Five weeks ago, I also came with oils to be with someone I love dearly. My father was hospitalized and seemed to be improving. Dad was fighting an infection that the doctors were struggling to find the source of, and so I decided to anoint his chest over the place where I understood his pacemaker to be. (One proposed culprit.) I rubbed scented oil on Dad, looked him in the eyes and said I loved him, and then left with my brother who drove me to the airport. I was just through security and standing at my gate when my mother called and told me to come back to the hospital. He was dying.

Commendation of the Dying is a beautiful rite in our Lutheran tradition. I’ve prayed it over many beloved people in my years as a pastor. It takes on a completely new meaning when a pastor prays it over your Dad. And that was the gift given to us on that Wednesday morning. Dad was truly going over the final threshold. His pastor prayed, we clung to each other, and we sobbed when he finally died.

Later, processing the day, my mother would tell me, “Well, Liv: you anointed him.” As if to say, you helped him be ready. You gave permission. He was all set.

I’ve run through a couple scenarios about this in which I respectfully dispute this interpretation my actions with the Good Creator, or try to clarify just what I was trying to do with that oil. Excuse me, God. That ritual gesture was for healing, not for blessing at the time of death. Maybe you misunderstood…point of order!

But oil is oil and blessing is blessing. They have intentions of their own, and magic that goes deeper than our understanding. It is said that rituals are messages we give ourselves about ourselves. What was I telling myself in that act of blessing my Dad? I may need years to discover that.

Mary Magdalene helped me be gentle to myself about all this today. She came to a place of death thinking she would caretake and bless in the context of pain, loss, and grief. What she met was the miracle of new life that comes after death. I came to a place of healing thinking I would help heal. What I met was the reality that death has its own timing, grace, beauty and pain. And even there, the whispered promises of new life in Christ speak.

Embodied spiritual practices are deep, sacred, and sneaky. You can think you’re going about one thing and then they slip, bend, slide and change. Sometimes the Spirit at work in them knows more of what you need than you do.

The oil blend with which I blessed my Dad was called “Joy.” It was a mix of citrus and floral oils. I don’t yet feel joy over his death. But I do have faith in the eternal joy to which he is forever gathered and that awaits all creation in the embrace of the Creator. Gathered to a table with a host who will call us all by name, and we will recognize love. On Saturday, we will gather at a table that anticipates the eternal one, gathering under the banner of thanksgiving and joy to commend my Dad to God. We will grieve, cry, feel big feelings and sing our hearts out. Unexpectedly, and with the surprise of Jesus-as-the-gardener, there will be joy in the promise of new life.

Thank you, Dad.

I pledge allegiance
to the forest:
nurse log, arrow leaf, ponderosa—
and to the rainbow of life
for which it stands
one breath, undergirding
the health and wellbeing of all.

I pledge allegiance
to the water
of the font where I was baptized
and to the scented oil tracing the holy sign,
the cross upon my forehead,
one calling, unbroken
with love breaking open for all.

I first heard about hermit crab poetry around the time that I began jumping in the river regularly. My understanding of it is that you borrow a well-known form, the way a hermit crab borrows a shell for his house, and bring in your own words to create the poem. I wrote several a Hail River prayers, borrowing the form of the Hail Mary. Though I would use them as I plunged, thanking the river for its bracing, life-giving cold, when I thought about sharing them I worried that it would sound like I was making fun of the Hail Mary rather than reinterpreting it.

I guess I don’t feel as protective of the pledge of allegiance! (wink)

Would you join me today in playing with the pledge? What do you feel reverent toward? What do you put your faith in? Add those signs and symbols to create a pledge that is true to your heart and home and spiritual practice.

And please share what you create!

Here is one more. Four for the Fourth.

I pledge allegiance
to the fire
of the creative spark of humanity
and to the freedom
for which it burns
one fellowship, an inner collective
with hope and possibility for all.

Go make imperfect, playful art today, friends. And get in that river!

Later on I was sharing this experience with my sons, voicing my disdain for “Claude,” and realized that I’d rather talk to Clod, a chunk of dirt. We chuckled.

And then I realized, wait, yes! That’s just it. That really is my desire, my practice, my path. I want to get in the dirt. To speak to the soil, the trees, the river water. I don’t need to spend my time on a crusade against machines. I do need to give time and attention to the land, the air, the waters, and my own earthy-watery body. This is the core of my spirituality.

St. Augustine said that our bodies are the dirt we carry around. I don’t think that’s a negative image. We are soil that is animated in a particular way for a handful of years and then when our journey is completed, we return to the earth. Clod. Our neighbor. My buddy.

What do you discover when you go into the woods? What do you remember when your hands touch dirt?

I’ve been cheering when artists and creators push back against AI by using those letters to signify other things. Artistic Intelligence, for example. I loved a campaign promoting Human Intelligence, HI, inviting folks to hand draw a greeting and share it to “say HI.” With those examples in mind, I’m promoting Arboreal Intelligence. We need a return to the wisdom, stories, and deep knowledge that resides in the forest. My kind of AI!

Here are some lessons I have encountered by getting close to dirt, trees, and rivers.

1. Storms come. Disasters of one kind or another test our roots. Sometimes we are tossed about. Sometimes we find that our roots are deeper than we knew, and we not only survive the tempest but we blossom in the aftermath.

2. Dirt is healing. Literally packed with life saving microbes. Thanks, Clod! It turns out there is a reason we feel better after working in the garden. (Isn’t it funny when western science gives us data to prove a truth that folks have known all along?)

3. Death and resurrection is real, and is the way of all life. Nothing is lost in the ever turning cycle of bloom, fruit, rot, breakdown, nourish, renew. This will be my story as well. It is my story.

Of course it’s one thing to note these pieces of wisdom, this “AI.” It’s another thing to live by them.

This Sunday, June 7, is the commemoration of Chief Seattle in our Lutheran calendar. However, the city named for this incredible leader—one who continually taught about the interconnectedness of all things, the sacredness of the soil and water, and the absurdity of capitalist ideas like owning land—is going about the removal of homeless folks who live in its streets in preparation for the World Cup. It may have already begun to happen. Cities closer to me, in central and eastern Washington, are receiving these displaced persons. Is there aid? Is there shelter? I don’t know.

Clod says it’s a dumb idea. And mean. I agree. And I think we are prone to inhumane treatment of our neighbors and ourselves when we go too long without getting in the dirt. The best of our theologies remind us of our dirt-ness, our humility. Humus. Earth stuff. Clod reminds us that we aren’t better or worse than any other earth creature. We might as well find a way to live in kindness.

What does the dirt look like where you live? What does it say?

I wish you a weekend full of dirt, bark, leaves, blooms and pine needles. Even if the pollen makes you sneeze. What a gift to have air in your lungs!

Earthy blessings, riparian friends.

Melanie Demore was opening worship at a conference on liturgy a few years ago and led the assembly in this rousing song. It’s understandably gotten popular in the Singing Resistance movement currently. It captures that most attractive kind of truth: a simple image that holds something profound. When we are most beset by challenges, fears, and griefs, we begin to move by putting one foot out in front and shifting our weight forward. Walking. That basic human activity.

When I became a mom, my own mother didn’t present herself as a fountain of motherly advice or source of wisdom. Even though she is that in spades. But she did tell me about two actions to turn to when an infant is unconsolable:

• go outside, or

• put them in water.
  
  I found this worked beautifully to help my struggling new-mother heart. And it greatly helped my children. I find it helps us adults too. Stressed to the ceiling? Go outside. Crying without stopping? Take a bath or jump in the lake. And a good mash up of the two practices is to go for a walk beside the river. Something about the quality of the air and the feel of water on your face is enough to change how we are carrying our pain, fear, or stress.

  

The phrase “It is solved by walking” is attributed to St. Augustine and a few others. It’s pretty darn good. And here I offer it as a frame around some hefty news I have to share about my life: my spouse of twenty years and I have ended our marriage. We discerned this last fall, filed for divorce initially in December, began living apart in the spring, and finalized things this past April. Actually on Maundy Thursday, April 2nd.

We have been walking this road together, amicably and peaceably. I am deeply grateful for Casey’s dedication to nonviolent practice. It is very much informing how we’re going about this parting, even as it is filled with grief and painful changes. Our stories of how we came to be here on the path, when neither of us sought this path, are different. But I respect him and I sense his respect for me. And that is a great gift.

We have also journeyed into new dwelling spaces, and soon we will say a really difficult farewell to the house (and memories and life) we inhabited for 18 years along Stone St in northeast Spokane. I ask your prayers for that transition, especially for our two children. But walking out is also walking in, and both of us are gradually walking into new neighborhoods and new patterns. I have found joy in a small house with an upturned yard due to a sewer line needing to be replaced. In the mostly dirt back yard, I built a labyrinth:

Many moons ago, I built a much bigger labyrinth as my internship project in southwestern Virginia. (Hi, Ed and Ellen!) That summer was the first summer of my marriage. It feels poetic to be returning to the spiritual practice of walking labyrinths as my life changes in this way again.

What challenges are you walking through, friends? What are you carrying to the river’s edge and asking for help with? Where are your feet taking you, one foot in front of the other? Is love leading you?

Again, though this particular path was not one I planned to traverse in life, I have found that I’m not alone, and certainly not bereft of God’s presence and care. Friends and family have been amazing. Prayer is powerful and felt. Thank you. Community matters and I experience it every day.

No matter what, let’s walk this walk as a body, together. And lead with love.

Riparian blessings dear ones.

Liv

Early Monday morning, I was one of four parent chaperones who joined a bold teacher and travelled with sixteen fourth graders (the most awesome fourth graders around, if I may say so) from Spokane, Washington to Camp Killoqua, north of Seattle. We were on our way to participate in an event called the Coastal Salish Cultural Sharing and Potlatch, an educational retreat offered to Waldorf schools across the Pacific Northwest. Elders from several coastal peoples guided about 300 students and their adult partners through three days of activities, beginning and ending each day with blessings, drumming, and singing. Groups rotated between activities like weaving and painting, or canoeing and games, or storytelling and native flute playing. In all things, we were continually reminded of our deep connection to all living things, the sacredness of creation, and the preciousness of life itself.

I realize that bunking with fourth graders and going without a shower for three days isn’t everyone’s definition of a good time, and may not be how everyone remembers the preciousness of life. But it was for me. I deeply enjoyed the experience and I am filled with gratitude. I especially liked being an Orca for two days. To organize 300 students from twelve different schools, the hosts sorted us into “clans.” Wolf, Bear, Eagle, Raven, Otter and Orca. Three children from our school were also sorted into the Orca clan with me, and we quickly bonded over it. “Fins up!” I’d shout, and we’d put our elbows together in a gesture of togetherness. (Shout out to L, T, and D in case your parents read this. We rock!)

It is truly a sacred thing to be granted the trust of a child, especially a child who isn’t biologically “yours.” And yet wasn’t that one of the lessons of this experience? All children are mine, in that we are connected. I am responsible. I am blessed to be in relationship with everything alive. And everything around me is alive. So, not simply because I was given a cool wooden name tag with “Orca” written on it in permanent marker, but also because I am here in this moment, breathing air, jumping in water, relating to my kindred, I am Orca. I am Salmon. I am Cedar. I am whatever little creatures the salmon eat.

Author and artist Sondra Segundo of the Haida nation shared her clan’s crest of the double finned Orca and the story behind it. Storytelling formed the backbone of this gathering. You could see the meaning making happening in the eyes of the children, and later around the campfire, they connected the power of stories to how elders pass down wisdom, how cultures relate to the land and to each other, how communities handle conflict. I was humbled at the wisdom of these young “elders.” How open their hearts were to growth and to learning. How their curious faces shimmered with the dancing glow from the fire.

Being sorted into the orca clan was a gift to me in another way: Orca are among a handful of mammals on planet earth who, along with humans, experience menopause. Recently I encountered a meme that cried, “Whoever decided that perimenopause should coincide with the fall of American democracy is just rude.” Oof. Yep! I feel that for sure. At 46, I can feel myself stepping into another season of life. I’m not going to create anymore little cubs or calves who will grow into fourth graders. I am blessed to walk with my two children as they grow and change, as they discover their sacred connection to all things. And I’m really blessed to experience all the ways they remind me of my own sacredness. Orca is a witness to the gift of aging, memory, and wisdom.

Fins up, friends. Yes, the world is scary. Yes, we are up against big challenges and our hearts easily despair. But this life is precious and this world is gorgeous, filled to the brim with wonder and beauty. Creator placed us here to attend this wonder and beauty. To protect and revere it. And to see the sacred light in each other. Annie Dillard once wrote that as we walk this earth, our left foot says, “Glory!” and the right foot replies, “Amen!” With our fins or our feet, may we join the chorus of praise and gratitude.

Lent offers many spiritual practices that help us move into the lengthening days with gratitude and peace. Silence is one of them. Silently noticing the snow drops pushing up through soil. Keeping silence as we breathe deeply of air that is tinged with a little more warmth. Quietly standing in awe of the sunsets over the Spokane River occurring a little later in the evening each day. Thank you, God of silence.

This past Tuesday I was blessed by another sort of silence. It took me by surprise, stirred my emotions, and led me to give thanks and praise. Let me explain:

For all of the time that I have served in my denomination’s regional office (I am part of the Northwest Intermountain Synod staff, in ELCA language), I have passed by a large blue-grey oxygen machine when I enter our synod office, and usually I step over a green tube carrying this oxygen to its user. Our Lutheran office is housed within the Paulson House, a beautiful space owned and maintained by the Episcopal diocese of Spokane and where they also have their office space. It is a great gift to share this space, body and soul.

On Tuesday, the oxygen machine was silent. Turned off. Kaput.

I stood in the foyer, looking at it, and because I’m a liturgy nerd I began to wonder what the proper ritual might be to bless and de-comission such a machine. I also felt waves of joy and gratitude. This machine was no longer running, it’s motor gone quiet, because its user for the last several years no longer has need of it. Bishop Gretchen Rehberg has been waiting for a double lung transplant for a long time. This past weekend, she received the gift of lungs and has successfully undergone surgery. We are surrounding her in prayer as she recovers. And though she’s not even my bishop, in working closely with her and being in the space with her, seeing this machine that helped ensure her ability to wait so long finally go silent was the most subtle and beautiful and sublime image of resurrection. She is my friend. And she is breathing on her own.

Here I’m going to break a Lenten fast and shout, ALLELUIA!

Singing hymns, laughing loudly, playing instruments, praying, cheering…all these are ways we praise God. And yet here it was the lack of sound that invited me to praise God and give thanks. This quiet machine reminded me about the gift of silence. And that I need to keep silence intentionally. My life is far too full of machines that are not bearing oxygen to keep me alive but if anything cause my breathing to become shallow with stress. Time to turn them off.

On the other hand, creation is abuzz, literally. The insect world is waking up, along with the flowers and trees and silly marmots. The river makes more noise as it burbles and bends. I love that. And I love the gift of quiet. We open the Nicene Creed by lauding the God of all that is “seen and unseen.” Perhaps we must also regard and revere the God of all that is “heard and unheard.” Keeping purposeful silence helps me do this. And helps me welcome sounds of new life.

After all, life is springing forth from death in a thousand ways I cannot sense. What miracles lie in the quiet places? I may never know. How amazing. Join me in sitting beside the river, silently observing the flow of water and the restoration of everything.

Thanks be to God for healing mercies and sacred silence. Riparian peace be with you.

Also, Tom wears hats. I think I want to bring back hats. You?

We’re reading about Bombadil and Goldberry during the season of Lent, a time of deepened spiritual practice with a focus on remembering our baptismal identity and the communal baptismal call of the body of Christ. This year, I’m taken by the verbs featured in these practices: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, heal the wounded, visit the sick, bless the dying.

All these Lenten verbs move toward our neighbor, not away. They are words of connection. Of offering. Words that make our bodies tilt forward in a gesture of neighborliness.

Contrast these action words with the toxic verbiage of war. Defend, strike, stockpile, attack. Making our land safe is one thing. But annihilating other lives in order to achieve that safety is a violation of what it is to be a connected human being.

Yet this fear-based language seeps into our bloodstreams. It pumps through our hearts. Only a God merciful enough to regard a broken heart would care to help us….
Thankfully, “a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Psalm 51.

What’s so amazing about Tom Bombadil is his persistent, unaffected joy. He is playful in all circumstances. He sings at all times. His purpose is always clear: serve the harmony of the forest and return to my Lady Goldberry. Outward service, inward contentment. So much so that when he encounters the evil Ring, a ring with powers so strong even the famous wizard Gandalf balks, Tom twiddles it like cereal-box-prize jewelry. Like a meaningless plastic decoder ring. Yet it decodes nothing for him. It doesn’t hide Frodo from his gaze either: the ring simply doesn’t work in his presence.

That’s the posture I seek to inhabit in these times, friends. That’s the Lenten discipline I want to make last all year long. To cultivate a spirit so playful, so soulful, that all the stupid tricks of the capitalist enemy will seem as silly gimmicks to me

There is a person I know who inhabits his life this way. Who playfully manages challenges and who lovingly remains true and dedicated to the things he believes in: my younger brother, Blake Larson.

He turns 42 this Monday, which is hard to believe. And yet his bouncing, undaunted spirit remains ageless. He is my always person, my forever confidant and friend, even is many months pass without a check in. Blake has a measure of that Bombadil way about him: unbothered by external BS, centered on the things he cares about.

I admire you, Blakester, and I bless you on your birthday.

Feed. Heal. Bless. Visit. Serve. Offer. May these verbs define our activities in the coming days, especially when war is the context we must live under. May we play and sing and dance and sport, even under a sun shadowed by global violence. Our souls belong to a story much deeper and much more true: that we are beloved no matter what. (Alleluia!)

ICE agents continue harassing and harming our neighbors, and stuffing people into cars while also harassing and harming—even killing—those who get in the way.

Because immigrants rape and murder white women. So the story goes. So the AI-created adds tell it.
Meanwhile, instances of rape and violence mount at ICE detention centers committed by…ICE agents. Yeah, the folks walking around fully armed and masked.
Meanwhile, corporations rape the planet and we—I—benefit from it every day.

Today, February 13, is my ordination anniversary. Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day. And Monday is a special day in which we honor…the Presidents? Like, all of them? Hmm.

I used the word “rape” three times above intentionally. Every time I have tried to pray about the many fractures in the world and the pains suffered by living things around me lately, I come back to a painful observation made by many wise people before me: we are addicted to rape culture in the United States.

Many wise people have also noted a dynamic in public discourse that boils down to something like this: the ones doin’ the accusin’ are usually doin’ the doin’. Yep.
Think of conservative pastors going on tirades about pedophilia among queer folks, only to learn later they themselves were sexually abusing children. Hypocrisy.

What we are witnessing right now is the complete denial of wrongdoing regarding the sitting President even though real live people are telling their stories to the contrary, and then this same leader construes an entire population of people to be guilty of the very kinds of crimes he is clearly guilty of: abusing women. Kidnapping. Rape.

Which will never amount to anyone coming to justice because it never does. And its so exhausting. And so shameful. And so sad.

To add an even more sickening dimension to this painful circus, this rapist President is lauded as a moral hero and a spiritual guide for the nation. By Christians. Again, if our culture as a nation is rape culture, I guess we have chosen our rightful leader.

Enter, Thecla.

Have you read The Acts of Paul and Thecla? You should. I wish it had made the cut of texts to be regarded as holy scripture.

Lamenting our nation’s addiction to rape culture, I sometimes ask myself, “So, what is the opposite of rape? What kind of effort or energy do I want to give the world so we can live differently?” Thecla’s story has helped me find an answer.

Thecla, like many female saints, was betrothed to a prominent man in her hometown in Egypt. But Paul came through there preaching and she was captured by the holy calling to follow Jesus. She renounced marriage completely, to the dismay of her suitor and her mother. Several times, in several different ways, the authorities and her family try to have her punished unto death for her “impious” scorn of her womanly duties. But Paul affirms her calling and invites her to share the good news.

For a deep dive and personal encounter with Thecla’s powerful story, read this by Meggan Watterson:

MEGGAN WATTERSON

THECLA, HEAR MY PRAYER

This is the rage that love inspires. This rage that flares loudly, red and golden. The released files, the inaction. The Transparency Act a paper sword…

Read more

7 months ago · 100 likes · 16 comments · Meggan Watterson

We can praise Thecla for her defiant rejection of men who try to take her by force. We can seek inspiration from Thecla for the depth of her faith and her commitment to the end. We can admire and emulate her pluck in pouring water and blessing herself when Paul told her to wait—baptism is for all!

But right now I want to celebrate the life Thecla came to build as one drawn to the message of Christ and moved to embody it with her whole life. We see her near the end of her days shepherding a community of healers and helpers. Living in touch with nature, opened to their neighbors in need. In fact their healing wonders are so pronounced that the local doctors are troubled by their lack of business and come to her for one last round of “we will take what we want from you by force.” And again, nope. But my point isn’t even that she avoids the attack. It’s that she built a community of restoration because of her faith.

Healing, hope, community and mutual flourishing is the opposite of rape. Thecla’s way is the way out of this mess, friends.

And of course it’s the way of the river as well. Receiving life and nourishment from upstream, we send it along the way with our own additions and blessings. We are creative and strong. We can do this. We can be healers and helpers.

We can nourish relationships of trust.

In Thecla’s honor, let me say on the eve of Valentine’s Day 2026: just because someone brings you a gift or writes a you card or makes you dinner or sings you a sweet song doesn’t mean you owe them your body. Your body is your own, holy and precious, powerful and generative. It is meant for giving and receiving love, and you get to decide how that happens.

Thank you, Thecla, for your story that resounds through the generations and comes to bless us. May we inherit a measure of your pluck and spunk and healing power.

Amen.

I make dinner and feed my children. I clean the kitchen, again. I stare out the window.

It’s not hard to get lost in daily life and sense a disconnect from the dramatic, big activity happening in the wider world. Happening to beloveds. Happening in ways that utterly disrupt and shatter the rhythms of daily life.

Above is an image I refer back to as the “flower of seeking change.” At the center are the goals of beloved community: equity, liberation, justice, solidarity. And all around this beautiful middle are the “petals” of various activity that helps the center come to life.

Where do you find yourself in these colorful bubbles?

From Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison:

“We need the poetry of now. We need the songs of now. We need the rap music of now. We need the symphonic orchestra of now. We need the powerful aesthetic that can do something that no politician can do, and that is to inspire people.”

Some of the “petals” I find myself in these days are caretaker, healer, and storyteller. I love to be creative and use my hands. That means giant pots of soup for a local warming center. That means holding the hand of a distressed friend. That especially means getting out the watercolors.

We will keep taking to the streets, beloveds. And behind each one of us there on the front lines is a river of souls providing unseen or less seen support, care, inspiration and hope. Let’s keep learning from the river, friends. Together.

I just returned from worship at the Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist. I love attending worship on Christmas Day. I love letting the poetry of the prologue of John’s gospel wash over me (In the beginning was the word…). I could sing Of the Father’s Love Begotten all day long. It’s a way of keeping the feast of this time that speaks to my heart and nourishes me.

This year, Bishop Gretchen Rehberg gave a sermon reflecting on the poem-turned-hymn, “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Her message centered on all the ways the incarnation comes into bleak circumstances, not to magically make them disappear, but to hallow our suffering with the radical presence of God. Gorgeous. And all the while she mentioned the hardness of winter and the coldness of snow, I couldn’t help but think, actually, we need more winter. We need the earth to harden like iron and water to turn to stone. It’s much too mushy and warm this year!

Today is no exception. Rain that should be snow is falling again, swelling the already swollen river to bursting. We heard in the psalm for the day, Psalm 98, of how the rivers clap their hands in the joy of Creator God. It feels a bit more like they are clapping back at us for warming the planet and changing the ecosystems with our over consumption.

We also heard about the beautiful feet of the messenger on the mountains who brings a word of peace. I wonder: what is this good news for those who have evacuated their homes, or seen their lives swept away in flood waters? How will the messengers find those who, for example, planned to experience Christmas at Holden Village but were evacuated and the Village winterized?

Yesterday, a group of folks who mostly don’t know each other but all know me collaborated to provide a Christmas Eve feast at a local shelter. How beautiful are the hands and feet of those who care for others.

This is the good news I see being brought to the evacuees, to the fearful, to those watching that powerful river rise and wondering when to go. It is good news for those watching the mountains not for snowfall but for mudslide and avalanche risk.

God comes not only to the hardened earth, not only to the kind of bleakness envisioned in cold and ice. God also comes in muddy mess. Into peril and death. Into climate chaos. And those of us who serve God can become a healing flood of help, mercy, kindness and justice.

May All-holy God, who sent the Christ child to share our nature, bless us in this holy season. May flood waters recede, may soil hold fast, may trees remain upright, and may all creatures who depend on the arrival of deep winter be sustained by the mercy of the Incarnate One.
May the angels who sang the good news to humble shepherds also gather in a circle of protection around all those making Christmas in unexpected places.
And may Mother Mary who held the bloodied body of her newborn child, who welcomed the breath of barnyard animals as Spirit blessing, who assented to her own heartbreak in bearing God to the world, keep, attend, and sustain us all in a flood of only grace.

Amen.

When taking Koine greek in seminary, my friends and I were cautioned against getting too excited about compound words. Our mentor reminded us that, after all, the English word “butterfly” does not indicate a stick of beaten cream that has grown wings.

True enough. But sometimes, a little word play makes all the difference. Take the Spanish term for the same creature, “mariposa.” Mari, ie. Maria. Mary. Our Lady. Followed by the verb “posar,” to alight. From the Latin pausare, to stop and rest. Mmmm. The word itself is a kind of prayer. Mary, alight. Holy Mother, take rest here. Pause with us. Help us to stop and pray.

I have long associated butterflies with Easter. New life. Up from the tomb. Being fundamentally changed like a caterpillar reduced to molecular goo inside its cocoon. This year I am learning the significance of mariposas in Advent.

I pray: Mary, pause with me. Visit us all. Alight upon us, even if for a moment. Bring the blessing of your very presence to our wintry state.

Speaking of our wintry state…

This is me feeling very little like a butterfly after jogging through falling snow. But any experience had at the Monastery of St. Gertrude and Center for Benedictine Life in Cottonwood, Idaho leaves one lighter and more free than when they entered. Recommend, recommend.

I was blessed to be at this holy place in order to do meaningful work. Partnerships between mainline denominations who have small churches plotted out in the rural areas of eastern Washington, Idaho, Oregon and parts of Wyoming is work probably best left to the butterflies. They at least understand total metamorphosis. They get death and resurrection at a cellular level. This meeting (of humans) was world-changing but not quite so elemental as what happens inside a chrysalis. Then again, the deep wisdom of the Sisters was speaking to us the whole time:

I passed by this bulletin board several times a day in order to attend the daily rhythm of prayer in the Benedictine community. This gorgeous, stark, inviting image of Mary called to me every time. Mari-posa, she reminded me. Mary visits us all the time. Always, Mary is pausing to be with us. Mary is stopping to take rest with us.

This Advent, can we pause long enough to acknowledge her?

Ding-dong!

This Halloween, how about we distribute sacks of potatoes, bags of rice, canned beans and other food staples to equip our neighbors for the coming loss of SNAP?

Boo!

I will be praying to the saints—for whom the festival of Halloween originally evolved—to come with all their power to congress and set those jokers on the better path to caring for the people. May we all turn away from acting monstrous towards each other and take up the call of neighbor-care and solidarity.

In light and love,

Your River Witch

One year and a few days ago, I sat beside the Spokane River with a dear friend to pray. (Hi, Em.) Our hearts were breaking over Gaza, feeling at a loss over how to help, lamenting the violence, hate, and seeming unending cruelty of the war in that region. We placed flowers and leaves in the water as we spoke our prayers—holding both the pain and the hope together.

Today I am singing Alleluia for the ceasefire, that it is real and that it holds. Come, Lord Jesus, and bring a lasting peace to this place. I am seeing in my heart a river of aid flowing into Gaza, food and medicine and resources. Alleluia, alleluia!

Oh healing river: flow! Flow! There was rain in Ramallah recently. May it come as cleansing waters for all of us stuck in patterns of violence and hatred.

There are other rivers we need to observe, too. Not long ago I witnessed a river of poison flowing out of the mouth of an elected official. As a diverse group of interfaith leaders were holding him (Michael Baumgartner) accountable for the cruelty and fear-based tactics of ICE agents in Eastern Washington, he justified the strategy as helping “incentivize self-deportation.”

[pause to make vomit noises]

The vision of our homeland that Baumgartner was supporting is of a land so inhospitable, so beset on enmity, so greedy and unwelcoming that folks who have come here to contribute and make a life decide to leave, risking their well being by returning to other unstable, violent settings. As he continued justifying this vision, it became clear that, to him, human rights are not exactly universal—US citizens, in his mind, enjoy more rights and privileges than others. Barf.

I have enjoyed a fairly non-militaristic life growing up in the US. I admit that that is an incredible privilege and that some of my neighbors live with much more surveillance, limits, and threats of violence in their daily lives. What I hear in my representative’s thoughts, and what I see happening in cities I love like Chicago and Portland, is a vision of life much more like what has grown to be true in Palestine: checkpoints, troops everywhere, barbed wire, dramatic inequality, and a belief system underneath all of that that says some people are less worthy of flourishing than others.

Friends: this is an evil vision. It is poison. It is the opposite of the gospel of Jesus. This is the seductive lie of white Christian nationalism, a poisonous way of thinking that painfully seems to be gaining speed. I joke about this making me want to puke but I mean that it is truly a sickening vision of our future.

I go back to the river. I bring her my fears and griefs. I wonder what my calling is at this moment. The water is so cold but so life giving. My stomach unwinds, my shoulders relax. The water sings and even laughs with me as it dances over the boulders and flows towards the ocean. I hear the voice of the river reminding me to be playful, to find the joy, to flip the script of fear. I think of the Granny character in Moana who sings, “the water is mischievous—ha!—I like how it misbehaves.” I think of folks in Chicago and Portland coming out to meet the deadly serious, masked ICE agents with costumes of their own: fluffy dinosaurs and inflatable unicorns! Ukulele orchestras and kazoo parades. “Protestors” forming conga lines or dancing the cha cha slide. Alleluia, alleluia.

Many years ago, I stood with other Christians in downtown Chicago to witness against the war in Iraq and to call for peace. I held a small candle. It felt so small in the face of big military forces waging war. My friend Liz brought a container of bubbles along, and I’ll never forget the sight of her dancing along the edge of the protest, sending opalescent orbs of soapy water that popped against the body-sized shields of police in full riot gear. Pop!

Prayer can be lament. Prayer can be play. Truth-telling can flow like a river and change the landscape for the better. Come Lord Jesus and teach us your ways of playful peacemaking and bold truth-telling.

O Lord, make me a little bubble, colorful and shiny and clear, to float against the tides of hate and remind the world to play.

Last Sunday I was privileged to be gathered in person with about twenty other people of faith listening to a man living in the West Bank. This person, Milaud, and his spouse, Manar, are the founders of a trauma-informed school and early childhood center for children living with the horrors of war and occupation. Milaud stayed up late to hop on zoom and speak with us about his work, his heart, and his audacious hopes even as terror, despair, and fear beset him on all sides. At one point he described being unwilling to obey the terror, despair, and fear, and then he said, “but my disobedience is falling in love.”

Confession: I had skipped worship that morning. When Milaud said that, I realized I had heard all the sermon I needed in that one line. My disobedience is falling in love. Wendell Berry says corporate power can never truly steal your affection. That’s the gift of your own heart. Valarie Kaur proclaiming, “you can’t make us hate you.”

In this case, intentional disobedience of violence, oppression, and dehumanization is radical obedience to love. A calling. A choice. A daily practice of showing up for love. And that Milaud used a phrase usually reserved for romance to describe his whole vocation moved me powerfully. His heart overflows for this restorative way through trauma, for granting children safe space and caring mentors where they can be fully human even as everything around them takes their humanity away. Oh and I should mentioned that this school, House of Hope, is inspired by Waldorf education. An approach to raising children which grew in part as a response to World War One. Rudolf Steiner sought to create a method of educating children that would raise human beings who were “incapable of trench warfare.”

Obedience has roots in deep listening. So does peacemaking.

In dangerous times
Hold fast to courage
In dangerous times
Hold fast to love
and sing
and cry, some—
In dangerous times
Hold fast to love.

The teachers swayed as they taught us this song to welcome the new school year. This back to school meeting at our own Waldorf School here in Spokane often involves 75% singing and movement and puppetry and getting acquainted with the developmental changes your child will face this year, and 25% details. I love it. So wasn’t surprised to be learning a new song from the faculty. I was surprised that it so beautifully addressed the moment and called us into it by lifting up courage and love as our steady rudders. Hold fast. Yes. And sing.

My youngest child who is at the Waldorf school still is such an exuberant, relaxed kid. The only thing that seems to unsettle him is getting a social situation or expectation wrong. Letting someone down, especially an adult, really gets him close to tears. I love that he cares about others in this way, but a part of me also wants to nurture a kind of thoughtful, intentional disobedience in him. Like, yes, valuing our neighbor’s needs is so important. And also knowing our boundaries and acknowledging that not all our neighbor’s expectations are right or just. It’s okay to say “no.” In fact, it’s vital.

My oldest has stepped across the threshold into a new educational environment that is the large public high school in downtown Spokane. Go tigers! We’ve been laughing about the transition from the little, cozy school where everyone talked about gnomes and fairies, to the big bustling throngs of hormonal teens awash in “tiger pride.” A mama’s heart is stretched. And yet, something about the way he carries himself, something in his brow, or his shoulders, tells me he’s okay. That the dance between obeying—seeking loving connection with others and abiding a norms of a new system, and disobeying—standing up for your own truth against outside pressures—is a healthy dance in his soul.

And so from gnomes to tigers we go, seeking ever deepening practices of love, respect, and mutual flourishing. May I someday be as kind and bold as my children.

As if to fold it all together, one of my older sons teachers keeps a number on the blackboard in his classroom. It is a number that rises by one each day. It is the number of days that Gaza has been bombed.

In dangerous times
Hold fast to courage

It is soon the autumn equinox, Riparian friends. The river is changing and the air is cooling. Harvest, rest, change, compost. These rhythms of falling forward into the future, of becoming soil for the harvest yet to be planted, speak to me.

Quiet but persistent truth telling. Insistence on compassion. Disobedience that is falling in love. Digesting all the trauma and violence and meanness by creating, loving, caring, doing what is holy and obedient to our neighbor’s cries for help.

Join me in welcoming fall?

In college, I traveled to a special place called Holden Village. It is a retreat center in the Glacier Peak wilderness. An abandoned copper mine fell into the hands of the Lutheran Church over fifty years ago. Holden is an intentional community, a place of respite and spiritual renewal, a self-sustaining off the grid village and a quirky bunch of beloved folks.

Now that I live in Washington state, I am blessed to visit Holden every few years. I went back last week to help celebrate a leadership transition there. While the summer’s theme of Life Anew is in honor of the tenth anniversary of the Wolverine Fire and the incredible renewal of the forest in the wake of devastation, I was moved by a different sign of new life.

A hillside stretching east out from the village is covered with evergreen saplings. Once I realized what I was seeing, I nearly burst into tears. That hillside is called the tailings and in 2001, and for many years before and after, it was bright orange. Poisoned by waste from the old copper mine. We were told nothing would ever grow there. It was a dead section of the mountain.

Poisonous truths are hard to tell. It’s no fun to face the gross reality of toxins leaching out from old holes dug into a mountainside for the purpose of material gain. It’s no fun to consider the truth that the copper extracted from this beautiful mountain valley went into weapons used in World War Two. Maybe ripping apart other mountains in other lands and poisoning far away soil.

But about a decade ago, the truth of this awful waste was too great to ignore. Holden became a Superfund site of the EPA and massive cleanup efforts began. An era of mine remediation defined Village life for several years, expanding the life of this quirky little community to include big machines and lots of workers. Now, the rhythms of simplicity that Holden has long been proud to keep have returned and the mine is under the continual care of a corporation that inherited the mess. And the poison orange that once made life impossible on the hillside is contained in a treatment pool. Real, living dirt is back. And now so are the trees.

It isn’t lost on me that the color of the copper toxins that stained and sickened the mountain is also the color often associated with our current president, a leader proudly gutting government agencies like the EPA. A leader proudly lying to us about pretty much everything. Recently, this person claimed that slavery in the United States was “not so bad,” and that the historical records on display at the Smithsonian depicting the truth of our past and present should be edited to be more positive.

Poisonous truths are hard to tell. But if you don’t tell them, you stay sick. And you spew your sickness down the mountain, down river, injuring others. Poison doesn’t go away just because you say it never existed.

Martin Luther taught that theologians of glory call evil good and good evil. In contrast, theologians of the cross call a thing what it really is. Racism is evil and toxic. Slavery was and is cruel, inhumane, and deadly—not only to those who directly experienced it but as a legacy within our land. To quote Sam Wells, the US has one of the single most dramatic and clear opportunities for true lament, contrition, and repentance. But instead of taking up this faithful work of truth-telling and repair, we throw tantrums about museum displays and school curriculum that make white people feel uncomfortable.

God’s way is ever toward life, truth, healing and resurrection. God wills trees to grow in barren places and clean water to flow out of injured mountains. And God calls us to be a part of that restoration. A whole lot of human sweat and smarts went into mine remediation at Holden. For what are we using these sacred gifts now?

Toxic falsehoods can enlarge in our field of vision, tainting our perception about what is real and true. While the power of that orange sludge is not to be underestimated, it doesn’t make the whole mountain valley any less beautiful or blessed. This land is powerful and resurrection is possible. God is good and does not abandon us to sit in poison and drink death. A lot of sweat, smarts, and humble, remediating work is necessary if we want to see trees of justice and mutual flourishing grow. This is our holy calling.

May there be saplings in my field of vision before my body leaves this mountain.

Today was different. Storms systems are moving through and dumping buckets everywhere. Flash flooding. I think if grown ups got merit badges, I would have earned one today for piloting that rental car through unknown intersections and highway on-ramps. Also, thank you Lord Jesus. Thank you, Mary of safe harbor.

Charleston is a city rich with stories, colors, waters, and difficult circumstances like storms. We ended up visiting this historic, beautiful place because one of us four friends bid on a chance to stay in a Lutheran retreat center here. That’s how three PNW-ers and one Alaskan-Minnesotan end up together in what has to be one of the most humid places on the planet. But our friendship can stand a little sweat.

On a walking tour, our feet crossed over a street I would have described as cobblestone. “Watch your ankles!” advised our guide. Cobblestone! One of us commented back. “Well, not quite.” Our tour guide was full of stories herself (so much fun) and she explained that this and other streets like it were unique in their construction. Charleston has no stone to speak of—all the marble and slate of the regal buildings nearby has been imported. The stones that pave some of the old streets are river stones from…England. Riparian friends who made the journey in empty ships coming to port at Charleston to load up on rice and other goods. To travel safely, these ships needed a ballast. Weight. Heft enough not to be tossed on the mighty ocean waves. Filled up with the heavy goods they came for, the ships discarded the river rocks that gave them that needed weight. Necessary no more, the stones were left behind. And the Charlestonians saw an excellent resource for road building.

Metaphors abound, and when you get four preacher friends together we can’t help but make meaning out of the rich images a new environment offers. Ballast. Weighty, meaningful support. What is that for us? And how do we discern when it’s time to put the stones that gave us heft down in a new place? To make a roadway instead of balance a ship?

Driving through the storm today, I realized what has given me ballast in recent years. It was the friendship between me and three other precious lives in that rental car. Three friends who zoomed through years of pandemic separation and forged beautiful bonds of support and care. Meaningful, steadying support in a stormy time.

The storms have changed and the daily questions about where we are and what to do are relentless. But the ballast of friendship persists, and I am blessed.

What is keeping you from being shipwrecked or tossed about? Are you feeling like a river stone taken out of its place?

Before we ended our day of exploring downtown Charleston, the four of us visited Mother Emanuel AME Church. It is understandably under tight security, being one decade out from a heinous violent event in which nine members of the flock including the pastor were murdered during a Bible study. The murderer was Dylan Roof, an ELCA Lutheran young man. We came to lament. We came to commune and learn. We came when most of the campus is a construction site. A memorial is being built that will be shaped like two large angel wings made of marble (imported), forming benches in which visitors can sit and be held as they contemplate the loss of life and violent racism that so deeply plagues our land.

As our nation seems beset on greater cruelty and meanness in just about every expression of itself, it was profoundly healing to sit, just for a moment, on a sample marble bench that will become a part of this memorial. A testimony to life lost, but also a charge for the future: we can be different as a people. We can journey through repair and repentance into a future of compassion and justice.

Faith is also a ballast for me, and though it can be hard to have faith in these cruel times, good friends who show up and love you can be a witness that though everything seems out of place, God might be slowly shaping us, together, into a roadway toward a better tomorrow.

River friends, may you have the ballast you need in this present storm.