God, hear my plan

Yesterday in worship I made a Freudian slip that made me glad I wasn’t on a microphone at that moment. While my colleague was presiding and the assisting minister was leading the Prayers of the People, I was participating in the congregation’s response to each petition: (assisting minister) “God, in your mercy,” (people) “hear our prayer.”

One of the petitions was for our congregation’s strategic planning process coming up, a huge endeavor of discernment which involves the whole congregation and lasts almost a year. Apparently I was thinking hard about planning during that petition (or I was just worn out toward the end of our third worship service that morning), because instead of responding “hear our prayer,” I said, “hear our plan.”

Hope for Lutherans’ discernment

Last week, the Churchwide Assembly of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA), in which I am an ordained minister, decided to open the ministry of the ELCA to gay and lesbian pastors and other professional church workers living in committed same-gender relationships.

I’ve been surprised to find myself connecting this juncture in Lutheran denominational life with a strange, uncomfortable, and heart-breaking period in my own life–a period of discerning separation and divorce in my marriage. To me, it feels as if the ELCA right now is like a “marriage on the rocks.” Even more surprisingly, this gives me tremendous hope for the future.

Subversive acts

“In our time cooking from scratch and growing any of your own food qualify as subversive acts.”

This is from Michael Pollan, whose book In Defense of Food I just finished reading. As my status update on Facebook, that quotation received so many comments from friends (many of whom had also read the book) that it seems worth further exploration.

Here are some photos of my own little “subversive” garden (complete with the subversive beans and zucchini that keep getting further and further outside the boundaries). It may not be the White House garden, but so far I’ve harvested some beans, tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs. I’ve also been thinking about what else I do, or could do, that qualifies as “subversive” in similar ways.

Here’s a partial list: