Pastors’ Ponderings
Kimberly Chastain, Pastor
Many of you know that I had planned to go to Lucerne, Switzerland at the end of August to celebrate my friend Georg’s 70th birthday with him & my dear friend Reinhilde. I had been planning for it and working toward it all summer. The only thing I didn’t do was to check the expiration date on my passport, and so my plans changed instantly when I got to Newark airport and tried to check in.
I didn’t have a good response. In fact, for several minutes I had no response at all, because I didn’t have a plan that didn’t include getting on the plane and flying away.
It’s not the first time that my plans came to an abrupt halt. It’s not even the first time that it has been my own dumb fault. And it brought back all of the other times that I stood silently, looking at the wreckage, wondering what a possible next step might be.
Like an echo through time, I heard my mother’s voice say, “You might as well get happy. Being miserable won’t change a thing.” I used to hate it when she said that, but in this case it seemed like pretty good advice.
I called a friend who lived near the airport, whom I had not seen in 7 years, that I’d argued with the day before because I hadn’t planned to stop by and see her on my way. I let my German friends know that I wasn’t going to be able to make it, and groveled a bit. I promised them (and really, mostly, myself) that we would plan another trip that would include wonderful adventures together. And I had a wonderful vacation after all. It wasn’t the vacation I had planned, but it was full of love and laughter and friendship and good food.
Every change brings with it the need to adjust, to pause and consider what the next step might be. Even happy changes, positive changes, bring disruption and adjustment with them. When the change is a hard diagnosis, or the death of a loved one, or a change in personal or professional circumstances, that pause can be filled by grief and blame. More often than not, my mom’s advice to “get happy” is not the word that needs to be heard in that moment.
We are all tired of changes, longing for predictability, wondering when we will be able to rest from our labors and feel like we know what the next moment will bring. The hardest part about these months since March 2020, when we realized that we would not be able to do what we have always done, is that every week, sometimes every day, brought new information and new things that required us to adjust.
But connection and comfort brings the sense that there is a possible moment beyond the pause. The sure and certain knowledge that we do not have to go through the changes alone can make the difference between getting stuck and moving into the newness. I have been grateful throughout this seemingly endless time of change that we have a community at United Presbyterian that walks together through it all. When we thought we knew where we were heading… when we realized that we couldn’t avoid doing things differently… when we tried and fell down… when we got back up — we knew we were in it together.
And even when I do not know what the next step will be, I know that there is possibility beyond the moment. Because the community reminds me of God’s never-ending presence and love, giving visible witness to the invisible truth.
The changes continue — good and bad, expected and unexpected. But we have companions on the journey, and we have the promise that through it all, in life and in death and even beyond, we belong to God.
Amen!
Pastor Kimberly
Becky Kindig, Associate Pastor
Dear friends,
It’s been a whirlwind of a month here at UPC. As many of you know, we have been helping several Afghani-Americans who are U.S. citizens as they try to get their family members who are in danger out of Afghanistan. It has been mind-boggling work — figuring out the paperwork to file for Humanitarian Parole through the U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Service, gathering application fees, and recruiting sponsors — but it has been very uplifting as well. So many, many people have come together, from UPC, from other local Presbyterian churches, from Temple Concord, and from the University community to help in various ways. And I am filled with hope that our community has so many people who care deeply about the well-being of humans halfway across the world.
We are so thankful for being able to partner with the American Civic Association in Binghamton, who have helped tremendously. They have done this kind of work for many years and have been assisting us in the process. We have also been thankful for the immigration lawyers from Journey’s End Refugee Services who have offices at the ACA, for helping us with the applications and to understand the process.
Each application has a fee of $575.00, and an application is for each person, not each family. The community has come together with sponsors and to pay for 92 applications and they have been sent to the USCIS to be processed. Each application can take up to 4-8 weeks to see if it is approved or denied — and that is the expedited time. So we need your prayers that the people processing these applications will work swiftly and with compassion.
We also need your prayers that the family still in Afghanistan can remain safe. The people we are helping are both an ethnic and a religious minority that the Taliban persecutes. The people in Afghanistan are calling their family here and reporting that they are being beaten when at the market buying bread, the young men are being abducted to join the army, and the women and girls are terrified of going out.
Our work will continue for a while. We need more sponsors since there are still about 40 applications to go for family members. And then if any of the applications are approved, and if the families can safely get out of Afghanistan, we will need help to resettle them here. If you, or people you know, would like to help with fees, the American Civic Association is taking monetary donations that they can convert into the money orders that accompany the applications. The information is below. If you would like to sponsor a person or family to come over, please call or email the office and we would be happy to explain what is involved. You won’t need to have people sleep in your house, but you are vouching that there is a community here willing to support them, and that you would be willing to help them find furniture or register their kids for school.
Thank you all so much for your support and your prayers. It is amazing to be part of a congregation who says “Yes” when God asks us to help take care of God’s people!
Grace and Peace,
Pastor Becky