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Three weeks ago, our neighbor brought Gwyn a tiny monarch caterpillar crawling on a milkweed leaf.  We made a home for the little guy with an ice cream bucket and mosquito net, and watched in amazement as the leaf got gnawed and caterpillar poop appeared.  In no time flat our very hungry caterpillar was huge with gorgeous yellow and black stripes.  Then, overnight, it was gone.  A stunning emerald chrysalis hung from the net.

This whole transformation feels tender and critical given the fact that the monarch population was decimated this year by heat in Mexico—that is, by global warming.  We’re careful with our little fellow.  And it’s got me thinking about change.  Why is change so hard?  Of course, the caterpillar’s transformation is a natural process, just like Gwyn’s growing up and my growing old, but real change, the kind that can stop global warming or sober us up or bring about reconciliation, is ridiculously difficult.  What if, for instance, the church wanted to become an advocate for the environment?  What would it take?

In his book Change or Die, Alan Deutschman studied instances where people have successfully changed to identify three key supports that make change possible.  First, you form a new relationship with a person or community that inspires and sustains hope—think AA meetings.  Second, this new relationship helps you learn, practice, and master new habits and skills.  And third, the new relationship helps you reframe your thinking so you see your life and the world in an entirely new way.*

Note how relationships and community are essential for bringing about personal and social change.  This is why I believe the church must leap into the effort to stop global warming:  Churches’ institutional support for relationship-building can be leveraged to change people’s beliefs and behavior patterns.  Or, for a more faithful perspective, a church community can and should open itself to God’s transforming presence.  Our work as Christians is to break out of our cocoons, again and again, so God can make of us something new.  What we most need now is a new relationship to the earth so it will be healthy for our children and our children’s children.  Our faith tells us that a loving, justice-seeking relationship to the earth and each other is possible.

This morning Gwyn woke me up:  “Mama, the butterfly’s here!”  The chrysalis is now a webby shell; the monarch’s wings are wrinkled, its body is stunning black with white dots.  This afternoon, we’ll take this miracle out to the yard and release it.  And I’ll pray for a similar change in the church.

–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

So I’m happily reading the Land Stewardship Project newsletter when I come across this passage, about a tribally supported agricultural organization:

Growing food in the community and getting people to consume it are different things.  That’s why Wozupi provides classes for the public throughout the year on not only food production, but preparation and preserving.  “We’re recognizing that a lot of our TSA members may not have ever peeled an onion before,” says Yoshino.

I feel punched in the gut, not unlike receiving the news that the monarch butterfly population was decimated by hot weather this year, or an earlier LSP article that mentioned how many grade school kids are surprised to learn that carrots come out of the ground.  Never peeled an onion?!  This is tragedy of an order I can barely comprehend.  Because if you’re an adult who’s never peeled an onion, chances are good you eat a lot of prepared or fast food, and bear the health consequences.  And you don’t have access to vegetables at your nearest store, so you don’t know the pleasurable heft of a bag of onions.  And you don’t know what it’s like to have onions sautéing in butter on the stove, scenting up your kitchen.  And you don’t eat meals around the table with family.  And you’ve never, ever pulled a beautiful gold globe out of the soil.

Onions are foundational in cooking, regardless of culture or creed, so life without peeling onions is life without real food.

Strangely, though, what really gets me is the loss of the metaphor.  You need to peel away the layers of an onion to understand how multidimensional life is, how layer after layer contributes to the whole.  Or how an onion can have one rotten layer in the middle of pearly, crisp white.  Sink a knife into an onion and your eyes will sting, you won’t be able to see what you’re doing for all the tears, but it’s worth it once the skillet warms and that heady, pungent scent fills the house.

Humans need intimacy with our food because food is wise; it shows us who we are.  We need onions to teach us how bound up pain and pleasure are, how rewarding it is to look beyond the surface, and how a vegetable that tastes horrid one moment can be transformed by heat into something heavenly.  The tragedy that parallels the environmental crisis is our loss of connection to the earth.  Thank God for organizations like Wozupi and LSP, who are holding up onions and saying, “Here.  I’ll show you how.”                                                            –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

Something’s got to change. 

I mean in my life and how I respond to the environmental crisis.  Because global warming threatens our political stability, our food system, and our health; it’s already eliminating the water source for thousands and will soon displace whole populations, particularly in poor countries.  Things are bad.  Out of love for the earth, out of Christian duty, out of concern for the world our children will inherit, something’s got to change.

Emily and I do what we can.  We grow our own food, wash and recycle our plastic baggies, bike most places, get our energy from wind power, compost, strive for zero waste, buy local organic food, we even cook with a solar cooker, for heaven’s sake.  It’s not enough.  We’ll continue to make what lifestyle changes we can, but they won’t be enough.

So here I stand, a small, caring person, helpless in the face of a daunting problem.  The institutions with the most influence (governments, corporations) seem unapproachable.  The more email petitions I click, the more ineffective I feel.  I could write letters, but where do I start?

In this state I turn to the church.  Church moves me beyond my small self into a larger body.  Every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, my voice dissolves into a relationship far broader than I can conjure alone.  Together we create a welcoming, healing presence in a hurt city.  We contribute money to United Methodist Church missions and make UMCOR, an important relief organization.  Church helps me participate in Christ’s body, something private faith can never do.  In the face of environmental disaster, I need—perhaps we all need—church.

Can church revitalize our faith during these fearful times?  Can church help us build the resilience we need to deal with crisis?  Can church rally us, empower us, and amplify our calls for change?  Yes.  But it’s not yet.  Earth’s body needs Christ’s body.  I wonder whether we can respond to this call.

–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

1. Gwyn’s sick, which means two nights of interrupted sleep.  This morning she arrives in our dark bedroom wanting to play.  I don’t.  She curls up at my feet, right where the cat sleeps, and lays still for five minutes.
2. Snow has dusted the earth.  It falls all morning in trace amounts, miniscule white thoughts moving through air.
3. Hot tea fills my belly.
4. Emily can’t wait to get to work, she loves what she’s doing so much.
5. Gwyn watches movies, a special treat reserved for when she’s sick.  She’s snuggled under a blanket on the couch.  I keep her company by cleaning out the hall desk.  Stationary, old maps, coupons, manila envelopes, photos.  I haven’t sorted this stuff in years.  Quiet organizing calms me, as though tossing old bus schedules has a counterpart in my heart.  Curious George gets himself into innocent mischief.
6. I show Gwyn the glitter I’ve found.  Her exhausted, teary face lights up.  “Can I do a craft?” she asks.  She pours Elmer’s onto black paper, then sprinkles the glitter.  Gold stars shine in the darkness.
7. The toilet upstairs hasn’t been working right for a month.  To pee at night we have to go downstairs.  Too cheap to hire a plumber, I’ve been in plumbing hell a few hours each night this week.  This morning I run to the hardware store, where the owner knows my struggles.  The connector I need is shorter than the comparable one they sell.  “Buy the long one,” he tells me, “and twist it into a loop.”  His easy, brilliant solution fills me with plumbing joy.
8. Lunch is leftover pork roast, slightly salted.
9. I delete dozens of emails from advocacy organizations working for gun control, just wages, GLBT rights, a healthy environment… Up against my limited time, I’m humbled by the abundance of good effort in our world.
10. This moment, now:  The gratitude I feel writing these words.
    –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

“God lives in your dreams.”

So says a line in one of Gwyn’s children’s books.  Our congregation is beginning to dream again, and I’m curious how this dreaming can invite God more fully into our midst.

When I’ve dreamed dreams for my future, those dreams that tug me with longing are born of both me (my talents, my interests, my personality) and God.  How do I know God’s in the mix?  Usually some mystery is involved—where did this longing originate?  Where is it taking me?—with no logical explanation.  Usually the essence of my being is stirred when I work with the dream.  Usually the dream pulls me into my best self while also serving some pressing need evident in the world.  Almost always the dream seems impossible or stupid; it rarely comes with cultural affirmation and almost never with money.  By following the dream, the world becomes a better place, but in a sly, backwards way that few people recognize.

The God of dreams asks us to co-create.  We don’t need to wrangle our dreams into fruition using sheer will power.  Nor does God wave a magic wand and grant our wishes.  Instead, God joins us as we listen to our heart’s longings, as we write them down, as we sweat and argue and problem-solve in our efforts to manifest dreams.  God surprises us with unexpected challenges and with tiny moments of grace.  We must be active players in bringing about our dream, and we must humbly accept God’s participation.  The process of heeding our dreams is so rich, it often outshines the final result.

Surely God lives in the dreams of groups of people as well.  God—creative energy, the unfolding of justice, the great pulsing love at the center of the universe—wants nothing more than to come alive.  May God use our dreaming and scheming to bring this about.                  –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

Snowless?  45 degree days in January?  Sure, like everyone else I’m reveling in the sun’s warmth and I appreciate being able to bike through this winter, but every time fellow Minnesotans wax poetic about this lovely weather I feel an awful sense of doom.  The elm trees need long periods of icy temperatures to ward off Dutch Elm disease.  Cold wards off the tent caterpillars; it permits native fish to survive in our lakes.  I’m afraid the immediate pleasure of warm afternoon walks could blind us to the long-term gifts of our normally cold climate.

Emily has begun a weekly Qi Gong practice of praying for the earth’s healing.  Usually in such matters I’m infinitely practical:  If I want to end global warming, I need to radically change my lifestyle and support those working for systemic change.  This is prayer in action.  To some small degree I am culpable in the harm done to the earth; asking God to do something about it seems hypocritical and irresponsible.  God has no hands but ours, Theresa of Avila taught, so we must pray with our hands.  Thus Emily and I rarely purchase new items, we share a car, we grow vegetables, we write letters and donate money.

But these choices seem paltry in the face of, say, the ongoing drought in the southwest that threatens my sister’s home with fire or the torrential rains in Guatemala that have caused a ten-foot rise in Lake Atitlan, forcing people from their homes.  The problem is huge.  I feel hopeless, powerless.  And yet it is precisely circumstances like these that invite us beyond ourselves, out of a practical mindset and into faith, the realm of possibility and mystery.  Praying for the earth’s healing isn’t a cop-out; it is a way to invite a loving, generative, just energy more fully into ourselves and the world.  Prayer helps us acknowledge our limitations.  Prayer also breaks apart those limitations by foisting us into a place of interconnection.  What is possible in the invisible, soulful realm can be birthed onto our fleshy earth.

So let us pray.

–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

About a year ago Gwyn went to the doctor for an annual check-up and received her two-year immunizations.  She screamed the entire visit.  Shortly afterward she began requesting the story—“Tell the story about going to the doctor”—three, four, even five times a day.  Almost twelve months later we still tell the story with countless variations; we play doctor and “tickle doctor” and acupuncturist and midwife.  Every piece of tape is a band-aid.  Anything with earplugs is a stethoscope.  Gwyn still gnaws on the doctor story fiercely, like a bone.

We have many theories about why.  Perhaps the shots were traumatic, and she’s trying to understand why her loving moms would let someone inflict her with pain.  Emily took her to that two-year appointment after a long recovery from cancer; perhaps the visit was a turning point in their relationship, when Gwyn realized Emily would reliably care for her.  Perhaps the office brought back hard memories of Emily’s surgery.  Gwyn’s fascinated with a photo we have of a midwife listening through a stethoscope to her birth mom’s belly; perhaps her obsession with doctors has something to do with her birth or adoption or the mystery of where babies come from.

Regardless, the more we tell the doctor story the more I appreciate how it contains an entire cosmology and, yes, it’s worth chewing on.  It includes a journey into the unknown, human suffering, faithfulness, love, healing, and mystery.  It contains fundamental paradoxes that are not easily resolved:  Why would a loving, cuddling mother let this nurse poke me?  If the doctor helps sick people, why do we go there when we’re healthy, get a shot, and then feel miserable?  What kind of world is this, anyway?  Reliving a story is a child’s best way to unpack such huge conundrums.

Adults do much the same thing, traveling through Jesus’ life repeatedly as we traverse the liturgical year.  His is a good story, worth gnawing on.  How can God enter the world through a poor baby?  Why did Jesus choose to live the life he did?  What kind of world permits crucifixion?  Contained in this story are all the mysteries of creation.  Just when I begin to get tired of it (not again!) it opens to me in a new way, revealing something true about myself or others or God.  Many stories do this, even doctor stories.  Whether I like it or not, the Christian story is my bone to chew, and it’s a good one.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

My mother-in-law’s church has issued a spiritual challenge to its members:  Buy nothing new for a whole year.  In response, support groups have sprung up like weeds.  There are purists whose underwear will grow thin, there are realists who gather to weigh alternatives before making a purchase, and there are new communication networks to facilitate the movement of used items between parishioners.  Why shouldn’t the retirees clean out their basements and simultaneously help new graduates set up apartments?  If Sue needs a lawn mower and Joe has one languishing in the garage, shouldn’t the church play a role in conserving these resources?

As an inveterate garage saler and chief proponent of Twice Nice at our annual church bazaar (which, by the way, netted over a grand this year), I get shivers of glee hearing about Epworth’s commitment.  I love the alternative economy they’re creating, how individuals are learning to tap community resources first before heading to the mall.  I love how they are using ordinary stuff (clothes, dishes, books, the detritus of daily life) to build connections to one another.  I deeply respect this commitment to the earth which is also a commitment to our inevitable interdependence.  And I’m thrilled that this work of fulfilling individuals’ physical needs (and even desires) is being taken on by the church, an institution which has usually ignored this domain.

One of the lasting lessons from my three year stint living in Christian community is the value of making do.  If a mop broke, we’d try to fix it.  If we needed a tool, someone tried to create it.  The benefits of making do were physical (we didn’t spend much money), emotional (we grew self-reliant, resourceful, and creative), and, I suspect, spiritual.  The jerry-rigged system that re-used laundry water filled me with awe, as did the pervasive sense that the community members skills were more powerful combined.  When communities commit to sharing resources, the power and creativity that emerge are beautiful, miraculous even—the body of God manifesting itself.  Of course churches should provide alternatives to our consumer economy!  This is the bread that nourishes all of life.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

After dropping Gwyn off for her first morning of preschool—she was too interested in the puzzles to say goodbye—I came home and cried.  I was proud that she was eager and ready; I was thrilled for some extra time in my week; I grieved the seven hours I now won’t see her; and I ached for the baby who is no longer.  Mostly I cried because this step is the first in a long progression as Gwyn begins a life quite separate from mine.  She’ll make her own friends, eat food I don’t approve of, hear stories that scare her, and be exposed to people and ideas beyond my control.

As happens often with parenting, I find myself wondering what my feelings have to teach me about God.  Surely the free will we’ve all been granted causes God lots of tears.  I take comfort in the thought that this tremendous gift—self-determination; the freedom to find our way in the world without a manipulating, divine hand—might not be so simple for our maker.  With free will we’ve been given the power to cause holocausts, to destroy our own environment, even to hurt our own children—as well as form healthy communities, create brilliant art, and bring peace into areas of conflict.  Our potential for evil goes hand-in-hand with our potential for good.

Some days, after reading the headlines, our creator’s choice to give us free will seems like a crap shoot.  Maybe God made a terrible mistake.  But my tears at leaving Gwyn convince me that God’s first act with humanity was one of faith, a great faith that despite our proclivity to take other’s toys and run around during story hour, we humans will choose to grow, and grow toward good.  From the beginning God believed in us.  I can’t imagine a more loving act.  And like Gwyn, who knows I’m cheering her from afar, I suspect God’s hidden in the fabric of creation weeping and cheering.                                                –Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew

9.15.11

Despite our determination to teach Gwyn to pick up her toys, our house is littered with things:  paperclips moved from the office to her toy kitchen, a nickel on the back of the toilet, Mardi Gras beads in the mixing bowl—you get the picture.  I spend a ridiculous amount of time putting things away.  At times I get fed up and decide to purge; if we didn’t have so much stuff, Gwyn couldn’t move it.  Clutter irritates me; as I pick up, I must work hard not to get annoyed.  I hope all the bending over at least counts as exercise.

A year ago I began to make peace with the mundane nature of my spiritual path. Others are called to service or silence or ecstasy; my fate is to find God in the details.  The doll clothes I discover at the bottom of the laundry chute and must carry back upstairs are a hassle, yes, but they’re also an opportunity to open my heart.  Gwyn’s two; she’s learning by doing, experimenting with doors and containers and gravity, and my small task of straightening supports her important work.  The God of Gwyn’s mess asks of me generosity, patience, perseverance, order, and a capacity to recognize where good is emerging.  At times straightening serves this good, and at other times I must hold Gwyn accountable.  I’m not her maid.  When she’s able to be responsible for cleaning, she should.  Good boundaries and high expectations help bring out the greatest good.

In the meantime I fish the playing cards out from behind sofa cushions and pick up dozens of rubber bands and resort the silverware as a form of prayer.  Thank you for this abundance.  Thank you for an inquisitive child.  Make my heart still.  May my every action be loving.  I’d prefer other spiritual practices given a choice, but this is what’s before me now.  Any small moment can blossom into communion if I’m open.  So I practice opening.
–Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew