Baptism of the Lord

An excerpt from the sermon…

And I guess that is what the baptism of Jesus is about.

He was not baptised because he needed to repent.

He was baptised because he entered fully into our humanity,

into all that drives us into a muddy old river to have water poured onto us

because we hope for something more,

because we long for newness,

for another go,

for our life to be restored to us,

for the heavens to split open with the uncontainable delight of God,

as God declares, “You are my Son, my beloved, with you I am well pleased”

 

We’re going to remember our baptism tomorrow, and rather than focussing on the promises we made, promises to love our neighbour, to forgive others as we are forgiven, to seek peace and justice, to accept the cost of following Christ, I’m hoping to focus our attention on this declaration of our belovedness. Paul Tillich wrote that faith was accepting acceptance. It is sometimes easier to do with our heads, than to allow our sense of our selves, our identity, to be shaped by a deep and certain acceptance of our acceptance. I’m thinking my sermon will finish something like this:

What if when we renewed our baptismal vows what we did

was soak up, like a thirsty sponge,

all that delight,

all that shining face of God

gazing on us with love and holding us in being?

What if we accepted God’s acceptance of us?

“You are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased”.

 

So this morning my question is this.

What might it mean to you, to know yourself as the Beloved of God?

How might you live, so others will also know themselves this way?

Let us turn now to this symbol of water,

to remind ourselves of our baptisms,

to recall our identity at the beloved sons and daughters of God,

to accept the acceptance God offers us in Christ

“You are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased.”

Lessons in Cross-cultural Conflict

Lesson One: Just because your taxi driver is shouting at you in Chinese which you do not understand does not mean he does not understand what you shout back at him in English. He may pull over and say to you in beautiful English, “Okay, you get out and walk now”.

Lesson Two: The moment before spitting the dummy is not the ideal moment to have to give a nuanced cross-cultural translation of the phrase “to spit the dummy“.

2011 in a word!

 

That’s how all my blog entries for 2011 look in a wordle.

I also chose a word for 2011 – “open-hearted”.  I knew that the risk of living in a community where people come and go so often that I would guard myself against forming attachments and friendships.  Whether it was the intention signalled by the word, or the outcome of living in a generous and loving community, I have definitely arrived at the beginning of 2012 affected by the friendships and relationships I have experienced in the year past.

As a childless household, we are especially grateful for the children in our lives: nieces and nephews, godchildren, friends and congregation members.  Our godson, Amos, was good medicine during my sickness with his laughter and insistence on being read “Maisy goes to Hospital” again and again and again.  There are children in the congregation who every week tell me about some thing that happened or some delicious thing they ate or some extraordinary thing they saw.  I love experiencing Beijing through their eyes and ears.

Of the words I wrote on my Blog last year, Beijing tops the list at 47 mentions.  But if you add up friends, friend and friendship Beijing gets tipped from the top of the poll.  Beijing is definitely the place that shaped my life last year, but I’m going to vote “friends” the word of 2011.  As William James once wrote, “Wherever you are, it’s your friends  who make your world”.

Count your blessings…

Over at Rev Gal Blogpals the Friday Five asks for five blessings of 2011 and five hopes for 2012.  Today I’ll only manage the first category…

Happy reunion after four months apart!

Love  I experience it most directly and often in my life from Andrew.  We’ve been together for seventeen years now, and that’s a good thing!  But lots of other people love me and that sustains me and transforms me and helps me understand a little more about what it might mean that God is love.

Friends  This year wouldn’t have been possible without the blessing of friends.  In particular our friends, Scott and Amanda, were unstintingly loving and generous to me this year when sarcoidosis became the defining feature of 2011.  They visited me every day in hospital, took me into their home, fed me, drove me to appointments, did my washing, helped make Andrew and I being in different countries attempting to live on one income financially viable and basically took care of me physically and emotionally for the four months I found myself in New Zealand.  They did it all again when I was in New Zealand for my check up in October.  They also came to visit in Beijing.  We’re lucky to know them, are inspired by the way they live their lives and highly rate them as human beings!

Scott and Amanda aren’t the only people whose love and generosity transformed 2011 for us.  I was visited, cooked for, prayed for, entertained, loved and taken care of by a whole crew of lovely and loving people.  If I make a list I’m sure to miss somebody out but Lisa was the star of gluten-free, vegetarian supplements to hospital food and also did a lot of ferrying about and gentle companionship; Helen is a fantastic feminist fierce friend; Marg brought me such gentle words of encouragement as well as gluten-free treats; Nan took care of my technological needs, making sure I could easily stay in touch with Beijing; and Barb and Kentigern and Lilian who know me would remind me that things do not remain the same when I was in need of some hope and some courage – all of them and lots of others too (Sarah and Dave and Chris and Gus and Nick and Simon and many more) blessed me with friendship. I also had the love of family members and their practical support.  My parents-in-law were supportive and generous and loving – which is how they are in general but I especially got to experience it this year!

Medical Care  I was so well taken care of in my sickness.  From the emergency clinic in Beijing through my GP in New Zealand and particularly the team at Waikato Hospital.  I had specialists who took the time to make sure I understood what was happening to me (like the endocrinologist who gave me a brochure, then spent another ten minutes drawing some other diagrams so I’d know not just the generic version of what was happening, but how it was being played out in my body in particular).  And excellent nursing care.  They were both responsive and gentle to me and fierce advocates for me.  They got me a skype connection with Andrew so that after my biopsy I could share results with him face to face.  When a specialist came and told me about the suspected granulomas in my brain in a slightly casual and not very informative way leaving me a bit bewildered and emotional, the nurse chased down the doctor and made him come back and explain to me properly and with a nurse present so that I would be better informed and supported.  I could go on about the many examples of good care – there were many.  Add into that the persistence and love shown by my complementary medicine practitioners and I can say that I couldn’t have hoped for a better team to do 2011 with.

Beijing  It would be easy to let the sarcoidosis eclipse everything about 2011 but 2011 was also a year of living in Beijing.  I got to experience snow for the first time, make a trip to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors, have a Chinese New Year for the first time, make new friends and enjoy working with and for an amazing congregation.

Spirit  I’ve been trying to think what to call this blessing!  I guess it is to do with God’s faithfulness, persistence and love.  I experienced it in the love of friends and family; in the care of the medical teams; in all those things I’ve written about.  I feel very much aware of it when I gather with our congregation for worship on a Sunday: the diversity of ages and nationalities and traditions and life-experience – called to be together: worshipping and loving and serving.  I enjoy it when I see great art or watch a good movie or read an engaging book.  I feel connected to it when I’m drawing or writing or making or cooking or dreaming.

I’ve  been reflecting a bit on some of the ways that 2011 was a hard year.  Certainly spending months so sick, being unable to read or write or make or do – none of that was easy.  Four months away from Andrew was not my idea of a good time!  But there was a lot that was good about 2011 and for that I give thanks.

And a bonus: not my hopes for 2012 but one of my favourite pieces of music from 2011.

Love love love

It happened today…

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago, around the anniversary of my ordination.  I think at the time I wrote it I couldn’t get on the internet, and then somehow I didn’t come back to it.  Perhaps the emotion of it, and the self-centredness of it was a bit conflicting. Communion really isn’t all about me, or how I feel.  But it’s been a tough year and sometimes it hasn’t seemed clear why things were unfolding as they were.  I guess the why isn’t so important.  A couple of weeks ago I broke bread into the hands of the congregation and it seemed like I was in the right place, doing the right thing, being something of the person that I’m called to be. This is what I wrote about it:

It happened today.

Its not predictable, or reliable.  In some ways that doesn’t matter, because it’s true regardless of how I feel about it.  But today, as I distributed Communion, I felt like a priest.

I am a priest.  Regardless of whether your theology of ordination is about an ontological change (a change in what is) or an epistemological change (a change in what can be known) something happened when I was ordained twelve years ago.

I am a priest who currently works as an ecumenical pastor.  And before that as an ecumenical chaplain.  So that can mean much less of the kind of sacramental “work” that used to express who I am as a priest.  Less presiding at Eucharist and baptising and blessing and anointing and all of that.

I am also a priest who is a pastor who has sarcoidosis. Which has meant a lot more lying around doing nothing than any kind of doing anything.  Not very much working which means not very much pastoring…  And really not very much standing up which means even less of the public work of pastoring: preaching and presiding.

But today I stood up.  It became clear that there weren’t quite enough people to distribute communion.  And probably if Andrew (who was presiding) had looked over the congregation he would have seen one of the other people in the congregation who is a distributor of communion and could have gestured or summoned or something.  But I stepped into the semi circle as we received the sacrament of hand sanitiser and then was given a loaf of bread to take and break and distribute.

I looked the members of our congregation in the eye and broke them a piece of bread and said to them “The Body of Christ, the Bread of Life”.  And the call to love and serve them made sense.  And I felt like a priest.  And there was grace and life and goodness.

Friday Five: Time with Friends

Today’s RevGals’ Friday Five is an easy one: five things you like to do with friends.

*At home in Hamilton: knit, drink tea (or in Beijing, just don’t have a group of knitting, tea-drinking friends yet due to my non-attendance at Stitch n Bitch Beijing! Well, I’ve been twice, and it was fun but sarcoid has complicated my non-essential going out, so solo knitting has been my mainstay.  Do miss the Fairly Crafty Sunday morning stitching)

*Out and about in Hamilton: eat great Indian food, dosas especially!  (the above photo isn’t super-flattering or even a very good photo but they are super-good friends)

*Out of town friends arriving in Beijing: Temple of Heaven.  For the craziness of the park (line-dancing, choirs practicing, chinese opera, karaoke, old people hard core exercising) and the beauty of the buildings.

*Out of town or in town friends in Beijing: a bit of shaved ice magic

*Any friends, anywhere: eat, talk, laugh, talk more – about theology, politics, the state of the world, eat dark chocolate, drink tea, solve more of the world’s problems….

I am so glad for the friendships that shape my life, sustain my sanity, bring me joy and challenge my thinking.

(knitting photo taken by Meliors Simms at Fairly Crafty, Temple of Heaven photo by Heide Pusch, shaved ice giant mango delight photo taken by Mike Crudge)

Reformation Sunday

This morning at the Congregation of the Good Shepherd we celebrated Reformation Sunday.  This is a new-to-me feature of the church year due to my “we’re-both-reformed-and-catholic” Anglican past!  At COGs we’re both catholic and reformed so we just do/be both!  This Sunday was Reformation Sunday, next Sunday will be an All Saints/All Souls Memorial Eucharist.

The Congregation of the Good Shepherd also has a tradition of giving Bibles to the member of the senior Sunday School classes.  We decided to combine a celebration of the Reformation’s emphasis on Scripture in the vernacular with the Bible-giving and so we invited a number of members of the congregation to speak briefly about where they find words of life in Scripture.

It was fantastic.  Contributions ranged through the story of Gideon (a scientist told us about Gideon’s controlled experiment with the fleece!), a passage from Joshua, the prophets with their visions of peace and justice (Isaiah and Micah), the super-abundance of wine and God’s grace in the wedding at Cana (was Jesus a little irresponsible with the provision of so much wine?), a teenager telling us that Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane was important to him because it shows Jesus as a real human, capable of experiencing fear and not some sort of superman and a look at the poetry and challenge of the hymn to love in 1 Corinthians.  It was moving and inspiring and challenging.  Members of the congregation also contributed post-it notes and pictures to a folder so we have a record of some of the parts of Scripture that are sustaining, challenging or sources of joy in our lives in Beijing.

People told me this morning that they thought some of my spark was back!  I’m certainly doing better physically than I was even a couple of months ago but I think what people saw this morning was joy and delight.  I was so glad to be worshipping with that congregation this morning.  I found joy in the children singing the introit and inviting us to join them; joy in a Fijian-accented Call to Worship proclaiming the work of the Creator  visible on one of Beijing’s most foggy and grey mornings; joy in the choir’s beautiful anthem; joy in our celebration of Scripture; joy in those who were belting out “A Mighty Fortress”; joy in the chaos of a choral benediction accompanied by the children on percussion.  I’ve been in bed since I got home, needed a big sleep this afternoon and couldn’t go to a celebratory dinner this evening (a celebration for a couple who were married in the States – so glad for them and sorry not to be there)  - but it was completely worth it!  It wasn’t perfect or polished but I think it was what we like to call some good church! Thanks be to God!

Have you abandoned your blog?

Gratuitous photo of super-cute godson shovelling in the fastfood at Chinese chain Yoshinoya (photo taken by doting godfather)

I’ve been leaving the article with the above title unread in my RSS feed, feeling like it was speaking directly to me each time I saw the headline. I don’t think I’ve abandoned my blog, but I haven’t written anything for ages and I don’t really know what I’d be writing if I was.

I’m still in Beijing, I still have sarcoidosis, I still love my congregation… I’m trying to juggle those three things – doing a little work, managing the fatigue and pain, trying to avoid breathing too much hazardous air… And at the same time occasionally leaving the apartment, keeping my spirits up, doing enough that is creative and life-giving to be sanity-sustaining.

I’ve been back to New Zealand for a brief 12 days to check on the medical situation (good progress, side effects being better managed) and found it exhausting and frustrating not to really spend much time with anyone… I was grateful to those who did manage to connect with me in my brief windows of opportunity and to those who didn’t hold it against me that I couldn’t fit them in.

So now I’m here… If by here we mean my air-filtered room in our Beijing apartment! And at least briefly here, on this blog – with the usual good intentions but no promises!

September

Over at RevGals’ they posted the following Friday Five:

Headquarters for me is the northeast of the United States. Here school is getting back in session, the tease of autumn is in the air (or the hope for the tease of autumn is in the air) and church life is gearing up to full throttle.

One thing I’ve learned with blogging and social media is that the where I live is not necessarily where you live. And so I want to know what September means to you, in your place of the world and time in your life.

This week’s Friday Five is:

What are 5 things that the beginning of September mean to you?

So here’s my Five September things:

*Mid-autumn Festival/Moon Festival. Coming up on September 12th is Moon Festival, Zhongqiu. All the shops are full of mooncakes – from Starbuck’s drinkable mooncake to Dairy Queen’s ice-cream mooncake through the traditional boxes of pastry stuffed with lotus seed paste, often with a salted duck egg yolk in the centre. Mostly for us this means trying to guess which of the beautiful peony-printed boxes will have the best mooncakes to give to Chinese friends and helpers!

The actual idea of eating mooncakes is lovely (though outside my gluten-free experience). Autumn festival is a time for family reunions and so the mooncakes are eaten together while admiring the full harvest moon. If it isn’t possible to be physically together, there is a sense of unity as all are gazing at the moon wherever they are!  (image from here)

*Congregation returns! Summer is ending and school is beginning so September means the congregation grows very rapidly from about 40 worshippers during the summer holidays back to 120 or so. New families arrive, Sunday School swings into action, the choir are back and will sing anthems and benedictions again, dinners for eight are around the corner… It is a whole new experience for southern hemisphere pastors but life gears up in September in Beijing.

*Visitor season. We have just said good-bye to friends who have been with us for two weeks enjoying Beijing. We have about ten days before our next visitor arrives. The weather is slightly cooler but still warm and its a great time to be out and about seeing the sights in Beijing.

*Health Stuff. For me, September also means gearing up to go back to New Zealand for a six-month check-up to see how treatment is working and to plan for the next six-months of treatment. It seems very odd to be planning a trip for three weeks time – this time I’m really hoping it will only be the 12 days that I’m booked to be in New Zealand and not an unexpected four months away.  I’m looking forward to x-rays, scans and spirometry showing good improvements and hoping that we can begin to taper off this high steroid dose.

*Father’s Day. In New Zealand the first Sunday in September is Father’s Day. So this is a Happy Father’s Day shout out to my wonderful stepdad Bill and to all fathers who parent with love, affection, steadiness and patience!

One year

It was a year ago today that we arrived in Beijing.  Of course, I haven’t lived here for a year exactly – the unexpected four months in New Zealand takes a bit of a chunk out of the year but our home has been Beijing for a year now.

So we left our belongings in a shed in our friends’ garden:

Acquired Chinese bicycles:

Ate a lot of delicious Chinese food

Became co-pastors of a diverse and lively congregation who meet in the low-rise near this high-rise (not so visible from our apartment

Got to stand on the Great Wall of China

Learned to shop in markets (an ever-evolving skill!)

Experienced snow for the first time:

Had many lovely visitors (some of whom I sadly missed while in New Zealand)

Took our visitors to some of our favourite places in Beijing:

There’s no doubt a whole lot more that could be said about our year in Beijing.  About spitting and traffic and air pollution.  About how kind people are when we trot out our four hopeful Chinese words.  About our Chinese language-learning abilities (Andrew’s better than mine).  About living in a spacious, warm apartment.  About missing our friends and family.  About missing our dog.  About the medical misadventures of a girl with sarcoidosis.  About loving each other and loving our life in Beijing.  It’s been a good year.  A grace-filled year.  Thank you for being companions in it – whether virtual or in-person, whether through blurry Skype connections, emails, visits or Facebook notes…  We’re grateful for the wide-spread web of connection and community that sustain us…  Here’s to the next twelve months’ adventure!