Ruminations from Pastor Brian

Week Two
February 8, 2007

Greetings, fellow pilgrims in faith,

My dexterity has its limits!  I had walked away from my computer for a bit, came back, accidentally clicked the wrong thing on the screen, and voila!  You received my partially completed email (staff members, you were spared this).  Let’s try again, where I continue my thought three paragraphs down:

Did you have a tough time on the roads this week as we experienced the bitterly cold air temperatures and wind chill?  On Wednesday I was about to enter the Lowry Hill tunnel during rush hour, and noticed an odd burning smell and looked for an old car next to me that might be emitting heavy exhaust.  There was no such car to be seen, and lo and behold, I saw the oil light on my dashboard light up.  In the Lowry Hill tunnel.  In heavy traffic.  A jolt went through my body.  I was not a happy camper.  Now, I’ve been pretty regular with oil changes and should have had enough oil, but this is a car I had only been driving since June, and I didn’t know it would slurp up the oil during the harsh winter weather the way it did.  Would the car make it?  Would the burning smell continue?  Would I have to pull over and cause a huge back-up on the freeway?  Would I lose the investment I had made in this car if I tried to drive it to the U of M hospital as I had planned?  (All of this is an argument for oil gauges, not oil lights, on dashboards.)

Well, I trusted that I had seen the oil light soon after it came on, and that I wouldn’t have to stop right away.  I made it to the U of M hospital, then to a gas station to add oil, and it was fine.  But it took awhile for the adrenaline to leave my body, and a good while before I could really focus well on what I intended to do on Wednesday morning. Where was my center? 

The centered life.  I’ve been really intrigued lately by a project by that name at Luther Seminary.  What is at the center of my life, of your life?  We talk about living a balanced life.  We pursue it with a passion: time for family, time for friends, time for work, time for worship and prayer, time for house and yard, and so on.  Are you taking time for self-care, we ask each other?  The balanced life is what we pursue.

But then you have car trouble.  Or you get socked by a cold for two weeks.  Or a deadline at work demands extra time.  What happens to our nice balanced life then?  Funny thing is, those things keep coming up.  Getting in the way of a balanced life.

Perhaps it is better to think of the centered life.  If the center of my life is Christ, then I can ask myself how my day’s ups and downs relate to Christ.  I don’t have to feel guilty, then, for the times when I just can’t keep everything in balance.  Maybe even better, I can ask myself the positive questions: How is Christ drawing me forward in my life out of love’s empowerment?  How can I see Christ’s face in that person who just cut me off in traffic or in the people camped out under the freeway bridges?  What will I do differently today in the spirit of Christ to respond to these things happening in life all around me?  Maybe even better yet, there is grace then at the center, grace that loves me as I am, grace that loves me enough to beckon me to change.  (I think Anne Lamott said something like that.) 

“Follow me,” Jesus says.

Peace and grace in your tunnels and freeways,

Brian

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