Why I Love Design

Every season offers its own rewards and challenges, look at Nature. So it is with the rhythm of our lives, day in, day out, year in, year out. What better way to inscribe our lives than in the tactical details--a chair, a painting, a dish, a meal, a glass of wine more than $10? We are gifted to create, explore, generate and design our lives in the material world. We need mentors, totems, guides who invite us to go this way or that way, to see with a new eye, the very Nature that surrounds us. It is called wisdom, renewal of knowledge deeply buried in the sinews of our bones that echoes down the hallways, across the floors, through the living and dining rooms to the kitchens of our hearts. Beauty lingers inviting us to sumptuous feasts of the eye, the tongue and the soul. Design gives us the structure and details to breathe amongst all that overwhelms our senses and understanding. So should I win the Dyson from Dwell magazine? Who knows, but I was struck by the connection between wisdom, defined as renewed knowledge, overwhelming beauty and design, holding the space for breath.

Listening Across The Lines: The Charity Clinic 3 weeks ago I began the famili...

Listening Across The Lines: The Charity Clinic  3 weeks ago I began the famili...: The Charity Clinic   3 weeks ago I began the familiar wheezing, breathing in short, hurried breaths, near to the bottom of my throat rath...

The Charity Clinic

  3 weeks ago I began the familiar wheezing, breathing in short, hurried breaths, near to the bottom of my throat rather than deep in my diaphragm.  It had been so long since I had any trouble I was caught off-guard, without medicine and more importantly, without medical insurance to get any.  For months I had walked my dog past a health clinic at the bottom of the hill knowing it was for poor people, particularly people in the neighborhood from the Pacific Islands and Southeast Asia.  I didn't fit the profile.  As my breath got shorter I became more concerned which makes my breathing harder which makes my breath get shorter...I needed help.  Checking the website of the clinic made it clear they had started as a clinic for certain ethnic populations but now were open to any one in need.  I fit the profile.  
  I walked into the clinic without an appointment yet seeking immediate attention as I was headed for a full-tilt asthma attack.  The first step is the financial and insurance review.  No I don't have health insurance right now.  Dependents?  One, 18, at college.  Payroll slip?  Not on me but can bring one tomorrow.  Today we will have to charge you $25 for the doctor's visit but after we see your payroll slip we can change your status.  Okay.  Come back at 4:15pm for the appointment.  
  With former prescription forms in hand I go to the main desk to check in.  The nurse calls my name:  'Ti-ar-re?'  I say "its Tea-air".  She asks, "how do I pronounce your last name?"  "Math-i-son."  She replies, "We get such interesting names in here."  In some parts of Seattle my surname is common with a large Scandinavian population.   Not here.  We do the health screen, the doctor comes in, listens to my lungs, gives me some breathing advice and writes prescriptions for everything I took when I had medical insurance.  'You should be okay in a couple of days.  The pollen count is through the roof here right now.  If you have any trouble come right back or if we are closed go the Emergency Room.  Ok?"  I go to the pharmacy in the clinic, they have everything ready.  The pharmacist says, 'We have to charge you a bit more until we know if you qualify for support.  Your bill is $30.'  'Thank you' I say.  For $55 i have seen a doctor and got medicine.  The next day I bring my pay slip in; I qualify for 100% subsidy.  
  I hold my bag of food from Whole Foods where I spent $20 on a few things as my mind tumbles to a new truth.  I am a poor person qualifying for full sustenance in medial care at the Charity Clinic.  I walk out.

I'm 'home'

October 2nd, I began the drive first to St. Paul to visit Isaac at his new college location and then 1700 miles to Seattle. Along the way I discovered Prairie Fire Pottery at exit 1 in western North Dakota and the very beautiful Sacajawea Hotel in three Forks montana. I am now home in Seattle, a small city when I left 30 years ago, a bustling place now with the Alaskan Way Viaduct being torn down cement piece at a time. I am 'home' in a place familiar and foreign.
Connection to family is powerful and confusing. Who am I and who are they when we are together more than 5 days a year. Where do I belong, like what neighborhood do I want to live in if I could choose depending on income and experience? And I am still a pastor with Rev before my name. What does that mean now?
We think our identity is established...life or God or the universe says, "wait a minute" so I wait.

Death and Redemption

Following so close on the celebration of Christ's victorious death and resurrection providing the universe with the image of sacrifice-in-love, the news arrived last night:  Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind of death, the symbol of twisted religion for violence sake, the man who did not sacrifice, is dead.  And I pause...
  The impulse to celebrate and even say 'alleluia, thanks be to God' is right on the surface.  Yet somehow using my religion's language to encapsulate the death of a man, even one who has committed such evil and violence, is not easy.  I worry I am doing the very thing I abhor in terrorist action, taking religion and manipulating it to fit into my little scheme of how life should go.
  At the same time, a manager of evil has been stopped and I am very grateful to President Obama (and presidents before him) and our Armed Forces who have spent years and given their lives to bring a peculiar kind of justice.  I pray this death does not feed fires of deeper hatred among us across the globe rather we take time to listen carefully to one another, even when we are in deep and abiding disagreement.  It is such a challenge to remain and abide rather than divide into our little homogenous groups of like-minds and hearts.
 "Forgive them for they know not what they do."  Jesus' final words haunt me today.
May the Holy One bring us all to peace and redemption.  

When people realize they can step out their homes, ask for change

There are so many lines to cross tonight from private to public, religious to political, at home to world wide.  The title comes from Wadan Khanfar, Director General of AlJeerza News.  This is an Arab based news program that has provided the world with honest reporting and critique, something NONE of our U.S. based news organizations have done for we are so corrupt, or narrow-minded in our views, or so sure (arrogant) of our viewpoints, or determined to protect our interests (read oil & money).  We forget our own country's history at our peril.
Remember one of your first U.S. history classes?  The American Revolution?  We are beneficiaries of a revolution, just like the one in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Yemen, et al.  We had 'Protesters' throwing the ruling governments' products (tea) into the Boston Bay.  We took up arms against the ruling class.  We crossed the line of 'civil' and created an incredibly beautiful country with its own set of problems.  (another post.)
  What we are witnessing is the movement toward enlightenment, as our Historians named it now in the Middle East.  As Christians we have to acknowledge and repent of the Crusades, that time BEFORE education took hold and we thought our way was the only way.  There were no TV cameras, no Internet, Twitter, You Tube, to capture our brutality.  But it resides in our bones.  We know we participated in repression, harm and violence.  We cannot segregate our selves from our history.
  We can confess, ask forgiveness and stand in solidarity for justice and peace for our neighbors.  Especially our Muslim neighbors in the Middle East and North Africa who are fighting for their very lives and the future for their children.  These people are not terrorists; they are mourners who long for the very freedoms we have of stepping out of our homes and asking for change.
  Does the Koran demand blood?  Does the Koran demand allegiance as the only way?
Does the Bible demand blood?  Does the Bible demand allegiance as the only way?
Who decides?
  

Celebrating the Past (Lines) connecting to the future (lines)?

The plane leaves @ 2.55pm on Sunday for Minneapolis, a short layover and on to Seattle.  My place of home, smells of salt water and dead fish (let's be honest), family, an 89 year old mom who 'is going to live 10 more years because God has her praying for everyone and their sister', an ingathering of memory, reflection, and hope.  Isaac and I will travel together after our time of 'trust shaken, not broken' as my spiritual director says to a place of warmth, love, acceptance, sorrow, grief, fear, as each and all find their way in their own worlds of salt & light, darkness and hope, life and death, maybe.  Their anticipation is spoken in emails with lots of !!!, plans for family birthday celebrations and long conversations about this gift we call life.
  I travel alone now as a single woman no longer a wife, partner, friend, lover, companion.  I call my former mother-in-law who can't wait to dine over funky Chinese food in Auburn, WA, with Isaac and me; she desperate to stay connected to the daughter-in-law who always spoke direct, not unkind, but without a covering of sugar, intelligent woman to intelligent woman.
  After 4 days I go to Eugene, OR, my place of coming of age as a pastor, Campus Minister, a true believer and leader of this thing called Christian faith.  I remember falling in love with college students (something I have never been able to do with middle schoolers, in a group anyway) their searching, fear and joy so tangible.  Rooting my faith in the questioning of an intellectual environment I crossed a line toward the internal when the love of my life left me for another.  Faith in my head needed to get into my body and soul or I would fall down, never to get up again.
  'Arise, do not be afraid' are words of angels and the Savior.  I am a believer, still and I arise.