brethren priestess online

Is it politically incorrect to say that I think I will make a FABULOUS old lady? Once I’ve gotten to the age when (white, English-speaking) women can get away with much more ludicrous behavior, I am going to have fun. I already know what I’ll be like. I won’t feel propriety restraining me from going with my gut and sitting there on my front porch while the adorable trick-or-treaters come by, crotchety commentary about the kids’ costumes muttered out all the while, handing one piece of nasty orange and black hard candy to each kid, with a devilish look in my eye that says, “I’m keeping the chocolate-almond-caramel truffles inside. Mwahaha.” When the girls approach in their oh-so-clever ‘Dead Bride’ costumes, with lace smattered with fake blood, I’ll bend over, face in hands, mock-sobbing, as I scream about ‘my daughter who was killed on her wedding day!’ to make them realize the traumatizing potential of their garb. I can see it all now.

Halloween this year was wonderful. I was home in Oak Park, not on the silly, autumnless West Coast, so there were colorful leaves crunchy underfoot all along the sidewalk, dozens of kids from infancy through high school swarming up and down the block, crisp cool air that gently reminds you to be sensible and put on a sweater if you’re going outside, dearie.

Oak Park does trick-or-treating right. They only allow t-or-t-ing from 4-7 pm, i.e. during daylight. That means the packs of kiddies are concentrated, which not only makes the sidewalks teem beautifully with the wee masses, but also means you can focus on treat distribution and then rest for the evening.

We ran out of candy. Well, candy and pencils: we gave out at least 80 candies, and 70 pencils. (Given a choice, most kids chose pencils, which may be sorry commentary on Oak Park school funding.) We would have run out even earlier if the roving band of high schoolers
hadn’t skipped our house (for whatever reason of herd mentality they were operating by, since my mum was sitting out on the porch waiting to give out the treats). It was pretty desperate: we were getting down to airline crackers and granola bars.

The best costume on the block was a baby as an iPod, a white suit with a black operation panel on her torso, with her mom’s ear buds plugged into the top of her white cap. Pretty cute, even though the technology will be obsolete by the time the baby’s old enough to read the word ‘MENU.’ There were also plenty of Spidermen, Power Rangers (are they even on teevee anymore?), and whatever you’re pretending to be when you just slap an animal-ears-headband on your head and grab a plastic bag to collect the treats. I went as the crazy daughter the mom locks inside while she sits on the porch passing out candy, the one who peers with her big tinted glasses out the front door window at the families as they make their way up the porch steps, smiling to herself and planning her blog post on it all.

2 Timothy 1

The sermon this morning at the First Congregational Church of San Rafael explored the opening verses of the Second Letter to Timothy. The greetings in these epistles are always interesting, but this one is especially so, because of the way the pseudonymous writer (i.e. NOT Paul) bases his claim that Timothy stay faithful as he commences his new leadership project. He reminds Timothy who he is by reminding him of the long line of faithful followers of the way who are his genetic lineage. Most remarkably (to me, always stunned by feminism in the Epistles), the two ancestors he names are Timothy’s mother Lois and his grandmother Eunice. These two women are Timothy’s faithful forebears.

The preacher, my seminary friend Jeanette, told of how her own mother had gifted her with an inheritance of faith, even though her means were not explicitly devout. In sturdy, no-nonsense Midwest fashion, her family went to church and Bible study, but didn’t talk about it at home. Yet, they still lived out their faith, just without the Christian lingo attached to it. She would quilt and crochet blankets, for her children, for her grandchildren, and for women at the local domestic violence shelters. (If I wanted to be painfully cheesy, I would point out here that in doing so, she warmed both bodies and hearts.)

At the end of her sermon, the preacher offered time for congregants to share ways they had inherited their faith. I shared how much my family patterns resonated with the description of the Midwestern values she had described.

My grandfather, the astronomy, chemistry, and geology professor at the local Brethren college, always served as expert guide on our family hikes in the North Woods. From the time we could walk, he would make our hikes nature lessons. He would bend down on one knee to point out the slimy mushrooms on logs, or he would pick up branches to show us how to identify the trees around us. The leaves of the forest showed us curious children the beautiful complexity of God’s creation as well as the pages of the Bible ever did.

Until seminary, I didn’t recognize the lessons in my family’s interactions for what they were: the living out of a Christian faith so deep it got beyond the business of talking about it.

Growing up, I thought it was rude that my mother didn’t say “Bless you” when someone sneezed. But then I realized that instead of just saying “Bless you,” she would get up and get the person a handkerchief. She responded to the bodily need represented in the sneeze, not with trite words but with what those words should represent: a commitment to the person’s health. She revealed an inclination too few Christians exhibit: not to recite the ‘perfect’ lines of doctrine and dogma, but (dare I say it?) to feed thousands, to heal ailing beggars, to raise children from the dead.

Amen for the faith of our families!