Staff Blogs

By Pastor Craig Pederson

I’m an avid fan of “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.” I find Colbert to be incredibly smart, funny, entertaining, and insightful. The writers who craft the monologues and skits are amazingly creative, and the house band (called “Jon Batiste and Stay Human”) emotes an authentic and joyful New Orleans vibe that richly enhances the show.

Colbert is also a devout Catholic. I appreciate his openness about the importance of his faith, which he communicates not only through jokes and skits but also through the occasional sharing of opinions from his heart.

“After a few weeks of trying various approaches, Colbert finally just acknowledged the inherent strangeness and uncertainty of the new pandemic reality.”

I have really admired Colbert’s approach to pivoting his show during this past pandemic year. Upon going into quarantine lockdown, like other late night talk show hosts, he had to move from the bright lights of a packed theater to the mundane confines of a room in his house.

After a few weeks of trying various approaches while performing monologues to no audience and conducting guest interviews via Zoom, Colbert finally just acknowledged the inherent strangeness and uncertainty of the new pandemic reality. He changed the article before “Late Show” from “The” to “A” – saying that “A Late Show” indicated he really didn’t know what would happen from one day to the next, or what his show would look like from one night to the next. Each show was an attempt to capture some sort of perspective on a reality unlike anything we’ve experienced in our lifetimes.

WE, TOO, HAVE BEEN trying to find perspectives to help us navigate the past year. In our synod office, in congregations, in schools, in workplaces, and in homes, each new day seems to have turned into “a” day without precedent or prescription.

Along the way we have grieved losses, reckoned with injustices as seen through newly opened eyes (at least from a white-privileged point of view), cheered advances in battling the pandemic, and endured an election cycle that threatened the foundations of our democracy. We also wrestled with questions of what the church will look like on the other side of the pandemic even as we have toiled to “be the church” in the midst of it.

“We have wrestled with questions of what the church will look like on the other side of the pandemic.”

As we worked to adapt, learn, and lead on-the-fly, some of the things we tried fizzled while others went remarkably well (whether we planned it that way or not!).

But beyond just outcomes, I believe and trust that we are strengthening our faith practices for the journey ahead.  We are practicing new levels of grace, humility, and generosity – with others and with ourselves – that will serve us well as we learn new approaches to ministry from one another regardless of congregation size or location or status.

And we are more open to taking risks for the sake of the gospel. Think of the innovations and adjustments you’ve witnessed in your congregation over the past year. Would they have been possible in “normal” times?

And so it has been “a” year. I leave you with the following prayer from a recent blog post by Nadia Bolz-Weber that sums up these changes of this “season” quite well:

Dear God who made us all,

A year ago we did not know that we were about to learn: 

what we could lose and somehow live anyway

where we would find comfort and where it would elude us

whose lives matter to whom

why we have kitchens in our homes.

In mid-March 2020 all I knew for sure is that 

hoarding toilet paper doesn’t make you safe – it just makes you selfish.

But God, it feels like the world is about to open back up.  

And I’m both thrilled and kind of scared about that. 

Because I’m not who I was a year ago. 

I want so badly

to hug my friends again

and laugh like hell again

and have amazing conversations again

and yet I am not sure how long I could do any of this before crying or just getting really quiet. My emotional protective gear has worn so thin, and grief just leaks out everywhere now.

I am so afraid that I will never be who I once was. And I am also afraid that I will be.

(Not to mention, I’m not entirely clear what size jeans I wear as the me I am now)

And yet, when I quiet my anxious thoughts, I start to suspect that I am now closer to the me you have always known and always loved. So help me trust that, Lord. 

As things change, help us be gentle with ourselves and with each other. We are all wearing newborn skin right now.  

Amen.

By Brenda Blackhawk 

It’s no secret that I am a proud Northside girl. I grew up in North Minneapolis (Webber-Camden neighborhood to be exact).

My family ended up joining Salem Lutheran Church (42nd Street and Dupont North) because that is where my younger siblings and I went to pre-school. My Papa would babysit us during the week while our parents worked, and he would walk us from our house (43rd and Humboldt) down to church. Then, a few hours later, he’d walk back to pick us up and walk us back home.

Brenda’s house growing up in North Minneapolis

Sometimes, we would take little detours and swing into the T Shoppe to visit with the bartender; or into the corner store to pick up an orange push pop. As we got older, we made friends with all the kids on our block and our house became the cool place to hang out. Our best friends lived across the street and we saw them every day.  

“As we got older, we made friends with all the kids on our block and our house became the cool place to hang out.”

When we outgrew our little two-bedroom house, my parents moved us all a little bit north to Brooklyn Park. I was devastated. I may have been excited about finally having my own room, but I did not want to leave North Minneapolis.  

So, when I got my driver’s license at 16, I transferred to Patrick Henry High School in North Minneapolis, and suddenly I was back in the neighborhood I loved with the kids I’d gone to elementary school with. My teenage years we spent hanging out all over North at the homes of the friends in my large friend group. We knew how other people talked about the Northside – but for us it was just home.  

I STILL KNOW A LOT of people who live in that area. While it has certainly changed some, the vibe is much the same. So, when my spouse, Chris, and I were ready to buy a house, I knew I wanted to back to what was for me home. We prioritized the Webber-Camden area in all our searches.

Hanging out with friends after Patrick Henry High’s homecoming

It wasn’t all that long ago that people were fleeing North Minneapolis (as well as many other parts of the city) and you could hardly sell a house in there. Now, “thanks” in part to the gentrification of our city, the cost of living is skyrocketing. Chris and I couldn’t afford a house there. We eventually got a bigger plot of land and a bigger house in Brooklyn Park for less than the cost of something much smaller in North Minneapolis. 

Isaiah 32:18 states, “My people will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.” We are all God’s people and all deserving of secure housing. And when people have that security, they are freer to live healthy lives, to dream bigger dreams, and to serve others, too. 

The issue of affordable housing and gentrification all across Minneapolis has been on the radar of many of our congregations for a long time. As a racial justice organizer, my work has led me to engage with these and related issues.

Allied with talented colleagues, I started building an ecumenical coalition over North to actively work to mitigate the effects of the gentrification that is raising the cost of living and displacing longtime residents. That project led us to an even larger coalition working on the issue of rent control. (If you are part of a Minneapolis congregation and are interested in joining in this work, please reach out to me!)  

“The issue of affordable housing and gentrification all across Minneapolis has been on the radar of many of our congregations for a long time.” 

Many residents across this city (and others) are just as invested in their own communities as I am. My story is not even a little bit unique. It is a common theme these days as we hear more and more stories of people being unable to afford to live in the city they have loved and lived in for years, decades, and even generations.  

I am left with a burning question that challenges my faith perspective: What does it mean to love our neighbors fighting to remain our neighbors?  

By Pastor John Hulden

The obituary from the small-town newspaper said she was 93 years old. Edna had moved to the small town when she was in her early 20s. Yet until her dying days, the other townfolk would say, “She wasn’t from here.”

Doris moved to the big city from North Dakota in the 1950s when her husband got a job at the Whirlpool factory on the Eastside of Saint Paul. She was active in her little neighborhood church, was the de facto Altar Guild committee-of-one, raised some amazing children, but never could call her Saint Paul neighborhood “home.”

Jim is a lifelong Lutheran who became enamored with the Left Behind books he checked out from his church library. Since he began to believe the rapture was a sure thing, and maybe during his lifetime, Jim couldn’t understand why his pastor kept pushing for protecting the environment and saving the planet if nothing was going to last.

During the ELCA conflict over “CCM” – that was the one before the 2009 conflict – a youth director friend of mine in greater Minnesota was in a conundrum. He liked his pastor a lot and, … his pastor was steering the congregation out of the ELCA. “What should I do?” he asked. My response: “Theology wins.” Whatever you hold deeply will eventually come out in the way you act and make decisions. The youth director stayed put, and the church did not leave the ELCA. The pastor started a new LCMC (Lutheran Congregations in Mission for Christ) congregation on the other side of the small town.

“If you took ash, or soil from a potted plant, or a burnt candlewick, or oil, or your bare-naked finger, and made the sign of the cross on your forehead, does that mean you are connected to a place?”

Last week, many of us figured out a way to smudge a cross on our forehead.

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.

Our second season of Lent during a pandemic began.

FOR A YEAR, WE’VE been stuck in place. Do you have a Theology of Place? (My favorite definition of Theology is “faith seeking understanding.”) How do you understand your place? Your township? Your neighborhood? Your town? Your city?

If you took ash, or soil from a potted plant, or a burnt candlewick, or oil, or your bare-naked finger, and made the sign of the cross on your forehead, does that mean you are connected to a place? To the little spot of earth you’ve occupied these past many months?

“Congregational leaders will try to figure out how to grow deeper in their faith and how to connect more deeply in their community.”

What if Edna would have been seen as a full partner/neighbor in that small town all those years? How might have that town benefitted more from Edna’s gifts?

What about your new neighbors? How can we listen to their story, and partner with them to make our corner of the world a better place for all?

What if Doris adopted her big city neighborhood as her own? How would her life, church, and neighborhood have been different?

What if Jim saw his role as tending God’s garden, instead of our time on earth as a holding place until the rapture takes some away?

A FEW YEARS AGO, our synod assembly met under the banner “The Word became flesh, … and moved into the neighborhood.” John 1:14 [The Message]

How do we as individuals and congregations grow deeper in our walk with Jesus?

Our synod was gifted with a Lilly Endowment Thriving Congregations grant that allows us to try an experiment. Fifteen congregations will work and learn together for two years. (And another fifteen the two years after that.) Congregational leaders will try to figure out how to grow deeper in their faith and how to connect more deeply in their community. They also might learn, just maybe, that, since the Word already moved into their neighborhood, sometimes faith practices and neighboring practices are the same thing.

Here are three opportunities to find out more about Thriving Congregations:

Info Session: Thursday, February 25; 6:30-7:30 p.m.
Info Session: Sunday, February 28; 1:00-2:00 p.m.
Tool Kit for Congregations Workshop: Saturday, March 13, 11:00 a.m.-Noon

*Edna, Doris, and Jim are made up stories that are true!

By Bob Hulteen

Sometimes the new tech even reminds us of our mission.

“My name is Bob and I am an extrovert.” (Did you respond, “Welcome, Bob”?)

I am happiest at work when I am working with colleagues on a shared project that will make a real difference in the real lives of real people. I don’t mind long hours; I even love them when we are engaged in a tough campaign against entrenched forces that marginalize people. I think it is my spiritual gift, in fact.

Well, COVID-19 has really messed that up. You probably are experiencing that as well.

“We read from Joel, were reminded that ‘to dust you shall return,’ and prayed together — for each other and for our congregations and leaders.”

Now, surprisingly, I am not struggling much over the quiet of working alone – whether in my home office or at the workplace. But, encouraging my colleagues and being inspired by them, I miss that. I miss the community. In fact, I guess it would be honest to say that I even grieve it.

Sometimes when I grieve, I get grumpy. Sure, isolation is part of it. But, even more important, I think, is the loss of shared purpose and direction, of work that makes me part of something bigger than myself.

TODAY THE SYNOD STAFF had a half-day retreat. It’s a chance for us to think about goals met and unmet, of plans for 2020 that are unfulfilled. Our 2020 vision started with clarity, but eventually we could only see through “a mirror dimly.” And I want to be “face to face.”

The staff that Zooms together, …

Of course, we couldn’t be together. But Bishop Ann was determined to make the day productive, innovative, and fun. We met via Zoom, though we still shared pastries from Butter Bakery (a good Lutheran-owned business in South Minneapolis) that could be picked up from the office fridge at staff members’ convenience. We did talk goals and plans, but also reminded each other (and “newish” staff members Madeline Troyer, Norma Malfatti, and Nick Tangen) about our “strength finders” and “enneagram types.”

We read from Joel, were reminded that “to dust you shall return,” and prayed together — for each other and for our congregations and leaders. We used Zoom – breakout rooms even (though we didn’t use the polling function, which really disappointed me).

The Google Jamboard platform allows for putting notes on a timeline.

“Over the next few months, our Twin Cities community will be confronting the challenge of court verdicts and corona variants, … but at least we can do it together.”

We also used Menti to create a word cloud around our synod mission statement. (Don’t mind the fact that “pizza” is bigger than “Jesus”; it was an staff inside joke.) Most of us had never used the Google Jamboard platform before; we loved being able to use Post-It notes again, placing them carefully across a timeline, looking for intersection between our various responsibilities.

And, we even spent a bit of time playing Pictionary online. (I don’t want to talk about that anymore, … because I got robbed. Don’t you think “angry” is close enough to “anger” to count for at least half?)

Here’s my point. I’m feeling a little better, a little more connected, a little more “on game,” a little more part of something bigger than myself. I feel a bit more of a sense of community. And, it’s easier to believe in the “already, not yet.”

The Divine One is ready to meet us in ways we recognize. For me, it’s through community. And, today, I got invited to feel the touch of the eternity. Renewed, I am ready to enter the Season of Lent, even knowing that our community will be confronting the challenge of court verdicts and corona variants, … because we can do it together.

By Meghan Olsen Biebighauser 

A few days ago, my mom and I took my children to the Minnesota Zoo. It was basically our first “fun” outing to an “actual place,” as my kids put it, and we really needed it. My 3–year–old, Robin, isn’t old enough to remember much about pre-COVID activities like the zoo, so this was all new for him.  

As we walked the outdoor trails (which we practically had to ourselves), Robin was obviously thrilled. He did, however, keep giving the adults some real side-eye, almost as if he was thinking: “There’s been an actual tiger 15 minutes from our house, and I’m only just now finding out about this?!” It’s a fair enough complaint.   

We’ve had several moments like this, though, over the last 10 months. In some ways, our lives have been more mobile than ever: I can log in to work or worship from anywhere at all, virtually attend weddings and graduations around the country, or tour the Louvre from my bed, if I want to!  

You’d think this would make me feel more connected to a global community, or at least make my world feel larger. But instead I’m feeling more connected than ever to right here – the neighborhood that I call home.  

“The simple acts of waving to our neighbors, sledding down the hill at the local park, returning books to the library drop-off, have become major items on our social calendar, where they were footnotes before.” 

Because so many of our social connections have become virtual, the physical, embodied experiences that we have all happen, … right here, right where we are. With limited personal contact, the simple acts of waving to our neighbors, sledding down the hill at the local park, returning books to the library drop-off, have become major items on our social calendar, where they were footnotes before.   

We’ve made many joyful discoveries this way! Early on in the pandemic, my 8–year–old, Frances, took up geocaching. It’s basically a worldwide scavenger hunt, and we were thrilled to discover that these little caches – these tiny treasures – were hidden all around us on the streets we walk daily, in the park a block away, inside the tree we lean against when we take a snack break on the playground. “Mom, these have been here this whole time and we never saw them!”  

We’ve also grown quite fond of Fern, the deer that lives in the cemetery at the corner of East Lake Street and Cedar Avene – right in the middle of the city! Fern’s been there for a few years, and we’d spot her once in a while. But as our world has become smaller during the pandemic, we’ve become much more protective of Fern – making sure we see her every time we walk or drive by. And on days when we couldn’t spot her, we’ve reached out to friends and neighbors to make sure that someone’s seen her and that she’s well.   

I DON’T THINK IT minimizes the absolute trauma and horror of these last 11 months to name the places where we’ve made joyful discoveries in our communities. A congregation is gathered outdoors, including new neighbors who may never have stepped inside the building to worship, but couldn’t help noticing the (socially distanced) crowd outside. Another congregation hosts a drive-through event inviting attendees to write letters to an elected official about an urgent local economic justice issue and people show up to do just that (and donate money to “stop the bleeding” until our lawmakers act). More than 150 synod leaders show up in two parking lots on successive Saturdays to be trained in nonviolent direct action (because if we’ve learned anything this year, it’s that we belong to each other and that our communities need our embodied presence to survive).  

“Over the last 10 months, our lives have been more mobile than ever, … virtually.” 

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, in his book The Wisdom of Stability writes: “Maybe the single most important thing we can do if we want to grow spiritually is to stay in the place where we are. … Indeed, we might even go so far as to say that true Christian mission is not possible until we have established roots of love through the practice of stability.”  

This year of forced-stability has been difficult, but I hope you’ve found moments of surprise and delight at the abundance that’s been right under our noses, unseen until now. I hope such experiences make us proclaim, as though we’d just discovered a tiger right in our backyard, “This has been here this whole time and I’m only just seeing it now?!”   

By Emilie Bouvier

If you’ve seen me from across the Zoom room at a meeting or virtual event lately, you likely have noticed the favorite thing that I’ve discovered about working from home this past almost-year of the pandemic: When I’m at my desk, I like to be walking!

So yes, if you see my head bouncing up and down a little in my frame, it’s just my normal pattern. While 98% of the time I’m terrible at multitasking, apparently my secret gift is being able to walk and type at the same time.

A mountain trail near Holden Village

It started out as a way to combat Zoom fatigue early into the pandemic. Especially after learning that without office colleagues or travelling to meetings (even if they’re just down the hall), I could accidentally go hours without even standing up, let alone tending well to my personal embodied-ness. So, I got a treadmill pad, set up an extra-tall card table, piled on some various stands for my computer and keyboard, and off I went!

I’ll confess, I do miss walking the trails in the mountains that I explored now more than a year ago at Holden Village. Yet, there’s been something beautiful about having literally walked my way through the ups and downs of these past months, within the four walls of my upstairs home office.

WHAT DO WE KNOW as we walk away from 2020 and into the hopeful but still uncertain 2021? Well, we know that none of our ministry looks the same, but that it’s more vital than ever. We need to listen and care for one another and our communities. We need to proclaim the daring, compassionate, incarnate God in our midst. We need to shift the systems of injustice by showing up together and holding our elected leaders accountable, even when showing up means entering our Zoom boxes to do the work.

A treadmill under a home-office desk

And, we know that these days even simple things can feel harder and small joys can make all the difference.

“We know that none of our ministry looks the same,
but that it’s more vital than ever.”

So, when I pick up the phone to try to connect (because seriously, it’s so hard to actually catch up with people at online events), I’m likely walking from window to window in circles while we talk. When I answer your email, in all likelihood I’m doing so from my walking desk. And when I feel overwhelmed by it all, I remember how grounded connected I felt to God while on the trail – letting the memory of the smell of warm pine needles and sounds of the forest calm me as I walk.

I think of the words of early twentieth-century Spanish poet Antonio Machado: “The path is made by walking it.” There’s so much we can’t control right now. But what we can offer is simply putting our feet to the ground and walking a path one step at a time, faithfully, together.

By Pastor Norma Malfatti

Are you looking for a savior?

Many have been labeled saviors over the years, especially when it comes to politicians. For instance, then-Sen. Barack Obama in 2008 joked, “Contrary to the rumors you have heard, I was not born in a manger. I was actually born on Krypton and sent here by my father Jor-El to save the Planet Earth.” (See the transcript of Sen. Obama’s remarks at the Alfred E. Smith Dinner.) All joking aside, President Obama was not the savior people were looking for.

Eight years later, people went to the polls thinking Donald Trump was the one who could save us and make our lives – and our country – better. Despite their hopes, President Trump has not been the savior people were looking for.

This week, Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States. To be sure, some of the 81 million people who voted for him believe that he will save us from the Coronavirus and the unemployment crisis that is crushing people. As with his predecessors, President Biden will not be the savior people are looking for.

AS MUCH AS WE might hope that a politician, tech innovator, or scientist will free us from pain and suffering, will be the force that eradicates racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, and all the other injustices that plague our world, none of them are going to live up to the task or title of savior. For us, as Christians, we reserve that honor for only one. This past weekend, many congregations read in worship services one of two passages – Jesus’ inaugural address in Luke 4:14-30 or the calling of Philip and Nathanael in John 1:43-51.

Rather than recognizing Jesus as the promised Messiah the townspeople in Luke wanted to toss Jesus off a cliff after preaching what the Savior was about: bringing good news to the poor, proclaiming release to those in captivity, freeing the oppressed, and declaring the year of the Lord’s favor. Nathanael was less violent and only judgingly wondered if “anything good can come out of Nazareth.” That is not the expected reaction to the one they should recognize as the Savior they were looking for.

“The season of Epiphany has always been a time of resetting my expectations of God and our relationship.”

Even John the Baptist wondered if Jesus was the one he was waiting for. To me, this shows just how easy it is to conflate God’s ways with our own expectations for God, especially in a season of deeply longing for a savior.

More than Lent, the season of Epiphany has always been a time of resetting my expectations of God and our relationship. Perhaps it is because the Gospel readings are about revealing who Jesus is and what the way of Jesus is about. Perhaps it is simply because it coincides with a new year. More than likely it is a little bit of both.

I invite you to join me over these next few weeks in resetting your expectations of God, of reconnecting with the ways of Jesus and letting go of what you might be substituting for Jesus’ ways. However you spend the rest of this Epiphany season, I pray that the ways of the Savior are revealed in your life.

By Pastor Craig Pederson

It was almost 15 years ago when I participated in my first online worship experience.  A wonderful young couple was getting married at the small urban church where I was serving.  The groom was from out of state, and unfortunately his father could not attend the wedding because of health issues.

But the couple was determined to make his presence possible in real-time, so they invested in the right equipment to facilitate the use of a new technology called “Skype.” (Remember when Skype was the only “virtual” show in town?) After setting up a camera, a microphone, and laptop on a rickety little table next to the pulpit, we tested the internet and attempted the connection – and there appeared the father on the screen, beaming with a huge smile.

Tears of joy flowed during that wedding ceremony as everyone was able to celebrate the real presence of real love in real time.

OVER THE PAST YEAR, I have reflected on that experience from time to time.  Back then virtual connection was a novelty and a Godsend. And, even over the past 15 years, it felt like a bit of a luxury to have the capacity and resources to connect so tangibly with someone who was not in the same room with you.

But in 2020 the pandemic has transformed that technology from a luxury to a necessity. It has become a tool to express compassion, connection, and community.

“The technological response to the pandemic has also demonstrated to us how much we increasingly long for ‘real presence’ with our siblings in Christ.”

“Zoom” has become a noun, a verb, an adjective, and a state of being. (Sorry Skype!) It has showed us how much we may have taken for granted the opportunity to gather together in person. It has also shown us how much we increasingly long for “real presence” with our siblings in Christ.

Let me make the incarnational move here to say that this year, more than ever, we truly needed the Christmas story of Emmanuel (“God with us”) to remind us of God’s in-the-flesh love for us. And then let me make the sacramental move here to affirm that the “real presence” of Christ is with us in Holy Communion through the earthly elements of bread and wine along with God’s Word, spoken in the Christian assembly (which has found new forms of expression through technology in these pandemic months).

“A decade-and-a-half ago, virtual connection was a novelty and a Godsend.”

As we enter into 2021 there is one more move we need to make: One of our biggest tasks as a church will be to practice more intentional, real presence with our BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) siblings within the church. Issues of race, class, equity, and inclusion have hovered around the church for decades. But the murder of George Floyd on a street within our own synod this year opened the eyes of many of us who, frankly, had the luxury and privilege of not paying closer attention before.

How will you utilize your time, your tools, your resources, your bodies, and your presence in the coming year?

I pray that the real presence of “God with us” will guide our hearts and minds to connect in ways that glorify God, and will teach us new ways to “be the neighbor” in our communities.  And while we give thanks for our virtual relationships, I pray that we can gather again soon to experience God’s grace and mercy in real time.

By Meghan Olsen Biebighauser

Month Nine of this pandemic has me thinking about how connected we are to our place – like, our literal coordinates. For the most part, I haven’t left my zip code in months. The walks that my family take are around the same couple of blocks; the people we wave to as we walk are the same couple of neighbors. My working-at-home desk is on the second floor overlooking the street and – I’m totally not a stalker – but ask me anything about my neighbors’ comings and goings, dog walking schedules, food delivery preferences, because I see it all.

We have an email chain for our block and, from my perch, I’ve been able to help my neighbors redirect a pizza delivery to the right house, locate their kids, and even track down some runaway urban chickens. I’m getting to know my neighbors much more intimately than I did back when it was safe to come and go, as well as to gather together.

I’m also thinking about how the most amazing leadership and service that we’ve seen this year has arisen out of neighborhoods. In the weeks that followed the murder of George Floyd by the police, just a few blocks from my perch above my street, we saw a groundswell of community caretaking through mutual aid networks. While I was volunteering at Holy Trinity during the days of the uprising, whenever we encountered a need that we couldn’t meet on site, neighbors were ready to jump in and take care of it; we only needed to call on them.

“I picture the holy family arriving in a new neighborhood, in need of just about everything, and being cared for by neighbors.”

I met a man who needed to get home from work, but public transit had been shut down to the area. A couple of clicks in a Facebook mutual aid group and five minutes later a neighbor arrived to give him a ride home.

The next day, a woman showed up and explained that she was leaving an abusive partner and needed a place to stay. After trying all of the typical pathways into the systems that exist for these situations, we were at a dead end. Another few clicks on my phone and she had an offer of a place to stay with two women (who were happy to welcome her for as long as she needed) and another woman who would provide transport from the church to her new hosts.

It was magical. Much of those emergency networks have quieted down as things have calmed, but once a week my spouse, Jeff, still does laundry for those neighbors of ours living in encampments, or in hotels. Once a week someone drops off a laundry bag of dirty clothes to our backyard, and Jeff washes, dries, and folds an individual’s clothing and leaves it back out in the yard for a pickup. It’s an act of service that’s intimate and entirely powered by neighbors.

THESE VERY HUMANE INTERACTIONS ALL strike me as beautiful. But it’s all happening because of a failure of leadership within the existing structures, systems, and safety nets. It fails when gridlock grips our public leaders.

From the mishandling of Covid-19 by the federal government, to the crisis of homelessness in our state, to the police brutality that has long been a problem in our city, local communities have had to step in and create alternate systems to care for one another when things have fallen apart.

Even in my own work in the synod office on the issue of payday lending, it’s become clear that neither Congress nor the Minnesota legislature will be the place for the action that’s so urgently needed to protect financially vulnerable Minnesotans. Who will step in to protect these neighbors? Apparently, it will be our local communities.

“Even in my own work in the synod office on the issue of payday lending, it’s become clear that neither Congress nor the Minnesota legislature will be the place for the action that’s so urgently needed to protect financially vulnerable Minnesotans.”

The city of Moorhead was the first community in Minnesota (and one of the very first in the nation) to pass a payday lending reform ordinance. This Northwestern Minnesota city won’t be the last. Neighbors in cities throughout Minnesota are launching campaigns to follow suit because, when larger systems fail (and they often do), we take care of the people closest to us – neighbor to neighbor.

This is all on my mind this week as I picture the holy family arriving in a new neighborhood, in need of just about everything, and being cared for by neighbors. The midwives showed up to assist Mary, just as they’d done with all the moms in the neighborhood for years. People in the neighborhood made sure they were fed and comfortable as Mary recovered from childbirth.

Until the day Mary sings of, the day that we work and pray for when God causes empires to crumble and tears tyrants from their thrones, we fill in the cracks in the crumbling structures with little glimpses of light by taking care of one another, neighbor by neighbor.

By Brenda Blackhawk

I love this time of year: the cold snap in the air, the spicy scents, and the pretty lights and decorations. And, I love the relational aspects of the season – the gifts (both the giving and receiving), the jokes, the games, and, of course, the incredible meals shared with loved ones.  

Advent into Christmas is one of my favorite church seasons. I love the Advent hymns and the Christmas carols. I love the anticipation and all the little ways we build up to the birth of our Savior. And I love the Christmas Eve service at my home congregation, Salem Lutheran. It’s special – the way the sanctuary looks soft and lovely in the candlelight, our voices lifted as the evening fades into deep night. 

“All the sadness and frustration and despair and anger has just been building up, undealt with.”

The events of this year have taken away so much from so many. From business activity and financial security to our sense of community to individuals’ health and lives. This year has been difficult, to vastly understate. And we have no reason to believe that anything will have changed for the better by Christmas.  

That means, as we are doing in all other aspects of our lives, we will adjust and cope the best we can. For some people, like myself, this is easy to say and do, but much harder to feel. We look for hope and fun and then we fight to cling onto it. We excitedly try to convince ourselves when we try to convince others how great everything will be.  

I am coming to the realization that for the past nine months I have been going and incessantly moving from one exciting event to the next. But all the sadness and frustration and despair and anger has just been building up, undealt with. 

THIS TIME OF YEAR can also be stressful and overwhelming with non-stop activity. As I write this, I already have both of my Christmas trees up and decorated. I have bought and wrapped more than two dozen gifts and I will be taking my brother and sister shopping again later this evening. The go, go, GO is a great distraction from all the sadness and despair, but it doesn’t make me feel anything but tired.  

“It is okay to cry about online worship on Christmas Eve.”

So, I give you all permission to feel all the “negative” feelings about how this year is closing out. I give you permission to mourn all that has been lost, both the things that we will never get back and the things that will one day feel safe and good again. It is okay to cry about online worship on Christmas Eve. It is just fine to rage and stamp your feet over the things that are out of our control, … and take lots of deep breaths. I give you and me and us permission to feel it all. 

Let’s just get our emotional reactions out now (and later and whenever we need to just feel it). Our family and friends – and even ourselves – might thank us later if we can feel true joy at Christmas. After all, ready or not, Our Savior is coming, with an abundance of grace and love for us all.