We Love the Great Pumpkin: On Liturgy and Scarcity

I am a huge fan of Halloween.[i]  Often, over the past decade plus, I have planned and participated in an event named HallowedWorship, which is exactly what it sounds like.

Interestingly, the last thing that happens at HallowedWorship is the showing of “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown.”  It happens after music and Scripture and preaching and Eucharist… after candy and games and Halloween stories.  It happens after everyone who has prepared for and worked the event is exhausted.  It happens with kids on a sugar high.  And to be honest, there have been some years when my family has been the last one standing (or sitting, or falling asleep on a Sunday School room floor somewhere), as it plays to a chorus of people leaving the room questioning whether or not it is really necessary.  We’re all tired.  We’ve seen this film before.

And so, there is a certain degree of irony to the fact that the whole Halloween celebrating world is up in arms about “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” ceasing to air on broadcast television after fifty-four years of consistency.  I’m seeing some concern over the injustice of this.  After all, not everyone has Apple TV+.  I don’t.  And actually, I want to freely admit that there were some years when I didn’t have access to broadcast TV, either, so I legitimately understand the frustration that comes with being left out of culturally significant moments in time which can only be experienced together through technology one does not possess.  I’m not making light of this.  In fact, quite the opposite.  Although, my lament of The Great Pumpkin runs more toward a sadness that we cannot gather around my aging DVD copy to share the story with anyone who cares to watch in community, whether or not they have another way to do so. 

But I’m slightly taken aback by the idea that people who regularly slipped away before the show might be the same ones who are crying out against its disappearance.  Slightly.  Ever so slightly.  OK, maybe not even that much.  It seems odd, but maybe it’s not.

People like rhythm and ritual, and even if they do not physically participate on a regular basis, they also want to know the option is available to them.  As humans, we order our lives around crisis moments and the regular patterns that happen in-between.  Perhaps more than any other year in modern history (or, at least, personal history), 2020 has robbed us of this sense of normalcy.  And “normal” is a word that is cropping up more and more, especially in the context of “a new normal.”  We have been resilient… or so we think.  We have made sacrifices and reframed our contexts for work and school and justice and politics and worship and family life.  We have quite literally framed ourselves in little boxes in order to continue to communicate with whatever invented version of body language and expression we can muster.  But the loss of The Great Pumpkin?  I mean, come on…  enough is enough!  Am I right?

Be kind to yourself.  This is not such an outlandish claim or feeling to have.  It’s fairly common for people who are in the midst of crisis to reach for the small, consistent pieces of their lives in order to cope with the things they cannot control.  Those who are suffering trauma might ground themselves with a blade of grass or a handful of sand.  When your house is burning down around you, the most devastating immediate losses and subsequent requests can seem strange and inconsequential.  But we thrive on embracing the ordinary when the world seems to be spinning off its axis.  It’s why we need to be able to sit with Linus in the pumpkin patch, this year, wrapped in his familiar blue blanket, even though we know The Great Pumpkin isn’t coming.  It’s why we need to hear Charlie Brown say, “I got a rock.”  This is quite literally a touchstone!

I knew it was serious when I did a quick search for "It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" on DVD today.  If you read that last line and were inspired to give it a shot, maybe don’t.  Just like there was a run on toilet paper and Lysol wipes, you will find the “shelves” empty.  I don’t really know how to fix this in the time of Covid-19.  Were it a more normal time in history, I’d probably just invite y’all over for popcorn and a movie.  Then again, we’ve been there.  If it were a more normal time in history, you might decline. 

Rather than being some sort of definitive treatise on the benefits and detriments of a Peanuts liturgy[ii], this is intended to create some space for the consideration of why this loss (and so many others) is significant… to you… to community… to the calendar… to the culture.  Allow it to sink in.  Tread softly. 

L.

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[i] No one gasps (see: girl who is most comfortable with lament, preaching funerals, Ash Wednesday, and All Saints Day). 

[ii] That sounds like a great piece for another time.

That’s a Wrap (with a bow on top)

At present, I am sitting at Starbucks in my pajamas.  I mean, it’s possible that no one here recognizes this.  It could just be sweatpants and a T-shirt.  But I know I slept in these clothes.  I feel slightly less than human, but that’s probably to be expected.  I just finished my first year of PhD coursework.  No one claimed it would be easy, but it doesn’t matter.  I don’t generally do things the easy way, anyway.

As I was submitting my final papers and exams, I thought back to a conversation I had with a friend, in the fall of 2017, as I was preparing to apply to PhD programs.  Sitting in Boston, I said, “I think I’m going to apply to the University of Boston.”

He looked confused and responded with something like, “L…  I don’t think that’s a thing.”[i]

Just in case you’re wondering, it’s not.  That’s how fully unaware I was about this venture.  The following days, weeks, and months led to multiple applications and acceptances with a final decision to sign on the dotted line at Boston University (I was sort of close), which I discovered is an R1 Doctoral University while sitting at orientation with my cohort full of Ivy League graduates.  I had to Google what “R1” meant.  I swallowed hard and introduced myself and proudly proclaimed my affiliation with Northwest Nazarene University, the small school in Idaho that I love.  I fluffed it up with words about publications and conferences, but I also realized I had either hit the PhD program jackpot or somehow slipped in by mistake.  I proceeded to spend much of the school year vacillating between greeting the day with exuberant energy as I burst through the doors at Back Bay station, shouting, “GOOD MORNING, BOSTON!” and defeating exhaustion as I crawled back onto the subway at night hoping to find a seat where no one would be touching me... or at least to remain upright.  There was really only one day when I collapsed in a puddle of tears in a library study carrel, but there were several when I wondered if I might actually be someone’s case study… “Let’s throw a middle aged, Midwestern mama of five into the big city on the East Coast, at a tier one research institute, and see if she makes it…”

As a fairly serious daydreamer, I want to take just a moment for an aside.  Leading up to this particular leg of the journey, there were some frustrating disappointments.[ii] Maybe you read about all of them.  But there was always this vision… this hope… that one day I would “arrive.”  I would post a selfie and stick it to the world, announcing, “Here I am!  See!  This is where I was going to end up all along!” 

Except it wasn’t!  This is just dumb!  I was never going to end up here.  I didn’t even know “here” was a place, remember?  And maybe that is exactly the point.  I’ve been lamenting Catherine Keller’s “cloud of missed possibilities” for a ridiculously long time.[iii]  I’m not sorry about that.  I do lament well, and since it’s something of a lost practice, I’m OK with bearing it.  But there’s something else, too.  Sometimes we risk missed possibilities not because we have already made choices that exclude them but because we just don’t know what’s possible.  I didn’t know.  Now I do.  And it’s not what I expected.  And it’s good.  But I probably still don’t know everything!  Year one… that’s a wrap.

Now here’s that “bow.”  As I left for the train station on Tuesday (the last day I had to go into Boston for the semester), a quick stop at the mailbox produced a 5 x 7 envelope from Northwest Indiana, which contained my District Minister’s License from the Church of the Nazarene.  If I’m honest, I’m struggling a little bit with how to celebrate this.  I was beyond thrilled to hold this piece of paper (dare I say an outward sign of the inward grace that is vocational calling to ministry) in my hands.  I don’t really want to hear people say things like, “What?  I thought you were already ordained!” or, “Wait!  How are you not already ordained?” or even, “Well, it’s about time,” even though I know the intense support and compassion with which these words would be (have been) uttered.  Y’all, the honest truth is my licensing process just fell through the cracks while I raised a family and ministered alongside my spouse and pursued the necessary education to eventually fulfill this calling on my life. 

What most people don’t know is that I drove over a thousand miles to meet with the good people of NWIN for my district licensing interview… that I slept in my van at a rest stop for several hours with my two oldest kids, because the sleet was so intense… that I spilled a gas station coffee all over the gas station (and myself) right ahead of the interview, because I was shaking so badly… that I got pulled over on the drive afterward… that friends drove several hours to meet me for lunch expecting that they would find me in tears, either way.

Sometimes, it has been extremely difficult to articulately verbalize this itinerant life and the unusual ways in which I have fought to live into the call to preach and to administer the sacraments as fully as possible.  Yet, one of the interviewers looked at me and said (and I paraphrase, because it’s been months), “We know you now.  You don’t have to transfer and explain this to another district.  And, can I just tell you what I appreciate about you?”  I think that might be the point at which I resumed breathing.  Even I could not have imagined how beautifully this would come together, not in my wildest dreams.[iv]   

Alright, that’s a lot.  Here I sit, 20% of the way through my PhD, a district licensed minister in the church I love, and rather spent.  One of those super smart cohort members of mine gave me about the greatest compliment I could receive the other day when she said, “You’re the real thing.”  Well, I’m trying to be less self-deprecating, so alright.  Maybe it’s time to kick imposter syndrome to the curb (although I’m not done writing about it, stay tuned and send publishers).  If this life it anything, it’s real.  Next.

L.         

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[i] On a second reading, I’m actually sure this is not at all what he said.  This is how I would have said it.  He just admitted that he hadn’t heard of the University of Boston (which does not exist).

[ii] Ok, years of frustrating disappointments.  Years. 

[iii] See Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming.

[iv] I fully recognize that it is hysterical that my wildest dreams are of licensing interviews and ordination and PhD regalia (wait, did I admit that out loud), but I’m rolling with it.

Cue 2019

If you need to be reminded of all the ways in which time keeps turning and you are loved and called by name, maybe read the whole daily office, today.

I was struck anew by what must have seemed like a “tag” at the end of the traditional Hebrew blessing from Numbers, which hangs prominently in my home, which I pray over my children, and which I often use as the benediction when I preach.  Seems I never get to verse 27, which is weird, because naming is important enough to me that you would think this would have captured my attention at some point:

Numbers 6:24-27 “The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you; the Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace.  So they shall put my name on the Israelites, and I will bless them” (NRSV). 

I have been caught in what might be a perpetual identity crisis for so long I’m not even certain when it began.  To be sure, there is some imposter syndrome going on, as my life has taken some crazy twists and turns in recent years, and I often find myself in places and wonder how the heck I got there (figuratively, not literally… there’s GPS for that).  Maybe I am averse to the whole “I may not know who I am, but I know whose I am,” cliché.  I mean, it’s a cliché, so I probably am averse to it.  But what I mean is, maybe this is why I’ve missed the sliver of truth that lies therein (that’s the problem with clichés, after all…  there is some reason people keep using them, but it can be painstaking work to ferret it out).  Being named by God, though… that’s not cliché.  And being God’s people?  We should take that seriously.

So, my MO for Flip Flops, Glitter, and Theology has been to not write about my family too often.  I have a super (not) secret Mommy blog for that, so this space can be reserved for theological inquiry and discourse.  But I just have to tell you, the coming of this new year is hitting me hard, because it’s the first year I will graduate kids from high school, and if there is one thing I have never questioned, even in the midst of the complete deconstruction and reconstruction of who I am (multiple times over), it’s my role as their mom.  Many things have changed, but they are what I always wanted.  I think I’m going to avoid a full-fledged mid-life crisis (although some people would argue I’m already having one), because I’ll still have three non-adult humans at home when #1 and #2 take off, and I anticipate I will be far too exhausted for a crisis by the time #5 grows up.  But still, I do suck at transitions and this one that’s looming over me feels ominous.  

Cue Mary: 

Luke 2:19 “But Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart” (NRSV).

Clearly, I’ve been thinking a lot about all these words (or as the NIV puts it all these things) that were first foreshadowing and then began to take on flesh as my children have grown.  Sometimes the things we dream turn out exactly the way we imagined and sometimes they don’t.  Overall, though, I have been blessed with a lot of wonderful moments to treasure and ponder, and there is a part of me that looks forward to the future, even though letting go can be rough, because I see every day, in the present, just how incredible these people are and how blessed the world is to have them in it.  Which brings me in a roundabout way to Ecclesiastes… the time for everything… but also the struggle to understand time as it is (cue: Landslide, Dixie Chicks version):

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13 “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time for war, and a time for peace.  What gain have the workers from their toil? I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live; moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil” (NRSV).

A sense of past and future in our minds, yet an impossible quest to discern how it all fits together, leads to the only reasonable conclusion… be happy while you live in the moment you have right now.  If I am anything, I’m a thinker and a planner, so this is a very difficult direction for me to follow.  I take snapshots of moments, precisely because I do not want to lose them and then lose moments, taking snapshots.  Vicious cycle…

But if we wonder what it is that we should actually occupy ourselves with in the ordinary flow of our lives, this is it:  

Matthew 25:34b-40 (NRSV) “‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me’” (NRSV). 

If we belong to God… if God’s name is written on our hearts… then these are the words… these are the things to treasure.  And, you know what?  Sometimes we really screw it up.  In fact, I think we might screw it up more often than we don’t (at least it seems so from my own personal experience, but yours might be different).  Maybe that’s part of why we’re so obsessed with new beginnings, with chances to start over.  Maybe it’s why we reinvent ourselves.  Maybe it’s even why we sometimes resort to throwing stuff up against the wall and hoping it might stick strong enough and long enough to mark our identities as something worthwhile.     

Undoubtedly, in all of it, God is near, and God seems to understand something of the need for creative beginnings and ends: 

Revelation 21:3a-6a “’See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.’  And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done!’” (NRSV). 

For the past several years, my mantra (with a hashtag, of course, because it is the age of social media) has centered around words and concepts like #LessFear and #Fearless.  It has been exhausting; there have been many moments when I have wondered whether or not I am broken beyond repair.  Most recently, I have even felt as if my very spirit might be crushed (see: PhD work has been brutal to my humanity and my current GPA makes me cry on and off… nobody panic or consider not hiring me, though… it’s still very acceptable, just impossible for this perfectionist to square).  This year, I’m aiming for #Resilience.  May we all stand up and bounce back (cue: weebles… now those things make for good childhood stories).

Happy New Year!

L.