Author Archives: jledmiston

It was a good and hard Thanksgiving.  Good to be with family.  Hard to pack up two family members’ possessions into boxes and lists that will fit into an assisted living apartment.

The last thing my father ate before he died 28 years ago was a bite of yellow layer cake with chocolate icing.  I remember thinking “He really is going to die” because he had never left a piece of cake uneaten in his entire life.  I remember, as he became ornery due to the ravages of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma that I jokingly said, “You’re going to be a cranky old man.”  And he said – without a twinkle in his eye – “I’m already a cranky old man.”  Actually he wasn’t old at all chronologically. But his twinkle-in-the-eye moments were over, at least on this side of heaven.

Life can make us cranky.  Sprouting baby teeth.  Enduring puberty.  Figuring out young adulthood.  Juggling work and family.  Dealing with midlife.  Worrying about debt as retirement is staring us in the face. Replacing knees and hips. Out-living loved ones. Moving into Senior Living space.

Years ago HH and I sat with a beloved parishioner in her high rise apartment while she waited for the moving van that would take her to a retirement facility in another state near her daughter.  Stacks of boxes towered around us as she mournfully said, “You live your life and it all comes down to this.  Boxes.”

After helping fill some of the boxes of life over the weekend, several things occur to me:

• When we think back over the years and can’t pick our very favorite decade – because all of them were wonderful in their own ways in spite of inevitable failures and losses – we’ve experienced unspeakable privilege.
• We all need less stuff.  I loved the term “Black Friday of the Soul” here and then I felt PTSD when I read this recently.  Survivors will thank us if we stop buying/hoarding/collecting/hanging onto stuff.
• Experiences with people we love are excellent gifts.
• It’s important to use what we have.  Take the plastic off the furniture.  Burn the candle shaped like the Statue of Liberty.  Eat the chocolate pumpkin.

Our decades are precious and if we are fortunate, we get several of them filled with more joy than sorrow.  And once we recognize that giving thanks is an essential life practice, the next step is to ensure that others also enjoy more joy than sorrow in their decades too.

This is the meaning of life.  (I especially like the way Jesus put it.)

Happy Monday.

Image source which also states that U.S. life expectancy dropped in both 2016 and 2017, partially due to despair.

I got on an elevator in my apartment building Sunday with two men and a bouquet of blue balloons.  Baby blue, to be specific.

Me:  Is it somebody’s birthday or is somebody having a baby boy?

Guys in Elevator (obviously jubilant): We are having a baby boy.  We just found out and people are coming over to our reveal party.

I noticed that only one of the men was carrying balloons.  The other one was carrying bottles of champagne.

Me (out loud): Congratulations!  I hope you have a perfect baby!

Me (in my head): What if your baby’s not a boy after all?  You two are perhaps not what your parents expected but you are so happy. I hope your baby’s happy too.  You never know who your child will be.

Today is Transgender Day of Remembrance which may or may not show up on your Hallmark calendar.  You can read more about it here.

We Christians believe in revelation.  And imagine – if we possibly can – what it might feel like to have it revealed to us, either slowly over time or like a jolt on a random Tuesday, that we are not what everyone has assumed we are based on our parts.  If you are reading this in a small town where LGBTQ+ people are unknown, please know that our LGBTQ+ siblings are indeed out there.  (But maybe not out there.)

For what it’s worth, most of the congregations I visit have trans members or visitors, or there are trans folks in the families of our parishioners.  Depending on how safe your family is, you might not even know that a distant cousin or nibling (the children of our siblings) is trans.  This is the case in my own family of origin.

Revelation is generally terrifying.  Ask John of Patmos.    Nobody wants to hear about “the synagogue of Satan.”  Nobody wants to see death on a pale horse.

And even if the revelation we receive is dramatically less cataclysmic than the sun becoming as “black as sackcloth of hair” it’s existentially tumultuous when:

• You realize you are not called to be a lawyer after all . . .
• You realize your parents are imperfect human beings . . .
• You realize that you don’t love ___ anymore . . .
• You realize that do not have a Cisgender body.

Gender reveal parties are interesting as long as we – ourselves – realize that God is God and we are not.  The God who made eyelids and toes and human skin has also created a diverse array of human beings all created to enjoy and glorify God forever.

Remember that time Peter the apostle was having a revelation about “unclean things” in the book of Acts?

The voice said to him again, a second time, ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’  Acts 10: 15

There are people some call “unclean” today: undocumented immigrants, the working poor, the homeless, our LGBTQ+ siblings.  But the Truth is still true:  ‘What God has made clean, you must not call profane.’  And yet the bodies of some of God’s precious children are killed for being who they are.  The Human Rights Campaign reports that these people were killed in hate crimes in 2018 because they were trans:

• Christa Leigh Steele-Knudslien, 42
• Viccky Gutierrez, 33
• Celine Walker, 36
• Tonya Harvey, 35
• Zakaria Fry, 28
• Phylicia Mitchell, 45
• Amia Tyrae Berryman, 28
• Sasha Wall, 29 
• Karla Patricia Flores-Pavón, 26 
• Nino Fortson, 36
• Gigi Pierce, 28
• Antash’a English, 38
• Diamond Stephens, 39
• Cathalina Christina James, 24
• Keisha Wells, 54
• Sasha Garden, 27
• Vontashia Bell, 18
• Dejanay Stanton, 24
• Shantee Tucker, 30
• Londonn Moore, 20
• Nikki Enriquez, 28    
• Ciara Minaj Carter Frazier, 31
• Roxana Hernández ​(age unknown)

Today is a good day to remember them by name.  It’s also a good day to educate ourselves about Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer people.  Maybe it’s makes you uncomfortable.  Maybe this is very new and unfamiliar to you.

But there are children of God out there who need and deserve a spiritual community that loves them in the Image of God.  Because they were created in the Image of God.

As the body is clothed in cloth
And the muscles in the skin
And the bones in the muscles
And the heart in the chest,
So are we, body and soul,
Clothed in the goodness of God.

Julian of Norwich – source here

Thank you J, A, S, A, S, M, M, T, P, and G.  You are blessings in the life of the Church and in my life.

The only thing needed for racism to continue is for good people to do nothing. Debby Irving in Waking Up White

I suspect that most of us consider ourselves to be Good People.  We make donations to charities and buy Girl Scout cookies.  We help neighbors here and there.  We certainly commit no heinous crimes or secretly belong to criminal organizations.  (Unless we do.)

Are there Good People who sell drugs or hit their children?  Sure?  To this day Hermann Göring’s daughter continues to proclaim that her father was a good man.  He was sentenced to death for being one of those responsible for the deaths of over 5,700,000 Jews.  Was he a good father while subsequently being a Nazi? Maybe?

In terms of regular people like you and me, being “good” is still relative. We can be sinners and we can be saints, and we can be better.  This is where being in a spiritual community is helpful.

In a healthy church, we are held accountable when we lie, cheat, hold grudges, and say racist/sexist/homophobic/not-to-be-confused-with-Jesus things.  In a healthy church, we are inspired by the message of Jesus, the power of the Holy Spirit, and the awesomeness of the Creator to do better.  In a healthy church, we are also aspirational, but not necessarily in the I-want-to-go-to-medical-school kind of way.  We aspire to be the people we were created to be AND to see others through the eyes of Christ as the people they were created to be.

This can be so annoying because it’s much easier to cling to our biases and our resentments.  It’s even easier to stay stuck in ditches of shame.  But we were born to be better.  We have good moments.  We might even have perfect moments.  But we can do better.

And we must.  When I criticize my country, my church, my denomination, my city it’s not that I don’t love my country, church, denomination and city.  It’s just that we can do better.

Monday’s as good a day as any to get started.  Was there anything you learned over the weekend that inspires you to ponder these things?

• Who am I moved to serve beyond myself and my family?
• What’s the most important thing I will do today?
• What deep pain do I need to get past before I can love people?
• What have I learned from the people who’ve hurt me?
• What anonymous thing could I do today that would make someone else’s life easier?

Sometimes – although I hide it well – I’m not a very good person.  I can do much better. But that’s why resurrection is such a wonderful and divine idea.

Continue reading →

The answer is: Yes.  We need both.

Institutions need to be shifted to adapt with the times.

(Note:  We often shift the institution to match the culture.  That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about shifting the culture of an institution to better match The Reign of God.  Just to be clear.  Read this. And this.)

There are all kinds of Biblical examples of leading both from the inside and the outside and I won’t go into all those here, but Denise Anderson and I talked about this topic on our way to New Haven this week.

So let’s say that The Institutional Church needs to change.

I have friends who are trying to do ministry on the edges, starting cool new communities and projects. 

Advantages to working from the outside: no age old norms (i.e. “We’ve always done it this way.”) and you get to create something from scratch. There’s dreaming and boundary-pushing.

Disadvantages to working from the outside: you will spend a lot of time explaining yourself and you will be financially unstable.  After explaining yourself, your next most time-consuming efforts will involve finding money and people.

I have friends who are trying to do ministry from the inside, accepting Head of Staff positions at Big Steeple Churches and becoming Denominational and Mid-Council Leaders.

Advantages to working from the inside: you have the power to give permission and open doors.  You know where the money is and you have access to it.

Disadvantages to working from the inside:  you (might) get sucked into the privilege and busy-ness of your everyday ministry.  Yes, you have a platform, but your time is often spent appeasing Big Givers, Cranky Wheels, Personnel Committees who don’t see what you see.

There are stellar leaders out there trying – at this very moment – to discern which path to take:  Do I accept a position that will offer access and money?  Or do I focus on a new way and work to gain that access and money?

We need both.  But mostly, we need for the people with resources and power to be best friends with the people who are moving mountains outside the system.

Image Source.

I’m not able to write much this week because I’m here talking about things that matter.  If you happen to be in New Haven this week, some by and talk with me and Denise Anderson about important things.

Image of Yale Divinity School Campus.

I remember being asked during a worship service to “Raise your hand if you or  someone you love has ever had cancer.”  Of course everybody raised their hands. It’s very normal to have a loved one with cancer.  It’s normal to have cancer. There are so many kinds and it’s almost the exception if cancer has never touched your life.

We are reaching a point when this will also be true in regards to gun violence. 

There are many kinds of gun violence.  But I want gun violence to be the exception, not the rule.

No one in my family or close circle has ever been shot by a gun. I have never lost loved ones who have been shot. I have never had a loved one die by suicide using a gun. I have never known someone who has been threatened with a gun – either by a stranger or a friend – at least that I’m aware of.

But it’s just a matter of time.

College students in a California dance bar. Worshipers in their own shul in Pennsylvania. A high school student before First Period Class in North Carolina. Two people in a grocery store in Kentucky.

All those tragedies happened over the past two weeks.  And it’s an incomplete list.

We fight cancer through research and treatment and educational awareness.  Fighting gun violence through research and (mental health) treatment and educational awareness is often stifled by pro-gun organizations.  But gun violence is a public health issue as surely as cancer is a public health issue.

I don’t want to be nonplussed if/when the day comes that someone shoots up one of my neighborhood restaurants or one of our congregations or my local grocery store.  I don’t want my local Target to become a target.  But it could happen in any of those places or in all those places.

People shoot children, teenagers, young adults, middle-aged adults, and older adults.  Victims and shooters alike have been black, brown, golden, and white in skin color.  I don’t want this to become so normal that everyone raises their hands when someone asks, “Who has personally experienced gun violence?”

What will it take to make gun violence rare?  Especially, if you happen to be a gun person, what’s your take on this?

Image from a Hands Up, Don’t Shoot event on a college campus in 2014.

I have a clear memory of talking with my Mom about Barbara Jordan.  I was months away from voting for the first time and Barbara Jordan had delivered a powerful speech to the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee regarding the impeachment of President Nixon.

My mother told me that she wished she could vote for Barbara Jordan for President.  This is especially interesting considering the fact that it would take another 40+ years for a woman to be nominated by a major political party as their candidate for President.  But Representative Jordan was extraordinary:  brilliant academically and a person of elegance and enormous integrity.

This opinion piece by Senator Jeff Flake yesterday made me think about Leaders We Admire.  For Senator Flake, President Reagan was among those leaders “who awakened my civic imagination and inspired me to want to be an active part of the American experiment.”  Who are those political leaders for you?

Imagine electing candidates who make us proud.  Some of us did this on Tuesday.  And some of us chose lesser evils or a people whose names were familiar or candidates with whom we share some but not all political opinions.

Even if we disagree with each other, there is comfort and hope in electing leaders we respect.  I would love to hear what leaders you admire and why.  Any party.  Any time period.  Any country.

Anybody? (Thanks.)

Image of Barbara Jordan (1936-1996) – U.S. Representative from Texas and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.  This stamp was first printed in 2011.

I’m intentionally writing this on election day before I see any election results.  It matters who won and yet there are certain things faithful and hopeful people must do next  – regardless of who was elected.

Following Christ is bigger than following elections.  We know that, right?

I’ve been writing about 21st Century cultural shifts for a long time but today more than ever I hope we will:

• Get out there.  (Don’t hide behind your desk.)
• Be deployed to serve in the world.  (Jesus said, “Go out.”)
• Teach others how to serve. (Don’t try to do it all ourselves.)
• Recognize that people connect with God and each other in different ways. (My way is not the only way.)
• Stop otherizing people.  (We are all in this together.)
• Stop expecting other people to serve us.  (It’s time to serve others.)
• Remember that rules exist for the sake of relationships.  (See earlier post.)

Whether you are celebrating or mourning today, there’s work to do. Let’s get out there.

Image from a slide I use when talking about necessary church shifts.

Even in professional ministry, people lie to me.  Sometimes those lies are bold-faced, bald-faced, or bare-faced. Sometimes the liars are parishioners and sometimes they are pastors.

Lying kills trust by definition. Lying is the opposite of truth-telling.

Yes, sometimes the truth hurts or it’s embarrassing.  But we cannot be a healthy organization without Truth.  Remember when Pilate asked Jesus, “What it truth?”  Best question ever.  Especially on Election Day.

Some say it’s true to call even peaceful protesters a “mob.”  Some say it’s true to call a caravan of poor migrants an “invasion.”  Some say it’s true to call the migrants themselves “diseased” or “criminal.”

Some say it’s true to call Republicans “racists.”  Some say it’s true to call conservative people “deplorables.”  Some say it’s true to call President Trump a white nationalist (although he self-identified as a nationalist a couple times and he is white.)

What is true?  Sometimes it depends on who’s talking.  Sometimes it depends on context. By this definition, many media personalities have told many lies.

And sometimes facts are facts.  Places of birth, dates of legal actions, and most checked statistics are facts.  By this definition, our President has told many lies.

Only a conniving person would say something like “it depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is”  when asked “Is there an improper relationship here?”  There are liars of every political persuasion.

I would love to live in a world where everyday truth was clearer.  But in the meantime, I pray that noble people are elected today and that we – in the Church – would always tell the truth for the sake of the Gospel.  Healthy organizations speak the truth in love.  We’ve known this for over 2000 years.

Sometimes I feel like channeling Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive.  Look out Dr. Nichols.