Just in time for Give to the Max Day— Thursday, Nov. 16—Pastor Oby is featured in a video promoting Perspectives, EMC’s partner organization in St. Louis Park.
Check out the video—and consider supporting this human services nonprofit!
Just in time for Give to the Max Day— Thursday, Nov. 16—Pastor Oby is featured in a video promoting Perspectives, EMC’s partner organization in St. Louis Park.
Check out the video—and consider supporting this human services nonprofit!
Ever since Hurricane Maria caused catastrophic damage in Puerto Rico, the American citizens there have been doing their best to cope with the humanitarian crisis. Meanwhile, El Colegio High School in Minneapolis has been collecting and shipping innumerable supplies, on a Delta flight and via a ship’s container, to Puerto Rico. EMC-donated supplies—personal care items, diapers, pet food, water bottles and much more—were dropped off today as the school gathers yet another shipment. Thank you, staff and students of El Colegio, for everything you’re doing! (And if you’d like to learn more about this amazing school, look at the school’s Dia de los Muertos photo gallery from a recent Star Tribune article.)
Since early 2017, EMC members have been helping kids create healthy dinners once a month at Perspectives, an award-winning human services nonprofit in St. Louis Park. This volunteer opportunity is open to you too—even if you barely know your way around a kitchen. Sign up in the office or email Laurie at [email protected]. Upcoming volunteer dates are December 4, January 29 and February 5.
Roughly 40 EMC members turned out to play games (from Catch Phrase and Telestrations to Tenzi and Man Bites Dog) and enjoy desserts (from rhubarb crisp and blueberry tart to banoffee pie and Twinkie bars) last Saturday night. Attendees of this second-annual event tasted and rated the desserts in three categories: best all-around, best presentation and “way to reach.” While the competition was tough (and delicious), three teens swept the awards for their chocolate mousse cake with raspberries. They received trophies and gift certificates to local bakeries. Congrats!
Some of the women of EMC gathered for an evening of conversation, wine and volunteerism last month. Like to join them next time around? Mark your calendar for January 26 and April 27. Hope to see you there!
In her thoughtful and insightful homily—”What Would Pooh Do?”—Janet Anderson, director of Faith Formation, shared an inspirational message with all of us who feel both overwhelmed by the world’s headlines and motivated to do something. EMC’s Family Sunday worship, Oct. 1, also featured a video by Joey Miller of EMC’s teens’ summer trip to the BWCAW; a Winnie the Pooh performance by Nicole Chidester, Luke Sorensen and Annabell Sorensen; readings by Catriona Ray and Olivia Krebs; and much more. If you missed yesterday’s service or want to dwell in Janet’s message again, you’ll find it below.
What Would Pooh Do?
J. Anderson
It is dangerous to stand at a pulpit and declare one’s view on a culturally divisive issue—
perhaps more so than ever, when, across the wide expanse of the world, we seem so quick to
anger. Nevertheless, I stand before you this morning and declare that I am a fan of Garrison
Keillor. That is in small part due to the fact that I once hosted a book-signing for the radio
show host and writer, who showed up late because he had driven himself and had gone to the
wrong location, but who wore his famous red tennis shoes and a suit as rumpled as his hair and
was warm to every one of the more than two hundred people who had waited restlessly for him
as I passed out chocolates to calm their nerves. My fondness is in larger part due to the
wisdom that I find in his Lake Wobegone stories, which express both deep humanism and
generous Lutheran Christianity. One story, that I heard on the radio years ago as I washed
dishes in my kitchen, concluded with this line:
“Sometimes,” Keillor said, “all you have to do is just get outside.”
I get outside very nearly every day since adopting my dog, Santiago. We walk for up to
an hour, and when I come home, I list in a small, five-year diary, the most wonderful things that
we encountered: a fishing pier in the fog; a rock marking the 45th parallel; the wing of a hawk
lying at the edge of a wood; a snapping turtle on the walking path; an old man sleeping in a
recliner in his garage with a small dog on his chest; goldenrod soughing in the wind beside
railroad tracks; a transit bus with lights that blink, “Go, Twins”; a Mississippi River beach
covered in snow.
God is.
Going out of doors physically facilitates taking temporary leave of one’s mind—one’s
mind being a dubious place to reside. Shakespeare’s Hamlet observes that “There is nothing
either good or bad but thinking makes it so,” and, indeed, our thoughts—about data breaches
and hurricanes and racial animosity and whether our tax burdens will be high or low, or we will
be able to afford our health care, about our political impotence and the possibility of war,
along with all of the daily burdens of work and love—can make us as jittery as Rabbit in the
Hundred Acre Wood, desperately striking out in the most logical direction and winding up,
again and again, lost.
Not infrequently, I send photos of Santiago out adventuring—nose to the earth, tail in
the air, leash taut in an expression of eagerness—to my friends. One of those friends has
developed an admiration for Santi because, she writes, “He wears life like a loose garment.”
“He wears life like a loose garment.” It is a delightful expression. You may have noted
the same character in your non-human companions: the utter absorption in the moment, the
expectation that good things are ahead, the sense that life is protective and enhancing, that
one can move easily within it. Dogs, in particular, along with “bears of very little brain,” have
the simplicity of the Uncarved Block, the Taoist virtue that Benjamin Hoffman ascribed to
Winnie the Pooh. This spiritual quality is the antithesis to the mood and slogan of the moment,
which is “resistance.”
Where justice and charity are not in evidence, resistance may be what God asks of us.
But I prefer to approach peace-seeking another way: through the practice of radical
acceptance. Moses shrinks from God’s call to demand the freedom of the Israelites, saying,
“Who am I that I should go to Pharoah?” As the story continues, Moses whines at God, “I am
not good at speaking. Please send someone else.” Moses resists. He pushes against
circumstance and against God, and he uses as an excuse his supposed short-comings. His
thinking that God’s demand is too hard makes it so. Moses understands neither who he is nor
who God is. But as he begins to move lightly within the garment that God has sewn for him,
he becomes powerful. By accepting the radical idea that we are created in God’s image to do
God’s work, we, like Moses, become capable of miracles, of holding back the waves of the sea,
of delivering an enslaved people to a land that is sweet and plentiful.
The Danish writer Isak Dinesen describes this way of being in her short story, “The
Dreamers.” It begins on a dhow sailing under a full moon along the coast of Zanzibar. A
famous storyteller called Mira Jama, whose ears and nose have been cut off in some past
suffering, explains “that what particularly pleases me about dreams…is this: that there the
world creates itself around me without any effort on my part.” When we fully inhabit and
respect ourselves as creations of God, we let go of our egos, and fear, then, becomes
something that is intense but not frightening. We exist as we do in dreams, trusting that
events that cause our hearts to pound will be resolved and marvelling at the beauty that
surrounds us.
In a moment of global cacophony such as seems to now be piercing our ear drums, I
feel an urgency to do something. I am sure that each of you feels that same urgency. But, like
Moses, I am intimidated by my short-comings and by the sense that I have no authority, that
what I can do will change nothing. To resist means merely to wear myself out. And so the
newspapers lie unread.
A couple of weeks ago, I called Parkway UCC in North Minneapolis. I had a futon
mattress and frame that I wanted to get rid of. I asked if the church could use them in order to
sleep the homeless people whom they serve with Families Moving Forward. Pastor Kathy Itzin
said to me, “We could. But we also have members who are living on the edge of
homelessness themselves who might want them. Let me put out the word.”
A week later, a man and his son came to my house and hauled away the futon and the
frame, and a rocking chair, too. They didn’t listen to me when I told them how to unfold the
frame and carry it up the stairs, and after they left, there were two, long gashes on the stairway
wall. And I was happy. I was happy in a way that I hadn’t been for a long time. By the grace of
God, I had extra to give away, and I had listened to a man tell me about the apartment that he
would be moving into, about how it was being coated with fresh paint, and about how his lady
friend had been wondering what she was going to sit on when she visited. I had met Lady
Friend, out on my driveway, and she had approved of the feel of the futon cover, and I had
witnessed the man’s satisfaction in furnishing a home for himself and a person whom he loved.
I stood, as in a dream, allowing the world to present me with an opportunity to change
someone’s life a little bit.
In one of A.A. Milne’s stories, a blustery wind knocks down the house that Owl lives in.
Afterwards, Rabbit passes around notices suggesting that all of the forest animals help search
for a new home for Owl. Eeyore, the depressive and largely anti-social donkey, takes earnestly
to the task and presents to Owl a new habitation—which is Piglet’s house.
“And then,” Milne writes, “Piglet did a Noble Thing, and he did it in a sort of dream…”
“‘Yes, it’s just the house for Owl,’ he said grandly.”
This is real world stuff, this need to care for people whose homes have been blown
down by the wind or flooded by rains or crumpled by tectonic shifts. Even if we are small,
fearful animals, we are capable of grand gestures if we trust God to put us in the circumstances
in which we have much to give.
I confess that, along with Garrison Keillor, I also like the depressive and largely antisocial
Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. Bergman closes his film Fanny & Alexander with a
toast given at a family dinner. I close with his words, which echo the Bible’s exhortation that
Jesus will return like a thief in the night, and that we must be ready:
“The world is a den of thieves, and night is falling. Evil breaks its chains and runs through the
world like a mad dog. The poison affects us all. No one escapes. Therefore let us be happy
while we are happy. Let us be kind, generous, affectionate and good. It is necessary and not
at all shameful to take pleasure in the little world.”
Amen.
Members, family and friends gathered to honor Mary Engelke, “mom of the church,” during her retirement celebration on Sunday, Sept. 24. Mary served EMC for nearly 25 years in service as custodian.
Members took turns sharing words of gratitude — thanking her for over-and-above service, her welcoming spirit, her extensive knowledge of the church, her caregiving of members and more.
When Mary wrapped up her service in May, she shared her work philosophy: “I have served not as a janitor but as a custodian, not just cleaning but taking custody of all God has entrusted to us with the church. We are all custodians in this way, called to care for the earth and its people in God’s name.”
Pastor Oby presented Mary with an angel necklace (Engelke means “little angel”) and a financial gift for her and her husband, Doug, from the congregation. We wish her well in all of her endeavors, and are glad she is staying on as a member and volunteer!
Since last spring, EMC members have been volunteering once a month at Perspectives, a 40-year-old nonprofit in St. Louis Park that takes a holistic approach toward helping mothers and their children.
“It’s an easy gig,” says one volunteer. “The kids show you the ropes, and you don’t need any real kitchen skills to participate.”
EMC volunteers spend three hours on site, working with Chef Dan and the children to prepare the dinner; then they all enjoy it together and clean up afterwards. Currently, members volunteer on the first Monday of each month, 3:30 to 6:30 p.m. Perspectives will be closed Monday, January 1, so EMC will not participate that day.
If this short-term opportunity sounds like a good fit for you, please contact the church office to volunteer: [email protected] or 952-926-6555. Sign up for one afternoon or several!
EMC’s Game Night—with a twist—is back by popular demand on Saturday, Nov. 4, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. And what could be more fun that indulging in desserts and playing Telestrations? Or Scrabble? Or whatever game is your favorite?
Whip up your best dessert for judging—or just come to eat and judge. Either works for us! And don’t forget to bring a game or two.
This event is for folks ages 13 and up, but babysitting can be provided by request ahead of time. (Tip: You may want to lay off leftover Halloween candy early in the day.) Please RSVP with the office, but if you forget, just show up. Hope to see you there!
All creatures—great and small, furry and fuzzy (and maybe even feathery)—are welcome at EMC’s Blessing of the Beasts, Sunday, Oct. 1, 2 to 2:45 p.m.
Plan to gather on the lawn for our first such event. We’ll meet other pets, laugh, sing, and give thanks for the blessing of animals in God’s world.
Photos of pets are welcome too if yours are unhappy travelers. Pastor Oby plans to bring Ruthie (pictured). Who will you bring? Hope to see you there!