Monday Morning Musing: Let Me Ask You a Question

As I engage with congregations in mutual discernment around call, we each have the chance to ask one another questions in the hopes that we will discern whether we might serve Christ's Church together as pastor/priest and people. Many of those questions are the same from congregation to congregation: how do you prepare sermons? what is your greatest joy in ministry? where do you struggle the most?

I remember when I was interviewing with the Call Committee at Luther Memorial in 2009. Paul Bartling, of blessed memory, asked what part of the liturgy was the most meaningful to me. I answered that it was during the distribution of Eucharist, looking into the eyes of each person and saying "this is the Body of Christ, given for you." Paul, a retired pastor himself, nodded in satisfaction. Later he would say that was the moment he knew I was a good pastor.

Anyway. Questions give us the chance to find out what we really want to know. We should ask them well.

Today, I want to share a poem written by the poet Jim Moore, who is from the same town in Illinois where my grandmother lived for a time (Decatur).

Twenty Questions

Did I forget to look at the sky this morning

when I first woke up? Did I miss the willow tree?

The white gravel road that goes up from the cemetery,

but to where? And the abandoned house on the hill, did it get

even a moment? Did I notice the small clouds so slowly

moving away? And did I think of the right hand

of God? What if it is a slow cloud descending

on earth as rain? As snow? As shade? Don't you think

I should move on to the mop? How it just sits there, too often

unused? And the stolen rose on its stem?

Why would I write a poem without one?

Wouldn't it be wrong not to mention joy? Sadness,

its sleepy-eyed twin? If I'd caught the boat

to Mykonos that time when I was nineteen

would the moon have risen out of the sea

and shone on my life so clearly

I would have loved it

just as it was? Is the boat

still in the harbor, pointing

in the direction of the open sea? Am I

still nineteen? Going in or going out,

can I let the tide make of me

what it must? Did I already ask that?