The Voices of St. Johns Youngstown

I am thankful for Rebekah’s peace. I am thankful for her glimpses of first love. I am thankful that she has weathered an adult-sized storm in six short weeks.

Two funerals in the space of three weeks.

A drug overdose: a young mother. Mother to Rebekah’s best friend. A death we foresaw, but shook our world. The best friend stays at our house the day after her mother died. Rebekah’s love for her friend permeated our home and held us up.

A suicide: a sixteen-year-old boy. Rebekah’s social media crush. She met him once. But she connected and was taken aback that he found her beautiful, even sexy. He talked to her the night he died. Rebekah’s probably the last voice he heard. And again, she loved. She offered him love. She pleaded and said “please don’t” and “I care for you.” Her love tragic, futile, maybe. But she carried him in love to his end.

The funerals are full of words. Words dwarfed by grief. Grief mingling with Rebekah’s love.

And now a first love: for my daughter, Rebekah. Her love mirrored back by a boy that holds her hand.

I captured this moment last fall in Northern California while on vacation. I watched several surfers stand for long periods of time watching the water. Often in groups chatting and laughing but watchful of the water. Always watching. Since I grew up 30 miles from Youngstown, I had absolutely no idea why they were watching the water so intently and I was curious. So, I asked a very young surfer why everyone appeared to be watching the water. He responded with a very detailed answer about tides, rocks, current, and crowd. I got lost in his answer somewhere around his tide explanation. He must have noticed my confusion and simply stated, “Waiting for the wave”. AH! Waiting for the wave! I got it! Maybe.

As I waited for the sun to set, I dug my toes into the sand and my thoughts began to wonder. I thought about waiting for the wave. I thought about how many other elements made riding the wave a perfect ride. I thought about  waiting. Waiting for everything to be just right to take that chance. I thought about my own life and how many times I’ve waited for everything to be perfect before I took a chance. I thought about how many missed opportunities I’ve had because nothing is ever perfect.

The setting sun brought me back to reality. I started to photograph, well, I tried to start snapping photos of the setting sun but the surfers were in all my shots. Gathered in various groups all chatting, laughing, and having a great time together. I was witnessing community on the beach in Northern California during the most beautiful sunset. Wow! Talk about a wave! I missed home in that moment. I missed my community. I missed my friends. I missed St. John’s, where everyone is welcome and loved. We all may be waiting for our wave or waiting for the perfect conditions to take a chance or not  but we are all doing it together. I couldn’t ask to be in a better place than right here in Youngstown Ohio.

Please tell your daughters God is not a man.

Please tell them that God believes they are precious and beloved and important.

Please tell your daughters they are created in God’s very image and are perfect and beautiful as they are in this moment, and that they have inherent dignity.

It is our daughters that I am worried about as the chaos explodes in the Senate. Our daughters, many of whom have been sexually assaulted themselves, many of whom statistically will be in their lifetime, are hearing that a woman’s violation and pain do not matter, are not politically expedient. And this will damage them.

So I don’t want them to lose God. I don’t want them to mix God up with politics or power or old white men. I don’t want them to think even for a moment that God thinks it is OK for them to be hurt, demeaned or publicly humiliated. I don’t want them to think that God in any way has made them less.

It is a tragedy that they have to witness their government doing that. Hopefully that will make our daughters determined to vote, to change things, to be the powerful people that they are. I hope they are furious enough to demand better.

But to do that, they will need the unconditional and eternal love that God offers them. They will need a community who will stand with them, lift them up, pray for them and cheer them on.  They will need a community that will not always agree with them, and so teach them how to reconcile. They will need a community that understands that investment of passion and compassion is never a failure.

Our image of God is critical. It forms and informs us. So please teach your daughters that God is love, which isn’t as easy to conjure up a picture for as a human being, but is a force that cannot be stopped or thwarted. Teach them to fill themselves up with that love, which God offers us every second. Teach them to use that love as fuel to work for justice and the dignity of every human being.

After this week it should be clear that we need our daughters to change the world. So let’s give them what they need to do it. And stand with them as well.

There is something about the walls of a church. They seem to be steeped in prayer. Holding the hopes and dreams and sorrows of hundreds of people over the years. The prayer radiates, captures you, invites you to add your own. The walls are solid, safe, and able to handle whatever your prayer concerns might be.

I felt the solidness and comfort of church last Sunday as I accompanied a bus load of people on a church art tour. We visited 7 churches in 3 hours, with a camaraderie that comes from the wonder and excitement of exploration. At each site we heard about the history of the church building and looked at the art, architecture, stunning stained glass, and statuary.

People were entranced. Each church was lovely and holy and inviting. The stained glass was especially radiant. But for me, it was always the walls. Sometimes painted, sometimes stone. Sometimes covered in icons, sometimes deeply polished wood. I wanted to touch them, to lean on them, to be held up in the best way. And they were ready for whatever I needed.

God is in those walls. God is our grounding and our support. God is ready to meet our every need. And while God resides in all places, always waiting for us, there is something about a place created to honor God that is holy and comfortable.

The walls of St. John’s are always available.

Most mornings at varying times I find myself driving down Logan and Andrews Avenue. From my house there are 3 lights I have to pass through on my way to church. The first light I almost always get through, the third as well.  The second is a three way light so I almost never make that one. If I make all 3 lights and go just slightly over the speed limit, I can make it to church in about 5 minutes. I consider it a good day when I make 2 out of 3.

However…I find it very irritating when other people do not take those lights seriously. As in they go right through the red, especially light number 3. There I am, sitting there like a good citizen and waiting for green, and cars drive around me to go through the light!  Especially if it is early in the morning. It irks me. Secretly I want to drive through those lights too.  But it is simply unsafe. So I wait and build up road rage at those who do not.

I am not a rule follower.  You may be laughing right now if you know me. I am selective about rules. They have to make sense, be justice based and convenient for me to pay much attention. But some rules are about safety. And while I am in as much hurry as the next person, I still observe the stop lights.

On good days I try to imagine that the transgressor is rushing to the side of a dying parent, or something.

The other day I was sitting at one of those lights contemplating my options when I realized that I had to love the person going through the light, and the person I was trying to protect by not going through that light equally.  They were both my neighbor, someone I had to love as much as I loved myself. Someone I had to treat like I would want to be treated. Not that the rule breakers should not be held accountable.  But that I couldn’t hate them.  Or want to be like them.

I think I will be working on this for a long time.

i did not hear my Summer pass

the faintest rustle

in the grass

one moment

i had turned away

to search for what

i cannot say

an errant paperclip perhaps

a thought

misplaced

on crumpled scraps

so now

i follow

hard and fast

i cannot let my Summer pass

i shall know her by the Frost

for who can bear

a Summer lost

karen

I was recently travelling on 80 through Indiana and I stopped at a rest stop for obvious reasons. I am a patron of Starbucks and I needed to refresh my caffeine supply. So I got in line and checked my phone and after a few minutes realized I hadn’t moved, and that the person in front of me was highly agitated.

The staff there was clearly inexperienced (I am being nice). They were trying, all 3 of them, to negotiate an unusual method of payment on their register, and as they explained in a way that made no sense what was happening, the person in front of me was turning shades of red. Finally the crisis passed and more orders were taken.

But by then the line was long, they didn’t know how to work the microwave, not sure about how to make some of the drinks. Painfully slowly the very long line moved along. There was a young woman, obviously a college student travelling with her family, who was waiting the longest. Her father kept encouraging her to complain, and her response was “I trust the system.”

All of the older adults knowingly rolled their eyes. Trusting the system. Nope. Never a good idea. In the end it turned out there were three of us waiting for a chai we had each ordered in a particular way. The barrista managed to make a chai that none of us had ordered. I took it, told the barrista about the patient and trusting young woman, and made a run for it.

And as my passengers snoozed I thought about trust, and trusting systems, and how much I admired the faith and hope of that young woman. I do not trust the system, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I also think we have to be savvy evaluators, and use our Christian values as a litmus test to every situation.

So when I am determining, discerning, the good of a situation, I am holding up Gospel values—is this situation life-giving, compassionate, respectful of all people? How would I behave if Jesus were there? Is there a victim, and if so, how do we advocate for those who are being hurt? I wanted to say to that young woman, have your wonderful attitude, and be open to intervening for justice. Or in this case, her overdue chai.

Recently I was at a training on Nonviolent Communication. When we think of violence we usually think of physical violence, but emotional violence has an even more insidious impact, and many times that is spoken. We call names a lot in our culture, and that is getting more and more brutal. We have to be careful about the spiritual damage we do to ourselves when we are violent to others.

However I have been thinking about the violence we do to ourselves. We do not take very good care of ourselves most of the time. We overwork. We don’t sleep enough. We worry. We eat too many carbs and drink too much of things that are not good for us. We are constantly evaluating ourselves against others—do I look better, am I smarter, am I nicer, do I have more overachieving children????  You can tell me you don’t do this, but on some level I would bet you do.

What I would like us to pay attention to is how we talk to ourselves. Not do you mumble about where you left the remote or yell at the radio news when there is no one else in the car. I am referring to how you refer to yourself. Example-when I was mad at myself I used to call myself cat-tastrophe.  Get it?  Last name Catinella? Clever right?  Sometimes I was even more blunt, idiot being my preferred slight to myself.

At some point I realized that calling myself names wasn’t helpful. In fact, it didn’t motivate me, it just made me feel worse. I know when I have screwed up. What I need, from myself, is the belief that I can do better. And with God’s help all things are possible.

Now I don’t really call myself anything, but I do try to give myself positive messages and self talk. “You can do it. It will go better next time. You can feel appropriately proud of what you have just accomplished.” I try to acknowledge, usually pray for, other people who have helped me, inspired me, motivated me. In general I try to encourage my best self.

And it really does make a difference. I encourage you to pay attention to how you talk to yourself, how you refer to yourself, and make sure you are being as healthy and positive as possible. God resides within us, and we can engage God in helping us be a sign of love in the world. We have to love ourselves first though.

Lauren’s Song

the light has passed

but green is evident

and gold

and the stop sign

at the end of the road

the neighbor girl is singing

barefoot on the grass

“alleluia

alleluia”

karen

The room was empty, except for this prayer card taped to the wall. Somehow in the emptiness she beckoned me from the dark hallway. Come pray with me for a second. Come reflect on the gravity of finding me in this lonely space.

I walked across the now empty patient room, broken glass crunched under my feet, smashed light fixtures hung from the walls, paint peeled in long strips from the ceiling, an empty broken place and yet there she was, waiting.

Without thinking, I crossed myself and recited her prayer. A prayer I learned so long ago in grade school was instantly escaping from my lips.

Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed are thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus.
Holy Mary Mother of God,
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Amen.

Never did this prayer have more weight than in those few moments, standing alone in an abandon Veterans Hospital. I prayed for whomever had taped her to the wall. I prayed that they were healed, recovered, or at peace. I prayed for our broken world and the things we leave undone or abandon.

I reached out and touched Mary’s face. I thought about liberating her from this space. Yet, I resisted the urge to peel her from the wall and take her home. It didn’t feel right to leave her to be destroyed when this building is demolished in a few short months. Yet it didn’t feel right to remove her. This was her home, her sacred space, where she provided comfort to a veteran.

I walked out of that room feeling the power that our faith tradition bring us through prayer. I felt the comfort that only God can bring to us when we are truly lost in an empty, lonely place. I felt a connection to the veteran that stayed in that room. All from a prayer card taped to the wall. A solid reminder that we, as Christians, are all one.