May 22, 2013 by Michael

My Hopes For You, Dr. Lallene Rector

Last week I heard about your appointment, and I was thrilled. I wanted to write to congratulate you and to offer prayerful words as you transition to your next post.

Someone I love and trust told me that transitions can feel like walking on shifting grounds, like nothing is as familiar. You once said in a class that it takes the brain up to three years to adjust to major life changes.

I hope that as you change roles, as you assume your next set of responsibilities, that your feet will find sure ground, that what’s under your feet will be steady grace and hope-filled promise that comes from God.

I hope that you will feel ready for your new role and that everyone around you, those you really listen to, will reflect that readiness, will encourage you for your journey, and will become supporters of you on that path.

I hope that your habits, your spiritual disciplines, will train you toward a nourishing faith so that you can sense how large God is in the face of daunting challenges and uncertain tomorrows.

I hope that all of your yesterdays with the Seminary will combine to give you real space to see a splendid future.

I hope that your work with the Board, the faculty, and the students will be more and more fruitful, increasingly powerful, and meaningful for the world, for the church, for the Chicago area, and the community of Evanston.

I hope you will be able to accomplish the goals that you and the community determines is best for you as an administrator, that the next academic dean will support the same, and that, because of all your good work, GETS will be a stronger, more focused, more invitational school for people making sense of their faith, for people making sense of God’s call upon them, and for people searching for how to put themselves into their own vocations in ministry.

I hope that you love your job and that it makes you a better woman, a better teacher, a better scholar, and a better follower of Christ.

I hope that you meet people whose lives you can still personally enhance the way you have throughout your career as a professor and therapist.

I hope that you will have fun, stay creative, lead with patience, grieve with hope, feel a sense of life, feel.

Finally, I hope these words in Philippians, from the Message translation, and words like them, will anchor and strengthen you, the GETS community, and the extended communities you serve:

I am so pleased that you have continued on in this with us, believing and proclaiming God’s message, from the day you heard it right up to the present. There has never been the slightest doubt in my mind that the God who started this great work in you would keep at it and bring it to a flourishing finish on the very day Christ Jesus appears. It’s not at all fanciful for me to think this way about you. My prayers and hopes have deep roots in reality.

March 8, 2013 by Michael

11 Things I Learned While Traveling

My church allowed me a couple weeks leave in January, mostly to begin wrapping my mind around my father’s death. There had been cards and emails and hands on my shoulders praying for me on Sundays. People then, and now, check in with me. The people of our church have been faithful in caring for me and us. While I was away from the office, I had to return to Arkansas to tend to some business of my father’s. I mostly stayed home the rest of the time, but I took a few days to travel.

For years I have had an abiding appreciation for long journeys on trains, even though my tolerance for the longest trips has diminished. This time I flew part of the way, took up space in the home of dear friends (parents of my brother, David), boarded a train in New York for Montreal. On the reverse, I stayed again for a night at the Swanson home and woke up to cross the George Washington bridge and a crowded bus to get back to Chicago. I’ll leave the details to more intimate conversations–because some things should remain private posts–but here are some things I learned during this last trip:

1. Anticipate delays, route changes, interminable waiting while other trains pass, coughing fits by multiple passengers, and various surprises which decorate, determine, and define the journey.

2. I really dislike getting on a subway in a new city, on the express train, going in the opposite direction I intended.

3. Sometimes strangers turned travelling partners say thank you and God bless you when you let them use your phone.

4. Strangers really want you to get where you’re going.

5. When searching for walking paths, stay on the side of the street with houses because mountains don’t have the easiest walkways.

6. In a foreign land I’m much more aware of someone mistreating me and much more aware, and perhaps grateful, when someone is nice to me.

7. People told me it was too cold to walk where I wanted to go, and I concluded it was because they didn’t know me, my ability, or because what they were saying was wise, even though I had to choose.

8. A church can be (and probably should be) a physical reminder to dream, to be inspired, without disregarding beauty and heritage and God.

9. Don’t trust when taxi drivers give you estimates during rush hour, or, at least, double them.

10. The train is an antidote to my delusions which tell me I don’t need to see blackbirds flitting from tree to tree, water frozen in a river, and cars waiting at stoplights.

11. There are delightful and memorable things, off well-worn paths, and generally away from view, and those things become gifts that help you see.

March 6, 2013 by Michael

Will You Pray For Me Over This?

I’m somewhere in the process of forgiving a neighbor. Of actively forgiving her, or them since I’m sure her boyfriend lives there. She is the homeowner. They are fond of smoking, which is fine, but their fumes creep through a vent in our bathroom because we share a wall in this renovated pile of bricks.

I’m not sure how long this has been happening, but I can say that we started noticing this when we became parents…three years ago. It was fine for a long time. I became a steady purchaser of incense. That was me you saw at the health food store in Lakeview or Evanston or Hyde Park or Woodlawn. I was the guy with his kid in the stroller, both of us sniffing the little sticks at random community festivals. I’ve become fond of sage, lavender, and, of course, jasmine. Cinnamon tastes good, but I don’t prefer it in the air. I’ve been to Target filling carts with every possible aide you can imagine. I’ve spent more time on the web searching for remedies.

I can tell you with reasonable accuracy when the Chicago Police Department changed its 911 guidelines and that they will come if an offender is still present. I can tell you that I’ve taken all the good steps I (and we as a family) could think of: having a trusted carpenter come and seal every outlet and baseboard, bugging my property manager and board until they agreed to add an escalating fine to my neighbor, which will either increase the expensive habit she already has or change her plans so that she smokes somewhere else. I’ve done other things.

But I’m more concerned about the split I feel, the one where I feel like I have to choose between being a good father and being a good Christian. The desire growing in me on good days is one where I’m admitting that the attempt to be a Christian is difficult, where I’m praying to God for my neighbor, where I’m seeing her (and them) as loved by God like my son. This is what it means. It means loving people who know that their fumes navigate near your toddler’s room but don’t change.

Then there is that other person. The guy who grew up and when planning wrong, considered it so that when he implemented his considered approach, it was untraceable. I was not then and am not now an impulsive person. I believe that impulsiveness is the act of impatient people. I tend to be patient. The shadow of that is that I tend to study my choices for a long time. And I go back and forth considering a) loving my neighbor and praying for her rescue from this addiction, which several neighbors have commented on actually and b) doing what that little person in me says a good father would do. And when I listen to the little person, I remind myself that there are some calls that the police will take and some calls they won’t. And I wonder if they’ll come if I become the less considerate neighbor. To be completely fair, the police did come yesterday when I called, and we got through the night without fumes. But every night is a test.

So this is my attempt to expand my circle of accountability. I’m trying to live in a forgiving way. I’m trying to be honest that being a father with a small child is hard because I’m a Christian. That whole thing about forgiving your enemies—loving your enemies—grabs my feet and slams to my knees, if you will. Though I don’t pray on my knees. I usually walk while I pray, but you understand my point. I want to love this neighbor. Even though she, after a relatively positive interaction didn’t limit her behavior. Even though I have aggravated my already strange sleeping rhythms by waking up at 1AM, 4AM, and 6AM to burn incense, not counting the days I’m still home between 9 and 10AM.

Will you pray for me? Will you hope with me? I want to live as a Christian father. I’m still doing more to address this. Indeed, I’ll do as much as I can. But I want to do it from a place of love. That even reads weird to me. Still, it best says what I desire. I meant it when my offending neighbor said to me, “You must hate” and I answered “No, I don’t hate you.” Because I didn’t and I don’t. But I want to love her well. I want her to be a whole and considerate and good neighbor. Even if her being a good neighbor comes after I’ve been a good Christian.

Michael Washington

Reflections on the Spiritual Life