Jeremiah is a prophet for our times. Ouch.

Jeremiah 22:13-17

New International Version (NIV)

13 “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness,
    his upper rooms by injustice,
making his own people work for nothing,
    not paying them for their labor.
14 He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace
    with spacious upper rooms.’
So he makes large windows in it,
    panels it with cedar
    and decorates it in red.

15 “Does it make you a king
    to have more and more cedar?
Did not your father have food and drink?
    He did what was right and just,
    so all went well with him.
16 He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
    and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?”
    declares the Lord.
17 “But your eyes and your heart
    are set only on dishonest gain,
on shedding innocent blood
    and on oppression and extortion.”

Oh, I hate cherry pickers, but this so sums up Jeremiah. And gets right to the heart of what makes me so angry about peope who say they are Christians on one hand and then do everything in their power to create more and more poverty with the other.

To me, this is exactly what we mean when we say Jesus did not come to overturn the law but to fulfill it.

Benedict and Me

CHAPTER SIXTEEN: OF A CERTAIN CLERGYMAN, WHOM VENERABLE BENEDICT FOR A TIME DELIVERED FROM A DEVIL.

At the same time a certain clergyman, that served in the church of Aquinum, was possessed: whom the venerable man Constantius, Bishop of the same city, sent to many places of holy martyrs for help: but God's holy martyrs would not deliver him, to the end that the world might know what great grace was in the servant of God, Benedict: wherefore at length he was brought to him, who, praying for help to Jesus Christ our Lord, forthwith cast the old enemy out of the possessed man's body, giving him this charge: "Go your way, and hereafter abstain from eating of flesh, and presume not to enter into holy orders, for whenever you shall attempt any such thing, the devil again will have power over you."

The man departed safe and sound, and because punishment fresh in memory used to terrify the mind, he observed for a time what the man of God had given him in commandment. But after many years, when all his seniors were dead, and he saw his juniors preferred before him to holy orders, he neglected the words of the man of God, as though forgotten through length of time, and took on him holy orders: whereupon immediately the devil that before had left him entered again, and never ceased to torment him, until he had separated his soul from his body.

http://www.osb.org/gen/greg/

The conversation between Gregory and Peter revolves around the holiness of Benedict and how he could know the intentions of God enough to know this information for the cleryman.

I'm not really interested in knowing about the relationships between God and saints, but I am really intriqued by this cergyman. A long time ago, when I first felt a call to Holy Orders, I prayed to God to put rocks in my path so I would know that it wasn't for me - because I already knew that it was as convoluted as humanly possible - as though persevering through the trials and tribulations to become a priest in the church were proof of concept.  Through my own process and those of my companions and friends in Holy Orders in the church, I know that this tends to backfire and cause the very results we are intending to avoid. Such is life. In the same way Jesus said the poor will always be with us, I think the church will, too. Both are the result of our well intentioned and willful misinterpretation of humanity.

I think that I will keep thinking about this story - as time goes by. Because I though it was pretty funny that I went to meet the priest of my new congregation, and although I told him I was not interested in The Process anymore - he wouldn't let me leave until he gave me the membership forms to transfer my membership. And said, it's just paper work at this part, so don't worry. Although I will say, that my pride was soothed when he also said, having come off the COM for the last 6 years, he didn't see any reason I wouldn't be sucessful. I told him he really didn't know me all that well, but that I was glad to change my membership since I was pretty sure my previous parish would be glad to see the back of me in any case.

Still, I'll change my name to Ambrose because that's what it's going to take for me to be ordained. I've had way too much therapy to wade back into that shark fest again and I feel, for me, that this clergyman may be a lot closer to my story than anything else I've read.

Mother's Day for Minnie

My sister-in-law was the first to post the reminder of how badly some people handle this particular Hallmark holiday. Whhich made me incredibly sad, because she is one of the most amazing mothers I know - even if she hasn't expelled a parasite of her own, or taken just one or even two of the creatures from someone else.

Pregnancy, honestly, is all about a woman and her issues. Pregnancy can help you resolve issues around your bodily integrity and sense of self control, but so can a good therapist and a will to change. Don't get me wrong, because I loved pregancy, and I'd have happily been pregnant 12 more times just for the balanced horomones I don't have any other time of the year. But pregnancy is something that happens to and about one person. (Plenty will disagree, but in any case, pregancy and mothering really don't have anything to do with each other.)

Things mothering is not - it's not the feeding, cleaning up poop, remaking lunch, doing laundry, cheering at a soccer match which you hate, making tea party 8 times a day which you used to love, or really, even kissing boo boos.

Mothering is different, and harder, than all of those things. Mothering is having the back of some half formed human being that will turn on you in an instance and then ask why you are mad. Over and over and over again. Mothering is seeing that someone is struggling or celebrating or about to sneeze and being there with a hug, a high five or a tissue. Mothering is anticipation. Mothering is tolerance and acceptance of human foibles.

You don't have to live with someone to do this - you don't have to be a woman to do this - you don't even have to be an adult or have a legal minor in your home. Mothering is what we do when we we see the needs of others and unfailingly think that their needs matter. (Mothering is not martyrdom; mothering is seeing someone falling into martyrdom and stepping in with childcare and a pedicure and a stern word about "killing yourself.")

A couple of decades ago, "it takes a village" was popularized by the First Lady. And it does. When my spawn were small, we called their childless mothers "auntie" and without MacKendrie and Tabitha, they would not be alive. How would any of us survived my own forays into personhood without Jessica and Jeremy to anticipate things I was flat out ignoring. And childed mothers, they usually were called by name, as opposed to "somebody's mom." Adolescence would not be this wonderful without Shannon and Kelly to have been able to take up the slack of anticipation and joy in things that were frankly freaking me out.

Without "biologicals" we might die out as a species, but without mothers, all the instances of mothering, we would die out as human beings. For all the mothers in my life and the life of my parasites, I honor you on this day. Especially the ones that mother the whole world and "other" people's children. (The rest of you can wallow in your dry toast and over creamed coffee.)

Holy Saturday - YrA

It's my favorite day in the whole church calendar. It's the holiday of my ministry. It's the "I'm still alive. Shit, what do I do now?" day of the year. Really, this is where we all live our entire lives of faith - because while we know that Jesus rose - he hasn't come again. And after so very long, it's really as though he never rose anyway for most of us. I know more faithfully practicing agnostics than I do hard core resurrectionists  - mostly because to keep living in anticipation of the imminent destruction of the world makes you a little hard to have drinks and a lively conversation with.

No, I think most of us live most of our faith lives space between "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and "out of sight, out of mind." And that's OK. We live all of our lives, not just our faith or spirituality in this space. The world is so big and so busy and so amazing and so "ooh shiny" as we say in my house, that living in this very moment is nearly impossible. It is fleeting instances, which as soon as we notice, we have already moved out of. Probably Jesus did it - but he had to be God to do it. And even the gospels point out, likely for our own benefit, he knew what was coming. But I think that he probably lived in the moments much more like us than like some super hero. Why else, how else, could the Son of God cry out, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me." Even Jesus could lose sight of the moment.

Holy Saturday is all about the space between. Can you even imagine all the opinions swirling around? There must have been a bumper crop in synagogue that day. "Finally, we can be done with that idiot Jesus." Son of God, yeah right." King of the Jews? Not likely." "Now, maybe all those nice boys will go back to work and take care of their wives and give me some grandchildren." "Maybe those women will get back to their real work now, instead of wandering around the countryside like a band of strumpets." Gossip, gossip, gossip.

And Jesus' followers. Well, I wouldn't be caught dead in synagogue after a night like last night. There is no way I am going to listen to the "I told you so" and "Now will you stop messing about like some kind of revolutionary and get back to your education, your family, your job." No freakin' way. There are depths of my own shame, pride and self-righteousness that I am not plumbing, especially with the matriarchs of my family and church. Sorry, I love you, but, no.

Here is the thing. Absolutely everyone in Jerusalem had to get up the next morning and think about how this impacted their lives. We got everyone involved. This was not just some internal Jewish matter - because as a subject people of the Roman empire they could not perform executions. If they could, I expect the Pharisees would have handled it as an internal matter. But they got everyone involved. They took something, someone, that the Roman empire didn't give a crap about, and made it a huge to do.

This is how the Romans got involved. This is how they got curious. We don't hear of a bunch of Romans traipsing about after Jesus during his ministry. But on Saturday, they get curious. And Jesus is on their radar, so in the subsequent days and weeks and months after Jesus' resurrection, this revolution is already on their radar. And having killed the trouble maker, it still isn't going away.

Here we are, on Saturday. The whole gamit of human emotion is swirling around on Saturday, as it is after the death of anyone. And these are the people I am called to - the resentful, the dazed, the confused, the irritated, the ones pushing against facts and the ones creating a fairy tale to take away the pain. The Lookie Lou's and the self-righteous I told you so's. These are all God's people, people trying to make meaning out of events that seem completely beyond their control, even when they consipred to make the event happen.

This is Saturday - this is the day we must make meaning for. Because this is the day that lasts nearly all the days of our lives.

(And this didn't get finished but I am going to post it up anyway, because I had company for breakfast and have company for dinner and was doing some Easter supper prep in between.)

Twitter, Glass Houses and Holy Week

I have searched and searched this blog, and somehow I have never written down this story that I used to tell all the time. But I have been inspired by my new friend Wendy to capture this - as a response to her own words.

There are things that Twitter is good for. It's great for pithy comments. It's great for a quick catch up with a friend. It's brought my favorite form of literature (bathroom graffiti) out of the stalls. If you are really careful, and don't mind making a mess of nuance, you can even have serious conversations in the back and forth of a Twitter conversation - much like bathroom graffiti, actually. I have comforted a friend thousands of miles away through grief and I have debated God in advertising and I've seen a lot of airplane pictures. (You know who you are...)

There are things Twitter is not good for - namely explanation and depth. Twitter relies very, very heavily on shared experience for interpretation; which is the wonder of hashtags. A hashtag grounds the few letters in a context that turns 5-6 words into a relevant commentary on life. It also lets us cross some boundaries that would not or could not happen "in real life." No matter our socio-economic geographical or political strictures, if we are alike enough to have an opinion on Game of Thrones or Pistorius or Occupy, we are alike enough to start a conversation that could never happen in the confines of facebook, where you select friends first and talk later, or in your neighborhood bar where you, of course, need to be physically present.

A rector friend of mine who actually communicates via Twitter is on sabbatical this Holy Week and is, perhaps for the first time in his adult life, seeing how uninteresting Holy Week can be in a fulfilled Christian life (note, I'm totally inferring this from shared context and Twitter, so, you know, it's basically my own opinion). There are definitely more and less useful Holy Weeks in my own life. For instance, three years ago, I had the most dificult Holy Week since Jesus was actually nailed to the cross, I am sure. And I participated in it absolutely so that I would not turn it into a traumatic event. That didn't actually work, but the intention was there.

Probably it couldn't work, because Holy Week is in fact the reliving of a trauma. The trauma that forms the central core of our beliefs as Christians. (Flora Keshgegian, you were the best thing about seminary.) And we really, truly, shy away from that trauma, and like any good PTSD, it just gets worse until we find the way to confront it head on. And, good Lord, do we shy away from that trauma. Sometimes because it resonates too closely with our own experiences. Mostly though, I think because it is ugly. We really, really, really want to talk about God after the resurrection. Even when we are full-on substitutionary atonement types, we are quick to nail Jesus up so that we can move on to the good stuff.

But, at the end of the year - the first third if you follow the liturgical calendar- we actually devote a huge amount of time and energy to recreating this trauma. We cannot let it go, because otherwise none of the rest makes sense. As Christians, we really want to think we are good people. We want to think we are moral and upright and followers of Jesus' Way. But, you know what, we spend an entire week, every year, reenacting the death and resurrection of Jesus in great detail. And, we re-celebrate it every Sunday. It really is creepy and ugly and ever keeps that historical and hereditary trauma before us. We really are cannibals worshiping a zombie. (Which should be great advertising but no one seems willing to go there.) No kidding that in the early church, the cachecumens (people studying to become Christians) were not allowed into the Eucharistic portions of our ceremonies until after baptism.

There are some truths that you just can't infer on Twitter. There are some truths that you have to be led to, gently and slowly, because they will set you free but you will not understand them from the outside.

I am never going to be able, via Twitter or Facebook or this blog, to explain the ways in which acknowledging my complicity in killing another human being, who then threw that back in my face by getting back up again, has made me free. I am never going to be able to explain why it is so important that I keep remembering my humanity in this particular way, with it's awfulness and not just it's light. I want to. And I will keep pointing to it in one way or another. It has to do with not being special, with not being alone, with not having to carry the weight of the world in my consequences, for getting points for my intentions and for understanding that metaphor and story and song speaks more deeply about my life than the scientific method ever will.

I am reminded of my seminal Holy Week experience. At that particular parish, we enacted the Stations of the Cross (physically walking through the rememberence of Jesus hauling his own instrument of torture to the place of his death) on Good Friday. As we walked around the nave (where the pews are) we came to the wall of the narthex (the lobby), which was glass, at the same moment that the Alcoholics Anonymous meeting let out across the hall. Separated by glass, people who could use some of the terrible good news of the cross and people play acting the terrible deeds. It was so ridiculous and ironic and worthy of some pithy Twitter comment that although I was leading the whole thing, I nearly burst out laughing. On each side of the glass, people awkwardly being judged and/or pitied by those on the other side. People on both sides of the glass, bound by anonymity,  wondering what the hell the other side was up to. I still want to symbolically break a pane of that glass. I still want to laugh out loud. If there was ever a more perfect symbol of the simililtude underlying Otherness, I have never found it.

What the hell are we doing, play acting the torture of another human being? A human being who had to be God to get us to see what we were doing. How the hell else are we going to remember if we don't? But don't expect someone who has not been gently led to understand. First, we must show the wonders to behold, then we can share the terrible price.


This link may not last forever, but this is the Wendy's summation of the conversation she started and that has been wandering around facebook this Holy Week. 
http://www.layanglicana.org/blog/2014/04/17/the-man-with-the-hammer-a-reflection-for-holy-week-by-dr-wendy-dackson/

Church Shopping at the Holidays

This is, I fully admit, a brief linguistic rant. Words have meaning - the name of the next post - and they affect how we act in unconcious ways.

It's coming up Easter, one of the two great feasts of the church and one of the two days that "cultural Christians" come wander in the door. It is one of two days we especially worry about church shoppers and how they will evaluate our services. (I'd put those in quote marks, but the fact is, I don't even think I am being ironic.) We worry about how welcoming they will think us, how inclusive, how relevant and authentic, how accessible - physically and spiritually. And we tend to act like awkward idiots. And we spend a lot of time apologizing, even if we don't actually say "I'm sorry."

What I wonder is why we put ourselves out in this particular way for cultural Christians. I have met a lot of people, people I will also call cultural Christians, who were in fact looking for a spiritual home, or an encounter with Christ, but I never met them on Easter or Christmas. I met them on Tuesday afternoons, or some random Sunday in July.

And they were all broken, they were all at a sticking point in their lives, and some of them partook of the Eucharist and ran out the door (I've done this), and some of them found a gentle face at coffee hour, sometimes even the priest, and they hid out in the corner of the church and cried and cried and cried. Some of them stayed forever, some stayed for a time, some left never to return.

The thing I worry about, when we devote most of our attention to cultural Christians who attend on Easter and Christmas is that we don't pay enough attention on Tuesdays or in Ordinary Time (yes, this is a church season, just like Easter.) I'm not saying we should close the doors to people who are not "real" in some way on the major feast days, but I am saying that we talk a lot more about how to be appealing on these two days, to people who are enacting rituals more cultural than Christ-like, and while we should put our best foot forward, we should consider than they may not, at that particular time, be our primary audience.

I would like to see us spend a little less time creating excellent service for shoppers on our major feast days and a little more time making sure that the celebration is a deeply meaningful connection to the high points of our faith, not our ecumenicalism, not our welcoming demeanor, not our "not like you think from major media outlets" fears. Be boldly Christian. Let them see the mystery, even if they don't understand it - it is a mystery after all. And we don't understand it fully either.

All-In Community

I have 5, yes 5 random thought processes sitting in draft form. So, I'm going to try to clear my plate of this stuff this week. So, plenty of posts but nothing really on Holy Week, at least not that I know of. 

Here is the thing about small churches - you don't "check them out" and you don't "ease into" them.

Walking into a small church isn't a process of anonymously assessing the pros or cons or welcome or whatever other criteria you have. It won't work, because they don't operate on anonymous. They aren't arranged for the casual shopping experience. At least, no more than your own family. True, like your own family, they can be highly disfunctional. They can be supporting the disfunctions of members in all sorts of passive aggressive ways. Churches struggle with how to balance the needs of everyone just like family.  If you have or have experienced families with say a Down Syndrome member or an alcoholic member - you know that your family is not passing the "normal welcoming bland anonymous" test. Because, let's be really real about this. When we don't throw away the "problem child" what becomes functional for us is highly individual and very intimate.

Here is the thing about small churches. As long as you aren't interviewing them for their ability to be politically correct, as long as you lay claim to them as family and have the expectation that they will adapt to you like family - aka, sometimes graciously, sometimes imperfectly, sometimes with all the charm of a hippopotamous, then they will be a family.

There is a complaint, often, about churches, that they are not accomodating enough for families with autism or ADHD or whatever the particular family is dealing with. And they lambast churches for not having a plan in place, not anticipating what is not there. I have no idea what the individual experience is that leads to these articles, I only have my experience. And my experience is that it is like family. We didn't have a plan in place for our baby to be born with a genetic deletion or our step mother to be an alcoholic. Situational ethics needs a situation first, and a solution second. And finding the equalibrium isn't going to be pretty. All those articles or their comments end with, why don't people just do something practical, like offer to babysit. These things do happen in little churches. (A secret - little churches are terrible at assessing their insurance risk. They just aren't worried about it, because they are actually worried about you.)

When you are right in front of them, well, think about how your grandmother reacted to her newest grandchild with a genetic deletion. It was a bit of love and awkward combined, and then some accomodating adjustment and then a fierce protection (this is common, but not everyone has this grandmother). And because it's your mother we are talking about, you are often fully aware you are stuck with her, so you have some patience to let her work this process out. A small church is going to work through the same process as your family. They will take a little time to accomodate you, to work it out, and as long as you are in it for the long haul and not obviously shopping for the level of service you expect, it will work out. And it will have someone to watch your child while you worship and it will have someone to take you to the doctor at 2am when your car won't start.

My own experience tells me that when the conversation becomes, "You should just leave because we can't deal with you," it's because that small church is busy worrying about the "church shopper" and their "service" and not what is right in front of them. Some of the most uncomfortable experiences in church I have ever had are in the growing smaller churches and church plants. If there is a very explicit structure for grace and in-grouping, it can be wonderful, but if it is relying on assumptive in-group ethics to grow, it can be very painful if you don't walk in the door already in the socio-economic assumptive reality of those already there. And if you have an akward family, or you don't own your own home, or you don't vacation in the right places, or you don't vote the same way, it's going to be ugly once you start opening up.

How do you know you have the former and not the latter? Grace has a lot of room for mistakes and apologizing on the part of the church, not the new member. Grace may ask if you can help pay for something, but it won't assume that you bear the full burden of accomodation. Grace laughs, sometimes joyfully and sometimes painfully and sometimes grace is completely mortified but admits to mistakes. If you find yourself in a place that makes you feel like you have to apologize for being inconvenient, you should leave. If you find one clueless, possible tourettes sufferer or mildy racist old lady who is not the pastor or head of the church committee, you are probably looking at a place that is accomodating. However, if that person is very powerful in the church, you want to leave.

A sidebar to churches on capital improvements: Look at your facilities. I know that an accessible ramp, and an elevator if you really must use the basement/attic are worth the investment - not only are they useful and welcoming for people in wheelchairs, they are useful and welcoming to parents of small children and the elderly and anyone who has ever broken their ankle and tried to navigate stairs with crutches. Spend the money - it's really a selfish investment but other people will appreciate it, too.