Archive for September, 2009

What we’re really thinking.

{ September 16, 2009 @ 2:22 pm } · { personal reflection }
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I have five blog posts in my queue, little notes about things I’d like to think more about later.  I’ve looked at them over and over again and keep thinking, “Ugh. Boring.“  You see, they’re on important topics like reconciliation, genocide, dialoguing with people who live not only on the other end of the political spectrum but (some days) in an alternative ethical universe.  And who cares?  Honestly, today, I don’t.  I’m worried more about filters.  Conversational ones.  Because, really, I’ve got a bit of a problem lately.  And talking about genocide, while a noble and necessary task, isn’t going to change the fact that on most days lately, I’m harboring a bit of hate in my heart for just the regular ol’ people I’ve got to deal with. And until I deal with that somehow, I don’t think I’ve got much righteous ground to stand on.  In fact, I don’t think I can understand widespread hatred very well at all without figuring out where such overt violence finds its source.

I’ve confessed this to a couple of friends already, but I’m going to step out on a ledge and lob it out into the open air of the world wide web.  I am full of some pretty mean thoughts.  These thoughts come into my head and I don’t even know where they come from.  It’s like they were waiting, lurking, holding out for just the right wrong moment to *bam* snap through my brain cells into that space over my tongue, banging to get out.  They have sounded like this, lately:

“What the hell do you know?  I’m the one with the degree here.”

“Please, don’t sit by me.  I don’t want to talk to you. Please, please, please don’t force me to be courteous.  I don’t wanna pretend like I care.”

“Oh my God, just shut up already! No one cares what you have to say about [fill in topic here].”

“If only you knew what I am thinking right now, you’d realize how stupid you sound.”

Okay.  You probably don’t need to hear more – there’s obviously a theme.  Somehow, during the last few weeks, I’ve somewhere picked up the idea that I know better than other people what is right, good, reasonable, smart, interesting, important, meaningful.  I’ve decided that other people are wasting my time with their wandering around out loud, their figuring out, their trying to fit into a group, their mistakes, their slips, their opinions I don’t understand or agree with.  In other words, I’ve turned into a jerk.  A meanie who thinks, basically, that other people are dumb and I’m not.  That other people aren’t worth quite as much as I am.  I’ve caught the pride virus.

lips

Some back story.  Earlier this year, I made a personal promise to take definite, concrete, and intentional steps away from gossip.  I’m not claiming I’ve succeeded, but it’s on my daily “remind yourself to be a better human being” list.  I’m trying.  It means stepping back or away from conversations other people start that include bad-mouthing colleagues and friends.  It has meant limiting my exposure to certain classmates. It means admitting when I find myself gossiping.  It means a lot more prayer than I’d like to admit.  However, I’ve got to say, the no-gossip rule (well, the less-gossip rule, anyhow) has caused my commentary to go… underground.  It’s staying in my head.  Where it’s getting loud and proud.  Maybe this is the first step toward phasing out bad thoughts about other people that would otherwise have come out with friends.  Maybe those meannesses are rattling around, used to having their daily feed, getting a bit hungry.  I seem to remember Jesus telling some story about clearing a house of one demon only to have seven more move into the renovated space.  So, consider this post one of my outer-perimeter mental home security systems.  I’m shining some light on those demons in my head.  Maybe they’ll shrivel up a little bit and start to waste away.

Two sorts of rainbows.

{ September 11, 2009 @ 8:00 am } · { personal reflection, political }
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alert

Today I remember that all third graders in the U.S. have lived their entire lives in a state of war, a country in which orange is not a popsicle flavor or a color of the rainbow but “high alert,” where “Mission accomplished” is an ironic statement, where images of naked men on dog chains are no longer noteworthy, where men of Muslim faith are the stereotypical bad guy of film and news rather than the Russians I grew up seeing in movies like Die Hard.  I remember the year 1989, the year I was eight myself, when the Berlin Wall fell and the tears, hope, and ecstasy of the end of war connected the hearts of Westerners across the world.  I remember the end of war.  I do.  It has happened in other places, in other times, and we have violated our promises and forgotten what we are capable of.

I remember another promise, one I didn’t make and wasn’t present for.  It was between one man’s family and God, and it included a rainbow over the soggy, destroyed earth, covered in rotting, bloated animal carcasses and the silence of a world stripped of human voices. A promise of hope, resurrection, and universal redemption, the forgiveness of Godself.

And then I am reminded, against my will, of a promise made to Rwandans after the genocide there, “Never again.”  The genocide of Armenians of a hundred years past, the following slaughters of Bosnians and Sudanese later.  I think of the Holocaust of the Second World War, the disappearance of thousands of Salvadorans and Dominicans in the ’70′s and ’80′s and the changes wrought in the course of history for those countries, digging an untold rut into their futures. I think of those children who were born into, grew through, developed their little selves during those war-times.  And I grieve.  Because we are not learning from our history, the history of humanity in conflict with ourselves, of the damage we inflict on our own heritage and the well-being of our collective soul.

I pray for the promise of a rainbow to reveal itself once again, for God to give us a sign that the damage we do to ourselves in the world is not only redeemable, but transformable.  That there is hope for promises to be kept, that “Never again” need not be an empty phrase, but a commitment to justice and healing for all people. That eight-year olds need never grow into a world of war, but might know the wondrous celebration of its end.

Amen.

Cleaning-woman God.

{ September 2, 2009 @ 5:07 pm } · { personal reflection }
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I interviewed with my district committee this morning in order to pass into the next phase of affirmation toward ordination in the United Methodist Church.  In the process of this interview, which included questions about my theology, my understanding of ordination, my own call to ministry, and the opportunity to list my own weaknesses, one of my committee members asked me a surprising question: Which is my favorite parable?  Anyone who knows me knows a couple of things: 1) I’m pretty into inclusivity.  In other words, I don’t really “do” favorites.  I kind of love everything.  2) I’m into hyperbole (see number one).  If I love something, I love it – it’s fantastic, amazing, incredible.  If I dislike it, it’s “That’s horrendous!” Or, at least until next time, when there’s an exception.  I’m sure it drives people crazy.  In fact, I know it does.  So, when asked, “What’s your favorite…?” I totally freeze up.  All of a sudden, my mind touches on a million options (or at least five), and I get the sense of being unfairly pinned down.  The thing is, in these situations, sometimes something about me really does reveal itself.  So it was this morning.  I sat quietly for a few moments, waiting for inspiration and thinking of the various implications of each of the parables coming to mind… and then just opened my mouth and worked with the first thing that came out.

One story that Jesus tells, right after the lost sheep and right before the famous “prodigal son” in Luke 15, makes my heart warm.  Actually, if this isn’t too weird, the feeling I get from that parable is the same body-sense I get from being in love – deep comfort, total clarity, exceptional hope.  It gets about two verses, and it’s in the form of a question… He says, “Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it?”  What woman, indeed?

I’ve lost things.  Lots of things, big and little, important and insignificant.  People, too.  Ideas, hopes, opportunities.  But that coin, it represents something special.  Everytime I think of that parable, I think of that woman, sort of middle-aged, in the center of her simple house, standing with her hands on her hips for a moment or two, thinking.  Then, suddenly, on her hands and knees on that hard, dirt-packed floor, tearing things out of corners, throwing blankets, pots, living space-things behind her with intensity, even abandon, the other nine coins stacked carefully on her rough kitchen table, glinting in the lamp light.  Systematically but frantically searching for that little silver coin in the dark, dirty corner it’s rolled itself into.  It’s equal to all of the others she has, already waiting there collected, but that’s just it… it’s equal in value.  It, too, deserves to be sought out, found, shined on the hem of her apron and gathered together with the others.  To be put where it belongs, in its home.  Because what’s wrong with a lost coin?  One thing: it can’t fulfill its purpose, the thing it was made for.  Separated from its brethren, it’s not able to be as fully-what-it-is as it might be.  It’s valuable in its own right, even more valuable when gathered into its community.

Telling this story to the committee, I lost it.  I mean, big, rolling tears started pouring over my face and I felt the weird feeling of telling a story from the heart of the world.  Wondering what it was about this story, I realized it’s my gospel.  One line, in the form of a question.  Who, what God, would not do this, would not gather together each and every one?   The one in whom I am learning every day to trust would.  The God I know, realizing this little coin has been lost, has gotten down on her knobby, creaking knees in the mud and the garbage and scrabbled through with her bare hands looking desperately and intently for me, like parent looks for her child lost in a crowd, to bring me back home… un-distracted by anything not immediately related to the problem, disregarding any consequence other than that of finding, of seeking and finding.

There’s a poem that matches this sense of God for me, and it was envisioned by the 14th century Hindu poet Janibai.  It’s entitled, “You leave your greatness behind you.“  May you, too, feel with deep assurance that God has left God’s greatness behind, just for you, to show you that you are loved, coveted, and needed for the building up of the Kingdom.

Jani has had enough of samsara,/but how will I repay my debt?/ You leave your greatness behind you to grind and pound with me./ O Lord you become a woman/ washing me and my soiled clothes,/ proudly you carry the water and gather dung with your own two hands./ O Lord, I want/ a place at your feet,/ says Jani, Namdev’s dasi.

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