Thanks

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

As we move into Thanksgiving Sunday and Thanksgiving Week, I understand how challenging it can be to find gratitude for anything. Earlier in the year, perhaps we were grateful for more time with our families and in our homes. But now, even that gift feels oppressive.

When I find gratitude waning in my life, I always try to both broaden out and narrow down.

What I mean by this is that I try to look around me, for the many blessings I am perhaps missing in the moment. Some of them are broad…like sunsets and moonrises. Others are narrow…like coffee and fresh berries for breakfast.

In every single day —even on the worst day of your life— you have so many things to be grateful for. 

My song “Thanks” is the result of this spiritual process. One Thanksgiving season, some years ago now, I wrote a song that tried to capture both the broad and the narrow —the global and the deeply personal— aspects of “giving thanks.” I’ll post the lyrics below as a poem.

And this Thanksgiving Week, even with all that’s gone wrong, I invite you to broaden out and narrow down. Look at both the super big and very small ways in which blessings are all around you, still.

And maybe, even during Thanksgiving 2020, you’ll find a new depth of gratitude in your life too.

“Thanks”

For mountains green with aspen stands,
fluttering like waving hands,
for broad lands…I will give thanks.

For ember orange sunset glow,
purple skies burning low,
the days go…and I will give thanks.

For silver incandescent moons,
every midnight howl and swoon,
real soon…I will give thanks.

For each moment here, each memory clear
For each day I wake, each breath I take
For each pain I bear, each love I share....Thanks.

————

For berry's taste and coffee's smell
rituals we learn so well
that foretell…that I will give thanks.

For lover’s touch and wounds that heal
friends who laugh and think and feel
when it's real…I will give thanks.

For loving those the world rejects
the poor and holy heretics
it connects…that I will give thanks.

For each moment here, each memory clear
For each day I wake, each breath I take
For each pain I bear, each love I share....Thanks.

———-

And is it really all that tough
to believe one word could say enough?

———-

For every blocked and crooked path
every door that closed to fast
for the past…I will give thanks.

 For every chance yet to forgive
and every second yet to live
that life gives…I will give thanks.

For times when death comes like a friend
and trusting life can never end
it's well then that I will give thanks.

For each moment here, each memory clear
For each day I wake, each breath I take
For each pain I bear, each love I share....Thanks.

Our Daily Bread

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Dennise sent me this meme on Facebook this week. It speaks pretty deep truth for us this year, doesn’t it?

I have always been attracted to the phrase which is attributable to St. John of Lennon (Hey, he’s a saint of a kind…)

“Life is what happens when you are making other plans…”

One of the things that is so deeply maddening about the year 2020 is the inability that any of us have to make, or keep, plans. If we are being honest so many of our life-plans have been disrupted by 2020. 

For some of us, plans that we looked forward to for years have either been put on hold or cancelled…weddings, graduations, new jobs.

It is the same for us at the Church. We’ve been forced by circumstance into this odd holding pattern, where —as I wrote to you about last week— everything has the firmness of “wet toilet paper…”

But, through it all, you are getting through. I know it may not feel like it every day. I know there is terrible loneliness and isolation, in a year when we *need* to be with people.

But you are making it through. I hear and see of the courage of your families and I am awed by it. 

What happens to us when we are forced into this kind of situation is that our vision narrows and shortens, and we start to fear the future. 

Our friends in Twelve Step groups have a deeply spiritual and profoundly important insight for us, though:

“One day at a time…”

That’s how you make it through a time like this. Just live each day as it comes. Don’t look too far forward, because even though we love to plan, the spiritual path now is day-by-day survival. 

I know it doesn’t *feel* like enough.

But sometimes it is. Sometimes, it’s enough just to get through the day…the month…the year…

As James Taylor wrote, in a song inspired by the death of his brother:

“Oh, it’s enough to be on your way.
It’s enough to cover ground.
It’s enough to be moving on.”

God understands this. And God is with us, through it all.

That’s why God instructs us to pray one specific line of The Lord’s Prayer:

“Give us this day, our daily bread.”

This line harkens back to the concept of “Manna” given to Israel during their time in the wilderness. Jesus calls us back to very ancient history, and God’s people have always affirmed….that while we want to plan, and strategize and move forward, sometimes it’s enough to put one foot in front of the other…it’s enough to be on your way…

Sometimes, it’s enough just to have our “daily bread.”

While the entire Lord’s Prayer is important, I urge you to pray this one line constantly during these days. Pray for the heart to embrace the “daily bread” of 2020, as much as we’d rather have an entire meal.

And trust that God will be with us through this time, that we WILL make it through, and that a banquet of God’s blessing and mercy awaits us on the other side.

Challenges of 2020

by Rev. Eric Folkerth

Almost weekly, somebody asks me “How are things at the Church?”

My answer is —like everything else in 2020— “It’s complicated.”

But, lately, I’ve been drawn to a memory of when my Dad had rotator cuff surgery. Bear with me while I tell you the story…

About twenty years ago now, my father had surgery to repair his rotator cuff; a relatively common procedure. In case you don’t know, that’s a surgery to repair a tear in the shoulder muscles that is repaired (basically) by sewing those muscles back together.

My father was still in the recovery room when the surgeon came to see Mom and me. He had a semi-grave look on his face.

“Well, I THINK it went well,” he said. “But, I gotta tell you…it was more challenging than I thought. It was like trying to sew together wet toilet paper.”

That was such a shockingly visual image for me, that it stayed with me all these years.

And it flooded back to me a week ago as a pretty apt description of both *ministry* and *life* in 2020.

Trying to do anything positive during 2020 feels like you’re trying to sew together wet toilet paper. You’re never sure just what the right “moves” are, what the right choices are.

The social distance that the pandemic requires of us is not only physically and spiritually draining, but it gives everyone a sense of disconnectedness. Any “people work” you do feels a bit like trying to “sew wet toilet paper.”

I know this must be true for many of you too. My calling is to name those truths we are all feeling, and to —as God gives to me— send along some hopeful message from God.

So, here it is…

First, my Dad recovered just fine for that surgery. Whatever concerns the surgeon had that day, his shoulder ended up just great.

Whew.

Secondly, I am reminded of Ezekieh and the “valley of dry bones.” Maybe you remember the story?

In a prophetic dream, Ezekieh comes across a valley of nothing but bones. A place where so much decay and rot has taken place that all that remains is white-washed bones.

What life could possibly be present in such a place?

But, just then, God says to Ezekieh: 

“Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord….I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. I will lay sinews on you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

“Prophesy to the bones.”

Is there a better word from God for us during 2020? Our *life* feels like dry bones right now. During 2020, the actions we take feel as if they are sewing wet toilet paper.

But even in the midst of this time of delay and decay, suffering and waiting, God is the one who will bring life to our dry bones once again.

Yes, we do our part. We “sew” as we are given strength, timing, and ability.

But it’s not all up to us, either. Even when it feels like all our actions are sewing wet toilet paper —perhaps *especially* then— let us trust in the powerful workings of God to do what we cannot do on our own.

God’s final promise is: “I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil…”

Trust that this is so. Trust, even as we continue to walk through the valley of bones, even as our “sewing” feels sometimes futile, that God brings new life back to us…to our Church, to your family….to our world.

Grace and Peace,

Eric Folkerth