Try to love the questions themselves...at present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Letters to a Young Poet
Oh, man. I'm not going into detail as to preserve my anonymity here, but suffice it to say that the person to whom we had offered a new staff position - a position which has caused some heartache in the congregation, over which we have suffered some conflict, and which has been damn near seven years in the making - turned us down. And not only that, but turned us down after we flew said person out here and said person gave us a verbal "yes" to the job.
Sometimes this work is bitterly disappointing.
I wish I had something more theological to say. Lament psalm, anyone?
Here's the thing.
Most of the time, the property committee at my church is a bit on the slow side. This is a pain when it comes to things like clogged toilets and simple repair jobs. It's a handy way of assisting me in my procrastination to deal with things that I just don't want to deal with. No excuses there. Just the truth.
So we have this flagpole outside our sanctuary doors. It's been leaning for the past seven years I've been here, and no one ever really talked seriously about fixing it. It only came up every so often, when someone would ask why we didn't have a flag, and I'd say, "well, the flagpole is leaning and there's no light on the flag, so we can't have it up all night, and we don't have someone to raise it up and down every day." We do have a giant American flag (right next to a giant "Christian flag," which, to be honest, I had never heard of until I came here...) in our coffee-hour area. But we have no flag in the sanctuary, which is my personal line-in-the-sand. Beyond here lie monsters, that sort of thing. I figured, as long as the flagpole is broken, and we have the gigantoid flag inside, we're good. No worries.
But then the property committee started speeding things up. Things are getting fixed, which is nice. Including the flagpole. Hmmm.
I'm happy to be American. I'm not overly happy with the direction of America. I realize this country is much more than the sum of its current leaders. And my father-in-law, a career military, Air Force, Base Commander guy, has some criticism of the current administration - so I feel okay about having similar criticisms myself. (Not that he and I should be talking about politics on a regular basis. We still have less in common than that which divides.)
But the whole flag/church thing troubles me. For now, I've decided that as long as no one tries to get any kind of flag anywhere near the sanctuary, I'm going to leave it alone. This is not the hill I'm going to die on, as one of my parishoners would say.
You know what bothers me the most? Two things. One, that flying the flag makes me sad. I should be proud to fly it in all my liberal glory, and claim that symbol for my left-wing voting, gay-rights supporting, women-preacher loving, pro-choice, anti-war, despise-this-president, place-way-too-much-hope-on-Barack-Obama self.
The second thing is that so many people equate faithfulness and patriotism. And that these are generally the folks who also equate no-badmouthing-the-president with patriotism. It's a sort of twisted problem you find on the SAT's: all patriots should support the war. All Christians should be patriots. Therefore, all Christians should support the war.
Flags are powerful symbols. It occurs to me that, when you stand on the corner and look at my church building, you see two powerful symbols: a huge cross, and a pretty big flag. All I can do is remember which one points me in the right direction, no matter who the president is. And hope that the worship, preaching, teaching, and fellowship of this place will help us all remember where our hope really lies.
But I still wish the property committee was a little slower.
Every once in awhile, you find a really good book. The latest one to arrive on my desk - a recommendation from our youth & family minister - is called The Dogs of Babel. I love to read good writing, even (especially?) when it has nothing directly to do with work. I'm only about halfway through, though I've gotten there in the last two hours. And I realize that "the story of a grieving man who tries to make his dog, the only witness to his wife's death, capable of speech" is a strange tagline for a book. But it's worth reading. Check it out.
Yesterday was my birthday. And my husband, my darling husband, gave me exactly what I wanted: the DVD set of the entire series of Sex and the City, in a special pink velvet box.
I realize that I probably should have wanted something more like the complete works of Luther, or at least the complete DVD set of Seventh Heaven.
Nope. Pink velvet joy, baby.
Today's task is to list five living people, whom I may or may not know personally, but whom I admire. Hmmm....
5. This young woman in my parish who shall remain anonymous. She came in to talk to me the other day about her faith. Not having grown up with any kind of church background, she feels pretty lost in the whole faith thing but has an astounding stubbornness to tackle it head-on. I admire that a lot. I admire her willingness to admit what she doesn't know.
4. Jimmy Carter. Best. Ex-President. Ever.
3. Terence Fretheim. My very favorite seminary professor. Great teacher, great passion for the bible, great asker-of-interesting-questions, and unbelievably good at remembering people's names. Super smart, but always makes you feel like you are just as important as anyone else. I aim to be the kind of teacher he is.
2. My husband. (He could also be listed at number 1: we have a tie here, really.) I have always admired his ability not to take everything personally. This is a gift I most assuredly do not have. Not that he's uncaring, but simply that he can hear a criticism, agree or disagree with it, and move on. He doesn't stew in many things the way I do.
1. My parents. (See disclaimer above.) These are people who take their faith seriously, but who are humble about it. I really admire the fact that they keep wanting to learn new things, that they're willing to re-think old assumptions. How devoted they are to their church, for all the right reasons. And how they want to challenge that same church, for all the right reasons.
It feels good to think about these people. Not a bad assignment for a Friday.
Remember that scene from The Princess Bride? At the end, when Wesley is laying paralyzed in bed, and the Prince comes in, ready to kill him, and Wesley dares him to a duel. "To the death!" says the Prince. "No, to the pain," says Wesley, and goes into this long description of how he will cut off the prince's hands, and his feet, and gouge out his eyes..."and my ears, fine, I get it," says the prince. But Wesley replies, "No; I will leave your ears, so that every scream of every child who sees your hideous form will ring in your head forever." And the prince gives up.
I'm teaching a class on Job, and this week we're taking on Job's first friend, Eliphaz. Whose first speech to Job basically involves the idea that Job is being tested, or disciplined, by God. Apparently, to the pain, since God has ruled out "to the death" in the prologue. ("Just don't kill him," God says to the Accuser.)
So I googled the phrase, "God never gives us more than we can handle," my nominee for "least helpful phrase ever uttered to a suffering person." And I found a few things. Oddly, I also found a link to something about Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy. Not sure what the connection was there.
And I looked up "test" and "discipline" in my concordance. Most of what falls under "test" comes from a few things in the Old Testament about God testing Israel. There are some laments not to be tested in the Psalms. And there's a bunch of "don't put the Lord your God to the test" from the gospels.
"Discipline" pops up in Hebrews. Those verses, combined with some "testing" stuff from James, are what's really bothering me at the moment. Because I have a really hard time with this whole idea. It all comes off a lot like God saying, "this hurts me more than it hurts you." It feels highly oppressive; an idea easily abused to silence those who are suffering.
It sure bothers me in my own life. Is God sending us infertility to "test" us? To "discipline" us? (I wouldn't argue that I could use more discipline, but this doesn't seem particularly helpful as a teaching method.) Does God send cancer, or famine, or hurricanes, or political turmoil - you fill in the blank - to "test" us?
This is an area where I feel the need to remove my shoes. We are standing on holy ground, and I am full of the fear of the Lord - in its straightforward, terrified, sense. The only testing story which gives me any hope is of Jesus in the wilderness, turning down the temptations of Satan in favor of a modest, fully human life. That Jesus is the one with me in my suffering.
I am not sure, however, that I am ready to believe any of it is a test. I wonder what people will have to say on Sunday. Should be interesting.
The foolishness of the wise is perhaps nowhere better illustrated than by the way the three Magi went to Herod the Great, King of the Jews, to find out the whereabouts of the child who had just been born King of the Jews to supplant him. It did not even strike them as suspicious when Herod asked them to be sure to let him know when they found him so he could hurry on down to pay his respects.
Luckily for the holy child, after the three Magi had followed their star to the manger and left him their presents, they were tipped off in a dream to avoid Herod like the plague on their way home.
Herod was fit to be tied when he realized he'd been had and ordered the murder of every male child two years old and under in the district. For all his enormous power, he knew there was somebody in diapers more powerful still. The wisdom of the foolish is perhaps nowhere better illustrated.
From Listening to Your Life, a devotional book by Frederich Buechner.
This Friday Five is great because I have a January birthday too! I'm still waiting for mine. Now I'm really in the mood for a celebration...
1. "It's my party and I'll [blank] if I want to..."
My favorite way to celebrate my birthday? Lately, just dinner out with my husband and a great friend (and her husband) - both the women have January birthdays, so we call it our BIRTHDAY EXTRAVAGANZA (it's important to say this in all capital letters).
2. "You say it's your birthday... it's my birthday too, yeah..."
Yep, I share my birthday with someone famous: Martin Luther King, Jr. I have always been illogically proud of this - illogical because I, of course, had nothing to do with choosing my birthday. But I'm honored to be associated in any super small way with Dr. King, so I'll take it.
3. "Lordy Lordy look who's forty..."
Milestone birthdays...require a milestone celebration, in my opinion. I guess my next milestone will be 40, but that's a ways off still. But why ignore your great years? I say, pull out all the stops and party.
4. "Happy birthday, dear... Customer..."
Have I been sung to in a restaurant? Yes. When I was 10, and my parents took us to a local restaurant where they made balloon crowns for the birthday kid's head. It was fantastic then. I no longer crave this, however.
5. "Take my birthday--please"
One advantage of my birthday: see comments on MLK Jr. above. Disadvantage: petty, but true...it's awfully close to Christmas. I get all my presents in a 20-day period. Then that's it. Which is no big deal when you're my current age, but as a kid, it's a bummer.
I am so excited because I start teaching an adult class this Sunday on Job. It seems strange to me that "Job" and "excited" are in the same sentence, but nevertheless, there it is. I find Job completely fascinating. Stephen Mitchell's recent translation (called simply, The Book of Job) is great. We're starting with the introduction and Job's first raging response in chapter three this week. Good stuff.
And it's always interesting to me to hear what parishoners bring to the table. Cliche aside, I undoubtedly learn as much from them as I am ever able to offer. Particularly around issues of suffering and grief, and hope in the midst of them.
I wrote earlier about a list of items called "Wisdom for Pastors," by Krister Stendahl. Here's the one that's making the most sense for me today:
Be aware that you are not the only medium of the Word; God's Word will also echo to you from the hearts and minds of those you are to serve and shepherd.
This is most certainly true.
Let me preface this by saying that the following is not a New Year's resolution. Having only ever kept one such resolution in my entire life - a commitment, when I was about 15, to put lotion on my hands every day - I no longer practice this form of discipline. I do, however, think the following is a really good idea which needs to be incorporated into my life, and happens upon me at the start of a new year. Disclaimer noted.
I mentioned in an earlier blog that my husband and I have been trying to have a baby. In spite of all warnings by my 8th grade health teacher, it turns out that this process is not as easy - for us - as one would have anticipated. I know the struggle to conceive is mightily distracting for me. So I have been trying to face it head on. I have been trying to admit that, after one year, we are officially in the "infertile zone." Which doesn't mean we'll be there forever, but there's no longer any point in denying the problem.
I found a book the other day on infertility, written to help women with the "mind-body connection," and trying to encourage practices which help stem the panicking tide of "we'll never have a baby!" One of the disciplines mentioned was that of mindfulness. For some reason, this particular chapter struck me as deeply important.
Of course I don't have the book in front of me - I never have the book in front of me when I'm writing things like this - but the author talked about how much of the time we spend anticipating the next bend around the corner. For women struggling to conceive, you're always waiting for the next thing: the next time you'll ovulate, the next time it will be well-timed to have sex, the next time you might get your period. You skip over the present moment with worries about what might, or will, be.
I do this in my church work too. I am never content when things are going well, just waiting for the next crisis. And in the midst of the crisis, I am waiting for the next person to get angry. My anxiety has become almost overwhelming. I usually live at a sort of low-grade anxiety level - a kind of yellow-alert-stage thing, if the government were grading me - but even I have noticed that it is getting really, really bad. Time to do something about that.
Mindfulness is the intentional focusing on this moment. The sound of the keys as I type. The sound of the guitar as it plays on NPR in my office. The taste of the decaf (stupid infertility) latte I drank in the car this morning. This moment. Not the next day, not the next week, not the next time I will have to buy tampons, not the next person who gets mad about the liturgy I chose for Advent.
Of course, Jesus already said, "Today's trouble is enough for today." Damn, that man was wise. I think I will try that for awhile. See how that goes. It's helping already, I can tell you that. I'm sure I will fail regularly. But there I go again, anticipating something too far ahead. For right now, my office is warm. There is snow outside. It is time for Performance Today on the radio. And that is enough.
I SO should be working on the Christmas Day sermon right now. I should also be writing that very last sentence for the Christmas Eve one - but I always get stuck on that last bit, so I'm procrastinating with holiday food questionnaires...
1. Favorite cookie/candy/baked good without which, it's just not Christmas. Spritz and Peparkakor; both Swedish cookies, both Grandma's recipes. Must have both. Pretty much anything with almond flavoring, actually.
2. Do you do a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, both, or neither? My lovely in-laws host Christmas Day: this year I put my claim on Thanksgiving, which is about the only major holiday a pastor can host. Not much church involved. Then we head 300 miles west after Christmas to have another celebration with my family. Two Christmases! Gotta love it.
3. Evaluate one or more of the holiday beverage trifecta: hot chocolate, wassail, egg nog. I'm going to add another: Glogg, the Swedish version of mulled wine. More like everything-you've-got-in-your-liquor-cabinet-plus-cloves. You can get drunk off the fumes. Not that I do that.
4. Candy canes: do you like all the new-fangled flavors or are you a peppermint purist? Not a cane fan in general. But I say, stick with the classic. Nobody liked New Coke, either.
5. Have you ever actually had figgy pudding? And is it really so good that people will refuse to leave until they are served it? I cannot imagine that anything called "figgy pudding" is that great. But I have had a good fruitcake, so all things really are possible.
This is the greatest challenge of preaching on the Christmas story for me; that familiarity breeds contempt. And the particular sort of familiarity people have (including me, by the way) with the Christmas story makes it difficult to break through with something new. I trust that God is always doing something new, even through my preaching, but when it comes to preaching on a story everybody knows, that's hard stuff. Last year, a former colleague told me my sermon "sounded too much like last year's." When I vented about that comment to another colleague, he replied, "hey - Jesus gets born every year. How new can you get?"
On my bookshelf, above my desk, is a list called Wisdom for Pastors, written by Krister Stendahl. One of the pieces advised is this: "you shall not think you already know the message; pray, ponder, be still, and listen." Here's the one right below that: "don't underestimate the power of the Word by not waiting for it to speak."
He is so right about that, and yet during a week when - in perfect irony - there seems to be no time to wait for anything, how is there time to wait for the Word to speak? What if the Word has nothing to say until Monday morning? Too late then.
Simply a bit of homiletical venting, I suppose. There will be something to say - that, God has promised. And I could certainly tune up my listening. Wouldn't that be a change?
Somehow, I was not getting the right page on Rev Gals, so I missed the Friday five. But here goes, even if it's now the Tuesday five...
1) It's a Wonderful Life--Is it? Do you remember seeing it for the first time?
I never actually saw it until high school. And loved it immediately. My favorite scene is still the dance on the oops-there's-a-pool-under-there floor.
2) Miracle on 34th Street--old version or new?
Embarassingly, the new one. Mara Wilson is adorable. And truthfully, I've never seen the old one all the way through.
3) Do you have a favorite incarnation of Mr. Scrooge?
Not really. I'm big on the Muppets, though.
4) Why should it be a problem for an elf to be a dentist? I've been watching Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer for years now, and I still don't get it.
You'd think all that Christmas candy would make for high dentistry need among elves.
5) Who's the scariest character in Christmas specials/movies?
Jim Carrey's version of the Grinch. But not scary in a good way; scary in the fact that he looks like crap.
Two disclaimers: one, in an unusual move, we are not following the Advent lectionary texts this year. We're reading through Luke 1 consecutively, so this week we pick up with the Magnificat. And two, the following by no means constitutes an actual sermon. Hey - it's only Thursday! Just some leanings.
Paired with the Magnificat is Hannah's song in 1 Samuel. The two women echo one another; or, more accurately time-wise, Mary echoes Hannah. One woman who has waited a lifetime to bear a child, the other who is barely a child herself.
What I will not preach on is the secret sisterhood between myself and Hannah. My husband and I are trying to conceive our first child, and we have been at this for a year. While I am not quite in the same league as Sarah (nor is my husband "as good as dead," as Paul so kindly describes Abraham), I know the waiting...and the waiting is more than hard. It raises questions that have no answers. It causes pain that has no cure. It breaks my heart almost beyond repair. It makes me anxious beyond words of comfort. And - most heartbreaking and yet life-giving of all - it does not quench hope. I doubt I have yet waited as long as Hannah. But I know a bit of her grief.
What I will preach on, I think, is something less private and more commonly known this season. A few weeks ago, my congregation held its annual Christmas hymnsing/talent show/reason to eat chocolate in disturbing quantities. (Though a self-described Advent Nazi, I find this Sunday afternoon event takes the edge off of the "no Christmas carols on Sunday mornings during Advent" rule). One soloist sang a piece called, "Going Home for Christmas," and yes - it was every bit as sappy as its title suggests. But I was sitting next to a woman I know to be undergoing a devastating divorce, and watching a woman across the aisle whose husband recently died, and thinking about a friend whose father died at the age of 58 on All Saints' Day, and thinking, "why the hell are we listening to this song at church? What about people for whom home is painful, or non-existent, or life-draining, or horrible in some other way? What about those for whom 'going home' suggests pain beyond measure? Shouldn't this worship space be a place of honesty, where we do not pretend that home is always Norman-Rockwellian?"
The desire to 'go home' at Christmas is indeed strong. Living some 300 miles away from my own family, I understand it. Yet Hannah and Mary do not sing about keeping the dear traditions, about returning to places of calm and peace, about Mother at the cookstove and stockings on the mantel. Their songs are of reversal, of turning the world upside-down, of disturbing the calm and breaking the traditions.
I'm not sure where this is going, entirely, except that "going home for Christmas" does not seem to be much of a biblical idea. My grandmother - I did not know this for years - always hated the song, "I'll Be Home For Christmas." She hated it because it came out during World War II, during which her brother was serving in France. She hated it because she did not know if her brother would ever come home for Christmas, and the song did not comfort her; it taunted her with an assurance she did not have.
God's ideas about "home for Christmas" are quite different than ours. Perhaps, if God indeed is our home, we ought to rethink the whole thing.
To all who commented on earlier posts - thanks, truly, for the wonderful welcome to Rev Gals. It's so lovely to have others who resonate with the struggles and joys of ministry. Hospitality - even electronic hospitality - is always a gift. Seriously....thanks!
Sometimes you find an article, or hear a sermon or a song, or read a book, or even hear a passing comment, that speaks perfectly to you in that moment. Such is L. Gregory Jones' wonderful piece in the latest Christian Century. "Slow-motion grace," it's called.
He writes of Jayber Crow, the main character in Wendell Berry's novel of the same name. First off, I love Wendell Berry. Score one for Jones. But more than that, it is the piece of the storyline around which this article revolves - the enmity between Jayber and Troy, the man who married the girl Jayber loves - which strikes me to the core.
I wrote in an earlier post about church conflict, which continues into another week. I wrote that I hate church conflict, and this is still true. Something in me desires peace almost - almost - at any cost, and I particularly loathe being...well, loathed. It is distasteful, and disturbing, and more to the real point, it hurts. It hurts a great deal.
But the problem is that I can switch so quickly from hating the conflict to hating the person at its center. And though some of that is simply a natural human reaction, self-protection perhaps, it is nonetheless exactly the opposite of what Jesus calls us into, of what Jesus lived. I am no fan of the phrase, "Hate the sin, love the sinner," as it too often lends itself to a poisonous self-righteousness. But how shall we live together when we not only disagree, but do so painfully? And when the conflict is not clean and clear (as it rarely is), but hidden and vicious? What then?
All I have today are two quotes, the first from Berry:
Of all the trials I have experienced, [Troy] was the hardest. He was the trial that convicted me over and over again. I did not like him. I could not like him. Maybe I didn't need to like him, but I needed at least not to dislike him, and I did thoroughly dislike him. I also enjoyed disliking him. In his presence I was the perfect absence, the night shadow, of the charity that I sought for and longed for.
And the second from Jones:
....it is not enough simply to understand God's love in Christ, or even to absorb it into one's soul. It must be lived in the company of others; one must cultivate a way of life that bears witness to love through membership in a community.
Somehow, I doubt that I will live this vision today. But to have it before me is enough for now.
So I'm joining the Rev Gals blog ring. Which is a way of being more public (in a deeply private, totally anonymous way) with this blog - and a way of being more accountable to myself, at least, for posting more often. And I already have the "Does This Pulpit Make My Butt Look Big?" mug, so I'm ready to go.
Toy Story is one of my favorite movies. Not that I watch it a lot, but I always enjoy it when I do see it. I love the sly humor hidden inside a basically-harmless children's movie. Like when Mrs. Potato Head is helping Mr. Potato Head pack for some toy adventure out in the world, and she says, "I've packed your angry eyes...just in case."
I am in full possession of my angry eyes at the moment, though I am trying to keep them hidden away in my backpack rather than frighten innocent bystanders. I hate church conflict. I hate it. I hate feeling like people are talking behind my back (because they are). I hate it when people won't just come to me and tell me what the problem is so we can work on it. I hate it when they behave like children and then expect me to just...what? Turn the other cheek?
Crap. There's the rub. How do you know when it's time to turn the other cheek, and when it's time to do something for the sake of the whole community? And yes, I realize that Jesus did not offer any exceptions to the "turn the other cheek" thing, but then again, Jesus never had to run a congregation. I am not a fan of my own thought there, by the way.
But it does seem like there are times when you need to stand up, when others are being unnecessarily cruel and hurtful, and do something to protect yourself. I just worry that my angry eyes are going to take over at that point and that I will do something to regret later.
So today, my prayer is for patience. For kindness toward all. For the ability to pray for someone who is hurting me intentionally. For the humility not to get on my high horse and let them have it - and for a change of heart, that I might stop wishing for revenge with such vicious fervor. And I don't know if I will pray to be able to turn my cheek. Not all suffering accomplishes something, a seminary professor used to say. May there be some wisdom to guide me, and them, and us all, into a better day.
I should never read Barbara Brown Taylor.
She is the Meryl Streep of pastoral writers to me, someone against whom I measure myself only to come up short. This is why I stopped reading the Mitford series too: one, because the pure-saccharine nature of the books started making me a little nauseous; and two, because Father Tim and his everlasting goodness made me feel like a huge failure.
"My breasts fairly leaked every time I met someone in need," BBT writes about her call into the ministry. (That's an approximate quote; I can't find the right page in her new book, Leaving Church). If Father Tim had been a woman, that would likely have been his problem too. The sort of self-extending, give-away-your-last-five-dollars, drive-a-stranger-to-the-bus-stop love they seem to have for everyone they encounter may, in fact, drive them nearly to despair. It may drain them of the last bit of energy they have. But it still seems like the sort of problem a pastor should have.
I do not seem to have this problem.
Maybe my instinct for self-preservation will keep me from burning out. Maybe it will keep me from writing my own version of Leaving Church someday. Maybe it will keep me out of the poorhouse. But maybe it also keeps me at a bit of distance from God, a safe arms-length from the burning bush, just out of the reach of the hot coals seraphim are reaching out to my lips. I think of myself sometimes as standing on the edge of a precipice, unable to make the leap, knowing that the fall will be exhilarating but still preferring the safety of the view from above. And I am not sure how to change this, other than to pray for a change I am still not sure I really want to receive.
If I don't have the million problems most pastors seem to, am I really doing my job? Is this really it? And, if doing "it" meant necessarily inheriting those million problems, would I really stick around? I have no answers to these questions. At least part of my anxiety today comes from the fact that we are buying a house and I am staying up at night worries that we can't afford the thing, even though in the daylight all looks well.
What I appreciate in the book is her frank admission of the complexity of this work. If parishoners got mad at her, I probably shouldn't sweat the occasional dilemma here. Even Meryl Streep gets the odd bad review (I think). Oddly enough, though, it's precisely the nature of her admitted weaknesses that give me pause. I don't think I will solve this problem today.
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