Extending Grace: The Ministry of Bearing

I can't remember when this idea first crept into my mind. We've been going through an excellent sermon series at church this fall about the facets of the Kingdom of God, things like fellowship, witness, simplicity, covenant, and persecution. It could have been in one of these sermons. Or the idea could have poked up its head in one of my conversations with a mentor or friend. I've also been leading a book study at church on Dietrich Bonhoeffer's pithy volume Life Together. I'm sure the idea partly came about through this book. Simply put, the big idea that's been on my mind and in my heart is the call that we have to extend grace to our fellow human beings.

Bonhoeffer gave me the words to express what this ministry is called in Scripture: the ministry of bearing. Paul writes: "Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindess, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another..." (Col. 3:12-13a). As I've thought more about it, my experiences in life recently have given body and shape to this idea of bearing with or extending grace to others. Or, more accurately, life has tested my limited ability to extend grace.

In church a couple weeks ago, my pastor introduced new members to the congregation. He said something like: "We have a divine call to welcome these new members into our congregation and to love them, to delight in their gifts, passions, idiosyncracies and oddities." The congregation laughed, but the truth is plain as day. We're all a bunch of idiosyncratic weirdos. Need any evidence? Spend 10 minutes with another person. Or, better yet, spend two minutes with yourself!

In my book study yesterday, we discussed the ministry of bearing with others as Bonhoeffer describes it. I was still trying to understand what this ministry was, so I asked three questions: 1) What is the ministry of bearing? 2) Have you ever thought of this as a ministry? 3) How do we practice the ministry of bearing? One person very thoughtfully said, "Well, it kinda sounds like putting up with others." We all laughed and agreed. I didn't expect to have my questions answered in one fell swoop, but there it was, clear as day. Bonhoeffer further describes the ministry of bearing:

"The freedom of the other person includes all that we mean by a person's nature, individuality, endowment. It also includes his weaknesses and oddities, which are such a trial to our patience, everything that produces frictions, conflicts, and collisions among us. To bear the burden of the other person means involvement with the created reality of the other, to accept and affirm it, and, in bearing with it, to break through to the point where we take joy in it."    

Notice he says that we "break through" to the point of joy. We don't usually get there right away. It takes struggle to bear this ministry faithfully. Perhaps this concept has been so striking to me recently because life has been so ordinary and this is a ministry of ordinariness. What could be more day-to-day than colliding with the created reality of our brothers and sisters? I could count out the examples from today alone in a few short minutes, but I do have two stories I want to share particularly.

The first story is from this summer when I took a day trip with my family to the Oregon Coast. For my family, family vacations are full of laughter and fun, but also memories of personalities colliding and expectations being thwarted. At the very beginning of the day, my dad insisted that he needed to deposit his check in the bank before we did anything else. Somehow, this started us off on a brilliant way of handling each other's "weaknesses and oddities." Whenever someone's oddities poked through and caused friction, we would gleefully shout: "Quirk! Quirk!" Instead of causing more tension, this simple statement released the tension, like the cap being opened on a soda. The tension fizzled away, and we would inevitably burst into laughter. But beyond just releasing the tension, acknowledging each other's quirks gave us insight into each other's needs and wants and gave us an avenue for communication. It opened up the possibility of extending grace to each other, and I learned a valuable lesson.

Bearing with each other isn't always so easy. It doesn't always have a good outcome. But this doesn't change our calling to bear with each other. In fact, I believe that God will, as he always does, extend grace to us as we extend grace to others.

Several weeks ago, my friend and I were cooking pancakes for breakfast. I had made a delightfully fluffy sour cream pancake batter, and my friend was in charge of flipping. As she poured on batter, flipped the pancakes, and slid the cooked hotcakes onto a platter, she told me about the tough time at work she'd had the day before. As she talked, I noticed that she was pressing all the air out of the pancakes with her spatula, thus ruining the airy fluffiness that had so excited me. The words were almost out of my mouth when a thought popped into my mind. She is upset, and she's taking her frustration out on these pancakes. It was a totally mindless act because she was focused on telling me her story. And what was I doing? Worrying about culinary perfection. Then came the three redemptive words: "Extend her grace." And I did. I shut my mouth and listened and ate flat pancakes with a new appreciation.

Month-Gone Highlights

Hello! Thought you'd never hear from me again? No luck! Here I am again, eating a freshly-baked molasses cookie. I don't usually do trial runs of recipes before serving them to guests, but I made an exception for molasses cookies.

Here are several highlights from the last month of my life:

1. Somehow I ended up with two full gallons of apple cider back in October. I went up two Sundays in a row to Green Bluff only to find that the Hansens were completely sold out of apple cider. Finally, I made a special trip up there on a Friday afternoon and got my coveted cider. The next Friday, I got two free half gallons from a friend. I spent a lot of time on food blogs, searching for recipes and ended up making apple cider quick bread, apple cider baked beans (which I ate for a full, long week!), several batches of steel-cut oats, freezing several yogurt containers full, and drinking many warm mugs in the evenings. Ah, fall!

2. On the last Saturday in October, my friend Gerry invited me to a harvest party and hay ride out in the country. The man who hosts the party each year farms a ton of land (like 1,000 acres!) and has a beautiful spot in the country north of Spokane. Right after we arrived, a bunch of us (there were probably a good 50 people there with tons of little kids) hopped into two trailers packed with hay bales for the first hay ride of the evening. I sat next to a lovely older couple, and we bounced along for about half an hour. Tim, the farmer, pulled us with his big, ol' tractor. At one point in the ride, the back trailer that I was on came unhitched from the front trailer when we jounced over a rocky spot. It was tremendously exciting. :)

It was so lovely to crest the hill of wheat-stubbled fields on our hay ride as the sun was setting and the mist was drifting in. We saw a herd of deer and one of my companions pointed out the fiery yellow larches--conifers that lose their needles in the fall--that were striking against the dark green of the Ponderosa pines. We had a delicious potluck dinner with hamburgers and hot dogs and a full table of desserts. Gerry's daughter, daughter's son, and his family were also at the party, and we all went out on a second hay ride in the dark. At first, I thought it would be scary and cold, but then we got distracted by the night sky. The heavens opened and stars burned through, bright and clear. The six-year-old who was with us stared up and said, "Wow! That looks like outer space!" We four adults got a good chuckle out of that. We spent the next half hour looking for constellations and watching for the ghostly lights of the barn that shone through the mist. As you can tell, the party was fodder for an active imagination.

3. Since September, the aforementioned Gerry and I have been cooking meals for a monthly family night at church. The day before Halloween, the youth group hosted a carnival and chili cook-off for the kids and their families. I purchased all the sides for the chili and was there early to arrange them and help the youth director with all the preparations. It was a madhouse when all the kids were there! I sat by myself with my chili when I finally sat down because I was a little stupefied. I rallied, though, and ran the craft table for the quieter kids. Being removed from childhood, it was fun to see the boundless enthusiasm of the kids in their costumes as they decorating cookies, cake walked, and had their faces painted.

4. For the third year in a row, my friend Heidi and I spent the first Saturday evening in November listening to the Whitworth jazz band play with a famous jazz musician, this year the saxophonist Chris Potter. The Whitworth jazz band is fabulous! Heidi and I listened with rapt attention and great big grins. There was one song I loved particularly because it featured a saxophone trio with Potter and two students. They seamlessly slipped the solo between the three of them and it was marvelous. It filled me with delight, and I had to stand up and clap when it was done while also regretting that it didn't go on for many minutes more.

5. Work has been an adventure the last two months. My department--customer support--has a steady work load. In an average week, we get about 400 e-mails from customers about every topic imaginable relating to the Olive Tree Bible Study app, our website, sales, etc. Due to financial tightness, we had to let a person from my department go at the beginning on October. Several weeks later, another co-worker resigned, leaving my department with two people. The first full week in November, my one remaining co-worker was on vacation for a whole week, leaving just me in my department. It was a busy, crazy week, and I learned a lot. About 10 of my co-workers from other departments helped out in the e-mail queue that week, so I got to lead them, answer questions, refine my own techniques and understanding, and work my tail off. It was a good week, but boy was the next week even better with my co-worker back to share the load of people waiting for help! There are still just two of us in support (though still with plenty of help from other departments), so it continues to be draining. I can't wait for a change of pace at Thanksgiving.

Well, those are the highlights! I do have a closing thought for you though. I'm part of a book club during Sunday School at church, and the leader asked me to co-lead this year. We've been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Life Together, and I'm finding it to be full of challenging and rich passages. I have my dad's version from 1979, and it has so many underlinings and notes and scribbles. It's delightful! I spent a lot of time alone this weekend. Really alone because I hardly saw any of my housemates after Saturday afternoon. It was thus ironic that the chapter we discussed in Sunday School yesterday was "The Day Alone." Being alone always makes me take stock of my life. So much of life is so very ordinary. As I looked back in my planner, so much of what I do day to day is the same: eat lunch and make lunch, walk, journal, look at recipes online, read, talk with my parents, e-mail, ignore chores, fill up the laundry basket, do laundry, fold laundry, and on it goes. And yet, the ordinariness is infused with changing, shifting life. New lessons to learn, challenges to overcome, gratitude to be expressed, and daily life to be shared. Life isn't always easy, but there is always plenty to be thankful for, and today I'm thankful for life, the ordinary and extraordinary both.

Made-From-Scratch Wontons

Last Saturday night, my two friends from church and I gathered to make wontons from scratch! Margaret, at whose house we were meeting, had made wontons with friends once before, so we had a potluck style dinner and she showed us how to form the wontons. We made nearly 50 wontons! Below are some pictures from our time together.

Here are the wontons ready to go out to the fryer:

Bethany frying up the wontons and me looking weird: 



Our wonderful spread ready to be eaten and enjoyed! 

We had two different kinds of wontons. The wontons in the middle of the table are stuffed with pork, shrimp, mushrooms, green onions, and water chestnuts. The wontons at the end of the table are stuffed with cream cheese and green onions. We also have apricot and cherry dipping sauce, lemongrass, baby corn, and ginger rice from Trader Joe's, and fruit salad. Yum!!

We had a lovely evening and had leftovers for later, too, which I ate for Sunday and Monday lunches. For dessert, we enjoyed my second batch of ice cream: homemade strawberry ice cream with Green Bluff strawberries. Thanks for reading!

What's something you like to make from scratch?

Highlights of April/Early May

Wow! I'm so sorry for not posting anything sooner. In light of my procrastination in writing a blog post, I'm going to write up a quick list of highlights from the past couple weeks. I must point out that as I sit down to write this post, I'm also occasionally dipping a Nutter Butter (or two) into a glass of cold milk. It's hot outside, and I have nothing in the house that resembles ice cream (and no desire to drive a mile or two to Froyo), so a glass of cold milk must suffice. I would also like to note that I'm sporting my first mosquito bite of the summer on my left hand. Is this something to brag about?

Here's my list of highlights:

1. My housemates and I all pitched in together to make a Chicken Bacon Spinach Alfredo pizza. I made the alfredo sauce and crust and the whole thing came together rather splendidly. For dessert we had a half-baked cookie with chocolate fudge ice cream, which was incredibly delicious.We also had a ton of fun talking and laughing.

2. My small dinner group from church had the pleasure of going to a Green Bluff farm (Cherry Hill Orchard) where one of the couples in the group lives and works. We had tacos, and I made a delicious pudding parfait dessert with vanilla and chocolate puddings, peanut butter whipped cream and chocolate and Nutter Butter cookie crumbs. The highlight was touring the big red barn out of which cherries are sold in the summer. We climbed up to the cupola at the very top of the barn and got a three-sixty view of the bluff countryside in the dusk. Stunning!

3. Near the end of April, a couple from church invited me to see their two daughters perform in The Music Man at a local high school. This is one of my favorite musicals, and I was in it in high school, so I said YES! We met at Pizza Hut before the performance and enjoyed a lovely time of fellowship with proud parents Samuel and Renee and six others. The performance was delightful and lines of Music Man songs have been playing refrains in my head ever since.

4. On the first Wednesday of each month, I volunteer with my friends Margy and Stella at the Mead Food Bank. Last month, Margy and I went out to dinner with the weekly volunteers and had a great time. Betty, a volunteer, said we could be on the dinner list, which means that if your name comes up on the list, you get to choose where to go to dinner. As soon as I walked in last Wednesday, Betty said, "Elizabeth! It's your choice for dinner!" I couldn't believe I actually got to choose! It wasn't a hard decision. I chose Zip's, a local Spokane fast food joint that I've only visited one time when I was fourteen as my youth group headed through Spokane on a mission trip to British Columbia. We had a wonderful dinner with the food bank volunteers, and I ate a corndog, crinkle fries, and a peanut butter milkshake. Bliss! I was raving about my corn dog so much that Margy said, "You know, you can buy frozen corn dogs at the grocery store." I agreed with her, but told her that I limit my corndog eating to once every six years or so, so I can really eat them with gusto. :)

5. On Friday evening, my friend Heidi and I went to Coeur d'Alene to see a Whitworth music professor debut his second concerto with the Coeur d'Alene symphony. The whole evening was wonderful. Heidi works with Japanese exchange students in town, and I had met her girls once before. I saw three of them while waiting for Heidi and chatted with them about their recent trip to the East Coast. Then Heidi and I drove the 40 minutes to Coeur d'Alene and enjoyed a picnic in a park by the lake. We ate wheat rolls with mustard, mayo, sliced chicken breast, cheese and avocado, cut veggies with homemade buttermilk ranch dressing, orange soda, and a chocolate-peanut butter no-bake cookie from Petit Chat. The concert itself was incredible. Brent Edstrom, Heidi's professor, is a jazz musician, so the piece was mixed jazz and orchestra. It sounds odd, but the pieces worked beautifully together. My favorite movement has some Latin-inspired rhythms and melodies which made it hard to sit still. Probably the best part of the concert, though, was clapping for Brent with pure delight at the end of the concert. He came back on stage three times and played an encore piece because we clapped so hard!

There are other highlights and hard things about the past couple weeks, too, but the stories above are the most delightful and brought me much life and joy. What are your highlights from the past couple weeks?

P.S. Also, I have to tell you that I watched the BBC Miniseries Wives and Daughters this weekend and loved it! I highly recommend it to all those who haven't seen it. It's a lovely story and can generate some good discussion (and maybe even a few good tears).

Blessed Fellowship

I've had some great times of fellowship in the past week. Here's a couple snippets:

1. Last Friday night (1/4), I had a potluck dinner with two friends from church, Margaret and Bethany. Margaret's retired and Bethany is in grad school. I made Sweet Potato Black Bean burritos, Margaret had a delicious Italian salad with olives and tomatoes, and Bethany made a delicious chocolate pudding cake. We just had the most wonderful time talking together all about life and our Christmas vacations and families. I love hanging out with people of all different ages.

2. The first Tuesday of every month is a lunch with Partners friends that we call FIRED, Food is Really Ethnically Delicious. We moved the lunch to the second Tuesday this month because of New Year's Day, and we had the most wonderful experience. We were going to eat Thai food, but the restaurant was closed, so we ended up eating at an Ethiopian restaurant in a gas station/convenience store that's just opened about a mile from work. The couple that runs the restaurant came from Ethiopia 10 years ago to give their children a chance to get an education. It was our first truly ethnic meal for FIRED. We didn't order, though there was a menu. Rather, the owner brought us each a dish she made, a sampling from the menu. Before we ate, she walked around to each person with a special bowl and pitcher. She poured a warm stream of water over our hands while we scrubbed and then we dried off with a towel. We did this because you eat Ethiopian food with your hands by wrapping pieces of Injera flatbread around the meat and veggies. The food was delicious and the owner also roasted coffee beans and made us strong Ethiopian coffee. I even tried a bit just for the experience. It was fun!

3. On Tuesday, despite rather treacherous road conditions, five women met together at one woman's house for our montly Colbert Women Connecting With Women event. Because there were only five of us, each of us had a longer time to share than normal. We shared all about our Christmas breaks and the emotions that accompanied our vacations. It's always so good to share in these circumstances because several of us were experiencing similar emotions, especially reflecting on how family dynamics change as children age, move out of the house, and get married or have kids. Did anyone experience a different Christmas with these kinds of changes? What was it like?

4. On Thursday, my friend Kari who is visiting for the week, my housemates Pam and Heidi, and I had Blueberry Yogurt Multigrain Pancakes for dinner with grapefruit, scrambled eggs, and kale/craisin/goat cheese salad. It was so fun! I love breakfast for dinner. After dinner, we had an awesome dance party! Yay for Owl City and One Direction! :)

5. Yesterday morning, my housemate Heidi and I had book club with our former professor Laura Bloxham. We've been discussing a book of short stories by Jhumpa Lahiri, which I highly recommend. But the most lovely part of the morning was the way Laura asked thoughtful questions about my and Heidi's lives and about the story we were studying. She is always interested and listens attentively and graciously. It gives me the wonderful feeling of being heard and understood. It was a good reminder to me that I need to continue to cultivate these qualities. What a lovely gift to give to someone: careful listening and thoughtful questions!

Each of these experiences and many more this week are evidence to me of God's continued and unmerited grace in my life. I tell these stories to inspire you to look for times of fellowship in your own life and to thank God for them. And honestly, my weeks vary. I'm not always surrounded with such opportunities for fellowship, but when the opportunities arise, I want to relish them.

The last thing I want to write about that's unrelated is the snow today. It's been simply gorgeous the past two days with blue skies and sun and continued so today. As I was sitting in church this morning, I looked out the window and the snow was falling so gently and quietly that it looked like it was floating in slow motion. It was magical. When I walked to my car, the snow sparkled on the ground like crystal. Thanks for the beauty, God!

May God bless you each with times of precious fellowship this week!