First Church in Malden Blog

I remember attending Sunday School, but the only teacher I remember was Mr. Roaf (I think that’s how his name is spelled). Our class met in a small room in the little stone church, and back in the 50’s there were no bells and whistles. But Mr. Roaf had us fully engaged with Bible Baseball. It was his way of drilling information while giving us some of the fun of a game. I don’t recall a thing he taught, but I do remember he really seemed to like teaching us, and that meant something.

A couple of years later I was a Sunday School dropout (my mom had stopped volunteering as superintendent because she had started college (at age 40). I was unchurched until a junior high friend invited me to her youth group. In that church I found community and some opportunities for service, some friends, and some fun as well. And it was there that I found worship. I really tried to soak up the meanings in worship, and I loved the singing. Again, I can’t recall specific things I was taught in that experience. But praise for God, attention to Jesus’ teachings, discovery of scripture through the songs and anthems as well as in the Sunday readings, reminders of God’s providence and care, and calls to love God and neighbor were all elements of my nurture in faith.
An older couple, he approaching the latter years of his active ordained ministry, befriended me in college, and from them I learned about devotion – to one another and to God. I also began to learn about the connection between faith and justice, especially from his words and actions within church and community.

In my early twenties as a pastor’s wife in eastern Oregon I knew people who were rigid in their religious expression, people who were really liberal in theirs, and I also met people for whom Jesus Christ was a very real presence in their lives. Their language and approach may have been different from that with which I was familiar, but I saw something shine in their lives.

In my mid-twenties, back in Massachusetts, I discovered a couple who put their faith into action very simply and directly. They reached out to mentally challenged folks, they also made their home a Sunday-evening haven for me, they dealt fairly with friends and with strangers, they offered their time in their congregation;  they also took part in actively helping Laotian refugees. And the husband drove a school bus to Guatemala; it was a mission trip, and the bus was a gift.

Around that time I was in seminary and was blessed to have a professor who both taught about the disciplines of the Christian life and lived his faith through his expression not only in the classroom but in the pulpit and simply as a person. I had another professor who offered powerful, faith-filled preaching and who also sought to draw it out from his students. That professor also lived out the meaning of being a Christian friend.

In my late twenties I experienced encounters with a small group of Christians who awakened in me what has become a great love for God’s Holy Spirit. Serving as a pastor for the next thirty years led me to meet people in all stages of a faith journey. For some of them, talking about their relationship with God was something they did willingly and gently.

Teachers in faith. They may be in a classroom; they may be right in your household or extended family. Who are your teachers in faith? How have they brought you into relationship with God? How have they made Jesus real for you? How does the Holy Spirit shine through them to illuminate your own life’s journey?

One of my joys in ministry is participating in baptisms for people – of any age. I have been privileged to baptize someone as young as three weeks and more than one seventy-something. Rejoicing in the grace of God’s love for us, freely given before we can say or do anything, is a true delight. I appreciate that baptism is an act of the whole church, and that the congregation gives a response of love and support as a household of faith. In this we can remember again and again that this Christian journey is not a solo trek.

Coming up this month is the baptism of Anna Louise Ramsey. Her first participation in First Church was a prenatal appearance last December when Travis and Gisela portrayed Joseph and Mary in our Christmas pageant on the Fourth Sunday of Advent. Born last March, she attends worship pretty regularly. And on the day of her baptism, we will premiere a performance of a song her composer dad wrote especially for the service in which Anna would be baptized. Travis welcomed some words I wrote and tweaked them a little to come up with something that beautifully fits his composition. The title is “Spirit Dances in the Sails.”

I love the Holy Spirit. I may consider Spirit through any of the traditional imagery: dove/living water/wind/fire – but I must confess I really like my own picture of part dove and part phoenix (comforting but you also never know just when the firepower will happen to awaken you to something new). When we read “The Shack” last year, I was very drawn to Young’s depiction of the Trinity, with Sarayu as beautifully phasing in and out, feminine and flowing, wise and strong. And often when I think of Spirit’s calling to us, I imagine that we are called to dance, moving with the rhythm of life, gently or vigorously as the music unfolds, pausing even as a true dancer holds a creative pause, giving ourselves to the movement and grace that is God rather than forcing ourselves to control every motion, every direction in life.

When I was called to a settled pastorate at thirty, the minister filling in for my mentor (who was not able to preach the installation sermon) asked me, “Why do you think God called you to this church?” I suspect my answer was not the concrete vision he might have sought. I replied out of the blue, “I think I am called to help these people learn to dance.” To this day I am pretty sure that came from the Holy Spirit, because it certainly was not the kind of answer I would have given to attempt to please or impress this colleague! And while the end of that nearly thirty-year pastorate left me with some questions about whether I was still suited for ministry and whether I had been an effective leader, I do know that at least in the early years I did help them dance, did help them discover more of God’s love, Jesus’ living presence, and Spirit’s invitation.

As does any congregation, First Church in Malden has a unique set of challenges. As we consider any or all of them, may we remember that “Jesus guides us at the helm, God graces our life journey, Spirit dances in the sails.”

Yours in Christ,
Jamie Howard

Haven’t written for a few months…I think of myself as someone who doesn’t have much to say for a lot of the time, then a lot to say in a compressed amount of time if there’s a purpose behind the words. Even then, as an introvert, I am never quite sure that I have it “just right.” And as a person who has never really embraced debate because I never think I can effectively and successfully defend my position, I tend to keep my frustrations to myself. So, here’s to stepping out on a limb…

I have just attended the Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ. What do I feel about MACUCC Annual Meeting? I have never been a fan of meetings. Not a great attitude for someone so heavily involved in an institutional setting. I am glad the Conference meeting is compressed into one day; it fits people’s lifestyles. But it does remove the retreat/camp experience we used to have over a weekend at Mt. Holyoke College, with opportunities for resource workshops as well as resolution hearings, with communal introductions over meals in dorms, for leisurely browsing in the marketplace and germinating ideas, for worship that was a “time set apart.” A sense of immersing oneself in the wider church and in concerns beyond one’s own…immersion rather than sprinking…

Not that mingling worship right into business is a bad idea; it reminds us that our expression of faith and work should be in concert. But I experienced it as choppy and requiring continual reorientation of my attention to “what are we doing now/next?” And it lacked the connection to purpose, the inspiration, and the flow of the worship I had been part of in the “Celebrating Call, Celebrating Challenge” conference only a few weeks earlier. It was rather as if here we were trying to “do” church and back then we were “being” church. I am sure I probably am in the minority – and I do know that worship resides first of all within the spirit and attitude and energy one brings to it – but I didn’t experience the same energy around me that Saturday as I had at the previous gathering.

I do appreciate that laity and clergy still take time to wrestle with resolutions that call us to justice and compassion within and beyond the Commonwealth – and then seek to encourage local churches to follow through with their own actions – that’s a significant part of “being church.”

But I was saddened and discouraged by the upcoming retirement of an Associate Conference Minister whose work and style I have really appreciated – and the awareness that his position will not have a successor but a reworking and sharing of duties…and the farewell to an ACM whose tasks in church vitality will no longer be an officially funded position – a great irony in the face of so many churches needing revitalization.

In MACUCC we seem to be a little like a local church that struggles with its own identity: Cat? Collie? Garden? Ranch? Nation? (those used to be designations of types according to worship attendance figures…) And as we fuss more and more with institutional frameworks do we move farther away from people? The Lilly endowment for Clergy Excellence was a bright spot in recognizing that crying needs of pastors for support, encouragement, education, mentoring, nurture, self-examination. And I am glad that MACUCC folks will be supporting this ministry after the initial endowment is ended. But I think there still remains an elephant in the room: the relationship of the ordinary layperson (someone who is not an involved delegate) to “The Conference.” And it makes me think of the average local church member who may be more on the fringe of his/her church’s life, who perhaps does not know and is not known by many people in the church. That person may more readily speak of the local church as “the church” or “your church” to a pastor or lay leader, may more likely consider “the church’s” decisions or actions or projects as something removed from him or her.

Yes, we may need the wider institution to help keep us from becoming too parochial (pun intended), and to help point us to resources, but do we run the risk of losing sight of the persons behind the attendance number or the OCWM numbers or the names of local congregations?

I have no answers. And that makes me feel like, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” So do I even have a right to say what I have said?

I do know that it will be vital for this tiny congregation with whom I serve in transition to continue to work toward one of their expressed values: getting to know one another better, and another: learning how better to provide care for one another. As they grow in this and in their understanding and embrace of how God loves each and all of them, they will be strengthened for the work they need to do to connect with their community.

I do know that even though I cannot attend on any regular basis because of my work, the large congregation in Boston of which I am now a member cares to stay in touch and continually extends an invitation to a small area gathering – and that when I am able to be more involved I will have opportunities for service in the community and times of being in worship that will bring comfort, joy, and challenge. And that in some way – as “fringe” as I am – I am known.

How can we – in our churches little, big, in-between, and denominationally gathered – regain sight of and connection with the flesh-and-blood people who are the individual signs of Christ and who collectively are the hands and feet of Christ in their world?

          Yours in Christ,
          Jamie Howard

For related thoughts see the entry: “Speaking of Faith.”

What does it mean to share your faith? What do you do in a society that tends to place a very low premium on talking about “religion?” why is it so hard to talk about what you believe?

One of the handouts I offer during marriage preparation sessions provides discussion questions about what one believes. The list comes from David Heller’s book, Talking to Your Child About God, in the chapter titled: “Knowing Yourself Spiritually.” Some of the questions are: “List five of your most deeply held beliefs about God,” “How do your religious views differ from those of your parents?” “Can you recall a time in your life or an event during which you believed particularly strongly in the existence of God? What was it like?” “Can you recall a time of your life or an event during which you strongly doubted the existence of God? What was it like?” – there are many more. I encourage the couple to use these questions as just simple conversation starters, and to do so long before they have children. In this way they have some better understanding of one another and will not as readily throw any curve balls that surprise their beloved when their child starts asking questions about God and faith.

I do this, I tell the couple, because I believe people are even less likely to talk with one another about their faith than they are about money or sex. And I think that they will strengthen their relationship by sharing their beliefs in an atmosphere of genuine interest and acceptance. As they better know one another they will have a better feel for how to approach their child’s questions.

Why are we afraid to share with our spouse or partner, our brother or sister, our friend, even our companions at church? Are we fearful that we “don’t know enough” and will sound stupid – as if we were supposed to receive a massive inoculation of Biblical information in Sunday School that we will always have at hand in our memory banks? Frankly, I don’t remember much about Sunday School, and I dropped out in the fifth grade. Can we learn ways to converse about this very subjective topic, ways that provide spaces of acceptance and non-judgment to one another? When I have encountered people who are open and non-coercive about sharing their experiences of God, their own particular spiritual bent, their struggles and affirmations with respect to belief, my life has been enriched.

Try this:
Write your responses/thoughts/questions with regard to each of the following questions. Write as you might speak. Don’t fret over spelling or grammar. Don’t write as if the “journal police” will judge your work. Just write what you think and feel.

1)    What is your earliest picture/concept of God?
2)   How does it compare/contrast with your present view/understanding of God?
3)   What is your earliest picture/concept of Jesus?
4)   How does it compare/contrast with your present experience of or thinking about Jesus?
5)   What is your earliest picture/concept of the Holy Spirit? (don’t be surprised if you find it harder to think about this one – many people have not spent a lot of time learning about/responding to the Holy Spirit!)
6)   How does it compare/contrast with your present experience of or thinking about the Holy Spirit?
7)   Is there anyone in your life who you feel has had God shining through him or her, somehow been a real example of how God’s living presence? How would you describe this? In what ways did it comfort/challenge/encourage/enlighten/puzzle you?
8)   If you were asked to name some persons or groups through whom you think God is working in the world, who might they be? And how does their action reveal God’s nature, God’s kind of action?
9)   What outdoor places help you to meditate, to pray, to reflect? What kinds of things do they evoke regarding the nature of God?
10) Try the same thing with “indoor” places, humanly-created structures that give you a place of respite, calm, reflection, peace.

Such writing is a kind of personal testimony, a personal faith-sharing, that can not only be helpful to you – if you decided to share it in worship or in a small group setting, or written in the newsletter, it very likely would be a source of help to someone else. You might hear from that person, or you might never know you had helped him or her. But sharing your reflection is an act of a generous heart.

Yours in Christ,
Jamie Howard

When I was a child, Easter was the time I received a new dress, often new shoes, (and for a few years, hat and little white gloves!) There was church – but more importantly there was an Easter basket at home – with a chocolate bunny included! 

One of my best memories of Easter is coloring eggs with my dad. I was never as patient as he; consequently my eggs never had quite the “finished” look that his detailed engineer’s/designer’s eye and hand created. But he didn’t make fun of mine.

When I was in junior high, and newly attending the Methodist church to which a good friend had invited me, the church that became a center in my life till well into college, I was already immersed in discovering the meanings in worship by the time Easter came along. Then the special aspects of Easter were the scents and sights added to worship, the extra music (I enjoyed singing in the adult choir from sophomore year on), but most of all the Easter Dawn Service in the park across the street followed by a huge breakfast prepared and served by youth and adults. One year we even held an Easter vigil at the church from 3:00 p.m. on Good Friday till the Dawn Service; people signed up for hours to be at the church. I went with one of my youth group advisors at 3:00 a.m. to pray for an hour in the worship center set up in a room at church.

Easter became even more meaningful over the years as I learned about and participated in Maundy Thursday and Good Friday services. I took the journey with Jesus through the singing crowds with their mistaken expectations on into the encounters on the Temple precincts, the supper in the upper room — with his emphasis first on servanthood and washing his disciples’ feet, then on sacrifice and love in the meal – and the pain of betrayal and desertion, arrest and torture and mockery, and a cruel death and unceremonious burial.

Walking with him, realizing that he has walked all the painful roads we could know, makes the marvel of Easter shine even more brightly. Not only does God dwell with us in this life, but God’s loving power and powerful love bring us through death itself into a new life at which we can only wonder right now, “for we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.”

At its best, the local church reveals signs of this faithfulness, this steadfastness, this grace, this love, this hope. How we reveal God’s welcome to others, how we show Christ’s compassion in loving care and in mission, how we engage in action with the Holy Spirit’s remarkable power both to comfort but also to shake up what needs mending in our world – these are hallmarks of an Easter People.

God has given all for us, freely, without reservation, meeting us as we are yet through this transformative love calling us to become the very best and most fully alive human beings that we can be. So gifted, so graced – how can we keep from sharing that kind of healing presence in our world? 

The First Church in Malden, Congregational, United Church of Christ is on a threshold of new possibilities. Come share in the worship, the discovery, the mission, the service, the community (which means some fun as well as times of support!) – bring yourself, your questions, your affirmations, your voice, your hands, your skills, your financial gifts, your sense of humor, your vision, your tears in tough times and laughter in good times, your prayers in all times…Life in this community of faith can multiply our joys and divide our sorrows as we walk the road together with the One who has already walked it for us.
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Yours in Christ,
Jamie Howard

What does it mean to share your faith? What do you do in a society that tends to place a very low premium on talking about “religion?” why is it so hard to talk about what you believe?

In marriage preparation sessions one of the handouts I offer provides discussion questions about what one believes. The list comes from David Heller’s book, *Talking to Your Child About God*, in the chapter titled: “Knowing Yourself Spiritually.” Some of the questions are: “List five of your most deeply held beliefs about God,” “How do your religious views differ from those of your parents?” “Can you recall a time in your life or an event during which you believed particularly strongly in the existence of God? What was it like?” “Can you recall a time of your life or an event during which you strongly doubted the existence of God? What was it like?” – there are many more. I encourage the couple to use these questions as just simple conversation starters, and to do so long before they have children, so that they have some better understanding of one another and will not throw any curve balls that surprise their beloved when their child starts asking question about God and faith.

I do this, I tell the couple, because I believe people are even less likely to talk with one another about their faith than they are about money or sex. And I think that they will strengthen their relationship by sharing their beliefs in an atmosphere of genuine interest and acceptance. As they more deeply know one another, they will have a better feel for how to approach their child’s questions.

Why are we afraid to share with our spouse or partner, our brother or sister, our friend, even our companions at church? Are we fearful that we “don’t know enough” and will sound stupid – as if we were supposed to receive a massive inoculation of Biblical information in Sunday School that fixed us up for the remainder of our lives? Are we afraid to try because no one has ever modeled this kind of sharing for us? Do the perfectly good words “witness” and “testimony” freak us out because we think we have to sound like someone trying to put heaven into us by scaring the hell out of us?

What better place than in church — in a study group, a prayer gathering, or a worship service — to share the simplest of experiences of where you think you have seen God at work through another person or group, or times when you felt close to God (and what helped you get there) or far from God (and what helped you reconnect), or the different ways in which you have pictured God throughout stages of your life? That kind of sharing – by the people, for it is the people who are the church – helps us remember just what we are about as a community of faith.

What’s your story?

For related thoughts see the entry: “Speaking of Faith.”

As Interim Minister, I have been reading a fair amount about welcome, hospitality, mission field, revitalization, “turnaround,” and more. Books, articles, and workshops abound, many of them quite full of encouraging comments, interesting ideas, and considerable deflating of myths.

But no matter how many meaningful strategies a congregation might undertake, the bottom line is: “who are we as a church,”  “why are we together,”  “where do we see God in our lives and in our common life,” “what does it mean – in a very down-to-earth, practical, day-to-day sense — for us to follow Jesus Christ?”

In the materials and workshops – often to the dismay of the desperate participants – the word comes down: it’s not the ads, the articles, the posters…it’s the people. It is the warm welcome of guests on a Sunday with helpful follow-through in coffee hour and later in the week. It’s inviting an unchurched friend or acquaintance to join in an activity you both like (sailing, dinner and a movie, etc.) with other church members, each of whom has extended such an invitation to an unchurched friend he/she knows. You don’t “push church,” you simply have some good times together – and gradually it sinks in that several of you have in common your participation in your congregation – and if the invitees ask about it, you have an opening to speak about why you love your church.
It’s being people who can listen, who care to know who others are and how they are doing, people who are genuinely interested in getting better acquainted, people who believe that there is something meaningful in their lives by being part of a church of Jesus Christ.

Our whole reason for being “church” started out with attraction. People were drawn to Jesus, who spoke about God in ways that touched the longing and the questioning in their lives, who introduced them to a way of life so very different from the way the world always seemed to operate, who was so very present to each one that he or she caught a glimpse of what it meant that God indeed cared about him or her. Jesus didn’t sell or advertise or coerce – he invited, he attracted. And even when he spoke the hard word at times, somehow people still knew that they mattered to God, that it mattered what they did with their lives, that it mattered how they treated their neighbor.

If you believe that God really loves us, warts and all… if you believe that through Jesus you have a marvelous picture of just how loving – and challenging — and present God is…if you believe that God’s delightful and mysterious Holy Spirit longs to help us connect with God and one another…you have some powerfully attractive stuff going on inside you. And you are far better than any ad campaign or flashy program. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us”…that is our calling, too. Make it real.

I just read two articles on different topics through the United Church of Christ Keeping You Posted page: one about a middle-school essay winner and the other about President Obama. Susan Nar (Lay Ha Nar) from Thailand, now three years in America, is a seventh-grader whose articulate essay regarding how she supports The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy of peace, equity, and social justice won Elon University’s 2011 MLK, Jr. Humanitarian Essay Contest. An excerpt: “Individually we are just a drop of water but united we are an ocean. Together as one we can make a powerful wave.”

Susan loves to write, and she works at it every day, a terrific discipline for a growing writer.

President Obama, speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, spoke of how his and his family’s Christian faith has sustained them through hard times. And he begins his days with meditations from scripture and with prayer. (He also has welcomed various pastors into the Oval Office to pray with him.) A terrific discipline for a President.

It takes some practice to express oneself – whether in writing essays, or in prayer, or in talking about one’s faith. But the more one does it, the more readily the expression can come forth.

It’s a sad paradox that within the very place one should be able to express one’s faith we often feel reluctant, tongue-tied, embarrassed, “unworthy.” At least in lots of mainline churches – especially in New England – this can be so. A recent blessing has been the writing of Lillian Daniel and Tom Long and a few others on the gift of testimony, of taking simply about one’s faith.

Testimony is a loaded word for some people, conjuring up spectacles of Elmer-Gantry-style tent revivals. “That’s not our style, not our way!” they protest. And they’re right. Every person has a different story and a different set of gifts for sharing it. But – to reclaim the word, for it is a good and honest word – testimony is “bearing witness.” It’s saying what you have seen, experienced, known first-hand. It’s your story and not another’s, so no one else can tell you just how to express it. But maybe you simply need some questions to help you get started…

What if you were to ask yourself:

What is my earliest memory/ “picture” of God? Jesus? Holy Spirit?
How was I taught who God is? Jesus? Holy Spirit?
Did the teaching resonate within me, or did it not speak to what I had experienced?
Do I have a memory of some place where I really thought that God was present?
What did I think then? What was I feeling? Were others part of the experience, or was I alone?
Have I ever known anyone who really seemed to be full of a lively sense of the presence of God, who embodied some love, peace, compassion, sense of justice, mercy, listening, spacious hospitality for “the other” whether a friend or stranger?
Have I ever been engaged in something where I truly thought I was in sync with God, acting with the kind of love for neighbor that Jesus talks about?
In a time of great hardship or grief, have I ever experienced the presence of God?
Did it happen through another person, a place, some reading, or anything else?

Oh, if we could simply create for one another a welcoming place for such sharing! Truly listening to one another’s testimony, one another’s experiences in faith journey, can provide much encouragement and affirmation – both to the speaker and to the listener. And it can remind us all that none of us is alone.

Articles read:

Local girl wins MLK essay contest Middle schooler only “local” for 3 years
January 17, 2011 8:23 AM Molly McGowan/Times-News

Obama Discusses Faith at National Prayer Breakfast
Yahoo! News By JULIE PACE, Associated Press�
Thu Feb 3, 5:17 pm ET WASHINGTON

1/11/2011

If you could find someone whose speech was perfectly true, you’d have a perfect person, in perfect control of life.  A bit in the mouth of a horse controls the whole horse. A small rudder on a huge ship in the hands of a skilled captain sets a course in the face of the strongest winds. A word out of your mouth may seem of no account, but it can accomplish nearly anything – or destroy it! 

It only takes a spark, remember, to set off a forest fire. A careless or wrongly placed word out of your mouth can do that. By our speech we can ruin the world, turn harmony to chaos, throw mud on a reputation, send the whole world up in smoke and go up in smoke with it, smoke right from the pit of hell.

This is scary: You can tame a tiger, but you can’t tame a tongue – it’s never been done. The tongue runs wild, a wanton killer. With our tongues we bless God our Father; with the same tongues we curse the very men and women he made in his image. Curses and blessings out of the same mouth!. 

My friends, this can’t go on….You’re not going to dip into a polluted mud hole and get a cup of clear, cool water, are you?
                           James 3:2-12 The Message, by Eugene Peterson

The topic arose almost immediately upon news of the massacre that left ordinary citizens and civil servants wounded and dead in Tucson: Congress and the media stars right and left must “dial back the inflammatory rhetoric.” Almost as fast – at least in some arenas of talk radio — has been the effort to call such efforts “politically motivated.”

The spectre of focusing on mental illness as the primary cause of the violence causes more harm: it allows the already-uninformed further to demonize the mentally ill, and it allows all of us who claim no mental illness to be “off the hook” regarding any possible consideration of our own capacity to commit heinous deeds.

I am certain that persons far more articulate and knowledgeable than I have been and will be writing about this event. I simply feel the need to wrestle with it in my own way; maybe that small struggle will help someone else with his or her reflections.

I disagree with those who would say that marking with cross-hairs on a map and saying “Don’t retreat – reload!” – or doing anything else that is a rough equivalent of expression — is harmless. Nor would I say that it is a direct cause of the Tucson massacre or necessarily any other violent event. I come from a religious tradition that holds in its roots the power of words; long before Jesus’ time there existed the belief that the word has real power, was in essence that which it signified. And not for nothing do Christians proclaim those words of John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God…” Not for nothing were covenants solemnly spoken in presence of witnesses.

And one would hope that not for nothing are vows and pledges made in presence of assembled companies of families or friends. Yes, they are often broken – but even to use the word “broken” implies that there was some deeper intended strength and meaning, and to experience their brokenness is, for anyone with a shred of conscience, a source of pain even if the circumstances were extenuating.

It seems, though, that even when we give some nod toward the importance of public words – be it at a wedding, a swearing-in, an Eagle Scout Court of Honor – in our larger everyday discourse we do not hold words (ours or other people’s) in such high regard. How easy it is to take the soap-opera way out and say one thing while dong another in order to achieve some imagined gain. How easy it is to talk about another person behind his or her back. How easy it is to lay verbal judgment upon someone. How easy it is to make grand pronouncements without ever having bothered to look up the facts or truly listen to something longer than a sound bite.

I do believe that we have to recover civilly conducted discourse. I do believe that members of the House and Senate and the Executive Branch (I like to think that the Judicial Branch already works hard at this…) have to lead the way, model for the rest of the country, model especially for the people who run their various political parties. I do believe that it’s not simply up to our leaders to do this; it is the urgent task of every single man, woman, and child in this nation.

“…but words will never hurt me” ends the taunting rhyme. How wrong. Oh sure, you can make the effort to rise up above someone else’s name-calling, but can you really say you are never hurt – or that others close to you are not affected? If you have attended a town or religious or other institutional meeting that has disintegrated into shouting and mudslinging and labeling, has it not given you pause about the town or faith community or groups or club you had thought was such a good thing in which to take part?

It almost seems as though speaking civilly (or having positive political advertisements or reporting “good” news or having uplifting dramas or comedies on TV) has become boring – or perhaps even more telling, unprofitable. When did strength and power become equated with who can be nastiest first?

I don’t have any big answers. I know where I can start: with myself. My dad said we were given two ears and one mouth, so we should listen twice as much as we speak.

Something is missing: simple respect that transcends political divides, true vision that chooses to search for ways to look in a common direction, deep humility that silences the desire to boast by downgrading another.

What are you willing to work on to help to revive it?

Yours in Christ,
Jamie Howard

I barely recall being part of a Christmas pageant in the little stone Congregational church in Raynham – but I think we did have one. The Methodist church I attended as a teen: I don’t think we had a Christmas pageant, although we did do lots of other neat music/tableau kinds of presentations outside of worship. During my nearly thirty full years in Bedford our Minister of Music wrote countless Christmas pageants, generally with a particular point of view from one of the principals, or occasionally from a “visitor,” and supplemented by numerous choral anthems and special lighting. I watched second-generation involvement happen there; one-time little angels now had their own children with wings and haloes.

Here in Malden we’ve pulled out costumes and are preparing them for Sunday’s drama with music. It’s the same old story – girl finds out she’s pregnant, guy stands by her, a hard road trip with no immediately available lodging at its end, stable, baby is born, shepherds are startled by angels and go to check out what they’ve been told… 

But taking a cue from our Advent sermon series, the title is called “Walk in Hope,” and one jaded twenty-first-century person discovers something new to take away from the tale in the “dream” that comes to her.

I hope those who attend will receive the story in a new light, too.

Because it’s not just about a baby and an unusual set of circumstances around his birth. It’s about the transformation in the people who are connected with him, one way or another. It’s about the times we let ourselves be open to making some new choices.
Same old story – but ever-new opportunities for those with open ears and eyes and hearts and minds…

Yours in Christ,
Jamie Howard