The Last Minute Angel: December 19, 2010 February 20, 2011
Posted by susan in 2010.Tags: church, her world
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There’s a church where Selam and I attend when I’m not supplying somewhere, and we’re not traveling. Unfortunately, this means we’re only there about half the time. It’s a church where people have belonged for generations and a lot of things aren’t put in writing, so we’re always a step behind, even if we are there.
So it was with the Christmas pageant. In the church newsletter, I read that kids who wanted speaking parts should sign up with the Sunday School Superintendent, and everyone else who wanted a non-speaking part should just come to a rehearsal. Since no ages were associated with the pageant, I assumed that Selam was too young. I wasn’t sure she’d do it even if she was old enough, anyway.
We were at church this morning and when I came downstairs to get her from Sunday School, she rushed up to me with a nativity that they had cut and pasted together. “There’s a BROWN angel, Mommy, just like me!!!!” She was exuberant. One of the other little girls told me that she was going to be an angel in the pageant. The teacher asked me if Selam was going to be in it, and I told her that I didn’t realize she was old enough, so we had not signed up. “Next year, we’ll be sure to do that,” I said as Selam spoke over me. “I’m going to be an angel, too. We NEED a brown angel and that’s me!!!”
The teachers encouraged me to ask the Sunday School Superintendent to let her participate. Mrs. Z. had, in fact, made an announcement in church that morning about there being room for some last minute additions, but again, I had assumed Selam was too young.
So we went to coffee hour and Selam was still quite insistent that she was going to be the brown angel in the pageant. I pointed out the superintendent and before I knew it, Selam had run over to her and told her that she wanted to be an angel. Mrs. Z. came over to me and asked if it was okay for Selam to be an angel, “the brown angel,” Selam corrected. I agreed and we ran upstairs to get a costume and a copy of the music—a little 4 line song. I agreed to iron the dress and teach her the song and the Last Minute Angel was born.
I should explain that this is not a church I would have chosen for our family. It’s way too white for my conscience, and a little more conservative than is my preference. Selam and I visited about 10 churches, seeking one that met my minimum requirements (reformed, less than a half hour away and no YDS interns) and hers (good coffee hour snacks). Selam picked this church, though. She called it the scissors church because it was the only one that we visited that had actual Sunday School for the 3 year olds, instead of just nursery. Mostly they were just cutting and pasting things and hearing stories, but it mattered to her. It still matters to her. She wants to feel like she’s doing something important. So we go there because Selam chose it. I figure with how many churches I drag her to for pulpit supply, she gets to choose our “home church,” even if she chooses a complexion that’s paler than hers. I appreciate the care with which they undertake Sunday School, and am overwhelmed at how a photo of three angels including one little brown one allowed my daughter to feel not just welcome but NECESSARY to the pageant.
So the last minute angel came home from church with a wrinkled dress and a song in her head. I tried to explain to her what would happen…about the shepherds and the kings and the baby Jesus. “I have the most important job, Mommy, I tell everybody that Jesus is born.”
When it was time for the pageant, we drove to the church and got her wings, halo and belt. She was RADIANT—so excited about her costume. She practiced flapping her wings for a while, then sat quietly in the pew and waited.
The pageant was hilarious and touching and wonderful, as they always are. There was a shepherd who was carrying a contraband legos toy, and another who tried to blow out the advent candles a dozen times at least. There were awkward adolescents reading the scripture, and blond angels twirling in circles. When Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger, a flock of angels sort of bum-rushed the child and nearly tipped over the manger. (Selam soberly reported afterward that she did not touch the manger or the baby. ) There was lots of waving at Mommy (including the Last Minute Angel). It was controlled chaos.
But there is a sweetness there, too, and something so profoundly moving about this tender and really rough story in the hands of bright eyed children with their legos and their shiny shoes. I know there are those that abhor the infantilizing of the story in pageants. I think it’s the most profound way that we can tell the children that “this is your story, too.” I particularly liked this church’s decision to hold it on a Sunday afternoon—not during morning worship, but at night for just the kids, their parents and handful of interested church members. It actually felt more worshipful this way.
After the pictures were taken and the halos and wings returned to their shelves, Selam and I walked hand-in-hand to the car. “You know how I was the angel, Mommy? I was very, very important. Because the angels have to tell everybody about the baby Jesus. And you NEED a brown angel, Mommy, and I’m the brown girl so I was the brown angel telling everybody about Jesus, Mommy. And I said, ‘Glory to God in the highest. Glory to God in the highest, Glory to God in the highest’ and all the people heard me singing and the shepherds fell down.”
As I strapped the Last Minute Angel into her carseat, she beckoned me close. Lately she loves whispering secrets. “Next year, when I am the angel, I’m going to really fly….”
We drove into the cold night, the white New England colonial spire rising behind us, Selam still singing sotto voce “Glory to God in the highest…”
Baptism: October 24, 2010 February 20, 2011
Posted by susan in 2010.Tags: church, story of us
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October 24 seems to be the day for Susan Olson to gently push the limits of Presbyterian polity. I was ordained on October 24, 1993. Back then, you were ordained and installed in one ceremony at your calling congregation. Since I was ordained to a specialized ministry there was no calling congregation, so I was ordained at my home church. I didn’t follow many of the ordination customs at my ordination, pretty much because I’d never been to an ordination, so I sort of made it up as I went along. There were bagpipes and pumpkin muffins, and a sermon and some prayers. The weather sparkled apple-crisp and blue, and that funny little church was full of people and love and though it wasn’t a typical ceremony, it was all I wanted, all I could have wanted.
Selam’s baptism was similarly odd. In our denomination, pastors don’t belong to churches—we belong to presbyteries. And only members can present children for baptism—which leaves me with the Presbytery as the location for a baptism, if one were to read the polity strictly. I was hoping to schedule it between the Committee on Ministry and the Council report. 
So, Selam ended up being baptized with her grandparents as sponsors instead of me. I had other options for her, but in the end, I felt like a Presbyterian minister ought to have a Presbyterian church make baptismal promises for her baby, I mean big girl. She was baptized in the congregation where I was a member from 6th grade until my sophomore year of college (I transferred to my college church then). The building has been gutted and rearranged, but my confirmation teacher was there, and the woman who rode with me to Presbytery when I was commissioned as a Youth Delegate. My childhood pastor showed up for the party, too.
Selam was so excited. She wore her white traditional Ethiopian dress—a dress that Alex and I found (after much searching) in Addis on the day we left for the US. I gave her an Ethiopian cross that morning, and she wore the new shiny brown shoes that she loves so much they got mentioned in the same breath as Jesus.
The pastor met with us ahead of time, and told Selam that she was going to be asked a few questions, too. She was amenable to all of them (Do you want to be baptized and do you want to be a Jesus girl?). He also told her that she would be asked to say her whole name—but not her last name. “Your first names are your Christian name but Olson is your given name,” he explained. I knew she’d struggle with that. She learned them all four together, and it would be hard to stop after Adane.
The baptism was at the beginning of the service. Selam bounced up there when it was time. She began swinging her leg back and forth, back and forth next to the font. I decided that she should be held! She watched through the questions of my parents and myself, and smiled when the congregation gave their consent. Then she let the pastor pick her up and hold her. He asked her questions and she answered in her inimitable way. “Yes, I do,” she said, when he asked if she wanted to be a Jesus girl. Then he asked her name and she clearly said all four. He smiled at that, and baptized her. She giggled at the water on her head. I imagine that’s a pretty good start to a life of faith: laughter.
Then, because I asked him to, he picked up the Ethiopian Liturgical Umbrella that Alex and I managed to wrangle back to the US, and with Selam on one hip and the umbrella over her, gave the charge to the congregation.
I thought about her insistence on giving all four names. Part of it is that it’s the way she memorized it. But part of it is that it’s who she is. She is Selam, named by the one who carried her and who cared for her as long as she could. She is Lanalee, a made up name mashing together a beloved friend who died too soon, and her grandmother’s middle name. She is Adane, the name of her grandfather—lacking a father, Adane was her last name in Ethiopia and is her tie to the family that loved her into being. And she is an Olson, forever merged with the mob of Swedish-ish Americans. For Selam, I think all four are her Christian name.
After the sacrament, there was a song, one that I had requested, not because it had one thing to do with baptism but because it just makes Selam so happy. She requests this before bed, and sings it to herself in the car. And though it’s not a baptism song, I hope that with every child born, we imagine again that the world is about to turn.
My soul cries out with a joyful shout
that the God of my heart is great,
And my spirit sings of the wondrous things
that you bring to the ones who wait.
You fixed your sight on your servant’s plight,
and my weakness you did not spurn,
So from east to west shall my name be blest.
Could the world be about to turn?
RefrainMy heart shall sing of the day you bring.
Let the fires of your justice burn.
Wipe away all tears, for the dawn draws near,
and the world is about to turn!
2. Though I am small, my God, my all,
you work great things in me,
And your mercy will last from the depths of the past
to the end of the age to be.
Your very name puts the proud to shame,
and to those who would for you yearn,
You will show your might, put the strong to flight,
for the world is about to turn.
3. From the halls of power to the fortress tower,
not a stone will be left on stone.
Let the king beware for your justice tears
ev’ry tyrant from his throne.
The hungry poor shall weep no more,
for the food they can never earn;
There are tables spread,
ev’ry mouth be fed,
for the world is about to turn.
4. Though the nations rage from age to age,
we remember who holds us fast:
God’s mercy must deliver us
from the conqueror’s crushing grasp.
This saving word that our forebears heard
is the promise which holds us bound,
‘Til the spear and rod can be crushed by God,
who is turning the world around.
Tonight, at bedtime, Selam was talking about being baptized. “That rober put water on my head!” she giggled. “He did,” I said, “and now Jesus can always find me,” she added, “a cause of the water, and a cause of I’m his girl forever.”
Indeed.
Freedom is Coming February 19, 2011
Posted by susan in 2009.Tags: church, story of us
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This is a girl who knows how to do joy. She smiles wider than wide, sucks in her breath with delight, and has been known to stage whisper whatever she is thinking at the moment.
“Oh, mommy, oh!” marked the stars illuminated on the ceiling.
“Special” when the candles came out.
While it was stressful to try to keep her exuberance and commentary contained enough that the others present could worship, it was delightful to see it new through her eyes. This was my 9th advent service at YDS. It was also my first.
The highlight of the service was the construction of the big tree in the center of the chapel. The trunk and branches were there from the beginning, (Selam thought they were arms—she put my arm next to hers to show me–”arms, Mommy, arms.”) and they added green leaves that had been written on by members of the congregation. Pulleys set these leaves flying toward the fingertips of the branches. While this happened, we sang.
“Freedom is coming. Freedom is coming. Freedom is Coming, Oh yes, I know.”
She liked seeing Ato Patrick lead the singing. She liked bobbing her head and shaking her thin shoulders to the beat. She learned the words and tune quickly and her sweet voice found my ears. But we sang the song many times. And it was toward the end of the service, and bedtime had come and gone.
“We’re almost there, Mommy,” she said, mimicking the words I say when she is tired in the car, words I didn’t realize she’d learned.
“Freedom is coming, freedom is coming, freedom is coming, oh yes, I know.”
“Almost there, Mommy.”
“Freedom is coming, freedom is coming, freedom is coming, oh yes, I know.”
“Just a little longer.”
“Freedom is coming, freedom is coming, freedom is coming, oh yes, I know.”
“Pretty soon, Mommy”
“Freedom is coming, freedom is coming, freedom is coming, oh yes, I know.”
“Almost there, Mommy. Almost there.”
Amen, child. May it be so.
