What kind of parents would allow their own children to be subject to such inhuman practices! Who would allow their children to live in fear and to be killed because of the fears of their parents? How much progress we have made!

Progress indeed. We have progressed to the point that our children’s cries and screams are heard at country music concerts. We have progressed to the point that our children fear going to school because there might be someone with a gun. We have progressed to the point that we sell our own children into fear and even death because we are afraid to stand up to the tyrannical rain god known as the NRA. Just as we know that Tlaloc didn’t really need the death of children in order to send rain, we know in our hearts – in those parts of our hearts that know the truth, beyond the reach of all the propaganda – that the NRA’s predictions of calamity will not result from common-sense measures like background checks and limits on magazine size. And still, we knowingly send our children into the line of fire, into the heart of danger, in order to convince ourselves that the NRA-god will smile on us.

Progress indeed. We have progressed to the point that our children’s cries and screams are heard on city streets as they are shot to death. We have progressed to the point that our children of color fear going to the store, driving their cars, or walking home at night because there might be a police officer with a gun who is afraid. We have progressed to the point that we as a nation sell our children of color into fear and death because we are afraid to insist that their lives matter. Just as we know that Tlaloc didn’t really need the death of children in order to send rain, we know in our hearts – in our hearts as parents and friends and coworkers – that the danger the police claim to fear from young men of color is not real. And still, we knowingly send our young men into the line of their fire, into the heart of danger, in order to convince ourselves that we will somehow be safer if their lives do not matter.

Progress indeed. We have progressed to the point that our children’s cries and screams are heard as they are forced to deny their gender identity an orientation. We have progressed to the point that our children fear going to school, naming who they are, or loving whom they love because we won’t try to understand any experience but our own. We have progressed to the point that we sell our children into fear and death because we are afraid to stand up to those who would tell them that they are beyond the bounds of God’s love. Just as we know that Tlaloc didn’t really need the death of children in order to send rain, we know in our hearts – in our hearts as parents and siblings and friends – that these children are every bit as precious to God as we are. And still, we knowingly send our children into a world that would hurt, shame, and even kill them, in order to convince ourselves that we are worthy of God’s love.

Progress indeed. In so many ways, we are no different than the parents who sold their children to be tormented and killed to ensure their own comfort and prosperity. When we fail to defend our children from gun violence and hatred and abuse, we look in the mirror and see the brutal, barbaric, and inhuman parts of our souls.

We no longer worship the got Tlaloc. We have replaced him with an array of gods that try to demand bullets as the price of peace and conformity as the price of safety. Perhaps it is time to consign those gods to the history books as well. Perhaps it is time to remember that rain comes from a loving God who wants all children to thrive.ray

This is the prayer I wrote for our final worship on that Mexico trip. Much of it could still be prayed today.

We have been called to this place to see clearly, to think deeply, and to act boldly.  Let us join our hearts in prayer for the church, the world, and all those in need.

Two-thirds of the people in Mexico try to earn a living in the informal economy, including a third of children under ten years old.  Children sell Chiclets on the street and men lie on broken glass in the subway.

For those who must struggle each day to earn enough money to feed their families, that they might receive daily bread…  Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…  Our real task is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity.  [George Kennan, for the U.S. State Department, 1948]

For those whose self-interest blinds them to seeing the needs of others, that they might be awakened to their place in the family of creation…  Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

Solo:  Eternal Spirit of the Living Christ, v. 1

Each year, over 4,000 people die attempting to cross the border from Mexico to the United States.  Each of these people has a name, a home, a family.

For those who have died, for those who mourn, and for those who wait for news that will never come, that they might be comforted…  Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

As a condition for making loans, the World Bank imposes Structural Adjustment Programs that lead to reduction or elimination of social services.

For those with power and influence, that they might be guided to use their authority in ways that build up the body of Christ…  Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

Solo:  Eternal Spirit of the Living Christ, v. 2

I would like to make a special appeal to the members of the Army… In the name of God, in the name of your tormented people whose cries rise up…  I beseech you, I beg you, I command you:  Stop the repression!  [Bishop Oscar Romero, the day before he was assassinated while leading a worship service in 1980]

For those who take a stand in support of the poor and in opposition to ruthless power, that their voices might be heard and heeded…  Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

Across the country, base Christian communities gather to pray, to study the scripture, and to take action to accompany those who are struggling.

For those who care for others in your name, that they might be strengthened through their service…  Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

Solo:  Eternal Spirit of the Living Christ, v. 3

We have experienced the radical hospitality of home visit hosts, who give up even their own beds so that we might have a place to sleep.

For those who, in the midst of their poverty, evangelize us, that both we and they would grow in our sense of community with one another…  Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant…  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

For those who wait upon the promise of your favor, that their souls might continue to magnify your name… Lord, in your mercy… hear our prayer.

In the silence of this moment, send your Holy Spirit into our hearts to stir up faith in us and to pray for us those prayers that, right now, we cannot pray for ourselves…  For all that you see your children need, we pray, in the name of your Son our Lord Jesus Christ.  Amen.

 

 

I have a lot of friends whose views on political and social issues are pretty similar to mine. I am neither apologizing nor feeling guilty about that; it’s natural for all of us to want to spend time with people who have similar outlooks and ideas. The problem is, we can too easily get caught in an echo chamber, where the only voices we hear are those that sound just like ours. If we don’t have a chance to engage differing opinions, it becomes too easy to stereotype those who disagree with us. We start to imagine ourselves as the Good Guys and the “others” as the Bad Guys. And if we happen to cross paths on Facebook or in the comments section of a blog or media article, the dialogue quickly degenerates into name-calling and character assassination.

This is not a new problem. Jesus’ disciples were convinced that their Samaritan neighbors were completely evil and untrustworthy. They were shocked – scandalized – when they saw Jesus talking to a Samaritan woman by a public well. And the familiar Bible story is called The Good Samaritan because that’s what made it news. Samaritans were rarely thought of as good. When we only associate with people who think like we think, say what we say, we can start to think of that as reality, not as the echo chamber it really is.

One of the remedies is to intentionally seek out people from different places in the social-political landscape and to listen to them. Listen… not debate, argue, or try to convert… but listen deeply and respectfully. I have friends who have tried to create spaces for conversations that cross the red and blue political lines. Sometimes they work well, other times not so much. In my own associations, I have some people who might be good conversation partners, except that they won’t put in the time and effort to craft an original contribution to the discussion of any issue. Instead, they lurk around Facebook pages and blogs and wait for someone to make a statement about a news event or current issue. Then they jump in with (verbal) guns blazing and engage in all the bad behavior. Those aren’t thoughtful contributors to any conversation; they are what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians as noisy gongs and clanging cymbals. They simply generate noise and ill will.

Fortunately, I also have some thoughtful conversation partners. One friend with whom I disagree on many issues but whose voice I appreciate is Rebecca Florence Miller. She and I met nearly 15 years ago in seminary. She has a blog on the Evangelical Channel of Patheos (here), and she frequently offers opinions on the day’s events on her Facebook page.

Rebecca is significantly more conservative than I am. But I am enriched every time I read one of her blog posts. She does not paint issues with broad-brush simplistic strokes; she is attentive to the nuances of a situation. She is a strong believer in accountability and will challenge those who try to dodge their ethical responsibility, regardless of their political stripes. And she seems never to forget that even those who are acting the worst are children of a God who loves them and wants better for them.

I am grateful to Rebecca and to the many other people in my life who are thoughtful, ethical, and willing to hold me and others accountable for our own words and actions.

For those who have been following the adventures of my furry little Mother of Dragons, this will be a quick update.

 My 7-foot-tall cat tree sits in a corner of the living room, right next to my couch. Russell has peacefully napped on one of the couch cushions ever since we moved here, without ever noticing the cat tree (unless I loaded it with treats; then he would consent to climb on it, until the treats were gone). Now that Khaleesi has claimed the top three levels of the tree as her domain, suddenly he wants to push her out and take over the space. As I’m typing this he is on the back of the couch, looking longingly at the spot she has claimed (and that isn’t big enough for two cats).

The two of them have reached some sort of armed truce… most of the time. He sleeps on the couch, she sleeps in the cat tree, they take turns sitting by the patio door to supervise the birds, they have a schedule for who is at the food dish when, so they never have to confront each other.

They are still negotiating the finer points of their agreement, complete with hissing and howling, usually accompanied by Sadie barking her encouragement from the sidelines. But that seems to be a little less each day. So I think we’re in pretty good shape for her having been here just over two months.

The best news of all, though, is that she is finally acclimated to people enough that I can pet her and even brush her. And this time I have pictures to prove it! The brushing is only good for a few minutes each day; then she gets restless and swats my hand away. But compared to how she was when she first arrived, this is huge progress. Not a lap cat just yet, but I’m confident we’ll get there.