Word.

I heard a story this weekend, in a sermon from Pastor Tita Valeriano, that has made me smile a lot of smiles. I've already re-told the story to three people. It goes a little something like this:

Once upon a time, some Protestant missionaries came to the Hmong people. At that time, there was not a written language among the Hmong, but, rather, a rich storytelling tradition. These missionaries, well-intentioned as can be expected, jumped at the chance to "help" the Hmong community collect their stories in written form into a book. [We Western Protestants really like our stories in book form.] The Hmong community laughed it off, saying, "We once had books. A lot of them. But one day they all fell into the rice fields. And so we ate them. And now that we have eaten the words, we can tell the stories."

We ate them. Ate them! This sounds preposterous. But what have we done each Sunday morning? Heard the Word proclaimed...and then eaten it. And then been sent out to tell the story. To be bread -- or maybe rice? -- for the world.

We Western Protestants and the Hmong have a little more in common than you might have thought.

These are the days.

The last few weeks of the school year are always the most wonderful. The weather is perfect and everyone is stir-crazy from writing finals and we are recognizing how soon we will no longer be neighbors or classmates. So we take to the courtyard for long afternoons of food and drink and music and laughs and loves.

My tan, at this point, is incredible. For the first week of May, it might be unprecedented. Watch out, Fletch, I may have even surpassed your winter whitest!

My refrigerator and cupboards are full of BBQ supplies and all the fruit in the universe.

My camera battery died at the party today (that never happens!) because there have been so many things needing photographing, lately.

My feet are thrashed -- I've been spending so much time without shoes! The dank!

It's hard to figure out how much to celebrate and how much to study and how much to grieve, you know? This year is particularly poignant because we have some graduates and some interns and some non-interns and some 4th-year interns and it's just so confusing because there are some people who are currently critical to my everyday existence and at the end of this month I either won't see them for over a year or won't know when I'll see them again.

I don't like that very much.

But what I do like -- very much -- is how sunny it was today. And how I didn't get sunburned -- not one bit because I reapplied sunscreen like I was my own mother! And how we had a keg for the first time since college. And how we played music on the grass until we ran out of songs we knew. And how we did it all because two people we love very dearly are marrying each other next month.

I like that very much.



Some monks I dig.

In Church Leadership class on Monday, we had a guest speaker about mission development, which is not the point of this post. I only mention it because he prayed with us this prayer of Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero from 1980. [Sidebar: If you're not familiar with Archbishop Romero, please spend like three minutes on Wikipedia. He was an incredible human being.]


It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view. 
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God’s work. 
Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.
We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.
It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker.
We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

This prayer reminded me very much of some words from our main man Martin Luther that I hold very dear.
"This life, therefore, is not godliness but the process of becoming godly, not health but getting well, not being but becoming, not rest but exercise. We are not now what we shall be, but we are on the way. The process is not yet finished, but it is actively going on. This is not the goal but it is the right road. At present, everything does not gleam and sparkle, but everything is being cleansed."

These resonate with all of the process theology that's been rattling around in my head all semester.  There are things that "church" needs to be doing, but we must also recognize that we cannot do everything. We cannot be everything. But we can do something and be something. The future holds so many possibilities and so much space for process and progress.

And not just the church as an institution! We, as the body of Christ, are in this same process as individual parts and members in relationship to one another and in relationship to ourselves. I just wanted you to think about that.