Easter Day

Easter Day 2023 April 9, 2023 I do not consider myself to be a “Swiftie.” However, I am close with at least two Swifties—these self-proclaimed fans of the pop music artist Taylor Swift, and these two beloved Swifties of mine occasionally keep me apprised of the goings on in the T. Swift universe. In a recent conversation about failure, and about how I’d been contemplating failure as a part of my Lenten discipline and reading, my Swiftie friend, Rev Aimee mentioned that Taylor had recently received an innovator award and in her reception speech, she spoke about failure. Here’s what Taylor said: “I do want to say that the thing with these exciting nights and moments and specifically this award that I’m so lucky to have gotten is that they’re shining a light on the choices I made that worked out. Right? The ones that turned out to be good ideas,” she said. “I really, really want everyone to know, especially young people that the hundreds or thousands of dumb ideas that I’ve had are what led me to my good ideas.” “You have to give yourself permission to fail,” she continued. “I try as hard as I can not to fail because it’s embarrassing, but I do give myself permission to and you should too. Go easy on yourselves and just make the right choices that feel right for you. And someday someone might think that you’ve been innovative. Thank you so much for this.” i What a gift that one of the biggest successes of an entire generation takes a moment to reflect on her failures and invites everyone to give themselves permission to fail! As I mentioned, I was already pondering failure as a part of my Lenten discipline this year. Lest you think too highly of me for taking on something so interesting, you should know that it came about by my reading the book that was designated this year as the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Lenten book. (He picks a different book every year, and I try to read it as a part of my Lenten discipline. Some years are better than others!) The book this year is titled Failure: What Jesus Said About Sin, Mistakes, and Messing Stuff Up, and it’s by the Rt. Rev. Dr. Emma Ineson, who is a bishop in the Church of England. Bishop Ineson defines failure as “when things don’t go according to plan” ii She clarifies that failure itself is not a sin, writing about how Jesus teaches his disciples what to do when (not if) they encounter failure, saying how again and again, in the face of their failures Jesus “names the reality of the situation and offers another, hopeful, chance to try again.” She writes, “Jesus was used to dealing with failure in others. He anticipated the failure of his disciples, trained them for it even, and was merciful when he encountered failure in those he met, always giving them a second chance.”iii So if Jesus is fully human (as well as fully divine), and failure is not the same as sin, it’s important to recognize that Jesus, himself, tasted failure. (If he didn’t then he wouldn’t be fully human.) In some ways, this can help redeem failure for us (like T. Swift was talking about). If even Jesus failed, then failure can be seen as something that is “an intrinsic part of everyday human experience, not something to be fearful of, embarrassed about or ashamed of, but owned, confronted, and learned from.”iv And while the failure of the cross isn’t a matter of things not going according to plan (because the gospels tells us over and over again that Jesus knew he was going to die, and he walked willingly down that path toward the cross and his death), Jesus knew the taste of failure as he hung there, betrayed by Judas, one of his closest friends, abandoned by so many others, mocked and made fun of by those in power in his own faith. And, most significantly, he felt the profound sense of God’s absence in all of that. The biggest joy of this day is that Jesus’s resurrection shows that failure will never be the last word in anybody’s story. Easter shows that once and for all failure is never final, and what might look like failure can turn out to be an incredible success. But we do ourselves a disservice if we rush too quickly to the redemption of our failures in and through Jesus’s resurrection without first encountering the truth of what Jesus teaches about failure. In her book, Bishop Ineson offers a number of suggestions on how to wrestle with and learn from failure in our own lives, or as she puts it “how to fail really well.”v There are two significant and related ones, that I want to mention here. The first is to “fail widely,” that is learning to make different kinds of mistakes (because so often in our lives, we make the same mistakes over and over again, never learning from them or changing and growing—we see this in the bible, too). The second is knowing your besetting sins. “Besetting sins are those aspects of our own character that lead us to fail in the same way repeatedly. Knowing what those flaws are and being aware of the impact they have on our interactions is half the battle.” Trusted friends can sometimes help us with this, holding up a mirror to help us “challenge the sins we have come to love.” vi Or to once again quote, Taylor Swift, “It's me, hi, I'm the problem, it's me At tea time, everybody agrees I'll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror It must be exhausting, always rooting for the anti-hero.” vii The gift of this day, of Easter, is that no matter what we do (or don’t do), Jesus’s death on the cross and his resurrection from the dead proves, once and for all that God’s love is stronger than any failure. It’s stronger than absolutely anything—even death. So failure is never final, and the resurrection means that even after our death in this life, we continue to grow in God’s love in God’s kingdom. In closing, I’ll share with you Bishop Ineson’s final words about failure. “When you are feeling down about your failures, remember the Benedictine monk who found that, due to cold, damp weather, his carefully stored wine had begun to ferment a second time, creating within it bubbles of carbon dioxide. What a failure! Discovering that mistake must have been a very bad day for him. The name of the monk? Dom Perignon.”viii i. https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/taylor-swift-innovator-award-speech-iheartradio-music-awards-2023-1234703674/amp/ ii. Ineson, Emma. Failure: What Jesus Said About Sin, Mistakes, and Messing Stuff Up. SPCK: 2023, p 129 iii.Ibid. p126 iv.Ibid. p 127 v. Ibid. p 128 vi.Ibid p 163 vii.Anti-hero by Taylor Swift. https://www.lyrics.com/lyric-lf/8688818/Taylor+Swift/Anti-Hero Listen to the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b1kbLwvqugk viii.Ineson, Emma. Failure: What Jesus Said About Sin, Mistakes, and Messing Stuff Up. SPCK: 2023, p 176

The Great Vigil of Easter 2023

The Great Vigil of Easter 2023 April 8, 2023 A letter to Ingrid Skousgard and Nathaniel Stein upon the occasion of your baptism. Dear Ingrid and Nathaniel, Tonight is a holy night. “This is the night” we sing again and again; the holiest moment of our church year in which we remember and participate in the saving acts of God. This is the night we gather in the darkness to light the new fire, to remember that the light of Christ can overcome all darkness. This is the night we tell the stories of our faith, how God creates all that is and calls it ‘so good’; how God acts to free God’s people from hundreds of years in slavery in Egypt and how God sets them on their course to new life and freedom in the land God has promised them; how those same people find themselves once again in exile and God promises them that God is always near, that God will save them if they but trust in God and not be afraid. This is the night, we remember and participate in the story of how God saves us; we remember and participate in this love story of God for God’s people. This love story is best summarized in a quote by the writer Frederick Buechner (pronounced Beekner). He writes that God says to us, “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” This is the night you are being baptized into Jesus’s death and resurrection, which is, strangely enough, the happy ending of this love story, and the reason why you don’t ever have to be afraid. This is the night you are being baptized into a new way of life—the way of discipleship, of following Jesus. This is the night you are being baptized into this way of forgiveness and reconciliation; into a way of self-emptying and self-giving; into the way of peace that teaches you to not be afraid but instead to put your hope in the God who saves you and who is always near. This is the night you are being baptized into the truth that God’s love for you is stronger than anything that you will ever have to face in this life, even death. And it is the night when we remember (as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says) that if it is not of love, then it is not of God. It is a road that is never meant to be walked alone, so we promise to walk this way with you. We promise to help you remember the light of Christ that always burns brightly in the darkness, even the darkness of the grave. This is the night we promise to help you remember God’s love story for you and for all of creation: “Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.” God’s love never fails. Your sister in Christ, Melanie+

Maundy Thursday 2023

Maundy Thursday 2023 April 6, 2023 “Miranda works the late night counter A little joint called Betty's Diner Chrome and checkered tablecloths One steamy windowpane She got the job that shaky fall And after hours she'll write till dawn With a nod and smile she serves them all” It’s the opening lines of one of my all time favorite songs titled Betty’s Diner by Carrie Newcomer, and the song looks through Miranda’s kindly and strangely-knowing eyes to tell us about the regulars who frequent Betty’s diner in the late-night hours. She gently names some of their past sins or hardships and tenderly paints a picture of this gathering of souls in need of communion, which she emphasizes over and over again with the chorus: Here we are all in one place The wants and wounds of the human race Despair and hope sit face to face When you come in from the cold Let her fill your cup with something kind Eggs and toast like bread and wine She's heard it all so she don't mind I’ve loved this song for years, and I think it’s because it reminds me of the best of what the church has to offer. At our very best, we are the gathering of the friends and followers of Jesus, each bearing the burdens and joys of our own humanity, who come together to find the comfort and the challenge that Jesus offers us in the awareness that this way is too hard, too burdensome to walk alone. And this night, as we begin this journey through the next three days, we remember especially Jesus’s invitation as he kneels before his friends and disciples. The invitation is to walk this path with our hearts wide open and undefended—open and undefended before God, and even open and undefended for each other. It’s why we wash each other’s feet, sharing this strange and startling intimacy with each other; it’s to remind ourselves that this awkward openness is how Jesus invites us to move through this life and how even with all its risk, it enriches and fills our lives with more meaning than we could ever ask for or imagine. It’s why we’ll pray our prayers and kneel side by side at the altar rail tonight, holding our own wants and wounds in our open hands to be received by Jesus and replaced, our hands filled with the gift of his very self, the gift of God who gently names our past sins and hardships, God who tenderly names our wants and our wounds, God who embodies hope in the face of our despair, God who grants forgiveness, who continues to sit with us, and who invites us to live and walk and dwell within his love and service, which is so much larger than our very small selves. Here we are all in one place The wants and wounds of the human race Despair and hope sit face to face When you come in from the cold Let her fill your cup with something kind Eggs and toast like bread and wine She's heard it all so she don't mind

The Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday-Year A

Palm Sunday 2023 April 2, 2023 I encountered a poem last week that offers an interesting window into Palm Sunday and Holy Week, and invitation to examine our expectations and to enter into a new way of walking through these holiest days of our year. It was written by Benjamin Cremer and is untitled. Here’s how it goes. We want the war horse. Jesus rides a donkey. We want the bird of prey. The Holy Spirit descends as a dove. We want the militia. Jesus calls fishermen, tax collectors, women, and children. We want the courtroom. Jesus sets a table. We want the gavel. Jesus washes feet. We want to take up swords. Jesus takes up a cross. We want the empire. Jesus brings the Kingdom of God. We want the nation. Jesus calls the church. We want the roaring lion. God comes as a slaughtered lamb. We keep trying to arm God. God keeps trying to disarm us. Your invitation this week is let yourself be open to be disarmed by God, to be open to let God shift your expectations of how God works, how God save, how God continues to act in this world.

The Fifth Sunday in Lent-Year A

Lent 5A March 26, 2023 “The core theme of [today’s gospel]—even more than Jesus’ love, compassion, and vulnerability—is the defiance of death. Jesus does not just raise Lazarus from the grave; he mocks the grave in his almost blasé attitude toward the last enemy. He…waits two days before setting out for Bethany, refusing to let death set his agenda.” i. I read these words in one of my lectionary commentaries early in the week, and all week, I’ve been pondering that one phrase---how Jesus refuses to let death set the agenda. It’s not surprising, considering this is John’s gospel. John gives us a Jesus who is “large and in charge.” John makes no bones about the fact that Jesus is God incarnate, and it is the gospel that most emphasizes Jesus’s divinity. Throughout John, Jesus offers 6 or 7 signs (depending on which biblical scholar you talk to), which are stories of Jesus’s miracles that follow a predictable pattern, and the purpose of these signs is to reveal God’s glory and to testify to Jesus’ identity as the Son of God. Our story for today, the raising of Lazarus from the dead, is the last of the signs in John’s gospel, and it leads to a pivot toward Jesus’ death on the cross. Over and over again, the gospel of John emphasizes that God has a plan that Jesus is working to fulfill, at a particular time, and the Jesus in John’s gospel is completely unflappable (even into his death). So, of course, John’s Jesus doesn’t let death set the agenda. But I’ve been thinking about that all week. What does it mean to not let death set the agenda? Are we being called to be like Jesus in this, as his followers and his disciples? Are we, too, being encouraged to not let death set our agendas? What does that mean and what would it even look like? Of course, we see that Jesus doesn’t rush to Lazarus’s death bed to try to prevent his literal death. And we all know that when it comes to Death (with a capital D), none of us is really in control. Capital D death will always set the agenda for us in terms of how many days, months, years, we have in this life. And yet….While we have no control over when or how we die, there are ways that we can still live without letting death set the agenda. And there are also so many millions of the little d-deaths that we experience in our lives: the endings, the changes, the failure of our plans or our health, the unexpected twists and turns of our lives, the outcomes that, no matter hard we work, we cannot control. What would it mean for us to live our lives not letting those little-d deaths set the agenda for how we react or how we live? Our patron saint, Thomas, may have something to teach us about this. In today’s gospel, we get one of the rare glimpses of Thomas. As Jesus tells the disciples that it’s time to return to Bethany, a town that is very close to Jerusalem, the chorus of disciples reminds Jesus that they were just in Jerusalem, and the people there were actively threatening to stone Jesus. Thomas replies, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Um, ok, Thomas! What are we supposed to do with that? Perhaps, Thomas, the eternal pragmatist, grasps something that the rest of the disciples don’t grasp. Perhaps, even as he responds out of his intrinsic loyalty and faithfulness to Jesus (and thus, making himself Jesus’s ultimate “ride or die”), he realizes in that moment that this isn’t just about the death of Lazarus but it is also, in fact, about the death of Jesus and those who follow him. And he embraces that. It’s a weird sort of paradox that in embracing death, he, too, isn’t letting death set the agenda. And that rings true with our experience, doesn’t it? When we can learn to embrace big D death as a companion who actually walks by our side through our whole life, not something to be feared, then we are no longer spending so much energy fighting or fending off death. When we learn to use our energy rolling along with all those little-d deaths rather than fighting to control or bend them to our will, then in some mysterious, paradoxical way, we aren’t letting death set the agenda. So, the gospel reading for today shows us that Jesus refuses to let death set the agenda, but then there’s one more twist. In John’s gospel, Jesus is fully equated with God. And all throughout scriptures, we’ve seen God express a variety of emotions. God gets angry; God changes God’s mind; God expresses regret. But it isn’t until Jesus is invited to come and see the grave of his friend Lazarus that we see a God who weeps. This large and in charge Jesus, who knows that he can and will raise his friend from the dead still weeps at the death of his friend. What does that mean? What does it mean for us that we follow a God who weeps? Later this week, on April 1, my husband’s full time job will be cut to a quarter time job because his church has run out of money to pay him and they have exhausted all other options that were available to them. This is very much a looming, little-d death for him, for me, for our family. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks obsessively looking at jobs, occasionally mildly harassing him to update his resume. Last week, I thought I’d found the perfect job for his skill set that would support him being able to continue to care for his church on Sundays. And after I finally got him to get everything together to apply (over a week of increasingly more forceful nudges), he went to do it only to find the job posting had been taken down. As I’ve continued to ponder this, to try to deal with my own disappointment without taking it out on him, I’ve begun to see how I’ve been letting death (with a little d) set the agenda for me. My expectations and demands and attempt to shape reality into what I think is best have not been life-giving for our relationship and they haven’t been so great in my relationship with God, either. I certainly don’t have it figured out yet, but I’m still wrestling with what it means for me to live into the call of Jesus’s disciple to not let death set the agenda in this particular area of my life and in these relationships. So, your invitation this week is to join me in pondering either one or both of these questions, looking at where this gospel may intersect with your life and your faith journey in this moment. What does it mean for you to follow a God who weeps? And/or what are the ways that you are letting death set the agenda in your life right now, and how might Jesus be calling you to change in that? i. Haverkamp, Heid, ed. Everyday Connections: Reflections and Practices for Year A.WJK: Louisville, 2022. quote by Michael L. Lindvall, p 351.

The Fourth Sunday in Lent-Year A

The 4th Sunday in Lent Year A March 19, 2023 “Why did this happen?” The disciples see a man who was born blind and this is the question they ask Jesus. “Why did this happen?” which really is a cloak for the question, “Who’s to blame?” And “how can I avoid it happening to me?” And we get it, don’t we? We, of all people, live in a culture of blame, where we are quick to point fingers, to misdirect, to criticize. It has become our default position, these days; the muscles we most often use in public discourse. And blaming is contagious. We see its contagion in our gospel reading for today. Jesus offers sight to a man who was born blind, and there are questions swirling around the event. And most of the questions are blaming questions: “Is this really the man who was born blind?” “How did he receive his sight?” “How did Jesus do this?” “Where is he?” This series of anxiously blaming questions ultimately result in the man who was born blind being driven out of the synagogue, so the one who received the miraculous healing was scapegoated. But then Jesus comes and finds him and asks him another question: “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” He answered, “And who is he, sir? Tell me, so that I may believe in him.” In these questions, the man born blind deepens in his relationship and his understanding with Jesus and in and through these questions, he becomes a disciple of Jesus. When I teach conflict transformation skills with a colleague here in the diocese, we spend a whole section on listening skills and how to ask better questions. We start by teaching people to ask more neutral, open-ended questions, questions that can’t be simply answered with a yes or no, questions that require greater depth and complexity. We teach people not to ask questions in potential conflict situations that start with “why” (unless they are asked in very neutral ways), because “why” questions often generate justifications and blame, and instead we encourage people to ask questions that start with “what” or “how”. By changing the way we ask questions, we’ve learned that we can shape the conversation in different, more life-giving ways. We can shift from questions that blame to questions that invite and explore. Our parishioner Jane Gilchrist serves on the Diocesan Council, which is like the vestry of the diocese, and Jane was talking to me about their most recent meeting, how they started with one question: “What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in this moment in our churches?” and then they had a lightening round of four minutes where they didn’t generate answers to that question. But instead, they generated more and different questions. From that original question-- “What does faithfulness to Jesus look like in this moment?” came other questions: “Are we more concerned with parish self-interest and survival or the gospel mandate?” “What is non-negotiable [in our church]?” “What does the church look like?” “What do we need to prioritize?” Who are we to empower to lead?” “Who needs to be invited to the table?” “How can worship look different than in the past?” “How do we want to relate to each other?” The list goes on and on. So, what does that mean to shift from questions of blame toward questions that explore—for us as individuals and for us as a church? I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if the religious leaders in our gospel story (and even the disciples) could have asked different questions? What sorts of conversations might have opened up if they had asked, “How is the glory of God being revealed in this person/situation?” “How am I or how are we being called to share in God’s presence in this?” “How am I being invited by Jesus to come alongside this suffering and what gifts of comfort or joy am I being invited to give or to share?” “Who is being ignored or forced out because they don’t fit into our understanding of who we are and what our call is?” What might our own spiritual lives look like if we start asking more exploratory (and fewer blaming) questions? How might our church become transformed? In what ways might our community be influenced? What would happen if we sought out the places of the unexpected presence of God in and among us and allowed those encounters to transform us? I’ve been immersed this week in beginning the search for a new associate rector for us. That has meant working with our HR task force on a position description, talking to the vestry about funding, and creating an interview process. I’ve also begun to have conversations with interested individuals. As I’ve been doing this work, I’ve been asking myself new questions. What new gifts (or old, unused gifts) am I being invited to draw upon in this present moment? What new lenses can I look through to see new and different possibilities? How am I being invited into God’s holy imagining in this moment? Where is the Spirit already moving in me and around me? What are the exploring questions that you need to be asking in your relationship with Jesus in this season of your life and your faith? I’ve also been thinking about the questions that we need to ask as a church. We’ve seen a rising of anxiety around our young families, and we have tended to slip into blaming-types of questions—“Why haven’t they come back in pre-pandemic attendance patterns?” “What’s going to happen to our church?” “How do we have a Sunday school program when only two kids show up for a class once a month?” I’m inviting us all to start imagining new, exploring questions. “What’s going on right now in the lives of our young families, and how might we support them where they are in this present moment?” “What are the unique gifts that we as a congregation have to offer them right now?” “How can we seek and find the presence of God in each other and in those we don’t expect?” “Who are we leaving out right now, and what might we learn from them?”

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year A

The Second Sunday in Lent-Year A March 5, 2023 He’s 75 years old. And God tells him to leave everything behind—this place where he’s grown up and made his life and all its trappings; this place where he’s been successful, where he knows what to expect. He’s 75 years old, and God tells him to leave behind this place where everyone knows him and who his daddy was, this place where his parents and brother are buried. God tells Abram to take his wife Sarai, to leave everything behind, and journey to the land that God will show them. In that leaving and journeying, in that new beginning and in that trusting, God will bless them and all who come into contact with them. God will do a new thing in and through them. It’s a huge risk, a staggering invitation to trust God, but we know how the story turns out. They do it. Abram and Sarai leave their home, with Abram’s nephew Lot in tow, and they journey to Canaan, the promised land that God offers them. In that move, they accept God’s offer to be God’s chosen people, and the history of Israel (and the Jewish and Christian people) truly begins with this one, first step. I was talking to a friend who’s my age and she was telling me that she has just started to learn to play tennis. She spoke about how it meant stepping out of her comfort zone and that she realized that she hadn’t really done that since childhood. She talked about what it means to risk, to open oneself up to something new—how it’s exciting because it involves an opening to new possibility and it also involves an opening for failure. After this conversation, I pondered the last time that I felt like I truly stepped out in faith, taking a first step into something new and where God was in that. And I’ve been thinking about how Lent is an invitation to all of us to do just that, to take a step into a new way of being in relationship with God. God invites, and God leaves it up to us to take that first step. As we talked about this in our Wednesday healing service, the folks there shared stories of when they made the choice to take a risk, to take that first step forward into a new life. They spoke about how hard it is to leave behind old identities, old ways of being and the predictability of familiar places and routines. And they reflected on how God always showed up for them, blessing those new ventures, those new places, those new endeavors once they made the decision to take that first step forward on the journey. We see all this at work in the gospel for today as well. Nicodemus, a Pharisee and leader of the Jews, takes the first step into a new life and new way of being as he visits Jesus under cover of night. While Nicodemus clearly doesn’t understand what Jesus is trying to teach him about “being born from above,” later in John’s gospel we see him working with Joseph of Arimathea to provide Jesus with a proper burial after his crucifixion. This night time visit to Jesus is clearly the first step, a risk and a chance for Nicodemus to trust God and to embark upon a new course, a new journey. One of my other friends, who is older than I am, has talked about how she has started taking a poetry class. She went into it thinking that she was going to be learning about poetry, and then she discovered, in the first class, that she was going to be writing poetry and sharing it with everyone in the class, week after week. She spoke about her initial dismay over this confusion, but she has rolled with it, and she’s learning to write poetry and to enjoy it. She talked about how it has been a helpful reminder for her that our identities are not fixed and unchanging, just because we are adults, and this experience has inspired her to take on yet another new thing in her life and her vocation. This Lent, I’ve been using our Lenten devotion Bless the Lent We Actually Have which is the companion to the book The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessings for Imperfect Days by Kate Bowler and Jessica Richie. The devotion for this past Tuesday was a companion to the blessing for beginning and endings. I have appreciated this prayer or meditation on first steps into new risks and new adventures, how we are called to trust God who invites us forward on our journeys and who promises to be with us to bless us and those whom we encounter on the way. I’ll share it with you in closing. For Beginnings and Endings i. This life is made up of so many beginnings and so many endings. We start new jobs and leave old ones. We move to new cities and leave our childhood hobbies in our parents’ basement. (Sorry, Mom) We become new people slowly (hopefully kinder and funnier?) Friends and relationships come and go. Dreams blossom and then they wither. And we find ourselves here once again at the precipice of change. Afraid to let go, and afraid of what will happen if we don’t. Might this be a place of blessing, too? Blessed are we standing in the hallway between closed doors and ones still to come, between the old and the new, between the worn-in and the doesn’t-quite-yet-fit, between who we were and who we might become. God, make it remotely possible to grow and change, become open to new adventures, and untethered to routine or to the same-old. Because the anxiety rising in my shoulders and filling my throat tells me I am unlikely, unwilling, to step forward. Blessed are we who take a minute to look over our shoulder at all we learned from what was, the people we became, the people who loved us into becoming. The peace that came with familiarity. Blessed are we who trust this timing, and who open our hearts anew to change, to new friends, to hope. Nervous, maybe heavy-hearted, but brimming with gratitude for a life so beautiful that it hurts to say goodbye. Blessed are we, turning our eyes ahead toward a new path not yet mapped. God, give us courage to take this next step, and enough for the one after that, too. Remind us that you have gone before, and behind, and around, and are with us now. In our leaving, in our arriving, in our changes, expected or shocking, surprise us with who we might become. i. Bowler, Kate and Jessica Richie. The Lives We Actually Have: 100 Blessing for Imperfect Days. Convergent: New York, 2023, pp182-183.