Why pretzels?–I asked this question before our liturgy began. Together we explored the meaning behind the Lenten pretzel tradition. Pretzels are a Lent-safe food. Made of flour, salt, yeast, and water, they don’t contain any of the fats and other “decadent” ingredients traditionally avoided during Lent. Another symbol is found in the pretzel’s shape, the crossed “arms” representing a posture of prayer. The word pretzel derives from the Latin bracellae–meaning “little arms”–which morphed in Germany to the word brezel. So pretzels capture two traditional aspects of our Lenten journey–prayer and self-denial.

The prayer part is a no-brainer. Most of us would admit we need to be doing more of it, more consistently. But the focus on prayer in Lent has implications beyond our personal spiritual practice. Lent also calls us deeper into community and invites us to consistency in a more demanding act–corporate prayer. Let me expand this notion by being clear that corporate prayer is not limited to the little space reserved in our liturgy for the Prayers of the People. Our entire liturgy is a prayer. Our songs are prayer, as is our our speaking or singing of the psalm. And certainly Holy Trinity’s confessional ritual–the dropping of “sin stones” into water–is a prayer that recruits our whole body into conversation with God. Praise, confession, lament, intercession–these are the threads that weave our liturgy into one comprehensive and shared act of prayer.

One function of the liturgy, then, is to teach us how to pray. Every liturgist–myself included–hopes that the liturgy will get into the community’s spiritual DNA and that it will sneak a ride home with those present, finding expression in the religion of our ordinary days. But there is a more important function of the liturgy–the binding of community. The bonds that make community are created, strengthened, and maintained by our praising, lamenting, confessing, and intercessing together. Participation in corporate prayer (a.k.a. Sunday worship) becomes an act not performed for one’s own benefit, but for those individuals who pray beside us and for the community as a whole–a community that has stretched itself to encompass our Dinner Table guests, the volunteers from all over who work beside us, the hungry who glean from the garden, even those for whom our courtyard is a lovely green short-cut. The fact that our community at Holy Trinity has especially blurry edges makes our participation in corporate prayer that much more a radical, even subversive, act.

And that brings us to our other Lenten observance: self-denial. Frankly, it’s a word and a concept that itches me like a hair shirt. It seems medieval, old-fashioned. It completely subverts everything that I–as a Gen X American woman–have been taught to seek. I’ve made the word a little less prickly by understanding self-denial as the act of getting myself out of the way. Still, the fact that the minor inconveniences associated with the blessing of our kitchen renovation routinely throw me into a tizzy reveals just how corrupted my notions of self and entitlement really are. I’ve totally bought into this “have it now and hurry up” culture of ours–without seriously considering how having “what I want when I want it” might affect others in my life or around the globe. I understand self-denial on an intellectual level, but in practice it’s like a game of Whack-A-Mole: I just manage to give self a good slap with the mallet of God’s grace and oops! there she is again–desiring, expecting, idolatrizing.

This is why it matters that we come together to worship and to serve. Because by forcing our prayer life and our service out of the individual and into the communal we are invited to engage in small acts of self-denial. We are asked to set aside our personal preferences in order to act as one–or, I could say, as One. In the process, we are shaped and molded by God into more of what He dreams for us.

All this said, it’s worth remembering that church ultimately isn’t about us. It’s about God, of course. In being about God, church is about those who have not imagined themselves as part of the community. One of our semi-regulars lives at Mallon Place–an assisted-living community for the mentally ill located just a couple of blocks from Holy Trinity. During our pretzel-making, he came up to me and with deep humility and sincerity said, “Kris, thank you for letting me participate.” At that moment, in the midst of the joyful noise we were making, the significance of his comment floated past me. Later, as I reflected on the day, it resurfaced–another slap of the mallet that took my breath away. Hidden beneath his simple thanks were intimations of being left out, rejected, shunned. But on that Sunday, God worked through us to make a place for him. And that is what a miracle looks like.

Take up your mallet @ www.trinityspokane.org

Join us tonight, Thursday, Feb. 2, for part one of “Why wall street can’t be fixed and how to replace it,” a workshop series sponsored by The Oak Tree. The Oak Tree is a collaborative ministry involving Holy Trinity, Salem Lutheran, and St. Paul’s Methodist.

We are meeting at 5:30pm at Salem Lutheran’s Fireside room (1428 W. Broadway) every Thursday this month. You do not have to come to every session for it to all make sense. Come to as many sessions as you can. The session topics are:

Session 1: Rx Radical Change

Session 2: History and Philosophy

Session 3: Vision of the New Economy

Session 4: Next Steps

After each session we will be continuing the discussion at Charlie’s on the corner of Broadway and Monroe from 7-9pm. Join us for dinner, drinks and discussion even if you cannot make it to the workshops!

Learn more via facebook at this link.

My heart cries out not from a place of light, but from a place where-as William Stafford writes-”the darkness around us is deep.”

Economic injustice. Class warfare. Entitlements. Right wing. Leftist liberals. The lingo is as mind-numbing as the outcomes are sobering:

• More than 20% of U.S. children are at risk of hunger while we throw away-toss in the garbage!-nearly 50% of the food we produce in America;
• Foreclosures on 1 million homes nationwide in 2010 set an all-time record, while the homeless are turned away from Spokane’s shelters for lack of space;
• In 2010, in the midst of the Great Recession, the demand for plastic surgery increased by 9%. Meanwhile, our infant mortality numbers were worse than Cuba and Croatia.

It would be easy to mistrust this season’s light, to shrug off the string of miracles we hear each Sunday as we spiral toward Lent. The demoniac restored? The sick ones healed? That was then. This is now.

But then is now–the greed of empire, the apparent powerlessness of otherwise decent human beings to disconnect from an oppressive system, the outrageously counter-cultural nature of the King who shows up in the midst of it all.

And what of us? What are we to do with this world? This King? How do we live our Story in this murky and irrational landscape?

I yield my time to the gentleman from Kansas with an excerpt from his poem, “A Ritual to Read to Each Other”:

If you don’t know the kind of person I am

and I don’t know the kind of person you are

a pattern that others made may prevail in the world

and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

. . . .

For it is important that awake people be awake,

or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;

the signals we give–yes or no, or maybe–

should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

–William Stafford

Keep awake, give your yes–or at least a maybe

@ www.trinityspokane.org

Our bishop, The Rt. Rev. James E. Waggoner, Jr., and our deacon and urban missioner, The Rev. Kris Christensen, will serve on panel presentations at the event. Keynote speaker Julia Stronks of Whitworth University will present on “The Global Economy and Our Economy.”

This event is presented by Faith Action Network and The Fig Tree. To RSVP, send suggested donation of $20 (scholarships available) to the Fig Tree at 1323 S. Perry, Spokane, WA 99202. For more info: Malcolm Haworth, 535-4112.

HT Dinner Table will participate in the 2012 Point in Time Count which provides crucial data regarding homelessness in our community. Extra volunteers are needed for Wednesday, February 1, to help with the count.

Volunteers will need to:

• attend one of two 1 1/2 hour training sessions on January 19 at 10am OR 6pm
• interview homeless guests at HT Dinner Table on February 1.

If you are interested in helping, please contact Kris at kris@trinityspokane.org for more info.

The word purpose means “an intended or desired result; end; aim; goal.” It derives from the Old French porposer, “to put forth.” A daily purpose reminds us that we are sent by God each day: “For what am I put forth into this day?” Another definition of purpose is: “the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used.” So on those dark mornings when I’m waxing more existential this prayer takes on the urgency of: “Why do I exist today?”

Whether uttered with simple curiosity or agitated angst, the question “What is Your purpose for me today?” always brings a response. The answer may leap out from the texts of Morning Prayer, or it may arrive in the space of silent contemplation. But it always arrives. Sometimes the whole day goes by before His answer makes any sense. Sometimes I have to worry it like a jagged fingernail to uncover any meaning at all. I’m pretty sure sense and meaning are mostly beside the point. What matters is that I bothered to ask.

And God’s purpose for me is always uncomplicated, though seldom simple: be calm, stand firm, or listen. I’ve discovered that God is concerned as much with the way I am while I do something as He is with the actual task in question. I’ve also noticed that my way of being determines which tasks I select from the never-ending list of possibilities offered to me each day. And with my focus on just one day, I’m think I’m actually finding a little more love in the mix–maybe because love is one of those things that tends to diminish with distance and fall through the slats of a strategic plan.

This little experiment also reminds me that when we contemplate call or vocation, we often think of a) big swaths of time, and b) what were called to do rather than how we are called to be. But in fact, call and vocation function on a daily scale as well, and they have an ontological dimension as well as a functional one. The pastor I’m called to be today is different from the pastor I was called to be yesterday. The same is true of each of my multiple vocations: deacon, Christian, wife, mother, daughter, friend.

If you are one of the 45% of Americans who made a New Year’s resolution, you have about a 50/50 chance of succeeding. Maybe it’s the longer term of these resolutions that’s the problem, or perhaps we just pick tougher goals to tackle in a New Year. If you’re on the downhill side of that 50 percent, try this instead: think small, ask daily, love deeply.

love, one day at a time @ www.trinityspokane.org

What struck me this time–because I’m rather good at losing my prayer rhythm–was how easily it came back, how those first words of our Morning Prayer liturgy felt like slipping into a favorite pair of blue jeans, those jeans that are soft and broken in just right and fit you perfectly. Prayer was that comforting for me yesterday morning, so much so that I didn’t waste any time with mea culpas.

Instead, I was reminded that prayer is a practice–and practice pays off. In the same way that years of piano scales create muscle memory that’s hard to lose, years of intentional–if imperfect–daily prayer reshape us in ways that endure.

Our Anglican tradition of common prayer is particularly helpful in framing prayer as practice. When you say the same words day after day, they tend to sink in. They take up residence inside you. They become like a well-worn trail that leads back through yourself to the Divine. As a hospice volunteer, I learned that even those falling into the chasm of dementia can, with help, string the words of childhood prayers together into a lifeline that calms and comforts.

In 1 Thessalonians, we’re encouraged to pray without ceasing. Morning Prayer has a beginning and end, but its daily practice sets mind and heart in His direction. Sure, He’s heard it all before. But He’s not one to complain.

pray your way home @ www.trinityspokane.org

We need the following items as gifts for our guests at the Christmas party Dec. 21:

Shampoo, tooth brushes, tooth paste, soaps, razors, shaving cream, other toiletries,  socks, gloves, mittens, scarves

Kids’ gifts (books, matchbox cars, etc.), have some fun here

Cookies* – a batch of about 4-5 dozen if you can manage it.  We need a total of at least 60 dozen.

Our plan is to wrap the gifts after church on December 18, so the gifts need to be at church no later than the 18th.

* a note on cookies:  sturdy cookies work best at staying in one piece.  We will be bagging cookies after church on December 18.  We plan to make up any shortage with a baking day on Monday.