Pack one....

We’ve entered the warming season with a touch of humidity and as a woman remarked to me, “It’s hot out here….yet, after the winter we had, I’ll smack anyone who complains that it’s too hot!”

OK.

The warm weather and the sunshine are just more obvious hints that we are in summer and nearing the official start of this glorious season. Other more subtle hints are an abundance of sidewalk chalk art, the chirp of crickets, fresh strawberries waiting to be picked and people populating their porches.

Today, 18 June is National Picnic Day. The picnic as we know it today evolved from the more elegant moveable outdoor feasts enjoyed by society’s wealthy in previous centuries. Whether it’s a blanket and a hot dog in the park or a packed basket at the beach, picnics are for everyone and remain a delight.

My family has a rich picnic tradition. As a small child, I remember my mother filling a thermos with chocolate milk, making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, tossing in two apples placing it all in a brown bag and encouraging my sister to take her baby sister down the path to the pinewoods to share a picnic lunch.

My father loved to eat outdoors. He made a most impressive, large and weighty wooden picnic table, varnished it, set it up perfectly level and from around late May through late September the family ate dinner every day outside on the picnic table. My father even packed the back-pack, gathered the clan and we walked into the October woods on many a Sunday afternoon for a cook-out.

As previously noted in this blog, my mother was an amazing cook and she even excelled at exercising her culinary artistry cooking outside over a campfire. I'm talking a major meal of roast and potatoes and not just weenies on a stick.

On this National Picnic Day, celebrate a meal outside! Pack a lunch and eat it in the park or fire-up the charcoal and plan to grill dinner. In this season try and have at least one meal outside each day --- be it coffee and a donut on the front porch or a sandwich near the river or take-out in the park.

Get out!

sj;

Beggars looking for bread

I've heard someone define a community of faith as "beggars looking for bread and telling others where to find it." The image works for me. We are each looking for that which will nourish us, feed us, sustain us, strengthen us --- seems to me a community of faith is as good a place as any in which to find this.

The image of "beggars" humbles us and puts us on an even footing with our fellow beggars in the search for nourishment. If you've ever visited one of the old churches built circa 17th or 18th centuries one notes how high up is the pulpit. The preachers of the day towered above their trembling congregants as they preached down to them and often told of pending wrath. Not my style. Yet, I've preached in pulpits where I had to climb a few steps to enter and in pulpits where I was enclosed very uncomfortably and felt...well, trapped and caged.

I much prefer the "church in a round" style of design where everyone is on the same level and sits in a circle to be able to see one's neighbor and the pastor moves among the folks or, if going from notes, makes use of a small lectern placed in the center of the congregation. Often when beginning a new appointment a congregant would ask, "So, what do we call you?" "Sally is fine," I replied. More times than not the parishioner was a bit taken aback and stated, "No, I mean do you like Reverend or Pastor?" "I like Sally, that works for me." My favorite reference was from the kids who called me Rev Sal or from one parishioner who took great delight in calling me Padre.

It seems to me when one is part of a group about seeking nourishment and being fed, titles are quickly discarded...as they should be. I must confess, however, when in need of a perk, I do still, on occasion, drop the Reverend Snyder line....sigh.....

Why I like the metaphor is the implication that we are to be invested in one another and are to help one another, to help all the others....no exceptions. I who remain top of the list of persons least-likely to be ordained am in no position to question any one's calling. Yet, I do believe that being involved in ministry must have a prophetic foundation. The ultimate goal must not be about earning (as if we can) enough heaven points to make it in, the goal must be about active help, proactive compassion and shared labor for others. If I know where there is bread and tell only the folks like me or those whom I like and think are good enough and virtuous enough, then I have ceased to be a beggar helping my fellow beggars to be strengthened and have become a "bread baron" controlling and judging and ignoring persons still hungry and still searching.

We need to be asking why so many persons, and many of them in their 20's and 30's, find organized religion irrelevant and inconsequential. Perhaps we've grown complacent or we don't want to put in the work or listen to what they would tell us and then make the necessary...gasp!...change.

I was raised in a home where my grandmother and my mother baked home-made bread. One of the best things is that first slice of warm bread! I was raised in a home where when persons who were lost or hungry or impoverished would knock on our door they were welcomed in and a fresh pot of coffee was brewed and a loaf of bread and strawberry jam was placed on the table and shared.

Happy Pentecost.

sj;

Hot dogs, baseball and calls

Staying power --- resiliency --- to keep showing up --- to be you....beautifully, boldly you.

Those qualities have always attracted me and persons who evidence them have my respect and admiration.

This week, we mourn the passing on of the writer, poet, advocate, presence and passion Maya Angelou. Almost twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to hear her perform live and what stayed with me from that performance was first, that deep, elegant, rich voice and second, that the spoken word when delivered from the soul spot can captivate and capture an audience.

When I learned of her passing, I tweeted that in her memory I would have a hot dog and a Corona for Maya said, "I love a Hebrew national hot dog with an ice cold Corona, no lime. If the phone rings I won't answer it until I'm done." Now that's my kind of woman (although I do like a slice of lime in my Corona) -- a woman totally comfortable with herself and present to the moment....the phone call can wait...the email can wait...the knock at the door can wait... it's the time for a cold beer and a hot dog.

Before the poem at President Clinton's first inaugural, Maya was perhaps best known for her poem, "Still I Rise" and the opening lines:

"You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you? Why are you beset with gloom? ‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns, With the certainty of tides, Just like hopes springing high, Still I’ll rise."

I encourage you to read the whole poem. Better yet, commit it to memory. Better still, live that self-awareness and contained fire.

This week I was in Harrisburg for a meeting and the Harrisburg Senators, the city's Double-A minor league baseball team, were in town so I walked to the park to catch a game. It was a delight! What really impressed me was the age of some of the players --- 29, 30, 31. For a baseball player that's nearing old age and to still be playing on the Double-A level....whoa. Yet, they were out there enjoying playing the game, taking their cuts and inning after inning hustling to their positions in front of the 2500 fans who gathered. Their love of what they were doing, playing the game of baseball kept them showing up.

I've been doing an on-line course based on the book by Sister Joan Chittister, OSB called "Following the Path." The book is about answering one's call and doing what one has been gifted to do and placed on this earth to accomplish. I believe we each are called...it's not just a clergy thing. A hint on what that calling may be is that which when you are doing it you feel most alive, most present and have no sense of time nor do you check the clock.

Whatever one's calling...by all means and purposes and with passion and preparation...do it!

By the living of it, one will be most alive and that is a blessing that abounds and resounds!

sj;