Prosser UMC

Prosser UMC
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Bo's Blog



Bo’s Blog

March  2024

Many of us have heard the saying that March “roars in like a lion, and goes out like a lamb.” Today, a couple of days before March begins, it sounds very likely the month will come roaring in. I’ve also lived long enough in eastern Washington to know it can go roaring out too! March is a transition month. It may be windy, but over the weeks spring does begin to show. Daffodils bloom, along with tulips, forsythia, and other early bloomers. It’s the month when I usually start on lawn care, cleaning up the detritus of winter, giving it the first mow, mow, spreading the first batch of fertilizer, and starting my watering routine. Of course, there have been years where I’ve spent March looking out at a lawn covered with snow. You have to roll with what you get.

As I mentioned last month, and in years before, Lent is meant to be a time for working on our interior lives. So how’s that going? Are you feeling movement within? Do you feel stalks coming up out of the ground of your spirit, ready to blossom into flower? Is new life beginning to swell into buds of fruit in your soul? Or does it feel more like the construction zone across the way from my backyard, with a lot of machinery, pipes, manhole segments, and dust “blowin’ in the wind?” Or perhaps it’s more like the snow-covered yard.

Many times, in reflecting on our soul work, it can be difficult to identify where we are, or to tell the difference between any of the above images, as metaphors for how we feel in our spirit. A lot of the time we end up questioning, “Is praying doing me any good?” “Why does my reading of the Bible seem so dull or dry?” “Shouldn’t I be feeling different by now?”
We live in a results-oriented culture. If I do all the right things in early spring, I should have a great lawn all year long. But in our spiritual life, the results are not what is important; the practice is. Our faithfulness to our practice of faith is what takes us to Easter. We may have wonderful moments of encounter with God along the way.  Beautiful flowers that bloom. But those are a bonus. The important part is that we keep the faith by our practice of it, in our hearts and in our world.
Shalom,

Bo

February 2024

February’s always a fun month.

Any month that has a day devoted to love and chocolate has got to be fun! It’s also our shortest month, even this year, with the extra “leap day” added in, so it seems to go by faster than other months. And, when we get to the end of the month, we know we’re almost out of winter!

February also frequently has Ash Wednesday in it— the beginning of the church season of Lent. This year it happens to fall on Valentine’s Day, February 14, so you might want to eat up all that chocolate on Fat Tuesday (double entendre intended). I’ve mentioned before that Lent tends to get a bad rap. It’s seen as the time we focus on the bad things we do, and we try to “give up” the habits, or foods, or behaviors, etc. that are “bad” for us. I’ve also suggested that we can refrain from focusing on the negative, and instead seek to add some good things into our life during Lent.

Spending more time in person with family, adding healthy food to our diet, attending church, or a Bible study (see below), more frequently, getting more exercise (difficult to do, but not impossible, in this wintery season), are all positive “treats” we can add into our lives.

This year I want to add another stream of thought into the mix. Lent is intended to be a time of reflection when we take an honest inventory of our lives. Am I going in the right direction? Do I feel fulfilled? Am I engaging in thoughts or actions that are destructive to myself, to my relationships with others, or to the world?

Am I giving the spiritual side of myself enough, or even any, food? Is there anything that I feel is my calling to be, or to do, that I am not following? When was the last time I really opened myself up to listening to, or looking for, God, and the way God may be leading mein my life?

Si mply living life can be distracting to us, taking all of our time and energy to just get by. Lent is a season of slowing down internally when winter has slowed us down externally so that we can catch our breath, expand our bandwidth, and rest in a God who calls us to continually grow in our faith, love, and joy.

Shalom,

Bo


January 2024

I wonder if there aren’t a lot of us who would agree with the quote by Jefferson on the bottom of the page. New Year’s is, in fact, often a time when we turn away from the present and past, and, for a while anyway, hope for a better future. A fresh start to a new year. After a few days though it often feels like the new year is much the same as the last one. Disaster, War, Death, Destruction—and that’s just what we see on TV, computers, or phones. There’s still our everyday lives. There’s still the project to get done at work (way behind on that), the relatives to visit, or who are coming to visit (do we have to see them again? It’s only been 5 years.), the scale that still says I’m overweight (and all that ice cream in the freezer, and chocolate in the cupboard, just calling to me), the bills to pay (maybe if we refinance the house . . .?), and so much more that clutters up our minds with worries and stress. We get one thing accomplished and there’s 15 more waiting for us to do. It’s easy to “like the dreams of the future” better, dreams of no worry, no stress, only wonderful loving friends and family surrounding us. Ah, that would be the good life!

Yet, one thing Christian faith teaches us is that we are no longer bound to “the history of the past,” or even the present. Salvation is all about being able to change from the people we have been in the lives we have led, from the people we are in the lives we now live, and to grow into the future dream God has for us in the lives we can lead.
The person who, in God’s eyes, we were born to be. Once we gain this perspective on life, not only does the future look good, but so do the present and the past, because what we begin to look for are the ways we, and others, have already been seeking this future dream. We see the ways people have, throughout history, sought to be faithful to God’s calling, and their stories inspire us to greater faith, and to doing what we can to live into that better future, for ourselves, and for the other people of the world. It becomes no longer a hope, but our life’s labor.
Hold on to the vision of the future to which God calls you,not just at the beginning of a year, but throughout the whole year, and throughout all your years. For this is how we live in God, and God in us—the good life indeed!
Shalom,
Bo

December 2023

While I like to think of myself as a pretty easygoing person, those who have worked with me on our worship services know that I can be pretty strict about some things. One of those is keeping Advent and Christmas separate.

It’s difficult for us to think that way because all around us in our culture Christmas is being talked about, decorated for, shopped for, and celebrated for months ahead. Christmas music has been playing 24 hours a day on one of the Sirius/XM channels since Halloween.

Special Christmas shopping days, in person and online, occur on the days following Thanksgiving. All the sights, sounds, and smells of Christmas lead us up to Christmas Day. And then it ends. Space must be made for New Year specials, and, of course, Valentines' Day.

Our culture moves on.

In the church, Christmas doesn’t begin until Christmas Day. Advent, then, is not Christmas. It is the prequel.

Just as in Star Wars episodes 1 through 3 set the stage for episode 4, Advent focuses on the buildup to Jesus’ birth. Advent talks about the prophecies in the Old Testament that proclaim a new kind of relationship between people and God that will one day come into being. Advent tells the story of Elizabeth and Zechariah, and the birth of their son John—a son who would one day call the people of Israel to repentance and introduce them to the one who would bring them this new relationship.

Advent is the story of Mary and Joseph, of dreams and angels, of their faithfulness to God that allows us to celebrate Jesus’ birth. Each year, by listening again to these prophecies and stories, we are better able to understand and take in the full meaning of the birth we celebrate on Christmas Day.

And fear not! Christmas is not over once Christmas Day has passed. We Christians celebrate Christmas for 12 days, until January 5. You can continue to give presents for all those days, just like the song, as Alison an I did for years. Because the story continues. The Magi arrive on January 6, Epiphany, and then Jesus grows up. We tell the stories he told and learn about this new relationship with God we have because he was born, he taught, he died on the cross, and he was raised to life again. The story continues, through the letters of the apostles and the history of the church, and continues through our lives too. Our story with God never ends.

Wishing you a Good Prologue and A Merry New Hope,

Bo

November 2023

One of the meals I like to make as we move into the colder months of the year is spaghetti.  There’s something nice about a hot plate of spaghetti in the winter that tends to warm my soul and fill my tummy. But even though I’m the one who always makes the sauce that gets ladled over the noodles, the sauce I make is never the same thing twice.

I start off with the same can of spaghetti sauce poured over the same mild Italian sausage browning in the skillet. But then I add herbs and seasonings, never measuring them out. So sometimes it’s a small dab of oregano, and sometimes it’s an oregano invasion. Sometimes I’ll add fresh crushed black pepper. Other times I might add dried red peppers instead. Sometimes I add diced celery, or onions, or chunks of zucchini or eggplant. And sometimes I don’t add any vegetables.

There are maybe a dozen different things I may or may not add, in varying amounts, each time I make that sauce. And yet, it’s always “the way” I make spaghetti sauce. And it always tastes good. (About the middle of November I’m going to start asking how many of you have had spaghetti since you read this. I’m certainly going to.) We know that “variety is the spice of life,” yet we often find ourselves locked into routines that make living more convenient. That can be especially true of our spiritual lives. It’s easy to feel that there’s little we gain, or lose, by not having much variety in our spiritual lives. Yet the routine of always doing the same things, in our praying, our reading of scripture, even sitting in the same seats at church, can make that part of our life seem less alive, less interesting, and consequently less important to us than it could be.

I invite all of us to be a little more adventurous with “the way” we live our spiritual lives. Add some eggplant, if you feel like it, by adding a new (or very old) spiritual writer into your reading. Add some spice to your spiritual sauce by reading a writer from another country maybe one who originally wrote in another language.

Throw in a handful of sage by adding something new to your prayers. Pay attention to the flavors of your spiritual life. Be creative with it’s ingredients. Ask me, if you would like more ideas, for variety, and paying attention to that variety, is the spice of our lives.

Shalom.

Bo

October 2023

The Walter Clore garden has been renovated! With help and guidance from Yellow Rose Nursery, the old plants, weeds, and drip irrigation were removed except, of course, for the grapevine!), the rocks were rearranged so as to be more visible, and new flowers, shrubs, and a tree were added to the space. With new irrigation lines and cedar mulch laid down, the space looks fresh and appealing. Funding for this work came from our Capital Improvements account, built up over the years by donations from you all.

Thanks to the Men’s Group and Fred and Lynn Mills for their work in clearing out the space, planting, installing the irrigation, and spreading the mulch! Special thanks goes to Don Williams for coordinating the project.

Another project completed in September was the new roof on the sanctuary. The old roofing was removed, as well as the flashing, including the caps along the top of the front and back brick walls. The sheathing on the roof is in good shape, and the new shingles went right on top of it. The new caps, colored similarly to the red bricks, look much better than the old gray metal ones! Also, the metal flashing on the Education Wing that was damaged last winter from high winds has been replaced. Thanks to the many people who contributed financially to our new roof. We are especially thankful for the bequest from Jim Raney’s estate that allowed us to do this project so soon! Special thanks again go to Don Williams for coordinating this project too.

We still have more items on our checklist of things needing to be done around our church. The roofer as notified us that the Education Wing roof, which is an almost flat tar roof, is in need of a new seal coat, to help it last another 10 to 15 years. After we have paid off the roofing work just completed, we will figure out how much we need to raise for that. Also, the Raney family has requested that a portion of the bequest we received be used to upgrade our sound system in the sanctuary, with additional equipment that would help those who have difficulty hearing participate more easily in our worship services. These are the next steps we will be taking in making sure our building continues to help us serve others in the name of Christ.

Shalom.

Bo

September 2023

Many of you are already aware that I shared with the Church Council at its August meeting and in the service on August 27, that I plan to retire at the end of this appointment year, which is June 30, 2024. 

United Methodist clergy are appointed annually to one year terms, from July 1 to June 30, and this year is my 16th consecutive appointment to Prosser UMC.  I also mentioned in the worship service that the United Methodist Church has a process when appointing new pastors to a church. Our District Superintendent,

Rev. Daniel Miranda, will be working with members of our church who are the Staff-Parish Relations (SPR) folk to find out what kind of pastor Prosser UMC needs and wants. Rev. Miranda will take that knowledge into his Cabinet meetings with our bishop and the other district superintendents and conference staff as they begin discerning (starting in January, and going into the spring) who to appoint to the churches of our conference for the next appointment year.

One of the reasons I wanted to share my plans so early was so you all could begin to think about what kind of pastor you want to have next year. What is important for you to experience in a church? Good preaching? Good music? Good teaching? Good administration? Development of social groups? Few pastors are great at everything. Just as in any other profession most pastors have their strong and weak areas. Whittle down what you would like to see, one or two things, rather than all of the above. Do you want a young family with kids, a newly ordained pastor just beginning in ministry, an older pastor with kids “grown and flown?” Is gender a big worry for you, or does it not matter that much? I would hazard a guess that more than half the active clergy in our conference are women, so it is quite possible we could receive our second female pastor.

This is an important decision coming up in the life of this church. Give yourself time to live with this idea of change. Ask questions. You can ask me, or the folks on our Church Council especially designated for SPR matters: Ben Dalstra, Chair, Donna Barr, Camille Klingele, Kay Myers, & Dean Smith. Have discussions with folks, inside the church or not, about your questions or ideas. What will help our church to continue to move forward in its work with us, our community, and the world?

Shalom,

Bo

August 2023 

This month I have a couple of things I want to share with you.

First, I want to call your attention to the church’s financial report on the bottom right part of page 3.

The Year-to-Date numbers show that for the first 6 months of 2023 we’ve had just over $12,000 less income than our expenses. While the Church Council has taken action this month to alleviate this disparity, using undesignated funds from a bequest we received from Jim Raney (you’ll see that reflected in next month’s financial report), this trend is not sustainable. Our church needs our support through our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. Even in the midst of fundraisers, such as our new roof (see the column to the right), we need to maintain our commitment to supporting the daily expenses of our church. Please consider catching up on missed contributions, or increasing your giving, in the second half of this year.

Thank you.

Second, I wanted to share with you about a new ministry happening in our community. A Community Volunteer Group has been formed. Coordinated through Jubilee Ministry, this group helps those in need in our community. So far these volunteers have delivered food from the Food Bank to about 60 people in the community who can’t get to the Food Bank, and have built wheelchair ramps at homes of folk who need them. This volunteer group is supported by Jubilee, the City of Prosser, the Prosser Chamber of Commerce and Historic Downtown Association, the Prosser School District, Prosser Memorial Health, the Farmer’s Market, the police and fire departments, and individual businesses, and works in coordination with Mustangs4Mustangs.

They are currently working with local farmers to do some gleaning after the farmers harvest crops, taking the gleaned food to the Food Bank for distribution to those who need it. The Community Volunteer Group has about 140 people signed up already.  If you are interested in signing up to be a volunteer, you can do so at this website: Community Service Program - Jubilee Ministries of Prosser (prosserjubilee.org) .  When volunteers are needed, an email is sent out to everyone with details of the date, time, and type of work needed. Anyone who wants to help out responds by email. It is a way for us to be the kind of people God wants us to be: a community.

Shalom,

Bo

July 2023

I’m very happy to be appointed to serve Prosser UMC for another year as its pastor. This will be my 16th year here, which seems incredible to me. It’s rare in our United Methodist appointment system for a pastor to be in the same appointment more than 10 years, yet at the end of another year, you will have had only 2 pastors over 30 years! This says a lot about what a great congregation you are, and how active in ministry, and supportive of your pastors’ ministry you have been over the past decades. Yet, lately, it has felt like we are just getting restarted.

It has been about 26 months since we began in person worship again following the COVID-19 shutdown. We have slowly added in elements of worship, such as singing and communion by intinction, that we had done prior to going to online worship. We have also let other aspects, like passing the offering plate, go, and have changed the way we do other parts of the service, such as how we share our joys and concerns. It all still feels new, and there are yet more changes to make.

There was a sense of momentum we lost in the shutdown. We had successfully completed the major remodel of the Fellowship Hall, yet barely got to use it before the building closed down. But Coffee Hour is once again going strong. The Men’s Group, and others, have been cleaning up the yards and caring for the landscaping. Yellow Rose Nursery is helping

them freshen up the Walter Clore garden space. The roses continue to look wonderful. We are raising money for a new roof over the sanctuary to protect our 100 year old building from the elements. Let’s continue to rebuild our momentum. We’ve had some tastes of special music in worship, thanks to Shara and Reva. I’ve heard people asking for more.

Perhaps we can get some ideas this summer of howthat can be a regular feature in the fall. We reached out to the community during COVID to help provide food to those who needed it. What are some new ways we can serve our community now, and in the future? We’ve had some young families visit us on Sunday since the first of the year. What do they need to see here in order for them to come again, or more often? This is a time for ideas to grow, for our ministry to become what it needs to be for our future.

God’s opportunities are calling us.

Shalom,

Bo

June 2023

 Memorial Day weekend has come and gone once again, and summer feels like it is upon us, even though we have 3 weeks until it officially starts. We know that the heat we feel now is nothing like what we will encounter in the coming months, and we try to get our outdoor spaces in order so that we won’t have to do more than the minimum of work in the warmth that is yet to come.

Summer, to me, is one of the paradoxes of life. It always seems to go by so fast, yet it also seems like everything slows down during summer. We are raised with the habit that summer is the time for vacations, so work tends to slow down, and we wait for fall, when “things pick up” again to their “normal” pace. We stay inside more, waiting for the heat to abate (and we all know that time moves more slowly when we’re waiting). We have more sunlight in the summer, which makes it feel like the days begin earlier and end later. Yet once we start looking at a calendar and making plans for the summer, it seems like there’s not really that much time before we get to next fall.

The thing is, while time may be relatively (pun intended) constant, our experience of time is not. If we are really busy, with a lot going on at work, in our family, at our church, in our community, time just flies by. I have a hard time believing that this month my son Ian will have been out of his K-12 education as many years as he was in it. “Where has that time gone?” is a question many of us ask about our past. It seems to have flown by, yet I can recall how slow it felt at times during those years.

We experience the seasons of our spiritual lives in much the same way. At times we feel so much growth is happening we can’t keep up with it. Other times it can feel like we’re on hold with the IRS, with nothing but repetitious background music driving us to the point of asking “Is there really anyone there?” It’s good to remember that the differences in these seasons is normal and natural. We need time for rest after busy seasons, time to live into the changes that have happened, time to settle, time to prepare, to let go, to become receptive again to the next busy season, as the circular spiral of life and growth continues.

Enjoy your summer!

Bo

May 2023

I’ve been spending some time lately cleaning up the back yard at the parsonage. The front yard doesn’t get a whole lot of debris in it over the winter, but the back yard, with the pine and sycamore tress that shade it through the summer, holds a lot of detritus when spring rolls around—pine cones, leaves, twigs, branches, seed balls, and more. As yardwork is one of the main components of my “exercise program,” it takes some time each spring to build up my stamina again. But after a few days of steady work (and a few doses of ibuprofen) the back yard is ready once again for mowing, watering, fertilizing, and greening up.

Raking the lawn does not demand a great portion of my thinking process, so as I have been out in the sun developing my stamina, I’ve been pondering a thought that has come to me. In some ways, this process we do physically each spring is like the process we do in our spiritual lives from time to time. We have seasons in our spiritual lives. We may go on a retreat, or take a class, or have a “mountaintop” experience, and our faith is suddenly vibrant, our experience of God fresh and exciting as spring. Over time that experience matures, deepens into summer, sustaining our relationship with

God. Eventually, it seems to wane, not feel as fresh or as deep. We may get busy at work, or be in crisis. God seems more distant, or perhaps not even there at all, as we move through our spiritual fall and into its winter.

We have seasons in our spiritual lives, just as we do in our physical lives.  It’s important to be aware that it is natural to have these seasons, and to acknowledge them. This is how we grow in our faith, how we change, how we learn to experience God in new ways. This is my 15th year raking the back yard, and changes have taken place back there. Over the years tulips have just shown up. One is in a raised bed garden we built 10 years ago, and four are in the grass yard. Two bloom, deep bright red. We didn’t plant them. They’ve just shown up. As we clear up after our spiritual winters, we take out the dead things, the broken things, the things that no longer belong in our spiritual landscape, or work in it. But we also discover the new aspects of that landscape, the new flowers, the new gifts, that lead us, in a new way, into our next spring.

Shalom,

Bo

April 2023

I had planned to spend Lent this year doing a series of homilies around the theme of “Being” something—Being Blessing, Being Thirsty, etc. The idea was along the lines of what I said in my last homily in February, that Lent is not just about giving up a bad habit, but could also be about developing new good ones. To do that, we need to spend time listening to who it is God calls us to be.

I want to use this month’s blog to sketch out some ways of being to which we might be called.

Being Blessing—How can we be blessing? Am I not talking about being a blessing? “He is such a blessing. He’s always doing something to help me out.” That is a good thing, to be a blessing to others like that. To be blessing, though, is about who someone is, in their very being. This can be seen in what someone does, but is also felt just from their being with us. “I feel blessed to know her. She seems to bring God’s blessing with her each time I see her.” It is that within another that evokes in us the sense of receiving blessing. It is that in another which seems to embody blessing. Think of people in your life who have been this for you. I think of some of my teachers, retreat leaders, and spiritual directors who have been blessing for me. Can we be blessing for others?

Being Thirsty—Jesus talked with a woman at a well who thought she was only thirsty for water. But in speaking with him, she became aware of a different kind of thirst-a thirst for God. Lent is a good time to rediscover our thirst for God. What are we doing in our lives to awaken this thirst? What can we do to slake this thirst? Does this discovery excite us to the point we can’t stop telling others about it, as did the woman at the well? How can we maintain this thirst in our daily lives?

Being Anointed—Samuel anointed David king with oil. Jesus anointed a blind man with mud made from spit. How are we as Christians anointed? What does it mean to be anointed by the Holy? Do you feel anointed? Aren’t all Christians anointed into the family of God through God’s Holy Spirit? How are we to live this out?

These are the questions of Lent, the ponderings of what and who we are called to be as we move through this season of reflection. Really, these are questions God is always nudging us to ask, whether we’re in Lent or not. As we move this month through the end of Lent, the waving of palms and cheering crowds, a last meal, the betrayal, trials and jeering crowds, execution, death, burial, and then suddenly, new life, how do we fit all these events and questions into our life? Or, how do we fit our life into them?

Shalom,

Bo

March 2023

I mentioned in my homily last Sunday that I feel Lent gets a bad rap. We tend to think of it as a time when we have to give up something that we like, such as cookies. That can be a good experience, the way Patrick Scriven, in our conference’s newsletter explains it on page 4. It can be a way for us to grow. Oftentimes, though, we see it as a test of our willpower (can I make it another week, another day, another minute without an Oreo!) - a struggle that can lead us to judge ourselves as a success or a failure, and then return to our “normal” life after Easter.

Traditionally, Lent was a time of preparation. People prepared to join the church or to rejoin after having left it. They spent the six weeks preparing to live a new life; preparing to be in a new way. That new way of being would mean leaving behind some things from their life before—things they used to eat or drink, ways they behaved, and sometimes even family and friends.

This new life would also include adding new things into their life in the Body of Christ—new friends, a church family, new ways to interact with others. Lent is a time for transition to (and in) the life of faith.

Which requires the openness to which Patrick refers in his article. We need time in our lives to slow down, stop, take a deep breath, and take a look around us.  We need the space to take in God’s world, and God’s Word. Lent calls for us to create that time and space so that we can see what we need to add to, or subtract from our lives in order to be the people God calls us to be.

What can you add to your daily life to make it a life more meaningful to you, to those you love, to our world, to God? What can you remove from your life that gives you more ability, more space, to be yourself—the person it feels like God has called you into being, with family, with community, with God?

This is the purpose of Lent. A six week period to take the time to ask these questions and to have the space to listen for some answers. I wish you a holy Lent.

Shalom, 


February 2023

We are in the season of rest in the northern hemisphere.  Animals are hibernating. Many grasses, shrubs, and trees are dormant. As human beings, we tend to want to stay indoors more, where it’s warm. The nights are longer.

As human beings, we need rest. Every 24 hours we need a period of rest. It may be longer for some and shorter for others, but we all need it. If we don’t get that daily rest for an extended period of time, we can die. When we do get the appropriate amount of rest, we thrive.  We often forget that we are natural beings, i.e., beings that have been formed within the natural world around us. That world has daily cycles, and seasonal cycles. We need daily rest, but we also need seasonal rest. We’re generally pretty aware of the former, but I don’t know that we acknowledge our need for seasonal rest as we should. Certainly there are times when we say to ourselves (or others) “I need a vacation!” How often, though, do we listen to ourselves, or others, and actually take the vacation? We tend, in our culture, to think that awake time is work time—that we must always be engaged in some productive activity. We work, plan, wash, mow, fix, trim, clean, move, workout, post, cook, sort, tune-up, decorate, text, paint, dig up, repair, study, water, write, feed, and much, much more. Doing is seen as good; productivity becomes our identity. But in doing, we do ourselves in; we wear ourselves out.
“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28) Jesus makes the point that we need rest, and that he can give that to us. What he says here goes beyond the weariness we can feel from doing too much. Jesus is also talking about the weariness we can feel from living. Anxiety, grief, anger, fear, responsibilities, relationships, dashed hopes can also wear us down. The burdens we carry through life are not always physical. Finding times and ways to rest from these burdens is as important to our health as sleeping each day. It’s not necessarily about getting rid of the burden, or not doing things. It’s about finding the balance for each of us between carrying and resting, doing and being. “For every- thing there is a season” says the author of Ecclesiastes

(3:1). Our lives are lived in these seasons—seasons that God created. Let us value our season of rest, that all our other seasons may become more holy.Shalom,
Bo

December 2022

“Waaiting.” Alison and I would be sitting at an airport, waiting for our flight to begin boarding.

“I’m waaaiting,” she would repeat, her arms and legs crossed. After fifteen seconds of silence—”I’m still waaaaiting.” She was a youngest child after all.

Her lighthearted portrayal of our natural human tendency to impatience would get us smiling. We had made it through the stress of getting there and through the check-in and TSA with plenty of time. We could now relax and wait.

Advent, as I have mentioned before, is a time of waiting. Waiting for the coming of the Christ, the birth of Jesus, on Christmas Day. As a kid, it used to take FOREVER for Christmas to arrive. We were waaaaaaiiiiiiiiitttttttiiiiiiiinnnnnngggggggg! As an adult, it seems to arrive, and leave, so quickly. We hardly get the decorations, the shopping, the wrapping and mailing, the cooking, the music, the visiting, up and going and done, and it’s time to put everything away.

I wonder if that’s how Advent began. People in the church wanted to be sure they set aside enough time to wait, in that wonderful, anticipatory way the season brings, for the celebration of that birth. They didn’t want it to slip by them. They wanted to cross their arms and legs, tapping their feet, and have the luxury of waiting for the Good News to arrive.

Which is one reason I am such a stickler when it comes to singing Advent songs during Advent, and saving the Christmas carols for Christmas Eve and the Christmas season following Christmas Day. Yes,the songs will be all around us in the stores, on the TV and radio. We’ll be humming them as we shop, wrap, and mail. But if we, the church, don’t wait, if we give in to the impatience that is naturally ours, then when the day arrives, what will there be left to sing?

At Christmas, we get to uncross our arms and legs, sit up, hear the story again, sing the carols, and feel the joy and wonder that a birth (which in itself is something of a miracle each time it happens) can bring into our world and our lives—the miracle of God’s love and grace. The wait is over, we remind ourselves each year. It’s time to board.

Shalom.

Bo

November 2022 

Perhaps like many of you, when I think of November, I tend to think of Thanksgiving, and that warm tryptophan glow after a big turkey dinner. As I think more about the month, however, I realize it’s even more about remembrance and thanksgiving than I thought.

All Saints’ Day, November 1, is a day when we remember and give thanks for the saints that have been a part of the church and our lives. There are the “official” saints, canonized by the church, such as St. Peter, St. Francis of Assisi, and St. Teresa of Avila. There are the more modern saints, not necessarily recognized by the church, but known for their faithful lives and acts—people like Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day, and Oscar Romero. There are also the everyday people who made a positive difference in our lives, like teachers, pastors, parents, family, friends, and more. All Saints’ Day is a good day to spend thinking about these people, and their influence on us, and to give a prayer of thanks- giving for the gifts they have given us. Veterans Day, November 11, is another day of remembrance and thanksgiving this month. It is a day to think of all the people, some we know, and many we do not know, who have served our country through military service. I can remember as a kid seeing a framed sign in my grandparents’ garage that I think used to hang in my great-grandparents’ restaurant, that listed the names of all the staff, many of them family members, who served in World War II. It is important for us to remember the names of all those who have served, some who never returned home alive, many who returned wounded, in body, mind, and/or soul, and all of whom gave their time and effort toward the security of our nation.
As I reflect on the Thanksgiving story, I realize that it is one of the few positive narratives of interaction between the white European immigrants and the indigenous people of this land. The first Thanksgiving meal was a celebration of the survival of the Pilgrims of their first year here. They survived only because of the help of the indigenous people. So their first harvest meal together was also a “thank you” from the immigrants to their hosts. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, let us also give thanks to God, to family, to friends, to the people of our community, to the people of our church, to the people who grew and raised the food we eat, for all they have done for us to help us “survive,” to live, this past year.
 

Shalom,
Bo

October 2022

In my homily on September 25 I mentioned that Christian nationalism is on the rise. It’s not surprising really, considering the rise in nationalism generally in our country. According to Webster’s dictionary, nationalism is “the doctrine that national interests, security, etc. are more important than international interests.” To some degree it is a good thing to prioritize our own country’s issues and problems. It can be helpful to have our own house in order before we try to help other nations order their houses. But excessive nationalism can harm our nation and its people more than help it. We benefit from our relationships with other countries more than we realize.
In any case, Christian nationalism, while a bit the same, is also a bit different. Christian nationalism advocates that America is a Christian nation, which is different in that it is identifying a particular religion with a nation. It is much the same, though, when its advocates identify their particular understanding of Christianity as more important than other Christian denominations, and other religions. This kind of attitude has,in human history, lead to religious persecution. In fact, it was Christian nationalism that led many of the initial European colonizers to come to America.

Britain, France, Spain, and other countries had national religions, and people of Christian denominations other than the official one were barely tolerated in the best of times, and killed outright in the worst.
The Puritans of the Mayflower were seeking a safe place to live, away from the Church of England, as was Roger Williams, founder of Rhode Island, and the Quakers who settled Pennsylvania. It is this history that led the framers of our government to include the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibiting the “establishment” of any national religion, and guarantees the “free exercise” of all religions in our country.

It seems to me, then, that in its essence Christian nationalism is un-American. It’s also not Christian. Jesus did not send his disciples out into the world to rule over geopolitical nations. Instead we are to make disciples, followers of Jesus, who teach and live and share God’s love with all people, of all nations, of all religions. That’s a much different calling.
Shalom,
Bo

September 2022

September reminds me that summer is ended and school has begun, both when I was a kid, and when I had school-age kids of my own. It is a shift of lifestyle, from a slower, more vacation way of being (even when I’m working) to a back-to-school, back-to-work mentality. Part of that summer slow-down is of necessity.


It’s hot during the summer, and we tend to slow down in the heat. In September the temps start to cool down, and we speed up again, getting on with our lives, our activities, and our family’s activities.
September is usually when things pick up again in the church after a summer break. But this year things are different. Our Women in Faith and Men’s Group are not starting up again, because they’ve been meeting through
the summer, catching up and reorganizing after the COVID-19 hiatus, and will simply continue to meet this fall. Our nursery care during Sunday worship, our Bible study on Thursday evenings, and our after church potlucks on the second Sunday of each month pick up again, not from where we left off last spring, but from March of 2020. Our fall “restart” is somewhat different this year, as it has been each of the past 2 falls.
We continue to do some things as we have done them in previous years. There will be the Taizé style service Labor
Day Sunday, and we return to our more formal style of worship the following Sunday. As noted above, we have some familiar things continuing and returning to our life and church schedule. We continue through this ordinary time of the church toward Christ the King Sunday, and then the beginning of a new round of seasons with Advent, as we travel through the familiar holidays and holy days ahead.

We also have a new opportunity this month as we join together at Lazy F camp at our all church retreat (see article on page 3). It will be a good time for us to ask ourselves and each other how we want to travel through this extended transition out of pandemic and toward . . .what? Do we want to go “back to” our “normal” lives, just like the Summer/Fall transition? Can we even do that? Or can we be more intentional about our future by being intentional about our present—not wasting the “autumnal sunshine,” i.e. the gifts we have been given coming out of the pandemic, by
being more intentionally present in it? Can we pause, get out of the “house” we have built at Prosser UMC, look around, enjoy the life and the light we see, and return renewed in our perspective of who we are called to be? Isn’t that our hope as Christians?
Shalom,
Bo

August 2022

Has it been hot enough for ya?
Early in our marriage Alison was laughing as I got off the phone after talking with one of my brothers. “I’ve just noticed that anytime you talk with someone in your family, you always talk about the weather,” she said. “Not every-
body does that. I don’t do that with my family.”

I was surprised. I thought all families talked about the weather. If I don’t bring it up, I know my siblings, my mom, my uncle, my aunt will. Weather is something I “follow.” It’s actually the reason I tune into the local news. Maybe it’s an upper Midwest thing, or perhaps it’s because my mom comes from a farming family. It’s an integral part of my family culture, wherever we got it. I’ve even passed it on to my son, who, to my gratification, pulled out his smart phone several times during our recent trip to California, checking his weather app to see what the temp was back home, or
where we were headed. Later in our marriage I smiled when I overheard Alison talking to her mom on the phone about our weather. I had made a convert! It made me think, too, about the cultures we have within us. Some are given to us by our families as we grow up. Some we add ourselves, from friends, schools, work, church. Some we let go of as we no longer need them. Our cultures are the things we naturally gravitate toward in our thoughts, our conversations, our activities.

Our spiritual practices can be one of those cultures. They are built into habits by continual, and intentional, use. When  we pray and/or read scripture at a certain time each day, when we study scripture in a class once a week, when we listen to Christian radio, or hum Taizé songs as we drive, we build up habits that focus us on our relationship with God. Attending church each Sunday gains the added meaning of expressing who we are as a person when it becomes part of our culture. Participating in spiritual renewal workshops or retreats deepen the foundation of our culture. We grow toward becoming the person God calls us to be.
It is good to have the common ground of family-our family of origin, and our family of God.
Shalom,
Bo

June 2022

I was struck by this quote from Ernie Banks. He’s right—the definition of a good sport is someone who loses gracefully.
Losing is the only way to prove you are a good sport. But having those words come from a very successful baseball player is surprising.  Ernie hit over 500 homeruns in the majors, had more than 2,500 total hits, played in 11 of the 13 All-Star games held during his career, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, and named to the All Century team in 1999. He was undeniably a great player! But Ernie most definitely knew what it felt like to lose games. He spent his career with the Chicago Cubs. They never made it to the post-season during the years he played for them. He was also among the early African-Americans coming into baseball in the1950’s, the first to play for the Cubs when he debuted in September of 1953. There were likely many times when he had to prove he was a “good sport,” off the field as well as on it. I remember hearing, back in my Little League days, that it was important to learn how to be a good loser, because it was about more than just the game that had been lost. As I look back on that concept now, I realize it was about a lot more. It was about life, and how we handle the losses in life. It was about being able to honestly congratulate the winner, and about using loss to motivate you the next time. It was about being a part of a team, a group, a community, and being supportive of everyone in it. It was about learning to separate self-worth from the outcome of something external to us. It was part of learning to live with passion and still remain objective. It was about humility, and grace.

I wonder about our world today. It does not seem that losing has any value anymore. It seems like we all have to win, and get the prize. If this is so, does that mean there are no more good sports? Or are they still out there, simply being good sports, going on quietly and humbly with their lives? I wonder if Jesus ever had to be a good sport? I think he did. Toward the end. For all of us. He lost his life, and we won a new life with God.
Shalom,
Bo

May 2022

“Be still, and know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:10a)
I have these words printed on a strip of blue paper. It sits on my desk at home, propped up just to the left of my computer screen. I have been looking at these words every day for the past 5 years, as I do my daily devotions, as I work on my computer, as I participate in Zoom meetings, as I pay my bills, as I shop on-line.
Be still, and know that I am God. Stillness is something that I strive for within myself. Not a stillness that tries to shove all the busyness of my mind and my day into some kind of container so that I can put it away somewhere (what could hold all that?), but a stillness that comes from opening and emptying myself to God so that I can sense what it is God wants from me, wants me to do or say or, more importantly, be. But this is difficult to do, as I’m sure many of you know from your own experience.
There’s so much going on around us. Family to care for and about; chores to do; work to think about, things to fix around the house; relationships to worry about; losses to grieve; responsibilities to bear. How can I be still? Be still, and know that I am God.  My brain is too full of knowledge. I hear about the things going on in my neighborhood and community. The news tells me about what’s happening in our state, our country, the world. This isn’t looking very good, and that sounds pretty bad. The vote, decision, verdict didn’t go the way I hoped it would. There’s so much going on in the world around me, so much to keep track of, so much that seems to be going wrong. How can I keep up?
Be still, and know that I am God. If you are God, why is there so much wickedness and evil in your world? Why do infants die of malnutrition, children get trafficked for sex, and adults live in abusive situations every day? Why are animals you brought into existence hunted to extinction, plastic trash killing your sea creatures, and carbon emissions threatening to destroy the life you have created? How can I believe?

Be still, and know that I am God. To be people of faith, we have to start with faith, not with the world.
To be people of faith, we have to grow our faith, not our place in the world. To be people of faith, we have to live our faith, in ourselves and in the world. Our church, God’s church, is the place where we learn and practice these things.
Be still, and know that I am God.
Shalom,
Bo

April 2022

The news last month that the long delayed 2020 General Conference of The United Methodist Church has essentially been cancelled, and that the next General Conference will take place on its regularly scheduled date in 2024, raised questions, in my mind and in others, about what that meant for the expected schism within the denomination over LGBTQI+ issues. I heard others say, and said myself, that the whole thing would just be put on hold until 2024. But another bit of information has reminded me that I/we were wrong in two ways about that. 

First, the schism has already begun, and is happening now. We’ve actually had people leaving the denomination for decades, for many divergent reasons. Some have found it too liberal, while others have found it too conservative. Some felt it was too focused on itself, and others that it was too focused on ministry “out there.” For a multitude of reasons church attendance across denominations has been going down across the country. That may not be the church splitting into separate denominations, but it is the church breaking apart for theological and/or spiritual needs unmet. 

Schism is also happening in the more traditionally understood manner. On May 1, 2022, the Global Methodist Church “launches.” It is a new denomination that has been created by members of the more conservative part of the UMC. They have a new logo. They have even written a Transitional Book of Discipline. On May 1, churches and clergy are invited to join this new denomination using the process put into place by the 2019 Special General Conference to leave the UMC. They.re not waiting for General Conference. 

They’re leaving now. Which brought me to my second realization, although I had heard it stated before. Yet I had believed the talk and the hype that the reason for the schism was about the human sexuality issues. It’s not. It can’t be, because the group that has formed this new denomination, and those expected to be attracted to it, are the same people who have “won” most of the ballots cast on this issue over the past 50 years at UMC General Conferences, including the 2019 special conference, which upheld the restrictive language in the Discipline and added stronger enforcement clauses to it. Who would leave over an issue with which they have had legislative success?  

Less attractive to the media, but of more concern to conservatives, have been such topics as UMC structure and administration. The General Boards and Agencies are seen as too expensive and cumbersome to maintain. Apportionments, a large part of which go to support the general church, can be one of the larger expenses for a local church budget. Also, the role of bishops in the UMC has been contentious for some conservatives, who would like to see term limits for them, and less power over appointments. These are a few of the issues which some people have seen as problems within the UMC, yet upon which they have not been able to effect legislative change. Which has led to where we are; schism.

This is probably as good a time for schism as any. We are well versed in transition right now, as we have moved through COVID to a new life as a worshiping community. We have had to be adaptable, creative, open to change. We are also, this month, experiencing the disorienting liturgical shift from Lent to Easter; from Death to Resurrection; from this old regular life to a new eternal life we spend our spiritual lives trying to experience and comprehend. The Easter we celebrate this month reminds us that, in God, the deaths we experience in life are followed by new life. God has lead humanity on a multi-millennial journey of change and growth. God is leading us now, journeying with us as we seek to be faithful and open through this time, which may seem like death for the UMC, but might become resurrection. All we need do is keep our hearts and our eyes open to the hope that, in faith, we may see and live into our new life in the Risen Christ.

 Shalom, 

Bo 

 

March 2022

The season of Lent starts on Ash Wednesday, which is March 2 this year (see article elsewhere in this newsletter). It is a time for spiritual reflection. But I wonder if “Giving something up for Lent” hasn’t become something like a short-term New Year’s resolution—a change of lifestyle intended to make us better or healthier that doesn’t last too long, and seems to be going out of fashion anyway. Perhaps we need to take another look at Lent. Originally it was a time for those who were joining the church on Easter Sunday to prepare themselves for that commitment through prayer and fasting. Christians took several years to learn what it meant to be part of the church before they could join, and this six and a half week period was the final part of that journey. Prayer and fasting helped them to clarify their sense of God’s call to be part of the Christian church. We don’t have such a rigorous process in the Methodist church today. But we do believe, as many other denominations have done for centuries, that prayer and fasting are good and healthy tools to help us on our spiritual journey. They don’t just help us to understand God’s call for us to be a member of a church. They help us to clarify what God’s calling is for us today—what it is that God wants us to do or to be at this time in our lives. Lent is always a good time to do this kind of reflection. Prayer (i.e., something we add into our life during this season) and fasting (something we take out) are the tools for doing that. We can add more time for prayer, or even just more quiet time, add healthier food items into our diet, more exercise each day, read more of the Bible or spiritual authors, spend more time with family or friends—whatever helps us get in touch with God’s Spirit moving in us and in our lives. We can take out things as well—meat on Fridays, fast one day a week, abstain from alcohol, schedule fewer meetings, try to make our lives less busy. Give us this day our heart desires, make this year a year of conquest and make us smile for the victory over our problems and challenges. Lent can be a time for us to create ways to pay more attention to our lives, to reflect on what is really important to us, and to open ourselves up more to God and to others. I invite you to this season of Lent. May you discover new blessings for your journey. Shalom, Bo

February 2022

been trimming the roses at the parsonage for the past month, top-ping off the garbage can with the clippings. I’ve watched the men’s group each year as they trim the church roses. It always surprises me how much of the cane they cut off. The first time I saw them do it, I asked if the roses would come back. They assured me this is what the roses need, and every year the church’s rose bushes have confirmed it in their beautiful flowers.
Some of us may have heard of the image of God as gardener—how the losses we experience in life are God’s way of pruning our lives to make us better or stronger Christians. I’ve always been uncomfortable with this image of God, in which it seems like God is creating bad experiences for us for some sort of object lesson. Had I done that with my son when he was growing up, I would have been reported to Child Protective Services. Jesus teaches about a God who invites us into change rather than coercing us.


Yet, I still feel there is something to the image of God as gardener. We do grow, not just physically, but mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, as we go through life.—and we don’t always grow in healthy ways. We do experience losses in life, have bad experiences which create dead spaces within us. Each of us is in need of pruning, shaping, training “upon the trellis” of Christian faith and life. But we are the ones who must do the pruning, shaping, training, of ourselves. God is the gardener who can advise us, steer us, support us, love us. We have to do the actual work, so that what is beautiful within us can grow and blossom.


I still have a tough time pruning the roses at the parson-age down as much as the men do at the church. We can be tentative in our own efforts to grow. Yet God sticks with us, encouraging us. It is a life-long process. There is time. Use the seasons as they come-the times of planting, of feeding and watering, of pruning, of enjoying the beauty of our lives, of resting. God, the gardener, is always there, to help us.
Shalom,
Bo

January 6, 2022

Each year is Epiphany, the day we celebrate the magi following a star to Bethlehem, finding  Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus beneath its light.  Light, in the midst of the darkness of night.

There was certainly darkness in Jesus’ day.  Roman emperors and non-Jewish kings ruled over the people of Israel, and they, as well as many of the religious leaders, were more interested in maintaining and growing their power and wealth than in caring for God’s sheep.  Even today, it seems easier to see darkness in our world as we experience wave after wave of COVID-19, stronger hurricanes and bigger wildfires, crises, starvation, saber rattling, and a rise in totalitarianism and radical divisiveness, in our communities and around the world.  Even the date January 6 seems now to conjure up an image more of darkness than light after last year.  It can be easy to get caught up in that darkness and lose hope.

That’s why Epiphany is such an important part of our church calendar.  At the darkest time of the year, we celebrate light, so that in the darkest times of our lives we will remember that the light is still there.  And, in our faith, the light is here, ready to guide us in the darkness.  “The people who walked in darkness have seen [past tense] a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has [past tense again] shined.”  (Isaiah 9:2, NRSV)  We believe this to have been fulfilled in Jesus, the Son of God.  Jesus is “the light of all people.  The light shines [present tense] in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” (John 1:4-5, NRSV)

Over the past couple of months I have been reminded of three wise men.  Nelson Mandela, F. W. de Klerk, and Desmond Tutu, and many others, followed the light and led the people of South Africa out of the darkness of apartheid.  They did it without violence, in a peaceful transition of power to all citizens of that country that included a pathway to truth and reconciliation.  Did they eliminate racism in South Africa?  No.  But they did show that light still shines in the darkness, and that it is possible to follow it.  God is still with us.  And that gives all of us great hope for the future.

Shalom,

Bo

 

December 2021
The quote for this month provides a very nice transition in my blogs from the pilgrimage theme I’ve been following the past five months into this new season of Advent.

Peace is something we hear a lot about in December each year. It is the theme of the third week of Advent, and also the title of my homily for that week. It is in the Christmas carols we know (“Sleep in heavenly Peace”), classic Christmas songs (“Peace on Earth, good will toward all”), and most of all, one of the titles for Christ we find in the prophets – Prince of Peace.
 
Winter tends to conjure a more peaceful feeling than the other seasons. Snow deadens the sounds outside. We tend not to hear as many outdoor sounds anyway, as we are indoors with windows closed tight against the cold. We tend to slow down in winter, particularly after Christmas, when all the shopping for gifts and visiting family is over. The new year is always a hopeful time, as we hunker down in the long dark nights, thinking of more peaceful possibilities for our lives and for our world.

As I mentioned last month, it is difficult to find peace, let alone share it with others, if we don’t have peace within ourselves. Mother Frances offers us an insight to finding peace. We need to dwell in God, and allow God to dwell in us before we can find, know, and share peace. It sounds simple, and it is. Very simple. But as many of us know from experience, it is not easy. That’s because it is not something we can just learn, take a test, and then be done with looking for it. It doesn’t travel with us through life, like an award or diploma might. That’s why we can have experiences of deep peace in our soul for a moment, hiking in the mountains, sitting in front of a fire, holding a new-born son or daughter, and then the moment passes. We move on, back to our lives. That is the issue right there. We have the habit of going “back to our lives.” We have moments of connecting with something beyond ourselves, but then we turn back to our “reality.” What the Gospels, and our faith, and Mother Frances and other spiritual  travelers in Christian history have discovered and share with us is that we need to develop a new habit, one that takes us out of our “regular” lives and opens us up to God. Prayer is a place where we can develop this new habit, this new way of looking at life, ourselves, and others. Not prayer that is full of
words, but prayer that is open to listening to God, to seeing the world from God’s perspective. Not jus for five minutes a day, or an hour, but constantly throughout the day, inside us, as we go through each day, until it becomes our habitual way of being. This is why peace is so difficult. We have to dwell in God, and allow God to dwell in us. It is who the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate, calls us to be.
Shalom,
Bo 

November 2021
“I greet everyone with peace” is the last maxim of the Pilgrim’s Credo I’ve been sharing with you the past 4 months. As I was hiking the east side of Badger Mountain and thinking about this maxim, I realized it had a different aspect than the other 4: it involved interaction with other people. How do I greet people with peace? Say “peace be with you”? While that phrase fits in the communion liturgy, it seemed like a strange thing to say to hikers.
 
I was still pondering this when two guys came toward me on the trail. I was still not sure how to greet them “with peace.” We got closer and made eye contact. I nodded, said “Hi”, and kept walking. Hm.
A lone young woman came along the path. Immediately I thought about my “Boundaries” training. How do I let her know I’m a safe person for her to walk by? How do I greet her “with peace” without intruding on her boundaries? We got closer and made eye contact. I nodded, said “Hi”, and kept walking. Hmm.
Further along the path a woman and 2 kids approached. One of the kids was African-American, while the other 2 were Caucasian. I thought about my Cultural Competency training. How do I greet them “with peace” in a way that is considerate of their culture(s?)? How do I let them know I’m ok with a mixed racial group? We got closer and made eye contact. I nodded, said “Hi”, and kept walking. Hmmm.
At this point, I was not too sure I had this “greet everyone with peace” thing down yet. As I thought about it on the rest of my hike, and on the drive back home, I reflected on the feelings I had as I approached these people. I realized that for one thing, I was not at peace within myself when I greeted them. Perhaps the maxim is not about giving others peace, in the sense of saying something like “Peace be with you”, or “Go in peace.” Perhaps it’s about greeting others with the peace I have within me—greeting them from a place of peace, which can also share that peace with them.
Of course, that means that I need to have that sense of peace within me. That means that all the things I do to create peace within myself—prayer, reading scripture, worship, going on retreats—are not just for me, but are also gifts I give others, when I greet them from that place of peace.
Every living person on this planet is a pilgrim. We are all on the journey we call “life.” We all participate, at some level, in the spiritual portion of that journey. These maxims are ways we can deep-en this part of our journey—slow down, let go, build hope and faith, grow and share peace, and receive from God the deeper gifts of life. As brothers and sisters of and in Christ, let us search for the ways we can continue to be the pilgrims he calls us to be in this life God has given us.
Shalom,
Bo
 
October 2021
“I walk in faith and hope” is the next maxim from Murry Bodo’s “Pilgrim’s Credo.” I don’t know about you, but I tend to wish life was clear-cut, definite, understandable, everything working according to plan. But life is not like that. It requires faith and hope.
 
The day I meditated on this maxim was the day I hiked the trails on the east side of Badger Mountain. As I studied the map at the trailhead, I noticed there were several different trails on that side of the mountain. I chose a medium length route that would end where I began. The trails were all neatly named, and I memorized which way I needed to go at each intersection: pass by these two trails on the right, then that trail on the left, take the Canyon Loop trail on the right after that, and follow it back to my starting point. Easy. I walked the trail, thinking of the phrase, “I walk in faith and hope.” When I got to the first trail on the right, I realized I had a problem. There were no signposts, like at street intersections, with the names of the trails on them. Also, looking at the trail heading off to the right, I had to ask if that was an official trail from the map, or just a shortcut other people had created over time. I wasn’t sure about it, but I continued on. The words “I walk in faith and hope” began to take on a different meaning for me.
 
After an hour of hiking, and passing several other trails, or what might be trails, I was convinced I was totally off my planned path. And isn’t that like life? You’re going along, everything hunky-dory, and something happens that throws everything into a tailspin. All that once seemed clear as crystal is now murky and confusing. How are we supposed to live in a pandemic? Will the COVID vaccine harm my unborn child? Why is my kid (or parent, or spouse) behaving like that? Can I find another job? Why did he have to die so young? We thought we were walking the right path, the path God had laid out for our life, and suddenly we aren’t so sure. We have no signposts in this place, and we aren’t even sure there’s a trail.  “I walk the path in faith and hope.” Even when we are in that place of uncertainty and confusion, we have to take the next step. We have to choose which path to follow, even when we can’t tell if it’s the right path, or a path at all. God continues to call us forward, even when we can’t see where we’re going. And that’s the key to faith and hope. We have to trust God. Trust that God is still with us. Trust that God will continue to lead us on the right path (Psalm 23).
 
It’s easy to walk a path we know well, where we are certain of every twist and turn, step up or step down. But even those well-worn paths can seem very different, very much unknown, on a moonless night. We walk in faith and hope in all of life, known and unknown.  30 minutes after I was certain of being off my planned route I found a trail marker to the Canyon Loop trail. I had been on the “right” trail all along.
Shalom,
Bo
 
September 2021
 
I lived in the Tacoma area for 6 years before moving to the Tr-Cities in 1994. When I lived there, working first at Puyallup UMC, then at Orting UMC, I usually drove about 5 mph over the speed limit on the city streets. Why? Because I was always running late. I would wait too long, or spend too much time on what I was doing, and then I’d have to jump in the car and rush to what I needed to get to next. I always felt pressured by time. I was always in a hurry.
 
Of course, over there, that wasn’t unusual. Everybody drove (and still drive, I find, on my trips over there) faster than the posted speed limit on city streets. But when I moved over here, I made the conscious decision I wasn’t going to do that any more. I didn’t like the feeling of it—the tenseness and anxiety of being late; the adversarial nature it brought out in me when other drivers would “get in my way” when I was late. I didn’t like the feeling of needing to hurry. I wanted to be more relaxed in life, to enjoy it more.
 
The spiritual pilgrim’s journey in life includes this third statement from the Pilgrim’s Credo; “I am not in a hurry.” This does mean we watch our speed when driving, but it means more than that. When I hiked up Candy Mountain, I didn't just go up to the top, then back to my car. I stopped and read the information signs about the Ice Age floods, and the plants along the path (I learned that tumbleweeds are not native to this area!). I took time to look at the TriCities and figure out where the Uptown Center was, and the houses I’d lived in. I looked at the Hanford site and the hills, and felt and listened to the wind blowing around me. Life is more than ticking off the items on our daily “to-do” lists. Life is experiencing each moment, each step we take, each per-son, place, and thing we encounter, and being fully present, mind, body, heart, and spirit, as we do so.
 
It comes back again to the statement “It is the journey that is important, not the goal.” For the most part I have been successful in planning ahead and leaving enough time to get to places that I don’t have to speed through neighbor-hoods. I can relax more, enjoy the ride more. But if I spend the drive focusing on what I’m going to do when I get there, or going over my internal list of what I want to get done that day, I’ve missed the point of slowing down. If I’m more concerned about remembering what I want to say next than I am about listening to what someone is saying to me, I have not slowed down. I am not paying attention. I am missing out on a good portion of the wonderful life God has given me. “Come unto me all you who labor, and are heavy burdened, and I will give you rest” is not about attending a planning retreat for work. It’s about relaxing and being in God.
 
In what ways do you “hurry” through life? How might you slow down, “stop and smell the roses,” so that you don’t miss the gifts God shares with you each day? How do you practice journeying in God’s world?

Shalom,
Bo 

August 2021
Last month I mentioned a “Pilgrim’s Credo” from an on-line course I was doing in June. It was written by Murry Bodo, and contains 5 maxims about pilgrimages, for the people who make them. Over the course of the rest of this year, I want to spend some time with you looking at each one of them in this space.
The first is “I am not in control.” At first that seemed to go against the grain for me. Aren’t we supposed to be in control? We learn early on at the playground that it’s not ok to go over and take a ball away from another kid just because we want it, or to go hit another kid who took the ball away from us. We learn to be in control of our desires and reactions as we go through life. We can also be taught that we control our own destiny. We can be whatever we want to be, if we just put our minds to it.
As we grow older, we learn the nuances of being in control. We find out that being controlling, where we try to control the actions or lives of others, is not a good thing. Even being in control of ourselves, if overdone, can be a bad thing, both for our physical and mental health. This maxim is not about abdicating responsibility for what we do or say. Rather, it’s about learning the limits of what we are called to control, and what we are not.
Pilgrims learn there are a lot of things “out of their control.” Walking on a pilgrimage to Mecca, or Jerusalem, or Santiago, Spain, people quickly learn they have no control over the weather, their aching muscles, whether the trail is easy to follow or washed out from a storm. There are all kinds of variables in the pilgrimage of life over which we have no control. I’ve lived more than half my life in Washington State not because I made a choice, growing up, that I want-ed to live in this state, but because I fell in love with a woman while visiting my brother in Seattle. Love is certainly not about being in control; quite the opposite. In love, we cede control to another. In fact, we often find that the best experiences we have throughout our lives occur when we are simply present, and not trying to be in control.
I can be in control of my actions and reactions, though I am not always so. Many times emotions, or psychological need, or simply surprise can wrest control away. But beyond myself there is very little I can actually control. Although many of us feel we “should” be in control, much of
our lives is beyond our control. When we can let go of the need/desire to try and be in control of all around us, then we can relax, and pay attention to, and enjoy, more of the journey, the pilgrimage, that is life. As people of faith, what can help us in this letting go is the belief that there is someone else taking care of that for us—God. When we open our hearts in prayer, trusting in God to guide us, we acknowledge we are not in control. We let go of that responsibility, which is not ours, to the One in whom everything “lives and moves and has its being.”
Shalom,
Bo
 
July 2021

Inspector Lewis is one of my all-time favorite British mystery shows.  Robbie Lewis, who was Inspector Morse’s sergeant in that series, now has his own sergeant, James Hathaway, who is a bit of a mystery himself to Lewis.  In one conversation, Robbie finds out that Hathaway, who went to seminary for a year before becoming a policeman, had gone on the pilgrimage walk called the Camino de Santiago in Spain.  Robbie asks what it was like when Hathaway got there, at the end of the journey, and Hathaway responds that he didn’t get there.  He got as far as the edge of the city of Santiago, then turned around and walked back.  Robbie, astounded, asks why he would turn around without going to the place he had spent so much time walking toward.

I don’t recall Hathaway’s specific answer, because I never understood how he could do that either.  I imagine many of us would feel the same way.  It’s pretty much ingrained into us, as part of our culture, that if you set a goal, and do all the work to achieve that goal, that you complete the process by enjoying your achievement.  It would be like painting a beautiful painting and putting it in the closet instead of hanging it on the wall, or writing a great novel and putting it in a desk drawer instead of publishing it.  Why would anyone do that?

I participated in a virtual Celtic pilgrimage during the month of June.  We met on Wednesday afternoons on-line and talked about Celtic spirituality and saints, and about pilgrimage.  On Sunday afternoons we would walk for 2-3 hours (this was before the heat wave, fortunately), then talk about our ponderings on our walks in the Wednesday sessions.  I had never done a pilgrimage before, nor studied what they are, and the biggest learning I’ve taken from this one is that the journey is as important as the destination, if not more so.  This is not new wisdom.  In fact, the old adage “stop and smell the roses on the way” says much the same thing.  Life is not just about getting to my destination at Place B, or completing the six items on my checklist for the day.  Life is also about what happens as we travel from Place A to Place B.  It is about the people we encounter and the things we experience in the process of doing those six items.  It is also about the ways we get diverted from our “agenda” into the lives of others, and perhaps even, at times, into life with God.

One of the sayings given to the pilgrimage group as part  of a “Pilgrims’ Credo” was this-”I bring back only what God gives me.”  God may give us what we are looking for (or even what we don’t know we are looking for) at any point on our journey, not just at the end.  Sometimes, writing the book or painting the picture is enough, and nothing more needs to be done.  Perhaps Hathaway found his answer on the road, and so didn’t need to enter the city (I’ll have to watch that episode again!).  As pilgrims on our journey of faith, let us be watchful, and open to whatever God has to give us on our way.

Shalom,

Bo

 

June 2021 
It feels good to be in the sanctuary with some of you on Sunday mornings again. Sure, we’re not singing, or having coffee hour, or many other things we could name. But we are together again, worship-ping God in the space we call our home church. It feels like a tremendous gift just to have that.
Especially when I see what is happening in India, Sri Lanka, even places like Australia and parts of Europe, that had COVID-19 rates knocked down so well in the past. It re-minds me that we are not out of the woods yet. We could still see a resurgence of COVID-19 here. As of the end of May, several counties in Washington are in the Red zone, including Spokane and Pierce (Tacoma area). Over 60% of the people in Yakima and Benton counties still have not had even one dose of the vaccine. Washington state is one of four states (Wyoming, Colorado, and Florida are the other three) still in the Orange zone. All the other states are in the Yellow zone. Many people in our communities are still vulnerable.
It seems to me the last part is the most important part. Stats, colors, percentages can help us understand and visualize. But really what we’re talking about is people. People afraid of a virus. People whose bodies and systems are damaged by their sickness. People who are dying. People who might still get the virus. Possibly our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends. People we know at stores, or restaurants, or shops around town. These are the people we’ve been trying to protect by getting vaccinated, restricting our activities with others, wearing face-masks and keeping our distance. Not just ourselves, but others. We’ve been trying to live out the commandment to “love our neighbors as our-selves.”
I feel like the sacrifices we’ve already had to make, such as not meeting together for worship, are a big part of what makes worshiping together now feel so good. Being able now to attend church on Sunday mornings, or go to a restaurant or movie Saturday night, can remind us how much we took the everyday parts of our lives for granted before COVID, and that many of the most important things we’ve missed during this pandemic involve being with people-talking with people, breaking bread with people, listening to people. People are important to us.
So let’s savor the reunion, rather than rushing to get back to where we were. Let’s notice the enjoyment we get with each step toward re-establishing our ties with others, so we may continue to notice how important those ties are to us. The changes will come. The restrictions will go. Let’s not miss the opportunity to learn, or re-learn, what God has to teach us about ourselves, and about our neighbors.
Shalom,
Bo
 May 2021
I’ve just returned from a trip to South Carolina, where I officiated a wedding for one of my nieces. The flight out there and back felt very strange. It was in some ways like visiting an alternate universe (not that I’ve done that), in that it was familiar in some ways, but different in others. There were less people there, in the airports and on the planes, which was nice. It felt more spacious, not a word I tend to think of in relation to air travel. But there was also an undercurrent of fear. I have been conditioned over the past year to think of being with others as dangerous (and it still is). So, even though I’d been in those airports, and traveled in airplanes, before (the familiarity), the feel of it was much different.
I wonder if worshiping together again will have some of those same qualities. It will be the same sanctuary, the same piano playing, the same pastor speaking, the same people there. But it will also be different. Pews will be taped off. The hymnals, Bibles, and offering envelopes will be removed. There will be things we won’t do, like passing the offering plate, holding hands for the benediction, Passing the Peace, singing. It will feel much different.
We will feel much different as well. It will be thirteen and a half months since we met together in the sanctuary last. We have all been conditioned to the danger of being with others. We have all been conditioned to being apart. There will be familiarity, but there will be difference too. Will that make our worship experience feel like it’s from another uni-verse?
Possibly. And maybe that’s good. I’ve spent some time thinking this past year about why we worship at all. Is it, as some cynically suggest, just a social time for people to get together with friends? I don’t think so. That could be done just as easily (and less expensively) at McDonald’s, Brewminatti’s, or the 10-4 Café. Sure, there’s a social aspect to going to church, but there’s more to it than just that.
I think it’s where we experience God, connect with God, slow down and listen to God. It’s where we are able to open the deeper parts of ourselves to that which is more than the universe. We don’t do that at other places (unless you’re drinking hot chocolate at Brewminatti’s) because that’s not what they’re for. We have developed the habit of opening ourselves to God in the sanctuary of Prosser UMC,
and so that space now feels like the right place for us to worship God. Certainly God can be worshiped anywhere. But those stained glass windows, the sight of the banners, the altar, the communion rail, the sound of the organ and piano, the smell of that sanctuary, lead us to feel praise and prayer.
Certainly it will feel different now. The habit has been deferred. It will feel fresh again, not routine. That is cause not for fear, but for joy!
Shalom,
Bo
 
 
April 2021

At its March meeting, our Church Council decided to restart our in-person worship service on May 2.  As stated in the Reopening Process article elsewhere in this newsletter, we can have up to 25 people attend in-person worship at our current phase.

So what will that look like?  It will be different than what we’ve been used to for worship.  We will all still have to wear facemasks, and have our temperature taken as we arrive.  People from the same household may sit together, but must stay at least 6 feet away from other households, both when seated and when moving about the church.  We won’t be able to sing, but we can listen to the organ and piano.  We can’t have food or drinks, so no coffee hour.  But we will be together.

There will be other things that will be different in the service.  There will be no hugging, shaking hands, fist or elbow bumps between people not of the same household, we will not be doing the Passing of the Peace, Sharing Joys & Concerns (aloud), or holding hands for the benediction.  The offering plates will be located on the tables behind the back pew, for you to place your offering rather than passing them.  The order of worship will be projected onto a screen up front rather than printed on a bulletin.  We will not have greeters.  But we will be worshiping together.

Because of our 25 person limit at this phase, which includes those leading the service, we will need folks to call into the office each week to register, if they wish to attend.  As our average attendance is 35 people, that will mean some will have to, or choose to, stay home.  We will therefore continue to post our service on-line, though now it will be a recording of the morning service rather than recordings made in our homes.  Although we won’t all be together, this is the first step toward that.

Nursery care and Sunday School can also be available, and we will be working toward that as well.  During this month we will be preparing the church space for our reopening.  Some of the sanctuary pews will be closed off from use.  Hand sanitizer dispensers will be placed out for people to use.  The recording and projection systems will be worked out.  Recruiting temperature takers, facemask dispensers, and sanitizing crews will begin.  We will be getting our house of worship ready for its family’s use.

Having worship together is exciting to think about!  But as I write this blog the infection and positivity rates for COVID-19 in Benton & Yakima counties, and in the state of Washington, has stopped declining, and is starting to rise.  This is not the time to let down our guard, when we are so close.  Keep wearing facemasks and maintaining distance.  Get vaccinated when you can.  We are very close to being able to get together, but we’re not there yet.

Shalom,

Bo


February 2021
BO’S BLOG”
I chose the very familiar quote from Reinhold Niebuhr below for this month’s newsletter because as I came across it, I realized that in today’s world the quote needs an additional amendment: “Lord help me accept the change I cannot stop.”
I’ve had a number of conversations with folks that have gone along the lines of “I can’t wait to get back to . . .” and you can add in your favorite thing you miss. Going to movies with my son. Going out to dinner without worrying if restaurants are open in this phase of the latest reopening plan, or if they’re even still in business. Shaking someone’s hand. Giving/getting hugs. Spending more of my waking hours out of my home than in it each day. I can’t wait to get back to . . .
As I think about it, though, and as I read and listen to others, I’m beginning to believe we will never “get back to” life as we knew it before COVID. Certainly, there will be life post-COVID, but it cannot ever be the same for two reasons. One is that we will be different because of this experience. The other is that the world will be different also.
We will be different because we will have all gone through the trauma of life under COVID. It’s not a high impact trauma, like being in a car crash or the death of a loved one (although the latter will be a big part of the COVID trauma for far too many people). It’s a long, slow, relentless, daily trauma of having to live life differently. Stuck in a home. Out of work and money. Having to go to work where any one of the many people you encounter each day could pass along the coronavirus to you. Even if you think the whole thing is a hoax (which it’s not) or overdone, you have to live with the daily frustrations from the restrictions you don’t believe should exist. Day in, day out, for more than a year. We will emerge from this time, but we will be changed by it.
Our world will also be changed by this experience, and we have yet to see or understand how. Which of our favorite local businesses will survive, and which will have to close? How will our changed habits from this time carry over and affect businesses post-COVID? How will we interact with people in public places—rushing into social contact again, or holding back from the vestiges of fear instilled in us by our trauma? How will that affect our social structures—our
clubs and organizations?
The other reason I chose this quote is because it is a prayer. We will need God’s help as we go forward, for we cannot do otherwise. As we move into Lent this month, our prayers for serenity, courage, wisdom, and acceptance may perhaps be even more meaningful and necessary.
Shalom,
Bo
 
January 2021
I was watching a panel discussion on a news program recently when the panelists began talking about how the “social contract” of America has changed over the past 40 to 50 years—they even called it “broken.” The term “social contract” has a very specific definition in political philosophy (government exists by the consent of the governed), but to me the conversation sounded a lot broader than that.
For example, they talked about how, 50 years ago, people, both socially and politically, by and large agreed to disagree. We may be of different political parties, but we can still coach a Little League team together. Today’s America seems much more divisive. If you don’t agree with me, you’re not American, and I won’t even talk to you! This divisiveness goes beyond politics—or more accurately, politics is expanded to include topics such as medical hygiene and vaccinations, scientific method, and even the concept of truth. There is a sense in which our social contract with each other, our ability to live with each other, is broken.
We have a “social contract” (in a broader sense) in the Christian faith. Jesus taught us the most important thing to do in life is to love God with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. He also taught the “Golden Rule”—do to others what you would have them do to you—and that we are to love our enemies. This is the social contract the church espouses.
As we move out of 2020 and into a new year, I believe that we, as people of God’s Light, have an opportunity to bring that light into the darkness of our social structure. One thing COVID has done is throw all of us out of our regular routines and ways of living in daily life. As we come out of the pandemic with vaccinations this year, how will we choose to move into our new life in community? How can we, as people of the light, share that light with others, so that they can love their neighbor better, or treat others as they wish to be treated? How do we help build a social contract in which we all care about, and for, each other?
I hear people talk about how eager they are to “get back” to their life as it was before the pandemic. But do we really want to “get back” to a divisive society? Do we even want to “get back” to the apparent glory days of the panel, 50 years ago, with the racism, sexism, pollution, lead paint, and all the rest we’ve been trying to change, and have changed, since? Or do we want to move toward hope, into God’s light? It is the calling we each have from God. Perhaps we can bring others along, as we live into that calling.
Shalom,
Bo
December 2020
He knows if you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness’ sake!” This song reminds me of childhood. As kids we learn that if we want to get presents from Santa we have to behave well. If we don’t, we might end up with a lump of coal in our stocking!
This is the beginning of learning about right from wrong. Kids are very concrete. “Good” and “bad” refer to things they do. They don’t yet understand the abstract moral character of those terms.
As we grow up, we learn to appreciate ideas and concepts. We understand what it means to have principles. We can debate the advantages and disadvantages of economic systems, or different forms of government. We can even learn to see the world from other people’s perspectives—people from other cultures or nations.
Yet our common perception of God is often expressed in those older, more concrete terms. Is there anyone who hasn’t seen a cartoon of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, often on a cloud, with a book stand in front of him. On that stand is the book with our name written in it, and check marks in the “Good” and “Bad” columns. We hope there are more marks in the “Good.”
It is a human way of thinking about God—”making a list and checking it twice; gonna find out who’s naughty and nice.” Jesus was born into a culture built around that idea. A culture focused on the rules of the Torah, the Law. A culture that believed that if you were able to observe the hundreds of rules in the first 5 books of the Bible, even if for only a second, you would be in a right relationship with God.—a task that was impossible to do.
God’s gift to all people each Christmas, as we celebrate the birth of Jesus, is the reminder of what Jesus taught us. The quote at the bottom of this page is that theme. In his stories, parables, teachings and actions, Jesus calls each of us to see reality differently. Like Mary and Joseph, like Simeon and Anna, like the shepherds and the magi, like the disciples and followers, like the people he healed, fed, and taught, we must allow ourselves to open to the reality he proclaimed, the reality of a living relationship with God in our lives.
When we are able to glimpse that reality, then we see the people of the world, indeed, the world and cosmos itself, differently. Because of that difference in perception, we will act differently, because our actions always reflect the way we perceive the world around us. As Paul noted in several of his letters, we behave better when we open our-selves to God’s reality because we have opened ourselves to God’s reality, and not because we want to earn our way into heaven.
Santa Claus may be coming to town this month, but God seeks entry into our hearts for eternity.
Shalom,
Bo
November 2020

November is a month I enjoy very much.  Fall is definitely here, with colored leaves in the trees and on the ground, and a definite chill and the smell of wood smoke is in the air.  Halloween has just led us into this month, and I look forward to one of my favorite holidays—Thanksgiving.  I think I like it so much because of all the memories of family gatherings, and the wonderful food there is to eat.

But this year things feel different.  We come to this time with 8 months of  fear and more or less seclusion from each other because of a virus, and 6 months of increased racial tension, in our world.  We begin this month with an election that has seemed to highlight the divisiveness and disunity in our country.  We will move through this month with record numbers of people in our country unemployed, hungry, and losing their homes.  Many students can’t go to school in person, while many others have some form of hybrid learning.  It was recommended that we not hand out candy for Halloween, and, with cases of the virus surging again, it will probably be safer not to travel and gather with family.  It feels like a difficult time to be thankful.

In difficult times, it is important for us as Christians to remember to hold all things lightly, except our faith.  Paul wrote in one of his earliest letters to remind his congregation in Thessalonica to:

“Be at peace among yourselves.  And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them.  See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.  Rejoice always,  pray without ceasing,  give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil.”  (I Thessalonians 5:13b-22, NRSV; emphasis mine)

If we can hold lightly the things of our world, the events of our lives, so that we do not “quench” God’s Spirit in our spirits, God will give us the energy, and the grace, we need to be patient with others, to forgive those whom we perceive to have done us wrong, to admit the harm and pain and wrong we have done to others, however unintentionally, to see the goodness in those with whom we disagree, to resist allowing evil to live within us, and to empower us to do the good we can for ourselves and for others.  In focusing on our relationship with God, we can rejoice, we can pray, we can give thanks.

Our lives, our experiences, have been, and continue to be, different than what we’re used to experiencing.  But we must rely on our faith in God, so that we may  continue to grow, and that God may continue to lead us into our future.

Shalom,

Bo


October 2020
I guess I’ve lived in the Lower Valley long enough now that I tend to take for granted the goodness of this place and its people. Sometimes it can be easier to see it again through the eyes of an outsider.
Abbie, a young woman of about 20 years, was recently driving her car from her mom’s home in Boise to visit her dad in Bremerton. Just outside Prosser her car started having some problems and making some noises that made her feel it was not safe to drive. She pulled over, and contacted family on her phone. An aunt told her to contact the sheriff, and they would give her a ride to the nearest town. And so it was that Abbie ended up at the interstate rest area in Prosser.
She didn’t have much money, had no credit cards, and her phone battery was getting low. She asked people she met what she should do, and someone told her she could get a Ben Franklin bus back to the TriCities and get a Greyhound bus back to Boise. On the city bus, Abbie met Glenn Baker, from Prosser. Glenn knows many things, including, apparently, that the daily bus to Boise had already left Pasco, that she didn’t have enough money for a ticket anyway, and she would be stranded overnight in the TriCities. He convinced her to come back to Prosser, and then, using a borrowed cell phone, he called me, arranging for me to meet them when they got back to Prosser.
I met them at the bus top, and listened to Abbie’s story. I knew right away she qualified for the assistance program Jubilee Ministry has. I took her to the police station and she got vouchers for food and a for a night at a local motel. I took her to the store and to her car, still on the highway, so she could get her things. Then I left her at her motel.
When we were at her car, I borrowed the key and tried starting it. It started, but ran rough. After getting her to the motel, I offered to try getting her car off the highway. Darrel Fortune and I went out to it, got it started, and drove it to her motel, giving her key back to her. The next day someone I was talking with about Abbie’s adventures offered to pay for her bus ticket home, and give her a ride to Pasco.
When she left Prosser that day, she told me how amazed she was about Prosser. People were so friendly and helpful
to her. The town was so nice looking. Even little things, like being able to leave your car unlocked when you went into a store were surprising to her. She said her experience, which could have been very bad, had turned out so well that she wanted to come back just to visit the town again.
She reminded me. That’s where we live. That’s the people who live around us.
Shalom,
Bo
September 2020
BO’S BLOG”
I’m a bit disappointed in the political conventions in August. Yeah, I expected to hear some “trash talk” about the other side from each of them. But it seemed to me both went farther than that, saying the election of the other candidate would be the end of the world as we know it. That theme sounded a little hollow to me, because it’s like we’ve already been living an end of the world as we knew it. We can’t go to movies with friends or family. We can’t go out to dinner in a crowded restaurant. We can’t hang out with friends, sharing our favorite adult beverages at a Brew-pub. We can’t walk around town without taking a mask with us in case we come close to someone else. We can’t shake hands or hug. We have to be isolated, distant, safe, even when we are together. That is an end to life as we knew it.
The people who have just gone through the hurricane in Louisiana and Texas have seen the end of their world as they knew it. Many have lost everything they didn’t have with them. The destructive force of the wind and flooding have taken their world from them.
There are plenty of other examples in our world of the end of life as people have known it. It can be depressing if we think about them too much. But that ending does not have to include the end of hope. People can, and do, recover from hurricanes, pandemics, recessions, deep divisions, despair. If I know people, there will be thousands of volunteers to help those left in the wake of Hurricane Laura. People send aid to countries that have faced disasters. People work until they’re beyond being tired to save lives in hospitals. People put together soup kits to help those in need in their own communities. People sew masks for those who don’t have them. People grow gardens and give the food away. Hope and help are all around us.
In life, we learn that the end of the life we have known is the beginning of a new way of living. Jesus even said that we have to be born anew in order to live the life to which we are called by God. The hope and help, within and without, carry us into the new life of each day as we learn again what life truly is. Life is not what the politicians or the media try to tell us it is. It is what we see, touch, hear, experience each day. “New every morning is your love, great God of light, and all day long you are working for good in the world” (UM Hymnal, p.877). God is continually at work to bring good into our lives, and to help us bring good into the lives of others.
So let’s go ahead. Move on. Step into God’s new love, God’s new life, for us each day. Let’s continue to stand with each other and help others as we experience the events of our lives. For it is God’s life, God’s love, God’s grace that is our constant. That life, that world, will never end.
Shalom,
Bo

August 2020
In the first and fourth notes I wrote back in March and April, I compared our time of COVID-19 restrictions to the traditional practice of self-denial Christians may observe during the season of Lent. But now it’s August. Lent ended back in April. Yet we are still living with our season of self-denial.
Self-denial, in Christian tradition, is not meant to be a testing of our endurance, although it certainly can also be that. Self-denial is meant to be a practice that helps us grow in our relationship with God. The giving up of something, or not doing something, we normally have or do creates a tension within us. Our routine is broken! We can’t stop thinking about chocolate at snack time! In the midst of this self-induced stress, God works with us, and we with God, to grow into the tension. We learn we can depend on God to be with us in times of uncertainty and stress, large and small. We learn we are capable of growth at any age. We learn that routine and chocolate may not be the most important things in life (note I said “may”).
We are certainly in a time of uncertainty and stress. We cannot gather together at church for worship and fellowship. We cannot leave our home without a face mask. We can-not shake hands or hug friends, or even family who don’t live in our house. We have seen the results around our country and in our counties when we don’t abide by these rules. We don’t know when this will end, other than when we get a vaccine. We feel a jumble of emotions—anger, loneliness, sadness, guilt, restlessness, uncertainty, fear, hopelessness, and more—in what I’ve been recently calling our “COVID time,” these months in which we live a more restricted life.
In the midst of our inner unsettledness, there is an invitation. We can choose to see this COVID time as an extend-ed season of Lent. We are living in the liminal time between what was, before COVID, and what will be, after COVID. God invites us to use this inner unsettledness and this restricted COVID time, to grow personally, and in our faith, in our relationship with God, just as Christians have down through the centuries.
This month, and the first Sunday in September, I will return to the Lenten scriptures we skipped over after our worship services stopped in March. My homilies will focus on ideas in the Gospel readings that help us grow our relationship with God—to “Stay in Love With God.” I will also speak to how the unsettledness within us during this COVID time can help us in this process. However, we won’t, yet, pursue the Lenten narratives into Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection. That will come for us, one day. There will be an end to the vigil we are keeping. There will be Easter.
Shalom,
Bo

July 2020
 
From the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, our bishop has framed the Northwest United Methodist response upon the structure of something called the “Three Simple Rules.” They are:
“Do No Harm”
“Do Good”
“Attend Upon All The Ordinances Of God” (or, as Bishop Rueben P. Job rephrases it, in his book Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living, “Stay in Love With God”)

You will notice these are the titles of three of my homilies this month. So what are these “rules,” where do they come from, and why would our bishop use them in responding to a pandemic?
These rules are actually the “General Rules of our United Societies,” which can be found in the 2016 edition of The Book of Discipline of The United Methodist Church on pages 77—80. The societies, and their subdivisions, called class meetings, were begun by John Wesley when, in the midst of his reforming work in Britain, he found people coming to him looking for some means of support in their new life of faith after hearing his words. He gave them a structure of small groups to build each other up in their faith each week, and these rules to guide them in what they did in their daily lives.
Bishop Job notes in the Introduction to his book that Wesley recognized the need for this kind of guidance was not new in his time, nor is it outdated in ours. “Most of us yearn to live . . . a good and faithful life in Christ. We do want to be faithful to the highest we know. We do want to practice our faith in ways that are healing and life-giving, not destructive and life-denying.” John Wesley, he writes, “knew that everyone needs help to live a holy and good life in a world like ours.”

The three simple rules are a tool the bishop, as a Christian, and especially as a United Methodist, used to respond to the pandemic. It is a tool we can use to respond as well, to COVID-19, to racism, to economic worries, to partisan divide, to every aspect of our life in this world. It is a way to live out the commandment Jesus said was the greatest— to love God with all our heart, mind, strength, and spirit, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

As we go through each one of these rules in the coming weeks, I hope you will find ways they can help strengthen and grow your faith in some aspect of your lives. Every one of us can use help in living a good and faithful life in the world we have today.

Do No Harm.
Do Good.
Stay in Love With God.
Shalom,
Bo


June 2020
Last week Bishop Stanovsky and the leadership of the Greater Northwest Area of The United Methodist Church sent out a document called “Reimagining Life Together” to the UM churches
of Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. This document provides guidelines to local churches as they develop plans for re-opening for in-person worship.
Don’t get excited yet. We’re not having worship service in the sanctuary next Sunday. But it is time for our church to start talking about how and when we are going to have worship services in person again.

Our Church Council has received copies of this document (if you would like a copy of it you can call the church office, or find it on-line at greaternw.org), and has begun the process =of developing our re-opening plan by creating a committee (we are Methodist, after all). The committee will work
through the 26 page document and put together a plan for what we need to do now, and in the future, to prepare to move through the phases toward re-opening. Much like the Washington State plan, the church will be going through 4 phases of re-opening. We are currently in Phase 1, which is what we’ve been doing since March—the church building is closed for use, church staff can access it only to collect mail, pay bills, take care of the building, etc. Phase 2 allows up to 10 people to gather at church, but with strict distancing, sanitizing, and facemasks, and not for worship. Phase 3 allows up to 50 people to be at church, still with distancing, sanitizing, and facemasks. Worship, weddings, and funerals may occur. Phase 4 has no group size limit, still requires sanitizing spaces after use, but does not require facemasks or distancing.

Our plan will need to show how we will prepare for each phase, and what we will do in each phase. We will need to work with our district superintendent to get our plan approved. We will move from one phase to the next when the governor & bishop have moved the state into the next phase, and when our district superintendent approves our plan for Prosser UMC to do so as well. There is a lot for us to do to prepare for re-opening, and some difficult decisions to make. For example, while it looks like we could re-open for worship in Phase 3 of the process, the guidelines restrict those who can attend to those not in the “High Risk” categories. This means people over 65, people who live in nursing homes or long-term care facilities, and people with underlying medical
conditions would not be able to attend worship. The question the Church Council will have to deal with is “Should we start up worship again if most of our congregation can’t be there? Another restriction that will be a BIG change for all of us is that we will not be able to sing in any of these phases. No sung hymns, prayer responses, benediction. No choir. The reason for this is that studies show singing projects our breath, and anything in it (coronavirus), up to 26 feet. It is not practical for us to gather for worship and stand 26 feet apart from each other.

We will miss those things we have always done, but at least we will be together and safe. The re-opening committee, and our worship leaders, may find new ways we can celebrate and worship God together.

Ultimately though, it is God’s grace, and God’s love, that sustain us as we move forward in faith.
Shalom,
Bo


 May 2020

May seems to be our transition from indoor to outdoor life. “April showers bring May flowers.” We celebrate those flowers on May Day, with dances around the Maypole. We share flowers with our moms on Mother’s Day. We honor those who have died with flowers on Memorial Day. Memorial Day also completes our transition into the season of barbecues, picnics, boating on the river, hot summer days, and vacations.
Or perhaps I should say, this is what May is usually like. This year, May will be a bit different. There won’t be gatherings around Maypoles. Many will not be traveling to see their moms or children. There will probably be fewer at the grave sites, at the barques, out camping in the forests. Life is different for us. Life is different for the non-humans in the world too. There have been reports of deer and elk walking on roads, ducks nesting in parking lots, more birds singing in the trees. The rest of the world is noticing the absence of us humans, and our cars, our noise, even our trash. I’ve never seen the streets of New York City so clean as in the pictures of them these past few weeks. There have been comments about how clean the air is in Los Angeles, Paris, Rome, New Delhi, and Beijing.

Undoubtedly, as we begin to return to our “normal” lives, the cars will get back on the roads, litter will return to the streets, the noise level will increase, and the particulates from our activities will again fill the air. It is the way we live. But wouldn’t it be nice if, right now, while we have this time of quiet, of staying at home, of not being preoccupied with our work, we were instead to take time to listen, and to reflect on what nature is telling us? Could there be a mes-sage for us in the sound of birdsong, the sight of animals on our roads, the smell and sight of clear blue sky?

One thing I hear is a reminder that we are not apart from nature, as we seem to act most of the time, but are rather a part of nature. We push nature back with our houses, yards, fences, parking lots and roads, but when we retreat inside our homes, or abandon neighborhoods, nature grows back in. Our presence is never permanent. Nature always counters our actions (how many times do I have to cut down those mulberry shoots before the roots will die?). Perhaps there’s no greater example right now of our being subject to nature than our forced re-treat into our homes before a natural virus. Had we not done so, how many more would have died, or become gravely ill? Corona virus is a part of nature we cannot yet control with our technology.

Perhaps also the cleaner air we’ve seen could tell us that it is possible to reverse some of the negative effects of our activities on earth. We’re not going to give up driving cars altogether, but we could be inspired by the clean air to develop and use affordable electric vehi-cles, and to build the infrastructure to support their use. There are ways of moving forward in the areas of transportation, food production, ranching, manufacturing, that help us be more efficient and better stewards of the world God has created. We’ve found these ways in the past, and we can continue to find them in the future.

It is May, and it is our season of transition, hopefully in more ways than one. While we do so, we can continue to enjoy the beauty and inspiration of the natural world around us that God called “very good.”
Shalom,
Bo

April 2020
As our times now are far different than any we’ve shared in the past, I want to do something different with my blog this month.

First, I’d like to invite you to get a Bible and sit in a comfortable chair. Then read Psalm 130.
Next, read the following quote from one of our United Methodist bishops, published in 2002:
“As Christians we live by faith in God, and we carry within us the notorious hope that a life of faithfulness is indeed the best way to live. Our hope is that fidelity and faithfulness will result in a holy life and the comforting companionship of Jesus Christ. The rewards of peace and assurance of continued companionship with God in the life to come belong to every faithful Christian.

“We hope for that which we do not see. The reward of holy living today is merely a hope for tomorrow. The rewards of peace and assurance may be ours today, but they are only a hope for tomorrow. The companionship of Jesus Christ is experienced today but is only a hope for tomorrow. The promise that this ordinary life can be invested in the extraordinary reign of God today and tomorrow is the hope that encourages us to do what we can where we are to make God’s will known and real.

“When disease, disaster, death, or triumph strike, we are filled with hope because our ultimate trust is in God. Our worlds and wealth may crumble; disease and disaster may lay hold on what and whom we value; but followers of the Christian way continue to be hopeful. We hold on to hope because we are filled with faith that God is able to consummate the promise made to redeem and transform all who turn their lives toward God.” (Rueben P. Job, A Guide to Prayer for All Who Seek God, p.155)
Now go back to your Bible and read the story of Jesus and his friends, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, in John 11:1-45.

As you consider these readings, what are the stories of hope you hear or see in these times? Where is God’s promise of hope being fulfilled by those doing what they can “to make God’s will known and real.” Share those stories with the people in your household, or call someone who you know lives alone and talk with him or her about it. Share the hope you see.
Shalom,
Bo


March 2020


I remember learning in elementary school that “March roars in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.”
We learn, as adults, that life is not always as simple and constant as we thought it was when we were kids.
One constant about March is that Lent occurs during most, if not all, of the month.
Another constant about March is that we transition from winter to spring, regardless of the wind, snow, ice, or rain.
Shalom,
Bo

February 2020

There seems to be a lot of division in our society today.
Some blame the proliferation of media options for today’s divisiveness.
That can be further reinforced by the news we watch.and our perception of our own lives can become more negative.
However, there is hope.
I don’t know if the Protocol will be voted in by General Conference, or if it will work.
Shalom,
Bo

 


January 2020

I have to confess that I’ve not been very good at making and keeping New Year’s resolutions.
not from having too much muscle, as I could tell by looking at a side view of myself in a mirror.
Later, I began to change my approach.  Instead of trying to do something big (like lose 50 lbs.) all in one year, I would focus on smaller transitions.  Drink more water and less soda this week.  Exercise for 5 minutes today.  Don’t buy ice cream at the store.  Try to weigh the same, or a little less by this time next week.  Allow myself to eat more desserts, cookies, or candies at Thanksgiving and Christmas.  In doing this, I ended up developing new habits that were healthier for me, and now I start 2020  28 lbs. lighter than I was back then.
I’m not selling a weight-loss program here.  What I’ve shared is an example of a way we can change our lives in a lot of different areas, including our spiritual formation.  If we say “This year I’m going to read the Bible from cover to cover,” that can be pretty intimidating to many of us.  But if we say “I’m going to read a part of the Bible for the next 10 or 15 minutes,” that can be more easily done, and, repeated often enough, can lead into a new habit of reading the Bible regularly.  The same process can help develop your life in prayer, worship, tithing, and serving others.
I invite you to consider the changes you would like to make in your life, and the small steps which might lead you, in time, where you’d like to go.
Shalom,
Bo
 


December 2019
The first of this month, the first Sunday of Advent, December 1, we begin our church cycle of seasons again. Yet, as we wait, expectantly, through these four Sundays for Christ’s Mass to arrive, to celebrate the birth of Jesus, our hope will be assailed by the world around us.

We have leaders in our country who seem to feel their most important job is being right, and to label the people in the other political party as wrong. As unhelpful to the concerns of our nation, and the world, as that may seem, at least we don’t have leaders who think it’s ok to use chemical weapons on their own people, or who send those who disagree with them to re-programming camps. Meanwhile, in our country and around the world, we have people using social media to create biased perceptions and opinions.  We have racial, religious, and gender discrimination and violence on the rise. We have rising levels of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, which will lead to global warming and ever more extreme climate changes. We have droughts and famine, where thousands of people die each day, and millions are seeking to migrate to places where they can at least survive. Almost every day, there are senseless acts of terror, of shootings, bombings, IED’s, and genocide.

How do we maintain hope in this season of Advent with all this, and more, going on around us? How do we keep from growing apathetic towards others, immunized to the deep needs and cries for help in our world? How do we avoid creating a bubble around our lives as we go about decorating our homes, shopping for gifts, cooking those holiday treats, and humming carols under our breath?
We do so by remembering that Jesus was born into this same violent world, with self-serving leaders in the government and the church; that he grew up in a poor family, knowing people who were struggling to survive; and that he never gave up hope, or became apathetic, about God’s kingdom, here on earth, and on the final day.

As followers of Christ, we maintain our hope, we grow our hope, we rejoice in our hope, and we act through our hope. This time of year I try to keep change in my pocket or wallet, even though I almost always use my debit card, because those Salvation Army ringers are everywhere. They are part of the holiday season for me. We can each act in ways to help others this time of year. Sign up at Jubilee
Food bank to help make or hand out holiday food boxes (see article on page 1). If you get a new sweater for Christmas, give your old one (in good condition) to the Red Door thrift store. These may seem like small things, compared to the world’s problems, but these small things help us orient our lives to God’s kingdom. Spend some time this Advent, as you wait expectantly to celebrate Jesus’ birth, to reflect on how you can be an agent of God’s kingdom in a world, country, and community that badly needs more of such people.
Shalom,
Bo

November 2019


Stewardship is not an attitude about money.  Stewardship is an attitude about life.  It is about caring for, and being grateful for, the gifts with which we are entrusted in life, and we need to reclaim this concept of stewardship in order to be better stewards.

If we love someone, we know we do not deserve love from the one we love, just as we know that the one we love does not have to earn or deserve our love.  It is simply there, a gift given.  Because of that, it is something precious that we need to care for, and so we give of our time and energy.  We give of ourselves, making ourselves open and vulnerable to the one we love.  We nurture the relationship, providing the invaluable food of intimacy and self-sacrifice.  This is stewardship, because love is not something that belongs to us, but rather something we can only care for to keep it healthy, and be grateful that someone wishes to give it to us.

This life we have is a tremendous gift.  There are many times I have not paid much attention to it—I get busy, and time goes by, and suddenly I realize I’m not 36 any more.  But we don’t deserve or earn this life we have—the smells of autumn, the feel of brisk cold air in our lungs, the tastes of good food, the sound of a river, the sight of sunshine on yellow, orange, red, and brown leaves.  The joys and sorrows, the hunger, the plenty, death and new life, the pain, the healing are all gifts to us.  To fully live this life, we have to pay attention to it, care for ourselves and others, and remember to give thanks in gratitude for the experiences we have. This is stewardship.

I encourage you to find ways to express gratitude on a daily basis, for that is how we can pay better attention to the gifts we are given.  It can be by giving time to a child who needs help, giving a hug to a spouse or friend, or giving thanks to God at the end of each day for the best thing that happened that day.  In this way we can be better stewards to the life, the relationships, the events, the places, and yes, even the money we are given.

Shalom,

Bo


 

October 2019
 
October brings us into the heart of Fall, with World Communion Sunday at the beginning of the month, and Reformation Sunday/All-Hallow’s Eve at the end of the month. This year we also have our All-Church Conference October 6, beginning with a potluck (appropriately Methodist!) at 6:30 PM. The early morning air is brisk to walk in, and the afternoon sun warms the air, providing beautiful Fall sunsets.
The people of Israel celebrated this time of year, when the final harvests were brought in, and the outdoor work was completed. The Festival of Booths, or Sukkoth, is the time when thanks were given to God for the abundance that had been received from the earth that God created. Certainly, we can give thanks to God at

September 2019



I was recently given a copy of an article entitled “Why Our Service Organizations are Dying: (and 6 ways to fix them)” that was published about 3 years ago (Thank you Alys Means!). While the article is about organizations like Rotary, Kiwanis, Masons, Shriners, Elks, and others, it sound-ed similar to other articles I’ve read about the decline of the church (mainline and independent). It seems we aren’t the only community category losing members! 



One reason for the decline, this author states, is a shift in our culture away from communities built on impersonal characteristics, such as geographical location or altruistic concepts, toward communities built on personal affinities, such as a social issue that affects us, or a favorite football team. In our digital age, a large number of people are finding their community, or place where they feel like they be-long, on-line. The author says they have reverted to an older form of community—a tribal community. 



In many ways this makes sense. A young couple who’ve just had their first baby can find a whole new community of “friends and family” on the internet—other young couples with whom they can share the ups and downs, trials and joys, of this most wonderful journey they have begun. That “tribe” can give them the support, and perhaps even guidance, they need. 



However, if we limit ourselves only to our collection of “tribes,” if we interact and participate only with other “like-minded” people, we then isolate ourselves from so many other people, and it becomes easy to assert that we have truth, and others do not (or perhaps that all truth is relative, and my truth is as good as yours). We can lose sight of the impersonal fact that there is truth beyond our personal experience, or our “tribe’s” experience. Service groups know that serving others is important, not because they know those they serve, but because those people are in need. 



Yes, it can be helpful to be part of a group of people whose experiences resonate with ours, But we are also called to go beyond ourselves. Jesus said “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” and that truth, and the way and life to which he calls us is God. Jesus called his disciples to spread the good news, not just within the tribes of Israel, but to all people, to the ends of the earth. We, like the disciples, are called to go beyond our tribes, to all in need of life in God. 


Shalom,


August 2019
Thanks to all of you who listened to the reports Donna Barr and I shared during the July 14 worship service, and for your
One thing we did not talk about that Sunday, and which was a question in my mind after our Annual Conference (AC), was what other ACs did in response to the changes the General Conference (GC) made in February.
The answer, as would be expected in a denomination as diverse as ours, is yes, and no.
In other parts of the country, 2 ACs in Texas and Georgia had no legislation at all related to this year’s GC.
This is only a small sampling from other AC websites.
Shalom,
Bo

June 2019

It is good to be back! It is good to see you all on Sunday mornings again and at evening meetings. It is good to be out and about in the community, and in the office during the week.

Donna Barr has done an excellent job in the office while I was gone, keeping the administration of this church going. Damage from water leaking through a roof, and ice pulling off a gutter, is in the process of being re-paired, with the first insurance check already in our account. People have been settling into the new space downstairs, and figuring out what it needs to complete the look, and the sound, of it. Sunday morning attendance was up for March and April, as was income. As I’ve joked with some of you, perhaps I should stay away more often. I greatly appreciate Rev. Mark Williams filling the pulpit, and providing pastoral care and administrative guidance while I was on leave. I’m glad that you all have had the chance to get to know him, and his wife Lisa. They are friends as well as colleagues, and good people. I knew the church was in good, and very capable, hands during my absence.

Those were not the only capable hands either. Many others stepped up and pitched in as well to meet the needs of our church, newcomers and long-term members alike. While some people (particularly pastors) feel that the pastor is the most important person in the church, the past few months at Prosser UMC show that it is the energized and active lay people in the pews who are most important to the vitality and life of a faith community. This life and vitality have been evident even before these past few months. Over the past 2 years you have raised more than twice your annual budget so that you could pay for most of the remodel work downstairs as well as the programs and operation of the church. And while the conference statistician notes in this year’s pre-Annual Conference Handbook that an average weekly attendance of 100 or more “is generally accepted as the attendance level [necessary] to sustain a full time or-dained pastor,” you all have been doing that for the last 25 years with an average worship attendance of 40.  There are no more capable hands than the faithful hands of God’s people. It is good to be back amongst you.
Shalom,
Bo

A Word from Pastor

Mark Williams

It was a privilege to worship and pray with you these past weeks while Pastor Bo was on leave. You made Lisa and me feel most welcome in the house of worship at Prosser United Methodist Church. Your ability to make us feel at home is one of the great gifts you have to offer as
the people of God. In celebration of our time together, I want to share three words regarding house and home. The first I share is an illuminated prayer which hung in my parent’s home. It read: “God Bless this house and all who go in and out.” That prayer remains engraved in my memory. It has always shaped my life and my understanding of ministry. I almost always pray those words when  visit someone in their home. I fervently pray these words in a hospital room when I pray with a patient. I pray these words on a Sunday as I enter the church. And for four weeks as your pastor and preacher I prayed God’s blessing on the Prosser United Methodist Church and all who came and went. It is my hope that you will continue offering up such a prayer. Not because it’s your house, but because it is God’s house. And in God’s house everyone who enters
deserves such a blessing.
Lisa often reminds me to think of the church as God’s house. She quotes a member of a church in Africa who welcomed her with the word, “Please feel most welcome in your Father’s house.” Lisa was deeply moved by that word and the thought that such a welcome applied (or should apply) to every house of worship. I am confident that if every visitor at Prosser is made to feel welcome and at home in the house of worship, then they will be greatly blessed, and you will be blessed to be part of a growing family of faith.
A final word comes from a family whom I once stayed. I was expressing my gratitude for their hospitality when the hostess interrupted me. “ We want to thank you because you have made our house a good home. A house with not vistors is a bad home. By visiting us you have made you house a good home.” Since that conversation with a humble homeowner who provided generous hospitality, I have always sought to invite others to my home and into God’s house. I hope you will always do the same.  The church, God’s house, the place that welcomes visitors and gives them a blessing, is truly the church only when we invite others to come in. Only then does our Father’s house become a good home. God has given you a good and blessed church home. I invite you to be generous in sharing it with others. And may God richly bless you to be a blessing.
Grace and Peace,
Mark

Bo’s Blog

March 2019
The General Conference of 2019 is completed. The Conference met to try to change the deadlock we seem to be in around the topic of human sexuality. For decades we have had heated debates at General Conferences on this issue. I attended the 1984 Bicentennial General Conference in Baltimore where there were protests, many petitions, and ultimately, little change in policy about the participation of homosexual persons in the life of The United Methodist Church.
35 years later, we have much the same story. The Conference voted to approve what is called the “Traditional” plan.  In this plan there are no changes in what the Book of Discipline says about people who participate in same-gender relationships. The plan does, however, attempt to change the process by which United Methodists hold each other responsible for “breaking the rules.”

I use the word “attempt” because many parts of the changes proposed were deemed unconstitutional by the United Methodist Judicial Council, both prior to, and at, the General Conference. Some fixes were voted on at the Conference, but we won’t know if they are constitutional until the

Judicial Council meets again in April. So it appears, after all that, we could be right where we were 3 years ago. In our relationships with other people, when we keep having the same argument with them over and over, it’s a sign that we are not truly listening to each other. Unless we learn to stop, take a breath, let go of whatever we’re holding onto so tightly, and really listen to the other person, so that we understand them, we will never be able to respond in a way that provides the other with the opportunity to stop, take a breath, let go of whatever they’re holding onto so tightly, and really listen to us.
I wonder if General Conference is structured to do this kind of relationship work. Perhaps that’s why they haven’t been able to resolve this issue, even after more than 35 years.
It will take each of us having conversations with other United Methodists, building relationships within churches, districts, conferences, and jurisdictions, and across churches, districts, conferences, and jurisdictions, before we can come to agreement on a solution. The answer will not come from legislation, but from conversation. Holy conversation. Conversation in which we speak from our heart and listen with our heart. Conversation in which we can hear God in the other, and they can hear God in us.
Shalom,

Bo


Western Jurisdiction UMC Bishops video statement script (Feb 28, 2019)

http://westernjurisdictionumc.org/western-jurisdiction-umc-bishops-video-statement-script/

(Look for the video.)

From our District Superintendent

February 2019,
From our District Superintendent

I keep hearing people talk about the big decisions to be made next month at General Conference. Well, I want to invite you to join with me in praying that what we do there is not decision-making but is instead discernment, real discernment, because those are different things.
To come together in an attitude of decision-making, we would surface and share information, we would apply our best thinking and we would wrangle with one another until together we figured out for ourselves the best way to move ahead. A very human approach, when it could be, and should be, and can be so much more for people of faith.
See, anytime the question on the table is: “Is God trying to bring something new into the world? Is God trying to lead us into new understandings of ourselves and one another and what it means to be a faithful follower of
Jesus Christ?” Well, then that’s a moment for discernment and of listening to God as well as to ourselves and one another. It’s a time to surface and share information, to bring our best thinking and then for all of us to set our egos aside with everything else on the table and say, “God what could you create in the midst of this?” And then listen.
My prayer for General Conference is that the Holy Spirit breaks in and that those of us present are open and present enough that we notice—and that we collaborate with it for what God could do in our midst.
My hoped-for outcome of General Conference is that we could increase the United Methodist way of bringing lifegiving, life-saving, life-transforming love into this world; that love that we know through Jesus Christ.

I invite you to be with me as I and the rest of the delegation prepare ourselves for work in St. Louis. And please be in prayer for us, and with us, in St. Louis that we might not just be doing the work of Church but that we might be Church and bring and embody the best of what it means to be the body of Christ.

Rev. Mary K. Huycke is the first-elected clergy delegate from the Pacific Northwest Annual Conference to the 2019 General Conference, meeting in St. Louis in February. She also serves as district superintendent for the

Seven Rivers Missional District.


By Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky

A Bright Star in the Night Sky

By Bishop Elaine JW Stanovsky
A baby was born who turned the world on its head. Lives are changed by Jesus, who opens our eyes to God’s transforming love and justice.  We celebrate his birth extravagantly, because we understand that his life, death and resurrection are awesome in their creative power—maybe even awe-ful in their disruptive power. They show us that life is not in vain, that the most violent powers of sin and death cannot snuff out the hope that burns in our hearts, even at times like a small, flickering flame.
The story of Jesus turns us inside out as we sing, “the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.” I pray that your very personal hopes and fears are met by Jesus in the New Year.
United Methodists will carry our very public hopes and fears from 2018 into 2019. A special session of General Conference in February will seek a way forward out of decades of strife over whether and how the Church will welcome and include, or reject and exclude, people based upon their sexual identities and orientations.
What are the hopes that delegates will bring to the Conference?
•Full Inclusion. The Simple Plan would remove of restrictive language in the Book of Discipline to enact full inclusion of LGBTQ people in the life and ministry of the Church. Sexual identity and orientation would not be a standard for ordination. Same sex weddings would be allowed. 
•Obedience to scripture and discipline. The Traditional Plan reaffirms the traditional teaching that marriage between one man and one woman is the norm. “Self-avowed practicing homosexuals” would be prohibited from ordination and samesex weddings would be prohibited, with stricter enforcement of each. [Learn More | Proposed Legislation]
•Redefining the Connection. The Connectional Conference Plan is the most complicated of the three proposed by the Commission on a Way Forward providing for three overlapping conferences which share some services but have more theological autonomy. Of the major plans, if provides the most space for theological differences but probably has the least support due to the number, and difficulty, of the changes proposed. [Learn More | Proposed Legislation]
•Room for contextual adaptation. The One Church Plan offers less legislated uniformity and allows clergy, local churches and annual conferences to set standards and practices appropriate to their ministry context and exercise of conscience.

I have publicly joined other bishops and leaders of the Western Jurisdiction in
support of the One Church Plan.

Bo’s Blog, “Wait. . . . . . .Wait. . . . . .”

December 2018

“Wait. . . . . . .Wait. . . . . .”
I remember being startled the first time a crosswalk button talked to me. Well, yeah, I thought, I am going to wait until the crosswalk signal changes. But I sure wish it would change soon.
Waiting is a part of life. We have to wait for the results of the test we took at school. We have to wait to find out if we got the job for which we interviewed. We wait for food to cook. We wait until we’ve saved enough to buy the car, or boat, or house, we want. We wait for the “right person” to come into our lives. We wait for months for a child to be born. We wait for that raise or promotion.
We wait for our kids to come home after school, or our spouse to come home after work. We wait for the kids to move out, get jobs, begin families of their own. We wait to go on vacations, for retirement to arrive. We wait for many things to happen in our lives. But many of us are not good waiters. Our culture, for
decades, has been one of instant gratification, about making the waiting less, and the goal sooner. We can see our test result as soon as the grading is done by checking our student account on-line. No need to “Wait. . . .Wait. . . .” until the next class to get your score. We have more credit cards now, so we don’t have to save up (“Wait. . . .Wait. . . .”) to buy what we want. We can call long distance at no extra cost, get up-to-the-minute news, and “chat” with a group of friends, all through our phones, without having to “Wait. . . .Wait. . . .”. In many ways waiting is a thing of the past.
We lose much, though, when we don’t have to “Wait. .. .Wait. . . .”. When we’re busy rushing from one thing to the next, we don’t have time to relax in between, to notice life going on around us, to have a sense of anticipation for what’s coming next. We don’t have time to think, to process, to imagine, to feel our emotions.
As human beings, we need time and space to wait. Advent is such a place. It is God’s season of “Wait. . .
.Wait. . . .”. I invite you to join me at the crosswalk. Intentionally lengthen the space between your pro-
jects, your shopping, and your other lists. Take time to reflect, to remember, to look around and enjoy the sights and sounds of waiting. Resist the urge to rush towards Christmas until it actually is Christmas. Take the time to feel your true self in this season, as we await the celebration of the birth of the One who calls us to be those true selves.
Shalom,
Bo

Bo’s Blog

November 2018
 BO’S BLOG
At a gathering of the pastors of our conference at Wenatchee First UMC last month, the Rev. Larry Peacock, a retired UM pastor from the Cal-Pacific Annual Conference, who is now the Executive Director of the Franciscan Spiritual Center in Portland, led a workshop on spiritual disciplines. Of the three disciplines he highlighted, one was gratitude. “Practicing gratitude,” he said, “turns scarcity and fear into abundance and hope. ”I always give thanks as part of the prayers I say, but I hadn’t really thought much about gratitude as a life practice, as an attitude toward life. But the practices
Larry lifted up in that workshop were about doing things in everyday life to reinforce a feeling of gratitude within. One was saying grace. Very simple, very basic, but what saying grace does is remind us
of the good gifts we have in life, beginning with food to eat. Having food is not a given in many parts of the world, nor even in our country, and community. It is a blessing to have food, and to share food with others around a table. Saying grace reminds us of this simple, basic truth.
Another practice of gratitude he shared (my mom’s going to love this) is writing thank you notes. In writing these notes, we acknowledge that we are not Lone Rangers, that we are not “all alone,” as King
Aurthur sings in “Spamalot.” Instead, we receive gifts from God and others, and the gift-giving, and the acknowledgement of gift-receiving enriches and deepens the relationships we have in life. I had no idea that my thank you notes were anything more than a chore I had to do as a kid until last year, when my brother sent me those very notes I had written to my grandfather. My grandfather had kept them in a drawer beside his bed. When he passed away, my father found them, and kept them. Those small notes held more meaning for those two men than my very basic “thank you,” and the notes about the weather I included. In saying “thank you,” we bind ourselves to others in relationships of goodwill.
Another practice is to simply review our day, as it closes, and remind ourselves of the good things that happened for which we are grateful. This helps build a habit within us of expecting good to be there, even if it seems to be carefully hidden.
Through these practices our perception of life can move from negative to positive, from isolation to belonging, from “scarcity and fear” to “abundance and hope.” Happy Thanks-giving!
Shalom,
Bo