Elie Naud

(Peace Mass reflection for September 7, 2011)

Daniel 6:10b–16,19–23

Psalm 30

James 1:2–4,12a

Matthew 15:21–28

The gospel reading for today is most notable for its insults. This woman comes bursting onto the scene demanding healing for her daughter. Jesus does what I consider his most amazing miracle, he thinks before he speaks, but the disciples immediately decide that shouting lacks the proper respect due to a Messiah. Then Jesus and the woman exchange this bit of dialogue.

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” he says.

“Lord, help me,” she pleads, on her knees.

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” he says.

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

“Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.”

It isn’t the dialogue itself that interests me in this exchange; it is the clever wordplay that they engage in, the quick comeback worthy of a 1940’s comedy. This is a way of communicating that we hardly ever engage in at church. To be a good Christian is often to engage in a very particular set of manners that most of us would sum up under the word, ‘polite.’ It is often about letting people meet us where we are rather than going out and meeting them where they are. It’s almost never about clever comebacks and witty repartee. It certainly doesn’t dish insult for insult.

Jesus and this woman aren’t being very polite to each other; they aren’t engaging in the proper exchanges expected by the disciples or us. But they are definitely in relationship, they are definitely communicating.

Elie Naud, our saint of the day, was definitely in the business of relationships that meet people where they are. Elie, a French Huguenot, fled persecution and ended up at Trinity Church Wall Street in New York. He never let what was considered right or proper get in the way of the Gospel. He became an Anglican catechist to black slaves and Native Americans, eventually founding a school for the children of slaves and Native Americans.

I wonder, when we engage with people outside our social groupings, when we encounter people who are perhaps defensive from the start about our Christian identity, do we stay in relationship, do we communicate, even if it doesn’t sound like “good Christian behavior.” I wonder, when someone needs our help, and doesn’t expect us to give it, do we back away from the forcefulness of their defenses or do we give it right back, with love.

Holy Cross Day

(Peace Mass Reflection from September 7, 2011)

Galatians 6:14-18

John 12:31-36a

Have you ever noticed a shrine on the side of the road? They often begin with a framed photo, a candle and a bunch of flowers. Some become quite elaborate and some last for many, many years. The thing about them is, no one really knows who started it, no one really knows who set out that first candle. And it isn’t any particular persons job to start a shrine, or maintain it. 

There are many memories that our cluttered mind needs an external reminder for. Too often, important, life changing memories are crowded out by grocery lists and appointment reminders. “I will never forget,” has a way of losing its urgency in the life lived. Some things are good to remember for a time, and to let slowly fade away. There is a gift in the way our minds can lose the urgency, sometimes captured in the phrase “time heals all wounds.”  

But what about the cross? On the one hand, it is very natural for us to shy away from the trauma of the crucifixion. On the other, the resurrection doesn’t really make sense without it. This rather horrible, yet miraculous story is our good news. It is our never forget. It is the sort of thing that we build shrines to.

Constantine and his mother Helena certainly did. In 335, they dedicated several buildings  that Eusebius describes as being “on a scale of imperial magnificence” at Calvary, to mark the place of the crucifixion and resurrection. In the way of shrines, this one is no longer standing and has been replaced. In its place now stands the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 

I wonder if our shrines need to be buildings? I wonder how we might maintain an external reminder, a sharable reminder, of the memory of the cross without creating a shrine, which sometimes becomes a tomb. 

How do we live out our lives as shrines, as sharable memory? How are our jobs, be they within or without the church, paid or unpaid, a sharing of the memory of the cross and the resurrection? 

Ember Day Letter Two

Feast of Ninian of Galloway, 2011  (September 16)

Dear Bishop ---,

I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and hope that this letter finds you well. I was pleased to hear how well your Mutual Ministry Review went and that the leadership of the diocese seems to be transitioning well in all aspects. I hope that the Pacific Northwest is becoming home for you in the way that it quickly did for me when I first moved here in 1994. These last two weeks in particular have been a kafuffle of settling in, which the rain yesterday capped of nicely.

As I pray and discern my vocation as a Christian and as a beloved child of God it becomes clearer to me that this is my highest calling and deepest commitment. For many years, perhaps as long as I can remember, I have had an intellectual understanding that I am a beloved child but it seems that this season of my life is about moving that head lesson into my heart and seeing how my life intersects with creation from this new anchor.

It is through this heart, then, that I will be exploring my calling to ordained ministry with my parish discernment committee this fall and winter. The committee has formed and have begun meeting to discuss how they will proceed as a team. I admit to some anxiousness that they begin their work so that I may begin to meet with them. I know even better now that I did last month, that I have not been settled enough to begin meeting with them in any case.

While I will begin this formal discernment and continue to express my love of liturgy and the leading of gathered communities in prayer with the Wednesday Peace Mass at ---, most of my energy will be devoted to my family at this time. Both of my children are in middle school this year and there are multiple transitions happening for us. My husband is still working in California and will be for perhaps as long as next summer. While we have come home, life is not static and relearning friendships and ways of being in Portland that are different than Berkeley are hitting them at a different cognitive age than when we left. It was a shocking transition for them to have me as a full time student alongside them for the last three years and refocusing my attention towards them without the filter of my own schooling is both blessing and not. My daughter has started therapy because of her own identified difficulty in focusing and coping with the transition and we are doing some assessments to see if she has a learning disability.

Thankfully, God always provides companions along the way and this time is no exception in my life. --- is quickly becoming a beloved colleague on the Commission to End Racism and a dear friend who has also been through the gauntlet of middle school as a parent. She has offered a great deal of love and support and Christian perspective in this process. I have also settled into a direction relationship with ---. I am still seeking a therapist in the Portland area, which is complicated by a necessary but unexpected change in health insurance at this time. I am trying to decide between a basic 24-Hour fitness routine and joining the rock climbing gym. I seem to have unpacked enough boxes and built enough furniture that I feel the lack of regular exercise. Not the least of which is the ways in which my body has conformed itself to slouching over the computer to read or type in the last few years.

And so on that note, I close this letter, hunched over the laptop some more, yet grateful that on the other side of it lies a long walk with my dog in the sunshine now peeking through the clouds and a weekend free of homework with my son and daughter during which we may, with God’s blessings, simply abide in the love of God and in each other. I pray you, too, the peace of an unstructured day of play.

Ember Letter One

June 15, 2011

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. I write to you as a
proud graduate of Church Divinity School of the Pacific. The pride,
pleasure and relief of this accomplishment is better expressed in a
picture, so I have attached a picture of being hooded by Dean Mark
Richardson, taken by Katie Keller, also from our diocese.

Even now, I am packing the rather abundant belongings of four people
and preparing for our return to Portland. Not all of the mechanics of
the move are completely known but I have always been blessed with easy
faith regarding material blessings.

As part of my further discerning how best to belong to God, I will be
returning to --- and to my work with the Commission to
End Racism. I have had very limited contact with these communities in
the three years that I have been in seminary, and great changes have
happened for us all. I am interested in exploring how reunion occurs.
How does the process of reengaging further my work as a reconciling
minister of God?

My time in seminary has been framed by my explorations and growing
awareness of the relationship between trust and authority. And I have
had the most amazing spiritual director while I have been here, who
has continually asked me, 'Where is God in all this?' and repeatedly
brought me out of my head and into my heart. It was in this process
that I unearthed my anxiety disorder, something that has been a
stumbling block to my ability to follow God with my whole being.
Exploring my own cognitive disordering, which is ongoing work, has
been the lived experience of how all things are being reconciled to
God. There are quite a few things that "aren't working for me" as my
therapist says, but that have, in fact, been used by God to increase
my sensitivity to the other in our midst. Realizing that I won't lose
that sensitivity, even as I am able to be in charge of my emotional
response to it has been a miracle worthy of any healing in the New
Testament. I begin to live the freedom of total dependance in God that
mystics speak of. I'm certainly no Julian, but I being to feel her
work with my soul rather than simply read it with my mind.

I have missed your visitation to --- but the Commission to End
Racism meets at the Close now, so perhaps I will see you in passing
this summer.

Blessings,
heather lee

Compassion

I preached this at the Beatitudes Preaching Workshop. It was an excellent exercise in taking the time it takes and always to be reading a good book. I was reading a book by Wendy Farley called Theodicy and Divine Compassion. I mentioned it in the sermon, but I don't know if it got mentioned in the text.

“He fasted forty days and forty nights, and afterwards he was famished.” I should think so. But, have you ever wondered just what Jesus was fasting from? I think that Jesus is fasting from the power of Satan, from the voice of Satan in his head. And I think this because thanks to the polyphonic Spirit, this is what I am fasting from.

Have you ever wondered about the voices in your head? I expect that you, like me, actually have a bit of a Greek chorus – teachers, parents, song lyrics, spouses and partners, preachers and movies, the Huffington Post, NPR, and Fox News are but a few of the voices rattling around in there. All of those voices and more throw in their two cents when we need to make a decision. How do we decide which ones to listen to? How do we decide which one to trust?

Have you ever wondered if some of those voices might be Satan? I can usually tell by what are they offering? Satan offers us power; the power of domination. Those voices that say, “The Spirit doesn’t speak through me, why would anyone listen to me.” Those voices that say, “If everyone would just shut up and do what I tell them. Why is it that I am the only one who knows what we should do?” Those are some of the voices that keep us imprisoned and that enable us to imprison others. Those voices that create ‘the other’ rather than ‘the communion’.

The gospel for today is an invitation to follow Jesus in turning away from Satan’s power of domination. Which makes me wonder about the Hebrew Scripture it is paired with. The lectionary compilers, in conjunction with eons of historical thought, have offered us the story of the Fall, of Adam and Eve eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and discovering shame. Traditionally, this story is used to explain why there is evil and suffering in the world of a benevolent God.

How do we reconcile the story of the Fall with things like the goodness of creation and free will and a benevolent God? Quite often, the answer to this is to say that Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and got their just reward. Unfortunately, this explanation is then extrapolated to say that whenever something bad happens to us, it is our fault, we caused it, we deserve our suffering. If we are going to read the story of the Fall as the beginning of Satan’s domination, so that Jesus can later refute that domination, we are going to have to answer some tough questions about consequences and freedom. It is easy to see how Adam and Eve had the freedom to act and the freedom to receive the consequences of that freedom, but the world is a lot more complicated than this story.

There is a difference between the suffering that happens when good intentions collide. The suffering that comes from freedom and leads to health and strength and it is not the same suffering that denies hope. God can and will redeem even hopeless suffering, but we cannot say that it is part of a causal chain from the Fall. We cannot say that it is deserved.

Domination is not the power of God. God’s power is love, and it is most readily seen in the act of compassion. Compassion is not an emotional response. It isn’t really an emotion at all, it is a verb, a very active verb. The hallmarks of compassion are righteous anger and sorrow in the presence of suffering, any suffering, but especially in the hopeless suffering of an abused child, of a Holocaust camp, of institutionalized segregation and racism.

You have to see a human as human, without any mitigating circumstances in order to feel compassion. You have to see the world as God’s good creation in order to act out of compassion.

It is all too easy to step over the homeless vet sleeping next to the newspaper vending machine in order to read and bemoan the latest atrocities of war. This is when the power of Satan wins. Because if we step over suffering we have stepped on compassion – we have abdicated our own divine righteous anger and sorrow.

Compassion is what Jesus offered on the cross. He did not curse the crowds, or offer a defense. He offered compassion, because compassion is the only way to break the cycle of domination. Compassion compels us to act in whatever way we can, short of domination, to bring more of God’s love into existence. Compassion says, “I have a dream.” Compassion says, “Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Compassion says blessed are the peacemakers and the poor in spirit and those who mourn, for they already see the kingdom of God. Compassion breaks the cycle of domination because it does not say, I know what is best for you, but says, I see you as a fellow human and my heart breaks for your pain. How may I serve you?

So my Lenten practice of saying no to the voice of Satan in my head is an exercise in compassion. I am, as it were, starting with myself. Because if I cannot break the bonds of Satan in my own heart, how can I ever imagine that I might break them for any other child of God? I invite you, in the four, now three days that we have together in this Sabbath time, to join me in my Lenten discipline. Shouting down Satan in your own hearts and minds. Anticipating the trampling down of death that is to come. Then we shall be able to overcome the powers of domination with the powers of compassion and lead others to do the same.

Pilgrimage

This is not a sermon. I am just processing my trip to New York. And wondering how this is going to evolve into a paper on the church's response to trauma.

I did not intend to go on pilgrimage over spring break. I went to a prophetic preaching conference and gave myself an extra day in New York City to visit a friend and play tourist, since I had flown all the way out there. So, with my free day, I did what any liturgy nerd Christian would do – I found a weekday Eucharist. The only one I knew of was Trinity Church, and I like the magazine they publish, so I went.

Now, I am a liturgy nerd, but I am not a church architecture nerd. I live in a context, and was raised in a context, where the building is primarily a roof over head, and the walls are for keeping in the heat. It ought to be attractive, but not distracting. You might describe my personal favorite worship spaces as Danish Modern meets American Mid-Century. So, if you have been to Trinity Wall Street, a very old church by American standards, it was pretty mind boggling (and a little distracting) with all the carvings and stained glass and pillars. And don’t forget the stalls, which are like pews, but also like for horses.

What I did not expect, probably could not expect from my own context, were the crowds of non-participating spectators during the Eucharist. Truth to tell, my preferred worship spaces aren’t much for post card pictures, but even so, even before I was a practicing adult Christian, I would have felt a little weird watching people ‘do church.’ Sort of like cooking or going to the bathroom; some parts are not part of public life. I felt like a cultural artifact, and I am never going to be able to watch a documentary in the same way again. But I also got a glimpse of what I imagine a large catechumenate would have felt like. Since the table was offered as an open table, and I have no actual idea if the people standing along the back of the church did or would have come up to the front steps for communion, I don’t know if anyone broke through their watching and participated.


What is the quality of longing? How does it develop? Are we afraid of it because of our instant gratification society, or did your societal response to longing create this instant gratification life style?

I spoke with the priest after the service. Fr. Simons is the one who put the word pilgrimage into my head. Then he sent me down the street to St. Paul’s chapel to see what was going on down there. So I went walking down the street. I was thinking about Canterbury Tales and Taize and the catechumenate. I was wondering if people who worship in the cathedrals in Europe or Buddhist monasteries experience the weird feeling of being a cultural artifact, too.

Then I happened on the chapel, larger than most of the churches I have worshipped in. I went up the steps reluctantly, there were dozens of people milling around the property and doorways. Chapel, to my mind, says quiet, and there is nothing quiet about this place. On the front porch is a display and when I walk over to it, expecting a capital campaign or a history of the building.

It is a timeline for the year after 9/11.

I was not a practicing Christian on September 11, 2001. I was a recent college grad considering library school. I was living in a 5 floor (mostly) walk up with two small children. I remember shuffling out of the bedroom to ask my husband to turn down his movie. I remember when the airplanes were all grounded and the fighter jets were the only thing in the air, circling over my downtown apartment. Ten years later, I am still jumpy when I hear unexpected airplanes. I remember being completely ok with combing through every nook and cranny of Afganistan in order to find Osama Bin Laden. I rarely think of his name anymore.

I certainly did not know anything about St. Paul’s Chapel. I didn’t know that the Twin Towers were ‘out back’ and I did not know churches had anything to do with the cleanup and recovery, let alone acting as forward command. I did not know that we had a national shrine.

What is the nature of longing? What does it mean to offer healing and redemption to people who might not even believe in God, or that think the belief in God is why this happened?

I left St. Paul’s and walked along the back of the property to Ground Zero. I say the Freedom Tower being built and it looked no different to me, evoked nothing different to me that the usual feelings of industrious American building. On the ground, it didn’t look any different than the construction of a skyscraper in downtown San Francisco.

I walked on.
I took the subway to Penn Station.

Considering the time that I had after my visit to Ground Zero, considering my flight time, considering my promise to bring tourist swag to my now pre-teen children, considering my son asked me to ask for the 600th floor of the Empire State Building, that’s where I decided to go. I forgot to ask for a ride to Mt. Olympus.

Before going in, I decided to sit down for some lunch, read a book, and give my mind a rest from pilgrimage. It is tiresome work, especially making meaning and identity out of collective trauma.

I decided to splurge on the Sky Ride, an interactive video of New York from a helicopter, and narrated by Kevin Bacon. I was trying to have a silly tourist experience, and I unwittingly made another stop on pilgrimage. We were ushered into a dark circular room, lined with video screens, where we were given a narration of New Yorkers as survivors of tragedy, of people as brave and proud and resilient as the Greatest Generation, the people who rallied after Pearl Harbor. Firefighters and Police officers were lifted up as brave heroes. We were told that the Twin Towers would be in the video, we were warned of the emotional response they would bring.

I thought, that is sort of tacky –it’s been 10 years, they could edit the video.

The video had been edited. The towers were not in the full video, but there at the end, we heard the story of the Empire State building as the big brother, standing in their honor. We saw the twin lights shining into the night, then the towers.

I was brought again to longing. What is the function of longing in our lives? How does longing relate to mourning?

After the ride, I went to the elevator banks and went to the observation deck. I tried to find my hotel, but it wasn’t tall enough. I braved the wind and went to the front, to see the downtown skyline.

There was a guide, talking to some of my fellow pilgrims, about he skyline and where the towers would have been. Where the Freedom Tower is coming up. It was identifiable by the crane on top – as all new buildings have – and I remember thinking that building should always have a crane on top, so we will always have that visual symbol of building and re-building America. I remembered something a friend of mine from Sudan once said to me about America. Americans never leave buildings to decay in place, we always tear out the old and clean it up, and build something new. Something better.

I didn’t think about skylines until I was on the airplane that night, watching re-runs of TV. The show I was watching was so old, the Twin Towers are in the opening credits. And I realized that the New York skyline isn’t my skyline, not like San Francisco. Not like Portland or LA. This was my first trip to New York.

I wonder how it is that skylines are a symbol. How can one skyline become the symbol of collective trauma? Skylines change all the time. America is always changing. American is always replacing itself with something better.

There was nothing about this airplane ride that activated any traumatic consciousness for me. I fly often. The airport security did not make me feel safe – just annoyed as usual. My Persian cab driver is more a New Yorker than I will ever be. I spent some time wondering how to pronounce his name properly but mostly I slept. It never occurred to me to wonder about terrorists the entire time I was in New York.

As I flew across America, this was only my second trip to the East Coast, I was reminded again how big this country is. It is too big. We are too far apart, we speak too many dialects, we have too many recipes for Buffalo Wings. We are so scattered and so diverse, we can barely share a collective trauma.

How do we go on? How do we cross-pollinate with ourselves? How do we pilgrimage? How do we lift up the very idea of pilgrimage? How to support it? Do we even want to?

Ember Day Letter - Negative 1

4/1/11

Greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, who forgives all our sins.

Including, one hopes, a delinquent seminarian, unsure if she should be writing an ember day letter at all.

I have, in fact, spoken with Mother Sara+ about the appropriateness of writing to you, cognizant that we have made a decision to move through a period of parish discernment this summer and fall but knowing as well that in sponsoring the General Ordination Exams for me, you have invited me into relationship around the discernment of my vocational call. So, if this letter is unwelcome, I do indeed apologize, and if it is not, I welcome the chance to begin what I pray will be a fruitful relationship between us.

I am quite grateful to be in my final semester of seminary. The formation of Christian vocation, encompassing but not exclusive to the vocation of ordained ministry, is a passion that developed in my return to the Christian life and has flowered profitably in my work with the Commission to End Racism. Residential seminary has given me a great deal to think about and I fully expect the next several years to be an intense period of integration - at least as intense as the last several years of disintegration. 

The General Ordination Exams, as part of that overall formation experience have been fruitful as well. I have spoken with Alice Speers on the telephone about my results from the GOE's, and I believe she has some understanding of myself and the gifts and challenges I bring with me into ministry, and the ways in which the pedagogy of the GOE's don't show forth my best advantages. I am willing to do what remediation is required to fulfill this requirement and have already requested my seminary transcripts be sent to Canon Neysa+. As I told Alice, I have the papers and tests from my time here at seminary and am willing to send them along as well. I am also able to take a stab at those tests again. Janet Roth, one of my anamcara, let me know after the fact that this process might have been accommodated for my anxiety disorder, however I did not know that before I took the exam. It is a new place in my life to identify and learn to adapt my strategies so that this anxiety is not a god in my life, setting limits on the ways I am willing to let God use my life to good purpose. I leave the consideration of remediation in the capable hands of the Commission on Ministry, focusing my attention and discernment to the work in front of me.

My family is well. As expected, we are not thriving in all areas; my husband's commuting and the transition of my children from childhood to adolescence were places we knew would be challenging. I think that we are all looking forward to a time when my work/home boundaries are not bleeding into each other in this particular way. I finished college while my children were toddlers and the quantity and quality of attention they require now is something I did not anticipate in my considerations. I thought about how capable they are with their physical needs but pre-teens have a wholly different emotional and social need than toddlers. There is frustration and cross communication, but I suspect that we and the faith of our family will rebound from this experience. One frustration I am looking forward to alleviating is one that I purposefully caused for my own educational needs and it will be wonderful for us to find a church home together again. 

My own faith life, throughout discernment and seminary has been a liminal experience. I feel quite called to something I describe as Saturday ministry, that moment in the transformation process that we reside in when we await the promised third day of resurrection, but cannot imagine it. What did the disciples do on Saturday? I think they went to seminary. I know this one did. I have spent considerable attention while in seminary to exploring authority, how it originates and perpetuates in the church as well as in my own life. I think I may be able to frame my seminary experience as a relationship with authority, beginning in confusion, trailing for a year in grief and mourning, and now finding it's voice in ways that existed before, but are newly clarified. As a listener of the null lesson, the lesson we do not intend to teach, as a voice for the marginalized and the dissenting opinion that does not feel free to speak up. As a change agent, an adaptive leader, who is brave enough and loved enough by God to say the unpopular or impolitic or unimaginable and willing to hold the safe place for others to speak their voice as well. This knowing was recently clarified for me from a conference leader at the Beatitudes Society Preaching Workshop I attended this past weekend. And I hear, also, as I write, the book on adaptive leadership that I am reading for my capstone class. In December, I had an idea that I had gathered enough sunshine to begin integrating, and many of my days do in fact feel like watching time lapsed photography of tulips - peeping up from the soil and unfolding leaves and flowers. 

And so I will close, with that image that tickles my mind (and is playing out on my neighbors patio) and pray also that your time in Kanuga with the House of Bishops was Spirit filled with the springtime of integration. I pray you find yourself refreshed and invigorated in your own leadership as our bishop and as your own person, on a journey through this life with God and Spirit and Son as your constant companions.

A fellow servant in Christ,
heather lee