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.

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.

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.

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.

In a very cool turn of events, I’ve been invited to participate as a fellow blogger of the Thomas Society. To read about the Society, which is an open space for ongoing dialogue between people who identify as atheist or as religious/spiritual, visit http://thomas2026.wordpress.com/about/.  Keep up with the conversation as it unfolds.

I’ve been trying to figure out since June 23rd how to talk about the fact that my mom is dead.  You see, I haven’t spoken with her or been in her presence since September of 1998, but the death of a person is more than the simple absence of their body from a familiar space.  Unlike most people who lose a parent to death, I don’t walk into rooms and miss seeing her standing in that certain spot at the kitchen counter, or find myself following a woman with a similar walk at the grocery store.  I haven’t thought I saw her since 2000, the year when, for the last time, I was certain Mom drove past me in a navy blue Volvo station wagon on a high way between Toledo and Columbus, Ohio. Despite that absence, she’s been everywhere in my life, fingerprints all over it.

In the intervening 11 years between the morning she walked out of our house, January first during my sophomore year of high school, and last month, I have moved through the stages of grief.  I’ve been angry, accepting, and depressed.  I’ve bargained with God, and with Mom.  I’ve forgiven and learned how to appreciate the wonderful things she gave her daughter, the tools and resources she shared, the weirdnesses and joys, the damaged and broken places she handed down across a generation to her girl.  January of 2008, I sat ten years to the day of her leaving in a crowded church in Madurai, India, and let…mom…go.  Intentionally, peacefully, I transitioned from one decade into the next, opening clenched fists and releasing into the world my sadness and my hope that this person who had parented me would someday figure out that her kids were waiting, if she would only turn around.  The Prodigal Son story has always been a favorite of mine, but mostly because I liked the fact that the son came back at all, that he took the risk.  After January, I found, however, that my moments of letting go had been mere preparation for a year that would show me forcefully that in fact, no matter how much letting go I do, I will always and forever be my mother’s daughter.  Her legacy follows me, is inherent in my nature and in my body, in ways that I can’t even begin to describe. And I realize that being aware of those things, the way my very self is shaped by her being, the way that despite death her voice is one of the strongest in my head and her way of living one of the most influential to my own, is one way into the future.  I can do nothing other than honor her presence here, in my self and my history.

And so, as the only daughter of Jerri Lin Cahill Nielsen Fitzgerald, I will.  I honor her life and her death.  Her absence and her presence, both.  Her blazing triumphs and desperate failures, incredible risks and heartbreaking choices.  Mom, I honor your awful silences and your eccentric laugh.  The energy you brought to living, balanced by the way you ignored and avoided difficult things.  The beauty you found in language, your cruel use of it.  Your efforts to teach, and the things you taught that I wish you had not.  Your appreciation of nature, and the nature you imparted to us, your children.  We all fail sometimes.  I promise this is not how I remember you, defined by your shortcomings.  Your way of being in the world would lead to pain as well as wonder, that’s the way such a life works.  Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself reminds me that despite death, you are still alive, in those of us your soul touched.  In a year where you might say everything has collapsed, I take sustenance and find peace in this line: to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.

What do you think has become of the young and old men?

And what do you think has become of the women and children?

This year has been a season of finding ways to understand forgiveness.  The dissolution of my marriage was final last month, the month previous to that my mother died, ending the possibility of a reconciliation after an estrangement stretching back to my sophomore year of high school.  Some friendships have been severely tested, my own understanding of ordination and my career, including ordination, always on the edge of dashing away into a world where I don’t have to be angry with church people or institutions or myself for failing them.  Forgiveness… moving forward into a future with hope, knowing that putting pieces together and healing the world is an act of courage and sometimes bold naivete.  One foot in front of the other, perhaps, with blinders on.

In the midst of this, a few weeks ago, I attended a gathering of emergent church people, a talk given by Doug Pagitt.  Something he said has stuck with me.  He said that there is a breed of people a friend of his calls “vampire Christians.”  They’re the ones who seem to want Jesus for his blood and not much else.  Now, my first reaction to this statement was, “Oh, yeah… them.” As though I’m not at all related, that I don’t have something I’m primarily interested in Jesus for, too.  I can get pretty far saying this (insert appropriate liberal snideness), since after all I’ve got a pretty solid argument against atonement theories that focus on Jesus’ death without caring too much about either his incredible living or the transformational resurrection.  I can talk my way around that crucifixion till your head spins.  Theological.  Political.  Cultural.  Whatever fancy-pants avoiding-the-issue sorts of arguments you want, I got’em.

The problem is, at heart, I’ve got to deal with the fact that really, I’m in the same boat as a vampire Christian.  Hell, I’m holding the same paddle.  Because what I really want from Jesus, what I have needed, in fact, is forgiveness.  What I’m saying is, they may want Jesus for his blood, those vampire Christians, but this year I pretty much have been wanting him for his empty tomb and not much else.  The great Jesus-do-over.  Which is wrong, too.

Now, I haven’t been asking for the kind of forgive-and-forget toxic silliness that we so carefully teach children.  No.  The kind of forgiveness I’ve been looking for is filled with consequence, and learning, and a sense of deep peace and hope that despite what’s been broken or damaged or hurt, I can’t fix it because after all that’s above my pay grade, there’s only one power in the world strong enough to mend what’s not right here.  The kind of forgiveness that has God stroking my face and telling me it’s not really okay, but that’s not the point because lessons are learned and the world is different because of them and in fact it’s going to be better, fuller, more significantly joyous because it’s about dimension, not simplicity and God’s working despite my impression that it’s up to me.  Which is great, I’m sure.  I’ve done some serious thinking about this, lots of praying, too much crying, and I think this is an okay kind of forgiveness to desperately want.  ButI’m not saying forgiveness isn’t a wonderful thing to want.

I’m not even saying that seeking it and growing it in the world isn’t a noble venture.  I’m saying, it’s not the whole picture.  I recently heard someone say that if you boiled down the three Abrahamic religions into one word, Judaism = family, Islam = prayer, and Christianity = forgiveness.  I don’t think any Jew, Muslim, or Christian would be totally happy with that assessment, no matter how wonderful those three things are.  ‘Cause we can’t just want Jesus (or God, for that matter) for one thing, especially when that one thing is just for ourselves.  It’s either the whole picture or we’re just vampire Christians, there for the part that makes us feel good and fed and ironically limiting ourselves from growing because of it.  We’ve got to be willing to say, yes… Jesus’ life, the fact of him, says something about us and the world, about me and how I live.  Yes, Jesus’ death does, too, on a cross, at the hands of religious authorities and the government, because of the brokenheartedness inherent in this humanity.  Yes, the resurrection is central to how I am because I believe that somehow, through some mystery, God’s managed to overcome death with love and transformed the most horrible horrors into the possibility of hope.  All three, together, are the story.  Maybe I can get out of this by saying that, for me, they’re all about forgiveness.  They’re certainly all about redemption.  And that might be enough.

How are you a vampire Christian?

My sister-in-law connected me with this video today, and as I watched it, I immediately thought about church.  Some context.  This morning’s Annual Conference worship had a speaker who focused on the theme for the year, which is developing leadership.  Lots of things could be brought out of that conversation, but the thing that struck me was the idea that people want an invitation, a calling, not a job.  They want to find the place where their unique way of being in the world intersects with the world’s need, and they want to share it.

I watched this video and thought about this, especially that first guy who steps out into the middle of that bustling train station, takes his place in the middle, and breaks into joyous dance.  He knew why he was there, even if the other people didn’t.  Then, a little girl joins him, then a woman… until everyone watching realizes that there is a place for nearly every single person in that place to participate.  That first guy, he just disappears into the crowd of dancers as more and more people join in.  He’s not a leader in the sense of the word that we use in corporate America.  But he leads.  The group grows and the edges expand until even those who weren’t “officially” a part of the dance start to dance… rocking and clapping together.   You can tell they want to be a part of it, that energy.  Some of them, the real travelers, those who had never rehearsed before, participate by learning the moves, improv.  It’s beautiful and organic.  It’s lovely, energetic… leaders and followers melting together while a larger story unfolds and becomes irresistable.

So, the church and a question, for myself mainly.  Can we create spaces for worship and mission where this dance is the model?  Where, with just a few rehearsals and a spirit of life and fun and community, we make a place that is so inviting that people are willing to a) lead in the role of serving the larger goal, not to be in the spotlight and b) risk following even when it may mean feeling foolish for the sake of the entire community and being a part of something generous and extravagantly joyous? Can we let people join in when and where and how they are called, and encourage that energy through our presence, our expectation, our courage, our patience, and our openness?

What does that mean for how we’re thinking now?  How I’m doing ministry today?  What do I need to change?  And who’s willing to dance?

I’m reading a book right now for my book club. It’s the Dr. Paul Farmer story, Mountains Beyond Mountains. Basically, it’s the true, ongoing, yet-to-be-finished story of a man whose mission in life is cure the world.  The phenomenal and wonderful thing about Dokte Paul is that he plans to do this one patient at a time, until all people are healed.  Simultaneously, this week I’m attending my denomination’s area annual gathering.  Annual Conference is 3,000 United Methodists worshiping together, meeting about the life and polity of the Church, networking, and learning about the current reality of the mission of the church in the world.  We talk about some very important things, some very boring things, some things that make me want to tear my hair out at the roots.  The most interesting thing to me, though, is not what happens on stage during legislation or worship, though I geek out about that, for sure.  It’s the side comments and conversations that happen on the street outside the auditorium and at the ice cream shop.  People are hopeful.  They’re often bored.  There are a lot of rolling eyes and yawns.  But, the things that stick with me and make me perk up are the snarky comments.  More than a half dozen times this week, sheerly by the accident of where I was standing, I have heard people say, “That’s stupid, impossible.  We can’t do that.  There’s not enough money.” Or, “That’s unrealistic… we can’t possibly change the health care system/work toward the end of poverty/be unified as a Church…”  In other words, insert your cynical response to hope and faith here.

Tracy Kidder, the author of the Dr. Farmer biography, relates a conversation she had with Paul, the man who has over the last twenty years, one person at a time, redefined and entirely transformed how we deal with the global disease pandemics of AIDS and TB.  They were traveling in Lima, Peru, and Paul saw a sign thtat read “patria es humanidad,” which means “the only real nation is humanity.”  Farmer said, “I think that’s so lovely.”  She said, “I don’t know, it seems like a slogan to me.”  His response was, “I guess you’re right.”  The author said, “I felt as though I’d punched him.  Among a coward’s weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all.”

Here was a man who has accomplished miracles for the desperately ill and poor.  He’d changed whole systems through will power, faith, and trust in the goodness and need of those with whom he was working.  He’d done it with creativity, dynamism, and admittedly the bending and breaking of many rules.  He’d never said something was impossible, or stupid, or unrealistic, or that the resources were not enough.  In fact, Paul often stated that the problem wasn’t lack of resources but their distribution.  If we all really lived as though the only nation were humanity, the problems would not only have solutions, they would be moot.  Rather than thinking outside the box, Dr. Farmer had decided that the box was no longer necessary at all in order to orient himself and his work.  Operating from a position of confidence, optimism, and trust, rather than from their hateful twin – cynycism – , he had and continues to transform the world.  But the United Methodist Church won’t be a part of that transformation, have a voice in it, extend our hands helpfully and courageously, if we allow ourselves the snark.  If we continue to be cheerfully cynical, bitterly backbiting, untrusting and unfaithful to the gospel which promises us God’s love, support, and Spirit if we work with integrity and courage, we will fail.  We will die.  We will preach empty words to empty churches.  There really will be not enough money, we’ll never transform anything, end poverty, or be unified.  But it’s got to start with the conversations we have together when we gather as a Conference.  This is my prayer.  May it be so, this week at Conference.

With graduation from my Master of Divinity program behind me, I’m beginning to realize how easy it is to simply move on to the next thing.  This smacked me in the face particularly hard on the Friday night before commencement, when as friends and faculty congratulated me on my accomplishment, they each seemed incapable of leaving off the parting comment, “But, you’re not really done, are you?”  After all, I do have another degree to finish.  I have classes this summer, Annual Conference to attend.  I will be studying for the GRE, applying for some mission programs, attempting against all odds to learn some Spanish.  But… no one would simply allow me to rest in what I had already done.  More than anyone, I know what is left to do, what is ahead.  One day, even just an evening, would have been a lovely space in which to look at the last three years, breathe deeply, and exhale.  But we push one another into the future.  I’ve been thinking about this during the last week since graduation.  It’s why I haven’t written.

Sometimes, it’s simply a good thing to rest, to take a break, even from the things we enjoy.  It’s good to be present in what we’ve already done and not attempt to move into the next phase of the process.  It’s good to be still and view the past from this particular vantage point, take some stock, freshen up a moment before stepping out again.  It’s good to clear the mind of what’s already been by appreciating and revelling in how it has come to pass.  I worked all week at a job I enjoy, though it’s emotionally draining and often heartbreaking.  In that break, between graduation and gearing up for what’s to come this summer, I found myself rested, even in the difficulty of work.  It was, in an odd way, a vacation.  And this sense, of needing to take a week or so to simply do something else, use my mind and my hands in new ways, to engage my heart with kids who can’t read or do math rather than with books about theology or doctrine, I sought out a sabbath time.  And stumbled into the realization that I need to schedule this.  The word from which we get “sabbath,” shabbat, derives from the idea of ceasing and desisting.  This doesn’t mean to cease existence or to be lazy.  It simply means to stop the work you’ve been doing and to rest by being a different way for a time in order to appreciate, refresh, and return with a new heart.  I am very good at procrastination.  This is not shabbat. I am also an expert at doing exactly what I like because it feels fun at the time and I’d rather not be doing something else.  This, too, is not shabbat.  What I need is an intentional break, a setting aside of habitual work in an effort at habitual rest.  This looked like taking time from writing this week, and it also looked like appreciating my newly minted degree before diving into the next one.  It looked like building a garden outside my apartment yesterday and visiting with friends yesterday evening rather than striving to outline my presentation for Annual Conference next week. Because the work will always be there, and I can’t do it if I’m not connected and rejuvenated.  Pushing through it isn’t as helpful or as lovely, doesn’t speak to the appreciation I have for simply being alive today, as focusing on it at the right time, after a bit of rest.  Putting everything into perspective, getting a handle on where the priorities lay.  God never ordered anyone to work, but God keeps reminding us to rest.  To cease and desist.  To shabbat.

So here’s the plan.  I’m starting small but with commitment.  Thursday mornings are now unshatterably sacred.  They are mine, all mine… for time to simply be, with God, alone, in company with friends, however rest will look.  But they will be different from the rest of the week.  No procrastination, simply sheer existence without the purpose of accomplishment.  Until noon on Thursdays, consider me at rest, ceased and desisting.

I was angry with my friend./ I told my wrath, my wrath did end./ I was angry with my foe./ I told it not, my wrath did grow;/ And I water’d it in fears,/ Night and morning with my tears;/ And I sunned it with smiles,/ And with soft deceitful wiles;/ And it grew both day and night/ Till it bore an apple bright,/ And my foe beheld it shine,/ And he knew that it was mine,/ And into my garden stole/ When the night had veil’d the pole./ In the morning glad I see/ My foe outstretched beneath the tree.  (A Poison Tree, William Blake).

We’ve all heard this poem, or some piece of it, I think.  The old story, the ancient lesson.  Hiding our bitterness and anger in our own hearts, directing it inward, poisoning ourselves even as we poison others with it.  I’m living this experience right now, from two directions.  The first is with a dear, old friend who is deeply angry with me.  I know it, she knows it.  But she won’t tell me, out loud.  Instead, every conversation we have is spiked with discomfort, anxiety, even resentment.  She won’t tell, and I can’t ask.  At least, yet.  I’m watching us sun our friendship, and this hidden hurt, with smiles, watering it with tears in the shadows, hoping the other person will do the right thing.  And neither of us is, because of pride.  And because of hurt on both sides.  So one of us is going to end up eating that apple.

Then there’s the other direction, one I’m struggling with even more.  In this, I’m the one who’s angry.  Exceptionally, truly angry.  You know, that kind of roiling orange rage that is so hot it turns blue near the source, where it sears away the ability to think rationally or compassionately about the real problem.  The source of it is an injustice.  The result of it is a lost relationship.  The problem is the secrecy in between.  The reason isn’t really important.  In fact, it’s meaningless.  The problem is my reaction.  I don’t believe in a God who punishes people for doing wrong.  In fact, the God I’ve clung to for the last year or so, hoping desperately I’m right about some-damn-thing in this world and please-let-this-be-it, gives more grace to people who are messed up and who make messes and disasters for others than for those who don’t (my theology professor may be throwing her head into her hands right now, or drinking).  I believe that there’s a bigger serving of grace for those of us who are truly screwing things up.  Because we need it more.  That’s the God I know.  It’s the God I’ve met and recognized.  It’s the God who, against all odds, loves me and the rest of this world.  So.  That doesn’t change the fact that whenever I think about this person, I sort of desperately want God to strike her over the head with a two-by-four.  Or a lightning bolt, old-school.  At least make her fail at something today, or tomorrow.  Hell, I’d go for a heel breaking on a favorite pair of shoes.  Something, anything to prove that I’m right and she’s wrong and this isn’t fair and somebody Up There is getting all this on video.  Hmmmm…

See what I mean?  The problem is, I’m just about that angry, but I’m smiling and being normal when it really counts.  Which is disingenuous and feels pretty dirty to me.  And it’s exactly the opposite of what I’d really like for her to do, which is finally admit to me what she’s done.  Not to smile and stroke that lie with soft deceitful wiles.  Not to make me eat that apple.  But she won’t.  So I keep thinking about Jesus, ’cause that’s what a person should do when she’s this angry and feeling pretty self-righteous.  I keep seeing the Jesus who looked with pity on Peter in his idiocy and on Thomas as he tried to believe and on Mary when she didn’t recognize him.  That soft, sad, sort of flabbergasted look of love.  The one where I think he would have said, “Listen, kid, you’re just not really getting this.  I love that you’re trying, but turn about 180 degrees that direction… yeah, there you go… see that?  There’s where you’re supposed to be looking.”  Which is to say, inside.  Because it’s really nice to point fingers.  But it’s sort of ineffectual.  If I’m hiding my own stuff behind a smile, then it’s rather unjust to ask that everyone else be straightforward and open just because I’m feeling particularly righteous that day, especially targeted.

So here’s the deal.  I’m going to keep these friends.  I’m going to apologize to the first one so that one day I don’t wake up and find her passed out under that toxic apple tree and regret my error too late.  I’m going to look with compassion on the second one and wait patiently for her to turn around and look inside.   I’ll pray for them both.  But first I’ll pray for myself, that the sun shining out of my eyes is really light and not some false attempt to blind other people from seeing what’s really going on, that the fruit of my life is wholesome and healthy and not about to break apart a treasured relationship.  I’m going to learn a lesson from Eden.

***This is the twenty-sixth of a series of posts based on a book I’m reading for a class called Connections in Religious and Ecological Education entitled Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. The chapter is “Confessions of An Evangelical Treehugger,” by Matthew Sleeth.

It’s the last day of seminary.  At least, this version of seminary.  After today’s classes, and one more research paper, I will have earned my Master of Divinity.  All I can say to that is, “huh.”  Three years ago, I took a detour into the world of theological education.  I didn’t realize that at the other side of that experience my life, my relationships, and my faith would look entirely different, not exactly better, but more nuanced and often more painfully complicated.  Complexified.  Sometimes, miraculously more interesting.  Always more.  In 2007 when I quit my job, one I didn’t believe I’d be doing for the rest of my life, but a good one nevertheless, I wondered what the hell the future would look like.  I plunged into school, not knowing how everything would look at the end but thinking I had some idea.  Sort of “my-life-but-better.”  God must have laughed at that one, a trickster laugh.  Three years later, I have to say that nearly nothing looks the same.  I’m different emotionally, theologically, professionally.  The world is different, my choices are different when I look into the future, my expectations of myself and my friends are changed.  My relationships have shifted and so has the ground under my feet.  I took a detour.  The thing is, I’m pretty sure that’s the point.  When I hear people talk about detours, they always sound so… regretful.  As in, “I was supposed to be in ministry, but I took a detour into chemical engineering for thirty years first… *sigh*… I guess I was running from God.”  This usually seems to mean that there’s been a mistake somewhere.  I don’t want to stomp anyone’s personal experience, but I think that’s illogical.  We don’t take detours that don’t get us where we’re supposed to go.  That phenomenon is called “getting lost.”  You don’t usually end up in the right place, lost.  A detour gets us exactly where we’ve been going the whole time, just not by the route we had previously planned, often a better, if longer, one.  So.  Here we are.  Detoured, but at the destination.  I’m not going to regret that.

***This is the twenty-fifth of a series of posts based on a book I’m reading for a class called Connections in Religious and Ecological Education entitled Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. The chapter is “Colored Town and Liberation Science,” by Kristin Shrader-Frechette.

Shrader-Frechette talks about the first activist she knew… her mom.  She describes all the ways her mom, often to her total mortification as a child and adolescent, lived out her personal and social commitment to eradicating injustice, hypocrisy, and false piety.  “Talk is cheap, people show what they believe by how they live.”  I didn’t grow up in a family of activists, though my parents did teach me values that have helped me stay centered in my own small work for justice in my community.  But I keep thinking about who that person was, for me.  That first, unshakeably just person who lived consistently, constantly, intentionally in line with her/his values while still appearing human, approachable.  I grew up, during most of my teenaged years, in a progressive Mennonite community church.  Language about peace and justice was part of the air we breathed there.  I didn’t really grow into that until after college, long after I left my home town, but it had an influence over my life to be sure.  I think the first person who really did this was my sometimes-Sunday school teacher, Wendy.  Somehow, in the way of all strong, mysterious, effective women, she managed to be not only a good teacher, a fun and interesting human being, and a good friend, she also managed to seamlessly integrate into her daily life anti-war activism, community-building, music, art, gardening, doubt, resistance, openness to questions, independence, compassion, ingenuity, humility, and a holding-tight to people while letting them grow.  I’m glad to know she’s in the world.  Looking back through my own development, I realize I’ve seen her as a model without naming her.  I’ll do that now.  Thanks, Wendy.  Thank you.

During the last few weeks, I’ve had the strange experience of feeling as though someone else is talking through me.  No, don’t run for your DSM-IV.  I’m not hallucinating.  It’s just a plain ol’ problem with communication.  Human to human.  We all remember the childhood game of telephone, where you pass a message through a chain of people until it gets back to its original speaker, usually garbled and entirely different in both form and content than when it started.  Let’s call this a game of telephone with only one intermediary – me.  Have you ever had this experience?  You know, the one where you could absolutely swear you’d been clear, that you’d thought out what you had to say, had smartly assessed the information, the conversation, the person with whom you’re speaking, and then… bam… what you said isn’t at all what that person heard?  They repeat back to you what they understood you to say and it’s not only not what you said (or some version of it, translated), but it’s not the message you wanted to send?  Or, worse, it’s exactly what you said, but when repeated sounds entirely unlike the point you were trying to make?

Sometimes, this is a good thing, and I can see relationships being built out of it.  Preaching is like that, I think.  Pastors simply can’t predict exactly which parts of the good news people are going to be prepared to hear that day.  Everyone comes from a different place, a unique context, and fundamentally special background, and this difference creates difference of interpretation.   I preached my senior chapel last Tuesday on 1 John 3 and focused on loving not through word or speech but through truth and action.  I had my message all thought out, I’d planned the service down to the last second, I was prepared.  I knew what I was going to say, how I was going to say it, what I wanted people to hear.  And then… every last person who came up to me afterward to talk about worship heard something different.  I had no control, after all.  And, most strangely, each person’s connection point, each interpretation, was entirely correct.  The words spoken to them were the same, but they all heard different things, each helpful or illuminating or healing (thank you, Holy Spirit) in their own way.  So, what I thought I’d said, indeed had said, meant something different simply by virtue of leaving my mouth and entering the hearts of someone unlike me.

And then, this week, I had two conversations with a friend with whom I’m still negotiating the nature of our friendship.  We’ve both got some stuff to work through with each other, and we’re desperately trying to talk about what it’s like to be in relationship, how we can move into a future friendship that will look the way we want and need it to.  And over and over again, I heard myself explore a thought or feeling, had it repeated back to me, and it came back all mangled.  And this relationship is important to me, so I don’t want to just drop the issue altogether – it’s worth it to keep working on the hard parts.  The two of us have to keep talking, even if (when) we have no idea whether the words we’re saying are being heard as they were intended.  This is, I think, one of the hardest things about being in relationships… this not knowing, never knowing, how we’re being perceived, but having to keep at it, nonetheless.

As I’ve sat thinking about this during the last week, it’s made me wonder about the times I write off the message I’m getting from people.  What are the times when my ability to listen and hear what someone is actually trying to say has been compromised by what I’ve already got going on in my head?  Even actively, intently listening, leaving all the stuff aside that I can about what I already know of a person, what I think about the words they’ve chosen, of their tone, sometimes it’s hard to really hear. And maybe that’s the problem.  Rather than really trying to take all of those things and integrate them, we assume we know better than another person what they are trying to say.  Does that make sense?  On some level, in order to really hear, we have to both take things at face value, without laying on top of them everything we already know, and simultaneously use every bit of contextual information we have in order to understand it.  Meanwhile, if we’re trying to be heard, we have to understand that the other person is trying to do this very thing, on the other end, and be patient with that.  I’m thinking of Jesus’ parables.  “Let those with ears to hear…” Each of us hears something unique, even if there’s a core if elusive message to capture, a central and valuable core to the story.  It’s important, but we bring a lot of ourselves to the table, and it’s hard to hear through that baggage clogging up our air space. This is true in human relationships of all kinds, it’s true when trying to listen for God’s voice, it’s true when sharing a thought or the gospel.  And I think it’s probably good for me to try to remember that, when I get frustrated that I’m neither hearing nor being heard the way I’ve intended.  Perhaps I’m making listening into something more complicated, more difficult, than it actually is.  But I doubt it.

***This is the twenty-fourth of a series of posts based on a book I’m reading for a class called Connections in Religious and Ecological Education entitled Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. The chapter is “The Zaytuna Ruku Tree,” by Zaid Shakir.

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, ⁹‘As for me, I am establishing my covenant with you and your descendants after you, ¹⁰and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the domestic animals, and every animal of the earth with you, as many as came out of the ark. Gen 9:8-10 (repeated 9:10, 12, 13, 15, 16, 17)

All Rolling Pine trees eventually tip over, their heavy tops pulling them down toward the earth until they uproot themselves and die.  They assume a posture of prayer, and bowing low to the ground, finally seek it so much that they disappear into it.  Genesis 9 repeats, over and over again, the promise that God made after the Great Deluge, the destruction of the world: “I am establishing my covenant with you…” But, we usually stop listening, if not reading, there.  If we continue to hear the passage, God’s covenant is with all living creatures.  Every one.  Each.  No matter how small, discovered or undiscovered by human beings, predatory or preyed-upon.  The Ruku tree, the tree that assumes the Muslim posture of prayer throughout its life cycle, reminds me that God’s own Creation sometimes honors God more fully than we humans ever manage to do.  My back is not bent by prayer.  I will, likely, never commit myself so fully to looking toward, to seeking God, that my devotion will cause not only my own suffering but my own death.  I will likely sit more comfortably, rest more easily, seek even less justice, forget to remember to be merciful.  We humans tend to have sharp bursts of energy with devotion but not stick it out for the long-term.  I remember that first jolt of spiritual energy I had when I first connected to God, first had a personal experience of the holy…  Did it fade, or have I been leaning toward it, inexorably and sometimes invisibly?  Am I willing to lean so heavily, bow so low toward the sacred I encounter I finally find myself prostrate on the ground?  Can I, too, be a living sign of the covenant God made with Creation, as the Ruku tree is?

***This is the twenty-third of a series of posts based on a book I’m reading for a class called Connections in Religious and Ecological Education entitled Holy Ground: A Gathering of Voices on Caring for Creation. The chapter is “The Shalom Principle,” by Peter Sawtell, founder of Eco-Justice Ministries.

Blogging has become a discipline of obedience.  I blog not only because it feels good, because I find it easiest to untangle the knottiest of my tangled thoughts in the written word, shared with my friends and with strangers, but because there are so few things in my life to which I can regularly commit myself.  Most projects are temporary, my effort necessary only in fits and starts.  A beginning and an end, not enough time necessary to reach that point where I simply hate the activity, that point through which, if I pushed, I would find myself tipping over into rich accomplishment.  So I blog.  And, I’m blogging about ecology, using Holy Ground to frame my thoughts and reflections.  I’ve reached that point.  Gotta tell you.  I am reading about various perspectives on caring for our environment from positions of faith and conscience… and I’m sick of it.  So repetitive, a trial to come up with new ideas, new thoughts, sick of feeling guilty for not doing enough, for not living like a hermit in the woods, for having a carbon footprint.  But then I think of sustainability.  Sustenance.  Sustaining.  Keeping up with it, maintaining, balancing, bearing up, withstanding.  The problem isn’t, much like our current ecological crisis, a problem of the environment, it’s a human problem.  Our hearts need to change.  Mine does.  So little are we asked to maintain, to give up something to gain something less tangible but significantly more wonderful and valuable… that we give up too easily.  Our spirits flag, we get tired, we look for the remote, we distract ourselves from the real problem at hand.  Which is our lack of dedication to the larger picture.  The point isn’t to blog one more entry.  It’s to learn about myself and the earth and and God and my community in relationship to one another.  The point isn’t to have a smaller negative impact on the earth, it’s to turn, to repent, to rethink our thinking in such a way that our values become different at heart so that healing can begin.  Damn.  I hate when things come together.