From Pastor Eric’s Study - October 2024

There is such a tornado of emotions and rhetoric swirling around these days, it’s exhausting. As a pastor in the midst of a contentious election season it is always challenging to hear the call to speak truth to power and to recognize that scripture, for all of its outspoken words about politics, has a very particular response to things political. Ultimately, the message is that our faith doesn’t call us to align with any particular politic but rather to live in alignment with a renewed relationship with God. It is a narrative that is in direct conflict often enough with the politics of any age, and yet the intent is not to preach politics but to preach the call of God's love into an ever deeper and more challenging relationship with ourselves, our world, and our faith. An article that I was reading recently, “The Politics of God” by Dan Clendenin, lifted up that challenge as he recalled: “Mary’s birth announcement includes an ominous prophecy directed at the political powers: “He has brought down rulers from their thrones, but has lifted up the humble” (Luke 1:52). It’s no wonder that governments have banned Mary’s Magnificat as politically subversive – in India in 1805 by the British rulers, in the mid-1970’s in Argentina after the “Mothers of the Disappeared” put the poem on posters in their non-violent marches against the ruling government…”

Clendenin does an eye-opening job of continuing this challenge of understanding that God calls us to different way of being, a different “kingdom” with which to align ourselves. That’s hard for us to imagine in our binary culture, and it is at the foundation of our faith. If Jesus is Lord, then Caesar is not! That’s the simplest summary. If God is in charge, then all politics are radically relativized with visions like Micah 6:8 where we are to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with our Lord. Or Isaiah 58 that proclaims: “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter— when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. “If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

Remembering that call to be citizens of God's kingdom, to be bearers of God's light, can be a real challenge in a season of division and heightened political rhetoric.

In the midst of this cultural-political tornado, I have been grateful to be journeying with another charming and familiar story: The Wizard of Oz. I’m grateful to be rehearsing with our community theater group, as well as church members Becky Manthei, Mia Dornacker, and Sherry McElhatton (typecast as the Glinda the good witch). That story of Dorothy getting clobbered in the midst of the whirlwind is an apt metaphor for lots of moments in life. To watch the fanciful journey of Dorothy navigating good and evil, friendship, and trusting in what is at the core of our beings, is a powerfully rewarding story. Oh, the munchkins are adorable in their energetic dancing, and the Winkies are woefully sad and ridiculous as those who were once “human just like us” until the evil of the wicked witch transformed them into a caricature of their former selves. It is a powerful metaphor for our times, and for our journeys of faith. Each time I watch Dorothy click her heels and remember what home is, I am reminded of how our story of faith keeps encouraging in every way imaginable that we do the same.

I am not expecting the whirlwind of our times to die down anytime soon. But I am praying fervently that we can click our heels three times and keep remembering that there is no place like our home with God's grace and truth and story of a radically different way of living in our world.

There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home in God's love,

September 2024

In the last week I have been intrigued by poetry and stories that I’ve encountered about monarch butterflies and dragonflies. These two insects are often used as symbols in church because of their amazing transformations. They become metaphors for the resurrection as we see a chrysalis break open to reveal the newly emerging butterfly, or new life as the dragonfly emerges from the back of the nymph to spread its wings as a creature utterly transformed. That metamorphosis from terrestrial or aquatic to taking flight is something extraordinary. I’m humbled by the incredible effort that it takes to get to these utterly wondrous magical states.

Imagine a dragonfly spending ninety percent of its life underwater, for some varieties up to five years, only to emerge for a matter of months. Then consider that this process has been going on since the time of the dinosaurs. It is no wonder that dragonflies are incorporated into religious practices from Japan to our own indigenous people. What an amazing story of persistence over time, and the spectacular witness of momentary transformation for each generation before the cycle repeats. One researcher was waxing poetic about dragonflies moving over great distances at over thirty miles an hour, how they see from the ultraviolet through the infrared light spectrum, they see so many times more colors than we are capable of perceiving. What inspirations of nature.

Those Monarch butterflies are miraculous in a whole different way as they begin their migration south in late summer and early fall. I can hardly imagine these beautiful, delicate wings fluttering on the breeze to travel as far as 3,000 miles over the course of eight to nine months. Part of what is remarkable is that they will travel to a place that they have never known. Somehow the destination is woven into the fabric of their being. Those butterflies on their return journey seem to fly only for a few weeks, before needing to stop and pass the baton on to the next generation. The journeys back to the northern most habits appear to be a multi-generational effort.

Imagine these journeys of transformation for which the destination is written in our souls, yet that might take generations to fully realize. That can sound like the life of the church, or like our individual journeys. We live in a society where our attention spans have grown shorter and shorter. We expect change to be instantaneous and often we also want it to be self-serving. Imagine if we were following the course written in our souls knowing that it might take generations to get to the destination and still, we need to do our part. We live in a society where we are often distracted by whatever the loudest voice or flashiest ad may offer, imagine if we slowed down and took the time to listen to the story of transformation that was written on our souls from the beginning of creation, even before the time of the dinosaurs. I love how Buddhism speaks of quieting ourselves so that we might get out of our own way and realize the truth that is inherent in each of us. In our tradition it’s too easy to think that we need to pursue God's truth instead of looking for how it was written within us in love from our very beginnings. The journey of faith invites us to align ourselves with that path toward transformation for which God awesomely and wondrously created us.

Summer is drawing to close, we will start seeing students and teachers resume their migrations to classrooms. The church will return to its regular schedule of two services at 8:00 and 9:30 on Sunday mornings. We will all begin another season on the journey. I pray that we might be trusting in the awesome transformation that God instills in each of us, and in us generationally. I don’t know where “church” is going in the years to come. I don’t know where our own spiritual paths will suddenly grow wings and fly… but I trust that God has woven into our souls, and into the fabric of the universe, a path that leads us toward life, and wonder, and transformation that is best pursued with a commitment to the long arc of history.

August 2024

The heavens are telling the glory of God;

and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.

Day to day pours forth speech,

and night to night declares knowledge.

There is no speech, nor are there words;

their voice is not heard;

yet their voice goes out through all the earth,

and their words to the end of the world. - Psalm 19:1-4a

In just a few days a group of eight of us from Peace UCC will head into the Canadian wilderness to delight in community and nature, and to open ourselves to the presence of God preaching though all of nature. This is a retreat that many of us have participated in over the years. There’s always lots of laughter, splashing, and playfulness – qualities that reflect some of the delight that we experience when we gather in various settings as a congregation – that sense of joy is a gift that our congregation has always embraced. For this week up north, the experience is interwoven with the quality of pilgrimage. The destination is hopefully a recentering in the sacred, deepening our relationship with God while allowing ourselves to be touched with the wonder of creation’s story. The psalmist so beautifully speaks of creation itself proclaiming God's amazing good news- it’s not with words, but it is with an invitation that transcends words. I know that canoes, tents, bugs, and beds on the ground aren’t experiences for everyone, but nature is around all of us, inviting us to come and know God. Indeed, studies that I’ve read throughout the years consistently name experiences in nature as one of the primary places that people encounter a sense of the divine. That’s part of the reason we’ve been offering this wilderness experience for all of these years. But you don’t have to travel that far: time in the garden, time walking in the woods, time watching the birds, each offers opportunities closer to home to experience God's creation proclaiming its story.

That said, an invaluable part of our wilderness experience is also the unplugging from the electronics and the noise of the day, so that we might recenter ourselves and remember who we are and whose we are. Every religion of the world encourages a continual practice of reframing our lives in the context of that which binds us to the transcendent. That’s ever harder to do in our noisy world.

I’m given the gift of routines of faith that remind me to refocus, sometimes in quiet, sometimes in near chaos. As I return from wilderness waters I will dive right into Vacation Bible School. That experience is another opportunity to be touched by God through the faces of little children and the incredible efforts of so many volunteers who invest each year in making the stories of our faith come to life anew. Our church Pignic will invite all of us into God's great sanctuary to change our venue and listen to nature join us in singing the glories of God.

Those moments of refocusing become so deeply important in these times when listening to God in the midst of incredibly chaotic times can be so challenging. As I write this newsletter we’ve just watched another assassination attempt executed on a politician, thankfully this time it was only the grazing of an ear. We’ve heard calls for unity as a nation, though much of the time these carry a quality that sounds disingenuous. The unity proclaimed invites everyone to come together and believe what one side or the other believes instead of celebrating the gift of our diversity and the power of working together with the gift of different perspectives. In the midst of the chaos that refocusing, recentering, remembering who and whose we are becomes ever more important.

I pray that we can pay attention to listening: to nature, to God, to our hearts. We are to remember the way of a young Jewish carpenter who sought desperately to open the eyes of the establishment to once again focus on the extravagance of God's love. I pray that we can remember how Jesus gathered at table with all manner of people, Pharisees and tax-collectors, women, and those accused of being unclean or unwelcome. We remember that Jesus was the one who crossed the borders of his time to heal and care for those in need, even when those nearest to him sought to emphasize the borders. We remember how Jesus was the one who fed people with faith in abundance, even when those who were closest to him saw only scarcity and the impossibility of caring for the thousands… and a few loaves and a few fish carried the story of faith. And we remember how Jesus railed against the kingdoms of this world -  the antithesis to the current cries of Christian Nationalism – Jesus reminded people right to the cross that the power that he was offering was the power of love. We remember how those who gathered on Palm Sunday wanted Jesus to be the new king who would restore the government to Israel, to restore the Davidic kingship, and Jesus answered their pleas with his death and resurrection. Never forget that no part of Jesus' ministry sought to institute a government in his name! Rather, he challenged those who would follow him, all of us, to live out our citizenship through the way that we embody God's kingdom, the kingdom of heaven, in everything that we do. We are called to love like Jesus, to care for the least and the last and the lost; to love one another and not to love power. We are to remember that Jesus' message was that there was no place for violence to secure our position – no role for talk of revenge or belittling the other, no place for talking of the anointing of a ruler in this world. That’s not our story – or at least that’s not Jesus’ story, but it’s one that the powers of the world have often falsely tried to market. This is an incredibly challenging faith that we are to walk. It’s going to take a whole lot of recentering and listening to the divine in order for us to faithfully navigate our world. We won’t get to constantly escape to the Canadian wilderness to unplug, but we do get to escape to the sacred space of prayer and the rhythms of sabbath and worship wherever that happens for each of us.

I have included a series of prayers from the Wisconsin Council of Churches that might be good tools for the journey, they’re on the next page. Let these last weeks of summer be sacred reminders that God's story is always ringing out in songs of love and wonder, if only we refocus our lives to let go of the noise and listen… listen for the glory of God.

May God bless us!

From the Pastor's Study - June & July 2024

“Never place a period where God has placed a comma,”

            - God is Still Speaking -

It has been almost two decades since the UCC took a quote from Gracie Allen and paired it with a proclamation that has been at the heart of our denomination’s faith and history. I have always been excited to be a part of a church that takes seriously Jesus’ promise from the Gospel of John (16:12-13) when he tells those who are dearest to him, “I have much more to say to you, but you can’t handle it now. However, when the Spirit of Truth comes, he will guide you in all truth.” The invitation is for us to be a people of faith who take seriously how it is that the Spirit of God is leading us forward. When we pair this idea up with Jesus’ command to “love one another as he has loved us,” we encounter this incredible journey of not just looking over our shoulders at what God has done, but an exciting opportunity to walk with God in an unfolding ministry of extravagant love.

I have always loved the way that this command to walk with God in love has managed to transcend the boundaries that our world is so good at creating. For twenty-six years, I’ve been humbled to tell my colleagues about the magic that I’ve seen at Peace UCC, where it has always felt like we have been able to listen for God and love one another across our social, political, and cultural differences. At our best we have nurtured a spirit that is eager to discern together how God's love is being revealed among us. This has always required a spirit of trust and humility that allows us to both share from the depths of our beings while also holding a willingness to listen to what others are sharing from the depths of theirs. It’s hard work, and it’s far from perfect. Our certainties tend to get in the way of our listening. Our passions can get in the way of our sharing with humility. Still, those moments happen when we get it right and together it feels like we are discerning what Jesus would do, rooted in what Jesus did do, and that was always about love, care, and respect. When those moments happen, there is a clear embodiment of “where two or three are gathered in my name, I’m there with them.” This witness shone forth in 2019 when our congregation voted to declare itself Open and Affirming, and it shines forth every time I hear someone speak about a spirit of love that binds the disparate group of travelers together on the way with Jesus.

As a congregation, that way of working together with one another in discernment has been the heartbeat of God's love at work in the church. It’s the reminder that God is not speaking through any one of us individually. It’s not about power grabs or positioning and it’s not about the gifts of any one pastor or leader. It’s about joining together in being this crazy and extraordinary body of Christ that always feels like it might be the antidote to the fractured ways of our lives and our world.

As we enter this summer season, I pray that we would listen together for where God is still speaking to us. I encourage us to spend more time with the unfinished “commas” of our story which keep drawing us ever more deeply into the service of God's extravagant love. As we engage in mission trips and wilderness canoe adventures, as we create imaginative space for youngsters to experience their faith in Vacation Bible School, or create spaces to be gathered at table for our church Pignic or with our summer meal program, we are encouraged not just to be busy, but to be animated in the life and witness of our Still-Speaking God. May God bless us in this journey of discerning how God is working through each of us woven into this story together.