"Hello, my name is..."

From the most recent slacktivist post:

“I rejoice with you, Tsion my brother, in the fellowship of Jesus Christ. Many have received him under our preaching here in Jerusalem. …”

The authors have decided to try to make Elijah sound authentically “biblical” by having him talk like the King James translations of the formal introductory parts of Paul’s epistles. Elijah didn’t talk like that. Even Paul didn’t talk like that. Just because he wrote formal salutations in his letters doesn’t mean he went around shaking hands with people and introducing himself in person that way:

“Hi, I’m Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“I’m sorry, ‘Paul’ was it?”

“Yes, Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for …”

“Good to meet you, Paul, I’m Bob. From accounting.”

The character of Elijah in this story apparently watches TV and knows how to use a telephone. There’s really no need for him to sound like the NKJV.

Now I want a "Hi, my name is..." badge with that whole !Paul paragraph :)

on DBT

Via rydra_wong I saw the NYT piece about Marsha Linehan, developer of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), coming out as someone who suffered from what would now be diagnosed as borderline personality disorder (BPD -- the diagnosis for which DBT is particularly used).

Reading the comments on her entry, I find it so bizarre to see people registering discomfort with DBT (often couched with, "Well, I don't have BPD, so perhaps it is just that it is quite literally not intended for me") since I have become such a convert to it -- I who have never had a DSM diagnosis (save "adjustment disorder," which was basically so as to give the insurance company a reason to cover my therapy).

La bff concurs that she thinks of DBT's applicability as being for struggling with overwhelming emotion -- which can come up in many mental/emotional health contexts, including non-diagnostic ones.

Some commenters talked about discomfort with the religious inflection of some of the stuff in DBT, which I found ironic since I remember having a visceral negative reaction to learning that the workbook includes the option for your Higher Power can be another person (my visceral reaction being because humans are fallible and will ultimately disappoint you -- plus are not infallible behavior models -- though the ways in which the workbook talks about that I find more palatable than when I simply first heard the concept).

[Clarification: The commenters had experiences w/ DBT which v. understandably led to that discomfort -- I just found it really ironic on first encounter given my experience early in learning about DBT.]

A woman I know from college posted the NYT link to facebook, commenting:

Dialectical behavior therapy works for people with borderline personality disorder & other "stubborn" clients [the article's word choice]. It's also used for other disorders not mentioned. Personally, DBT introduced me to mindfulness and gave me a useful set of skills. In an un-grounded society filled with "shoulda coulda woulda," I wish more people could do some DBT. Bless Dr. Linehan for her courage & her work.

on saying no

GMA this morning had a segment on letting your teen have sex inside your home. I didn't watch the whole segment, but right around the point I tuned in [~4:30 in the video embed], a teenage female commented that if your boyfriend (or whomever) knows that your parents allow you to have sex in their house, you lose a huge way to say no. She literally asked, What am I supposed to say if I can't use the "no, I can't, my parents would kill me"?

edit now that I'm watching the embed [btw, ~3:50, there's a "slut" trigger; I was horrified]:

Interviewer: "If your boyfriend knows that you can just go home and it's allowed in your home, does that put more pressure on you?"
girls: "Absolutely... definitely..."
Girl1: "If your boyfriend knows, or whoever knows, that there is a perfectly open, available house, I think that takes away one of your big--"
Girl2: "Yeah, like how do you say no? Like a lot of times if they're saying, "Let's do it, let's do it," like, "It's time," you blame it on your parents. You're like, 'No, I can't, my parents would kill me.' But if that whole thing is gone, like what do you say?"

I, of course, muttered on the treadmill, "You say you don't want to. You always have the right to say no. Stand in your own power."

I reminded myself that saying No can be difficult as an adult and can be far moreso as an adolescent; I remember trying to use "my parents won't let me" as an excuse to get out of my then-best friend pressing me to I think go to the mall (knowing my parents as she did, she did not buy it at all). I was still sad that none of the grownups at least mentioned as a response to that question the unapologetic "I don't want to."

My primary takeaway is that we need to be better at raising children who can and will say no -- who can and will own their desires (including their desire to NOT do something).

[I also got kinda ragey at the wrapup back at the anchor desk -- particularly when one of them raised the issue of, "So if you do allow this, is it something you can take away as punishment? Like taking away the keys to the car?"]

***

My best friend and I had a conversation about the story of the baby named Storm whose assigned-at-birth-sex the parents aren't disclosing.

From the Yahoo! News article:

Because Jazz and Kio wear pink and have long hair, they're frequently assumed to be girls, according to Stocker. He said he and Witterick don't correct people--they leave it to the kids to do it if they want to.

But Stocker and Witterick's choices haven't always made life easy for their kids. Though Jazz likes dressing as a girl, he doesn't seem to want to be mistaken for one. He recently asked his mother to let the leaders of a nature center know that he's a boy. And he chose not to attend a conventional school because of the questions about his gender. Asked whether that upsets him, Jazz nodded.

We had mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, we support not presuming someone else's self-identity. On the other hand, correcting people on such matters is a heavy thing for anyone, so that seems quite a load to lay on a 5-year-old. (We hoped that we were correctly inferring that the mom did indeed abide by Jazz's request that she inform the nature center staff.)

lobster arms

Saturday evening, in conversation with Shoshana, I said, "I'm eating, but in my head I made rockstar arms and said, 'I win!' " She was confused. I picked up the toothpicks we'd discarded from our sandwiches, laid them out on a napkin, and then made an "o" with my fingers. She said, "Oh! I thought you said 'lobster arms.' " We both proceeded to dissolve into giggles.

Tuesday evening, I told Scott the story. I said I wasn't sure how to render lobster arms as an emoticon -- 2 lowercase f's? Scott commented that mirror-f's aren't on standard keyboards and suggested an f and an r. I said I'd totally forgotten about the mirroring requirement, and then pointed out that it could be a sideways facing lobster. He then suggested a capital F since lobsters have one claw bigger than the other. ♥

I don't actually know what a lobster arms emoticon would indicate. My first impulse is to want it to indicate amusement, given the aforementioned "dissolved into giggles," but I feel like "crankiness" or somesuch would make more sense given it's supposed to evoke lobsters.

Attempting to type them out now, I find that they look so much like words that I have difficulty parsing them as emoticons :/

fof
rof
Fof
foF

[vulnerability] on forgiveness and grace

I've been feeling really worn out in recent weeks and unsure what to do about (e.g, another staycation? -- I just took a weeklong one a month ago). I'm starting to feel more enlivened.

On Monday, I listened to the audio recording of Liz Walker's sermon at the 2011 Boston Pride Interfaith service.

She quoted Fromm: "love is the solution to the problem of human existence."
She said that love is something you work at and that we have to learn to let go -- she talked about forgiveness and mercy.
She cited Nouwen on voluntary displacement -- "if love does not carry us beyond ourselves, it is not love [...] love is total abandonment to the divine," "the opposite of love is not hate, [... it is] fear."

Someone linked me to "If Grace is Received, It Must be Given". I don't love all of this essay, but I do really appreciate its challenge to us to love others as Deity loves us:

1. You won’t be shocked, disappointed, disillusioned, or angry when others mess up. You will accept them for who they are: sinners, like you, desperately in need of God’s grace and your love.

2. As a result, you will have no other choice but to love them unconditionally. You won’t love them for who they are, what they do for you, or what you hope they might become. You won’t reject them if they don’t measure up.

3. You will love them with specific grace. It is easy to love all Christians in a general way. It is quite another thing to love specific people for what they specifically are, in spite of their particular weaknesses, eccentricities, and shortcomings.

4. Your love will demonstrate irresistible grace. Such unconditional love will draw them irresistibly to the Christ who has filled you with such irresistible love. It will have an irresistible force drawing others who witness this love to the same Christ.

5. And this grace turned horizontal will persevere to the end. It will never forsake or abandon its commitments or covenants. It won’t run from those who frustrate, reject those who irritate, or wall off those who disappoint.

I listened to a bunch of Ani DiFranco -- but not the angry stuff; I started with her cover of "Amazing Grace" and then "sorry i am" and "not angry anymore" came up.

night falls like people into love
we generate our own light to compensate
for the lack of light from above.
every time we fight a cold wind blows our way,
we can learn like the trees, how to bend,
...how to sway and say

i, i think i understand
what all this fighting is for,
and baby i just want you to understand
i'm not angry anymore.
no, i'm not angry anymore.

-ani difranco

I'm in the midst of arguably 3 separate fraught relationships, and yesterday I was really pleased that I could respond dispassionately to one of my friends being really upset at me -- I lived into my knowledge that responding in the moment wouldn't help, I curbed my defensive impulses, I didn't internalize his negative emotion ... I don't know (since we haven't spoken since) how successful my eventual reply was in being appropriate, effective, etc., but I stand by the choices I made re: when and how I responded, and I'm not obsessing about whether/how I could have responded better and/or where things are at now.

Much of this emotional (non)response isn't stuff I can cause myself, so I'm grateful to the Divine for that grace. Similarly, I'm grateful for the grace of peace and letting-go re: the other 2 relationships -- i feel like I've said what I need to say, and I'm waiting on the other person's response but I'm not feeling anxious or obsessive about it, am not doing much in the way of pre-emptive defensive crafting of responses to things they might say.

At faith sharing this Tuesday, we didn't so much talk about creativity as we DID creativity.

Hilary led, and afterward she emailed the list 3 TED talks.

I wasn't impressed by the first one, but the second one, Sarah Kay: "If I should have a daughter..." I really loved the spoken word poem that opened the talk (sidebar: TED has both subtitles and an "interactive transcript" option -- though it took me a while to realize that one can in fact c&p from the latter), and the whole thing is quite good.

The 3rd one was Brené Brown ("Maybe stories are just data with a soul.") "The power of vulnerability", and I like that one a lot.

Excerpt:

And shame is really easily understood as the fear of disconnection. Is there something about me that, if other people know it or see it, that I won't be worthy of connection. The things I can tell you about it: it's universal; we all have it. The only people who don't experience shame have no capacity for human empathy or connection. No one wants to talk about it, and the less you talk about it the more you have it. What underpinned this shame, this "I'm not good enough," -- which we all know that feeling: "I'm not blank enough. I'm not thin enough, rich enough, beautiful enough, smart enough, promoted enough." The thing that underpinned this was excruciating vulnerability, this idea of, in order for connection to happen, we have to allow ourselves to be seen, really seen.

[...] if I roughly took the people I interviewed and divided them into people who really have a sense of worthiness -- that's what this comes down to, a sense of worthiness -- they have a strong sense of love and belonging -- and folks who struggle for it, and folks who are always wondering if their good enough. There was only one variable that separated the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging and the people who really struggle for it. And that was, the people who have a strong sense of love and belonging believe that they're worthy of love and belonging. That's it. They believe they're worthy. And to me, the hard part of the one thing that keeps us out of connection is our fear that we're not worthy of connection, was something that, personally and professionally, I felt like I needed to understand better. So what I did is I took all of the interviews where I saw worthiness, where I saw people living that way, and just looked at those.

[...] And so here's what I found. What they had in common was a sense of courage. And I want to separate courage and bravery for you for a minute. Courage, the original definition of courage when it first came into the English language -- it's from the Latin word cor, meaning heart -- and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. And so these folks had, very simply, the courage to be imperfect. They had the compassion to be kind to themselves first and then to others, because, as it turns out, we can't practice compassion with other people if we can't treat ourselves kindly. And the last was that they had connection, and -- this was the hard part -- as a result of authenticity, they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be in order to be who they were, which you have to absolutely do that for connection.

The other thing that they had in common was this. They fully embraced vulnerability. They believed that what made them vulnerability made them beautiful. They didn't talk about vulnerability being comfortable, nor did they talk about it being excruciating -- as I had heard it earlier in the shame interviewing. They just talked about it being necessary. They talked about the willingness to say "I love you" first, the willingness to do something where there are no guarantees, the willingness to breathe through waiting for the doctor to call after your mammogram. They're willing to invest in a relationship that may or may not work out. They thought this was fundamental.

There's also a piece near the end that made me think of an Atlantic article that's been going around -- "How to Land Your Kid in Therapy: Why the obsession with our kids’ happiness may be dooming them to unhappy adulthoods."

Brown says:

And we perfect, most dangerously, our children. Let me tell you what we think about children. They're hardwired for struggle when they get here. And when you hold those perfect little babies in your hand, our job is not so say, "Look at her, she's perfect. My job is just to keep her perfect -- make sure she makes the tennis team by fifth grade and Yale by seventh grade." That's not our job. Our job is to look and say, "You know what? You're imperfect, and you're wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging." That's our job. Show me a generation of kids raised like that, and we'll end the problems I think that we see today. We pretend that what we do doesn't have an effect on people. We do that in our personal lives. We do that corporate -- whether it's a bailout, an oil spill, a recall -- we pretend like what we're doing doesn't have a huge impact on other people. I would say to companies, this is not our first rodeo people. We just need you to be authentic and real and say, "We're sorry. We'll fix it."
(emphasis mine)

[Rest and re/New] on anger at God

Last night's Rest and re/New theme was being angry with God.

James mentioned Jacob wrestling with the angel and Laura T. commented that she really likes that Jacob doesn't leave the encounter unscarred.
She also said that often we're wrestling with the wrestling, and that that just makes things worse for ourselves.

Have I mentioned that everything makes me think of DBT these days? I talked some about "radical acceptance" -- which I said is not my strong suit :) -- and "doing what's effective." I said that lots of us come from backgrounds that encouraged us to deny/repress our anger at God and that's definitely not healthy, and so we need to find a middle ground -- to experience our anger, but not dwell in it, and to do what we need to with it, that sometimes you need to go and yell at God and sometimes you need to go for a walk and try to let go of the anger.

Lisa talked about William Schultz's article "What Torture Has Taught Me." Apparently he has done a lot of work with Amnesty International with torture survivors and is also a minister and he found himself wondering... if those survivors showed up at his church, what would they think of the theology he espoused? would they find it naive? would they find it deep and meaningful?
I thought of Mariella at Art Night last week talking about someone saying that your theology shouldn't be anything you "can't say in front of burning children."

I Googled just now for [theology "burning children"] and yay, GoogleBooks:

Irving Greenberg's principle that no statement, theological or other, can be made "that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children."⁹ (p. 128, Long night's journey into day: a revised retrospective on the Holocaust by Alice Eckardt & Arthur Roy Eckardt)
9. Greenberg, "Cloud of Smoke," p. 23
[which I think (doing more GoogleBooks search) is: Irving Greenberg, "Cloud of Smoke, Pillar of Fire: Judaism, Christianity and Modernity after the Holocaust," in Auschwitz: Beginning of a New Era? ed. Eva Fleischner (New York: KTAV, 1997), pp. 1-55]

In skimming through the footnotes, Moltmann's Crucified God, and possibly I have a new reading project...

P.S. Regular Google got me a top hit of a blogpost that opens with the quotation:

“No statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of burning children.” Irving Greenberg

From the blogpost:

“Weep with those who weep,” St. Paul said, and indeed, sometimes as a chaplain that is almost all you can do. [...]

A theology that has everything figured out is not particularly helpful at such a time. My friend Jenny calls that “2 a.m. Theology” – and in fact, it was two in the morning – two a.m. theology cries in pain. It doesn’t have answers. Two a.m. theology just says, I don’t get it, but I’m here, and I believe you’re here, too, God. Even though I’m mad at you. Two a.m. theology believes God is crying, too.

My denomination is now the behindest.

Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) approves change in ordination standard
‘submission to the lordship of jesus christ’ replaces ‘fidelity and chastity’

Yeah, I have lots of thoughts about that :D

[29] Resurrection is a Process (Easter Sunday sermon 2011)

¹Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid her.”

³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵The beloved disciple bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following, and went into the tomb. Simon Peter saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that Jesus must rise from the dead. ¹⁰Then the disciples returned to their homes.

¹¹But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; ¹²and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. ¹³They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”

She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid her.”

¹⁴When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus.

¹⁵Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?”

Supposing this stranger to be the gardener, she said, “Please, if you have carried Jesus away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take her away.”

¹⁶Jesus said to her, “Mary!”

She turned and said in Hebrew, “Rabbouni!” (which means Teacher).

¹⁷Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Divine Parent. But go to my siblings and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Parent and your Parent, to my God and your God.’”

¹⁸Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”; and she told them that Jesus had said these things to her.

(John 20:1-18)

Resurrection is a Process

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb...” (John 20:1)

A couple Wednesdays before Easter, I learned that the West Somerville churches were having their Easter sunrise service at 6am. I balked, because sunrise on Easter Sunday was at 5:50am this year, and Easter sunrise service is supposed to begin in darkness, moving into light both liturgically and literally.

Ian T. suggested that the women would have waited until the sun was up before heading out to the tomb.

I said, "If the person I loved most in the world had died two days ago..."

"You wouldn't wait for the sun to rise?" Ian filled in.

"I don't think I would have been sleeping very much..." I said. I knew in the moment that it was a lie, as grief doesn’t tend to make me insomniac, but it seemed like the thing to say.

I’ve never had a desperate grief for a physical body -- my griefs have been for relationships...

But I can imagine being haunted by the image of the person you love most in the world dying -- cruelly, brutally, alone... You watched, but you could only watch from a distance -- you couldn’t hold their hand, place a cold cloth on their forehead, smooth the blankets, couldn’t do anything to ease their pain. Of course you would want to tend to their body after death -- to offer that care that you couldn’t offer in the last moments of their life.

So what do you do if you find that body gone?

Simon Peter and the beloved disciple -- they are content with the knowledge that the body of their lover is gone. They lock themselves in an upper room, hiding their grief away from those who had killed Jesus, curled up tightly with others who share their grief.

But Mary does not leave the tomb. Her grief is a gaping wound, as open as the empty tomb, no stone to seal it up. She weeps. Her grief will not be contained in an upper room, rather it pours out into the ground.

We hear, in verse 8, that “the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and saw and believed.” Now, I don’t know what it is that the beloved disciple believed, because the sentence continues: “for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that Jesus must rise from the dead.” But they certainly believe that the body is gone, that the tomb is empty.

Not Mary. She looks into the tomb again.

And this time she does not find it empty. She sees two angels. And they ask her why she is weeping.

Now, it’s arguably a foolish question. They are sitting by the very linen wrappings that mere days before were cradling a dead body. Surely they understand.

But perhaps they don’t. Perhaps they, like us, know the punchline of the story. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ is with us now. Alleluia. Alleluia! (Can I get an Amen?)

And what is there to grieve when this is the Gospel? Why are you weeping at this very evidence of resurrection and triumph over death?

In Luke, the angels send Mary away -- “Why do you look for the living among the dead? She is not here but has risen.” (Luke 24:5b-6)

But not in this story. No, in answer to Mary’s anguished plea, Jesus shows up. The Resurrected Christ, symbol of new life and triumph over death, shows up. Here. At this tomb.

I keep thinking of the Gerasene demoniac (Mark 5), who lived among the tombs. Jesus shows up in the places of death -- for “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” (Matthew 9:12, Mark 2:17, Luke 5:31).

So that is the first point I want to make: That God comes and meets us in our places of brokenness and grief. Maybe you feel full of resurrection life this Easter Sunday -- or maybe you are still deep in grief. Regardless of where you are, God meets you right where you are.

Jesus says to Mary Magdalene: “Noli me tangere. Because I have not yet ascended to the Divine Parent. But go to my siblings and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Parent and your Parent, to my God and your God.’ ”

This whole “ascending” thing makes me profoundly uncomfortable. Yes, Divinity is transcendent, but Divinity is immanent as well. Is the Good News that Jesus sends Mary out to be the first apostle with really, “Jesus is Ascending to God?”

Elijah was taken up into Heaven in a whirlwind with a chariot and horses of fire. Enoch did not die but got taken up by God. Ascension’s a pretty elite club, but I don’t think I’d call it Good News with capital letters.

But Jesus doesn’t say, “I will Ascend” -- though, spoiler alert, She will -- Jesus says. “I am Ascending.” Present participle. Progressive tense. It’s a process.

Jesus is back, but different, still in a liminal space.

“I am Ascending.” I am not here, I am not there, I am in transit.

Jesus sticks around for 40 days post-Resurrection -- a good Biblical number.

At faith-sharing group the Tuesday before Easter, I ostensibly led us in a discussion about Resurrection, and one thing I said, as we telescoped in time both before and after Jesus’ resurrection, was, “What if post-Easter Jesus stuck around not just to do trauma recovery grief work with the disciples but because Jesus didn't want to leave?”

It occurs to me now: What if Jesus stayed for 40 days because She wasn’t ready to leave yet -- not in an “I have unfinished business” kind of way, but in that way where preemies in incubators aren’t ready to leave the hospital immediately?

I’ve heard/read/discussed a bunch of Easter Sunday sermons this year, and one of the themes that has stuck with me is the idea that the Resurrected Jesus is unrecognizable.

I often invoke the image Tiffany used in a Children’s Time one Easter -- about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly … it is still the same creature, yet so incredibly different that you would never think they were the same.

It’s easy for us to imagine the Resurrected Jesus walking around on Earth as just the same as the pre-Easter Jesus, to interpret all the stories of the disciples not recognizing Jesus as being just because this is so surprising (the disciples expected to never see Jesus alive again), or because their eyes are still blurred by tears of grief (literally and/or metaphorically), or because Jesus is playing some game of hide and seek.

All of these explanations hold some appeal, but I also think Jesus genuinely looked different, in a very real way.

The Resurrected Christ shows up in locked rooms -- and also cooks fish on the lakeshore. She is both corporeal and non.

What if She is still in the process of becoming Her Resurrected self?

Nadia Bolz-Weber said, “when Mary Magdalene stood at the tomb she didn’t encounter some perfected radiant glowing spiritual Jesus that first Easter morning.” Nadia reminded us that Mary mistook Jesus for a gardener and said, “I like to think that Mary Magdalene mistook the resurrected Christ for a gardener because Jesus still had the dirt from his own tomb under his nails.”

She talked about how we clean up Jesus, and ourselves, for Easter -- just like we do for Christmas and all the other Sundays, but we seem to especially want to be shiny and impressive for Easter. We want to look nice. And she said, “God isn’t about making you nicer. God is about making you new.” Now, I’m not inherently opposed to outward performance of the resurrection life we know internally to be true -- and yes I realize I basically just called Easter bonnets a sacrament -- but I do think she has a point. Incarnation is a hugely important part of my theology, and Incarnation is not all shiny new clothes and perfectly coiffed hair. Incarnation is blood and sweat and tears. Incarnation is messy and breakable.

Nadia finished her sermon by saying:

if there is anything impressive about following Jesus it’s that you are loved so powerfully by God that God has swept you up into God’s own story of death and life and life after death. And if there’s anything impressive about Christians, it’s that we are a people who still have the dirt from our graves under our nails, while we stand here shouting Alleluia! Christ is risen.

We are a Resurrection people -- an Easter people in a Good Friday world, you may hear often this season. But Resurrection is a process. It’s not something that just happens one Sunday and boom, we are transformed once and forever.

At faith-sharing group that Tuesday, I mentioned the Harrowing of Hell. I grew up low-church Protestant, and I still don’t really believe in the Harrowing of Hell, but I’ve been coming to a greater appreciation of the power of story -- of the fact that Christianity isn’t a series of propositional statements but rather a collection of stories, stories that get told and retold and have so many different meanings and resonances to so many different people at different times in their lives. And the Harrowing of Hell is admittedly a pretty bad-ass story: Jesus descends into the place of death and darkness and oppression and suffocation and torture -- and Jesus busts open those looming wrought-iron gates that keep the people trapped, and Jesus cries out, “YOU ARE FREE!”

And that’s something like what happens to all of us with Christ’s resurrection -- God’s insistent and definitive “no” to death.

We are freed from the power and bondage of death.

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, Jesus Herself likewise shared the same things, so that through death She might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. (Hebrews 2:14-15)

Now, this “You are free” is a performative utterance -- like, “I now pronounce you married.”

A new reality has been enacted. And you have choices about living into that new reality.

We have the fullness of Eastertide to begin that process, to journey with the Risen Christ and the surprised disciples.

And so I close with a quote from Mary Oliver:

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
(from "The Summer Day")

"If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do."

In his most recent Left Behind post, slacktivist writes:

“What if I told you it doesn’t help?” the man asks as the woman packs up a truck with supplies for her shelter for at-risk youth. “What would you do if you found out that none of it matters? That it’s all controlled by forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive and they will never let it get better down here? What would you do?”

“I’d get this truck packed before the new stuff gets here,” she says. “Wanna give me a hand?”

That scene comes at the end of a very long story. The woman has heard all this before. She’s said all this before. She knows firsthand about “forces more powerful and uncaring than we can conceive” who will “never let it get better down here.” But she’d also met a real hero who’d showed her different and so she changed her name and became a hero herself.

I recognized the reference early on and got all squeeful/gleeful.

***

Later in the post, relevant to my tendency toward (self-)righteous anger, he talks about the kind of wrath that is considered a Deadly Sin versus "the wrath of God," and how having just the one word often leads to confusion wherein we imagine a God who is guilty of Deadly Sin. He closes by saying:

“Hope has two beautiful daughters,” St. Augustine said, “their names are anger and courage.” The wrath of God, I think, is that kind of anger — the beautiful daughter of hope.

If you’re imagining the wrath of God as something other than an expression of the love of God, then you have taken a wrong turn, for God is love.

Ah, but isn’t God also perfectly holy? And thus wouldn’t it be possible to say that God’s wrath is an expression of God’s perfect holiness? That’s a slightly different, albeit very popular, wrong turn — imagining the holiness of God as something distinct from the love of God.

Very bad idea, going that route. Jesus had a great deal to say about the idea that holiness could ever mean anything apart from love. His response to that idea tended to be, well, rather wrathful.

John 4:5-42 (in which Jesus does not have to be male)

I would like to tell you a story.

This story begins with a well. It’s called Jacob’s well. It’s in the Samaritan city of Sychar, near the plot of land that Jacob gave his favored child, Joseph -- Joseph who was the youngest but one of twelve sons, but the firstborn of Joseph’s favored wife, Rachel. The story doesn’t tell us why this well was called Jacob’s Well -- though its listeners might have recalled how Jacob met his beloved wife-to-be at a well. Tomorrow’s lectionary* brings us the story of Abraham’s steward finding a wife for Abraham’s beloved child Isaac at a well -- Isaac who would be Jacob’s father.

This story begins with a person named Jesus, tired from a journey, sitting by this well, at noontime.

This story begins with a Samaritan woman. She has come to the well at noontime to draw water.

Jesus says to the woman: “Give me a drink.” The teller of this story informs us that the disciples, those who have been companions with Jesus on this long journey, have gone into the city to buy food.

Now maybe this Jesus was a man -- and listeners’ expectations were that this would be a marriage story, like Jacob and Rachel, like Isaac and Rebekah. Maybe this Jesus was a man, and the woman felt unsafe, alone out there on the edge of town with a strange man.

Maybe this Jesus was a woman. Maybe the Samaritan woman felt safe from threat of violence because this was another woman. Maybe the Samaritan woman felt apprehensive, wondering what would bring a woman alone to this well at midday (her knowledge of why she came not keeping her from speculation about this stranger).

Maybe this Jesus was a large cat like C. S. Lewis would write about so many centuries later, and the woman was afraid, because Aslan is NOT a Tame Lion.

One might expect any of these things. But what this woman saw, the piece of Jesus’ identity that spoke to her so strongly that she spoke it aloud, was that Jesus was a Jew.

Jesus was a Jew, and she was a Samaritan. Both peoples claimed Mosaic lineage, but the two peoples had broken off long ago, and now they didn’t so much as speak to each other.

This woman says to Jesus, “YOU? ask ME? for a drink of water? Do you not notice who we are? We haven’t invented segregated drinking fountains yet, but that’s basically what’s going on here. What do you think you’re doing?”

Jesus patiently replies, “If you knew the generosity of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked me, and I would have given you living water.”

The woman bites her lip on the ridiculousness of this. She calls Jesus, “Sir,” or, “M’lady,” or some other honorific to soften the scoffing remark she is about to make -- “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and who drank from it with his children and livestock?”

Jesus says, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”

This sounds intriguing. A little impossible, but intriguing nonetheless. This time the woman’s use of an honorific is less sarcastic, more petitionary. “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”

Jesus smiles at her unreadably and says, “Go, call your spouse, and come back.”

A bit downcast now -- or perhaps a bit on-guard, a bit cagey -- the woman replies, “I have no spouse.”

Jesus says to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no spouse;’ for you have been married five times, and you are not married to your current partner. What you have said is true.”

Taking a deep breath and using the honorific one last time, the woman says, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.” And what do you do if you end up in conversation with a prophet? Why not ask them for a decision on the major schism in your religious life? So she says, “Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but your people say that the place where everyone must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus says, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Parent of us all, Maker of Heaven and Earth, neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we Jews worship what we know, for God's way of salvation is made available through the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Divine Parent in spirit and truth. Indeed, it is just such worshipers whom the Divine Parent seeks. God is spirit, and those who worship God must worship in spirit and truth.”

The woman says to Jesus, “I know that the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, is coming -- who upon arriving will proclaim all things to us.”

Jesus replies, “I who speak to you am the Messiah.”

The dramatic pause here is interrupted by the return of the disciples. They are astonished that Jesus is speaking with this woman, but no one comes out and says, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”

Taking her cue, the woman leaves her water jar and returns to the city. She says to the people, “Come and see someone who told me everything I have ever done! Could this be the Messiah?” The people leave the city and go to Jesus.

Meanwhile the disciples are urging Jesus, “Rabbi, eat something.”

But Jesus says, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

So the disciples ask one another, “Surely no one has brought Jesus something to eat?”

Jesus says to them, “The food that keeps me going is doing the will of the One who sent me and bringing this work to completion.

“Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting. The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor at harvest time.”

As if to explain this saying of Jesus’, the story returns us to the people of the city. Many Samaritans from that city believe in Jesus because of the woman’s testimony, “This one told me everything I have ever done.” So when they come to Jesus, they ask Jesus to stay with them; and Jesus stays there two days. And many more believe because of Jesus’ word. They say to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

***

*For values of "tomorrow" that are true if you are using the RCL and are operating as if I'm telling this story on Sunday Lent 3A 2011.

One of these days I will have a sermon for Lent 3A 2011, but today is not that day.

My best friend’s lesbian christology is what first started me thinking of Jesus as other than always-default-male, and continues to be foundational in my continuing explorations of that.

For helping to spur and/or shape this particular retelling, thanks also to: Molly’s friend Val (who told a folktale at Molly’s Peach Fuzz Party on Saturday), Support Pastor Ian H., Chris D., and Julia W. (and Ian T. for Lenten weekday morning prayer).

Thanks to The Inclusive Bible and Eugene Peterson’s The Message for some phrasing assists (and to the NRSV for providing the base text).

on sympathetic satire

Ari and I were talking about Jane Austen this afternoon (she recently reread Mansfield Park), and I came to the conclusion that I'm not really wired for sympathetic satire (as a creator or a consumer) -- AFAIC, if you're going to bitingly satirize someone, it's because you don't like them; if you do like them, you tell them that they are wrong so they can fix it. (Ari said: "Well Jane Austen was telling people -- she just thought they'd enjoy it more as a novel than as a diatribe." I said, "But if it's a novel, people can say, 'Oh, I'm not like that.' You need to write them a letter directly.")

I, um, sometimes tend toward strongly dichotomous paradigms...

on fear

rydra_wong posted yesterday:

Z is for Zara, who knew her own strength

Two passages I found this morning, linked for thought-provocation. Krista thinks fear may not actually be the mind-killer:

You must chase fear from time to time.

You must dive in and come out the other side. You must risk this shame and humiliation. You must risk dropping the bar with a soul-shattering crash. {...}

And along the way, feel the edges of your spirit crisping up, growing into sharper focus. When I am truly afraid with a healthy fear that says I am having adventures and stretching the envelope of my secure life – that is when I am closest to gnawing on the juicy bones of my existence. I am sucking every last drop of nourishing marrow from that present-ness.

And in a sidethread at fandom_wank, ealusaid has some interesting things to say about agency (note: includes discussion of abuse):

It's my observation that some people who live with a lot of toxicity have absolutely no sense of their own agency.

{...} And I think what that also gives is no real sense of how hard you can punch, which leads to either under-or-over-evaluating one's own strength. I never, ever, ever showed social or verbal aggression when I was a kid, so when I learned how to hold my own in arguments when I was a teen, I spent a long time thinking if I said ANYTHING it would be THE MOST HURTFUL THING EVAR, so I would say in this halting little voice "I think, um, on this one point, you're not entirely correct."

Then I had a brief period where I went "...Waaaait, no, that's not working! I want my blows to hurt them as much as theirs hurt me! YOU FUCKING SHITSTICK, YOU WOULDN'T KNOW RIGHT FROM YOUR ASSHOLE, NOW SHUT THE FUCK UP." And friends kind of had to say "Honey? That was six times harsher than you needed."

Learning how to gauge hits is really hard. Especially if you have no idea that's what you're learning.

Commenting on rydra_wong's post, niqaeli said:

So, my thought on that first article is that fear, like pain, is a message. It is a non-neutrally coded message because it is meant to strongly hold your attention. And, like pain, sometimes the message is one that is not helpful or useful to you, and so you set it aside and do something other than what that message advises. And then again, sometimes that message's advice will save your life.

So: do not ever ignore fear. Ignoring fear is not bravery, it's stupidity. Evaluate your fear. Look at where it's coming from, what's triggering it. Fear is an emotion our body uses to guide us. And trying to go outside your comfort zone, whatever your comfort zone is, will almost always trigger it (get back by the fire, we know the fire, don't go out, it's not safe); don't ignore that either. Listen to it; it will give you a map to your mental geography. If you want to go outside your comfort zone regularly enough to expand it, you have to know where that comfort zone is. And your fear tells you, every time you venture up to the edges and outside.

And never ignore fear only because you cannot identify its source and an explanation for it; that fear may be the fear that will save your life. That fear may be the fear that your subconscious has generated by picking up a thousand tiny things and put them together and now frightens you badly, saying, leave, get out, run, anywhere but here.

I've ignored fear before and that's how I learned not to. I said, no, surely this makes no sense, I will hang out with this person anyway. Well, I didn't get axe-murdered (obviously) but I did get scared to utter hell and ended up quite literally running away from them. I don't honestly know what would've happened if I hadn't gotten the hell out, finally, when my conscious mind finally decided enough weird shit had been said and I started running; I just know that I never want to be that frightened again. And if I'd listened to the fear sooner, I never would've gotten to that point.

Fear isn't the mindkiller; it's really the shepherd dog of the mind. Whatever patterns the mind already knows, it wants to keep them intact (and it has no idea whether those patterns are good, bad, or indifferent). It drives the mind to the same path; maybe there's better pastures to graze, but it knowsthis path. It will sniff out coyotes and other predators and warn us away, also. But it's not good to be herded; and that's all down to how we choose to interact with fear. Better to have a dog that communicates with us things like "coyotes ahead," or "strange scent, dangerous," or "that's an unfamiliar path, don't know what's down it," and make the decisions for ourselves.

I have heard that idea before -- about fear being a message from our ~subconscious, a message that bears listening to but which we are to choose how to respond to. It's an idea I could certainly stand to be reminded of, though.

I really like the image of fear as a sheepdog -- the idea of "instinctive" responses being rooted in familiar patterns, and tending to keep us in familiar patterns, but (familiar) patterns of course aren't inherently good (or bad).

In a similar vein is willful_zephyr's comment:

I've always taken that as letting fear rule you, letting it make the decisions, that is the mind-killer.

Even further, being ruled by the fear of fear itself goes on to be the soul-killer.

To that end, you are correct in that it must occasionally be embraced. You need to learn your fear well enough to know when it is being wise and when it is full of crap. Mostly, we all need to learn to function while being afraid.

I like the non-neutrally coded message metaphor.

Krista in her post also has a really evocative story about how fear causes us to be much more attentive -- and how that isn't inherently a bad thing.

There is, indeed, much to fear in Arizona. Here, the terrain is baked hard.

This ground will chew you up and hork you out along with a mouthful of tobacco spit. The gravel crumbles underfoot and the rocks are spiky.

Everything has poky spines, from the saguaro’s skewers to the barrel cactus’ fish-hook harpoons, to the innocent-looking teddy-bear cholla’s pincushions. Even Camelback Mountain is named after a spine, which it resembles – all bony vertebrae and pithy humps. Our hiking guide carries pliers, in case our tender flesh might need a good yank or scrape. It’s a scary place.

I do this hike twice. The first time, I wear my tried-and-true Merrells, which are the stylistic equivalent of wearing Kleenex boxes on one’s feet. Like the old “It’s boxy but it’s good” slogan for Volvo, these are sturdy sensible shoes that any British Depression-era sanitorium nurse would have been proud to wear.

I clomp with impunity over hill and dale with these bad boys. I scarcely notice the danger. I dare a saguaro to piss me off – I will kick you in the effin face, cactus!! If I had a big gun like the Whole Foods peeps, I would blast baby animals like Leonard Smalls in Raising Arizona.

The second time I hike, I wear Vibrams, essentially barefooting over Nature’s minefield. Now my senses are sharp. I am paying attention. My steps are different – I have to chart a course from step to step, dancing from rock to trench to crevice to slippery sand. My toes grip like a gecko’s. I am there, deeply present in the experience.

Fear has a way of capturing our attention.

Also from Krista's post:

Fear of negative evaluation: FNE.

I love me some TLAs. I’ve long been a fan of FMO – fear of missing out. FMO is what you experience when you can’t say no to things. ‘Cause, like, what if you miss something? What if something happens and you’re not there? What if there’s some crucial piece of information you don’t have?

If you have FMO you’re nodding right now, except you’re probably distracted because you’re also watching an instructional video and downloading an article and doing some committee paperwork, just in case.

Fear of negative evaluation involves constant preoccupation with other people’s potentially negative judgements of you. You do everything you can to avoid these judgements, because they scare the hell out of you.

• You might be a people-pleaser. Approve of me! Approve of me!
  
• You might be a pre-emptive self-criticizer – you shoot in like a ninja to crap on yourself before anyone else can. If you ninja crap yourself then you got there first, bitches!! You are the baddest and the best putdowner! Nobody else can hurt you with their slings and arrows like numero uno!
  
• You might fret and worry and whittle your spirit down to a little nub. What if? What if? What if?
  
• You might avoid situations where you could look bad or stupid. Looking bad or stupid is shameful and to be avoided at all costs. Consequently, of course, there is no juice in your life because to do anything fun or exciting or adventurous usually involves some potential element of silliness or screwups.

Notice what all these have in common? Two things:

• Despite being focused on other people’s judgements, FNE is – ironically — incredibly narcissistic (What do they think of me? They must have noticed me! They really really give a shit about every tiny thing I’m doing and saying and thinking! They are so carefully observing me that they totally notice that extra piece of toast I ate!).
  
• FNE leaches your life dry of every last bit of joy.

The f_w comment thread was also interesting, about how people develop responses that are sense-making and even relatively effective in toxic/abusive situations but which aren't so helpful/appropriate in other situations. In addition to the bit rydra_wong quoted, this comment from ekaterinv also felt resonant to me:

Plus if that's all you're used to, you don't know it's possible to deal with conflict in any other way. Things are either smooth and seemingly perfect or they're completely fucking out of whack and you're being blamed for everything that has ever gone wrong EVER, and are an evil, horrible, rotten brat from hell for not cleaning your room well enough. You feel you can either be a mouse or a rampaging lion, and rampaging lion looks a lot more appealing when you're angry.

"becalmed instead of stuck; drawn instead of driven"

Through a series of links, I came to a blogpost titled becalmed instead of stuck; drawn instead of driven. (The synchronicity was kind of amusing, since we just assigned Chapter 3 of Pink's Drive for the day before yesterday's class).

Excerpt:

Stuck is an extension of our metaphorical drive thinking, it implies a linear process. Imagine a car stuck in the snow or mud - what do you do? You spin your wheels, you try to force it out by pushing from behind. You gun it, pressing down on the gas pedal as fast and as far as you can.

There is power in the words we use - the way we talk can bring us freedom and open us up, or it can close us down. To quote James Flaherty again, "Please start to notice when you begin speaking in a way that ties you up in knots, that leaves you with few options for action, that leaves you estranged from others [or from yourself- L], that leaves you distraught." I think that's what happens when we talk about being stuck.

I'm proposing an alternate metaphor to describe this state/process. In sailing the term used when the wind dies down such that the boat stops moving is becalmed. Becalmed. Be. Calmed. Whoa, how cool is that? That's a world away from stuck. Completely different energy in that word.

And what do sailors do when their boat is becalmed? Well, first of all they recognize that it's a partnership - the boat is not completely under their control - it moves due to a partnership between the wind and the sailor.They have techniques for ensuring they can make the most of any light wind that comes up, for allowing themselves to be drawn, rather than driven.

1. Lighten the weight - the heavier the boat, the more drag. What's weighing you down?

2. Move towards the centre of the boat. How can you move closer to that which moves you?

3. Seek the ripples - little ripples on the water tell you where the slightest wind is. What is making your heart flutter?

4. Minimize unnecessary movements - they rob you of momentum. Rest.

5. Use the current. Where is the deeper flow that you can tap into? Create rituals and routines that can act as your current.

6. Keep all movements slow and steady - quick, jerky movements keep your boat from gliding. Small steps.

7. Remember that even on the calmest days, a slight breeze always comes up as the sun begins to go down. Don't panic.

[28] "Your faith has saved you; go in peace." [Luke 7:36-50; H!PS: Luke & Us; Feb. 22, 2011]

My friend Rae let me know about Hosanna! People’s Seminary, and so I’ve been a part of their Luke and Us women’s preaching circle since September. It meets once a month via the magic of technology, and I preached tonight.

Luke 7:36-50

³⁶One of the Pharisees asked Jesus to eat with him, and Jesus went into the Pharisee’s house and reclined at the table.

³⁷And a woman in the city, who was a sinner, having learned that Jesus was eating in the Pharisee’s house, brought an alabaster jar of ointment. ³⁸She stood behind Jesus’ feet, weeping, and began to bathe them with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing Jesus’ feet and anointing them with the ointment.

³⁹Now when the Pharisee who had invited Jesus saw it, he said to himself, “A prophet would have known who and what kind of woman this is—a sinner.”

⁴⁰Jesus spoke up and said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.”

“Teacher,” he replied, “Speak.”

⁴¹ “Two people owed money to a creditor. One owed the creditor the equivalent of two years’ wages; the other, two months’ wages. ⁴² Both were unable to pay, so the creditor wrote off both debts. Which of them was more grateful to the moneylender?”

⁴³Simon answered, “I suppose the one who had the greater debt canceled.”

And Jesus said to him, “You have judged rightly.”

⁴⁴Then turning toward the woman, Jesus said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she has bathed my feet with her tears and dried them with her hair. ⁴⁵You gave me no kiss, but from the time I came in she has not stopped kissing my feet. 46You did not anoint my head with oil, but she has anointed my feet with ointment. ⁴⁷Therefore, I tell you, her sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.”

⁴⁸Then Jesus said to her, “Your sins are forgiven.”

⁴⁹But those who sat together at the table began to ask among themselves, “Who is this who even forgives sins?”

⁵⁰And Jesus said to the woman, “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

     -NRSV, edited with help from The Inclusive Bible and my best friend

A religious leader invites Jesus to dinner. While Jesus is reclining at the table, a woman identified only as a “sinner” shows up. She stands behind Jesus’ feet, weeping, and her tears fall on Jesus’ feet -- which are still dusty from the outside as we learn later that Simon was remiss in his host duties and didn’t offer Jesus any water for foot-washing (desert plus sandals? you get the picture). She washes Jesus’ feet with her tears and then dries them with her hair. She then goes on to kiss Jesus’ feet and anoint them with ointment.

This is a strongly embodied interaction. The woman doesn’t come to Jesus with an eloquent plea for forgiveness -- or an eloquent screed against the Pharisee -- or an eloquent statement of faith. She just shows up.

She draws near to this person Jesus, even though the atmosphere is hostile to her.

She stands behind Jesus, perhaps feeling hesitant, but she also doesn’t hide. When her tears fall on Jesus’ feet, she doesn’t apologize for the interruption, she moves with it into an offering of love.

Simon is appalled that this sinful woman is behaving so intimately with this rabbi, especially in public, and thinks this must be a sign that Jesus isn’t really a great prophet, because of course a prophet would have recognized her sin and recoiled from her touch.

Jesus, of course, has a very different perspective.

A couple chapters earlier, some Pharisees and other religious scholars asked, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?” and Jesus replied, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Luke 5:30-31a).

Of course, all of us are in need of healing and forgiveness, but unlike Simon, the sinful woman in this story recognizes her need.

Whereas the woman experiences Jesus’ forgiveness like the debtor who had two years’ wages worth of debt forgiven, Simon would have experienced a statement of forgiveness as a much smaller burden relieved -- and, actually, I think it equally likely that Simon would have been insulted by the idea that he had anything he needed to be forgiven for.

The woman is transformed by this forgiveness. “Your faith has saved you; go in peace.” She has been saved. The weight of all that sin and guilt has been lifted from her. Like the woman in Luke 13 [verses 10-17] who had been bent over for 18 years, this woman has been released from her bondage.

Being “saved” is not a simplistic transaction -- insert repentance, or statement of belief, or whatever … receive free pass to Heaven. Rather it is a transformation. We are released from the death-dealing forces which have kept us trapped, released into abundant life. The stress and turmoil which have weighed us down, which have confused our path … these are wiped away, like water washing dust and dirt off our feet. We are given a new lease on life -- except that a lease implies debt, and this new life is a gift, no repayment required.

However, while nothing is required of us, it would be inappropriate for us to sit smugly with our gift, making no motion to behave in a similarly gracious fashion toward others.

Jesus reminds us, “the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” It is easy for us to feel like the debtor forgiven of a relatively small amount -- and to therefore be stingy in our generosity toward others. Who invited you to this party? What will you buy with my spare change if I give it to you? We erect barriers to keep people in their place, administer tests to decide who goes where...

But God meets us where we are, just as we are -- and calls us to meet others likewise. God meets us in the dusty, dirty feet of Jesus. God meets us in the tears of an unnamed woman.

God meets us in all the mess of our bodies, in all the mess of our lives. And all God asks is that we show up, that we allow ourselves to touch and be touched in return -- to be transformed by that connection … and to live out that peace in our lives.

“Your faith has saved you” isn’t about statements of faith you sign onto, it’s about faith in the transforming power of God … faith in the power of that connection.

“Your faith has saved you; go in peace.”

Amen.

I have ALL of the excitement about this! \o/

From: Marla
To: Samuel; Pr. Lisa; Elizabeth
Sent: Thu, February 10, 2011 10:33:11 AM
Subject: FYI: Disability Committee (NEUMC)

This went out in the weekly e-news from the Conference:

News from the Disabilities Committee

Stories Wanted!
We at Annual Conference are always looking to hear about how our conference is working to help reach out to more people as we Open Doors and Open Hearts in order to Open Minds. One way we do this is by making ourselves more open to the disabled populations and their families and caregivers. Recently, I heard on The Light (A Christian Radio Station in Vermont) on Jonnie and Friends that many disabled people do not attend church due to their disability.

Yet, churches are doing more to make themselves more open all the time and we don't hear about it because we tend not to advertise ourselves. Not this year! We are looking to hear from you about what you have done over the past two years in overcoming barriers to the disabled. We would like to hear from you about your story. If you have pictures, please include them. You may mail stories to Michael McShane at [email address redacted] or Bonnie Marden at [email address redacted]


Help Needed!
Do you have a background that can help people with disabilities? Would you like to be a resource the Disability Committee can use? We are looking for people not only to help with helping churches adapt to the physical structure but also think of what people with disabilities need. We are not looking at membership unless you have an interest in it. We are looking for the occassional helping hand. If you are willing to do so please contact Michael McShane at [email address redacted]. Thank you very much for your interest.

Submitted by: Michael McShane

on pastoring

From "Practicing Resurrection - part three" (When Love Comes To Town blog):

The wisdom of Eugene Peterson's to pastors - your work is to be unbusy, subversive and apocalyptic - has been on my mind of late as another week of ministry comes to a close and I settle into my Sabbath.

[...]

Peterson writes:

People are not comfortable with God in their lives. They prefer something less awesome and more informal. Something, in fact, like the (traditional) pastor. Reassuring, accessible, easygoing. People would rather talk to the pastor than to God…

So (often) pastors, instead of practicing prayer, which brings people into the presence of God, enter into the practice of messiah: we will do the work of God for God, fix people up, tell them what to do, conspire in finding the shortcuts by which the long journey to the Cross can be bypassed since we all have such crowded schedules right now. People love us when we do this. It is flattering to be put in the place of God. It feels wonderful to be treated in the godlike way. And it is work that we are generally quite good at.

A sense of apocalypse (urgency) blows the whistle on such messianic pastoring. The vastness of the heavenly invasion, the urgency of the faith decision, the danger of the impinging culture—with these pouring into our consciousness accompanied by thunder and lightning, we cannot stand around on the street corners of Sunday morning filling the time with pretentious small talk on how bad the world is and how wonderful this new stewardship campaign is going to be. If we have even an inkling of apocalypse, it will be impossible to act like the jaunty foreman of a home-improvement work crew that is going to re-landscape moral (or immoral) garden spots. We must pray. The world has been invaded by God and it is with God we have to do.

We are NOT called to waste God's time. We are NOT called to distract our congregations with meaningless busy work that sounds holy but is all empty calories. No, we are called into the fierce urgency of now with tenderness and patience - trusting all the while that God is in charge and we are not.

today's wisdom from Molly

From "No Thanks":

But I want to say one other thing, in case you ever go through a similar tribulation, and people overwhelm you with their kindness, and you start feeling, dare I say, burdened by the need to feel sufficiently, publicly grateful. When I was feeling that way, I told my spiritual director. And he told me—I will probably get this a little bit wrong—that monks in the order of St. Benedict, which is known for its hospitality, are not allowed to say thank you.

That’s right.

No thanks.

They are not allowed to say thank you, because the offering of hospitality is a rule; God wants us provide shelter and comfort and care to one another. So receiving comfort or hospitality from another doesn’t indebt us to them in any way, and therefore doesn’t require a payment in the form of socially-mandated gratitude.

Back in the Days of Many Gifts, I found myself wishing I had a handler, someone with much better handwriting than mine, and a more linear sense of the progression of stationery-stamp-mailbox, to write fervent thank yous to people. I didn’t know how to sort out the people who really secretly wanted to be thanked, who needed that thanks, from the people who are ok just knowing their gift may have helped in some way.

Now I find myself wishing we could all be the kind of people who know that No Thanks is necessary; that we are called by God to offer what comfort we can, when we can, and we are bound in inextricable webs of care, invisible to our eyes. And we might never get a beautifully written formal thank you for this or that kindness we did, but we can be satisfied knowing we have entered holy orders, we are lay Benedictines going about offering comfort and not needing any but God’s recognition for it. And maybe not even that.

"Your victory is my victory."

From Molly's blog:

Months ago, Sara said something to me that I haven’t forgotten. She stands 4 inches shorter than me, I think, but is such a powerhouse that I felt like she was eye to eye with me when she took my shoulders and said this, “Molly, your victory is my victory.”

That is one of the deepest and most mysterious Christian truths, I think. It is the heart of communion, in which the ego-walls between us human beings collapse and we are revealed as all belonging to the same body. It is the heart of baptism, where the ego-walls between us and God collapse, we acknowledge our status as children of God, and we share in Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection—we follow God where no human has gone before.

It is the Christmas story, where Jesus comes down from heaven and takes on human form, game for whatever may come. It is the Easter story, where ‘made like Him, like Him we rise’ from the dead as the old hymn goes, and we learn to laugh at Death forever.

This might all sound like religious gobbledygook, but if you’ve ever had a Moment during your nephew’s baptism or while taking communion after a long absence from church, if you’ve ever let your guard slip during Christmas Eve or sunrise service and suddenly felt a lump your throat, you know that what I’m talking about is as real as anything.

Your victory is my victory. There is no “you” and “me” and “God” anymore, all tidy and separate, there’s no my cancer and her homelessness and God’s cool remoteness and your ability to sit there at work or at home and read these blog entries. There’s just all of us together, staggering toward victory.

Another thing I’m not proud of is the terrible Judgy Judger that lives inside of me. One kind of people I judge the most, interesting considering my hardness of heart against (some of) the homeless folks I meet, is people who spend their gold on what I deem to be silly or superficial or downright immoral, considering there is so much suffering and want in the world.

So Judgy Judger reared her head when I was in the locker room at the gym the other day. My gym in Medford is full of mostly young, mostly attractive, mostly white people. On this day, there were two young women getting dressed after their workout. I overheard one of them saying to her friend, “The facial cleanser was $150 but she gave it to me for only $70! Can you believe it? How do you like my new amazing blue headphones? Do you like them? Hey, do you want to go to Vegas in March? Dave wants us to go. I don’t know how I’m going to afford it but I’m going to go.” Maybe if you didn’t buy $150 facial cleanser, I thought…

I mostly can’t believe we live in a world where $150 or even $70 facial cleanser exists. Especially having just heard on the radio, moments before overhearing that conversation, that Haiti only received 2% of the foreign aid it was promised after the earthquake.

Anyhow, I was already kind of burning at their conversation, and walked over closer to the women so I could paint on my eyebrows in front of the mirror. Neither one even glanced at me, though the space was small and I was hard to ignore.

Maybe their ignoring was the result of long practice, a way of allowing strangers to have their privacy in a busy locker room. But I couldn’t help but feel, already fuming, that their act of ignoring me was intentional. Not an eye flicker, not a pause. “Don’t notice the bald woman without eyebrows. Whatever you do, DON’T SEE HER. If you notice her, she’s real. And if she’s real, then we live in a world where thin healthy young white women get cancer, and then I might get cancer. So just don’t acknowledge her, and it won’t be real.”

As I walked away, I noticed that one of them was wearing a Dana Farber marathon team tee shirt. I don’t know what that meant. It seemed ironic to me at the time. But then, you never really know what people are about.

I thought of all this. And I remembered the homeless woman from Harvard Square, from years ago, and how many people had passed her by before I, probably vulnerable to the Holy Spirit for a split second, stopped and gave her a dollar. And how grateful she was not for the dollar, but for the acknowledgment by one human being of another.

And I said a silent prayer for her, wherever she is.

My suffering is your suffering.

And my victory is your victory.

I give to just about every homeless person I pass now. I do it because I noticed, fairly recently (why did it take so long, when as a city dweller I pass homeless people just about every day? Because I, too, was stuffing and hiding and afraid, just like so many other folks), that when I didn’t give, I felt terrible after passing the person by. And I began to notice that when I did give, I never, ever felt that I had done the wrong thing.

I might have mixed feelings, giving cash, I might wonder if they would use my buck to do themselves further harm, but I wouldn’t have the sick, ashamed feeling (or the self-righteous feeling that is usually only masking shame) I almost always had for a few fleeting seconds when I ignored them. So, you might say I give for my own sake, my own well-being. But God is sneaky that way. She’ll use lots of tactics, like enlightened self-interest, to get us to be more human with one another, to love as we want to be loved.

-from "Your Victory is My Victory."

[27] "Incarnation in the holiday season" [Rest and Bread; Wed. Dec. 8, 2010]

[Preached at Rest and Bread on Wednesday, December 8, 2010. Thanks to la bff for helping me select a Scripture passage.]

[Inspired by The Advent Conspiracy, Keith and I picked 4 alternative themes for Advent this year -- relationship, incarnation, sharing, and activation. Today is Incarnation.]

All you who are thirsty,
come to the water!
You who have no money,
come, buy food and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk,
without money, without price!
Why spend your money for what is not bread,
your wages for what fails to satisfy?
Heed me, and you will eat well,
you will delight in rich fare;
bend your ear and come to me,
listen, that you may have life
I will make an everlasting Covenant with you--
in fulfillment of the blessings promised to David.
-Isaiah 55:1-3, The Inclusive Bible

"You who have no money, come, buy food and eat."

What a message that is for this season, when so many are struggling with economic scarcity.

The kindom of God, for which we wait expectantly this Advent season and all days, is a place where sustenance and abundance are available for all.

This passage also speaks to the goodness of nourishing our bodies.

While this season is full of pressures to buy more stuff, our physical bodies, the very stuff that houses our spirit, often become our enemy. Facing the glut of holiday sweets, we are deluged with tips and tricks for how to not have "too much," how to not "overindulge." We are pulled in opposite directions -- retailers invite us to gift ourselves and our loved ones with chocolates from Godiva, fruit baskets from Harry and David, colorfully foil wrapped candies from Hershey's ... while the morning shows are full of advice about how to enjoy the ubiquitous holiday parties without using up all our Weight Watchers points.

Hear again the word of God: "Heed me, and you will eat well, you will delight in rich fare."

I'm not saying that God wants you to eat nothing but processed sugar, but God's table is a table of abundance. The Communion table there, around which we will all gather later in the service, holds bread and fruit of the vine ... food to nourish and sustain you, food for you to enjoy. And of the surplus you are invited to eat and drink more after the service is over.

Food is central to so much of Jesus' ministry. Jesus eats with everyone -- from the Pharisees (scholars of the religious law) to tax collectors (agents of the oppressive Empire).

In Matthew's Gospel, we read Jesus saying:

     What comparison can I make with this generation?
     They are like children shouting to others as they sit in the marketplace, "We piped for you but you would not dance. We sang you a dirge, but you would not mourn."
     For John the Baptizer came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, "He is possessed."
     The Chosen One comes, eating and drinking, and they say, "This one is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners."
     Wisdom will be vindicated by her own actions.
(Matthew 11:18-19a, The Inclusive Bible)

Jesus experienced the same opposing cultural pressures as we do today. Wear a cloak of camel's hair out in the desert and eat locusts and honey, and people will say you're possessed. Say you're not buying Christmas gifts for anyone this year, and people will say you have no sense of the holiday spirit. Share meals with those who are "socially unacceptable," and people will say all sorts of nasty things about you. Head directly to the chocolate fondue station at the office party, bypassing the veggies and low-fat dip, and people may call you a glutton (though probably not to your face).

Our culture gives us lots of conflicting messages about bodies. I want to give you one message to take home: God likes bodies.

God thinks bodies are so good that God said, "I will have one of these myself."

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us."

This is what we anticipate and remember during the season of Advent -- that God, who had shown up in the world plenty of times before, in booming mountaintop and still small voice, in pillars of fire and cloud, chose to take on flesh, to be embodied...

{I extemporized an ending and as usual don't remember what I said -- I think it was about loving the bodies that God gave us, that God so loves, that God who formed us in our mother's womb called good.}

[26] "3 thoughts, approaching Advent" [Pentecost +25(C) Wednesday, Rest and Bread]

[Preached at Rest and Bread on Wed. Nov. 17, 2010. Thanks to Scott for last-minute editing.]

Matthew 23:37-24:14

³⁷“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! ³⁸See, your house is left to you, desolate. ³⁹For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of our God.’”

24 ¹As Jesus came out of the temple and was going away, the disciples came to point out the buildings of the temple. ²Then Jesus asked them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” ³When Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?”

⁴Jesus answered them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. ⁵For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will lead many astray. ⁶And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. ⁷For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: ⁸all this is but the beginning of the birthpangs. ⁹“Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. ¹⁰Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. ¹¹And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. ¹²And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. ¹³But the one who endures to the end will be saved. ¹⁴And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come.

One metaphor for Advent is that of pregnancy -- we, like Mary, wait in joyful (and perhaps more than a little fearful) anticipation for the Promised One -- Emmanuel, God With Us.

In today's reading, however, we are reminded that Christ is already mothering us. Jesus weeps over the city of Jerusalem, crying out, "How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" How familiar that must sound to parents of willful children...

Confident in her own power and security, Jerusalem has rejected the prophets God has sent to her, has refused the transformative calls from her God and Maker.

Jesus prophesies the destruction of the Temple -- the focal point of religious power and authority. The coming of the Kingdom of God on Earth means the overthrow of all the human kingdoms that are already here on Earth, even the ones we might have a strong personal investment in -- "Truly I tell you, not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."

The disciples ask, "Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?"

Typical, Jesus avoids answering the question directly. Instead, Jesus cautions them not to be led astray -- and also not to be afraid. "Be not afraid" is a greeting we hear often from divine messengers throughout Advent and Christmas. When God shows up, you can be assured that you are going to be asked to make some radical changes in your life -- and the more we have to lose, the less that appeals to us (one of the many reasons God has a preferential option for the poor).

Jesus also cautions the disciples that there will be much conflict ahead. I don't think this is necessarily to be read as an assertion that all of this disaster will be a sign that the Second Coming is at hand -- famine and disaster are as old as the Fall; they predict nothing, though they indicate quite a lot. Rather, Jesus exhorts the disciples to endure; "you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet."

All this pain and suffering and disaster? This is not the end. "This is but the beginning of birthpangs."

I have never given birth -- and I really have no desire to, in fact -- but I have it on good authority that it can at times be an incredibly painful and difficult process. If that's true of bringing a regular human baby into the world, would we expect any less of bringing a whole new world to fruition?

And unlike pregnancy, where we have at least an approximation of a due date, we don't know when this Second Coming will be. We hear over and over again throughout the Gospels that no one knows the date or the hour, and so we must always be prepared. We can ask, "What would you do if you knew that Jesus was coming back next month?" or "What would you do if you knew that Jesus wasn't going to come back during your lifetime?" but the reality we have to work with is: "What would you do if you were assured that Jesus would return but you had no idea when that would be?" Every year, during Advent (and also during Lent) we take time to intentionally practice both waiting and preparing ourselves.

So as we approach the season of Advent, let's review Jesus' advice:
* you will not see me again until you say, "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of our God."
* Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, "I am the Messiah!" and they will lead many astray.
* you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed
* the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved.

I'm intrigued by the twinning of these first two -- the second one is perhaps more salient, connected as it is with all the doom and gloom foreshadowing, but the first is no less important. Jerusalem is exhorted to proclaim: "Blessed is the one who comes in the name of our God." While we should be wary of those who claim divinity for themselves, we are also exhorted to be open to the presence and call of God in our lives.

Be not afraid. An exhortation used throughout the Advent and Christmas stories to assure us not to be afraid of the new thing God is doing in our lives and in the world -- but here we are also reminded not to be afraid of all that is happening in the world. For we have so great a hope... as we heard Paul proclaim on Sunday: "For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus."

Do not let your love grow cold. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself." "Love one another as I have loved you." Over and over again we hear this exhortation, this love which is at the heart of the good news.

And so I invite you, as we move into this this season, to remain open to God, to be not afraid, and to not let your love grow cold.