It Takes a Table

I'm participating in a 10-month program in Co-Active Leadership this year.  The first component, a six-day program at a beautiful retreat center in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, ended last Sunday.  For major parts of those six days, our group had been sitting in chairs that looked lovely and fit the decor well, but did not make my lower back and hip joints happy at all.  I found a small end-table with a lower shelf that was a good height to prop my feet on, and life became more comfortable.

The table began to accumulate things.  I'd put my journal and pen on the shelf when I wasn't writing.  The person on my left would add hers.  The person on my right would set his coffee cup on it.  People began to cluster a bit. As we re-gathered after a break, one of the leaders remarked on the little village we were building.  I joked, "Well, you know how you always say 'It takes a village'? I say, 'It takes a table to build a village.'"

It takes a table to build a village.

Fierce Love

I stand for the power of fierce love to change the dream of the world.

"O Love that wilt not let me go" are the first words of an 1882 hymn by George Matheson.  Love that will not let go it doesn't get more fierce than this. It doesn't get more insistent. It doesn't get deeper. It doesn't get stronger.

That fierce, insistent, powerful love is the primary thread that runs through all my "Life Purpose Statements" in one of the columns over on the right-hand side of this page. Love is the current of connection, the juice of partnership, the energy of relationship. Fierce love champions, encourages, challenges, protects, inspires, and above all holds on and won't let go. Fierce love holds a vision of what is possible and believes that the possible will become the actual. Fierce love has the power to change lives, to change the world.

Magnificence in August

August is nearly over. It has been a glorious month. It's been an odd summer. Last year I did  a lot of biking all summer. I wanted to be out earlier this summer, but May was freezing, June was windy and filled with the Wisconsin Conference Annual Meeting, winding up my work as Association Minister, and closing my office. July was scorching hot - weeks of 100+ degree weather or rain. Lots of rain. Heat and rain. Rain and heat. It was not good biking weather. It was good whining weather, and I'm sure I did some of that.

But August. Ah, August.

From "If Only" to "What If" -- Changing the Dream

Ten people sat around the table in the church’s Fellowship Hall. Together the members of the church council represented about 25% of the church’s total active membership and about 50-75% of its average weekly worship attendance. Their pastor had just moved on, and they had invited me there to talk about options for pastoral leadership.

I knew that what I was really there to talk about was change.

Enough Dreams

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. Maybe this is a start. This is the sermon I preached at the Annual Meeting of the Northwest Wisconsin Association of the United Church of Christ, the last for which I will serve as Association Minister.

Exodus 16:10-20, 2 Corinthians 9:6-12

I've been feeling a little like Job lately. As I look back on it, I’ve had a heck of a three or four months. It started at Thanksgiving when I cooked for my family at my house for the first time in years, leaving the Saturday after that for a week in Cancun with friends, coming back from that to assist at a three-day workshop and then to go down immediately to De Forest for a staff meeting from which I came back to find that Rhonda, our wonderful secretary and my good friend had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. We barely had time to get used to her diagnosis before we found that she would have not the four to six months that the doctors originally thought, but a mere couple of weeks left to live. Rhonda died on January 15, and her funeral was on January 21. It was a very difficult month for her family, for everyone in the Association, and for me. February 3, we welcomed our new secretary, Mimi. February 5, I learned that my uncle had died, and I flew to Ohio on the 16th to visit with my family and to preach at his memorial service. I flew home on the 20th.

Except I didn't get to come home.