Hard to see

      There are a lot of people going through life with problems that most people don’t see.  Many of the conditions which make life difficult are not visible from a distance.  Honestly, most of us have (at least a few times) seen someone get out of a car in a handicap space and wonder, so, I wonder what that person’s story is; I don’t see anything wrong.

      Of course, just because someone is not using a wheelchair or a white cane or carrying oxygen or limping doesn’t mean that person is healthy.  From a distance cardiac disease, respiratory issues, healing surgeries, and the like have no external signs.  Mercifully, most of us move seamlessly from impatience to consideration by the time we drive by the parking space, but there are just enough times when we want some sort of proof to justify out sympathy.

       And, mercifully, most of us most of the time do have true sympathy for people who may have troubling ailments.

       But society is still lagging on some of the other difficulties people can have that may not be physically based.  Brain disorders and mental illness and like conditions have not found the sympathy and support they deserve.  I don’t think it is lack of awareness, for our daily conversations are filled with references to mental illnesses, brain disorders, personality issues, traumatic events recent and past, addictions, obsessions, abuse, developmental delays, emotional troubles, and such, and most people can grasp that there are neurological and biochemical and physical things that can impact a person.  We know that events or conditions or bad experiences or problems at birth or before birth can cause problems for years or a lifetime.  At least we know intellectually that such things exist.  But they make us very uncomfortable and standoffish.  Maybe because things that can happen unbidden to others’ brains are especially scary and confusing to most of us precisely because they happen to our brains.  Perhaps it is confusion.  Perhaps it is shame.

       We are still very poor responding to and supporting individuals with mental illnesses or brain disorders or emotional conditions.  And part of that is how few of them manifest themselves on the outside of a person.  That’s why some call them “invisible disabilities.”   My son’s ADHD and anxiety were overlooked or downplayed when he was a child because he didn’t look like anything was wrong with him, other than he acted really zoomy.  But his brain has some processing snarls and miswiring that cause issues other than hyperactivity which he has had to learn to work around and with.  Several people I am related to or very close to have been dealing with depression and anxiety, but most people wouldn’t know that about them.  As a pastor dealing with families for many years, I know for sure that more families have members with diagnosed or suspected mental health issues, but most cope in hidden silence.  It is still uncomfortable to talk about.  And it is hard to get help and support.

       All of which makes me reassured and hopeful as we have been observing May being Mental Health Awareness month with resources from the UCC’s “Wider Welcome” emphasis and our local Family and Children’s Services of Ithaca.  Sunday, Karen Schachere from F&C will lead our AfterWord, and I encourage you to attend and to avail yourself of the resources in the narthex and online.

      It is time to be kinder, more supportive, and more caring of those with “hidden” disabilities and the people who love them.


                                                                          In Christ,
                                                                       
                                                                           David


Texts For Sunday Worship:
      From the New Testament         Acts 7:55-60
      From the Epistles                   1 Peter 2:2-10
      From the Gospels                   John 14:1-14

Mothers Day????

      I’m not the first person writing a church column disinterested in the big commercial to-do around Mother’s Day.  I can get pretty scathing about the modern observance of Anna Jarvis’ memorial for her mother Ann in 1905.  (Although I have to admit Ann Reeves Jarvis was quite a person, a peace activist who tended the wounded on both sides of the Civil War and who founded Mother’s Day Work Clubs to address public health issues.)

      Without ignoring the fathers and grandfathers also rearing, loving, supporting, and protecting children, this is a very tough time for mothers right now.
    
      Hundreds of mothers in our near vicinity are trying to keep families together without enough resources— money, food, housing, medical care, education— every day, not just Sunday, May 11.  Some have suddenly found themselves in circumstances that have changed.  Some are young and single parents coping with hardly any supports from the beginning.  We know they are around, but mostly we keep them off to the side of our thoughts.  This week, let’s remember their hard work.

      The last months have seen some terrifying events brutally impacting mothers.  There was the young mother whose mother and daughter were killed in the Washington mudslide.  The television cameras have dwelled long on the crying mothers of flight 370 and the Korean ferry sinking.  But we glimpsed again the mothers of the victims of last year’s Boston Marathon bombing.  The mothers who buried children because of gun violence still cry.  My heart is most broken for the mothers of the 276 girls stolen from school in Nigeria.  But it also breaks for mothers in war-torn areas and occupied territories.  Haitian mothers are still recovering.  Mothers in hospital and hospice cradle their children.  We know of mothers whose children have run away or have become hard to live with.  This month we are reminded of the families dealing with mental illness and brain disorders.  Mothers are addicted or impaired themselves or try to help children who are.  Sometimes it’s just the usual stresses and strains of just plain regular life that make motherhood hard.

      This is not the stuff of greeting cards and frilly jewelry.

      Days are brutal for mothers.

      It is incumbent on faith communities to be leveraging assistance and advocacy in support of mothers’ issues and needs.  There are many ways we can do that through church and community channels; but a moment’s search and you can find ways that fit your concerns and abilities.  In fact, since Ann Reeves Jarvis was herself a powerful worker for good, perhaps that would be a far more suitable celebration of Mother’s Day for us to undertake!

      So let’s get serious, not sentimental, about this Mother’s Day.

                                                                                        In Christ,
                                                                                    
                                                                                        David

Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the Hebrew Bible           Psalm 23
      From the New Testament       Acts 2:42-47
      From the Gospel                    John 10:1-10

First Supper

      Fifteen evenings ago we gathered in the darkening sanctuary and observed the night when Jesus shared the Passover meal with his disciples, then moving beyond it with bread and cup instituting what we call the Last Supper.

      Sunday we will recount something that can, on first read, seem like not a big deal.  Two followers of the rabbi Jesus are walking off toward a little town of Hammat— Imwas in Arabic, Emmaus in Greek— about ten kilometers outside Jerusalem.  Another traveler falls in with them, and they converse about the events of the weekend.  Strange events. Worrying events.  Impossible to understand events.  But the traveler helps them understand.  Helps them not to worry.  And starts to move on.  The two invite him to supper, and it turns out he invites them into the mystery of resurrection and new life in a few tiny motions.  “He took the bread and blessed it and broke it, and they recognized him.”  It was as simple as that.

      I come from a tradition (like many) which begins the Lord’s Supper with those really simple words.  “When the risen Lord was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed it and broke it, and gave it to them, and they recognized him.”  That first supper after resurrection connected back to the Passover shared but two weeks prior, and it connects forward to every time we take the bread in Jesus’ name and bless and break it.  And recognize each other as table partners, as beloved, as those for whom Christ is still present and still nourishing.  Our hearts still burn within us, all because of a few gestures made at the front of churches ever since the road to Emmaus.

      I like the context of our common communion to be not so much the long, elaborate, crowded tableau of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” and more three travelers at an inn at dusk sharing a loaf of bread and God’s love.  That same simplicity and intimacy is why I like earthenware cups and baskets of bread instead of ranks of gleaming silver communionware and mini-cubes of bread. What we do seems much more like supper with family and friends, the kind of meal which sustains us in grace.  Emmaus is our first supper.

      Come join us Sunday as we break bread together, meeting up with the merciful traveler wherever we are on our roads to wherever.

                                                                         In Christ,
                                                                      
                                                                             David                                                          

Remember that we will, providentially enough, be having our congregational roundtable discussion about worship and preaching and music here at First Congregational following worship this Sunday.  There will be a light buffet (cold cuts, etc.) available right after worship, so please make your lunch and bring it into the sanctuary so we can get started quickly.  (If you don’t plan on attending the roundtable, kindly wait until those who do can serve themselves before you start working on the leftovers!)



Texts For Sunday Worship:

      From the New Testament       Acts 2: 14a, 36-41
      From the Epistles                  1 Peter 1:17-23
      From the Gospel                    Luke 24:13-35