What's the Point of Balancing on a 4-inch Beam?

This is the question my brother asked in a recent Twitter and Blog Entry. I started to leave a comment on his blog just now, responding to his entry, but decided my comment was getting too long. So I figured I'd post it here instead. I invite you to read his entry first: Board Balancer.

I don't really have a clear articulation about the relationship between art and sports, but I do think there is one. And I'm not sure that "producing" a "product" of some kind is necessarily the dividing line. There are too many arts where nothing remains after it is performed.

I'm aware, in particular, of the sand mandala in the Buddhist tradition in which an artist creates a most beautiful work of art with sand--and then destroys it.

The thing is, I really do relate to Cyen's rant--what's it all for, basically? But I feel really hesitant to go with it all the way. Maybe especially because he mentions an Olympic sport which is different in my opinion from professional sports (a bloated business for sure!).

But I see the Olympics and gymnastics in particular, say, as a celebration of what the human body is capable of doing. More than that, though, it's also a celebration of the human imagination caught up with the human body. A gymnast on the balance beam doesn't merely stand on a four-inch beam, but she also bends, and leaps, and flips, and gracefully traverses that beam in every way she can imagine.

Most people trudge through life never imagining anything can be different than it already is. But a gymnast takes the same human body and puts it in astounding positions on the thinnest slip of wood.

That makes me want to ask: what else is possible?

Back in the 80s, Joseph Campbell urged folks to follow their bliss. I imagine, for whatever reason, that a gymnast's bliss is balancing on a four-inch beam. It's not my bliss, but I celebrate that it is her's. I'm hopeful that if we were all given the chance to follow our bliss, then the world would be a more beautiful place.

It's a totally non-utilitarian view of things, I admit, dear Brother of mine. :)

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes...

After a month or so of daily countdowns, today we reached it: the last day of fourth grade for the Monk. How can this be so? And will we ever stop asking that?

Monk has had a great year this year. He seemed to fall into his groove with making new friends, taking things in stride, doing his homework without much complaint, growing more responsible. He had a couple projects in school that he really poured his heart into. Especially he worked hard on his Mission Project, in which he made the case that the California Mission system was largely responsible for the destruction of Native American cultures. He made a very sophisticated argument in his essay where he was able to recognize that although some of the intentions behind the Missions were good, in fact they had some very negative, unintentional consequences for Native Americans. For a fourth grader to be able to realize such complexity is pretty remarkable, in my (humble mom) opinion!

This was the year that Monk's parents saw way, way more closed bedroom doors than ever before. It used to be we couldn't get Monk to play in his room for anything: toys were always strewn around the living room floor when he was small! Now it seems we can't ever get him to come out of his room for more than an hour at a time. Of course, given that our apartment is roughly the size of a shoebox, we're never really far apart. :)

I have always seen the end of school years as opportunities to re-evaluate things. And I've been doing that these past couple weeks. Some of that I've been blogging about here and there--about looking for ways to live more faithfully in a broken world. But I'm also seeking ways, living as an academic, to be more embodied. Or, maybe put better, to pay attention to the fact that I am a body.

Having gotten sick at the end of May with a pretty serious (and painful) staph infection, I realized just how much the stress of these past few months had affected my immune system. And I saw that my ability to keep pushing on, no matter how stressful things are, while good for the short-term, is not a long-term, sustainable lifestyle.

This past week, inspired by PeripateticPolarBear, I decided that I wanted to start walking to work this summer. (I would have started earlier, but needed to recover my health first.) Although I haven't exercised for ages upon ages, I jumped right in this week and started walking the three miles to my office and back.

I made it a day and a half (9 miles in 24 hours) before I realized something pretty important. That is this: not exercising for twenty years is rooted in the same disrespect for one's body as jumping in and walking nine miles in 24 hours. I wanted to be able to do it all, every day, rather than understanding that I needed to gradually ramp up my expectations. It's a humbling thought, to be honest, that I can't just immediately begin walking 6 miles a day.

But realizing that I can't do it all, well, that seems to be the thing I must be working on these days.

I took a day off from walking on Wednesday, to let my aching muscles get their rest. And then yesterday, rather than walking to work, I went to the Bay and walked briskly for thirty minutes. And that felt great.

Gradual change feels so much more, what? tenuous? vulnerable? less likely to succeed? not dramatic enough? But I have an inkling that it is sustainable change in a way that drastic change is not.

Yes, this is what I want to try and pay attention to right now. Small things I can do, not trying to change everything all at once, looking for ways to live sustainably.

Oh, and as of 2:30 today, I am the Mom of a fifth grader.

Lord have mercy.

P.S. Oh! Speaking of changes! Much thanks to Mrs M for generously posting code for how to use a photo as a backdrop on blogger! And also thanks to my Brother, who edited the photo so that the sailboat could be seen in the left margin of the page, rather than in the center. He's so cool.

P.P.S. The picture here is the view I have when I take my half-hour walk. Yeah. Kinda nice.

I Will Never Be Able to Do Enough...Even So... Part 2

Jesus started a global movement by paying attention to one person at a time.




Visit www.girleffect.org

I Will Never Be Able to Do Enough...Even So

...I can do something.

These past few months I have been profoundly grieved at the worsening global food crisis which has emerged as a result of a perfect storm of global events. In recent days the the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has been holding an emergency summit in Rome to address the current food crisis. Today they announced a significant increase in funding which will allow the hardest hit countries "to grow enough food for themselves in the coming planting seasons, as well as [help] them to achieve continuing food security through investment in agriculture and research."

Earlier today BBC News reported significant resistance to this plan at the Rome Summit from Latin American countries as they are apparently benefiting too much from the cultivation of crops for biofuel (not the sole cause of the global food crisis, but undoubtedly one element of the perfect storm).

I have felt overwhelmed by this global food crisis, especially once the catastrophes hit in Burma/Myanmar and China last month. All of these have been spinning around in my mind particularly in relation to the scripture from several Sundays ago in which we are reminded that God's eye is on the sparrow. It is so difficult for me, as a person of privilege who wants for nothing, to read that scripture of God's loving care for human beings even while unfathomable numbers of people are dying daily from hunger, catastrophically in natural disasters, and horrifically as a result of corrupt government practices.

In their 11th Hour Preacher Party for the Birds & Lilies week over at the RevGal's site, many of the preachers were focusing on the command Jesus issued for people not to worry. This was also what my own pastor focused on that Sunday in worship. I know it is a hugely important focus for our 21st century, North American context. But I found myself struggling with it in light of everything I've already mentioned here.

"I am wondering," I wrote in a comment on the RevGal site that day, "how I can better incarnate God's eyes and hands to help provide for others in an aching, suffering, starving world? I do worry: that I'm not doing enough and never can do enough."

Since articulating those words for the first time a few weeks ago, they have stayed with me like some kind of irritant, like sand in an oyster. I am letting it work on me and in me. It is variously confrontational to my spirit and my living; it is upsetting; unsettling; and it is asking of me to do something.

Even in the midst of this ever-present irritant, I have found myself, well, hungering for hope. If I cannot do enough, if I cannot fathom these many unrelenting deaths, if governments and corporations are just so corrupt--then what? How do I have hope in the face of these realities? In the face of death?

I have glimpsed hope in two people over the past couple weeks, two witnesses to hope: Howard Zinn and Dorothee Solle.

In his article "The Optimism of Uncertainty" published in The Nation on September 2, 2004, Howard Zinn writes:

"If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory."

I absolutely love this image of the future being an infinite succession of presents. And the notion that by acting even in the smallest ways, we contribute to the shaping of that future in significant ways.

The other witness to hope came to me this morning as I was re-reading Dorothee Solle's fantastic book Thinking About God. She writes:

"In a conversation about the situation of the peoples oppressed by Western countries, a young Swiss teacher recently asked me from where I could derive my hope. At first I wanted to reply to him, 'From my faith in God, who once rescued an oppressed people from slavery under a great military power.' But then it struck me that it is not 'my' faith which bears me up. It is really the faith and the hope of the poor who do not give up. As long as they do not despair and give up, as long as they go on, we do not have the least right, whining and resigned in an analysis which counts money and weapons but does not see the pride and the combativeness of the violated, to say, 'There is nothing one can do'" (20).

Despair, Solle seems to be suggesting, is an emotion of the privileged. Tossing up my hands, overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of this aching world, is a privileged choice. I will never be able to do enough...even so...I can do something today.

For about ten days now I have started my morning by visiting The Hunger Site. I click through each tab on the site, which manages to bend even our consumerism toward justice. It is, in the spirit of Zinn's reminder, a very small action. But I am hoping that by making this small action a part of my morning spiritual discipline, it will be a part of that infinite succession of presents that contribute to the future.

Even as I click on each tab, the irritant troubles me again and again. It is not enough! And I must not be fooled into thinking it is. But it is an action which, done prayerfully, roots me in the world's need, enacts a small contribution toward justice, and troubles my spirit to continue to look to do something more.

We Have What We Need

This month I have been preaching at a small congregation in The City, filling in for a friend who is on sabbatical. All last week I planned to rework a sermon for yesterday that I'd preached some years ago that reflected on the same text from the gospel of John that was one of the alternate readings suggested for Pentecost.

I had a very restless night sleeping on Saturday night. I felt like God was working on me. (Though I've never actually been to a chiropractor, I imagine it would feel quite a bit like that kind of work out--a realignment that's not particularly comfortable in the moment, but feels oh so better afterwards.)

I woke up at 6:00 a.m. Sunday and looked at the sermon I thought I was going to preach. All wrong. Instead, I preached the one that follows here. Whatever it's worth, it was the one I felt I was given.

Scripture:
John 20:18-23 and
Acts 2:1-21

Last Sunday, we read the texts in Scripture that were preparing Jesus’ followers for the time when they were no longer going to be able to enjoy Jesus’ physical presence with them anymore. In our readings last week, we got the sense that Jesus’ followers were gripped by fear; fear of the unknown, of the threat, maybe, of violence, fear of loss.

“How can we go on?” the disciples seem to ask, “Without the one that we love?”

But Jesus replies, in some ways to their unvoiced questions more than the ones they actually ask, that the Spirit will come and give them power so that they might become his witnesses on earth.

It is the coming of this Spirit that we read about in this morning’s scripture. The story we might be most familiar with is the one that appears in Luke’s account, in the books of Acts. The Sprit comes upon the gathered followers with the sound of a loud wind rushing over them. It is an overwhelming presence, even described by Luke as a violent one.

There is no mistaking that something has happened to the gathered followers: they have experienced the radical freedom of the presence of the Spirit in their midst, which has loosened their tongues, broken down barriers, set them apart from those who would scoff at them, and truly empowered them to go out, as Jesus had assured them they would, to become witnesses of Jesus’ on earth. This is the more familiar of the Pentecost stories—often referred to as the birthday of the church, when the Spirit that had once hovered over the waters before creation, now sweeps over a bedraggled group of followers and brings something yet again into being: this time an empowered community of witnesses of God’s astounding love.

But the text I felt more drawn to this morning is a much quieter Pentecost. This one happens so gently, comes to Jesus’ frightened disciples so peacefully, that it can almost be missed entirely. This is the Pentecost of the Gospel of John.

Once again, we encounter Jesus’ followers huddled together with their seemingly ever-present companion: Fear. This scene takes place in the upper room, on the evening of the resurrection. And the disciples have locked themselves in their room in fear. Their beloved leader had been killed only days before. And though Mary had come to the disciples that very morning to tell them she had seen the Risen Christ, still they sought out the comfort of close quarters, and the reassurance of locked doors.

One of the most astounding things about Scripture, I believe, is the extent to which it invites us into a profound confrontation with our own selves. It is so often the case, with Scripture, that when we’re able to hoist ourselves over all the centuries that have passed between these ancient texts and our contemporary lives—we are brought into an encounter with our own soul’s condition. There is no other place that this seems more evident than in the reactions and questions posed by the disciples. While we might find it easy, at first, to laugh at all of their blunderings and missteps, when we are truly honest with ourselves, we have to admit that their mistakes graciously illuminate our own.We know fear. We know the tendency to lock ourselves away from those who wish to do us harm. We know self-protection. We know how to close ourselves off from experiencing the presence of God’s extravagant love. We know how to shut out the world with all it’s horrors, brokenness, despair, and disappointments.

There is only so much we can take. This past week, as the horrors have unfolded in Burma, it is more than we can take in. How can we, really? The loss of life from natural disaster alone is unfathomable. But it is compounded unbearably by the inexplicable, inhumanity of corrupt government officials who leave people to die even as they seize the humanitarian aid sent by outsiders.

In the face of such overwhelming grief and horrific brokenness, if we’re honest, I think there is at least some part of ourselves that wants to lock ourselves away: protect ourselves from feeling the pain that is surrounding us.

Many of our churches will gather for worship this morning in just this way, don’t you think? Cloistered from the pain of this past week (whether in a global sense or in a personal sense), sometimes our worship takes place in rooms that are securely locked away from the reality of our lives for fear of the pain we all too often encounter there.

But here is the good news: We cannot lock away the Spirit of God. Because it is through our most hidden-away, locked-up places that the Spirit desires to move. It is to the most broken, horrific, grief-filled moments that the Spirit is drawn. The Spirit does not know separation or boundaries, but moves freely into them, always with the desire to reconcile, to draw out our wholeness for the healing of the world.

The followers of Christ locked themselves away in fear, but the Risen One entered the room. It is a divine breaking-and-entering, if you will. And, unlike the violent coming of the Spirit as we read about it in Acts this morning, in this account the Risen One stands in their midst and reassures the fearful ones: “Peace be with you.”

Then he shows them his wounds. And the disciples, John tells us, rejoice as they recognize Jesus for who he is. They rejoice when they see the evidence of his wounds. Why do they rejoice?

Well, maybe it is this: when we see the Wounded/Risen One, we see a few things:

First, we see the worst that can be done to any human being by other human beings. Second, we see the Divine One who did not self-protect, but willingly entered into the brokenness of the world. And finally, we see that brokenness is not the final word. Despair, abandonment, military might, betrayal, even death: none of these is the final word.

Again, Jesus says to his followers, “Peace be with you.” And I like to think that just as God spoke the world into being with commands as simple as “Let there be light,” so in the same way, Jesus spoke Peace into being with this simple phrase: "Peace be with you.”

And in doing so, the room that had once been close and humid with fear is now flooded with peace. It is in the reality of that saturating peacefulness that Jesus, the Wounded/Risen One, tells his followers what is expected of them: he sends his followers out of the room and into the world in the same way that he had himself been sent. In the same way, we must be reminded,
that wounded him so.

And it is at this point that we come to John’s depiction of the Pentecost—of the gifting of the Spirit to the bedraggled, beleaguered community of followers.

Jesus breathes on the disciples and says to them: Receive the Holy Spirit.

No tongues of fire. No violent wind. Just a breath.

John writes this as if it were a single moment, but I can't help but wonder if it actually happened over and over again. Jesus breathing on each disciple one by one. Much in the same way that we passed the peace this morning: a singular encounter, each one of us with another, coming in close enough to each other that we can feel each other’s breath.

In the same way, I imagine Jesus drawing each one of his followers close to him, in a warm embrace, close enough that they can feel the gentle breath of the Spirit move across their faces:

Receive the Holy Spirit.
Receive the Holy Spirit.
Receive the Holy Spirit.

Again
and again
and again.

Receive the Holy Spirit.

The first step in opening ourselves to the pain in the world and in our own lives is to open ourselves to God’s love for us.

That love comes in many forms—sometimes in dramatic, unmistakable ways. And sometimes in the most intimate, gentle, and almost miss-able ways: a breath.

Despair, fear, abandonment and betrayal are not the final words. But what are the final words? In John’s Pentecost, they are these: Peace; I send you; Receive the Holy Spirt; And, finally, forgive.

This is the message of Pentecost. This is the message that birthed the church. This is the mission at our center. No matter how many times we forget it or how many times our sisters and brothers in faith forget it, it doesn’t essentially change: Peace, Go, Receive, Forgive. The outpouring of God’s love for God’s broken creation never ceases, never stops pouring itself out. Never stops breathing into the hidden-away, locked-up, broken places. Never stops inviting us out into a world we think we can’t face.

We can face it because we have received all that we need. When we look at one another in love
even in all our Wounded/Wholeness we know this to be true: We have all that we need.

Peace.
Go.
Receive.
Forgive.

Amen.

Be With Us, God-With-Us

Over the past several years I have been teaching worship to seminarians. And part of teaching worship includes working with seminarians as they think about and begin to prepare prayers for Sunday morning worship experiences. Of the many things I love about the work that I get to do, this is one of my favorites. I consider it one of the most incredible privileges to be able to accompany people into the deepest waters of their faith. And the space of prayer will often plunge us into the deep-end of faith fairly quickly.

But over these past few years, I have noticed a pattern that has consistently emerged in the prayers I encountered from my students. And it is this: the most commonly repeated phrase, in all the prayers I read, is this one: “God, be with us.”

Actually, it was so often repeated by so many people that my first inclination was to treat it as a cliché: as a phrase that was written or spoken more out of habit than because it was particularly meaningful. Or maybe that it was not much more than a nervous tic in our prayer-speaking, much in the same way we might say “um”—as a way of buying time until we figured out what it was we really wanted to ask of God.

So I started out by circling the phrase and asking the students to reflect on what it was they were really asking of God, when they asked for God to be with us. This was for maybe the first year or so. But as the years went on, and the phrase “God, be with us,” continued to appear time and again, my attention was drawn back to it in new ways. Something about the request – and the number of times I was encountering it – suggested to me that something more was going on than was at first apparent.

This time, I noticed that there was a certain strangeness about the phrase, especially when we realize that we are praying to Emmanuel, the title or name that appears in Isaiah and shows up most often during the seasons of Advent & Christmas. Emmanuel means, translated, “God-With-Us.” So the strangeness of the prayer request is highlighted when we place the phrases next to each other: “Emmanuel, be with us,” or, literally: “God-with-Us, be with us.”

There is something about putting the prayer that way which reminds me of one of the greatest statements of faith recorded in the gospels: when the Roman centurion responds to Jesus: “I believe; help my unbelief.”

“God-with-Us, be with us.”

The thing is, if we are to take these prayer requests seriously, not as clichés, or as means of buying time, but rather as true cries from the hearts of those praying, then we start to wade into the deeper waters of faith. And it often seems that it’s in the deepest waters that two things can be true at once: I believe; help my unbelief. God-with-us, be with us.

So the question becomes this: If we begin our prayers by asking for God to be with us, what does this request say about our experience of God’s presence? Or, maybe more precisely, what does it suggest about our experience of God’s absence?
In this morning’s scripture readings we have two different moments in time folded in next to one another (like the back cover of an old issue of Mad Magazine), which, when taken together, form a distinctively new picture for us.

The earlier moment is recorded in John’s gospel and takes place shortly before Jesus and his disciples head to the Garden of Gethsemane where he will be turned over to the Roman authorities and eventually crucified. In this account, Jesus has just finished giving what is commonly referred to now as his Farewell Discourse—a long, looping, poetic, evocative plea and promise to his followers just prior to his being violently taken from them. In this morning’s text, Jesus has just stopped addressing the disciples directly and has, instead, started to pray for them (and by extension, most commentators point out, for the earliest Christian communities and for us)—all in anticipation of his leaving them.

In the Acts reading, we find ourselves on the other side of the cross post-resurrection, at the end of the forty days that the Risen Christ had to remain with his beleaguered followers (according to Luke, the author of Acts). This time it is the Wounded and Risen Christ who is addressing his disciples as he prepares to leave them one more time.

In both instances, Jesus the Christ is preparing his followers for the experience of his absence. These two liminal, or in-between, threshold moments fold in on each other and we find that we are facing a community of people who were themselves facing the loss of their most beloved one: Lost once to the violent convergence of religious fear and imperial oppression. And lost a second time to a cloud of unknowing, when the physical presence of God could no longer be grasped or, perhaps more importantly, clung to, possessed, or owned.

As strange and alien as some passages in scripture might strike us at times--and it is a strange thing to imagine Jesus slowly being lifted up from the midst of the disciples and taken into the clouds—one image I encountered when looking for a bulletin cover looked for all the world like Jesus was doing his best David Blaine impression and was levitating in front of a gawking crowd of frightened spectators—But as strange as scripture can sometimes be we can also almost always find something within that opens us to something true about ourselves and about God.

And the truth is many of us have experienced the loss of someone who was our most beloved. And many of us have experienced, maybe at that same time, but not necessarily, a sense of God’s absence in our lives or in our world.

And, no less jarring, many of us have experienced moments in our faith journeys when something we once understood, had a firm grasp on, has started to slip from our hands. It was true for a time, yes; but in order to continue to grow we find we need to let go of what was certainly true and open ourselves to not-knowing for a little while:

God, I believe; help my unbelief.

God-with-us, we pray, be with us.

The liturgical theologian, Don Saliers, writes: “Praying begins not so much with a sense of presence, but with some intuitive or even painfully concrete sense of God’s not being immediately present.” It is for this reason that prayer, according to Saliers, is always “a profound act of hope.” In fact, he pushes us even a little farther, and suggests that we do well to recognize our insecurity around God’s presence, because otherwise we begin to assume that “God is at our beck and call.” [See Worship as Theology: Foretaste of Glory Divine (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1994), 108, 109, 111.]

How to say it? God’s presence is always a gift. But the certainty of God’s presence with us is not necessarily a gift. And perhaps most especially in North American, dominant culture where everything imaginable can be turned into a commodity. You know, last Sunday in church, my congregation sang the beautiful hymn, We Cannot Own the Sunlit Sky as the closing song for our Earth Day celebration. And as we were singing, my ten-year-old son glanced up at me with a twinkle in his eye and said, “Yeah, we can’t own the sunlit sky, but we can digitize it and then sell it.” We even talk about time as a commodity: time can be spent, wasted, borrowed, shared, stolen, or lost. I have tried for years to divest myself of economic ways of talking about time, but I’ve found it’s nearly impossible to do so completely. Because I am, we are steeped in a culture that commodifies everything it possibly can.

It is in this sense that our experience of God’s absence becomes as much a gift as God’s presence is a gift. Even when our experience of the absence of God is, as Saliers says, painfully concrete.

When the disciples watched as the Risen Christ disappeared into the cloud, don’t you think they experienced that rising absence with great dread? And yet, as they stood there gazing into the now-empty sky, they were called back to the present: Do not look for what used to be; Do not cling to the understanding of the Divine that you once held so dear; Do not seek to possess God. Rather, go and be the community that never stops seeking God.

In a little while, we will gather together around the table to break bread and share the cup in remembrance of the Risen One. And as we do so, I invite you to notice that the bread is always broken and given away; the cup is always poured out and given away.

The presence of God is only momentary before it becomes us as we eat it together. The presence of God is only ever a gift, given to us, given away by us, so that we might never stop seeking God, our beloved one.

These Days

God is breaking my heart at every turn.

1. On Monday night at 9:00 I went to Target to get some food options in for Monk's lunches. While there, I encountered a mother, her friend, and a baby girl--hardly a toddler, just big enough to stand in the cart and cry. Which she did. Wail. Not a temper tantrum cry, but a heart-wrenching, hold-me-Mama, grief-stricken, lonely cry. Her mother was utterly, viciously indifferent, even cruel. At times screaming back at her daughter (as the adult friend laughed) in mimic of the baby's cry. Around the store I caught the eyes of other women (all women) who were as bewildered, horrified, helpless as I felt. There was nothing I could do, I was convinced, that wouldn't further endanger this child. A confrontation of the mother, I feared, would only be taken out on the baby before the end of the night. I came home and wept myself--for all the unloved, inconvenient babies.

2. The next morning I parked in my spot at the seminary. There was a small basket of brilliant yellow tiny narcissus flowers on the ground just beside my car. I park right next the dumpster and wondered if they'd meant to be thrown away but missed the mark. I got out of my car and picked them up. It was drizzling rain, getting ready for another rainy season, January drenching just as we'd suffered last Friday. As I picked up the flowers (turns out they weren't real, but still lovely in their own right), I saw something stir in the dumpster beside me. I looked over and there was a man sitting in our dumpster. He was rolling what I can only hope was a joint and not something worse. "Are you okay?" I asked him. "Yeah," he said, hardly looking up. "Are you sure?" I asked. "Yeah," he said, not looking up from his rolling papers, "I'm alright." I took the flowers into my office and set them on my windowsill beside my Julian of Norwich icon. Now whenever I notice the flowers I pray for the man in the dumpster and the baby in the cart. It doesn't seem like enough.

3. The past 24 hours at the seminary we hosted a conference on Restorative Justice. The hopefulness of the gospel message was muted by the whiteness of the presentation, making the gospel ultimately unhearable. As much hope as was instilled in me was matched by the hopelessness of unreflective whiteness.

4. Soon after the conference, a psychotic homeless woman was forcibly taken into custody from in front of the seminary where she had been raging all day.

4. Came home to burgeoning gang members hanging out in the park across the street.

And that is why I say: God is breaking my heart at every turn.

Bringing the Outside In

Yesterday was a frustrating one for me, for various reasons. Within about an hour of chapel beginning, I was probably at my most cranky point. But I headed over to chapel (later than I've done all semester), in order to prepare the space for our worship service.

After setting out the hymnals and preparing the communion table with the green cloth I use each week (never the same way twice, though), I felt overwhelmingly that I wanted to bring something in from the outside.

I walked out the door of the chapel and looked about me. I thought of maybe some branches off a tree, or some flowers I might find... then I saw a charlie-brown ginkgo tree just off to the side of the chapel. It had shed a number of its bright, gold leaves and they had blanketed the ground around it. I collected a good handful and put them by the bulletins (which I always set on a table at the entryway). I also put some more on the communion table on top of the green cloth and under the candle, already burning. But then I turned around and saw this long stretch of bright red carpet along the the aisle...

I went back out with a student. I took off my jacket and we started to fill my jacket with gold leaves. As we reentered the chapel, the president of the seminary looked at me curiously: "I saw you out there loading leaves in your jacket..."

I laughed. "Wait til you see what we do with them!"

Then we proceeded to strew them all along the aisle - from back to front. The bright gold against that deep red was something!

It was fun, then, to watch people come in and blink! The prayer of invocation we prayed together ended up asking God to help us see God in unexpected ways: in the strange and familiar. Then the sermon was on the feeling of "in-betweeness."

I thought about how the leaves made our space an in-between space: not outside, not inside. And Autumn being an in-between season: not Summer, not Winter but carrying us between the two. For me, the leaves began to generate meaning.

My favorite part was directly after the service, first the two of us who had brought in the leaves (and made the mess in the first place!) started collecting them into baskets. Then, little by little, more and more people--from the students to the dean--were down on our hands and knees collecting leaves! There was so much laughter and marveling going on down there on the floor of the chapel that it was certainly a continuation of the worship service from my perspective.

Part of my role as the director of chapel is to use the chapel experience to teach students. I've been trying to do this subtly, by showing the kinds of things that are possible in worship. At our community dinner afterwards, one of our students asked me about the leaves. She is Korean and still struggles to express herself in English, which made our conversation all the more beautiful to me. She asked me about the meaning of the leaves. I talked about the meaning I had found in them, but suggested that others might have made different meanings. She smiled, and said: "I liked it. They were beautiful!"

Another student admitted that she hadn't noticed the leaves at all until partway through the service. And she said she couldn't figure out then if they'd been there when she had walked in, or if someone had walked through as part of the service and scattered them, or if they'd been there every week and she simply had never noticed before! She was one of the ones who got down on the floor to pick up the leaves, laughing delightedly. It occurred to me that the leaves had called her into presence in worship in a way she had not expected. They were familiar things in an unfamiliar place--and they had caused her to notice. There is gift in that.

By the time the service was over, the frustrations of my day had melted away. My spirit had been able to come to a resting point. And I'd been reminded of the joy that can be found in community, especially a community that dares to worship together.

Giving Thanks for Simple Things

First, with prayers for all those who have been displaced from their homes due to fires, for those who are facing danger by seeking to contain the fires, for those who are grieving loss in its many forms.

Thanks to all who have encouraged us to go ahead and take this cruise. I think we're gonna do it! Looks like we'll be heading out in the spring, shortly after Easter. We'll celebrate Monk's 10th birthday in Ensenada, Mexico. Now, really, how cool is that? We're very excited about this grand adventure ahead.

More immediately, I'm scheduled to head back to the dentist today for (possibly) some major work to be done on my tooth that broke a few weeks ago. I say possibly because I got a letter from my insurance company which suggests this particular procedure may not be covered. Either that, or there was simply a technicality with the way the claim was filed. At any rate, it means a day chock full of some of the most unpleasant things I can imagine doing: dealing with an insurance company and going to the dentist. Nice.

In other news, I finally gave in on Monday and paid for Amazon Prime so that I can get "free" two-day shipping on my orders. The trick is whether or not it truly will be free; that is, if we buy enough books from Amazon (and Barnes & Noble, I guess) that we would have spent the $79 over a year anyway. Even I, as terrible with numbers as I am, have that much figured out.

Truth is, though, it's not so much about saving $$$ as it is about getting the books immediately. And I have found that often, once I am online looking for a title, it's because I need the book yesterday.

Speaking of which, my books did arrive yesterday (one day sooner, even, than expected). The first is for my dissertation. A book by Jurgen Habermas called (tantalizingly) The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Say wha? Even so, I remain hopeful that by the time I get to the end of the book, I'll have some glimpse of what the heck that title means. :)

The second book is equally for my own prayer life as it is for work. (How joyous that the two can be that closely intertwined!) It's by Nan C. Merrill called Psalms for Praying: An Invitation for Wholeness. Merrill's project is a lovely one (although I freely recognize the dangers in it). She offers a translation of the Psalms that does not "other" enemies or nations, but draws them in and identifies them as internal enemies, whether fear, doubt, despair, lack of self worth, and so on. She also translates images of God primarily in terms of Love--calling God Love, Beloved, Compassionate One, Blessed Healer, Blees One, Listening Heart, etc.

One of the dangers, of course, is that a translation like this over-psychologizes the imagery in the Psalms. In some ways, the Psalms are transformed into nothing more than a sort of Jungian prayerbook. Another danger is that it clearly de-historicizes the Psalms, which commits a certain violence to the Hebrew/Christian texts--faiths that are deeply rooted in historical events.

But here's the thing: Merrill is not proposing her translation as a replacement of the more literal translations. And in that sense, I feel like the prayer book's dangers are mitigated considerably. And the benefits of these contemporary, accessible, and poetic images outweigh the dangers as I see them. I can't help but wonder what it might be like to grow up knowing God's name as Love, Beloved, and Compassionate One. I mean, really, what might the world look like if we knew this as God's name? Truth is, I open this book of Psalms and immediately experience it as a prayer book in a way I've never quite been able do with the traditional translations.

Anyway, enough talk about this, let me leave you with one of the Psalms. Here is Merrill's translation of Psalm 54.

Awaken me, O Blessed Healer with
your holy mercy,
that I might be free of fear.
Hear my prayer, O Holy One;
give ear to the words of
my mouth.

For nagging doubts assail me,
bringing loneliness and pain;
I remember not the Beloved, so
overwhelming are my fears.

Yet behold, You are my helper,
the upholder of my life.
With You I have the strength to
face my fears;
Your faithfulness will help me
transform them into love.

With boundless confidence, I
abandon myself into your Heart;
I give praise to your holy Name,
O Beloved,
with gratitude and joy.
For You deliver me from my illusions,
and, through Love, my heart
opens to Wisdom.

Out of Myself into God

Well, I guess the good news is, we didn't need any retrofitting to survive this morning's little temblor. :)

Yesterday, I had a very heavy heart. And though I had (and still have) a pressing amount of work to do, I found it was nearly impossible to get the focus I needed to get anything accomplished.

I came home in the afternoon to spend some time with my family before having to head out again for class in the evening. There was a peaceful moment of watching Monk hit baseballs - enjoying the way he is clearly living out great scenarios of world series success with every hit. He throws his arms in the air and begins his trot around the imaginary bases.

Things got a little worse for me when a tooth in the back of my mouth came apart. Or maybe it was the filling that fell out. It's hard to tell because it was one of those composite, tooth-colored fillings. I only had it filled in August, but I don't think it was ever done correctly. It had never stopped hurting since then. Turns out the dentist can't fit me in until Wednesday of next week. A week with a hunk of tooth missing? How is it I never had any teeth trouble until I started to go to the dentist?

So between my heavy heart and my teeth woes, I really had to drag myself off to class in the evening. We had invited a guest speaker, a young Pentecostal pastor, who was there to talk about his theology of and approach to preaching. He did a fantastic job. It was thrilling to hear him. And this was the great thing: midway through the class I realized I hadn't thought about myself since things had started. I had been able to get caught up in the content, engaged with the speaker and the students, and focused again on things that bring me joy.

After the evening was over, I was deeply thankful for the opportunity that I find myself living into: to live out my call in teaching, to participate in something larger than me, that draws me out of myself and into a sense of God's mystery and wonder.

The big task before me today is to finish my first rough draft of my dissertation proposal and send it off to my adviser. What an accomplishment that will be. All the while I'm keeping Anne Lamott's wonderfully liberating writing advice in mind, summed up in three letters: sfd (s#!%&y first draft). Hopefully I can do that much.

Interiors

D and Monk left a little while ago to go to Monk's hockey practice. D is officially one of the Assistant Coaches for this next round--last time I think he was just skating with the kids and helping out to be nice. But the organizers of the league have turned it into a more official role. It's a neat thing, really--he's great with the kids and able to help the ones who seem the most uncertain with the whole thing. And I think Monk loves having him out there.

I'm taking the opportunity to have some quiet time on my own at home. Living in such a teeny-tiny apartment makes it quite difficult to ever really be alone and home at the same time! I love my guys dearly. But sometimes it's also nice to be alone, too.

I hope to get some reading done for Tuesday night's class. I can't believe we only have about four sessions left! This semester has flown by and been truly wonderful. And I can't believe that I'll get to do this now for the rest of my life. How I love teaching!

But before I do the reading, I think I'm going to spend some time cleaning up around the apartment. I just wrote to a friend of mine that my least favorite rhythm in life is the Neat-to-Messy-to-Neat rhythm. There seems like there's got to be a way to end the vicious cycle! It is a daily rhythm (messy by the end of the day), the weekly rhythm (a mess by Saturday), the monthly rhythm (too much junk mail and other papers on every surface), and for us a semester rhythm (the later in the semester it is, the more of a wreck the house is in)!

Over the years I have become increasingly convinced that being able to create a comfortable, neat, and beautiful space inside our apartment lends to a sense of peacefulness and creativity that is otherwise squelched in a messy home. In fact, a messy home I think is one of those, as I call them, white-noise stress inducers--like white-noise, below the surface but keeping a low-grade level of stress constantly present.

Lately I have been considering painting one of our walls in the apartment a rich, dark color--something other than the glaring white of apartment living that has been our constant environment for, well, most of our adult lives! I'm tired of white walls! Technically we're not permitted to paint the walls, but I think as long as we're willing to repaint it white again when we move out then we could get away with it. Any advice?

Yesterday I met with my spiritual director and talked about a growing desire to deepen my spiritual "disciplines"--such a strict word for such a gentle practice! As we talked about it, I became aware that I think of four tiers of spiritual practices that seem to be intertwined: daily prayer, spiritual reading (non-academic, inspirational reading such as writings of the mystics, for instance), writing, and making retreats. As I prepare to begin my teaching position this July, I'd like to have all four of these in place--so that I begin in balance. Patterns started early tend to carry through. So it's best to begin the patterns intentionally.

So I suppose I am working on interior spaces right now: the one I live in and the ones within me. I guess that makes sense at a time of major transition such as this. Like "nesting" as a pregnancy nears it's birthing.

Receiving the Day

I've come across these two quotes in my studying for my exam today. I share them with you because they just seemed too overwhelmingly beautiful for me to keep all to myself.

"We do not know that breathing can be communion with God. We do not realize that to eat can be to receive life from God in more than its physical sense. We forget that the world, its air or its food cannot by themselves bring life, but only as they are received and accepted for God's sake, in God and as bearers of the divine gift of life. By themselves they can produce only the appearance of life." -Alexander Schmemann

"This applies to the [gift of the] present time as to manna: one must gather it each day, without ever being able to store it up or to amass it as far as to dispense with receiving as a gift. The manna of time thus becomes daily for us. . . .The Christian names her bread 'daily bread' first because she receives the daily itself as bread, a food whose daily reception -- as a gift -- no reserve will spare." -Jean-Luc Marion

And so, may we experience this day as gift--for God's sake. Amen.

The Gift of More

Last Spring when I wrote my two devotionals for the RevGalBlogPal's book Ordinary Time (advertised at right), November seemed so unimaginably far away. But here we are, about to heft the last days of the month onto our backs and carry them into December. I shamelessly invite you over to Ordinary Time to read the devotionals I wrote for yesterday and today. Both of them are based on the same text--David's last words--which are part of the lectionary readings for this coming Sunday when we celebrate Christ the King.

As I recuperated over the past couple weeks during my blogging hiatus, I sadly missed my first blogiversary. I published my first entry here on the Blanket in the Grove on November 14, 2005. If you're disposed to such things, I invite to you to take a step back for a moment and read my debut here. At that time I had just returned from the East Coast (as I have now, as well!); I was preparing with great (and as it turns out, unnecessary) trepidation to propose my comprehensive exams, (I'm now preparing for my final, oral exam next week); and had just been licensed for ministry in my congregation (where my hours expanded considerably for this current year).

Each of these things continue to be the benchmarks that help me know my place in this world. I had titled that first entry "In Between" and in some ways I wonder if this is always my experience. There is an enduring sense of being on a journey (as I know so many of us feel) and that the in-betweenness of that journey is the gift of it. Every arrival eventually becomes an invitation to set out again toward another unknown.

So I am recently returned from the East Coast again--arrived Tuesday night from Washington DC where I attended my first-ever Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion and Society for Biblical Literature. As D pulled the car up at the airport about 8:00 on the night I arrived, Monk spotted me and opened his door before the car had come to a complete stop--so eager was he to greet his ol' Mom. There was no danger, really, the car was going slow enough by that point and he was well-strapped in. But it did give me a bit of a start!

I want to always remember the moment, though--the prodigal son who looks with overflowing eagerness for the return of his mum. In the car as we drove back home, Monk burst over with stories and laughter. When I would turn and look at him, I was amazed at the light in his eyes. I felt it all as gift.

Going to AAR was everything I needed it to be. I am so glad I was there this year. It got me out of the cozy box I'd had to live in over the past year as I answered the questions for my exams. It reminded me of all the amazing questions being asked by academics all over the world. It demystified some of the Big Names I've been reading all these years--I got to see them as people, laugh at their jokes, appreciate their three-dimensional humanness rather than their two-dimensional texts!

I was also able to reconnect with old friends in a way that simply helps me remember who I am.

I also was able to talk with people fruitfully about the next step in front of me--proposing and writing my dissertation. I won't say much about that now, but imagine it will be a subject which accompanies me in this blog for some time to come now.

One of the highlights of the trip, rather unexpectedly, was the opportunity to go to an exhibit at the Sackler Gallery (one of the museums of the Smithsonian Institute) where they featured Bibles (as in codices, scrolls, papyri, and eventually manuscripts) prior to the year 1000. You can read more about it here. What an awesome experience! With all the talk about fragmentation in postmodernity, it was humbling, indeed, to see the fragments out of which we have pieced together our scriptures. There is something fundamentally deceptive about the neatly contained, uninterrupted solidity of our bibles published by major publishing houses today. It was truly humbling to see the fragments of our scriptural origins, their very physical tentativeness seems to stand as a crying plea to careful, gentle, tentative exegesis--rather than the heavy-handed, confident, and stern certainty that all too often is our approach to biblical texts.

Not only that, but the reverent beauty with which many of these pages were created was awe-inspiring. Though I have to say that it occurred to me at one point that these pages were once somebody's deadline. Perhaps merely what had to get done, somebody's work. My sense is that they were not alienated from their work, as we so often are from our own. But I bet there were at least some moments when the monk working on his page felt the pressure to simply get it done. Perhaps he suffered from a sleepless night on occasion, worrying about the page he had yet to finish. This thought pleases me for some reason. To see the page a thousand years later seems to give those moments simultaneously unbearable weight and unbearable lightness. It matters; it matters not.

Well, there still feels like more to say. And for this, in and of itself, I am grateful. Too many weeks of dry silence in my world. So good to wake up to fresh dew on the grass.

Oh, and Happy Thanksgiving.

Daily Prayer

I have finally, after a six year hiatus, managed to find a spiritual director and started meeting with her once a month. We've met two times now and I am really grateful to have this be a part of my life's rhythm again.

One of the things my spiritual director has suggested is that I establish a morning ritual: nothing elaborate or time consuming, just a way of taking notice first thing in the day of God's presence in my life and world. She suggested it ought to be tied to something that I do anyway--like brushing my teeth, turning on a light, starting the coffee maker. It would be just a simple phrase, "Holy One, illumine my day," as I turn on the light in the morning.

I haven't actually done this, yet. But I have more recently been setting aside a brief time each morning to center myself in prayer--a daily practice I used to keep, but haven't for too many years now. (Days turn into weeks turn into months turn into years.)

What has shaped my time most of all is this new site I found via Sacred Space. It is called Pray as You Go. The site provides daily mp3 files to download to your ipod or other device (I simply listen to them from my laptop) which guides you through a ten-twelve minute time of meditation using music, Scripture, and gentle questions. I like being able to start the file and simply close my eyes and let myself be led gently through the meditation. Here is today's: August 31, 2006. (You need a broadband internet connection. Also, be warned, the file will start playing aloud almost immediately.)

We've also done this together as a family a couple times this past week. It's really something seeing my eight-year old son sitting with his palms open, imitating his mama's prayer posture.

The site also includes mp3's for the examin, based on Ignatian spirituality: an eight minute meditation to be entered into each evening which helps you to notice where God has been inviting you each day. Here it is. And mp3's for body prayer and breathing meditations (neither of which have I tried yet, but intend to).

Pray as You Go is put together by Jesuit Media Initiatives and comes out of Britain. If you're looking for a way to enter into daily prayer, I highly recommend the site.

Filling Whose Shoes?

I read a little while ago an inspired bit of reflection from Katherine over at Any Day a Beautiful Change in which she considered how far she is from fitting the typical pastoral profile. As she often does, Katherine struck a chord in me. When I realized that any comment I would write in response to her latest post would end up being rather lengthy, I thought I'd take the space here instead. My reflections are not in any way an "answer" to Katherine's reflections. They are merely my own thoughts sparked by her words. Before reading this post, I highly recommend you read hers.

The notion of fitting a professional profile or filling a role has interested me for some time. Maybe any woman who has at least gotten as far as considering a position as a pastor of a church has to face these issues head on at some point. Yesterday, after preaching at my church (something I do maybe three times a year as a lay person with a church staff position), I got into a conversation with a woman who is about 65 years old or so. She told me that a granddaughter had been born in their family lately, the first girl in seven years or so. I smiled and mentioned that I was the first girl born on my father's side of the family in 96 years! Her immediate response: "And now you're doing a job that men usually do!" She's right in a way.

One of the reasons it's been so scandalous for women to become preachers is that it's essentially perceived to be a gender-bending activity. In the nineteenth century, this was very much the perception. A woman who wanted to preach was often perceived to be mentally ill--the equivalent to many folks' unfortunate reaction to cross-dressers today. This view, tragically, is not locked into the nineteenth century. I remember encountering a website this past year where someone argued directly from this perspective, equating women preachers to transvestites.

I think my dear friend SRF would suggest that women preachers queer the pastoral role in a way that breaks the role open to God's kin-dom here and now. It disrupts the usual expectations in a way that lets grace seep through the cracks.

But 'taking on a role' is not only about being a pastor. bell hooks reflects on this subject briefly in her book Teaching to Transgress. She remarks:

I feel the way I teach has been fundamentally structured by the fact that I never wanted to be an academic, so that I never had a fantasy of myself as a professor already worked out in my imagination before I entered the classroom. I think that's been meaningful, because it's freed me up to feel that the professor is something I become as opposed to a kind of identity that's already structured and that I carry with me into the classroom.

Like being a pastor, being a professor certainly has a sense of filling a preconceived role rather than something we become, gradually, in our own way, over time. The feeling is akin to the sense that one has 'big shoes to fill.' The roles come complete with costumes--whether it's a stole, a robe, or an alb. Or a Volvo stationwagon, flowing linen dresses, and cropped hair. The roles come complete with certain languages one is supposed to be fluent in (not just Hebrew but pastor-speak or professor-speak), or a demeanor one is supposed to assume.

While we bring our own assumptions to these roles, we are also shaped by the way others expect us to be, too. So my students have a certain idea of what it means for me to be a professor--and I am shaped by those expectations. Even if I am not those things, even if I don't meet their expectations they still shape me.

In seminary one of my colleagues refused to do the usual Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) units during the summer months between her first and second year in school. Instead she took her whole middler year to do CPE, with the hours spread over the course of two semesters rather than over three months. She told me why she chose to do it that way: "The CPE model is still really heavily influenced by the young, single male seminarian--someone who doesn't have a family to care for, or a home to help shape in any significant way. I refuse to work myself to the bone over the summer--and not have any time or energy for my partner. I need the summer to be more restful so my relationships can be sustained in a healthy way."

My friend was perceptive enough to see what had long-shaped the role that she would be assuming. And she knew that it would not be healthful for her to step into such a pre-formed, rigid model. She needed to do something new, something that made sense for her life.

But others' expectations of how you fill a role are not necessarily a bad thing. While I was in seminary, I read Hillary Rodham Clinton's book Living History. She reflects honestly about her struggles with being First Lady--never seeming to meet people's expectations of her. Her role was so public, that any "mistake" she made brought wave after wave of criticism and negative press. At some point, though, she met with someone who helped her to understand what she was experiencing in a new way. (I'll be darned if I can find the quote in the book, so I'm just re-creating this from memory.) Her friend explained to her that the position of First Lady is a symbolic one. (Now is a good time to remember that it's never useful to say, "It's just a symbol" as if a symbol doesn't carry huge import and life-changing consequences.) Clinton realized that the symbolic role of First Lady carried a vast amount of possibility with it--that one couldn't re-create the role without experiencing huge repercussions. When she realized she could live into the role with the full knowledge that it is a symbol, then she learned how to navigate her world effectively and powerfully.

The role of a pastor and a professor are similarly symbolic roles. They carry a weight and an import that have nothing to do with us. This is not to say we cannot be ourselves when we're in these roles. But it is to say we will never be only ourselves.

It is a delicate and a difficult balance. There are expectations assigned to these roles which are not life-giving, to the one living them out as well as to those who are in relationship with that role. There are expectations which simply have to change--and the sooner the better. We have to make ourselves aware of how these roles are shaped by patriarchy, hierarchy and even consumerism. But there are expectations which will also empower, need to be lived into (not like too-large shoes, but like a sunflower grows toward the light). Who we are will bend to these things and change us in ways we don't expect. And we'll stay the same, too, in ways we don't expect.

Now I have to get back to studying for my exam. So I can become a professor someday...

We are a Hungry People

For the past couple weeks I have had the privilege of filling in at the church office while C.S. has been on vacation. For the most part it has been a pretty quiet, uneventful time—just enough things to do and just enough people calling or stopping by to keep me from getting too lonely every day.

The first morning I started my substitute job, when I arrived I walked over into the courtyard and noticed that the little fountain out here was running for the first time since we started coming here about two years ago. I was so delighted to hear the gentle sound of the running water, a sound that feels to me like an invitation to stop and rest a moment, to take notice of the world around me.

Knowing that the fountain gets overwhelmed with the leaves that fall from the Sycamore tree above it, I skimmed out whatever had fallen into the water, the leaves and some purple blossoms from the hasta plants beside it. After doing this, I placed my fingertips into the water where it burbles up at the top of the fountain, then I touched the water to my forehead and formed the shape of a cross there.

Coming from a family of long-time Baptists, this is a gesture my body is not familiar with—I can’t do it without feeling awkward, clumsy, or a bit like a liturgical impersonator. In the years when I was attending a Lutheran Seminary on the East Coast, I grew to envy my classmates who could so familiarly touch the water to their foreheads in an act of remembering their baptism (a baptism which most of them, of course, couldn’t in fact recall because they had been baptized as infants). To remember your baptism is very different from recalling the moment you were baptized. To remember your baptism is, in a very real sense, akin to the phrase that has sent many a child out of house in the morning: Remember Who You Are and Whose You Are. To remember your baptism is to remember you carry the name of Christ and that God has claimed you as God’s own. To remember your baptism is to remember that, no matter what, you are loved.

There was something about this fountain being in the courtyard of our Baptist church, something about my hand already being in water, combined with something inside me that longed to know in that moment God’s love for me, even for me, that made it seem possible for me to try on this gesture for myself—to touch the water to my forehead and remember my baptism.

It ended up that this was how I started each of my mornings these past couple weeks, carefully tending the fountain, then awkwardly touching the water to my head. Trying this new thing on for size.

This past Monday, a few minutes after I arrived in the church office, I received a phone call from our neighbor Betty who lives just up the road a bit. “I was just calling about the excitement at the church this morning,” she told me when I answered the phone.

“Excitement?” I asked cautiously, not wanting to commit to anything yet. “I haven’t heard about our excitement.”

“Oh! You haven’t heard!” she answered. “Well, a mountain lion was spotted in the church parking lot at about 6:30 this morning!”

After briefly considering investing in a couple of air horns to walk around with, I have to admit I found the news more exciting than frightening. Betty and I speculated together about what may have brought the mountain lion down into this fairly well-populated, certainly more-suburban-than-rural setting. Betty mentioned that the thermometer on her deck had registered 118 degrees the day before and she suggested, “I think the lion was looking for water.”

My thoughts immediately turned to the fountain in our courtyard, the delicious gurgle of water as it falls over itself. And I imagined the mountain lion hearing its sound, drawing cautiously through the terrible heat to its side, dipping his muzzle into the water and drinking deeply: The fountain of life.

We are a thirsty and a hungry people.

Our scripture this morning gives us Jesus feeding the multitudes and Jesus the Storm-Walker. The stories are fantastic—and stretch the limits of our imaginations, may even challenge some of our tolerance for what is possible in this work-a-day world. But “the miracle,” writes Tripp Hudgins, an American Baptist pastor in Chicago, is never the point of the ministry, [rather] the miracle points to God.” So we are invited to enter the story of this miracle with our eyes open to see the God revealed in it.

Jesus sits on the mountainside and sees that the thousands of people who had gathered there were hungry. He turns to Philip, and with a twinkle in his eye, asks him the pressing economic question of that day: “Where should we go to buy enough food for all these people?” Philip, clearly a practical man and a shrewd economist, answers Jesus very practically, one might even say prosaically: “Six months wages wouldn’t be enough to feel all these people!”

The economic system that shaped Philip’s imagination, though very different in time and place than our own, certainly seems very familiar to us. I remember years ago planning the reception for our wedding—everything eventually came down to calculating what the cost-per-head would be! Philip must have been doing his own figuring, as Jesus sat beside him, waiting for him to see beyond the hard, cold facts. Waiting for Philip to catch a glimpse of the kingdom of God.

It is Andrew who notices a boy with five barley loaves and two fish. It’s not much. It’s hardly worth noticing at all. Even so, he points the boy out to Jesus, almost with apology: “Of course, that’s not enough for everyone.”

But Jesus, delighted, instructs the disciples to have everyone sit down comfortably on the grass. The detail to have the people sit is an important one, because it has to do with social status. To have the people remain standing would be to treat them as a servant class, which many (if not all) of them most likely were. The difference between standing and sitting is much like the difference between a soup line and a dinner table. Jesus treats the people who had gathered with all the dignity they deserve, regardless of their social status.

With the bread and fish before him, Jesus gives thanks, (do you recognize the rhythm of communion in these words?), and he distributes the food to everyone. After everyone has had their fill, Jesus instructs the disciples to “gather all the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

“So that nothing may be lost.” The Greek word used here is the very same one used in the familiar passage from John 3:16—“For God so loved the world God gave God’s only begotten son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.” The phrase that nothing may be lost is the same verb translated here as will not perish.

This is the God who is revealed to us in this miracle—a God who will not let anything or anyone be lost. We discover in this story of the feeding of the multitudes a prodigal God who provides for the physical needs of the people, like manna in the wilderness—and a God who will not rest until all the fragments are gathered, until every lost soul is gathered in.

On some level, the miracle is that with such a small amount, vast quantities of food were provided—enough for twelve baskets to be filled. But on another level, the miracle is this: that God’s love will not let us go: no matter what we face, what hunger we bring, what thirst we may suffer, no matter what we’ve done—God’s love will not let us go. So that nothing—and no one—may be lost.

Either way, the miracle points to Life. And this is God’s invitation to us, and to all the world. “I set before you life and death. Choose Life.” “I am the bread of Life,” says Jesus. “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (6:35). “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came,” says Jesus, “that they may have life, and have it abundantly” (10:10).

It is important that we remember that Jesus gave the people real bread and actual fish out there on the mountainside. He did not merely pontificate or wax eloquently about spiritual nourishment for the hungry soul. Hungry people need to be fed real bread. But it is just as important for us to remember that fed people are hungry, too. We do not live by bread alone—we certainly do not live abundant life by bread alone. “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread?” asks the prophet Isaiah, “and you labor for that which does not satisfy? . . . Incline your ear, and come to me; listen so that you may live” (Is 55: 2,3).

The disciples were terrified when they saw Jesus walking toward them on the stormy, wind-tossed sea. But he said to them: “It is I; [or, in the Greek, “I AM”] Do not be afraid.”

To the Hebrew mind, the sea was a terrifying place—it was the site of chaos, the unfathomable, where the unknown threatened and overwhelmed. This is why the creation story begins with the Spirit hovering over the Deep—in Hebrew the word we translate “deep” is too-hoo-va-bo-hoo—it is a nonsense phrase meant to elicit the same gut feeling of dis-ease as the phrase helter skelter does for us today. When we hold in mind the tsunami that struck the Indonesian island of Java on July 17, we are reminded of the fear, damage and loss of life the sea can cause.

“I AM,” says Jesus—recalling the words that Moses heard out of the burning bush. I AM is the Liberating God who delivered the Hebrews from slavery. I AM will not rest until every fragment is gathered. I AM is liberating still. “Do not be afraid.” The invitation is to life, abundant life.

It is not a coincidence that we encounter these stories in the Gospel of John that focus on bread and water. The gospel was written late enough that the earliest Christians were already practicing baptism and communion. That Jesus give thanks over the bread and fish is meant to remind us of the last supper when Jesus gave thanks over the bread and wine. That Jesus walks on the stormy sea is meant to remind us of the waters of our baptism, when we took on the name of Christ.

Both stories confront us with the reality of death—when the people are hungry we can’t help but to think of the possibility of death by starvation or from utter lack of what we need, whether love, or shelter, or gentle words, or a safe home. When Jesus walks on the violent sea, we can’t help but think of death by drowning, or from being overwhelmed by things larger than us, whether the threat of downsizing, or fear of natural disasters, or the wave of dread with facing a new day, or the terror of war.

And yet the gift of abundant life is made all the more vivid in these direct confrontations. Not the least because Jesus Christ died the thirsty death. As the liturgical theologian Gordon Lathrop writes: "Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, is the bath that kills and makes alive, the hope for both the waters and the washed, the meal of God, the means for the nations to eat at Israel's table of salvation, the meal that says the truth about our death while transforming it into life" (Holy Thing 101).

The fountain is right here. It calls to every thirsty soul. The meal is right here. We are a hungry and a thirsty people. Somehow the mountain lion heard the soft fall of water. It is a gentle sound. And it is a fierce love. It is the water that kills and makes alive.

Remember your baptism. When you were buried in the stormy seas of death’s chaos with Christ. Remember your baptism when you were lifted up to new life in Christ. Remember your baptism when you took the name of Christ for your own. Remember who you are—and whose you are. We are all beggers coming to the bread. We are all thirsty coming to the fountain of life.

Meeting God's Broken Presence

Yesterday I walked over to our Hip Neighborhood Cafe, bought some Black Currant tea (loose, of course), and settled in for a lovely morning of work--reading Bruce Morrill's Anamnesis as Dangerous Memory. No sooner had I sat down when an older gentleman in an electric wheelchair cruised over to my little table built for two. He gestured and said just enough for me to understand that he had difficulty speaking. I quickly perceived that he had likely suffered a stroke at some point which had stolen his mobility (he was paralyzed on his right side) and his words.

He handed me a laminated photograph of himself as a much younger man. The photo showed him in an artist's studio, surrounded on all sides by large, colorful canvasses. "You're an artist?" I asked him. He nodded, then handed me a plastic grocery bag. Inside it I discovered numerous prints of his paintings on card stock paper, folded in half. They made fair-sized greeting cards or could also be framed. They were abstract, beautiful, evocative pieces.

"You painted these?" I asked.

"Yes," he responded.

"And you can still paint now?"

"Oh, yes!" Then somehow (I don't know how I got all that he told me, how much he communicated with words, how many blanks I filled in, I'm not sure.) he conveyed that he'd had a stroke but that painting was what he could still do.

"My father and grandmother both had strokes, too." I told him. "My father is an artist. But the stroke took his art away. He can't paint anymore." The man's face showed shock as I told him this. "Painting is all I have!" he told me slowly.

"My grandmother's stroke took away her words." I told him. He nodded, understanding.

Strokes have been especially cruel to my family. My father's stroke came when he was only 59 years old, too terribly young. An artist his whole life--the way he made his living, but also the way he perceived the world--it was life's most cruel trick to steal that away from him. His mother already had suffered for some years without the words she needed to express what was inside of her. She stumbled over what had become too solid, too inflexible and ungiving. Eventually it took her laughter, too.

He was selling his prints for $5, which was about what I could spare. I told him I could get one and started to go through the prints once again, looking for the one I would select. Then I paused, as if someone had placed her hand on my shoulder for a moment to cause me to pay attention. I looked up at him and said, "Is there one you think I should have?"

He smiled broadly and pointed to a beautiful print showing three faces with expressions of longing in a blue-green swirl of plants and flowers. In the midst of the faces danced several (spirit)animals, one of which is being cradled in the hands of one of the people in the painting, hands that are cradling, hands that are praying.

Only a day or so away from Trinity Sunday, I received the painting as one might receive an icon--gift, beauty, God present with us, for us. I share it with you now in the same spirit.

Tech Tags: artist strokes mark+axelrod God theology

Love, Teaching, & Vulnerability

This past week I had to write my final paper for my Course Design class. I designed a course that I hope to teach someday at a seminary near me. I've called the course "Holy Times: Worshipping Through the Seasons of Life." It addresses the liturgical year and the Revised Common Lectionary. But also expands into talking about the seasons of our lives that are not addressed in the standard liturgical year: birth, menarche, menopause, new school years, embarking on missionary trips, going to seminary, moving, loss, unemployment. We'll look together about how to mark these events ritually for individuals, families, churches. We also look at ordinary time and extraordinary time. We'll read Kathleen Norris' Quotidian Mysteries and we'll consider the days after September 11. We'll ask questions about how time is constructed: what are the cultural, anthropological, economic, scientific constructions of time? How does worship shape time itself--on a yearly, weekly, daily, hourly basis? And so on.

A major part of the project was not just creating the syllabus for the course, but spending a significant amount of time reflecting on that process. Part of that involved reflecting on my philosophy of teaching: what do I see happening in a classroom? what dynamics are present? how does learning happen? what makes a seminary classroom unique?

It was a very difficult assignment. Partly because we had an excellent article from the Chronicle of Higher Education which talked about how pompous and detached philosophies of teaching can be. The article advised the writers of these philosophies to be as concrete as possible. Don't just say, "I believe learning is a collaborative process" and leave it at that. But explain the way in which you attempt to live out that belief in the classroom. "Therefore I begin each class session with small group discussions centered on the readings for that week."

The article also encouraged teachers to be honest about what doesn't work for them sometimes. What has gotten in the way for them in the past. Not to make themselves sound like Teacher Extraordinaire.

And finally, to be careful not to root all of your reflections in what the teacher can and should do, but to remember to write about students.

I ended up phrasing my philosophy of teaching in terms of expectations and hopes. So I said things like:

• I expect my students to have a rich and varied history with the subject we will be engaging together.
• I expect my students to have very busy, committed, and over-committed lives, of which their academic work is one aspect.
• I expect my students will be bringing their fears into the classroom with them.

And

• I hope my students will see one another as colleagues and as resources to be mined.
• I hope my students will take our subject to places I never imagined.
• I hope my students will fall in love with the subject matter.

It is this last one that I thought I'd share with you today. Partly because I've written about the role of love (or eros) in teaching and learning before. And partly because I'm desperately trying to distract myself from the fact that I'm still waiting to hear about our apartment application.

I hope my students will fall in love with the subject matter. This is the stuff of revolution! If my students fall in love with worship, then the way we worship will change for the better. If my students fall in love with worship, then the world will never be the same. I hold very dear a quote from the Jesuit, Pedro Arrupe:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way. What you are inlove with, what seizes your imagination will affect everything. It will decide what will get you out of bed in the mornings, what you will do with your evenings, how you spend your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude. Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

The only way I know to help people fall in love with something is to love it myself, to show them that the subject is worthy of love, indeed calls for a response of love. bell hooks writes: "When eros is present in the classroom setting, then love is bound to flourish."

Indeed, we ought to enjoy what we are talking about and the questions we are asking. Enjoyment is one of the key intangible ingredients to fostering love in the classroom. There is a sense of playfulness in enjoyment. And there is also a sense of splendid possibility. Enjoyment and eros go hand in hand. They both have to do with knowing, and searching, and being known. Somehow all of these play together in a way that opens us up to the ecstatic experience of learning and breaking new ground. I experience this ecstasy in the classroom when I am brought to a place where my thinking goes to the edge of language, to the very edge where I can see the vast nothingness that has not yet been thought. Even while there, I am confronted by the realization that I have no ability yet to think even that--that is the ecstatic experience of learning.

It is also undeniable an experience of vulnerability. Just as opening ourselves to loving a person puts us in a position of vulnerability, so it is with coming to love a subject. May Sarton writes about the vulnerability in love:

Love at any age has its preposterous side--that is why it comes as a kind of miracle at any age. It is never commonplace, never to be experienced without a tremor. But to stop arbitrarily the flow of life because of a preconceived idea, any preconceived idea, is to damage the truth of the inner person . . . that is dangerous. Are we not on earth to love each other? And to grow? And how does one grow except through love, except through opening ourselves to other human beings to be fertilized and made new? (May Sarton, Recovering: A Journal. New York: Norton & Company, 1980, p. 250.)

Sarton is speaking of falling in love with a person in this journal that she kept in her seventies. But we can apply her insights to the classroom as well. There is at the very least a certain preposterousness about falling in love with a subject in the classroom. But more than that, it can only happen if we keep ourselves from letting our preconceived ideas shut us off from new ideas.

To open ourselves to new ideas is a vulnerable thing to do. It is also, frankly, not very commonplace. In a classroom environment which cultivates the need to prove one's point, to make oneself an expert on a subject before addressing it--it becomes very difficult to open ourselves to new ideas. It can also be a challenge especially for seminary students who may be under scrutiny from their ordination committees who are looking for "right thinking"--or worse, looking to root out "wrong thinking."

A climate of fear will shut down the possibility of falling in love. But an overemphasis on safety is not the solution. A comparison might be fruitfully made between the age of terrorism and its accompanying race for "security"--even at the cost of civil liberties. It is much too facile to make security the solution to terror and safety the solution to fear. According to bell hooks an overemphasis on safety often stems from "the fear that classrooms will be uncontrollable, that emotions and passions will not be contained." In an effort to contain emotions and passions, all too often we resort to a model in which "the professor lectures to a group of quiet students who respond only when they are called on." The appearance of a calm setting, however, is often misleading about what's really going on below the surface. "Many students, especially students of color, may not feel at all 'safe' in what appears to be a neutral setting." (bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress. New York: Routledge Press, 1994, p. 39).

Like bell hooks I believe that cultivating a sense of openness in the classroom (which may exacerbate feelings of vulnerability rather than smooth them over with a false sense of neutrality) is the way to draw people into profound, life-altering learning experiences.

I enter the classroom with the assumption that we must built 'community' in order to creat a climate of openness and intellectual rigor. Rather than focusing on issues of safety, I think that a feeling of community creates a sesne that there is shared commitment and a common good that binds us. What we all ideally share is the desire to learn--to receive actively knowledge that enhances our intellectual development and our capacity to live more fully in the world. It has been my experience that one way to build community in the classroom is to recognize the value of each individual voice. (hooks, 40)

I seek to cultivate a classroom community in which people can "try on" new ideas and insights before attempting to speak authoritatively about them. (Thus one of the final project ideas is to "try on a new spiritual discipline" over the course of the semester and write about the experience.) I also allow space for students to present their work-in-progress, rather than only presenting their completed work. Works-in-progress presentations demand different responses from among student colleagues who must see themselves now as essential contributors to a project which can only get better with their valuable insight. Presenting completed work too often results in either silent reception (students don't understand what response is required of them) or de-constructive comments in which students point out what wasn't present, or what they would have done differently.

I also seek to model openness to growth. I have been known to ask a question of my students during the question-and-answer phase of my lecture: "Do you know what has been confusing to me as I prepared this lecture?" I have said. Then I have followed up by asking for their insights on a certain matter. Such a question in no way abdicates my role as teacher. I take very seriously the responsibility to be fully prepared for each class session. However, it does model for the student the reality that I also continue to be a learner. It is my love of the subject that makes me that way. Not to ask my own questions would be to pretend I were not in love.

(If you made it all the way to the end of this behemoth posting, God bless you.)

Maybe It's More About Being Loved?

I've been turning over last night's post throughout the day today. And as I did, a new way of thinking about it began to form. (And thank you, Katherine, for your part in creating those new rivulets of thought.)

Slowly, it began to occur to me--the strangeness of the command to love. I'd had this thought before, but it hadn't swept into this particular space before. Really, how can anyone be commanded to love? Isn't that sort of an oxymoron?

Then, somewhere along the day (as I soaked myself in Tillich and Barth and Rahner in preparation for my first Comprehensive Exam on Thursday!!!!), I remembered that corny song that says something like: "We love because God first loved us."

And then Katherine's thought came in there in reponse to my heartfelt question: How in the world do I teach my son to love himself? She wrote: "By loving him?"

Somewhere in there I thought, "Wow, I sure did put a lot of pressure on the boy by reciting this particular Scripture." It occured to me that that Scripture really puts the onus on the person. But it says nothing about God's grace. And what if it's impossible to do any of it (love God, love neighbors, love yourself)? Suddenly I remembered that I went to a Lutheran seminary, for heavens sake, and if I learned anything there (and I did, I learned a ton!), it was that relying on ourselves to get it right is always a sure-fire way to fail.

So this evening as the three of us walked home from our dinner at a fantastic Chinese restaurant, I said to E: "Let's give this a try . . . For now, don't worry about loving yourself or even loving God. I know you already love others; that comes naturally to you. Instead," I said, "learn how to feel loved by the people in your life. And pay attention to how it feels to know God loves you. And then, maybe, the rest will follow on its own."

I don't know if this is it. But it feels right at the moment. It feels just crazy enough to suggest it's God's gift.