Post GOE Blues

A newsletter article for one of my supporting parishes. January26, 2011

When jazz musicians talk about the blues, they don’t mean the doldrums or depression, but a realistic and persevering sense of hope, even when the reason for hope seems unlikely. My pervading hope comes from Christ, and the face of God revealed to me. Much of my work here has been coming to conscious and complete understanding that God loves me only as myself, not for what I can do or who I know or where I can go. Only me.

The GOE’s were an interesting experience. I am unsure what I was intended to get out of these tests. It seems is the intended outcome is to ensure that I, individually, know enough information to lead a congregation. My understanding of God and of the church of God is such a contextual and communal experience that I hope I never get confused into thinking that my education sets me above the gathered community. I hope it never confuses me into thinking that it can replace the essential loved experience of my relationship with the one who made me.

I have been to speak with Canon ---. She and I are working towards gathering all my paperwork so that I can attend Vocations Conference in May. This really means that I am doing a lot of work and she is happily helping me with the snags and questions that come up. On one hand, I am going at the process a bit backwards, on the other hand, given the time and effort and patience required to walk this path of discernment, it isn’t unique to go around the long way, either.

In this journey, prayer has surrounded me, and I know that Holy Spirit and St. David’s have been part of that. I am grateful and appreciative of the many people who have remembered me when I was not always able to remember myself. It turns out I am able to be both ‘absence makes the heart grow fonder’ and ‘out of sight, out of mind’ at the same time. So while I long for home and the sort of people I know and love there, I get caught up in the ever-present deadlines and concerns of the day. I look forward to the end of school, in some measure, because I will be back with people and their real concerns, and no longer speculating wildly on the uses of this or that aspect of schooling.

The Journey Begins

I am going through some of my files. This was a newsletter article I wrote awhile back, ok a year ago. School has really gotten me off kilter. hl


Once upon a time a journey or a pilgrimage was an arduous trip with an uncertain outcome. As great plans were made family and friends would try to talk the voyager out of leaving. People did not always return from voyages, and when they did great changes had occurred in themselves and those they had left behind.

We don’t live in a world of voyages anymore. There are surely a few places on Earth left that qualify, although here in America we travel much and journey little. A trip to the next town, the next state, or even the next continent may all cost something in terms of time and money, but no longer is death a companion.

Consequently, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk of our spirituality via the journeying metaphor. But, as other metaphors don’t readily come to mind, it may be that our spiritual journeys were never metaphors at all. For in truth, years go by as we search towards ends we cannot imagine, changes will take us unaware and mold us into new people and new communities, and spiritual death and resurrection are a certainty. And let us not forget that our family and friends often try to talk us out of making spiritual journeys for fear we will take roads they cannot or will not travel with us.

Seminary is surely the ocean passage of this spiritual journey. Here at the beginning, there is no land in sight and the boat feel a little rickety, no matter that it is an ocean liner. The welcome and blessing I have received since arriving have been amazing, especially since so many people come and go in such a short amount of time. But the truth is, I have left home to be here. And while many of the strangers are on the same journey as myself, having come from different places, they will return home, as will I.

Maya Angelou says, “You can never go home again, but the truth is you can never leave home, so it's all right." I expect that the Heather who left St. David’s, Portland in late August will not be the same Heather who graduates in three years. That Heather will never go home again. Instead, a Heather molded by the Father for His purposes will return.

But I also know the truth that I have not left home. I have brought all of you here with me, in prayer and intention. In my few days, I have already met people who struggle alone to interpret God’s will and I know that I am among the most blessed of all people to be lifted up and sustained by the faith of so many people. That you are with me, always, and have been touched by faith regarding this call from the Father is what has made it possible to uproot children and postpone ministry to take this time of formation. It is for all of you that I undertake this work and it is through you and through the Father that it is accomplished. May His will be done.

Heather Lee
The Feast of Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, 2008

First Semester Wrap Up

I have completed my first semester of seminary. It has been a fruitful if sometimes baffling experience. Like many of life’s events – we can listen with our intellect all we want, but until we start, we really don’t understand what they are all about. Seminary has had several of these life lessons for me.

“It’s a full time job.”
I have apparently forgotten what a full time job is like. Somehow, I thought that seminary was going to involve a respite. How much better can life get when your work is to read books you love? Plus, I thought that my 20 hour a week ministry, my 20 hour a week school volunteering, my 20 hour a week managerial job, and my full time family commitments would prepare me for any problems I might face in balancing life and school. This has not been the case. Consequently, many things that I had hoped to do, such as write these letters home more frequently, have been lost in the confusion.

“You must work to maintain your spiritual life.”
I must admit this sounded like complete foolishness to my pre-seminary self. I am in seminary. All of my work and the people around me are engaged in the spiritual life-right? Wrong. I am disappointed to report that when the Bible is required reading, it isn’t any more enlightening than the phone book. Seminary is not three years of monastic retreat, which was my fanciful imagination. Seminary is graduate school, with all the accompanying lectures on plagiarism and citing your source. It has been very hard to hear the Holy Sprit here; she is no academic! At one point, someone asked my how my relationship with God was and I was appalled to hear myself answer truthfully, “We aren’t on speaking terms.”

‘Seminary isn’t time out.”
It took me some time to realize this one. In many ways for me, it is time out. I am not working with the homeless, I am not writing sermons, and I am not offering spiritual guidance to anyone. Still, the ordinary and extraordinary parts of life are still happening. I still have to pay the car insurance. My children still want (and have gotten) a dog. My daughter is having braces put on and we are applying for her Middle School. Birthdays and anniversaries are still flowing by. It is important to remember and honor all of these things in their season and not forget them because I feel that I am in a time out.

I have learned a lot this semester. While I should perhaps not admit this, most of what I learned wasn’t Koine Greek, Christian History, or the genealogies of the Old Testament. I have learned that the relationships really do matter most. The spaces between me and my daughter, between me and you, are the places where God truly reveals himself to us. Keeping those spaces open and healthy and clean keep God present with us, and that work is more important that how to decline Greek nouns or where the chalice sits on the corporal. In old relationships, the comfort of God is found. In new relationships, the wonder of God is waiting. So my friends, both old and new, I offer up this hard earned wisdom from the CDSP seminary – call someone you didn’t get to see over the holidays and say hello or someone you met at a party and felt joy with. See how God moves in your life.

Blessings,
Heather Lee - Epiphany 2009

The Joy of Old Friends

There are no friends like old friends, or so the saying goes. They have seen you at your worst and still like you. They have seen you at your best and are not jealous. They know your stories and are excited for the latest update; how your spouse is doing, how old the children are, what you are working on now. Don’t get me wrong, I like new friends too, but the old friends keep us connected to our lives.

I have had the great fortune of being away from many of my friends for the last year. It didn’t feel fortunate at the time but that is precisely the point. By being removed from our comfortable places, we get the jolt we need to reevaluate the decisions that we have made. You know the ones, they nag in the back of the mind. The ones we may have made in anger or in haste. By experiencing discomfort, it could be the result of moving to a new town or even a death of a loved one, we get a second chance to look at our lives and perhaps, correct the course.

God calls to us to keep faith, to keep community. Our relationships are what ground us, our friends are what remind us, that our God is found in the ties that bind us, one to another. Jesus was trying to get us to expand the length and increase the quantity of those ties, because, through God, we are capable of compassion and friendship with people we think we can’t like, that we have become angry with, that are different from us.

If you’ve had a jolt lately, like me, I encourage you to try looking for the blessing, the opportunity to reevaluate those things that are nagging you. But most especially, I encourage you to look up an old friend and say, “Hi.” To all of you that I have missed and have missed me, it’s good to be back and I am glad to see you.

A Welcome to Remember

Greetings to all from San Francisco. Many of you know that the Lee family has moved to California following God's call and a good job. We are aclimatizing quite well to the sunshine and dry weather, although my skin is starting to dry out! I have had discussions with many of you about welcome and visitors to St. David's and I have recently gotten the welcome that I would challenge all members of God's church to meet.

We arrived for the Sunday morning Christmas Eve service at 11am. As you can imagine, the service was light on people, many chosing to come in the evening service instead. It is easy enough to hide in a large crowd if you are a newbie, but as we all know at St. David's visitors are hightly visible with less than 20 people in a large room. I must admit I am not a wallflower, but I was definitely a visitor to the sights and customs of this parish. As the celebrants and attendants gathered for the begining of service, Rosa Lee, the vicar, walked right up to me and said, "Heather, it's about time you got here."

If we are builing heaven right here on earth, Rosa Lee is the chief door greeter. One of the blessings of community is the quality of being known. Christ reminds us often in the Gospel, that we are known to God. But to relish the fullness of joy in being known by God's people, we must first trust that if He finds us worthy, then we must indeed be worthy. It can be scary to come to a new place with different customs and expectations. As disconcerting as it is within the tradition, imagine how difficult it is for people who have not grown up in the church, or who have had that trust violated.

That was the perfect greeting for me, in that time and place. As most of you know, my husband had been in San Francisco for several months before we joined him, and I was pretty resistant to leave my loving and trusting community of faith. We may be a people of the book, but we all read it pretty differently. I am a preacher, and I had concerns that I would find a community that I could still speak to. I am a homebody and what I like best is deepening old relationships, not necessarily making new ones. How perfect then, for me, to receive a welcome of the tardy child rather than the potential stranger. I knew that it was not just a priest who greeted me but God reinforcing the rightness of this move for our family and for His work in our lives.

I realize that not everyone can or should be greeted in this manner. But I think that no one who enters the doors of our churches should encounter a challenging greeting or a lack of greeting at all. We all enter the building with the desire of encountering God. It is the responsibility of those of us who already inhabit the halls of God's house to remember that we are not only the hands and feet of God doing good work in the community, but we are the voice and comfort of God's love to those who seek. Anyone who enters our buildings has already been blessed and found worthy by God, all we have to do is make sure we and they don't forget it.

Thanks be to God!

What are we waiting for?

Advent has rolled around again, and once again I am faced with the dual tasks of waiting and reflecting on the newborn Christ, and running around like a chicken with my head cut off shopping, decorating and attending holiday parties. This year, there is the added adventure of moving the week before Christmas Day. So, you would think that the fact that I have been snowed in for a week at my parent's house, on top of the week vacation I gave myself, would have me pulling out my hair. But I have, instead, found the space between waiting and running.

The week of my vacation, I had a lovely time. It was spent cooking for family that was coming for dinner and going out shopping for Christmas gifts. The week of Thanksgiving was spent in the same manner of all my weeks, running around trying to get as much done each day as possible.

But on Saturday, when I could and perhaps should have come home for church on Sunday, I instead accepted an invitation from my mom to stay and sew with some of her friends. We had a great time, of fellowship and laughter. We pieced utility (what my mom calls big squares stuck together in rows with no particular pattern) quilts for both children. We even quilted them, and mom was going to finish the binding and bring them for Christmas.

I did not watch the news until Saturday night. It turns out my window of opportunity to get home was Saturday. Saturday night brought in a storm so large and cold that it was the same storm in Seattle, WA as Denver, CO. It snowed all day on Sunday, a foot deep without drifting, in a sheltered area, on the back porch.

So, Sunday, we watched it snow, considered putting up the Christmas tree, and decided to bind those quilts. And start another one. We packed up our things in preparation of leaving Tuesday. I spent part of my time shoveling out the longest steepest driveway in America, and we started teaching the kids to sew. It did stop snowing, but it hasn't warmed above freezing yet.

Somewhere between Sunday and Wednesday, the frantic need to get home and get things done has been replaced by a complacency, a contentment to wait until it is safe and sane to be out again in the bustle. In the meantime, we have done more for my Christmas list than I ever imagined. My daughter is helping while learning to sew ( I won't say what, because some of you are getting them for Christmas.) The kids are not fighting and no one has said, "I'm bored."

I have learned a lesson about snow that I knew as a child but had forgotten once I grew up and moved away from it. The snow and the ice, which, in the right climate, are part and parcel of advent, are a physical reminder from God to slow down, and wait in hope, for good things. With no place else to go, we cannot run away from the problems and hurts. We cannot let them fester and we cannot ignore them. The trick, I think, is to use that snowed in experience as a metaphor for life writ large. Even if we are not snowed in, we need to remember the shut in, and we need to use this time to be with the hurt of the whole world. And we need to wait in hope, for with the coming of Christ, the healing of the problems and hurts is coming as well. And we need to remember that all year long. But we won't of course, and so we are given a season, each year, to reconnect with that feeling, with the waiting in hope, that is Christ born.

It's All about Me, Right?

You are the determiner of your own destiny. This is the truth statement that underlies popular Western culture. This is the same under-pining of most salvation motivated mainstream Christian believers. This is the bottom line for the self-help movement.

We operate in a universe that says we can change our stars with enough hard work and a little luck. That hard work is fixing the behavioral damage of our parents and the genetic legacy of our appearance, but we can all reach our potential with enough surgery and medication. In the midst of all the available options to become all we can be via the secular world, the Christianity we encounter in the media is portrayed as able to sell us perfection in the afterlife, if only we believe.

Except that isn't actually what Jesus was talking about. He wasn't offering us looks or fame or charisma. He wasn't even selling the afterlife. He was selling this life. And he wasn't telling us how to get rich and famous, he was telling us how to actually be happy, actually matter, actually be human. Jesus did not become the Christ, the resurrection and the atonement so we could go to heaven. It was so that we could be fully human. It was so we could have meaningful happiness. And the way home isn't by taking care of our own selves, it is by taking care of each other.

People, by design or by nature, are communal creatures-we cannot live alone. The miracle of self-awareness creates exactly this need to live in community. “Is there anyone else like me?” is the first question we ask with our self-awareness. Earthworms are not awake at 2am wondering if anyone really understands them. People are. Children explore this question – babies and grade schoolers and high school students. Adults do it – college students and barflies, secretaries and parents, retirees and nursing home patients.

Christianity teaches us a simple and profound truth. We must consider other people before ourselves if we want to satisfy the itch of self-awareness. When we worry about our relevance, if we are needed and if we are contributing to society, we are being self-absorbed. We cannot answer own question. It is only in relation to another person that we become relevant, contributory and needed.

Have you ever taken the trust test where you stand with your back to someone and fall? Always sure that we are going to fall, and we are always amazed and surprised when we don't land on our backs. Christianity is just like this test. And like this test, we cannot do it alone.

Why Study Sex at Church, Lenten Study Series

The following is an article I wrote for the church newsletter as an explaination for why we are studying the issue of homosexuality for Lent. As for me, I rarely give anything up for Lent anymore, but like to use the time to address something that is missing in my life. For instance, this year I am adding exercise, again. But for our study at church, I thought that something we are missing is our connection to the church writ large, and I wanted to make sure at least my tiny neck of the woods was prepared for the broohaha that will be General Convention 2006.

So, this is why we are studying sex at church....

At a Sunday service last summer, a young man who is not from a liturgical tradition asked me why we pray for the catholic church since we are not catholic? I explained that the word catholic meant universal and that when we pray for the catholic church we are praying for all bodies of Christians, no matter what kind or where they are. Hot on the heels of this came a question about why we pray for the dead, wasn’t that ancestor worship. I explained that no, we were not praying to the dead, but that we were including all Christians, both the living and the dead, as part of the church. These may be the short answer, theologically, but they are fundamentally true. As the sign says, all are welcome here.

In fact, I came from a tradition much like this young man’s and one of the reasons I sought out a new place to worship was my own belief that all who profess Christ are Christians, and that the Holy Spirit will not let evil profess Christ. (1 Corinthians 12:3) Do I think the church of my youth is not a body of Christ? No, but it was not my body.

The Episcopal Church in particular, and the Anglican Communion of which it is a part, is a practicing catholic church. We gather together as Anglicans, and we gather together in ecumenical bodies such as the World Council of Churches to consider our common Christian mission. This is practicing a belief, that all Christians are fully Christians.

The result of such welcome, however, is tension. We are all different people who see the world in different ways and bring different values and needs to our practicing faith. It takes a lot of work, on the part of individuals and institutions to acknowledge an autonomy of practice while sharing an affirmation of faith. This is the reward of the transformational nature of conversion (being born again). In fact, this tension is possible only through the Gospel. In the fact of Jesus lies the full potential of the Gospel-we are free of the burden of sin. This freedom is the necessary ingredient for us to overcome our need to surround ourselves with like-minded people who can make us feel better about ourselves. And it compels us to go and do good in the name of that freedom, in the name of Jesus Christ.

But what does that good look like? The goodness of God is unchanging. We are not. For us, where we are in time and in place will have a lot to do with how we are able to understand that goodness. The variety itself is the goodness of God. For example, consider a chair. What passes for a chair varies by location. From a smooth rock, to a gold-encrusted six-legged high-backed throne, to a three-legged stool; these are all chairs. The goodness of God is just as varied. Deciphering the goodness of the world takes the prompting of the Spirit, and following that prompting takes reflection.

We are blessed in the liturgical tradition in that we celebrate seasons each year, not the seasons of winter and summer, but the seasons of Lent and Advent. Lent is a time for reflection. We are coming into the Lenten season, and have chosen, as a community, to study the decisions that have been made in our church, in common and particular communities, with regards to sexuality and fitness for ordination. Homosexuality is not the only issue that the catholic church has wrestled with in the last 50 years, but it is currently the most heated around the world. In a few months we will gather again as a national church and these issues will be at the forefront. It is our responsibility to be aware of the work of our church, not just our parish. It is our responsibility to allow the Spirit to move us in the same ways that it moves others. It is our gift to live in tension.

Quick, What do you look like?

In a discussion, ongoing, at my house, my husband asked me why there weren't any books about what it looks like to be a Christian. If someone comes to you and says, why do you go to church? we are all hard pressed to answer them. Any books you do find that might answer someone's question either don't talk about actual people(like I am an actual person, not a saint) or don't make any sense if you haven't already drunk the koolaid. As the thinker, and the writer, in the family, I have been charged with finding this out.

The easiest answer is that we are not speaking to people in their own language. We have worked out so long ago what “Lamb of God” really means that we have forgotten the seven years of wrestling that got us here. Furthermore, so much of the history of Western Civilization has happened in conjuncture with The Church that many of our images are part of the public domain. They have life outside of us that must be taken into account when we are using them for the gospel.

The harder answer is that we are mired in the habit of our Christianity. Habits allow us to get things done without having to revisit the fundamentals every time we want to get something done, be it shoe tying or Christian living. When someone asks, “Heather, why are you a Christian?” I am being asked how I answer the question of relevance. Habit has allowed us to do great things for Christianity, but it has not answered the actual question: What does a Christian look like? Why is Church/God/Christianity relevant? What does a miracle look like?

We cannot address the miracle because we are not staring it full in the face. It is like trying to draw your own face from memory. When you compare the picture to the image in the mirror, you find all the ways you have changed when you were busy looking out, not in. What does a Christian look like? What is the miracle? Why is the institution relevant? They all have the same answer. A Christian is someone looking outside themselves. The miracle of Christianity is that it keeps us looking outside ourselves. The institution is the keeper of community looking out.

Have you looked in your mirror lately?

Enjoy the Silence

What are you going to do with your Advent Season this year? Most of us will probably spend it rushing between parties, shopping, and either cleaning for guests to come, or packing to be guests somewhere else. In between we will put in as few hours of work as possible to get it all done while our employers want us to stay overtime.

Do you know what you are supposed to be doing with your Advent Season? Once, a long time ago before marketing departments spent millions on advertising, advent was the season of peace, of stillness. The harvest was in, the party was over, and it was the beginning of a whole season of waiting(aka winter).

Advent is a time for silence, rightly falling in the season of silence. Just imagine the silence of a snowfall. It is in this time that we need to stop, to sit, to wait, and to listen to the silence. But silent is not the same as alone. Silence is, in fact, the most essential element of any conversation. If someone is not listening, then all of our speech is for nothing. In the year of the church, it is the time to experience the distance between us and God.

The church year is a celebration of the life of Jesus that mirrors the natural year, with its seasons; winter, spring, summer and fall. It is distinctly different from the calendar year or the fiscal year or the school year. Which calendar are you on right now? Probably you are juggling several already-if your children are in school, if you are looking for your winter boots, if you are gathering tax receipts from charity donations, and purchasing a new calendar for 2006. And if you are feeling a little harried from all of that, perhaps it is because you are not honoring the most important calendar in your life.

Be in the silence this Advent. Even though it is hard, even though there are only 15 more shopping days until Christmas. Even though the rest of the world is making more noise than usual, we must give ourselves this time to listen to the silence. Because if we don't hear the silence, we never have the chance to hear the answer.


(The 15 days reflects the actual publishing date of the article. I am not that confused about the date. hml)

How to talk about GOd in the 21st Century

This is the second article in the How to Talk about God series. Last month I spoke on what it is like to talk to God and I used television shows to explain two perspectives. This month, I would like to complain about the problem of hermeneutics, the fact that everyone has preconceived notions. Something that we all experience when we try to speak to non-Christians about our faith is that people want to tell us what we think instead of listen to us. There is a two fold reason for this.

First, we as humans want to teach more than we want to learn. This is a pretty well documented sociological fact and remembering this when we encounter people who always dispute our facts, opinions and faith goes a long way towards keeping us in charity with our fellow humans. We are who we are and we like to be 'in the know.'

Second, we live in a post Christendom era. The Anabaptist Network have put together a FAQ of their “Core Convictions” and one of them sums this idea up perfectly. “Western culture is slowly emerging from the Christendom era when church and state jointly presided over a society in which almost all were assumed to be Christian. Whatever its positive contributions on values and institutions, Christendom seriously distorted the gospel, marginalized Jesus, and has left the churches ill-equipped for mission in a post-Christendom culture.”

Our world is still full of default Christian values and traditions. Christmas and Easter are still considered national holidays, people running for public office are expected to profess Christianity, and the media and marketing industries cater to the perceived desires of Christians, which we all too often defer to ourselves. Whatever Jesus WOULD do, I highly doubt he would buy bumper stickers. No matter how much I enjoyed both Wonderfalls and Joan of Arcadia, should I have been letting my understanding of the gospel and that of non-believers be molded by people trying to make a few dollars from advertising bathroom cleaner?

We are called to be set apart from the rest of the world. This is not because we know we are better than the other inhabitants of the planet, but because we know that we are worse. We are called apart to serve people in need and not to cater to the power brokers of this world. When we want to talk to people about God, are we doing this? And more importantly, how are we doing this? Asking people if they are saved and do they know Jesus invites one of my favorite bumper sticker responses, “Born OK the first time.” These questions are phrased in a language set apart, and the secular understanding of them will never match the 'technical term' status we assign them. What I think of when someone says 'chaos theory' and what the physicist think are radically different.

Hermeneutics is the study of the problem of preconceived notions. We must be careful that we understand this problem, and we understand what the preconceived notions are before we try to talk to someone about church, or Jesus, or Christianity (three very different things). When we ask people what they think first, before we speak, we acknowledge their world view and perspectives. This gives us a language, their language, as a place to begin the conversation. This allows us to address other peoples actual needs, which is the true service instructed by the gospels and what we are actually trying to say when we ask, Are you saved?

The Devil Speaks through Potted Meat

Jean Baker asked me to consider writing about the process of learning to talk about God in the 21st century. I think this is a great idea and the next few columns will be devoted to expanding that thought. This month I want to start with what it feels like to talk TO God in the 21st century. This is a tale of two television shows that envision what it is like to talk to God.

First, I want to talk about Joan of Arcadia. Two summers ago I painted the interior of my home, mostly on Friday nights so I could watch Joan of Arcadia. The most obvious adjective for the show is sincere. Everyone was sincere and Joan was a good kid who never violated anyone's expectations of her, even God's. Sure she disappointed them but she never, even in doing God's will, turned her back completely on her social paradigm. This is the view I think we all want of God, that we will never be startled out of our comfort zone and that God wants us to comprehend his will.

As for Wonder Falls, I doubt many of you have ever heard of it. I hadn't until it showed up from Netflix but I found it far and away does a better job of depicting how I feel God interacts with me and the whole world. Jaye, our heroine had defied every expectation that her family, friends and coworkers have ever had for her. Her family is wildly successful – her mother is an author, her father is a surgeon, her brother is an atheist getting a doctoral degree in comparative religion and her sister is an immigration attorney. Jaye is nouveau poor. She has a philosophy degree from Brown University, works in a gift shop in Niagra Falls and lives in a trailer. Jaye raises self-righteous indignation to an art form; right up to telling people to stop calling her a hero for catching a baby. Unlike Joan who interacts with God through different people each week, God speaks to Jaye through clearly inanimate objects-defective wax lions, brass monkey book ends and wind-up penguins. In every episode Jaye is asked by God to defy social norms, like withhold someones mis-delivered social security checks or reveal a historical lie that has made someone famous. Every time Jaye tries to do what God asks the situation gets noticeably worse, but in the course of events, something bigger and better and beyond expectation happens for the person that Jaye interacts with.

God identifies himself to Joan and patiently guides her through the steps she needs to take, even if he won't always tell her why. God won't even admit that he isn't Satan to Jaye because she must exercise her free will. She does, and she grumbles the whole way.
This is what the bible tells us it is like to interact with God. But because we know the stories in the bible so well, they seem normative, and because we keep them in the bible, we forget how they describe non-normative events for their time. Interacting with God takes us outside ourselves, and God doesn't always or often choose someone sincere and well meaning to spread his message to us. Paul's letter to the Corinthians about being fools for God (see 1 Corinthians, chapter 1) is oft quoted but perhaps rarely understood. God is trying to break us out of our complacency, to experience a paradigm shift that embraces the other. How often do we not listen to someone because they aren't Christian and so infer that God would not speak through them? How often do we not speak or act because we do not believe we are powerful enough for God to speak through us? How often do we not do so because what God needs for us to say is neither polite nor politic?

When we are self-righteous (when we think of ourselves before others), we are not able to build the kingdom of God. Being self-righteous happens when we think we are right to the exclusion of all others, but it also happens when we think that God wouldn't work through us. Are you letting God work through you?

Joan of Arcadia had two seasons and they have a fan site www.joanofarcadia.com if you are interested. Wonderfalls had one season and their fan site name says it all www.savewonderfalls.com.

The Freedom to Give

The other day at a picnic I got into a discussion with someone about homelessness, self-sufficiency and drug abuse. The premise was that people with these problems ought to take classes in taking care of themselves and not bother us by being on the street anymore. I picked up my jaw, my Christian charity, and repeated my mantra first in my head and then aloud. “There but for the grace of God go I.” The conversation revolved around the illusion of self-sufficiency and the medical status of drug abuse and concurrent homelessness. I recommended a book I just finished reading called Radical Compassion by Gary Smith, S.J.(Society of Jesus) that is about his experiences here in Old Town. It is difficult to keep someone as 'other' when you know their back story.

I was reasonably satisfied with the conversation at the time, but the person I was talking to professed Christ, as do I, and I have been wondering why she and I have such different takes on our Christian obligation to the problems of homelessness and drug abuse. I don't know what her take is, but this is mine.

It starts with the question of salvation. And what salvation really means is freedom. Principally, our salvation from sin frees us from the fear of making a mistake(a sin)- fear which keeps us from doing anything at all. Salvation theory isn't about me going to heaven and you going to hell, its about me not worrying about going to hell for a poor outcome to a good intention. Christ died, and that death is all the restitution we need.

This leads to another one of the huge tenets of Christianity; to care for the poor, the sick, the widow, and the prisoner. Salvation theory actually makes this not only possible but imperative. Christ can and does ask of us to care for those with less than ourselves, and he has made possible for us the freedom to do so. His sacrifice exempts us from the usual human interaction of tit for tat.

Christianity does not ask anyone to fulfill their side of a social contract for services. We never have to wash our hands of a problem child or keep large databases of good deeds and taxes paid in order to calculate how much help or love or money someone deserves. They deserve whatever we can give them. Free of holding others responsible for the goodness of our deeds, we are then free to care with love and patience; to come to people where they are and do for them what can be done for them. God will take care of the details, we just have to be expressions of the love that He gave us for each other.

We at Saint David's aren't keeping any databases on who gives, but we have one for who receives. The website has a whole page devoted to trying to catch all the ministries we do for others. There are links to the organizations, lists of what donations we accept for delivery(during office hours, or call for arrangements) and what activities we need volunteers for. Please express your freedom (and maybe unload things that aren't worth the trouble of a whole yard sale.) www.saintdavidofwales.org/ministries/

Making time for God in your Personal Life

Last month I wrote about letting things go to make room for God to work in our lives. This month, I need to remind myself, and thus you, of why I did this.

One of the most spectacular aspects of the Episcopal Church, for me, is the concept and practice of corporate worship. Having grown up in a religion where the individual experience of God is the most important and telling measure of one's faith, it has been a liberating homecoming to be in a place that celebrates the communal nature of Christianity. But this does not negate or diminish the importance of personal devotions. Even the BCP, our community guidebook, has a liturgy for individuals, called Daily Devotions (p 136 if you want to have a look).

Of course, I have a recently discovered and much indulged fascination with communal worship, so what I really want to do is start morning and evening devotionals with my whole family. I want to show my children just how important and fulfilling God is every day, but I know that this would constitute a fight twice a day with my house full of nature's audience members. All this would really accomplish is even less time to spend in prayer and devotion.

So for now, I think I need to stop trying to force my good intentions on others and in doing so, actually avoid the personal time I need to be allowing God to speak to me. I need to lead by example. Instead of squeezing my own prayer into the twilight corners of my day, when I am in truth perhaps worshiping my coffee cup or pillow more than God, I ought to dedicate some of the prime time to my prayers and study. Then, perhaps, when others see me, they will be truly touched and want to know more of God themselves.

Feed your Soul - Not your idea of what needs doing

This last month I have fallen into a very bad habit that I slide into from time to time. Someone will ask me to do something, or they will state some thing that needs to get done, and I will volunteer. After all, it doesn't seem like very much extra, and the sun is up so much longer, making the time seem that much more available. Unfortunately, no matter how long the sun choses to grace the sky, there are still only 24 hours in a day. The real result of all this volunteering to make other lives seem easier is that my own rapidly falls into chaos. I have to start juggling priorities and deciding not only which activity is more “worthy” but which relationship is more important.

I come back to Matthew 10:39 a lot. It says “Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”

What do we mean when we say 'get a life' in our 21st century culture? For the most part, we are talking about getting a 'real' job with real benefits and real potential for taking on more responsibility at that job. We are talking about buying a house and taking on repairs and mortgages and actually buying furniture. We are talking about getting married, and creating new rituals and responsibilities with another person, and often having children. The problem is, that sort of life is expensive, it is time consuming, and very rarely do all of those other responsibilities and commitments line up with the work that we have been left to do by Jesus Christ. When we find that life, we spend a great deal of time afraid that we will lose it; And often we do.

About two years ago, Shannon and I committed our lives to following the small still voice of the Holy Spirit. To be fair, He was making his wishes pretty clear with a combination of high rent and no job. Still, the call had come before and I had always chosen the security of the world over the security of the sparrows and the grasses. It was time to consider the definition of stupidity and make a change.

Suddenly, I was spiritually mature enough to understand this verse. It wasn't about getting heavenly mansions at all, it was about the amazing transformation of priorities and needs and fulfillments that happen when you do listen to that voice; when you do lose your life for His sake. The freedom from fear is the true freedom of grace. That grace has brought about a refocus of just about everything I was taught to do with and for my family. I have to say, we slide a lot between what the culture tells us is important to us and what is important to God.

Peace and grace our gifts to us from Jesus Christ if we lose our lives for his sake. Living faith is a commitment that has to be affirmed every minute of every day. It is counterintuitive to human priorities and it has a way of cutting through the detritus of human affairs. When I am not listening to what God asks of me, and arranging my life accordingly I get very distracted by the coulda, the shoulda, and the woulda; and not very much actually gets done at all. What does get accomplished is often only done with half my heart and half my attention. Unfortunately, then I am left with the other half of both my heart and my attention focused on the undone. What I could, should and would do, if I was ordering my life according to His will and not my own is often very different. I do admit, it is very hard to let God take care of the details. It is even harder to consider that if I did not do the things that are not asked of me, and they didn't get done, that too is God's will.

I challenge each one of you to think about what you are doing right now in your life that is an unwelcome obligation, a time bleeding commitment that does not glorify God (you will know them by the feeling in your heart) and a task you think that no one else will do if you don't. Let them go. It may be that they are not important to God, and it might be that you are taking away someone else's opportunity to glorify God and live by grace.

Coincidental Distractions from God

When do circumstances constitute random events, a distraction, or a call to growth? Several upheavals have occurred in the life of our family recently, and Shannon and I have been discussing how to tell the difference between coincidences, distractions and calls from God.

As many of you know, Shannon is looking for a new job because his company cannot make payroll. It isn't something he did, it isn't downsizing or outsourcing, it is just circumstances and a really small business. The strange and quirky thing is that this is that 2 years ago Shannon lost his job for the same reasons and at the same time. Easter isn't exactly the best time to get bad news. For us as Christians it is the most exciting time of year and filled with the most possibilities; Christ is risen, all things are possible.

The last time this happened we cut our losses and moved back in with our parents. It didn't seem like we were lining up our lives for any great revelatory events but it turned out to be a wonderful opportunity for growth, individually and as a family. Shannon got to stay home with the kids, whom he had hardly seen in 5 years and I reached a place spiritually that has led to things like leading prayer services and writing these articles.

Now, two years later, we are wondering if God has something to teach us and we missed the boat the last time. We began second guessing some of our previous choices and reevaluating of our current circumstances. We were wondering if the job loss at Easter – again – was just a coincidence. Is looking for a new job now a distraction from the work we should be doing for God's purpose, or is it a call from Him to grow in new ways that we have not been able to do before now?

Coincidence, luck, happenstance, serendipity. I think they are all just words we use to describe events with our pattern-making brains. I think the events in themselves are not all that important. What matters is what you do with them. Do you use them as an opportunity to get distracted from fulfilling Jesus' work on earth? Do you use them as an excuse to avoid doing God's work? Every one of us is guilty of having changed our perspective to avoid the things we don't want to do something about.

One of the important lessons that Christianity teaches us is that we do not have control over the happenstance of our lives, all we have is the knowledge the there is a God and He does express His will. We can cooperate with that will by conforming to the revelation, reason and tradition that God has given us or we can do our puny best to thwart it. However, God's will does prevail, not our own. Jesus was for us the perfect example of how to do God's work. He then left us to continue his work. The important thing is to see every event as an opportunity to grow in our Christ-like behaviors. More important is to use every opportunity to be Christ-like.

I am picking up more work at my job, and Shannon has had a couple of interviews already. We have family and friends and Samaritans who will use our circumstances to be more Christ-like in their lives, just as we have utilized the circumstances of others to be more Christ-like in our own. The things of this world are fleeting, jobs especially, but the opportunities are golden.

What to tell St. Peter

(this was lost for a time in my computer woes over Christmas and was supposed to be my article for February/Lenten Reflection)

For Christmas, my daughter got a Barbie Doll marketed under the name ‘My Scene.’ Because she is 7 and an avid reader, Francis attempted to read this label herself. It took a few turns of conversation to figure out why she was talking about her ‘sins.’ We had a good laugh over the mistake and I asked her to stop calling her dolls sins. When she didn’t, I got one of those questions difficult questions; “Mom, what is a sin?”

Many more learned people than I have spent a lot of time and energy coming up with more complicated ideas of sin and redemption, but I have found that all that effort is lost on a seven year old girl who is very committed to the people around her but not very interested in what some dead people said. So, right or wrong, this is what I told her.

Sins are when you hurt God’s feelings. We have had a lot of discussions relating to hurt feelings, and they generally revolve around thinking of yourself first and not caring about the needs of other people.

This just seemed like a nice introduction to what has been sitting on my mind lately. I have been thinking about evangelism and reading a book about a “new” way to evangelize by being people’s friend first and telling them about God second. There is something that rings true about this at the same time it rings false. After all, it would be a sin to stand next to your befriended neighbor at the Pearly Gates and have to tell them (and St. Peter) that you never even told them you were a Christian, let alone made it seem so appealing that they wanted to know more about it.

We need to consider how we as a congregation meet these people at our own front door. Do we show them our love of Jesus? Do we show them that Christ loves us? If we can do that, we don’t need to tell them that Christ loves them, they will know. Being saved isn’t what makes Christianity so appealing; it is what makes it possible. Before we can save anyone, we need to show them the wonder of a community where everyone makes good faith efforts to forgive each other and when they want to know how that is possible, then you can tell them about the grace of the resurrection. One of the most beautiful ideas in the Episcopal faith is that we invite people to share our worship first, then they can see the wonder of salvation.

How Will they Know

“Everything your church needs to be what God wants it to be is already in your midst. Open your eyes to the people around you. Stop wishing and hoping, and do the best you can, with what you’ve got, for Jesus Christ today.” Rick Warren, in The Emerging Church by Dan Kimball.
I have been thinking about this powerful quotation for the last month while doing research for our evangelism committee. And the conclusion I have reached is somehow both remarkable and obvious. “Open your eyes to the people around you.” There are certainly a lot of people around. Our building is surprisingly full of people all the time, if we are only willing and able to see them as part of our church.
How do we really feel about having the many groups and communities using the building? Do we see them as purely a source of income? Do we even see them as potential Christians? Do we see them as members of our community, just they way they are? I keep running into the idea that early Christian communities contained both the initiated and the uninitiated. (One source of this was a quote from Bishop Itty’s address at the Convention.) How we see ourselves, especially where we draw the line demarcating ‘other’ will have a lot to do with how we present ourselves to the groups in the building and how we present ourselves to strangers who come through the door.
We need to take some time to think about our attitudes towards the people who meet in this building. They have a right and responsibility to the building and my perception is that they would love to have an invitation as well. We might want to think about opening the boundaries with regards to the building- who has permission to use it and even who has permission to be on the committees about the building. And lastly I suppose who has the responsibility to provide care and money and maintenance on the building.
Dan Kimball had something else important to show me. While teaching a class on Acts he said to his students, “The church is the people of God who gather together with a sense of mission (Acts 14:27). We can’t go to church because we are the church.” Our little group of parishioners is the church at St. David’s and no matter how much we love this building, it isn’t the church, we are. We don’t need this parish beyond its ability to provide comfort and safety for all the people who use it. We don’t need this property beyond its ability to give us space to focus and feed our mission – to witness to the love of God and to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ.
We need to re-imagine ourselves in relation to this building. Semantics are powerful. Calling the groups who meet here outsiders denies them the right to be here. And it keeps them separate from the church, separate from us and ultimately, separate from God. If we see them as tenants, how will we ever imagine them as members of the body of Christ, how will they ever imagine that our God is the God of Unconditional Love. Every community that uses this building is contributing to the lifting up of the broken and hurting world. Every individual who meets here for any reason is searching for God’s love and worthy of joining our family.

Why do you come to church?

As we find ourselves approaching the start of the church year again, it is time for us to think about the answer to this simple question. Why do you come to church? Is it habit? Is it to see old friends? Or is it to recharge your batteries? Is it to engage in the mysteries?

There are a lot of good and comfortable reasons to come to church but are they what Christ left us to do? The formation of the early church was not so that Christians could congregate with Christians without the interference of non-Christians. It wasn’t to form a social club for the enlightened. It wasn’t even to form an organization to coordinate charities.

Jesus left us with two commandments and one commission. Love God. Love your neighbor. Spread the Good News. That’s it. And figuring out what that means and how to execute it is the work of the church. That is what we need to do. Every day. This should be the standard of our actions, as individuals and as a church. Our parish is conveniently assigned a little chunk of real estate in the world to figure out how to do these things for the people who live here.

So who does live here? We can study demographic data. We can look for the local standard of beauty and spread it around our building. We can read books and we can put up flyers. As long as we are focused on who and what we are missing the point. Before we wonder what to do and even who to do it to, we need to know why we do the thing we do.

The Holy Spirit brings people through the uninviting architecture of our front doors with surprising regularity. We need to be cognizant to why they are coming. People no longer come to church to find a social club or a charitable organization to contribute to. These things are available to an information age at the click of a button. People come to church because they are looking for God. And people come to church despite the fact that Christians have a bad reputation for being exclusive and narrow-minded.

It is not our numbers that will wow them; it is our faith. I know that we have a very faithful community and we need to be less afraid to speak of it. We love God. We love each other. With joy and with passion we must not be afraid to spread the Good News.