April 2019

Greetings to God’s Beloved People,

This is the time that we witness the depth of God’s amazing love for us most clearly.  I hope that as we come to the end of our 40 days of Lent and make our final preparations for Holy Week that you have been richly blessed in this journey.  I certainly have.

 I have so enjoyed watching us try to learn how to fold the complicated origami butterflies as our community discipline.  I came face to face with all the feelings that surround me when I am learning something new and my own frustrations at not taking the time to read all of the instructions, guessing and hoping I did it right, not wanting to appear stupid and adding the word ‘torture’ to the “discipline” bulletin board.  And I was reassured that I was not alone as I watched the origami folding on Wednesdays and Sundays as people tried and failed and succeeded and I watch some become teachers and some take the instructions and paper home to try in solitude or with the help of YouTube. I am grateful for Nicole’s instructions and her patience.  I am grateful for this community of faith and our willingness to try.

 Due to the blessing of Intern Nicole and her faithful leadership, I was able to take some time in the “wilderness” of Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado to spend some time on Copper Mountain.  It was good to be away for a bit of time and in the “wilderness”.  As Lydia and I drove across these states with their familiar landscapes and smells and some flooding at the Platte River, I also delighted in seeing a cowboy on horse, out early in the morning checking the spring calves.  And as we drove through the mountains I was in awe of the beauty of God’s creation and human ingenuity to make a path not only through the mountains but also in the delight to be able to traverse the mountains through chair lifts and skis. And to conclude this time with being in the most perfect place to experience sunset and full moon rise on the plains of Nebraska.  It was breathtaking to see multitude of colors everywhere I looked.  My whole being was filled in this “wilderness” experience.

I was gifted with teaching Psalm 104 in our adult class which affirmed my experience with God’s creation.  Take a read through this Psalm and see if it encourages you to trust God.  When I look at the creation of this world and spend time in it, I can’t but help think of God’s amazing creativity and artistry.  And why wouldn’t I trust God with all that I am as I look at God’s creation? 

Then within just a couple of days, I came across two different Lenten devotions (SE Iowa Synod & ELCA Worship) that used the same Japanese illustration, “Kintsugi”, the art of putting broken pieces back together with gold creating a more beautiful and durable piece of art.  Barbara Bloom states that “they believe that when something breaks and has suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful.”

I look at the beauty that God brought to us, to humanity, to our brokenness, our history and added God’s kind of gold.  God became one of us by entering into the very fullness of our humanity.  Jesus entered into the hurt of our humanity and our death and created beautiful new life for us.  So I take a new look at my sin, my brokenness and my rough edges, knowing that the Holy Spirit meets me here to do some amazing work.  I know this because of this journey in the wilderness and the witness of Jesus.

 Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

March 2019

Greetings Holy People of God,

In my annual report for 2017, I had hoped to devote time and energy into Sabbatical planning for 2018 and then other things came up that drew my attention away from planning a sabbatical. The preschool flooring project ended up with asbestos abatement, internship for Nicole, and my mother’s death all added together to put planning on the back burner. So, when I wrote my 2018 annual report, I rededicated my efforts. With all staff in place this year and with Intern Nicole able to share in pastoral duties, I would like to apply for the 2019 Lilly Endowment National Clergy Renewal Program. This just might be a practice run seeing the deadline for submitting applications is April 11, 2019 with the intention of the sabbatical taking place in the summer of 2020. But we seem to work well with deadlines.

For the application we, pastor and congregation will work together to design the renewal program. I will be working with Executive Committee and council to agree on 1) the length of the program, 2) the pastor’s activities during the program, 3) congregational renewal activities that will take place during the pastor’s absence, and 4) how the pastor and congregation will share their experiences and insights with one another when the renewal leave is completed. The congregation will submit the proposal to Christian Theological Seminary. Please go to http:// www.cpx.cts.edu/renewal for more information on clergy renewal.

At the February council meeting we approved a Sabbatical policy which will also guide us in this process. The policy requires a written plan covering the following areas: 1) the purpose of the sabbatical, 2) the hoped-for outcomes, and 3) a description of how this will benefit both the ministry setting and the rostered leader.

One of my long-term goals in ministry is to visit the Holy Land but not just on a tour, but a lengthy stay with a home base. The Tantur Ecumenical Institute in association with the University of Notre Dame offers a one-month program in June or July that weaves together classroom instruction of the Bible, geography, history and spirituality along with guided tours. In addition, Tantur Programs seek to introduce participants to the people of this land, both in their history and in their contemporary existence. It would be an immersion experience into the Holy Land.

One of the most obvious hoped for outcomes of a Holy Land experience would be in preaching but also in the experience of living in a communal setting for a month might also bring some insight into our endeavors to be “present” in our community and to form relationships with our neighbors. I think time spent with people who live in Israel and Palestine may have some unique ideas and experiences that may have the potential to help us truly be a light shining on the corner of Melrose and Mormon Trek.

That’s a bit of my brainstorming. I invite you to do some brainstorming with me. Think about the conversations we have had over the past two years with the LEAD Team. Think about our neighborhood and the community of Christ the King and pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit to blow through our midst. What do you think would need to happen to give us a sense of renewed energy or help us to sing a new song? What renewal activities could we engage in for us and for our community? I am thankful to be on the journey with you, my faithful brothers and sisters in Christ.

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

February 2019

Greetings Disciples,

On Sunday, January 27 our prayer of the day was about God’s word. “You have caused the holy scriptures to be written for the nourishment of your people. Grant that we may hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that comforted by your promises, we may embrace and forever hold fast to the hope of eternal life.”

And there it is – both my Epiphany word - LIFE and our collective community Epiphany word – DISCIPLINE have met together at the beautiful place of prayer and worship.

I have so enjoyed hearing some of the stories about your Epiphany words and the “confessions” of how the word chose you. Not necessarily a word we might choose for ourselves, but probably a word we need for the coming year.

I too have that confession. I drew out the word, LIFE and my immediate reaction was that LIFE is such a big word. And then my devotion for January 7 from “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” began with this sentence. “The temptation is always to reduce life to size. A bowl of cherries. A rat race. Amino acids. Even to call it a mystery smacks of reductionism. It is the mystery.”

Yes LIFE is a big word. It is THE mystery. I am feeling like I am being called back to life after the losses of not only my mother, but Diane Schweer and Monica Kistler. These two moms called out of life and through death in what seems before their time but called nonetheless. And then I am thankful for the very expansive idea of the hope of eternal life that is ours through Jesus. I am thankful for God’s word that helps us to hold fast to the hope of eternal life and the power and mystery of Jesus’ resurrection that shows us the way – or at least as much of it as we can see or understand at this point.

Then our Epiphany word, DISCIPLINE enters. What does that word mean for you and for us as a community? Here’s what some of you have offered: Checking myself before doing something. We are much more disciplined about some things than others. We choose. It means doing wrong in some way but knowing better. Focus on what’s important – setting priorities. Learning for the purpose of growth. From the root – disciple and pupil.

For me when I think of discipline, I think of doing something over and over again, so that I remember and can draw on what I have learned. When I think about that in terms of God’s word and LIFE, I am drawn into a larger picture, something that is bigger than me and I am thankful that I am participating in this life with you.

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

January 2019

Happy New Year Gracious People of God,

In Frederick Buchner’s devotional book, Listening to Your Life, January 1 begins with this, “I discovered that if you really keep your eye peeled to it and your ears open, if you really pay attention to it, even such a limited and limiting life as the one I was living on Rupert Mountain opened up onto extraordinary vistas.” And concludes with: “If I were called upon to state in a few words the essence of everything I was trying to say both as a novelist and as a preacher it would be something like this: Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it no less than in the excitement and the gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments and life itself is grace.” (p. 2)

As we enter into this new year and the 3rd season of the church year, Epiphany, I invite you to keep your eye peeled and open your ears and pay attention to what God is revealing before you and in the midst of our community. In Advent we prepared for the coming of the Lord. In the 12 days of the Christmas season we celebrated the incarnation of Jesus. God became one of us and one with us. In the season of Epiphany we keep our eye peeled and our ears open to see the manifestation of God in Jesus. The incarnation of Jesus takes flesh, so pay attention to what that looks like in Jesus’ life, in your life and our lives together.

This life that we have been given is grace. Pay attention to what God is up to and revealing to you and our community. Try an Epiphany word, which is a word that you take from a basket on the Sunday of Epiphany, January 6 and carry it with you through the year.

Last year my epiphany word was JOY. I enjoyed watching and looking for joy and exploring the grittiness from which joy emerges. When I paid attention, I was rewarded with Christmas ornament that stayed out the whole year to remind me. I scented my body with an essential oil called Joy that I had lost track of amidst other perfumes. And when the scent of joy ran out, I entered into the grittiest joy of the year.

You know that my mother died in November. She had long journey with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, which her cancer doctor told her would not be the cause of her death and she learned how to live with cancer. The cancer moved from a slow growing to a faster growing but yet she navigated it. The cancer compromised her immune system which meant that she was treated for colon cancer. She also had osteoporosis which focused on her back. So when she fell and fractured a vertebra, we knew it would be a long and painful journey to heal. So it is with a gritty kind of joy that a bladder infection moved quickly to her kidney and spread throughout her body.

It is the gritty kind of joy that I thank God that we could all be there to usher her through the gate of death and place her and ourselves into God’s tender care. She was ready. We knew that. She would not want to have laid around waiting for her body to heal. My mom and dad’s pastor had lead us in a beautiful service of scripture, song and reassuring and familiar words of hope in Jesus, our good shepherd. And our cousin talked about how our mom had all taught us to pray that bed time prayer and so all 5 of us as her children prayed, “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray dear Lord my soul to keep, if I die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. And this I ask for Jesus’ sake, Amen.” And we scented her with lavender and bid her farewell.

With a tearful gritty joy, we held her hand, cried and comforted one another and gave thanks to God for her and the ways in which she gifted our lives. And when she died, we sang, “Praise God From Whom All Blessing Flow” in a slow processional way as she returned to the one who created her and gifted us with her. It is a gritty joy but joy nonetheless.

I wonder what word I will draw this year and I wonder what the Holy Spirit has in the works for us?

Believing It Boldly Loving Expansively,

Pastor Connie Spitzack

December 2018

Greetings to the Holy and Beloved People of God,

At the end of October, Intern Nicole and I attended a retreat as part of the internship experience. The retreat was entitled: SURELY GOD IS IN THIS PLACE: DWELLING, SOJOURNING, PLACEMAKING and was led by Rev. Dr. Charlene Rachuy Cox, dir. of Contextual Education at Wartburg Seminary. It was a time apart to reflect and share about how we are present in the places we move through and live in.

We explored how place forms and shapes us, thinking about questions like; What does place have to do with who you are, how you feel and think about yourself and what you believe. John Inge in “A Christian Theology of Place” writes, “One only needs to open the Bible at the beginning of Genesis and read a few pages to be left with the impression that place is important to the writer.”

It made me think about a book I had read by Kenneth Bailey, “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels.” He has a chapter on the story of Jesus’ birth drawing on Luke 2:1-20 that has me thinking differently about Jesus’ dwelling, sojourning and placemaking in Bethlehem.

Our place influences how we make sense of our encounter with God coming to us. In the West our tradition creates a scene of a late night arrival, no place to stay but a stable with the animals and shepherd visitors. In the Eastern tradition, Mary is alone when the child was born. This then is reflected in worship practices where the altar is hidden from the congregation and the event of the elements becoming the body and blood of Jesus takes place out of sight. There is a mystery in the coming of Christ. The tradition for Christians in the Middle East was to focus on the birth having taken place in a cave which would have been some of the first dwelling places for the people of the Middle East.

Bailey makes a strong case about the place where Jesus was born taking into consideration the context and culture of the people in the Middle East. He places the birth of Jesus in a home. Bailey draws a picture of Jesus’ birth among extended family that welcomed them in with warm hospitality into a peasant home that consisted of a large family room that housed the whole family including the farm animals who were housed with the family to heat the home when it was cold and to prevent theft of the animals. The inn that was full was the guest room attached to the back of the home or the roof. The manger that Jesus was laid in was either built into the structure of the home or was a wooden feed box.

This coming of Jesus’ family into a town that welcomed him and surrounded him with extended family as well as the shepherds welcoming and worshiping is a refreshing way for me to think about the dwelling, sojourning and placemaking of Jesus and his family. Lynda Schneekloth and Shibley Robert in their book, Placemaking: The Art and Practice of Building Communities state that “Placemaking is the way all of us human beings transform the places in which we find ourselves into places in which we live.”

As we prepare ourselves for the “Advent”, for the coming of our Lord, I invite you to think about dwelling, sojourning and placemaking for God is in this place.

Believing It Boldly Loving Everyday,

Pastor Connie Spitzack