Hebel Hebelim

Christmas Eve: thoughts from the colonial side

2011-12-24T10:54:00.000-08:00

This morning my plan was to finish tomorrow's sermon at Aromas and then take a walk down Duke of Gloucester Street. This, as it turned out, was also the plan of everyone else in Williamsburg and their dog. It was crowded, and that annoyed me a little. I had wanted to be alone with my thoughts to ponder lofty and holy things like Incarnation and the True Meaning of Christmas.

Luckily (inspired by this article I shared recently on Facebook), it didn't take me long to realize how silly it was to want to be alone to ponder the incarnation. So instead, I noticed the people around me, and that became my prayer. I noticed the woman walking her two sweater-clad, antlered greyhounds; the toddler jumping on a wooden stage saying, "Jump! Jump! Jump!"; the Russian tourists figuring out where they were; the boy pretending to shoot passersby with his fake rifle; the fifers, and the drummers; the young woman hugging Santa in Merchant's Square; the group of maybe eight Occupy Williamsburg protesters huddled around a Christmas tree with a sign at the top that proclaimed, "A better world is possible."

This is the life God enters. All of it.

Colonial Williamsburg has always been a place where the past meshes with the present so that it's sometimes hard to tell the difference. Kids with light-up shoes wait in line to stick their heads in the stocks; a man in 18th century garb is in line ahead of you at Wawa. And today that seemed especially true as I remembered that the God who entered this world in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago walks with us still--us, in all our latte-drinking, dog-walking, tourist-shooting, Santa-hugging, corporate-personhood-protesting glory...or lack thereof.

What I saw was ordinary people caught in ordinary moments, just like me. And that's the life the incarnate God makes holy. That's the un-lofty life God infuses with eternity.

Hope on a treadmill

2011-08-15T17:57:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough couple of days. Without going into detail (professional boundaries, and all that sort of thing) it's been the kind of weekend that requires the support of good friends (thanks, guys), and Ben & Jerry's. Luckily, I've had both.

But while the Ben & Jerry's is necessary, it's also a very short term solution to life's problems. It's easy to sit there with your face firmly planted in a pint of Half Baked, consequences be damned, I don't care if I'm downing 1500 calories in one sitting or whether I'll feel sick later.

So the ice cream was only part of my approach. I also went running. That's not a new thing, of course, but that's kind of the point. In the midst of being sad, and physically and emotionally tired, I managed to stick to the marathon training schedule I started in July. This is a low week, schedule-wise, so it was only 3 miles. But still, I found some hope in that half hour on the treadmill.

(OK, it was a little more than half an hour. And it might have been the only time I've ever found hope on a treadmill. There was Great Dismal Swamp smoke outside, you see...)

Running, for me, felt a little bit like Jeremiah buying his field at Anathoth (Jer 32:1-15). The land was under siege, and property values had plummeted. It just wasn't a place you bought land anymore. But Jeremiah did. Buying that field was a way of showing he had faith in what the future would bring: that, as God told him, "houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land."

Things may be a little rough now, but I'm trying to have faith in what the future will bring. And running is a way of doing that. Even a 3 mile run is an investment. It says that in November, no matter what else, I'm going to run a race and I'm going to be proud of myself for it. Fields will be bought again in this land. There's good stuff to come. Let's get started now.

Nothing Like Me

2011-07-25T17:49:00.000-07:00

When you work in a church--or, let's face it, when you are part of a church--there are inevitably a lot of times that you wish that everyone else in the church was just a little more like you. Thought a little more like you, had priorities a little more like yours. But then there are also times when you have to praise God that there are people in the church who are nothing like you, too.

Today and tomorrow our church is hosting Helping Hands, a mission mini-camp for 4th-6th graders. And today the group of kids from our church went to sing some hymns with the folks down in Respite. I thought this was great, because I love Respite and wanted the kids to love it too, but I was also a little nervous. I was worried that the kids would go, stare at the old people, sing a little, stare a little more at the old people, and leave. And that didn't seem like the point of a mission experience.

I was worried that it would be that way because that's what I would have done as a kid. I remember a Girl Scout trip or two to sing at a nursing home, and I was happy to sing, but I did not want to talk to anybody. For one thing, there is to this day nothing in the world I despise more than being told to "mingle." For another, I was scared of old people.

Having since gotten over my fear of the elderly (though not my fear of being made to mingle), I tried to pump the kids up. I told them why Respite was a special place for me and encouraged them to talk to the clients after we sang. So after our last hymn I said, "All right, go introduce yourself to someone!" and waited for the shy hesitation and embarrassed stares. I waited for them to respond like I would have.

But instead, the kids went right on up and introduced themselves. And they chatted with the old folks. And the old folks smiled and loved them.

And then we went back upstairs to the fellowship hall. We were the first group back from our mission projects. There were cards still on the tables--cards the kids had written and decorated as they had arrived at the church earlier, meant to be sent later to people at nursing homes.

But one girl said, "Hey, we should take these cards down to Respite."

So the kids picked out the best cards they could find and we turned around and went back to Respite, back to the old people, back to the world I never would have wanted to enter in the first place at their age. And they each found a client to give their card to, and some of them chatted a little more, and the old folks smiled and loved them.

Now that's what I call mission--not just singing a few nice songs, but reaching out in love and friendship to someone you wouldn't normally encounter or pay attention to. Those kids today didn't just follow my own hopeful/skeptical instructions to meet people. They went back. They took their call to mission to heart. I'm so glad they are part of the church--and that they are nothing like me.

Grace in the hard times

2011-04-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

Tonight we had a small group for my Altar in the World study. This at first seemed like a slight disappointment, but I think it was actually a blessing. We had some of the best conversation we've had up to this point. The chapters we talked about tonight had to do with pain and how it can lead to spiritual growth, and the how and why of prayer. The people there had some really powerful stories to share relating to these chapters, things that might not have been shared in a larger group.

Their stories had to do with personal struggles and sickness and fear and the loss of loved ones. They are not my stories to tell, so that's all I will say. But I was humbled as I sat surrounded by these people who have been through so much more than I have and come through these struggles with grace, at least in retrospect. None, I am sure, are struggles that anyone would choose to go through again, but these people have become stronger, more faithful, and more grateful people through them. And when I shared some of my own experience wrestling with how to pray and what to expect from prayer, they had advice for me. Not know-it-all, obnoxiously certain advice, but helpful thoughts born and cultivated in the important experiences of their own lives.

So tonight I am thankful for people in my life who have gained wisdom through pain, and I am thankful for their willingness to share those stories so that we all might gain a little bit of that wisdom. I'm reminded of how much I have to learn spiritually from those who call me their pastor. And I hope that when I inevitably face struggles in my life harder than those I have encountered thus far, that I will be able to see--at least eventually--grace and growth in those times, too.

The compassion game

2011-04-06T13:22:00.001-07:00

On the first Wednesday of every month, people from around Williamsburg come to see me, and I give them money. Sometimes it is money to help with rent, sometimes a few nights in a motel, sometimes making a dent in a power or water bill. Sometimes it is money for prescriptions or gas. I'm the one at church whose job it is to hear these needs and decide whether and how much help is appropriate.

I've written and talked a lot at church about how hard this part of my job is. I never know whether I'm being stingy or gullible and mostly end up feeling both at the same time. I see a lot of the same people from month to month and am acutely aware of how little difference this money actually makes, at least most of the time, and how powerless the church and I are to actually make that difference. Sometimes I think--though most of the people I see would probably disagree--that the most important part of this job is the fact that it makes and allows me to listen to people. I hear stories from parts of the community that I don't hear on Sunday mornings or evening Bible studies. And I get to put a face to the fact that the church cares about helping its neighbors, whether or not we can do much.

Every once in a while I meet someone who thinks that, too. They will thank me not only for the check I hand them but also for listening to them. "I've been everywhere," they've said, "and no one else has listened to me." I feel good when people tell me this. It makes me feel like what I am doing is ministry. It makes me feel like I have succeeded in treating my neighbor with dignity, as a child of God. Sometimes it also makes me selfishly feel like we're doing better at that here than whatever other church they were at last.

But I know also that it probably works the other way around. When the budget has run out for the month, when someone's come back for the third month in a row and I have to tell them no, when I have to tell them no for any reason, I'm sure they must find another church, and another pastor to sit down with, and they must sometimes say, "Thank you for listening to me. I've been everywhere, and no one else has listened to me." And by no one else, they will mean me. Maybe what they mean is I didn't give them what they wanted. But maybe they really mean that I somehow failed to see them in the process, too. From the point of view of someone in need, those two things must blend together.

Ministry is so imperfect. I remind myself of Bonhoeffer's view of ethics, how not to do anything for fear of sinning is really the worst sin of all. I hope in the end, I've listened to more people than I haven't. And I hope that when I haven't, someone else will have--money or no money--at the church down the street or somewhere else in this community.

Time, why you punish me?

2011-04-04T17:29:00.000-07:00

Two or so weeks ago, I wrote my monthly article for our church newsletter, about revisiting our chosen Lenten disciplines mid-Lent. Our newsletter deadlines are the 15th of each month, and they don't come out until the beginning of the next month. So I wrote this mid-Lent article at the beginning of Lent, you see. By the time this article actually appeared in the newsletter, I had already let my discipline slide for almost a week. So I thought in the name of integrity, I'd better revisit it.

I've let my Lenten blogging slide in past years, too, because I found that I had a hard time thinking of new, fresh theological thoughts to write each day. That's not really my problem this year. Spending my days at church lends itself to having lots of theological thoughts. I might not always want to write publicly about things that happen at church, but at least I am thinking theologically. The problem this year is more one of time.

I know I work less than many of my friends who are bankers and lawyers and even some who are pastors. But I don't know how. Even if I get home from work at a "normal" time, say a little after 5, there is running to do, dishes to be washed, dinner to be cooked, laundry to be laundered, and Spanish to be practiced. Sometimes there are also TV shows to catch up on on Hulu--but cultural literacy is important too, right? Something's gotta give, whether it's laundry or dishes or blogging or sometimes a mixture of all of those things.

One of the chapters we read in my Barbara Brown Taylor group this week was on saying no, and I think I felt like that gave me a little freedom to loosen the reins of discipline and make a grasp at regaining some sanity. It also made me think a little more about the value of actually giving things up for Lent.

Giving something up for Lent is traditional, of course, but I've heard lots and lots of people express a preference for adding something meaningful instead. Giving up chocolate doesn't seem to do much spiritually, so we'll commit to a half hour of meditation a day instead. It sounds so reasonable. And we encourage things like this at church--I'm doing this Lenten study for people to add to their busy schedules, after all.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that if it works for you, but I wonder if for some of us it's missing the point a little. Those of us who are busy know how to add things to our schedules. We're good at it (to varying degrees.) Taking something away is harder. It's counterintuitive. Why subtract from life when we can add instead?

BBT talks about sabbath as "taking a break from earning our own salvation for a day." I think giving up something meaningful for Lent--maybe not just chocolate--could be a powerful reminder of that. The real self-denial might be in believing we don't need to add more things, do more things, be more things. A friend posted a link to Facebook recently to an article about how sleep tends to be the first thing we sacrifice when we're busy, and what a bad idea that was. Could a Lenten practice be getting a full amount of sleep, even when things don't get done? I don't know if that's the most meaningful spiritual practice, either, but it's an interesting thought. When did the self-denial of Lent become about more instead of less? Can we really go for less and trust God to be our More?

I think these thoughts will remain theoretical for this season, which is already winding down. I don't want to stop blogging altogether, but maybe post-Easter it's time to transition to an occasional practice of writing down theological thoughts year-round, and leave Lent for giving up. Of course, there's always the hope that by next year I will have mastered the art of adulthood and manage my time brilliantly. There's always that hope.

I miss Mayberry

2011-03-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

I love Target. I really do. The one here in Williamsburg is remodeling and reorganizing a little these days, so at times I love it a little less because I can't find what I am looking for, but still. I walk in and see colorful scarves and pretty shoes and nicely arranged kitchen equipment...and it's all so reasonably priced!! And today I wandered around their new and improved grocery section with real live fresh fruit and stuff. It's not as big as a regular supermarket, of course, but it wasn't bad. As I realized when I first found out they were putting one of these in: now I really have no reason to go anywhere else.

I don't know what this says from a social justice perspective, this getting everything in one place. Not because Target has a bad record on social justice--now that they've promised to stop donating to the PACs of anti-gay candidates, I think they're on the up and up. But because ideally, I suppose I'd shop at a lot of different local, family-owned stores. One for produce, one for bread, one for linens, one for pots and pans, one or more for clothes. This way, instead of a lot of different people owning businesses, a few people own one business, and the rest get to work for them as cashiers. (Although never enough cashiers for the number of people in line, I might add...)

There are some small local businesses in Williamsburg, of course, but not enough I know of to get all the different things I need. But even if there were: who has time for social justice these days? When I went to Target tonight, it was 8:30, and I hadn't been home since 8:45 am, and I had to get Oreos and a springform pan and some cat litter and some moisturizing cream and some coffee filters, and then I had to go home and make the chocolate mousse pie I had promised for staff meeting tomorrow. No way I would have gone to a bunch of different places. We'd make do with a smelly litter box and dry skin and no pie.

I promise I don't generally fantasize about a return to the 1950s or anything. I will continue to shop at Target, and I will like it. I will do the best I can and buy things there that have names with "eco" or "green" in them, however much that means. I will pay more for the Newman's Own fair trade coffee, even though I really want the cinnamon flavor in the Dunkin Donuts package. Sometimes all we can do is the best with what we have to work with, or work within. But I guess it's still good to remind ourselves of the consequences of the systems we buy into even as we load our one-stop baskets with exercise videos and cheap jewelry and toothpaste and, now, bananas. And even as we fully enjoy it.

Perdida

2011-03-27T17:22:00.000-07:00

One of my group's Barbara Brown Taylor spiritual practices for this week was the Practice of Getting Lost. It may be hard to do that intentionally, in the literal sense, but in the chapter talks not just about getting geographically lost but about intentionally putting yourself in places where you are a stranger.

The other practice for the week was the Practice of Walking on the Earth, but it was cold today, and I did not feel like doing extra walking.

Anyway, today I got myself intentionally lost by going to a Spanish language church service after my own church got out for the day. I have been to a Spanish church service before, but not here, and never by myself. I've also been saying for years I need to start going to a Spanish service, but I have never gotten up the courage to do so.

I was nervous for two reasons. First, I am not good at Spanish. My reading is decent, but I can barely understand a natively-spoken word. That was all the more reason to go, of course--I need practice. But it was also all the more reason to fear that they would ask visitors to identify themselves and I wouldn't even know what they were asking, and everyone would be looking at me, and I wouldn't know what to say.

The second reason I was nervous is that I read a description of the church on its website, the bigger English-speaking church of which this Spanish service is a part. It said they worship like the Bible commands, with lifting hands and dancing and stuff like that. My own church is predominantly comprised of 75-year-old white people, and I fit right in. We do not lift our hands. We do not dance. Furthermore, the "What We Believe" section was full of things that would make any progressive mainline Protestant think twice, like the infallibility of scripture, even in scientific matters.

But the point was to get lost. So I went, half hoping it would be big enough that I could sit in the corner and no one would notice me. It was not that big.

We started with praise songs, and there was some clapping, and some lifting of hands, but I was relieved to find that it seemed to be like any contemporary worship service. The guest speaker spoke in tongues a little when he prayed, but not too much. During what I suppose was the passing of the peace, I talked to people. Just a few sentences, but it was a start.

The guest speaker actually spoke in English (natively, and appeared not to know Spanish.) It was translated by a native English speaker who did speak Spanish. In a way, that meant I was a little less lost than I had anticipated, about which I was both glad and not glad.

The speaker was loud. That's basically what I can say about him. Everything he said was loud and punctuated, like each sentence was the most important thing you were going to hear all day. At one point he told people to take notes. This is not a preaching style that tends to resonate with me. I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's a lot different from my own preferred style of "OK, now, let's see if we might be able to look at this text a little differently..." In a way, I felt more out of my comfort zone listening to him than I did singing praise songs in Spanish. I also think if I'd been listening to that preaching style in Spanish, it would have been OK. When something's in another language, you expect it to be different from what you're used to, and there's a openness to that. When it switches back to your own language, when you're on the border between lost and not lost, you shut down. You want to not be lost. At least I do.

But that was a good reminder that you don't have to go far to find another culture. Because even if we both call ourselves Christian, that man and I come from very different cultures. I am lost in his, and I'm sure he would be lost in mine. I'm learning Spanish because I want to be able to connect with some of God's children whose stories might be very different from my own. It's scary to walk into someone else's story. But that's why it's spiritual, too--it demands something of us, it demands our vulnerability. And that's true whether that story is told in another language or in your own, whether it takes place across the world or just around the corner. I think I'll be back.

Broken for birds and squirrels

2011-03-23T17:24:00.000-07:00

Today I did a little communion service for the Respite Care folks in the chapel. I love doing this. The only tricky part is that it's a pretty small group, and it's hard to buy bread the right size. When we do this I usually end up with a hefty chunk of leftover Body of Christ.

Properly disposing of communion elements can be a bit of a pain. You can't just shove them in the trash or dump them down any old drain. You have to either eat them, or return them to nature. The juice isn't too bad, although there was that one time I spilled grape juice all down my front by trying to drink the excess without actually putting my mouth on the chalice. Since then I've discovered the special drain in the sacristy (OK, I hope that's what it is), and besides, you can always just pour it outside. But there is something that feels a little irreverent about just throwing a (whole) half a loaf of bread into the woods. I don't know if any theological school of thought says yea or nay on that, but usually I try to break it up into little pieces, and that is what I did today.

I think about feeding the birds when I do this, like when I was little and at my grandmother's house in Philadelphia, and we would stand on her little balcony and tear up slices of Wonder Bread and throw them to the pigeons. But today it wasn't Wonder Bread, it was consecrated bread, the Body of Christ. And it felt like there was something holy in doing this, in tearing off pieces of bread just like I had served to people in the chapel, and throwing them in the grass for the birds or squirrels or whoever else would find them.

I don't think the birds and squirrels care that this bread is holy bread. And I don't think they need the sustaining, renewing grace that is in that bread in the same way we do. Birds and squirrels live by God's grace every day, eating what God provides, praising God just by being birds and squirrels. But I care that this is holy bread that I am feeding them. It reminds me that God's grace is for all creation, and that this Body of Christ is broken for the salvation of the whole world. And on my way home, I heard the birds singing a little clearer, because I was reminded of this.

Dream on

2011-03-22T17:48:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Revelation these days. Not for any specific purpose, but just because I've been working my way through the New Testament in my own devotional reading each morning, and I finally got there. I've read Revelation before, and despite what the Left Behind series has made of it, I don't hate it. In fact, I really like some parts of it. Dr. Newsom's Apocalyptic Imagination class at Candler gave me a solid appreciation for the social justice implications of the book, and especially how it has been meaningful through history for oppressed and/or minority communities--for whom, of course, it was first written. Reading it as a work of spiritually grounded political resistance starts to look a lot different than reading it as if it were written especially for upper middle class white Americans.

This is the first time I've come back to the book as a whole since I took that class, and it's different to come back and read it outside of that academic context, too. The appreciation is still there, but the details of that appreciation are fuzzy. I feel much more like I'm encountering the book as an "average," not-in-seminary person this time. Which brings me back, somewhat, to the mindset that seminary shook up a little: this book is weird.

There's just so much imagery shoved together. That's my problem. If John of Patmos could just pick one or two symbols and do a kind of extended metaphor thing, I think I could be on board. But that's not what he does. Instead...there's a throne! Now there are some creatures around it! Now there are horsemen! Now there are some angels with bowls of plagues! Now there is a beast! Also a whore is riding it!

It makes it all very hard to follow.

But here's a thought that helps me read Revelation. It's not a very academic thought that explains why all these symbols are there thrown together. It's just a thought. And that is that this book is the retelling of a dream. Or a vision, a revelation, an apokalypsis, whatever you want to call it.

Have you ever tried telling someone about a dream you had last night and ended up sounding like a complete crazy person? I've had those dreams. There's someone whose face I never see, but I know who it is. Or there is someone who looks like one person I know, but in the dream I know they're really supposed to be someone else I know. There are non sequiturs where you move from one scene to another with no good explanation, but somehow it all makes sense. All the parts seem so disconnected that it's almost embarrassing to try to relate them to anyone. And maybe it's not just random synapse firing, either--there are subconscious reasons why all these things play a part in your dream--but when you put them all together, it's just weird.

I'm not saying that's a completely accurate representation of a sacred text, here, which I am sure has very carefully chosen imagery and symbology throughout. But really, if John did have some divinely-given revelation of this struggle between heaven and earth, it would be no wonder if he couldn't quite relate in terms that made complete logical sense to the person he was telling it to. In fact, it would have had to have been a pretty boring vision if he could. The overall dream has an important and poignant meaning, and each part of it is there for a reason, but when you put it all together in chronological order it comes out sounding like, "And then there was a beast! And then there was a whore!"

Scholars who know more than me are free to debate me, but it helps me to read this text without thinking I have make complete sense of it all, that trying to make logical sense of it even does it a disservice--because how could a powerful divine revelation like that make perfect sense?

I like to think this. It helps me appreciate what's there.

Confessing Grumpiness

2011-03-21T15:14:00.000-07:00

Today has been one of those days. It didn't start out that way. I was tired when I got up, but I'm always tired when I get up. And it's Monday, but I don't particularly mind Monday. Monday is Pastor Tuesday. My week is already off and running, and Monday can be a good time to get things done.

And there was a lot to get done today--preparing for tonight's Lenten study, picking out liturgy for Sunday's service before tomorrow's bulletin deadline, getting started on sermon preparations. Those were the big things. Only there seemed to be so many little things popping up that I started to wonder if I would have time for the big things. And then the little things started going wrong, like when I discovered a conference I thought I had registered for weeks ago had never actually gotten my registration and check.

A little past noon, I got a call from a woman I'd spoken to about housing needs last week. She and her family were being evicted from their current residence, and I had told them to call me closer to the eviction for me to arrange a temporary hotel stay.

"We have to be out of here NOW," she told me on the phone today. "Can you do something soon?"

I could and I did. But not without being annoyed about it. Do you think I have nothing else to do today? I mentally said to the phone. And when my fax to the motel didn't go through the first time and the family called back: I don't have time for this!

It was not lost on me that while I was getting grumpy over my delayed to-do list, a family was worried about where they were going to sleep tonight. It wasn't lost on me. I tried to keep things in perspective. Sometimes compassion is hard even when it seems like a good idea in theory.

I did eventually get to the things on my to-do list. As I flipped through one of Bill's books searching for liturgy, I came across a prayer of confession. "We confess to you this morning that we can be a grumpy and unsatisfied people," it said. It was based on the Old Testament lectionary reading for the week, one of many passages in which the newly exodized Israelites are whining in the desert, this time because they are thirsty.

I'm not using that prayer in the service this Sunday, but I confess that I can be a grumpy and unsatisfied person. If the most inconvenient thing that happens in my day is the chance to help a family find a place to sleep, I don't have much to whine about. I pray that especially on "those" days, I'll be able to take a deep breath and find joy in whatever work God is giving me to do.

Waltzing with Potatoes, part 2

2011-03-20T17:03:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Wesley's Potato Drop, when 44,000 pounds of potatoes showed up in the Morton parking lot at W&M and volunteers got to load them onto smaller trucks for local food organizations. The Potato Drop has been an annual thing for a while now--I'm not sure how many years, but I remember it from when I was in college. Specifically, I remember being on my hands and knees on the parking lot asphalt putting potatoes in bags one by one.

This year, except for a small group, we weren't really bagging potatoes. We had lines of people going from the big truck to the small trucks, passing down these 50 pound bags of potatoes. Only, there were a ton of volunteers, baseball teams and school groups and W&M students and church people. And really, there were more than enough people to fill these potato-passing lines. So Peter, Megan, Jason and I stood around and kind of cringed (at least I did) as baseball players threw these heavy sacks of potatoes off the truck to their teammates on the ground.

We came ready to work, but it was hard to figure out what to do. At one point I found myself in a potato passing line, more to look busy than because there was actually a gap, but it only took a few 50 pound bags of potatoes for me to decide my gifts and graces might better be utilized elsewhere. (I'm sore today from those five or six bags, by the way.)

Well, I saw a cute baby over by the snack table, being held by her grandfather, a member of my church. So I made friends with this baby, and held her while her grandparents manned the table and refilled the lemonade, and tried to make sure she wasn't actually eating the styrofoam cup she was chewing on. My friends thought perhaps I planned to steal this baby (since it is no secret I love babies. BABIES!) But I didn't. I just held her and had a one-sided conversation with her until she cried for Grandpa, and then I gave her back.

They say ministry happens in the interruptions. Sometimes, so do small blessings like holding a baby. I showed up at the Potato Drop to bag and carry potatoes, and I did very little of that. That can be kind of hard for a service-oriented person, who shows up to do a good thing and ends up more in the way than anything. But what's that Wesleyan covenant prayer--"Let me be employed by you, or laid aside for you"? It says that sometimes, feeling useful is more about our own self-esteem than what God actually needs from us. It's like you show up thinking, "I'm going to help a bunch of hungry people get dinner tonight!" and God's like, "Nah, I got some other people for that. Today, you just get to hold a baby."

After all, those potatoes got into the right trucks, and they got into those trucks fast. And people will get to eat them. And a lot of people from the community, especially kids, got to be a part of that. That's awesome, even if I didn't do much to help. And in the meantime, I made friends with a baby. And that was a pretty good thing, too.

Spirit fingers

2011-03-17T10:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I miss the spirit days we used to have in high school: things like Nerd Day (though at my high school this was every day), Talk Like a Pirate Day (OK, that was never an official one), Pajama Day (this was my favorite, and I brought back this particular spirit day several times in college on my own.) I'd be all for a few more adult spirit days. So I am happy that today is St. Patrick's Day, and not just because it means I get to wear the awesome green-pompom headband I found in Target's dollar aisle.

I walked through CW a little on my way to Wawa for lunch, and all the people wearing green made me smile. Young people, old people, black people, white people, even (remember, this is CW) 21st century people and 18th century people. Not everyone, of course, but a lot of people.

Why do we wear green today? Personally, I'm 1/8 Irish, but I don't really strongly identify with that. And since I'm no longer in elementary school, I'm not terribly afraid of getting pinched. The green is just for fun. It's fun to be part of something bigger just to be a part of it. We wear green because other people will be wearing green. It's a way to wiggle our metaphorical spirit fingers.

Wearing green on St. Patrick's Day lets us come together, in a way. And we're not coming together over any tragic event (though we have some to choose from) or for any sort of rivalry, or even for any particular cause. It's just that doing something together makes us happy.

It may not be communion, and St. Patrick's Day might be the most secular of all saint's days, but there is something vaguely spiritual in a whole bunch of different people who will probably never know each other coming together just because. Amen to spirit days!

And if anyone wants to bring back Pajama Day, just let me know.

Words that pale

2011-03-16T18:51:00.000-07:00

I started a blog post earlier about something else, but instead, I feel like I need to write something about Japan.

But I don't know what to write about Japan. Anything I might say pales in comparison to the reality, especially since I'm so far away.

Every time I read or see the news it seems to get worse. I saw on the TV attached to the treadmill next to mine at the gym tonight that over 13,000 people were now dead or missing.

And maybe it's that last sentence that makes it so hard to say anything worth saying. It is amazing to me that while in one place, the whole world is falling apart, here life goes on as normal. While workers desperately try to save nuclear reactors and ex pats flee the country, today I went to work, and helped some people pay their power bills, tried to visit a woman at a nursing home (she was asleep), attended a board meeting, went to the gym. Those are all good things, but they are normal things. While the headlines on BBC.com are all about earthquakes and radiation, a link on the side brings you to a story about Boston's Running of the Brides. While people starve and die, others are storming Filene's Basement. That sounds like a condemnation, but it's not. It's just the way it is. And though that means that those of us on this side of the world buying dresses and counting calories aren't thinking all the time about what's happening in Japan, when we do think about it, it makes it even more awe-inspiringly heartbreaking, and even harder to say anything about.

The earthquake was Friday. Then there was a tsunami. Then there was radiation. Things have been getting worse for days. And yesterday, I blogged about potatoes.

The dichotomy there reminded me of lyrics to a Dave Matthews song. I wrote out the lyrics and then deleted them. They didn't seem like an appropriate response. Maybe that's why when something horrible happens, or someone we love dies, we have a moment of silence. It's the response with the most integrity.

In that case, I guess I've already said too much. I'll end with just three more things, not even in complete sentences: prayers, and grace, and a belief in a God who suffers with us.

Waltzing with Potatoes

2011-03-15T18:24:00.001-07:00

For Lent, I'm leading a study of Barbara Brown Taylor's book An Altar in the World. This book is all about spiritual practices you can do in your everyday lives, and one of the first ones she writes about is the Practice of Paying Attention. That might mean paying attention to nature, paying attention to people you'd ordinarily ignore, paying attention to what countries items in a catalogue come from--no matter what you pay attention to, doing so is supposed to evoke reverence in you. Everyone in our group, which met for the first time last night, is supposed to find some way to practice paying attention this week, and come back and talk about what they gleaned from it.

So today, since I Lead By Example, I was looking for something to pay attention to. What I quickly discovered is that there are lots of choices, but it's hard to think of something that would sound worthy of coming back and talking about.

I ended up at Bloom on my way home from our worship committee meeting tonight, because as is often the case, I had no food at home. I decided I was in the mood for mashed potatoes. And then I thought that maybe potatoes were something I could pay attention to.

So I got home and started paying attention. As I held and washed my potatoes I noticed how rough they felt and how if you looked close enough, their skin almost looked like snakeskin. I noticed their lumps and eyes and ridges. I don't know who first decided that a potato was something they might want to eat, because it is dull and brown and hard, like a rock.

The next thing I quickly discovered was that I was bored. Maybe it is hard to practice reverence when you are hungry.

So I went ahead and chopped my potatoes. I tried to pay attention as I did this, too. After all, I've read things about how distanced we Americans often are from our food, and how just slowing down and spending time actually cooking can reconnect us to what we eat. And I like cooking, in theory. I just don't always like cooking when I get home from a meeting at 8 or 9. Also I don't like washing dishes, which is somewhat of a deterrent. Anyway, I paid attention. I felt the tension between my knife and the potato, heard how the slices crunched like an apple when I cut them, felt how they were almost a little slimy on the inside. I suppose if you pushed me I might say the cutting became slightly meditative after a few minutes.

So I don't know. I'm glad God made potatoes. They are delicious mashed up with garlic. Did I develop a heightened sense of reverence for these potatoes and the God who made them? Maybe not so much. Maybe I stopped too early.

Or maybe the practice of reverence and paying attention really does take practice. Maybe it just takes a while to see something new in a vegetable, a person, a catalogue. In the meantime, I suppose it can't hurt to be a little more aware of the things and people God has put around you. And maybe you just have to be in the right frame of mind--and have a snack first.

Ashes and nail polish

2011-03-14T11:03:00.000-07:00

For the past several years working and volunteering in various churches, one thing I avoided like the plague was the children's sermon. Every once in a while I was offered the chance to do one, and I would worm out of it as subtly as possible with an excuse like "it's just not my gift." Once or twice I wasn't able to worm far enough, and so I was stuck in front of the whole church, awkwardly rambling about Jesus while kids played hide and seek under the chairs.

It's not that I don't like kids. I love them. But I suppose I didn't have any confidence in my ability to communicate with them in groups, and especially in front of a crowd of adults.

Now it is my job to do the children's sermon almost every week, and in spite of myself, I have discovered I enjoy it. In a way, it's not so different from preaching to adults. No matter who you're preaching to, it is the preacher's job to figure out what God is saying in a certain scripture to his or her particular congregation, and communicate it in a way that is relevant. That comes out looking different for kids, but the process is similar.

I'm learning to go with the flow and be ready to improvise. Yesterday at the 8:15 service I sat on the chancel steps with a bowl of ashes left over from Wednesday's service, and two little girls came up and joined me (most of the kids come to the 11:00). I showed them the ashes and explained what they were, and asked if they knew what we used ashes for in church.

And one little girl eagerly extended her hand and replied, "Do you like my nail polish?!!!"

I did. It was sparkly.

And that's what I love about children's sermons, though it is hard to explain why. I love that they put me right in the middle of the immediacy and the urgency of whatever the kids are excited about at the time. I love that they force me to let go of the importance of my own message for a moment, and to instead celebrate something a child wants to share. I love that I am becoming more comfortable without having an exact plan.

I did, of course, steer the lesson back to my bowl of ashes. And maybe that little girl will remember something about ashes and Lent and saying we're sorry, or maybe not yet. But if nothing else I hope she'll grow up knowing that church is a place where people like her nail polish.

Post-it theology

2011-03-11T15:16:00.000-08:00

I didn't have any profound theological thoughts of my own today, so I thought I would steal someone else's. I heard it on The View this morning. Sarah Silverman was on the show talking about a new movie she's in, and after they showed a scene from it, one of the hosts (forget who) said that her character was kind of a bitch. (Her words, not mine.) "Yeah," Sarah Silverman said, "but of course, as Mr. Rogers said, there's no one you couldn't love once you've heard their story."

(Disclaimer: a quick Google search actually attributes this quote to Mary Lou Kownacki...but maybe Mr. Rogers used it sometime.)

My first thought, because this is how I think these days, is that that would go great in a sermon sometime. Maybe my upcoming one on the woman at the well. So I grabbed a post it and wrote it down before I forgot. But now it's just sitting on my coffee table, and I think I might leave it there as a reminder for a little while.

I think it's kind of cool that actors get to practice knowing people's stories when it's their job to make "kind of a bitch" into a sympathetic character. I don't know how well that skill translates to real life. In real life, we don't always get to to hear the stories that would allow us to love people. But I think it's a good reminder to assume that those stories exist, and that if we only did know them, we could love someone--so I guess we might as well love them in the meantime too.

The Kingdom and Awkward Turtle, part 2

2011-03-10T17:06:00.000-08:00

This Lent, our music director is leading Taize services every Thursday. Today was the first. We started early with a movie about the Taize community and what Taize worship is. A smattering of people sat quietly in the fellowship hall, watching.

About halfway through the movie, a woman came in and stood hesitantly at the entrance to the fellowship hall. The woman sitting next to me waved her in. She came in and put some stuff down on a chair. Then she started handing out bulletins.

The bulletins said "Taize" at the top, had a picture of a cross, and the words "United Methodist Church" at the bottom. Inside were the words to some Taize songs.

This was odd, because I did not know this woman, and I had seen the draft of Richard's bulletin, which this was not. But hey, I wasn't in charge. I figured either she knew something I didn't, or she was maybe a little crazy, in which case I would pick up the real bulletin and not worry about it.

This strategy seemed to be working out OK until Richard caught wind of what was going on, and brought her out to the lobby and asked her to leave. Only she didn't want to leave. I'm pretty sure she had no clue why she would be asked to leave. By this time it was becoming clear that she leaned a little more to the crazy side of things.

I tried to figure out what her story was. After all, she seemed to legitimately know something about Taize. I asked her if she had been there. But all she did was point at Brother Roger up on the movie screen and say that he had invited her. After a little while, a friend of hers came in. She was able to clear things up: the woman had, indeed, been to Taize, as had her friend. She had also gone to Yale Divinity School. She had also been diagnosed with dementia. Her friend agreed to sit with her for the service, which she did, with no more incidents.

Thoughts on this:

One, sometimes you have to take a step back and laugh at the hilariously absurd things that happen in the course of ministry--or, I suppose, life. Coming to a church service and handing out your own bulletins? That's great.

But second, it is things like this that should make us constantly examine what it means to be a welcoming church. Do we welcome people even when they are (non-maliciously) disruptive? If we think we should, are we able to in practice? What lines do we draw? We have certificates on the wall that declare us a Certified Welcoming Congregation. How do those accolades help us understand ourselves in situations like this one?

Third, if this woman was a Yale-trained Taize pilgrim now riddled with dementia, then I think it was probably more important for her to be there at that service than it was for anyone else. We might appreciate the beauty and the silence and the meditative music. For her, it might have been a connection to a life she had once loved, now out of her grasp. She might not have been able to worship God in the ways we often think of worshiping God. But tonight, she wanted to worship God.

In the end, even if events like tonight's are hard, awkward, uncomfortable, disruptive; whether we handle them wrong or handle them right; I believe with all my heart that they are blessings to the church. They make us think about how best to love people.

At the end of the service, I told the woman I was glad she came. I meant it.

To dust

2011-03-09T18:11:00.000-08:00

When I was little, and just learning what death was, I was scared. I remember nights sitting on my bed with my mom sobbing over the inevitability of this thing I didn't understand. I remember Mom trying to comfort me, telling me that probably neither of us would die for a very long time. Eventually she took me to a therapist, who I remember suggested that belief in heaven was an answer.

I have no other memories of this counseling and don't recall if I went anymore. I know that I now consider myself a fairly well adjusted adult, on most days, probably no more or less wrapped up in morbidity than the next person. But I am still scared of death. The word "forever," if I stay with it a little while, is enough to make me panicky. Of course, the alternative is no better. Forever is forever, whether you spend it alive or dead.

I am scared of death, and yet it is my job to tell others that they should not be scared of death. I know that is an overstatement. But it is my job to speak at funerals, to stand at a casket and proclaim resurrection; to reassure people taking their loved ones off life support that to let them go is the unselfish thing;to preach on scriptures that tell us to lose one's life is to gain it; and to smear people's foreheads with ash and remind them that they will return to dust.

We had two Ash Wednesday services today, and I thought about this more at the second than at the first: for one thing, there were about a hundred more people at the evening service, so I had a lot more time, and for another, I read this essay by Sara Miles in the meantime, posted by several friends on Facebook.

Miles writes that a woman came up to her with a week-and-a-half old baby to receive ashes for both of them. "I crossed his forehead with ashes," she says, "and took a deep breath, and told the baby he was going to die."

I didn't tell any babies they were going to die tonight. I did tell one girl, maybe age nine, and I didn't like doing it. Miles writes about giving ashes to kitchen workers, and truck drivers, and drug dealers. I didn't tell any drug dealers they would die, as far as I know. But I did say those words to my senior pastor, and a retired bishop, and a bunch of college students with makeup on and hair done from their concert before the service. Telling people they were on their way back into dust, I felt embarrassed, even apologetic. True or not, who I am to tell them this--I, who am also dust, who am scared of my own dustiness?

I believe and love the words it is my job to say: that we will die, but that we will ultimately live. And I think that we're allowed to be scared, even if we believe that. And as always, I hope the truth and the good news of the words I say come through to people, whether or not I am scared.

Ecclesio-simple

2010-08-25T18:10:00.000-07:00

For the past few days, I’ve been reading a book called Simple Church, by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger. Eric Geiger is coming to talk to a conference event in a few weeks that some of our church staff is attending, so this is like homework. And if you happened to see my Facebook status earlier today, you already know that I am not happy about it.

It's not just the patronizing language or the vapid metaphors that make the whole thing read like a cheesy children's sermon. It's not just the chauvinism that blares through whenever the authors mention their wives, or the rampant biblical eisegesis in defense of their premise. OK, it is partially all of those things. But I have some actual questions, too.

The premise of the book is that simple churches--churches with a clear, streamlined process for making disciples--tend to be healthier. I don't completely disagree with this premise. I think there's probably a lot to be said for getting rid of outgrown or ill-conceived ministries, and eliminating special programs that turn out to be more for show than for effectively reaching and forming people. So I admit there's some validity to their argument, even if I do wish they'd given ME their research and let me write a book targeted at moderately intelligent readers. I also admit I haven't read the whole book yet, so it's possible my questions might be answered or opinions changed by the end.

I also don't disagree with their assumption of spiritual growth as process. What good Wesleyan could?

But I do wonder how well we can assign parts of that process to aspects of an individual's involvement within the life of a church. Most of the churches they rank highly have a model that looks something like: people come to worship and meet God, people join small groups and learn about living in community, people pick a ministry and serve.

But what if I don't come to church first? I can't find a welcoming small group or a community ministry as an invitation into a relationship with God? I can't come to church and get plugged into the congregation by joining a Saturday service event? I have to go through a small group first? And couldn't there be some value in having a wide variety of ministries for people to choose to be involved in--even if they do clutter up the calendar, even if they're not particularly streamlined? I'm simply not convinced that the process of salvation "from the first dawning of light in the soul till it is consumed in glory" (that's probably misquoted slightly, sorry Wesley) is as neat as a three-step program. This "simple church" idea seems to want to plug people into a machine that spits them out as disciples on the other side.

And what happens when I do get the service stage of my spiritual growth process? I graduate? I'm good to go? How does continuing sanctification factor into the life of the individual and the church? When I think of how worship, education, fellowship, and service contribute to growth and discipleship, I envision less of a line and more of a positive feedback loop.

And of course, what their data show is not technically that simple churches are healthier, but that they are more popular. It's about growth--attendance and baptisms and membership. And really, if the church really, really faithfully lived out its calling as the church and expected its members to do the same--don't you think there would be far fewer Christians, rather than more?

That's not to say that people are leaving mainline Protestant churches in droves due to our stringent views on discipleship. It's also not to claim that numbers aren't useful, because they do speak to relevance. But there's really no good way to quantify faithful, transformative ministry.

Still, I wonder how the study would change if we picked some different y-variables. What if we looked not at membership and attendance, but at ways churches positively impacted and transformed their communities? What if we looked at how much they made their little corner of the world look more like the Kingdom of God? I don't know what those variables would be, but I wonder if the x-variable would still turn out to be simplicity. Because if not, I want to know what it would be, and that's the way I would want to run my church.

The Kingdom and Awkward Turtle

2010-04-02T19:40:00.000-07:00

Today at Rising Hope I was having a pleasant conversation about football over lunch. Yes, it was off season--the woman across the table from me was wearing a Redskins shirt--and no, it didn't involve much actual knowledge of the sport. We were having this conversation when a woman with long brown hair and a slightly vacant expression sat down and introduced herself as K. She opened her Bible on the table and told us she wanted to share some things from Luke.

Oh God, I thought. The woman in the Redskins shirt, who seemed to know K, rolled her eyes at me from across the table. I was careful not to return the look.

K began reading about earthquakes and persecutions. And then she kept reading. And then she kept reading some more. Gradually almost everyone at the table left while I listened politely, feeling a little trapped.

Finally I found a breaking point and said--a little desperately--"K, what does this mean to you?"

She stared at me for a second, surprised, and then said, "I can hear the earthquakes. I can hear the persecutions." I wasn't sure quite how literally she meant that, but wasn't about to ask.

Not really knowing what to say, I ventured, "I think this passage is about how hard it is to follow Christ, and about the challenges we'll face, but how God is with us through that."

K stared at me again and then repeated, "I can hear the earthquakes..."

I waited for her to finish, thanked her for sharing, and then excused myself to go back to the office. "You told her what she wanted to hear," said the woman in the Redskins shirt as I walked past her. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing.

I've often found myself in that kind of situation at Rising Hope and other places--listening to someone who's mentally unstable or just not quite with it--and not knowing what to say. I really want to know what to say. Or at least how to listen. I want to know how to take people seriously as people without always being able to take what they say seriously. I want to know how to love people without getting stuck in an endless stream of doomsday prophecies. Of course, there probably aren't any right answers, and most people probably don't know what to do any better than I do, but I do wish I knew some way to make those encounters less wrenchingly awkward.

But when I think about it--usually after the fact, but on better days during, too--I remind myself that I'm thankful for those awkward and uncomfortable encounters, too. Partially because it's good experience for me to get used to them and learn different approaches. But mostly because I am honestly thankful that K has a community where she can come and hang out, doomsday prophecies and questionable mental health and all, and I'm glad to be a part of that community.

A few years ago at Trinity I remember thinking something similar, when a probably-homeless woman got up during Joys and Concerns, walked to the front of the church, and began singing a song she appeared to be making up on the spot. Kathy, up front, had an expression that clearly said, "What on earth is going on?" No one knew what to do. We all listened politely. That was awkward enough, so imagine the awkward-turtle moment next week when the exact same thing happened again. And I thought--as uncomfortable as the whole thing was--how glad I was to go to a church where that kind of thing happened, because that woman could come in.

I fear--and laugh at--the thought of things like that happening in my own ministry down the road. But I hope those things do happen. I hope they happen all the time. Otherwise I'll have to wonder why the people who create those moments aren't around. I don't think the Kingdom would be the Kingdom without those painful-at-the-time, funny-in-retrospect, awkward, uncomfortable moments.

Grace with a vengeance

2010-03-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Today I ran. It was the first time in about a month, which is the longest I've gone without running in a while. The not running has been frustrating. And it was slow going today--I got winded at about a mile and half, and when I stopped to walk at two my legs shook ever so slightly. But it didn't matter. It was good to feel my body move in that way again, and even when I got home I kept going around the block, sometimes running and sometimes walking, because I kept thinking of more songs on my iPod I wanted to run to for the first time in so long.

As much as I wish I hadn't been forced to spend most of March losing muscle mass, I'm embracing the fact that there is grace in starting over.

In high school, when it wasn't crew season, I used to come home from school and run five miles every day. (I thought it was six at the time, actually, but Google Maps has since proved me wrong.) In college and the beginning of seminary I gradually fell away from that habit, until I was running maybe three or four miles a few times a week, sometimes less, once in a while throwing in a longer run if I felt particularly inspired or fat.

Then second year of seminary I mysteriously injured my foot, spent a few weeks in a boot that made me look like half an astronaut, and didn't run for the rest of the year. I mean, I tried every once in a while. But I was never able to build up any sort of pain-free consistency. Then that summer I headed off for two months in India, good walking sandals in tow, and never once tried to run. I let myself have the break I needed. When I got back to Atlanta, my foot was better and I was ready to start over--which I did, eventually running two half marathons and a full one before graduation. I'm convinced if I hadn't been forced to start over, I'd still be chugging out three miles twice a week. Instead, I came back with a vengeance. Maybe grace and vengeance don't ordinarily go together, but here they do.

There's grace in starting over. It's New Years resolutions and covenant renewal and baptism. None of those things mean much in the long term without the discipline that comes after, but those moments where something new begins to emerge are significant in themselves. From time to time we just need that swift kick in the ass (OK, I wouldn't describe baptism that way to the Board of Ordained Ministry) that comes after a time of knowing something is missing. I wonder when my next race will be. I wonder what I'll be able to do and how I'll be able to improve this time, and I can't wait to get to work.

High Stakes

2010-03-15T11:52:00.000-07:00

This past Friday, in the middle of my travels to a few different churches looking for associate pastors, I spent the night at Kim's. She and her mom were in the process of picking out a dining room table for Kim's new house, and I was (willingly) put to work helping measure spaces, and comparing shapes, prices, and relative levels of ornateness.

At one point in the deliberation, being the practical and thoroughly untrendy person that I am, I put this thought out there: "Whichever table you get, it's going to be fine."

"I know," Kim said, "it's just that it's so much money..."

Which sums up, in a way, my feelings about meeting with people from all these churches. I could end up at any of these places, and it would be fine. More than fine, even. And yet, it all still somehow seems high stakes. There still seems to be so much riding on my decisions of where I want to go and what I want to do and what I'll tell my DS my top choices are.

It would be a bad idea, of course, to blog about any of my thoughts on specific churches at this point. But here are some general thoughts that have been swimming around in my head during and since this interview-ful weekend.

1. Unsurprisingly, there have been one or two churches that I had really high hopes for, and walked away--not disappointed--but maybe less excited than I had anticipated, for whatever reason. And on the other side, of course, there have been a few that I went to more to keep my options open than anything else, and that I walked away from much more excited than I would have thought. The more surprising part is how those realizations are really kind of scary. They mean the future might look a lot different than I had planned. In a way, I'm prepared for a future that I don't plan...which sounds terribly pious of me, but I really just mean that I've agreed that the bishop can put me anywhere she wants. But going for an associate position, I do have some say, and the scary part is not that I might end up somewhere I never wanted or expected, but that there's a possibility of me having some level of control, and actually making choices I never expected to make. I don't know why that's scarier, except that it means actually having to face those choices and what I really want and what my call really is, instead of waiting for someone else to figure it out for me. I don't know how I feel about that.

2. On a related note, some of these interviews have kind of blurred together, and I hardly know how to distinguish what one place can offer me, and vice versa, compared to another. I've spent all this time writing about the beauty and purpose of itineracy with the consequence of actually convincing myself, and now part of me wants to say dear Bishop Kammerer, please just place me somewhere and don't make me decide anything. So many of the best and most transformative experiences of my life have been those where I would have chosen otherwise if I could have.

3. Of course, my decisions won't necessarily mean that much, anyway. The churches I want have to want me, and I'm pretty sure if there are discrepancies, the senior pastors are the ones with dibs. And I'm afraid that even if interviews have gone well, there's nothing that really distinguishes me, and I won't be anyone's first choice. And then what if everyone else is matched up with mutually high choices, and there's nothing left for me?

4. I'm also becoming more and more afraid (maybe contrary to thought #3) that the more I sit at tables talking about what gifts I have to offer a church, that I make a good sell now but will just end up being a huge disappointment, that I'll never be as effective in ministry as I might convince people I will be.

5. But I'm realizing something else, too. The best match for me might not be the church I walk out most excited about as a church, or the one I can "see myself in" the most clearly. In other words, the church I'd choose to be a member of might not be the church I should serve. For one thing, I like small churches, and I'm not going to be serving a small church--I need this experience in a big one. And maybe the church whose passions most match up with mine--whose missions program I adore, for example--isn't the church that needs me or that I need, because maybe there's not as much room for growth on either side. None of the churches or job descriptions have been "perfect matches." I think that's a good thing. To a degree.

All this is to say that I still have no idea what's next, but clearly I'm getting to the obligatory point where I'm obsessing instead of enjoying the sense of God-directed potential. Any of these churches will, I'm sure, be a wonderful place for me to serve and learn and grow in the next few years. But still, it all just seems so high stakes.

Original Sin

2010-03-14T09:30:00.000-07:00

Today in Confirmation the plan was to party it up a little and have a nice talk about sin. So last night when I got home from my grand tour of church interviews, I sat down at my computer and tried to adapt Genesis 2-3 to a readable, informal little skit for the kids to do, as a starting point for our discussion.

As I decided which parts to keep and which parts to cut out--so that we could all understand what was going on without having to read two entire chapters out loud and risk losing everybody--I grew a little concerned. I started to remember that maybe I didn't really know what the point of the story was.

What did Adam and Eve do wrong? That's what I wanted to ask my class, but I wasn't sure I had the answer, or any good answers, even. OK, they weren't supposed to eat from this one tree, and they did, and that was a problem. But it seemed like a pretty arbitrary rule. Like God's just making up stuff for no reason. Isn't knowledge of good and evil a good thing? Isn't it what we try to instill in kids as they grow up? Doesn't it help us to make the right choices? You might say that it sets up a dichotomy that wasn't there before. But the tree doesn't create the existence of evil, it only helps us see it. So I was afraid of how this discussion might go. I wasn't quite sure what I was trying to teach using this story, besides that a discussion of sin without the story of the Fall seemed to lack a certain traditional quality.

I didn't wake up this morning with any better idea, but we read the skit together, and I asked, "So what did Adam and Eve do wrong?"

"They disobeyed. They ate from the tree when God said not to," a few of the kids offered.

"Yeah," I said, "and that's bad in itself, but why didn't God want them to eat from the tree? What's wrong with having a knowledge of good and evil?"

"Maybe," said a sixth-grade boy, "because then we can look at other people and call them good or evil."

Bam! I love it! What an insight! Eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil makes us judge people. Maybe this knowledge means we can't just accept each other as part of God's good creation anymore. Faults we didn't see before come into view. That might be a good and helpful thing when we're examining our own hearts and lives, but probably not so much when it means we start examining others.

Thinking about the story last night, I probably would have said that the core of the problem was wanting to be like God. That's a pretty standard reading; that's what the serpent offers with the fruit. And this new insight fits right in, I think. We want to be like God, deeming things righteous or not. Deciding for ourselves what (and who) is a blessing or a curse. When really, all God wanted for us was to accept, enjoy, and live the abundant life we're created for--the life that God called good.

So thanks, kids, for reminding me again that I don't need to show up with solid answers, and for giving me an interesting sermon somewhere down the line.

Confirmation, part 2

2010-03-07T16:13:00.000-08:00

Two weeks ago I wrote about how I enjoyed teaching confirmation. I mostly enjoyed it today, too, but it also made me want to bang my head on the table a little.

That's not because of the kids. Sure, there was some throwing of donut holes and crawling under the table to tie someone's shoes together. Maybe that said something about how riveting my lesson on the Holy Spirit was or wasn't, but that didn't make me crazy. I'm a substitute teacher, after all.

It has more to do with the realization that we are behind on the class schedule (my schedule!!), need to catch up, barely have enough time to get through things without catching up, and omg it's my responsibility to teach these kids the basis of the Christian faith so they can make an informed decision and I'll never be able to do that by Easter gahhhhhhhhhhh.

Sometimes I need a reminder that it's not all about me. Luckily, God is pretty good about providing those reminders when you need them.

I've been trying to tell myself that, while maybe through this experience of teaching I'll learn things I might do differently in the future, it'll be fine this time too. As one of my favorite poems attributed to Oscar Romero (I think pseudonymously) says, "No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith....No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything....This is what we are about: We plant the seeds that will one day grow." In other words, no class is going to teach these kids all they need to know about the Christian faith. That kind of learning is the project of a whole lifetime. And how much do we need to know to make a decision, anyway? What's the cutoff? It is what it is, and God is famous for working through what is.

I tried to have a discussion of fruits of the spirit with the class. We got sidetracked into talking about what actual fruits the kids did and didn't like, so maybe not the most successful discussion ever. But then in church afterward, one of the scripture readings was from John 15: "I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit." And I found myself hoping something had sunk in and the kids would make a connection. Or maybe something like that will happen five years from now. Seeds that will someday grow.

I also told the kids to pay attention to what happened during communion today, so we could talk about it next week. Turns out two of the girls in the class helped serve communion. And I thought more about how they are being shaped in our common faith in all sorts of ways that don't have to do with me teaching. Not only has the church been doing that for a lot of those kids since they were born, but it will continue doing so after they are confirmed. It will continue shaping them and introducing new ideas about God and helping them experience God in different ways. Even if this class was too short and no one paid as much attention as I wanted, even if decisions to become a willing part of this community called the church were based on nothing (which I'm not saying is the case), there is prevenient grace in that, just like in baptism.

My prayer is that the class will be, as Romero or pseudo-Romero would say, "a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest." And that remembering that prayer will save me from some headaches.

Hope to Account For

2010-03-05T16:06:00.000-08:00

If I had one of those feelings charts with the rows of variously-emoting cartoon faces, today I would circle the face marked hopeful.

It was my first full day subbing since I came down with mono, and it was a good one, and I had enough energy for it. I lined up another church interview, which means opportunities and options are continuing to open up. The snow is finally melted enough that I could walk in my little park down by the creek, where it was chilly but not cold, and where I ran into neighbors with whom I shared the good news of this week. Life is good, and I am full of hope for the future.

With the word "hope" tumbling around in my head as I walked by the creek, I thought of how 1 Peter tells us to "always be ready to give an account of the hope that is within" us (3:15).

Well, I'm ready, Peter. But then I also thought how throughout February, I would not have been so ready. Between death and breakups and heinously gratuitous snowfall and illness and the threat of impending financial ruin that accompanied those last two things, I felt very little hope in February. And if it was there, hidden somewhere, I certainly wasn't putting much effort into accounting for it.

And since, of course, the hope I'm supposed to account for really doesn't have much to do with my own health or relationship status or job prospects or the weather, that kind of makes this newfound March hope seem a little cheap. A little selfish. If I'm honest, today's hope doesn't have much directly to do with resurrection or the advent of God's kingdom or eternal life. It has to do with my luck seemingly turning from bad to good, and my desire for that trend to continue. Although I must say, being happy about the superficial things makes it much easier to feel hopeful about the holy ones. Note to self: must try to cultivate deeper, more stable hope.

Still, I suppose if pressed in February, I would have told you that I did in fact hope for better things to come. That, in addition to the support of family and friends, what got me through was knowing that after February would come March, and the snow would melt, and I would gradually feel better, and I'd start talking to senior pastors about associate appointments. Those are all still the superficial things you can't count on, of course. But at the same time, knowing things will get better sounds a little like resurrection to me.

Lunch at the Special Ed Table

2010-03-04T16:03:00.000-08:00

People always talk about how mean children can be to each other. They can. I certainly have vivid memories of the kids who forced me to change bus stops in fifth grade, and I'm sure there have been times when I made other kids' lives unnecessarily difficult too. (Though I don't think on such a continual basis...but it's funny how easy it is to forget that side of things.)

Since I've been subbing I've spent time in a number of different special ed classes, from kindergarten to high school. Working with kids who are "different," often visibly so, you might expect me to have seen my share of this childhood cruelty. But I haven't. Not at all, really.

Today I spent lunch period with an autistic boy named Ricky. He could get his lunch and eat on his own, but needed help with things like opening his ketchup packet. Other special ed students of various abilities trickled in and sat at Ricky's table, to which I assume they were all assigned. I watched a high-functioning boy across the table from me help the slightly less high-functioning boy next to him open his milk, and eagerly ask if there was anything else he could do. The rest of the kids sat and ate lunch and talked like, well, normal kids.

Of course, maybe it's easy to be accepting of difference and diversity when you're in a group set aside and defined by just that. And in a way, what a gift that is--though not a gift that most of us would probably ever register for! But I've also been in mainstream classrooms offering extra support to certain kids with special needs, and for the most part, I've seen the same thing there--their mainstream peers want to help, not to exclude or make fun or even ignore. Kids are great.

I've often compared the Kingdom of God to sitting around the lunch table at the adult day care where I used to work, seeing all the faces of people of such different ages and mental and physical abilities, and realizing that despite or because of it all, we were a family. Sometimes, in the school cafeteria or around the reading rug, I see it again.

Moving Forward

2010-03-03T15:02:00.000-08:00

It's official--the Board has recommended me for commissioning this year.

That means the powers that be have affirmed my call to and my gifts for ministry. It means this coming year I'll have a job, a real one. I'll find my own place (to live) and find my niche in a new place (geographically), near or far. It means life has finally started to move forward.

This year, for the most part, has just seemed so static. I'm back home, which there's nothing wrong with, but it's just not what you have in mind for your life when you're 26 and finished with grad school. I've worked at jobs that don't mean much to me, whether I actively hate them (Staples) or just feel like I'm not in any one place long enough to be invested or make any sort of difference (subbing). It hasn't been a bad year. It's just been a year of waiting, of feeling like I should be moving on but can't, of frustration that my gifts and passions are going to waste.

I know that there is grace in there. I know that this year has brought blessings that I never would have had if I'd moved on in the way I wanted and expected to. I wouldn't have worked at Rising Hope, or gotten to see new parts of the world, or been able to spend some time at home with my grandmother before she died, or built up my character considerably during my brief foray into retail. I know that life come July, when I start working in a church, won't always be sunshine and rainbows, and probably sometimes I will feel like nothing's going anywhere and my gifts and passions are going to waste. And I know that life isn't just the big things that happen but all of the frustrating, mundane, static, sacred days as well.

But I hope that this year since graduation will help me remember to give thanks for this coming opportunity to live my life doing something I love and feel called to. Even on the non-rainbow days. For now, I'm excited about moving forward :)

A swirling vortex

2010-02-23T08:40:00.001-08:00

I've been sick for the past few days. This makes me mad.

It makes me mad partly, of course, because it means I don't feel good, but it makes me madder because it means I can't work and I can't run. I mean, I'm not going to pretend I hate sitting in a reclining chair drinking tea and watching Gilmore Girls and What I Like About You. But when I started substitute teaching, and many times since, I calculated what I could expect to earn in an average week in, and how I could use that money. Turns out with all the various eschatologically-themed snowstorms recently, I've worked only 2.5 days in February. And then running--around Christmas I was asking advice on how to cut 10 minutes off my half marathon time. Now I'm so behind schedule on training I'm not even sure I'll be able to finish.

It forces us to slow down. I've heard people say that about being sick. I also heard people say that about the snow. And maybe it's true. In general, people in America need to slow down, even if it infuriates us to have to do so. However, I do not consider myself to be one of those people just now. I'm already living life at a crawl these days it seems. So what about when being sick just keeps you slowed down? When it makes life, in the words of Sheldon Cooper, "a swirling vortex of entropy?"

But even so, I suppose I can stand to be reminded that I'm not completely in control once in a while. I'm not completely in control of my income. I'm not in control of my training schedule. I can respond in ways that make the best of both--not spending as much, walking if I don't have a run in me, all that good stuff. And in the meantime, I suppose remembering my own lack of control over my plans is an occasion to trust God for things to be OK despite everything.

...3 Johns, Jude, and Revela-ation..

2010-02-21T13:22:00.000-08:00

I taught confirmation today, the first time I've done so on my own. I was a little nervous. Maybe a little less nervous than I would have been six months ago, since these days my livelihood pretty much depends on showing up places, having no idea what's going on, and teaching. (Or maybe, "teaching," depending on the day. But still. I don't have much experience with Christian ed, especially with youth. It seemed like a good idea to correct that now.

Looking over the book and planning yesterday, I actually got kind of into it. I decided, in the interest of Bible-familiarity promotion, they needed to learn a books of the Bible song. Maybe this was partially for me, because I never learned such a song, and I tend to fumble around a lot in the minor prophets :) So I found one on YouTube and listened to it on repeat a bunch of times. Today it played in my head during my run, except only the last part, "First Peter, Second Peter, 3 Johns, Jude, and Revela-ation." So maybe I will regret that, along with promising them a prize if they could show me they had it memorized, prompting one girl to ask if a dog was too big a prize.

Anyway, I really enjoyed the class today. They asked good questions: "Can God do anything? And if so, why doesn't he make everyone believe in him?" And, "Would God be angry if we called him Mother?" And it sort of made me think about how teaching makes you reformulate things, get down to the core of them. Because I could have totally been like, "Well, let me tell you about process theology, or the classic free will response" and they probably would have gone back to eating their donut holes. I mean, I don't want to talk down to them. I want to convey that there is a variety of answers to their questions, all faithful; I want them to think; I want my answers to have integrity, and not just be the ones that are easy to spoon-feed when we're already pressed for time; and I want to give them something, so that I've taken their question seriously. I want to express those answers in ways that are relevant without making them easy.

I'm sure I know many, many people who have struggled with these questions and are able to find good balances in their contexts. I have a ways to go. But that's one reason I'm glad I'm there. And hopefully, answering questions and putting what I (and others) think into new terms will help me clarify my beliefs as well.

"What if I'm wrong?": Some thoughts

2010-02-20T14:52:00.000-08:00

Recently the Reconciling Ministries Network group that I'm part of on Facebook posted this blog entry by Joey Heath. In it, he responded to the question, asked in a conversation he was part of, of "what if he's wrong" in his belief that homosexuality is not a sin. Heath, who is a United Methodist seminarian working toward ordination, argues that if he's wrong, it doesn't matter. We're all sinners, and salvation comes from faith, not from one's correct stance on issues.

As anyone who knows me knows, I agree fervently with Heath's starting point--that homosexuality is "part of the beloved creation and not a sin." I agree that this is a very important question to have a cogent response to, because it will be asked, and because it furthers conversation rather than hanging on to a blind insistence that there's no possible WAY we're wrong. And, of course, I agree with his conclusion--we are saved by the grace of God, not our own orthodoxy.

But! I wasn't satisfied with the Methodism of his response. So I want to try to put it in what I feel is a more Methodist framework. Heath writes, "No matter how much we seek out perfection, it will be just beyond our reach, because we have sinned and therefore fall short."

Well, often I'm pretty tempted to agree with that, and I think many denominations would (?). But when I'm (hopefully) commissioned, according the the Discipline, I'll have to answer the question, "Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?" And I will have to answer yes. With God's help, of course. So I'm uncomfortable with the statement that perfection will always be just beyond my reach. That may be true, but I'd better believe it's not.

I don't think Joey Heath and I are at odds here, I just think we need to be clear about what perfection means. Christian perfection means for Wesley--as the Discipline says--perfection in love. Christian perfection doesn't mean "an exemption either from ignorance or mistake, or infirmities or temptations" (Sermon 40, I.9). So it follows that I could be "perfect," and still hold fast to an idea or doctrine that turns out in the end to be wrong.

But if I was perfect in love--or even if I was just far, far way and working toward this little by little--I think I would try my best to include the unincluded, however I understood that. I think I would have no choice but to stand up for justice--whatever my sincere but human idea of justice might be. And if I was wrong--if I am wrong--then I have faith that, through the grace of Christ and in the words of Julian of Norwich, "all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well." And on that, Joey Heath and I agree.

Next year, I'm giving up meat

2010-02-18T16:27:00.000-08:00

Things I'm not giving up for Lent this year:

1) Sweets. I've done this a bunch before, prompted by the example of my Catholic aunts when I was a kid. I always expected to weigh 10 pounds less by Easter. It never happened. Instead my chocolate addiction was resurrected (yes, resurrected) with a vengeance each time, making it that much harder for next year.

2) Money. I've tried this before too--not buying anything unnecessary--prompted by a sermon my first year in seminary. I thought that was kind of in the true spirit of Lent, so I did it for two years, then got tired of it. Not too long ago I read A.J. Jacobs's Year of Living Biblically, where he tries to adhere to Scripture as literally as possible, and I remember thinking it would be a good Lenten practice to try to take Luke 6:30, "Give to everyone who begs from you," literally for 6 weeks. I still think that would be good. But turns out I don't have very much money these days, so maybe next year when I am rich. I know--nowhere does it say "Give to everyone who begs from you if you can comfortably afford it." But maybe that's just a good verse to generally keep in mind for now...

3) Meat. Who doesn't eat meat???

4) Facebook. It occurs to me that this would be another excellent option, probably also in the "true spirit" of Lent. I waste vast amounts of time on Facebook. Refreshing the news feed, checking if anyone liked my status, keeping tabs on the relationship status of every guy I've ever had a crush on. This is conducive neither to good stewardship of time nor to good mental health. If I gave up--or even limited--my Facebook access, I would have all sorts of time for things like prayer and meditation and learning Spanish. But then again, when your social life isn't exactly abuzz offline, Facebook does help you feel connected. So it's staying, too.

I'm thinking about these things because last year, when I started this blog as my Lenten discipline and committed to have one theological thought a day and write it down, I kind of ran out of things to talk about toward week three or four. That's crazy! If the goal is to think about my whole life in all its aspects more theologically--to see everything through the lens of faith and not just explicitly churchy things--how do you run out??

I know if I read the Bible more, I would more naturally think of life in terms of what I read. I want that for myself--for Scripture to be so much a part of me that I can't separate it from the things I experience on a day to day basis. I've been trying to be better about that for a while now. But maybe for writing I also need some focus. You know, so I could chronicle my experiences during my Facebook fast, or how I felt when I couldn't just walk past the overly-cheerful men collecting donations outside Giant (that did happen today; I was a little annoyed at how enthusiastically they greeted me, like they were personally excited to see me.) Anyway, I'm going to keep thinking, and maybe inspiration will strike!

Ashes to ashes

2010-02-17T19:05:00.000-08:00

Today being Ash Wednesday, I went to church. It was a joint service with a church nearby, it was as sparsely attended as might be expected (not everyone shares my enthusiasm for liturgical solemnity), and it was at 7:30 in the evening.

In high school, when I was first able to drive myself places, I started going to church before school on Ash Wednesday. These days it would take a lot more than repentance to get me up that early, but I liked having the ashes on my forehead all day. They showed people who I was. Specifically, they showed people that I was the kind of person who got up at ungodly hours for godly purposes. They showed people what a religious badass I was. Sort of like all the years I secretly looked forward to Lent because I got to feel hardcore explaining to people why I couldn't eat that delicious looking donut.

In college, my church had a noon service, so I went to that one. It wasn't quite as badass, I suppose, but I still got to walk around campus with a big gray smudge on my forehead for most of the day, so that was good.

I remember one of my friends in high school remarking cynically (as she often did with regard to the church) how every Ash Wednesday, people gathered and listened to Matthew 6, about fasting in secret and not letting anyone know, and promptly went and did the exact opposite by getting smeared up with ashes. And honestly, because even then I knew deep down why I had gotten up so early, I kind of agreed with her. Isn't walking around with a big smudgy cross on your face just a big, meaningless show of piety?

That's why part of me was glad our service was later this year. I got my smudgy cross and went home, watched Modern Family, wrote this, and will proceed to shower off the ashes. The outside world knows nothing of my piety, and my immortal soul is probably better off for it.

But then again, I miss those early morning ashes. Because they do help you remember that there's something different about the day. Today I barely remembered it was anything but Wednesday. I didn't have to be careful pushing my bangs back. No well-meaning stranger said, "Hey, you got a little something..." Today wasn't solemn, and I didn't feel repentant, and except for a semi-treacherous run in the street and several Facebook posts on my newsfeed reminding me that I was returning to dust, I certainly didn't think about my mortality.

And I didn't get to see someone someone else with a smudgy forehead and smile at them, knowing we shared something. I missed that too. Maybe what we share is the religious badassery of getting up early to repent, but maybe, maybe, it's something more as well. Maybe those ashes do show people whose mark we bear, and remind us to act worthy of it. Maybe.

If anyone's reading--thoughts??

Sinking in

2009-04-11T07:42:00.000-07:00

I've never really thought much about the Saturday before Easter, but I think that's kind of on purpose. Saturday is the day that nothing changes.

The first time I lost someone I really loved was when I was 14, when my Aunt Kay died. I was still in bed when Mom told me the news, and I remember rolling over and crying for a long time. But then later, standing in the shower, I remember thinking, did that really just happen? For a moment, I almost really believed it had just been a dream. And I remember later, at the funeral, when of course there was no more pretending, realizing that unlike most of the things I had cried about up to that point in my life, this wouldn't just be OK.

Saturday is the day when you wake up and realize that it wasn't just a dream. That all the bad things that happened yesterday weren't just a bad day, they were the beginning of a new reality. Saturday is when it sinks in, when you start looking ahead and saying, this person died yesterday, but today they're just dead, and tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.

For us, now, the Saturday before Easter is a day of waiting. But the first Saturday before Easter wasn't. Who knew there was anything to wait for? I think death still feels like that most of the time, even on this side of Easter. But at the same time, we're blessed to look back at Friday and Saturday from the other side. We at least have that idea, however faint and far away, that even when death is at its most real, it still isn't over.

Thoughts for Good Friday

2009-04-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

Today is Good Friday, and I wanted some good, old-fashioned, hardcore, high-church solemnity. So, I went to Catholic church. Not even just Catholic church, but the cathedral of the diocese of Atlanta.

The solemnity was somewhat broken up by the toddler in the pew in front of me happily shrieking and touching everything within an arm's-length radius, but it had all the necessary parts: the canted psalms, the good ten minutes of standing and kneeling, the veneration of the cross (that was a little awkward for me, I won't lie), the homily about our own betrayal of Jesus. I like some guilt and solemnity now and then. Clearly not everyone shares my opinion, or Joel Osteen would be poor. But, at least judging from today's Facebook statuses, a lot of people do. What is it about the guilt and darkness that draws us?

Last year at this time, I was having a horrible semester for a combination of a lot of little reasons. I needed Lent then. In fact, I wasn't sure I was so keen on Easter. It didn't feel like Easter. If I could have stayed in the darkness of Good Friday for a little longer and kept Easter as the light on the horizon, I might have. I like the days of guilt and darkness and solemnity because often they acknowledge liturgically what is already present. They validate our brokenness. They make it holy.

This semester has been a good one. It's had its moments to be sure, but on the whole, much closer to Easter than Good Friday. Still, the brokenness is never very far away. Even if it feels like Easter already, it's good to remember what we've been through. Because there will come a time again when it won't feel like Easter, and then we will have rehearsed this. We'll know that death and life come very close together.

The bulletin made a note at the end that there would be no concluding rites after communion. The church would remain in prayer during the Triduum. I liked it. It was like a way of saying, we're not going to conclude this, because it's not over yet. We've spent time in solemnity and we leave in silence, but it's not over yet. We've acknowledged our brokenness like we want and need to, but it's not over yet. We wait still for the redemption and newness of Easter. But it's not over till we get there.

The old, old story, part 2

2009-04-10T08:31:00.000-07:00

There was a kind of cool moment at the Maundy Thursday service at Trinity last night. Kathy talked a little about how we usually think of the Last Supper--something very somber--compared to what it probably was, a family laughing and enjoying each other's company before things changed completely. And also, she said, they probably weren't all on one side of the table, a la da Vinci.

For communion, usually we go up to the altar in shifts, but the service was small enough that everyone could just squeeze around the altar rail at once. It's a mostly straight altar rail that spans the front of the sanctuary, rather than one that goes around a sort of island like at home at Epiphany. And I looked down the row from one end and saw a wave of people tearing bread, dipping, chewing, and standing, one after another, and I thought, we're all on the same side of the table.

There's nothing profoundly theological about that. As Kathy said, that da Vinci depiction is hardly the way the Last Supper actually went down. But at the same time, since that is such a dominant image, it seemed for just an instant like we were making up that image. Like we were writing ourselves into the story.

Like I said last time, I think that's a big part of what Holy Week is all about. That's why we wave palms and march down Washington Street, it's why we have communion, it's why we wash feet (for those who unlike me don't intentionally skip chapel on the day that's scheduled), why we strip the church and watch it fall into shadows as candles are extinguished one by one. We act out this story because it makes us who we are.

After church a group of us met for dinner at Taco Mac, and people just kept coming, and we had to smush tables together and there were long rows of people on either side. And we laughed and enjoyed each other's company. And we all know that the time for this is winding down. So in a less intentional, less liturgical way, we acted out the story again. Because it's our story. It makes us who we are--inside church and out.

The old, old story

2009-04-06T07:49:00.000-07:00

I love Holy Week. All of it, from babies waddling down the church aisle with palm branches bigger than they are, to the bleakness of Good Friday, to the joy of Easter. I love the fact that there are extra church services. I love taking time to debate the christological implications of Jesus Christ Superstar with friends. I'm just nerdy that way.

I think the reason I like Holy Week so much is partly the story it tells, but only partly. This is the high point of the Christian year, and there's a lot of important stuff going on, stuff without which we might not have our faith tradition as we know it. There's a reason the evangelists spend a disproportionate amount of time on the Passion compared to the rest of Jesus' life. This is the climax of the story.

But I like Holy Week not just because of what the story is. I like it because I think this week, we do an especially good job telling it. That depends, of course, on people listening and participating. But for those who don't just go from Palm Sunday to Easter, who stick around for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, it's like we really get a chance to go through these last days with Jesus. We get to experience the highs and lows, the joy and the sorrow and the doubt and the unfortunate fickleness that come along with following Jesus. Those extra church services all have a purpose, they all do something different.

It's the story that makes us who we are, as a c0mmunity across the world and ages. The whole story, from the first day of Advent to Christ the King (or insert your own more inclusive appellation) Sunday. But during the liturgical drama of this week it's easier to remember it's a story, and that reminds us who we are. And it reminds us that we're still part of a story, one that keeps unfolding.

Signs and wonders from Iowa

2009-04-03T12:53:00.000-07:00

I know many Christians are writing blog entries today that are the exact opposite of mine, but I'm celebrating the Iowa Supreme Court's decision that the gay marriage ban is unconstitutional.

It's in actions like this that we experience the "already and the not yet" that we throw around so much in seminary. We don't yet live in a society or world where all of God's beloved children are treated as such--as fully human in all the beautiful diversity that entails. The kingdom is not yet. But every once in a while, like today, a sign of that future breaks through. And that is a cause for praise and celebration now. That is already.

But if only it was the church pointing to the kingdom instead of the state. If only the Body of Christ were in the forefront of this movement toward justice, which I truly believe is God's movement--though many will disagree--instead of so often fighting it. I'm thankful that God works despite us as well as through us. And I pray that as we move more and more from what's already to what's not yet, the church can be more and more a part of this work.

For the remembering of me

2009-03-27T11:50:00.000-07:00

Today I made good decisions (maybe) by going to Friday Eucharist instead of finishing my Greek homework. Dr. Saliers was presiding, which meant everything in the service was extra poetic. He threw something into the liturgy about "memory on the tails of the stars" or something. Very Dr. Saliers.

When he got to the words of institution, instead of "Do this in remembrance of me," which of course is ingrained in everyone's mind who has ever been to church on a regular basis, he said "Do this for the remembering of me." And while I was sort of sitting there floating along with his liturgy, I heard that and went, damn! I LOVE IT! It's amazing how such a small, almost semantic change of wording can make such a big difference (to me, anyway). It's close enough that the Greek could probably encompass either or both equally. But the first one, the one we always say, sounds like we do the Eucharist because we remember Jesus, because we're supposed to. And the second one sounds like we do it in order to remember Jesus, or to keep remembering him.

I wrote a paper for New Testament last year about how Jesus' institution of the Lord's Supper gave the disciples (and the early Christian communities who the Gospels were written for) a way to keep acting out the Kingdom in Jesus' absence. It's a way to be, for just a fleeting moment, the community we're meant to be, in the hope that as we practice this more and more, that moment will be less and less fleeting. It's a way that God reminds us who we are as the Body of Christ.

The truth is that we don't always remember Jesus, not like we should. We remember that he lived and that he died and that we're supposed to do what he would have done, but we don't often remember in practice who Jesus is and how we participate in that. That's why I love communion. Because we do it for the remembering of him, and the remembering of the Kingdom he embodies and leads us to.

Neighborhood watch

2009-03-25T17:01:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm going to exegete neighborhood watch signs. That's right.

I pass neighborhood watch signs on my way to and from school every day, though I don't usually take much notice, because after all, they are neighborhood watch signs. But for whatever reason I noticed one yesterday. It had a nice picture of some houses and said something like "watching out for each other" or something.

I remember getting to ride around the neighborhood with Dad when I was little and he had neighborhood watch. It was fun because I wanted to catch people. It was like being a detective. The neighborhood watch signs in our neighborhood, as I recall, had a big eye on them.

So I noticed the nice houses and slogan on this sign in Druid Hills and thought about how it was a different conception about what neighborhood watch was supposed to be. Not a bad-guy-catching adventure symbolized by a big scary we're-watching-you eye, but a chance to take care of the people you live with in a small way.

Probably neighborhood watch in Druid Hills isn't any different than neighborhood watch in our little corner of Vienna. I bet kids still ride along hoping to catch the bad guys. But I like the shift in meaning. Sometimes nicer language can just serve to mask a lack of real change, but I believe the language and symbols we use to describe things really can and do affect how we think about them. Which, of course, applies to God, too--especially when it comes to inclusive language and masculine/feminine imagery, but really in any set of symbols we use to conjure up an image of the divine. And which applies to other people--whether, for example, we consider them "sinners" or "children of God." (That was in something I was reading recently too...She Who Is?)

So that's why God is like a neighborhood watch sign. You know you wish you had thought of it first.

Bible Voice

2009-03-22T09:32:00.001-07:00

I thoroughly enjoyed the Old Testament reading from the lectionary today. It wasn't one I remembered. It was from Numbers, and basically the Israelites are whining in the desert about how their food isn't tasty and God gets mad and sends snakes to bite them and they die. That is an Old Testament reading, right there. Of course, that isn't the end of the story--Moses intercedes and God gives Moses a bronze serpent to hold up for people to look at and be healed--but that part was less entertaining.

When I was younger I went through a phase of trying to read the whole Bible. It lasted through the New Testament (which I read first) and then about to the second half of Exodus. I did NOT find the Bible entertaining. That is partially because the second half of Exodus is simply not entertaining. But it's also partially because in my head, I read with this very serious and reverent voice, and Bible Voice doesn't lend itself to entertainment. The Bible and I started getting along a lot better when I realized I was allowed to laugh at it.

Being entertained doesn't always make for a good message though, and that's why I'm glad Kathy preached on the Numbers passage today. If you just leave it at the reading, without saying anything more, you might get a chuckle, but you're left with a kind of pissy God who sends snakes to bite people. Kathy talked about how we need those snakes sometimes, when we have the bronze serpent to heal us, so we don't forget what we've been through, so we don't get complacent. Stories like this one can speak to us. But we have to let go of Bible Voice and actually enjoy them, I think, to more fully understand how.

God definitely doesn't choose you

2009-03-21T21:00:00.000-07:00

I was working on my next sermon for preaching today, so I think I'm going to cheat and process some ideas here. This is more immediately necessary than I thought, since I thought I was preaching Friday and then magically decided to look at the schedule and realized it was actually Wednesday...

My text is the story of the anointing of David from 1 Samuel, the one where Samuel has all of Jesse's sons line up and none of them are meant to be king until David, who Jesse has to send for specially, because it didn't even occur to anyone that he should be there. I was a little frustrated at first because the message seems pretty clear--God picking the underdog and all that--so what could I say that was new? As I told Lauren, I believe that Scripture is rich enough to say more than one thing, but I was wary of working too hard to find something new at the expense of what the message was actually supposed to be.

I was struck, though, by a few things--first of all, the fact that Samuel never tells Jesse or his sons what is going on. Basically he invites them to a sacrifice and then stands there appraising their chosenness or lack thereof, which personally would make me a little nervous. Second, as far as David's brothers are concerned, the verdict is just harsh. Nope, God doesn't choose you. Ouch.

It reminded me of a prayer I read in one of the ordination workbooks, which included the line "Let me be used by you, or laid aside by you." I thought that line was powerful even at the time. We all want to find our places in God's plan--but what if there is none? Are we willing to accept that God's plan for the world is bigger than us? I thought also of Henri Nouwen, who went from being a Harvard professor to working with mentally disabled people and wrote about giving up the temptation to be relevant.

I do believe that God calls each person. But maybe not all the time, and maybe not for everything. That's a humbling thought for someone trying to figure out where her life is going from here. But I guess the good news is that realizing what we're not chosen for, painful as that may be, gets us that much closer to realizing what we are.

Slacking

2009-03-20T19:11:00.000-07:00

It's about halfway through Lent now, and I feel myself beginning to slack on this attempt at cultivating discipline. It's not that it's hard to come up with theological thoughts, but it is hard to come up with new ones.

On the other hand, I like the fact that writing these posts have made me intentionally look at my life a little differently. Thinking about ordinary events in theological terms gives life a sense of the sacred. Just a little bit. When you remember.

I remember Dr. Matthews last semester talking about how John Wesley quoted scripture so prolifically in his sermons. He said Wesley just lived in the world of scripture. He was so familiar with it that he couldn't help but talk about things in those terms. I'd like to be like that. Maybe if I lived a little more in the world of scripture I wouldn't run out of thoughts so easily!

Meanwhile, maybe new thoughts are overrated. Maybe when you're not feeling particularly insightful, it's enough just to be thankful for little things. Like the first day of spring. Like friends who mysteriously disappear from class for a long period of time and return with a latte for you. Like the guy Eric sent me an article about, who feeds homeless people every day with his own money and whatever donations he gets. When there are things to be thankful for, life is sacred.

Theological snippet

2009-03-18T18:58:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago I read a news article about how the Vatican had conducted a confession booth survey and determined that men and women sin differently. It seems, based on people's confessions, that the number one sin for men is (shocker) lust, while the number one sin for women is pride. I dismissed the survey as blaringly flawed. What it showed us, I thought, is not that men and women sin differently, but that we've been culturally and religiously conditioned to think differently about what our own sins are.

I'm familiar with the common criticism from feminist and liberation theology of the idea that pride is the fundamental sin. Dorothee Soelle, among others, suggests that while for men pride may indeed be the fundamental sin, for women it is not pride but self-denial. I don't quite buy this, both because I think it's kind of presumptuous to name one blanket "fundamental sin," and because I personally know both men and women who need a reality check out of both of those places. But I have to admit the Vatican study made me reconsider. Why is it that women are more likely to view themselves as prideful? Because we're told to think and expect less of ourselves?

This came to mind because of a snippet of my preaching reading for tomorrow that caught my attention. It was an article on Hispanic preaching by Justo Gonzalez, and writing from a community on the periphery of American society, he too has an issue with this hangup on pride. He goes back to Genesis. People always say that Adam and Eve ate the apple to try to be like God--but as we know from the beginning of the story, Adam and Eve were already like God! Their sin, Gonzalez says, is that they forgot.

As much as we can name one fundamental sin, I think this is eloquently stated. After all, forgetting we are like God can manifest itself in so many ways. It can be self-denial, thinking we're not good enough without that bite of the apple. Or it can look prideful, as if we define ourselves, forgetting that there is someone's image who we have been created in. And I think it can look like both at the same time, in men and women and people from everywhere around the world. So...there's someone else's theological nugget of wisdom to think about for the day! :)

Ordinary time

2009-03-16T18:07:00.000-07:00

Spring break officially ended tonight at 6:30 when I had to go to Polity and take a midterm. I was sad to see it go. This semester got off to a very slow start, one in which easy two-page reflection papers seemed like the biggest hurdles ever. But I got into it. Things started flowing a little more smoothly. And now, I'm back to square one. I don't feel like I should have to do anything.

If I described my life in liturgical seasons (and, perhaps the question is, why would I not describe my life in liturgical seasons??) maybe this would be Advent. It's a period of waiting for something (theoretically) better to come, of preparing for the new things that life will hold come May. Whatever those things are!

But it doesn't feel like Advent. In Advent, you know you're moving toward Christmas, and I don't know what I'm moving toward right now. I guess I need to find some eschatological hope! Instead, I feel more like I'm caught in the in-between. I want to be done, but I don't want to leave this place I love. I wish graduation would hurry itself up and I wish the rest of the semester would last forever. Meanwhile, it's back to plodding slowly through assignments. Maybe instead of Advent, I'm in Ordinary Time. The in-between of liturgical seasons. Not Christmas, not Easter, not moving immediately toward anything, just sort of there. But that's OK. There's a time for that. And there's hope in the future, but also a lot of stuff to live and love in the meantime.

Thin Mints and yellow ribbons

2009-03-15T13:26:00.000-07:00

Today and yesterday I've been driving around hunting down Girl Scout cookies. This proved to be more of an adventure than I realized. First they weren't at the Kroger where they were supposed to be, then at the next Kroger they didn't take checks, and when I came back with cash they were out of Thin Mints and sent me back to the first Kroger. This wild goose chase for Thin Mints was a little frustrating, but I was getting them to send to Jen, one of my good friends from high school who's in the army in Afghanistan now. So my scavenger hunt made me feel kind of patriotic, too.

That was different. I've never really been a support-the-troops, magnetic-yellow-ribbon-on-car kind of girl. I'm mostly a pacifist. And no, I won't try to defend that on political grounds; all I mean is that military activity makes me morally uncomfortable. That doesn't make me hesitant to send cookies to a friend overseas or anything, but the cookie hunting has made me think about war and military and all that good stuff over the past few days.

Jen seems happy. Her last email talked about how the food in the chow hall was really good, and how her job was going to include buying donkeys and chickens from the locals. I can't imagine being happy doing what she does. But I'm glad she is. If I'm honest, I know I can also find moral ambiguity in my own sense of call--like my decision to be ordained into a church that doesn't support the full inclusion of homosexuals, a moral stance I disagree with. I guess it all goes to show how different our callings are and how we try our best to fulfill them in an imperfect world.

Giving to freaking Caesar

2009-03-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

I don't normally consider myself a dumb person. I mean, I have my moments, to be sure. But generally I feel like I fall on the more intelligent side of the spectrum. This is why tax time is humbling. Because the IRS attempts to prove every year that I am just soooooo wrong.

Last year I cried doing taxes because both Virginia and Georgia claimed they needed my money and I couldn't figure out who needed what. This year it's even worse, because I've outgrown the 1040EZ form, so now I have a form with a lot more lines and a lot more terms that mean absolutely nothing to me. Even the instructions in the booklet don't make sense. In fact, I tried to look up instructions for line 41 because I was confused, and they didn't even have instructions for line 41. It was just supposed to be that self-explanatory. Clergy are legally self employed, so when I get a church, forget it. I'm getting people.

I heard Dave preach a sermon early last year about how grace wasn't complicated like taxes. It's come to mind again over the past few days. And all I have to say is amen to that. Here's to room in the Kingdom for the dumb people.

Slightly ajar

2009-03-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

More than once in the past few weeks I've talked to a friend who doesn't quite have a post-graduation career lined up yet and assured them that something would turn up. "Look at me!" I say bracingly. "I don't have a job yet, and I'm not worried!"

And for the most part, I'm really not. I'm applying to places, talking to a lot of different people about a lot of different opportunities, seeing what doors God opens, and walking through them. If so far the most promising doors seem to only be slightly ajar, that's OK. It's still early to expect to be hired for a position starting in May or June. Honestly, I kind of like the feeling of having my future open in front of me. There are so many possibilities. And it's kind of fun and even a little exhilarating to feel like my life isn't completely in my hands--like even though it's my job to search out opportunities, God's the one who's going to hook me up. And whatever it is, it'll be good.

But recently--like I knew it would--it's been getting a little harder to hold onto that feeling. Like when I look at job listings and, instead of having a hearty laugh at my lack of qualifications like I did in December, think, "That sounds exactly like the last six jobs that didn't contact me." Or when my phone interview with the only job to respond thus far ended with a simple "Thanks for your time. Have a good afternoon." (Isn't it common courtesy to at least say, "Um, yeah, we're totally going to talk and get back to you"?)

So I'm starting to have conversations with friends who tell me, "Don't worry, Allie. Something will turn up." And they're right. As long as I keep looking, God will open whatever doors I need to respond to whatever it is I'm called to in the immediate future (which might be as vague as it sounds!) It's good to have a community that makes you listen to your own advice and your own beliefs. Sometimes it sounds better coming from them.

Seagull, come back!

2009-03-12T06:36:00.000-07:00

Yesterday Kim and I sat on the beach enjoying the sunniest day yet this week. I am paying for that today, by the way, and will be reapplying aloe shortly. But it was beautiful. We both brought reading to do--Gregory and Howard Thurman--but instead, we spent most of our time watching the group of absolutely adorable kids set up in front of us. There were two little girls in matching tankinis and colorful plastic sunglasses, and two little boys who couldn't quite walk yet digging in the sand wearing floppy hats.

Kids are fun to watch because they're just so excited about everything. They see and value parts of God's world that the rest of us take for granted. Like the little girl with her small pink pail shouting, "I have SHELLS in my bucket!" And was it her or her sister stumbling after a seagull yelling, "Seagull, come back! Come back, seagull!" Grown ups all hate seagulls, like the the old guy chasing them away shouting "There's no such thing as a free lunch!" But for kids there is something inexlicably magical about these birds. A few days before we'd even sat for a while watching a small baby slowly crawl after a completely unconcerned seagull for a very long time.

I love that kids love seagulls just because they're there. I love that they find so much excitement in a pink pail full of broken shells. I love how they remind me to see parts of creation that I don't, even the parts of creation that poop on you and try to steal your sandwich.

photo courtesy of Lauren :)

Drama, drama, drama

2009-03-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

So I don't like patristic theology. Or at least, Gregory of Nazianzus has not, since first year, begun to suddenly inspire me. I don't mind reading him on the beach, but I'm looking forward to moving on with my foray into understanding the Trinity.

But what I did like about this book of his I'm reading is the introduction. It's pretty much all about what a drama queen Gregory was--always complaining about how sick he was, whining about his theological opponents more than necessary, always the victim. You know it has to be bad if the translator says that. This is a guy whose life is devoted to reading and re-communicating this stuff. His descriptions of Gregory made me laugh out loud.

It shouldn't have been a surprise when, sometime after reading the introduction, I flipped back to the cover and read the author's name: St. Gregory of Nazianzus. But it suddenly clicked that this whiny drama queen was a saint. The thought appealed to me for how it seems to lower the qualifications for sainthood. Sometimes, when you know the future leaders of the church as people, it's hard to think of them (of us) with all their drama and issues as saints. And sometimes, when you know the future leaders of the church as people, they impress you so much that you think you'll never be as good as them. But Gregory the whiny drama queen got to be a saint. He got to be a part of making the church what it was. And so do we. And all we can do is know that God works through and with the drama, just like God has always done.

Beach sabbath

2009-03-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

I've never really been the type to take Spring Break to sit and rest. Over the past six years, the only time I haven't gone on some sort of mission trip was the year I had to visit seminaries and figure out my future. So the fact that I am presently sitting by a sunny window in a beach condo and looking forward to another day by the water and evening in a hot tub feels kind of foreign to me. In a good way. In a Sabbath kind of way.

I'm not trying to claim that I have the most stressful life ever, especially this semester. But I've been in higher education for seven years now and, as much as I love it, burnout is setting in. There's something to be said for just getting away. It lets me reconnect. I can sit on the beach reading patristic theology and feel like I'm trying to understand God better by choice, instead of just being pressured to finish.

Yesterday evening Kim and Lauren and I drove around the island, from the condo to dinner, and to the house with the hot tub, and back. It was dark and completely peaceful, these windy roads under canopies of Spanish moss. Kim found some old CDs with redone traditional hymns and we all sang along as we drove. There was something about the night, the quiet, the being with good friends that made the words seem especially true. That's what Sabbath does, I think. It gives you time to remember what is especially true.

Head, meet desk

2009-03-07T13:38:00.001-08:00

For spring break this year, I've decided to become a Trinitarian.

I am, of course, already a Trinitarian. My faith and theology wouldn't be complete without Father, Son and Spirit (to use non-inclusive but best-metaphor-available language.) But how the whole thing works has always been a little hazy to me. In Systematic Theology last year, I remember reading in one of our books one way we might look at the Trinity--that God is one "person" who we experience in three main and semi-distinct ways. "Oh!" I thought. "That is excellent. I pick that one." Then I read in the next line that that was widely considered to be heresy. Oops. Apparently the idea that God is three persons in Godself is pretty important.

Some people might say that there's no reason to try to convince myself of what other people say or believe. But that's not really what I'm trying to do. I think that what the community of faith over time has affirmed is important to who we are, even if we choose to look at things differently due to our own experiences. So I want to know what people say, and what makes something make sense to them that doesn't always make sense to me. It's the whole "faith seeking understanding" thing...

The reason I've been thinking about this lately is because the other day, Paige said she liked CT501, and especially the parts where we read the church fathers talking about things like the Trinity. That part of CT501 made me want to bang my head on a desk. It seemed to me like a bunch of guys claiming to know things they actually didn't. The same can be said about the human-divine nature of Jesus. But the realization that somebody actually liked that got me thinking. And I know Lauren got into the whole Trinity thing through a few classes last year. So I got three books from her--Moltmann, Gregory of Naz, and She Who Is by Elizabeth Johnson, a feminist Trinitarian. And by golly, my faith is going to spend the next week seeking some understanding. I'll let you know how that goes.

Even though I'm right...

2009-03-06T13:18:00.000-08:00

Today I sat in my preaching class and heard what I thought was a really great lecture. Mostly I sit in preaching thinking things like, "Why did I take an 8 am class? Oh yeah, I have to graduate" and "that person's coffee smells good" and "I wonder if it's time for my chocolate chip Muffie." But today I thought, hey, this is a really great lecture. It was about preaching the Old Testament. Especially, it was about finding a balance between the fact that the Old Testament contains the fullness of God's revelation on its own, and the fact that for Christians Jesus is God's definitive revelation of Godself. Dr. O'Day didn't have answers so much as she gave us some really good ways to think about the issues. That was what I thought. I was inspired.

Dave was not inspired. Dave sat next to me muttering things like "...bordering on Arianism." We got into a few short whispered verbal scuffles during the lecture. So at the end I said, "Dave, I just wanted to say that I thought that was a really great lecture." And he said, "Hey, I affirm you in that. I've definitely heard lectures before that I thought were great and other people thought were the worst lectures ever." Something we could agree on.

We all want people to appreciate the things we appreciate. But it's also kind of beautiful--not to mention an important lesson for preaching--that God speaks to us in different ways. Things that are meaningless to some people inspire others, and some things are guaranteed to be neither a complete success nor a complete failure as long as Dave and I are both listening :) The important thing is that in the end, God speaks to everyone--and that's what revelation's all about, right?

Also, just because it's awesome, found on Dr. Blevins's office door: http://stillsearching.wordpress.com/2009/02/27/are-you-a-christian-hipster/

One body

2009-03-05T11:49:00.000-08:00

There's a lot to be thankful for today. The weather turned unexpectedly beautiful, it's Taco Mac Thursday, there is a cake in my oven, and a Greek midterm is the only thing that stands between me and spring break less than 24 hours away.

And I was thankful to get to go to the international student worship service today. It's the first regular Tuesday/Thursday chapel service I've been to all semester, since I'm usually at work then. The chapel was full, and in a very colorful way. Candler's such a diverse place, but you can't always just look around and see that like you could today. And it was a chance to recognize the real gifts that international students bring to the community, gifts that aren't always in the spotlight.

Obviously a three-paragraph blog entry isn't the place to go into the reasons why Candler's diversity doesn't always permeate our experience or why certain people's gifts haven't more often been in the spotlight. So though that's a worthy discussion topic, I'm not trying to lead it here today. All I want to say is that I was thankful for the chance today to come together and celebrate as one more complete, more representative body of Christ, and that I'm thankful for that chance whenever it arises.

Liturgical Silence

2009-03-04T19:06:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's all you've got. Amen.

Inspiration...go!

2009-03-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

Today, my thoughts revolve around one thing: harlotry. Well, harlotry and spring break, but harlotry is the more immediate of the two. I'm writing an exegesis of Jeremiah 3 which, over the last few days, has proven harder than I thought.

Don't get me wrong. I love sitting and working with a text in the nerdiest possible way. I'd like to do it for a living. Because it's so exciting when you can see something new in it, something that changes the tenor of the whole thing. In one of my classes first year we read something that said to preach, you first have to be astounded by the text. I love finding the part of each text that astounds me.

But I'm not astounded by Jeremiah 3. I wrenched out a thesis. It's basically taking part of another guy's thesis and nuancing it a bit to fit my passage. He took pieces of other people's scholarship and nuanced it a bit to fit his passage. Sometimes it feels like the pressure to write sucks the joy out of the discovery. But on the other hand, I love that theology is a conversation, even one of nuances. And maybe at some point I'll come back to this text and it will astound me. Maybe even later tonight, after a few too many lattes.

I'll be the vegetarian at the pot luck

2009-03-02T18:05:00.000-08:00

Something caught my attention in my UMC Polity class this evening. (Yes! Something caught my attention in Polity, and it wasn't just Facebook on Meg's computer next to me!)

Dr. Frank was talking about how we can still see vestiges of historical understandings of Methodist ministry in the Book of Discipline. Of course I can't find what I'm looking for in the Discipline right now, but there was an old term still in there along the lines of "traveling ministry" or "covenant of traveling ministers." What a great way to look at itineracy.

I've done my share of grumbling about the itineracy system, especially since I decided to be ordained into it. It means, technically, that my bishop can appoint me anywhere in the Virginia Conference, and I have to go. And it means, I am convinced, that instead of being assigned to a nice urban church with a good homeless ministry, I will almost certainly be moving to a three-point charge two miles from West Virginia. That scares me. Especially the thought of announcing I'm a vegetarian at the first church pot luck. ("A what?")

But I've always loved to travel, and when you talk about itineracy as a ministry of travel, I'm in. As I've learned from being completely lost (literally and metaphorically) in places like Seoul and Madurai, you learn to rely a lot on God when you travel. You learn you're not as independent as you think you are, but you're also not as alone. You learn to be open to things and people you wouldn't be open to at home. Even just across the border from West Virginia.

There's something exciting about being completely not in control of your own future. Of course, I'm ignoring for now the politics and seniority that inevitably make their way into the appointment process. David assures me that God is present in the process, and David knows everything. So ministry of travel, I'm ready for you. At least, in a year or so. :)

Thoughts from this side of the window

2009-03-01T13:20:00.000-08:00

Like pretty much everyone in Atlanta, I'm amazed by the snow today. I would be even more amazed if I had had a scraper when I was trying to leave church. Turns out a closed umbrella (still on the floor of my car, btw) is a surprisingly ineffective alternative.

There were more homeless (or apparently homeless) people in church than usual. A few wandered in halfway through the service, looking wet. During fellowship time I talked to a few of them; we chatted about the unusual weather, mutually wished each other good days and weeks. And I felt a little guilty--because where would they go when church was over?

When it's rainy or cold, we often remember people with nowhere to go. (Maybe not as often as we should.) But even people who can escape the elements don't usually get excited about downpours or potential frostbite. At least we're all agreed on that. But snow is beautiful and exciting. Snow makes people gather by the window in the kitchen instead of passing the peace. Only some people, though.

I'm glad my church was a place where people on the streets could spend an hour warm and dry. I'm glad Trinity is the kind of community that welcomes them. I'm glad people could come in and find a word of peace, coffee and a donut, a place for a nap, whatever they needed. And I know it's not as easy as just saying I wish the church could give them that for longer. But I wish it could.

Moving along at a slow waddle

2009-02-28T14:12:00.000-08:00

As miserable as they sound to a lot of people, I've always enjoyed my weekend long runs. They're hard, of course, but I like the time to myself and the scenery of Stone Mountain and the sense of accomplishment when I'm done. This is the case almost every long run day. But not today.

Today's run killed me, brought me back to life, and killed me again. It was bad. It was bad from the start. Two and a half miles in I was running up this hill and a truck came up behind me and I thought, if that thing ran over me right now, I would probably not feel different. I was supposed to do 3 7-mile loops around the mountain. By the third, my "run" had pretty much become a slow waddle. And then I started walking up every hill. And then I just walked the last three miles. I've never had to do that before. I felt defeated.

So I came home and read some Ecclesiastes. As evidenced by my blog title, it's one of my favorite books (ever since Dr. Strawn's class first year.) Ecclesiastes is, in a way, about accepting our limitations. For Ecclesiastes that means death and the apparent lack of ultimate meaning in life. It's only when we stop trying to find or create things that last that we can simply eat, drink, and enjoy our toil--because that's God's gift to us.

My athletic limitations are probably a superficial parallel. After all, if I were Ecclesiastes, I would have run this marathon, won it handily, and still pronounced everything vanity in the face of death. But hey, we all have to accept less significant limitations every day. Accepting that I couldn't finish the run I planned today means that instead of dwelling on it I can be thankful for the fact that I could run, walk, and waddle around that mountain for 21 miles. And I am thankful for that. A few months ago it would have been unthinkable.

I'm not giving up on the marathon training. Come March 29 I am going to run that bad boy. But for today, I accept defeat with a grudging smile and give thanks for what God has given me the physical strength to do on this particular day of my vain life.

This is the weather, with which I am not pleased

2009-02-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

It's raining today. This annoys me. It annoys me first of all because I own two umbrellas, and I know where both of them are (on the floor of my car), and I knew it was going to rain today, and I did not manage to bring one to school. It annoys me because I always go to Panera between Friday morning classes for coffee and a chocolate chip Muffie, and I had to walk through the rain to get there. And it annoys me because I need to run later. I really want to love running in the rain. But last time I did water got in my contact and it rolled back in my eye and I ran half a mile with one eye open and one eye closed. I don't love running in the rain.

This semester I've started going to the Friday midday Eucharist service in chapel, and today the Gospel reading was the baptism of Jesus. I didn't think much of it. Then during the prayers of the people I caught one line between zoning in and out: "Pour out your gift of water on all creation." And I thought, HEY! God IS pouring out God's gift of water on all creation! Rain is like BAPTISM!"

Now, I know I am hardly the first person to connect rain to baptism. The Eucharist liturgy even mentioned the flood. But sometimes we need reminders, and I was reminded. So I sat there in the dry chapel feeling good about myself for realizing this and thinking about how my walk home after Greek would be like a mile-long affirmation of my baptism. I felt good about this all the way up until I had to leave the chapel to go to the theology building for Greek, and my thoughts changed from "Remember your baptism and be thankful" to "Oh, why, God, why?"

On the walk home I really tried to remember my baptism and be thankful. But it was cold. And my hair was getting frizzy. But then I thought about how babies cry when they get baptized. They don't like it, either. But that water is still a symbol of God's commitment to them. And I guess that's true with rain. On my walk home I made peace with the fact that God's grace doesn't depend on whether I'm thankful for it.

Then halfway home some people I know only a little stopped and made me in their car so they could drive me the rest of the way. Sometimes, grace is easy to be thankful for.

Now I can still have Splenda

2009-02-26T13:17:00.000-08:00

Welcome to my Lent blog.

For those of you who don't know Hebrew, the title means "vanity of vanities," from Ecclesiastes. I named my blog that because that's probably what it's going to be.

When I got certified by my DCOM this January, the issue inevitably came up that I have no devotional life to speak of. Someone on the committee asked me a question about Wesleyan spiritual discipline and I kind of sat there awkwardly for a few minutes, hearing "Bueller? Bueller?" in my head. Then I gave a theological rockstar answer along the lines of "I don't really have any spiritual disciplines, but I really want to start." Another committe member said I sounded like the married couples he counsels who really mean to start going on dates sometime. Oh, snap.

So as much as doing something of the devotional variety shouldn't actually be an exclusively Lenten practice, it's a start. Here's my goal: have one theological thought a day, and write it down. That's all.

I was going to give up Splenda for Lent. Seriously, that was my plan for a long time. It was going to be like the opposite of giving up sweets in hope of being really, really skinny by Easter. (I've done that one a bunch, too...turns out it doesn't work if you just eat tortilla chips instead.) See, I use Splenda (and related brands of fake sugar) like it's my job. Soda, coffee, yogurt...I love Splenda because it's like cheap grace. Eat all you want, don't worry about the consequences.

The thought was, giving up Splenda would make me think harder about what I actually put in my body. Especially since I got back from India this summer I've been more and more convinced that there's just no reason to eat all the crap we eat here when people have so little in other places. Except then I realized that training for this marathon means I'm already thinking about my body pretty much all the time anyway. Adding a Lenten practice to make me do that more is probably just bordering on having issues.

Also, I didn't want Splenda to go out of business in These Troubled Economic Times.

Anyway, my lack of a devotional life is probably a bigger peril to my immortal soul right now than my consumption of sugar derivatives.

So if anyone is actually reading this, enjoy my attempt at a combination of spiritual discipline and public theology. And if not, well...hakkol hebel.