Dottie’s Dialogwhere faith, hope and love intersect!

Joseph, Mary, and Jesus (reimagined by Matt, Laura, and Noah)

Today I am digging in the home front and spending the day preparing two Christmas sermons:  one for Christmas Eve services, and one for Christmas Day.  Every year I tell this story at length, utilizing Advent season to bring out the nuances of the amazing miracle of God coming to earth to be present with us.  It’s an incredible story and one that takes more than one Sunday to tell…  (The same goes for Easter!)  So today as I think of all that I’ve already said, and the two more messages to get out, I’m wondering what is left to say.  Really, so many times what I really want to do is play “A Charlie Brown Christmas” where the story is told in its beautiful simplicity by little Linus.  (Charlie Brown Christmas - YouTube)  And yet every year I seek to make it fresh by adding something current and relevant.

In seminary we took a class on Story by Mary Elizabeth Mullino Moore, and she taught us that the story itself will transform lives.  Our interaction with the story matters, but even so, the simple story will go down deep into a soul and do what stories do:  change the world.  I am remembering this as I prepare.  God is in the story and I am the story teller, but all that we preachers have to do this season is remember, relate, and retell an old story that never gets old, boring, or mundane.

Especially now.  When culture is barfing up materialism in the name of Christmas, this story will shine brightly to a world seeking for the real experience of God.  This is it!  This is our experience!  The story of a God who loves and cares for us so much that this God moved toward us, embracing us with the kiss of a sweet baby, a lone manger, and a tender message of hope.

Hope I do the story simple this year.

Faith, hope, & love,

Pastor Dottie

Mr. Cain,

I am fairly confident you will not read this.  However, I still need to say this to the world at large.  I was taught to respect all people, even people who disagree across political lines.  So, when I saw you join the ranks of persons running for the presidency, I thought you might be someone who would bring some good things to the table.

Now, lately I have seen the news about women charging you with sexual harassment, and time will provide for the truth to rise up to the top.  I see the news focusing on this…and I’m thinking it through…mostly listening.  We, the public, don’t know where the truth lies, but we know the truth will be known.

But, really, I’m thinking to myself as I listen to the news, that I’m already done listening.  Mr. Herman Cain, you lost me at “electrifying” Mexicans. (I know you didn’t say “Mexican” but that is the border you were talking about…and I’m one (Mexican). It is hard to believe that a man of your heritage, who knows people were killed because of their color, could make the comment you made….well, I am stunned.

I am not stunned to silence.  I am stunned to voice.  Now I’ve put it out there.  And I will move on to hear the other voices that are out there…

Of course, even when we disagree, you are a child of God, and I pray God’s grace be with you.

Dottie Escobedo-Frank

The Central Farmer’s Market is up and running @ CrossRoads.  It all started with an idea that was planted by Dr. Len Sweet.  He states that churches need to recognize that it is a different economic day.  No longer can we rely on offerings as the sole means of supporting the mission.  Today the church must find other avenues for support, as do many non-profit organizations.  And so, the fundraiser of the Farmer’s Market has begun.

But its much more than that.  It is our way of reaching out to the community to provide avenues for healthy eating and healthy living. In our day where food has been associated with toxins, it is wonderful to be part of the answer for providing pure food.  The stuff that farmer’s know about.  The stuff that is original.  The stuff that God made.

My favorite thing, besides the vegetables, was the cream.  It was like the stuff we had in my childhood…unforgetable! Great on the pumpkin pie…

Come buy some healthy food…Saturday at 9am-2pm.  Eat well…take care of the body God gave you…eat real food…and enjoy caring for your family!

The work of life is simple.  It is to love God, and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves.  So there’s a lot of love there:  for God, for others, and for ourselves.  How are you doing at the work?  Are you in love with God every moment?  Are you caring for others every chance you get?  Are you taking care of yourself?  They all go together.  We often think that we can love ourselves and not God, or God and not others, or others and not ourselves.  But all that’s wrong.  Loving happens in triad.  They are all connected.

Remember when Jesus said to Peter,

Do you love me?…then feed my sheep.

Or when he said,

I want kindness, more than I want sacrifice.

And of course,

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.  This is the first and most important command.  And the second command is like the first:  ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’  All the     law and the writings of the prophets depend on these two commands.

These things matter.  They are our work…our reason to get up every morning.  Some days it is hard to love others, and some days it is hard to love God, and some days it is hard to love ourselves.  Which is it for you?

Whichever area you are struggling with, I want to encourage you to keep working at the love.  Love God more.  Love others more.  Love yourself more.  Find a way to increase in the area you find the hardest to love.

God is with you.  I am praying and caring for you.  You are amazing!

Pastor Dottie

We are working through the preaching series called, “Serious!” and we are looking at serious followers of God in the scriptures.  We’ve looked at Peter and Ruth, and this Sunday the young  will be preaching to us on Timothy and Mary.  It is amazing to see how serious the characters in the Bible were about following God.

Easter Morning…up at 4am and went about my routine and instinctively avoided mirrors… After coffee, I went into the dressing area, and remembered that the mirror fast was over. I pulled off the sheet covering my mirror and had a look.  I was still there!  ha.  And I looked about the same.  Except that I thought this Easter morning that I was looking especially beautiful with my early morning look…  And then I looked at my eyes.  Ahhh…now that I missed.  I missed seeing my eyes more than anything else.  I remembered that I had been frustrated by  not being able to see my hair as I fixed it…but really, that was no big deal compared to the soul-gaze into the eyes.  I saw in them, “it is well with my soul…”  The scripture says that the eyes are the light of the body (Matthew 6:22)…and so it was good to see the light again.

I went through the day avoiding mirrors..looking down in bathrooms, watching ahead and stepping out of the range, etc…  Now it is a habit…and though I’m sure it won’t last forever (this avoidance of mirrors), I have learned some things…and I am so glad for the new understanding that comes when we stretch ourselves…  Try it sometime!  I dare you!

Here’s lookin’ at you babe!

I’ve been peaking, and I didn’t even plan it.  Suddenly, with only one week to go or life without a mirror, I have found myself peeking…catching glimpses of the top of my head, a piece of my face, or a distant look at my body coming at a mirror.  Amazing.  I wasn’t doing that before, and it feels like it is my way of getting ready to be back in the world of mirrors.  I’m not sure I’m ready for that, but I am sure that I want to look at my hair when I fix it in the mornings. That part (not seeing my hair) has been bothersome.

I learned there are some things I couldn’t do when not looking in mirrors:

Get my hair cut (can’t avoid the mirror in the salon)

Pick out a new pair of glasses

Buy a shirt

Put on some of my makeup (became a minimalist)

Do yoga (4 walls of mirrors in studio)

There’s more, but you get the gist…  Mirrorless living put some limits on my life.

But there were also some freedoms…I didn’t really care much about all the exterior things of life because I didn’t see them.  ”Seeing is believing” had a new meaning for me…I chose to see less of me and more of the world around me.  And that has been a wonderful journey.

But now I’m peeking…Getting ready to return on Sunday morning.  Somethings I will not do again.  I will only try on one outfit in the morning.  I will keep my dressing routine to 15 minutes (how liberating that is!).  I will remove many of the mirrors in my house (don’t need that many).  I will not look in the bathroom mirror every time I wash my hands…

I loved this journey, though at times it has been frustrating.  I really need to buy some summer tops…  Mostly, it has been fantastic.  I hope you give it a try sometime.  It could change you…  I could make you see life differently…

For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. I Corinthians 13:12

I love this picture because it is gives an awesome visual of the heavy load we tend to carry…the burden that is so great it holds us back, pulls us down, and topples us over. That is the weight of seeing all of life from the reflection of a mirrored soul.

We forget sometimes that the mirror is not real.  It is not us.  It is only a lighted reflection of what we look like on the outside…it does not carry the glimpse of our soul…our inner true self.

In this time in life when we are being taught to value the external so highly…yes, we are being taught that by social media, by advertising, and by cultural messages…the heaviness of the external can become more than we can bear.

But what if we lighten the load and found time to listen to the voice of God within us?  What if we released all that is heavy and overbearing and allowed for the lightness of joy to fill us?  What if we gave up trying to externalize what we are not, and found comfort living the inner self?

We were not made to bear burdens larger than we were built for.  We were created to reflect the light of God, and not the light of ourselves.

Mirrorless living is wonderful.  I can’t tell you if my hair looks right or if I have leftover breakfast in my teeth…but I can tell you that I don’t care much (someone I love will tell me if I need fixing…) and that this sure makes the burden of life lighter.

Jesus said it this way,

Come to me all you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and i will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you.  Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke fits perfectly, and the burden I give you is light. (Matthew 11:28-30)

So I have successfully come to the place where it is my habit to avoid mirrors.  It is not so hard anymore.  I instinctively look ahead and take note if a mirror is coming in my direction, and I have the habit of looking down or away when one is right before me.  I go most days without seeing my reflection in a mirror.

But it has been more difficult to avoid reflections in objects.  In the metallic spout of my kitchen faucet, in windows bathed in sunshine, on the computer screen, in my coffee cup, and even in the chocolate brown eyes of my friend.  Wow.  I never noticed that before!  We are reflected in the things and people around us.

Which, if you think about it, is true for life.  Our things are reflections of who we are, and our friends are reflections of who we are.  It never seemed more true than now.  When God asked us to take care of the earth and the people in it, I wonder if God understood that in caring for them, we would be working on the reflection of our own souls.  I wonder if God made reflections to occur so many places in the world around us so that we would not forget how connected we are…that we are the same as those around us, for better or worse, and that we will never be left alone…for our good.

What is continue to rise up is a demanding emotion to be myself without outward distractions.  To be real and true and to be comfortable in my own soul.  I can’t even begin to tell you how good that feels. Sometimes we get distracted by our outward self, to the point of forgetting our true self.  This whole journey makes me wish everyone could do it.  But especially I would love it if someone who makes a living on their looks could do this.  Say, what if Madonna, or the Kardashian’s, or Beyonce, went without a mirror…how might that change them?  The other group I would like to see go without a mirror for a time would be all CEO’s and heads of institutions.  What if all the Pastors and Bishops went without a mirror for a time?  And how about teens?  What things would rise up from the inside?

On the other hand, then there are those I would like to hold up a mirror to.  I would love for the homeless folk, those who walk the streets of our cities, to look in the mirror so they can see their beauty and the spark of light in their eyes.  And children, who really don’t care too much about mirrors…I would love for them to see that their light shines so bright and see how their reflection of that light changes the world. And the women who have been beaten down…I would love for them to study the mirror and find their strength within it.

I don’t know what it will be like when I look into the mirror again.  But I do know that this journey is fascinating, and that it is worth the growing pains, the inconvenience, and the diversions tactics.  This road is rising up to quiet down the outside understanding of life, and to put a megaphone on the inside voice of the heart….and it is a journey of deep connection.

Proverbs 17:19 says best:

Just as water reflects the face, so one human heart reflects another.

26 days to go…

Well this week I travelled to Nashville and had a new venture of avoiding mirrors.  I found mirrors in these places:

Bathrooms, hotel lobby, airport walls, airplane bathrooms (hard to avoid that one), restaurants, hotel room (couldn’t cover them all), meeting rooms, coffee shop, book store, shoe store, the sunglasses of my friends (I asked them to remove them so I could look their way), mirrored/glassed exterior of buildings, and I probably missed a few.  Also, I found that my reflection peeked my way in windows, shiny cars, and other sun-reflecting surfaces.

I found some tricks to avoid mirrored spaces.  One is leave the lights off in rooms with mirrors…this decreases your desire to be in that room and reminds me that it is a place to avoid.  Also, I throw towels over mirrors (in hotel rooms).  I look ahead more…to make sure I don’t find an unexpected trap.  And I look down more.  The street doesn’t have mirrors.

Interesting to travel and not care what I wore.  I just threw in what was comfortable.  In fact, I am more and more picking clothes that are just comfortable.  I have added uncomfortable clothes to my “give away” pile…

I had my whole day without seeing my reflection on the 7th day.  Since then, I have had a few more, but it doesn’t happen often that I can get through a day without seeing myself.  But at least now I am not habitually going to check out my reflection in the mirror…

The experiment is getting tiresome.  Sometimes I just want to see my eyes.  Other times I find that I am finding something wonderful below the anxiety.  A true ease with self is rising strong.  And a leaning on others.  I have asked my husband if I look stupid in this outfit…he says “No!”, which is what he has always said, so go figure that it makes me feel better.  Tiresome, and giving in to something beneath the surface, and a desire to continue even though I simultaneously want to throw this experiment out the window.

There are 10 mirrors in my house.

34 days left to go…