God Talk

General Conference Book Study: Synchblog

2012-02-29T21:44:00.000-05:00

This Lent, as I mentioned last week, I am super-busy. Next week is performance week for the Bach Saint John Passion, then I get a week off, and the following week is performance week for the Brahms Requiem (which I will be singing in Symphony Hall! So excited). That's nine hours of rehearsal for each of those weeks, plus two hours of practice per week for my solo gig at a friend's wedding, and the performances.

So blogging? Uh... not so much. I'll be lucky if my apartment doesn't look like a tornado at the end of all this.

Thank goodness there is a synchblog going on right now on the General Conference Book Study! There are tons of Methobloggers out there doing great work on the recommended reading for General Conference 2012. Each week, I will post a link to the synchblog site, which happens to be the blog of my friend and colleague, HackingChristianity. Each synchblog is a digest. Jeremy posts links of all the people who discuss each book for the week, with a short description of each. You can read one post, all of them, or pick which ones look interesting to you.

I'll be reading them along with you! I just don't have the time to read and generate content myself. Perhaps at the end of this very busy Lent, I can discuss some of the reading in retrospect. Until then, please enjoy exploring the Methoblogophere and hopefully learn something new each week!

This week's post is.... [drumroll please]

Focus by Lovett Weems
Synchblog is here.

Ash Wednesday: Looking Forward to Christ's Passion

2012-02-22T21:36:00.004-05:00

Some days, I feel as if the weight of my own sin is heavier on my heart than other days. Ash Wednesday is one of those days. This year, I have been contemplating my sins and Christ's passion earlier than usual. Right now, the Back Bay Chorale is gearing up for a performance of one of J.S. Bach's masterworks, the Saint John Passion. Unlike Bach's other passion, the Saint Matthew Passion, this one emphasizes the angry mob screaming, "Crucify!" and the underhanded betrayal by manipulative chief priests. It's very difficult to sing the turba choruses because I have to place myself in the shoes of the mob. Suddenly I become one of the ones in the garden coming with torches and weapons... I have to sing, "Give us Barabbas!" and "Crucify, crucify!" It makes me very uncomfortable, and at first, I couldn't figure out why.

Then at Monday's rehearsal, we sat down to discuss the controversial nature of the John Passion, and one of the basses in choir said something very insightful. He mentioned that he is uncomfortable singing it because he is reminded of the part of him that has the capacity to participate in a mob... and even to murder. I think he nailed it. There is still something in me that might do those things, given the right circumstances. Even though the sins I actually commit (or omit) aren't nearly as heinous as calling for an innocent man's torture and death, they still hurt others. Every time I hurt someone else, I grieve God's heart. And I betray my Savior, who came to redeem the very ones I hurt, and to teach me the way of love... which I conveniently ignore. For three hours each Monday, it's hard to live with myself. I think of all the ways I have hurt and let down both God and others, all the while narrating Jesus' suffering and death. It's hard enough to meditate on Christ's passion without layering my failures on as well. A friend recommended this video to me- it's the opening chorus to the John Passion set to footage from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (warning: the video is graphic and not for those with weak stomachs!) and it raised the hair on my neck.

Like the John Passion, this video ends with the crucifixion. Where is the hope in this journey toward the corss? The Good News, of course, is that God has forgiven our sins. But that can be hard to accept when we are burdened by sin. Another friend on Facebook wisely said, "Forgiveness is not what we struggle to achieve for ourselves. It's about what we accept. I say this from years of trying not to do this myself. It's not easy getting over the habit of thinking we can." Well, I'm a long way from getting to that point. Somehow I think that I can just be better somehow, and that in time, I can stop doing X and start doing Y. Here's where even more Good News comes in: that the Holy Spirit will transform our lives if only we open our hearts to God. The only way I can stop sinning and start doing what Jesus would do is for the Spirit to make me into a better person. It's a hard thing to ask for change, but if I really love others as I do myself, it's important to pray for transformation.

Lent is a time for transformation. Some people strive for transformation by giving up something or taking on a new spiritual practice during this time. This year, I have no extra time to add a practice- it's all I can do to maintain my current devotions. So I'm trying to do just one thing: to set aside my ego and open myself to the Spirit's work in my heart. Even in the painful times when I have to think about how Jesus was scourged and crucified, and when I have to contemplate my sins, I want to listen for the Spirit in my life. Sometimes I mourn with Mary, and sometimes I deny like Peter. But even in those moments, the Spirit is there with me because She never gives up on anyone. It's harder to adopt a practice that has no set time of day or week, and that is more about an inner posture than an outer habit. But I think it's time for a challenge.

What are you doing to observe Lent this year? How are you looking forward to the cross during these forty days in the wilderness with God?

The Holy Spirit and the Feminine Divine

2012-02-15T17:09:00.204-05:00

Recently, John Piper made a comment that has the Christian blogosphere in a tizzy over issues of gender once again: that "Christianity has a masculine feel" that is God-given. One of my favorite Evangelical bloggers, Rachel Held Evans, notes, "This is... a dismissive, hurtful way to speak about women, who Piper seems to have forgotten were also created in the image of God, were appointed by God as leaders at critical times in the history of Israel and the Church, and were the first to whom Jesus appeared when he inaugurated his new Kingdom on Resurrection Day." Rachel makes a good point. She has also called for male bloggers to write about feminine images of God or that celebrates women's role in the church. You can read the many wonderful responses by Christian men here. While I'm not a man, I wanted to contribute to the discussion because I came from an Evangelical background, and it took me almost 20 years to discover feminine images for God in the Bible. I just wasn't encouraged to read them very often before. And when I did, some of them didn't resonate with me.

But then it hit me: Christians have been worshiping the feminine divine for centuries, in the person of the Holy Spirit. Before you object that the Holy Spirit doesn't have a gender, I want to point out that God doesn't have a gender either, and Jesus only had a gender while on earth, but we tend to ascribe masculine characteristics to them and to refer to them as He. Also note that the Patristics (whom John Wesley studied avidly) referred to the Holy Spirit as She, including Clement of Alexandria, who envisioned the Spirit as mother.

I'd also like to point out the role of wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament). If you sit down and read Proverbs, you will find wisdom is personified as "She." You can see this right away in Proverbs 1:20-23, for instance. The wisdom passed down from generation to generation in Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and other books is revered in Jewish culture. Like the Jews, we believe that wisdom flows from God and the wisdom that we can attain is given by God. Proverbs 8:22-31 references this feminine voice, "Woman Wisdom" as she is sometimes called, and indicates that She was there in the beginning with God, when God was creating the world. Genesis 1:1 says that God's Spirit moved across the waters of the deep, before the world was formed.

Some Christians today interpret these verses as referring to the Holy Spirit, others interpret them as referring to Jesus Christ, and still others say that Woman Wisdom merely personifies one of God's many attributes. But whichever interpretation you choose, each one acknowledges a feminine dimension in one Person of the Trinity. Personally, I prefer to interpret a connection between the Holy Spirit and Woman Wisdom because of the idea of Holy Spirit as breath/ wind as described by Catherine Keller, one of my favorite theologians, in her books On the Mystery and Face of the Deep.

Keller emphasizes that, as Spirit, God is wholly Other to us. Unlike Jesus, the Spirit has never been embodied. While the Bible imagines God as a mother, a warrior, a woman looking for a lost coin, a shepherd, and a father, except for Woman Wisdom, biblical images for the Spirit are non-human: wind, fire, dove. And yet, the Spirit is intimately involved in our lives: She resides with us in this time between the ascension of Jesus and his return. The Spirit is here with us in the everyday spaces of life, the nitty-gritty of our routines and personal struggles. Although the Holy Spirit is most definitely Not Us, the Spirit is always With Us. The Spirit is powerful. Like a mighty rushing wind, the Spirit whooshes into our lives, pushing us to be who God created us to be. Like tongues of fire, the Spirit gives us new words to speak into a world of pain and darkness. If we try to ignore these nudges and the words given to us to speak, the words will come out anyway. Anyone who has ever been called to ministry or who has ever done or said something prophetic knows that! The same power of the Holy Spirit that transforms lives in Christ is the power of the Spirit to propel us to action. In manner of speaking, the tongue of fire above our head becomes the fire in our belly to do mission.

Who is this Person, whom I do not know and can barely comprehend, who has changed my life and transformed my very self? Who is this Person who gave me gifts to live out my call to ministry, thereby making me who I am? Somehow the Spirit has always known me better than I have known my own self, and who has breathed over me every day, on my best days and my worst days. Like women everywhere, this Spirit cannot be stereotyped, tamed, or put in a box. The Holy Spirit Is Who the Holy Spirit Is, and all we can do is come along for the ride of discovering Her. Try and put the Spirit in a box, and She will burst it open and burn it down. The Spirit is wild and powerful, yet She accomplishes the slow, gradual work of transforming our lives. Gently cradles our hearts each day, the Spirit knows us so well that She "intercedes with sighs too deep for words" at the throne of God during the times when we have no strength left to pray (Rom. 8:26).

So many women I know hold together strength and fragility, power and vulnerability, fierceness and gentleness, Otherness and intimacy. Somehow the Holy Spirit holds all of those things together too. One can't take some of these attributes by themselves and say that the Holy Spirit is either always masculine or always feminine. That's because gender stereotypes don't accurately represent who we are, let alone accurately represent who God is. For centuries, Christians have worshiped the feminine divine in the Holy Spirit, in all of Her untamed, unpredictable, stereotype-defying glory. In Western culture, we tend to elide the Spirit into the other two (usually presumed masculine) Persons of the Trinity because our culture erases women's voices. But our Eastern Orthodox sisters and brothers remind us that to do so is a spiritual loss... likewise, it is a loss to discount women's voices and contributions in the Church.

Reverencing the Holy Spirit the same way we reverence God the Creator and Jesus Christ teaches women to value ourselves and teaches men to value women. And it is an ancient practice that we do well to observe: praying in and through and with the Spirit draws us closer to into the heart of God.

Coffee Hour vs. the Newsfeed?

2012-02-10T23:01:00.000-05:00

I'm working on a massive blog post for next week about the Holy Spirit, but in the meantime, I thought I'd post an article that caught my attention earlier this week.

Lots of folks say that the Church has a corner on the market of true community; that in a world that is increasingly going digital, our niche is with those who need an analog haven from the chaos of social networking and the deluge of emails. But an article in the Sojo blog, "Whenever Two or More Are Gathered... Online," makes an excellent case for fellowship that isn't face-to-face (more like server-to-server).

What do you think? Can online fellowship measure up to coffee hour at church, or even replace it?

Thoughts on Marriage, Part 2

2012-01-27T22:16:00.001-05:00

It occurs to me, at this point, to mention that I'm no expert on marriage. In truth, my husband and I have only been together for for 8.5 years, and for 3.5 of them we have been married. I'm not writing these blog posts because I think I know everything about relationships. But I have known a lot of people and seen a lot of different relationships, some good, some bad, and some in between. And I recognize that having a good relationship is not about following a set of rules. It's about cultivating a set of qualities that makes you the kind of person who is a good partner. David Vanderveen (a Christian who has been married 18+ years) wrote,

"A person simply has to be aware of what empowers, enhances and enables their spouse to be come the best person they were designed to be and help them pursue that together."

I completely agree. In order to develop that awareness and to truly push our spouse to be the best person s/he can be, we ourselves need to be pushed and helped. A good relationship has qualities that allow both partners to pursue holiness together.

In this post, we will continue a discussion of what makes for a good relationship. Last week, we reflected on some of the attributes that make a marriage strong and healthy, including intimacy, mutuality, exclusivity, commitment, and loyalty. It's fairly obvious why these qualities promote a healthy marriage. This week, we will continue reflecting on Brother Anthony's attributes of a good marriage:

justice
courage
creativity

These attributes require us to use our imaginations, because they don't immediately come to mind when thinking about what makes a good relationship. But when these attributes are present in any relationship, not just a romantic one, the relationship takes on a completely different- and godly - dimension. Although Anthony was referring to God's love when he mentioned these qualities, his point was that truly good relationships mirror God's love. So how can human relationships embody the qualities of justice, courage, and creativity? It's easy to tell when an individual is just, creative, and courageous, but what does that look like in a relationship?

At first, I thought that courage was going to be the hardest one to describe, but it turned out to be the easiest. I've observed courageous relationships on Facebook as I watch my friends move thousands of miles away so their spouse can attend seminary or another academic program. You can see a courageous marriage when you meet someone who sticks by a cancer survivor or a spouse with a chronic or terminal illness. Courageous partners face a miscarriage or the death of a grown child together. They persevere through discrimination and economic hardship. When one partner takes a stand for what is right, the other supports him/her. All of these challenges force us to face ourselves and our circumstances. That can be scary, especially facing those parts of ourselves we don't like. But this is one of the ways marriage makes us better people: when we own up to who we really are, we can start to become who we want to be, and who God wants us to be.

Justice functions in very much the same way. When we talk things over with our partner, s/he helps us reflect on the day's events. If we aren't sure how to respond to a situation or which decision to make, our spouse can help us decide what is the right thing to do. Or if our response to a situation was a bad one, marriage is a graceful space in which we can own up to our mistakes and think about how to rectify them. In a good relationship, we learn to treat others more justly- those outside our homes, and those within. It can be harder to admit that we can improve the way we treat those closest to us, and this is a blind spot because we are so familiar with them. But by improving the way we treat our spouse and others in our household, again, we become more Christlike. This comes back to equality in marriage. Paul described this ideal in Gal. 3:28: "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." Differences should not become divisions, and differences don't dictate our roles in life. In a truly just marriage, both responsibility and authority are shared. Any good relationship- marriage or otherwise- is a laboratory in which we learn to be more just and fair-minded people. We thus become more just in our relations with our spouse and with everyone in our world.

Much like justice, creativity functions in our relationships to help us find alternatives to old habits that may be hurting us and to help us deal with difficult circumstances in which we unexpectedly find ourselves. When someone doesn't get a promotion, scholarship, or something else we mentally planned on, we have to recalculate. We need to make a different plan. It can be hard to do that, especially after having been rejected in some way. A good partner helps us to cope with that loss (yes, even losing a vision of the future is a loss), and to find a new way to move forward. Even in ordinary circumstances, if our spouse has a bad habit, we can help him/her find another, more healthy way of being, thinking, or doing. Perhaps I cannot break my bad mental habit alone, and he can't handle all the cooking alone, but when we work together we can both eat healthier and change stubborn mental patterns. Creativity in my relationship also helps me spiritually. I have a tendency to react immediately when I get angry. My spouse knows a few things about Zen Buddhism, so he suggests ways for me to calm down before I do or say something. Mindfulness is good for the soul, and I don't practice it nearly enough; he sometimes needs to be reminded to pray and meditate on the Scriptures. Being together reminds us to engage in spiritual practices we tend to neglect. We even show creativity in the mundane things, like getting a new pet, taking up a new hobby, teaching each other something new, or deciding to have children. As God is creative, constantly making new things and finding "workarounds" to all our mistakes, so the best human relationships help us to work around the obstacles in our lives and keep doing new things.

Cultivating the attributes of justice, courage, and creativity thus help us accomplish the end goal of marriage, which is becoming our best selves- the people God made us to be- and helping our partners to do the same. That includes striving for both spiritual growth and personal growth. Sanctification, that is, the process of becoming holy, involves both inward maturity and outward compassionate deeds. Good relationships help us to do both, and push us toward them, if necessary. Any relationship that does not embody the attributes we've discussed in these weeks is holding us back from our pursuit of holiness. Whether your relationship is with a spouse, a serious girl/boyfriend, or even a fraternity, cultivating any of these traits in your relationship is one way you can participate in becoming the person God wants you to be.

How have you experienced creativity in your relationship? Have you ever thought about justice and courage as part of a healthy relationship before?

Thoughts on Marriage, Part 1

2012-01-19T21:42:00.000-05:00

It's that other time of the year: the time when folks who got engaged over Christmas are starting to plan their weddings; for those whose weddings are this spring and summer, wedding planning is beginning to ramp up. Three of my Facebook friends who got married over New Year's are just beginning the lifelong journey that is marriage. And many of the rest of us are thinking about how to fulfill our resolutions to repair, improve, or find intimate relationships. I think the best way to evaluate and improve our relationships is to notice attributes of a healthy relationship and ask ourselves how we can better embody them.

A couple of bloggers I read have been thinking over this topic recently. My friend, Brother Anthony, has written the best definitely of marriage I have ever read. According to him, marriage is...

a relationship with another person characterized by mutuality, intimacy, exclusivity, commitment, and justice. By the grace of God, the love between these two persons may become, through the sacrament of marriage, a mirror of the love between Christ and the Church. That love is courageous and just, loyal and true, all-powerful, deeply creative, tenderly intimate, perfectly mutual, and indestructible. Every person should want their love to become this kind of love. To help committed couples attain this, the Church offers them the love of God in the sacrament of marriage.

Although Anthony is a Franciscan friar-in-training, he has obviously thought a lot about this topic as he has discerned his vocation to be a celibate life of brotherhood. I think his lists of adjectives are particularly helpful for those who are seeking a lifelong relationship, discerning whether the person they're with now is the one they want to marry, or are already married. It's hard to answer the question, "Is my marriage/ relationship healthy?" But it's easier to answer the question, "Is my marriage/ relationship characterized by...?"

intiamacy
mutuality
exclusivity
commitment
loyalty
justice
courage
creativity

Anthony points out that these traits mirror God and the nature of God's love for us. Sometimes, when I hear someone say that marriage should be a reflection of God's love, I feel intimidated. I immediately see all the flaws in my marriage (and by "flaws," I mean things I have recently done badly), and I think of how inadequately God's love is reflected in my marriage (my actions).

Thankfully, Adam Hamilton points out in one of his recent sermons that marriage isn't about us, meaning it's not about me personally or my husband personally. In marriage, we focus on the other person and think about how we are meeting their needs and making sure their "love tank is full." Rev. Hamilton says that one of the most important ways to do this is to show affection to our spouse. Recently, I've been reading a memoir of a Lutheran pastor on my new Kindle (eee! I love it!). It's called Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery and it's by Richard Lischer. Anyway, he says that even saying grace at meals is like a kiss good morning/ good night because they are "the ritual tendernesses that make ordinary life endurable" (p. 60). Clearly, affection/ intimacy is a big part of a good marriage. But what about the other stuff Anthony mentioned? We'll look at a couple more and save the rest for next week.

Mutuality is also very important, but it takes effort to achieve. It is my opinion that mutuality is impossible without real equality. I used to hang out on a fairly conservative Christian online forum about marriage and relationships. There was a lot of talk about complementariansm, or the idea that men and women are intrinsically different and intrinsically unequal. I wrote all of it off until I read a post written by a cowboy from Colorado (yes, he owns a ranch) who has been married 25 years. His description of how the complementarian idea of "spiritual headship" plays out in his relationship was really a description of how he had a very equal and mutual relationship with his wife, but still managed to call it headship. It really worked for them, mainly because they shared everything, even responsibility and- yes- authority. And they stayed together happily, despite the challenges of 10 kids and life on the ranch.

Exclusivity, commitment, and loyalty all kind of go together. Staying together takes all of these things. They all spring from one another and feed into each other. You can't be an exclusive if you aren't loyal and committed. If you undermine exclusivity by having an affair, you break your partner's trust and your commitment to them. After an affair or another breach of trust, it's very hard to stay together and to repair the relationship, because you doubt their loyalty to you and commitment to the relationship. Rev. Hamilton seems to think that if we meet one another's needs, there won't be a need to have an affair/ cheat on our partners. He says he'll talk about that next week- I'll be listening!

So those are the attributes of a healthy relationship that seem pretty predictable and easily come to mind. What of Anthony's more unexpected attributes: justice, courage, and creativity? How are these part of a healthy relationship? What does it mean for a relationship to be just, courageous, and creative? Well, that takes a little more imagination, so stay tuned next week for Part 2!

Thoughts? Reactions? Stories to share?

Judgment Free Zone

2012-01-12T22:27:00.000-05:00

It's January, and everybody is going to the gym on the weekends. Since December, I have seen the number of people at my gym on Saturday mornings easily double. My gym is Planet Fitness, and they have a couple of slogans prominently posted that always catch my eye:

This sign greets me every time I check in. Pic is mine.

Apparently they use the British spelling of judgment.

What a powerful message. Pic is also mine.

Every time I see these signs, I think, "I wish the Church could be a judgment-free zone!" Of course, a lot of people say that church really is that way, and certainly the church should be a place in which all people are welcomed and not judged. The UMC, in fact, has a slogan to that effect:

This JPEG courtesy of some of our friends over in West Ohio. :o)

The problem with our slogan isn't with the slogan. It's that we don't actually live up to it. We judge each other, we judge our pastors, we judge visitors... and we're not afraid to voice those judgments to those being judged. And it isn't just a "laity problem." One time in Ashland, a retired pastor's wife criticized a current UMC pastor for the service running 15 minutes long. The service included a baptism.

What would it take for the Church to become a "judgment free zone"? Is that too tall an order for the people of God? Are we going to resign ourselves and chalk it up to sin nature, or are we going to decide that this is one sin it's time to stop committing? The church has a credibility problem, and part of the issue is that folks see us as hypocritical and judgmental. The truth hurts, but it's important to hear the truth. When teens and young adults perceive us that way, we know we have a problem. While some may feel that hypocrisy is the fall-back excuse for leaving church, it's true that we say one thing and do another. We say we welcome everyone as they are, and then we judge who they are from the moment they step in the door.

I don't think that dropping judgmental habits is too tall an order, but it entails a lot of work and a complete change in the culture of a local church. Becoming a judgment free zone requires a lot of tolerance of difference between ourselves and others. This can be difficult when we want to view church as a second home and family. In churches where I am in New England, folks prize a family-like atmosphere in church, in which everybody knows everybody. When we're at home, with family, we can relax. We think we know what to expect. But when we welcome folks who are different from us, we don't know what to expect. We become nervous and uncomfortable. Somewhere deep inside, a part of us wishes that people who are different would just go away so we can be comfortable again (even if we're ashamed to admit it).

The thing is, being a Christian isn't about being comfortable. We're not called to be nice or called to keep up appearances. We're called to be God's people, sent in mission to the world (John 20:21). Early Christians distinguished themselves from the surrounding Roman culture by extending hospitality to widows, orphans (including baby girls abandoned by parents who wanted boys), slaves, and people of different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Dr. Christine Pohl calls us to revive the ancient art of hospitality as mission in her book Making Room. I think this is a great place to start, because almost every church has coffee hour. Even small tweaks to coffee hour routines can make any local church a more open, welcoming place. Maybe we can't be as radical as the Early Church right away, but it's a step in the right direction. And maybe one day, when we've really made the Church a judgment free zone, we can put up a sign like the one Planet Fitness has.

Have you ever felt unwelcome or judged in church? What would you change about that experience?

Have you ever caught yourself judging someone in church, at work, or on the street? How can you respond differently next time?

A New Year's Resolution: Don't Be a Jerk

2012-01-06T14:11:00.001-05:00

Last week, I shared with you a call to examine your life and think about how you are representing Jesus in your own life- are you doing things God's way or your way? I thought I would expand on that point this week by sharing an example from everyday life. This one comes from blogger Professor Richard Beck of Abilene Christian University who writes over at the Sojourners Blog. In his latest post, He observes how Christians' behavior in our daily life doesn't always line up with the Gospel:

One can fill a life full of spiritual activities without ever, actually, trying to become a more decent human being... Many churches are jerk factories. Take, for example, how Christians tip and behave in restaurants. If you have ever worked in the restaurant industry you know the reputation of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Millions of Christians go to lunch after church on Sundays and their behavior is abysmal. The single most damaging phenomenon to the witness of Christianity in America today is the collective behavior of the Sunday morning lunch crowd. Never has a more well-dressed, entitled, dismissive, haughty or cheap collection of Christians been seen on the face of the earth.

I exaggerate of course. But I hope you see my point. Rather than pouring our efforts into two hours of worship, bible study and Christian fellowship on Sunday why don't we just take a moment and a few extra bucks to act like a decent human being when we go to lunch afterwards? Just think about it. What if the entire restaurant industry actually began to look forward to working Sunday lunch? If they said amongst themselves, "I love the church crowd. They are kind, patient and very generous. It's my favorite part of the week waiting on Christians." How might such a change affect the way the world sees us? Think about it. Just being a decent human being for one hour each Sunday and the world sees us in a whole new way.

But it's not going to happen. Because behavior at lunch isn't considered to be "working on your relationship with God." Behavior at lunch isn't spiritual. Going to church, well, that is working on your relationship with God. But, as we all know, any jerk can sit in a pew. But you can't be a jerk if you take the time to treat your waitress as if she were your friend, daughter or mother.

Ouch. That hurts to read. But as a former waitress, I resonate with Beck's words in a very real way. In the summer of 2008, I worked as a waitress at Hoggy's , a BBQ restaurant in Dublin, OH. (By the way, I highly recommend their BBQ and all their sides. I loved Hoggy's food and still do. If you're in the Columbus area, it's worth a try!) And I actually worked the Sunday lunch crowd on a regular basis. I would listen to the podcast of Marsh Chapel while I did chores until church was out, and then the customers started coming. The Sunday lunch crowd is indeed stingy. Getting stiffed by so many people in one shift really hurt my pocketbook. By the time I reached the end of the summer, I had $25 to my name.

Beck makes an excellent point. Every time we are mean, sarcastic, selfish, or stingy in public, we ruin our own Christian witness. This includes cutting people off on the road (especially if you have one of those Jesus fish on your bumper!), cutting in line at the grocery store or coffee shop, and being rude to a customer service representative on the phone.

Photo credit: http://praisejc.wordpress.com/2011/02/

When we profess a "love thy neighbor" faith but behave just like everybody else, we show others that we don't take our faith- or the Bible- seriously. Christ calls us to be mindful of our words and actions so that we don't just practice our faith on Sunday morning, we practice it through the rest of the week.

Oh, and a word about tipping: many companies in the service profession don't pay their workers minimum wage. Restaurants, hair salons, taxi companies, and spas are legally allowed to pay less, because they expect that the customers will tip enough to cover the rest. When we as consumers don't hold up our end of the bargain, that becomes a justice issue. It's not fair for our sisters and brothers in service professions to be paid less just because of the industry in which we work. My hairdresser, Claudia, is a genius. She works at Supercuts, where the haircuts are $16 and $18. Obviously, her tips aren't going to be big: 15% of $16 is only $2.40. She mentioned to me that she lives in government subsidized housing in Boston's urban core. Of course she has to live in subsidized housing- she doesn't make much! Claudia told me on Monday that the customer before me had required a lot of time and effort, and he left without giving her any tip at all. How terrible! As a former waitress, I know how that feels, so I always make sure to tip Claudia 18%. She always does an amazing job on my hair, but more importantly, she is God's child who deserves a living wage.

If we are concerned with what concerns Jesus, we will be concerned about low-wage workers. We will be concerned about whether our actions are communicating God's love to everyone- even those in the service professions. Our prayer lives and our behavior outside of church should align. As you have been out and about recently, have you noticed the way you treat others? Are you as aware of how you behave as you are of your prayer life? Do you think your witness stands up to the "jerk test"?

Let Jesus Occupy Your Heart

2011-12-30T18:05:00.004-05:00

This Christmastide, now that Christ is here, I've transitioned from thinking about how to make room for the Christ child in my heart to thinking about what it is to have Jesus in my heart. My first thought was that if Jesus is in my heart, that is, occupying a space (the same space I created during Advent when I made room for him), does that not mean that Jesus is occupying my heart? It's a cute phrase, and it can be used in the sense that internet memes re-use the same material in creative ways for humor. But what if I was serious about using the word "occupy?" What if I wanted to use it in the same sense that the Occupy Together movement uses it? What would that really mean?

Well, when the Occupy Together movement began using the word "occupy," they meant "march aggressively into another's territory by military force for the purposes of occupation." In reality, what those in the camps were doing was more like "be present in; be inside of," "to inhabit," and "to engage... wholly" (definitions found here). By engaging the culture and one another, and by covenanting to live together and be present with one another, the participants of the movement took ordinary actions and made them political.

Likewise, allowing Christ to occupy my heart is also a political action. Now, when I use the word "political," I don't mean modern American partisanship. I'm using it in the classical sense of the word. Bryan P. Stone explains it well in his book, Evangelism After Christendom:

“To speak of the church as a polis or to talk about the politics of evangelism may sound strange at first. Most of us are familiar with the word politics in the context of the public life of a nation, where it refers to options such as Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative. As with that usage, politics here refers to the processes, rules, and skills that help us as a people to understand, order and form our involvements and relations. It likewise has everything to do with power, conflict, change, and authority. Politics originally referred to the shape and organization of the polis and thus to the particular grammar of a people’s common story and life together. As [John Howard] Yoder says, “Anything is political which deals with how people live together in organized ways: how decisions are made and how they are implemented; how work is organized and how its products shared; who controls space, land, freedom of movement; how people are ranked; how offenses are handled”... The church then is not called merely to be political but to be a new and unprecedented politics; not merely in public but as a new and alternative public; not merely in society but as a new and distinct society, a new and extraordinary social existence where enemies are loved, sins are forgiven, the poor are valued, and violence is rejected." (pp. 178-179, emphasis mine)

Stone is suggesting that the politic of the Christian community is an alternative politic to the one employed in our modern American society. Rather than retributive justice, we value restorative justice. Rather than hate and retaliate against our enemies, we love and forgive them. In the Christian politic, the poor are cared for, not forgotten, and swords are beaten into plowshares. When we take the Christian politic seriously and strive to live it, we are bringing about the Kingdom of God on Earth.

What does that have to do with Jesus coming into our hearts? Well, A. P Jones wrote that "to occupy is to be concerned about, to pursue with vigor" something that is important to us, and to do so is our Christian duty. If Jesus is in our heart, then should we not be concerned about the things that concern Jesus himself? Should we not pursue the things that he pursued? If my heart is to be a fitting home for the Christ child, I must pursue the Kingdom of God; I must be concerned with the poor, the downtrodden, the grieving, and with becoming a peacemaker (c.f. Matthew 5, 25; Luke 6). When I concern myself with the kinds of people who concerned Jesus, and pursue the Kingdom of God as he did, I become the kind of person Jesus wants me to be.

Allowing Jesus to occupy my heart means I have to give up my agenda. I have to stop living for my own success, comfort, and convenience. It means I will go out of my way to love those who have been forgotten, ask God's forgiveness for my sins and forgive the sins of others, and become a peacemaker in these times of strife. These are all political actions because they are shaping my Christian community and they are shaping the way I live in that community. Ultimately, these actions shape the entire world around me, as Christ's transforming power radiates out from the Christian community into the world. By letting Jesus into my heart, I am participating in a new politic- a new way of doing things- the Christian way of doing things. I'm making a statement to the world: "I'm doing things God's way!"

As the New Year fast approaches, it's time to evaluate whether we have been doing things my way or God's way. What can we do to let God's Spirit transform us into the kinds of people Jesus wants me to be? How can we let Jesus Occupy our hearts this Christmastide, now, and forever?

Peace on Earth

2011-12-23T10:36:00.004-05:00

This Advent, I have spent a lot more time and energy being joyful than being peaceful. Each weekend, I have had parties with friends, church events, and/or caroling with my beloved fellow choristers. I learned of a dear friend's pregnancy, shared chocolate with co-workers, and celebrated the presence of family in my life. But I must confess that all of this activity has left me little time for contemplating peace on earth.

My husband gave me a Christmas gift early- a DVD of Kung Fu Panda 2- and we watched it last night with his parents. In the movie, Po is troubled by his family origin while his master, Shifu, tries to teach him to find inner peace.

Master Shifu demonstrates inner peace.
Photo credit: www.kungfupanda.wikia.com

Even though an evil peacock is trying to conquer China and chaos is all around him, Po manages to find peace anyway, with the help of his friends and mentors. Unfortunately, I am usually a lot more like Po than Shifu when it comes to peace.

I realized last night that I have not been a peaceful person recently. While I have the "peace that passes all understanding," a gift of the Holy Spirit to all Christians, I have not really been acting like it. I have been stressed, and at times, troubled. I wonder if my friends' experience of my Christmas cheer has been tainted by this stress. I wonder how they might find Christ in Christmas better if I were a more peaceful person to be with. When they listen to my life, do they hear, "Peace on earth and mercy mild, God and sinners reconciled"? Yet how do I let the peace of Christ shine through all of the other "stuff" in my heart?

For me, I don't think the answer is a special revelation from my past like Po had. It's a decision on my part to let go of the things that stress me out, don't let my problems bother me so much, and let these things roll of my shoulders rather than dwell on them. My own mental focus becomes what I project to others, and my witness will improve if my attitude improves.

Peace on earth is God's promise to us, and it is also something in which we participate and which we bring about in in our own lives. Part of living the Christian life is learning to focus on God's blessings, and to let our worries and negative thoughts float away like leaves on a river. This is a lot easier to write about than it is do, but with God's help, I know I can do it.

How have you experienced God's peace in your life this holiday season?

The End of Occupy Boston... Or Is It?

2011-12-15T00:26:00.002-05:00

I know this post is really late, but from the time I heard last Wednesday that the judge had lifted the restraining order against evicting the Occupy Boston encampment, I knew I needed to wait. Good things come to those who wait, because I can now report to you the things I witnessed at Occupy Boston last week. Since the eviction of Occupy Wall Street, Occupy Boston has been the longest-running Occupy Together protest in the nation.

Following the lifting of the restraining order, Mayor Menino notified the OB community last Thursday morning that their deadline to leave would be midnight on Friday morning. Expecting a police raid at midnight, OB called an emergency General Assembly at 7 PM on Thursday to discuss their plan for how to defend the camp and learn more about non-violent resistance (e.g., what to do when pepper-sprayed, how not to appear to be resisting arrest, ect.). Realizing that it may be some folks' last hot meal before being carted off to jail, I decided to bake an apple pie and bring it down to Dewey Square. Get it? Occu-pie? Har.

Anyway, it's my mother's secret recipe which I made from scratch, so by the time I brought it downtown, it was about 9:30 PM. The General Assembly was still going and people were still hungry. They devoured my pie in a matter of minutes, and I prayed that my small act of mercy of giving warm pie "to the least of these" was giving pie to Christ as well. The GA decided not to pass anything, which really disappointed me, and then they started the non-violence training. The Protest Chaplains/ clergy gathered at the time decided to have their own meeting to decide what to do. Expecting violence on the part of police, they decided to stand in between the police and the OB participants and ask the police, "In the name of God, will you put down your weapon? Please will you consider not arresting these people?" They knew the police might not listen and decided to bless the police as they passed by, and they decided they would say a benediction for the whole camp after the police began arrests. As this plan was being made, a woman from Channel 5 News came to take a statement from the Protest Chaplains. They said, "We are the Protest Chaplains and we have been shepherding and encouraging all along." Now I know how to give statements to the press! Even though the chaplains had a designated area for those who were not able to be arrested that night (myself included), I decided this plan was not a good one for avoiding arrest, due to standing in the way of police, and went home to prepare for work on Friday.

Somebody rigged up a projector and trained it on the building behind the GA meeting area.

Photo from OB Facebook page.

When I returned home and turned on the TV coverage, I found that the police were not making arrests. Instead of linking arms at the core of the encampment, people streamed into Atlantic Avenue and had a massive dance party! Folks on the ground estimated about 2,000 people were there that night. I could hear the makeshift band in the background playing- a tuba, trombone, and bass drum. The party dissipated at 2 AM and the camp remained on Friday.

On Saturday morning, I awoke to the news on Facebook: OB had been raided at 5 AM, a few hours earlier. According to eyewitness accounts, there was a spirit of joviality, laughing, and wisecracking in the camp that morning. The policemen who had patrolled the area regularly addressed the protesters by name when arresting them, and the protesters greeted the Chief of Police on a first name basis. The Boston Globe reported that this was the most peaceful police raid on any Occupy camp. But not all was well that morning. One of the Protest Chaplains reported on FB that those who were not arrested included the homeless (re-named "houseless" by OB participants) people who had been taken in by the the tent owners. She said that they were wandering around the empty square and crying, telling her, "What am I going to do now?" An account on the OB main FB page said they were even crying as they watched the police arrest those who linked arms and sat in the center of the camp. I tried to imagine what it must be like to be taken in by new friends, and accepted despite the problems developed while living on the street, only to have my new home and new friends suddenly taken away. Devastating. Their loss and despair must be profound.

As I reflect on this movement that has given hope and voice to so many, I rejoice at the peaceful dissolution of the camp but grieve for my "houseless" neighbors who are now tentless also. It's back to the shelters for them, and the shelters can be rough places to be. Last week in church, we read that "every valley shall be exalted, and the rough places made plain." Who will make these rough places plain for the houseless among us? Especially now that Occupy Boston the encampment is gone?

But OB continues in a less permanent physical form. Certainly it still exists online, and the working groups (such as the Faith and Spirituality Group, which includes the Protest Chaplains) are still working. General Assemblies take place on the Boston Common now, or in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, an Episcopal cathedral across from the Common. Occupy Boston has not ceased to exist, and its voice for economic justice will continue to be heard locally and around the world.

And what does this have to do with God? Well, the Bible tells us clearly that when people are oppressed and treated with injustice, this angers God. Isaiah 10:1-4 says:

Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes, to turn aside the needy from justice and to rob the poor of my people of their right, that widows may be your spoil, and that you may make the orphans your prey! What will you do on the day of punishment, in the calamity that will come...? To who will you flee for help...? For all this [God's] anger has not turned away.

Amos 8:4, 9-10 says,

Hear this you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land... I will make the sun go down at noon, and darken the earth in broad daylight. I will turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentation.

Micah 2:1-3 is very relevant to those bankers who profit from selling mortgages on houses that have now been foreclosed:

Alas for those who devise wickedness and evil deeds on their beds! When the morning dawns, they perform it, because it is in their power. They covet fields, and seize them; houses, and take them away; they oppress householder and house, people and their inheritance. Therefor thus says the Lord: Now, I am devising against [you] an evil from which you cannot remove your necks; and you shall not walk haughtily, for it will be an evil time.

Clearly, God is concerned for the poor, those who have lost their homes, and those ensnared in the usury of mortgage and credit card debt. To watch the rich people of our country do this to the rest of us makes God angry. The Occupy Boston participants, while they did not all agree on political philosophy and social issues, stood on Atlantic Avenue and decried foreclosures, usury, greed, inequality, and oppression. Every day, they did something to tell the world, "Hey, this isn't right! We need to make things right!"

Even if protesters are not all Christians, the Occupy Together movement is doing something very Christian: it is calling our nation to repentance for the sins named in Amos, Isaiah, and Micah.. As Christians, we ought to cheer them on, and— dare I say it?— join them in protest. While the Occupy Boston encampment is gone, OB is continuing to help bring about God's Kingdom of peace and justice in the world today. And we can too.

I hope and pray that one day, through our efforts and the efforts of our children, all people will have homes, fairness can be restored in our lending practices, and no one will have to use food stamps or go hungry. God, give us the strength and wisdom to make it so. Amen and amen.

I'm Too Busy for Advent!

2011-12-09T13:27:00.001-05:00

Hey folks, this is a little bit late, but there is a lot going on right now with Occupy Boston. They are facing eviction and I don't have enough time to write the full account of what I am seeing when I go and what I am reading in the Boston Globe, the OB blog, and other sites. In the meantime, I think I'll post a prayer that my pastor found this week. Up until the OB excitement, this is exactly how I have been feeling. Over at Unfolding Light, Pastor Steve wrote a prayer for what he calls the Advent Blahs:

Dear God,
I just don't feel like Advent today. I don't have time to sit in the velvet darkness and contemplate some wonderful silence. I don't feel Jesus coming. I'm not in touch with any promise or vision. I have absolutely no idea what Isaiah means by “preparing a way,” and even less idea about that crazy John the Baptist jumping around in the desert with grass in his hair. I don't know what it means to “make of my heart an open manger.” I'm just not there. I'm busy, tired and distracted. I haven't set up my stupid little Advent wreath; the candles lie in their stupid little box in the closet, under a lot of stuff. You're starting to bug me. All the spiritual hype about repentance and transformation sounds to me just like the crap from Macy's about how I need to buy their stuff. I've done Christmas before. I know what to expect. I bet I'm going to be just fine in January like I am now. So I'm just going to go right on with my ordinary little life here, OK? Whatever is in my soul, I'm not handing it over. It's nothing special, anyway, nothing devout and holy. It's clenched inside, plain and undeserving, and fine with that. I'm fine. I just want nice presents and a good dinner with the kids. That's all. So if you're going to break in on my world, it's up to you. If you're going to do some wacky Gabriel thing with me, knock yourself out. Go ahead and make flesh turn into heaven, and a plain human life divine. If you're going to come into my life, don't wait for me. Just do what you do, you know, behind our backs and unasked for and all that. Go right ahead. Just do your thing. OK? Please? Amen.

Do you ever feel this way about Advent? That you are just too busy to stop and prepare the way for the Christ child? And you have no time for any spiritual, even reading Barb's quick devotionals on the CUMC Facebook page? I feel that way many times this Advent- especially when I scroll past Barb's posts in my FB notifications. What does it mean to prepare a way for Jesus in my heart when I am on the bus going somewhere, or doing laundry?

For me, what helps with the Advent Blahs is singing Christmas carols (or if I'm on the bus, listening to them on my iPhone YouTube app). Perhaps I have a million things to do after I have pre-treated this load of laundry or put away these groceries. Yet as I do these small, mundane tasks, the act of singing about Christ's birth helps keep me in the Advent frame of mine. OK, so perhaps singing carols is liturgically incorrect, since technically the Christ child hasn't arrived yet. But it works for me, and that's what's important.

What might you do to help you prepare the way for Jesus in your heart, even in the midst of this hectic season?

Photo credit: Martin Stockley

Advent is Waiting... For What?

2011-12-01T22:53:00.001-05:00

Sunday marked the beginning of Advent, and I must admit that a was a little crabby about it. I didn't take Pastor Lisa's message very well. Stop and listen? Limit my stress? But I am too busy for that! Ah, yes. My attitude is precisely why I need a little Advent- right this very minute.

In case you haven't heard much about Advent yet, this blogger posted an awesome picture of a liturgical calendar and explains the part Advent plays in the liturgical year. (For more on the liturgical year, go here.) Advent is the beginning of the liturgical year and it is a season of anticipation. We are waiting for Christ to make a quiet, unassuming entrance into our lives.

For those of us who have been Christians for a long time, this can feel a bit strange. "But Jesus came into my life ____ years ago!" we object. And during this season of crazy schedules, holiday parties, and shopping for gifts, it can be hard to remember to be stop and be quiet. We become aware Christ's presence in our lives in the quiet moments and the small, unexpected changes in our routine that make us think twice. Just as Mary noticed the small, unexpected changes of pregnancy in the quiet moments of life, we are witness Jesus' birth into our world and our lives all over again.

In reality, Jesus is coming into our lives every day. The Holy Spirit is constantly beckoning to stop and notice our attitude and our surroundings. Every time we catch ourselves being grumpy toward a family member or treating a favor as a hassle, we are being transformed into the likeness of Christ. Our old selves are constantly rediscovering Jesus and his work in our lives. That is precisely the point of Advent. In what ways have you noticed God's work in your life this year? How are you anticipating Jesus' coming in these four weeks of Advent?

Giving Thanks

2011-11-23T13:19:00.004-05:00

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and I don't know about you, but I am looking forward to lots of food, the Macy's parade, and two dinners with family and friends. This week and last week, I've been reflecting often on what it looks like to be thankful in the world in which I live.

Last week's post about the Occupy movement got me thinking about so many in America, and in my own community, who struggle to pay for groceries with food stamps, have been unemployed for a long time, or whose homes were foreclosed. The Occupy protesters are standing up for these people. I wonder what their Thanksgivings will be like. Will they go to soup kitchens? Will they be getting help to have a dinner? Do they have a kitchen in which to cook? Harvard-Epworth UMC collects "turkey baskets" for the Salvation Army each year. We gather all the ingredients for a Thanksgiving dinner, place them in a baking pan for the turkey, and deliver them to the Salvation Army. They say demand is up again this year. Last year, our Young Adult group made three turkey baskets. I hope folks in other places can get turkey baskets or something similar.

this luscious turkey pic is from www.whatscookingamerica.com

Even though our budget is tight, we were still able to afford Thanksgiving on our own. I know we should be thankful for that, but penny-pinching is never fun. It can be hard to be thankful when one worries about money. I have realized that thankfulness is a spiritual discipline. Even though I don't feel thankful sometimes, I am called to be thankful. One way we can be thankful is to be in solidarity with those in need. We can do this by praying for them, helping them on Thanksgiving if we can, and showing that we care when we volunteer among them.

These moments of remembrance echo the remembrance of Jesus in which we engage during the Eucharist. We are all called to live that remembrance of Jesus every day-"what you do unto the least of these, you do unto me." When we love others as Jesus did, we become more like Jesus each day.

How do you become a more thankful person in your faith journey?

A Sanctuary

2011-11-17T21:25:00.002-05:00

This week Jim Wallis over at Sojourners reflected in his blog on the eviction of Occupy Wall Street from Zuccotti Park. He suggests that if/ when there comes a time when the protesters have nowhere to go, local churches should step in. He suggests that this would promote intergenerational understanding and give protesters a rest from protesters' conflict with municipal authorities- and it would be an expression of the mission of the Church:

"Jesus is a popular guy among the thousands of Occupy sites around the world, and faith is a lively topic — even if religion is suspect as an institution of an unjust society. So as the young protesters are made to feel unwelcome by the municipal authorities in cities around the country, let us make them feel very genuinely welcomed in our faith communities. This could be a great opportunity for hospitality, for ministry, for solidarity, for faith conversation and, yes, for prophetic witness as churches and people of faith speak up for the economic justice that is at the heart of biblical faith and is an integral part of the gospel."

I think this is a bit of a tall order, but the mission of Jesus Christ is definitely a tall order! Going to Occupy Boston has really stretched me and required me to be more accepting of people who are very different than me. Most of them think differently than I do. But when I take the time to listen, I can usually find something in common with them. Local churches often show trepidation at taking in folks who are very different, even if it is just temporary, like the mobile homeless shelter in Ashland. While it can be uncomfortable at first, it is rewarding. Historically, the Church has been a place of rest and shelter, and that is a tradition we can proudly uphold, even if we are challenged. In fact, I have a sneaking suspicion that Jesus intended for us to be challenged when he called us to love our neighbors.

In a sense, we all need a rest from the injustices in our society. There are even those among us who are displaced, perhaps not in the sense of being refugees, but displaced in other ways by home foreclosure, job loss/ underemployment, or overwhelming debt. We need to care for one another and remember the heart of our faith, even if we live in areas far from any Occupies. I wonder what we can do to make our faith community a place of rest and shelter for all — for us and for those who are not (yet) part of our community.

Whistle Down the Wind

2011-11-09T23:37:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, I was back in Ashland for my annual meeting with
the Mid-Ohio District Committee on Ordained Ministry. Serendipitously,
AU was staging a revival of Whistle Down the Wind at the same time.
Whistle was my very first musical; I was part of the '97 cast. There was
a reunion for both casts on Saturday, which I very much enjoyed. It was
wonderful to hear the music again, most of which I still remember! :o)
Whistle is about children who are discovering faith in Jesus, and taking part in it was part of my formation as a person of faith.

Hearing the songs all over again 15 years later really gave me a new perspective on the show. For example, in "Funny, It Doesn't Feel Strange" and "Spider," Cathy and Nan sing about how they "just know" that the man in their barn is Jesus. Cathy compares having faith to knowing that the sky is blue without knowing why, or that fish swim without knowing how. I was a little surprised at this characterization of having faith. My perspective is very different. Living in Cambridge, MA surrounded by MIT and Harvard-types, I have learned firsthand how scientific inquiry can help us to better understand the world God made, and thus, understand more about who God is. Whistle uses the cynical, overprotective attitudes of the adult characters to show how a lack of open-mindedness can prevent us from seeing Jesus for who he is, but still, I think Whistle leans a bit too heavily on that theme. One must be open minded to learn, however, faith is neither blindly trusting without really thinking nor disbelieving unless the evidence fits into our narrow definition of "fact." In fact, blindly trusting in either "religion" or "fact" without critically thinking isn't really faith at all in my opinion. It's just a belief. I think there is a difference between holding a belief and truly having faith.

The other thing that really struck me about Whistle was how it dealt with theodicy, that is, the existence of evil in a world made by a loving God. In one scene, the girls' brother, Charles, leaves his kitten, Spider, with The Man/ Jesus and Spider winds up dead. The Man/ Jesus didn't realize he was supposed to take care of Spider. Charles asks him why he let the kitten die. In a sense, in this scene, humanity is asking God why God allows our loved ones to suffer and die. Is God being negligent, as if God doesn't notice that our loved ones are in distress? Or does God not care? Charles genuinely asks that question. Unfortunately, Cathy's answer about the color of the sky and the fish doesn't answer his question at all. It is really too bad that this question of the ages- a serious theological question! - is glossed over this way in Whistle. There are many ways that theologians have answered this doozy of a question throughout the ages. I wish Whistle could have engaged at least one of them rather than avoiding the hard questions.

One of the main things I learned about faith in college was that faith is about engaging these difficult questions, even when it is painful to confront them. If we ignore them, give pithy answers, and don't fully engage them, those persistent people in our lives who need to think it through will be turned off by the Christian faith. Critical thinking and biblical reflection aren't just for professional theologians in ivory towers; they're tools for all of us to make meaning in our lives. We owe it to ourselves to "go there," even if it is sometimes painful, because when we do, the waters of our faith will be deep and wide.

Hope for the Church at Occupy Boston

2011-11-02T13:28:00.003-04:00

This past weekend, my best friend, Joy, came to see me! It was a wonderful visit. :o) We played Just Dance 2 on our Wii, talked, cooked, ate, and went to Occupy Boston. On Saturday, a Nor'easter came to visit as well, for which I was not too pleased. Joy brought her car, so we loaded several things we had collected to donate into the car and made our way downtown. She is not a Boston driver, so the mayhem of downtown and multiple construction sites on the way made the trip a bit hectic.But once we had arrived and made our donations, we went to visit the Religion and Spirituality tent and met a new friend.

Khepe-Ra is a community organizer and consultant who lives at OB four days per week. She was hosting in the tent when we arrived and struck up a conversation with us by asking us why we came. We explained that Jesus' command to love our neighbor and God's concern for those who are poor and suffering led us to participate. Khepe-Ra shared that she had done a lot of faith-based community organizing, and she felt frustrated with the Church. She was disappointed that church folk tend to only want to get involved when everyone in the movement believes the same things they do. She contrasted them with the folks she meets at OB, whom she says are genuinely trying to live out the kind of community they want America to be- even if they all hold different beliefs and come from different walks of life. Khepe-Ra said that OB is struggling with how to deal with the homeless members of the movement. They lived in Dewey Square first, so OB wants to include them and feed them, but they struggle with addictions, mental illness, and theft, which is hard on OB participants. We shared our experiences in the Church with her, and then we had a mini-Bible study and prayer time. By the time my alarm told me our meter had run out and it was time to go, Khepe-Ra declared that she had regained hope for the Church from our visit.

the altar at the Faith and Spirituality Tent - image from the OB Wiki

As we dashed through the freezing rain to the car, I thought about what Khepe-Ra had said. Why is it that church folk are reticent to become involved in work in the community when the effort is interdenominational or interfaith? What is it about our mindset that fosters the need to have everyone agree with us? Shoot, half the time, United Methodists don't even agree with one another! Perhaps what holds us back is the notion that working with people who are different from us is an obstacle, and we perceive those who believe differently than we do as people who are different from us.

In the end, though, we're not so different from people of other denominations and faith traditions. We have the same needs. We all love our families. We all care deeply about our religion, and we try hard to follow it and so be made more holy. Despite our differences, we share similar values. Perhaps we need to move away from making sure everyone believes the same way to finding a core value or values that we share. That might help us collaborate with people in other denominations, in other faiths, and even in other parts of the United Methodist connection. I know, it's easier said than done. But I think it is worth a try. If OB can find a way to live with chronically homeless, addicted persons, I think we can find a way to live with one another.

Joy and I returned to my apartment, slipped into warm, dry clothes, and heated up some spiced apple cider. As I curled up under a blanket on the couch, I thought about all those who were Occupying through the cold rain and snow. While I enjoyed my comfortable home, they gave up their homes so that they can live out the kind of community they want America to become. How can I show the same dedication to my fellow Americans, even if I can't sleep in a tent or feed the homeless? How can we as the Church support our communities, even as our communities are different from us?

What Does "Evangelical" Mean?

2011-10-26T22:10:00.001-04:00

Recently, the Sojourners blog has been doing a series on the topic "What is an Evangelical?" I was particularly struck by the response by Lynne Hybels. She talks about encountering a difficult time in her life, and how she responded by reading about Jesus over and over again. She connects the Jesus of the pietists- those who emphasize a personal relationship with God- and the Jesus of the activists- those who emphasize social holiness. She writes:

At that point in my life I desperately needed to be welcomed, valued, understood, seen and forgiven. I desperately needed to sit in that Presence of ultimate and unconditional love. I needed to know -- and I still need to know, every day -- that I am loved despite my failures, tha I am loved for the uniqueness of my true self, and that I am loved as I sit quietly doing absolutely nothing to earn, or buy, or chase that love... Whenever I lean fully into the reality of my loneliness, my insecurity, my fear, or my brokenness, I find Jesus there loving me. That has become a Mystery I cannot live without.

In Jesus I also found a radical call to compassionate action in the world. At Jesus' first public appearance he said, "I have come to set the captives free and to preach good news to the poor." Then, through his teaching and life of servanthood, he slowly and methodically turned the values of the powerful Roman Empire upside down. He threw the moneychangers out of the temple because they were exploiting the poor. He said that when we feed the hungry or clothe the naked it's like we're doing it to him. He said to love our enemies, to do good to those who hate us. Jesus changed the rules and ushered in an upside-down Kingdom.

I couldn't have said it better myself. God is a God of love. As Jesus loves us, we are to love the world. We are to evangelize, literally to "be good newsing" in the world. What does it mean to "be good newsing?" Lynne showed us that it means to be aware of Jesus' love for us and to bring that love to the world. We are to bring about Christ's upside-down Kingdom. Amen, amen, and amen.

Jesus and the Moneychangers in the Temple

2011-10-19T12:53:00.002-04:00

In case you haven't noticed, I love getting news from the General United Methodist Church. One of my favorite ways to spend my lunch hour is to read the GBCS emails, which I did yesterday. Jim Winkler, the GBCS General Secretary, wrote about the Occupy Together movement currently sweeping the nation. The title of his essay was "Occupying the Temple." He writes,

"The dream of upward mobility based on hard work appears to be slipping away for many. The system is gamed in favor of those with money and connections. When money buys political power and corruption is the norm, young people lose faith in democracy. A whole generation is losing faith. Occupy Wall Street is an example of the response. Those involved are creating a participatory democracy. It’s old fashioned people power. Like Jesus, they are occupying the temple of the moneychangers. If a nation's leaders won’t address an intractable problem, the people will."

What Winkler means by "occupying the temple of the moneychangers" is that the Occupy movement is going directly to today's temples- the financial districts of our cities. One thing I learned in seminary is that the temple (Jewish and pagan) were essentially banks. They were where people's money was kept safe, and a mini-market was inside, where people could buy things they needed, including animals for sacrifice. And the religious officials- pharisees and sadducees- were in charge. When Jesus went into the temple and overturned the tables of the moneychangers (Matt 21), that was a political action. When he said, " ‘It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer'; but you are making it a den of robbers," he was saying, "Something is very wrong here!" That was an audacious thing to do when he was being watched by the religious officials!

a sign I saw recently at Occupy Boston
photo is mine

That is what those who participate in Occupy movements around the country are doing. They are saying that something is very wrong. It's not fair that those at the top are hoarding all the resources while the rest of us suffer. It's not justice. And our God is a God of justice. If we are on the side of God, we are also on the side of those who are poor and suffering. When those who have power and authority are misusing that power, it's time to challenge the status quo. There is a time for everything, and even Jesus knew that there are appropriate times to challenge those in charge- when things aren't right. Jesus was being a rabble-rouser! And he did it because he cares about those in need.

Perhaps a little holy rabble rousing isn't beyond our purview as the people of God. Have you ever felt angry about something that wasn't right?

The UMC Then and Now

2011-10-12T21:57:00.000-04:00

Today I stumbled across the blog of Deborah Coble Wise, a UMC pastor in Iowa. She found an article written in 1969 about the Church of the future. In it, Rev. Ronald W. Tapp is interviewed about what the future of the institutional Church would be like. The writer reports,

Recently on a three month research assignment for analysis and planning, Dr. Tapp said in an interview that indications are that the organizational structures of churches "are not going to make it" to the end of the century." "The long-range prospects are good for essential Judeo-Christianity, but not for the institutions." he said.

Wow, that really describes what is going on in the UMC today. This article speaks to this particular moment in UMC history, because the Call to Action Report has just been published. This document was written by United Methodists who are trying to cope with the changes our church has been facing, especially its declining membership, and it proposes radical changes- some of which were well-received and some of which were not. Some of what Rev. Trapp predicts especially rings true:

- A re-enactment of the fundamentalist-liberal fight of 60 years ago...It already has resulted in a marked polarization of the church at all levels...the split may become irreparable.

-With Protestants and Roman Catholics "no longer in real dispute" over major doctrines, they will move increasingly toward "merger at practical levels" - between fundamental Protestants and fundamental Catholics and between liberal Protestants and liberal Catholics.

- Most institutional members will be 45 years old, and up. "There will be a steady decrease in total membership...fewer youths will join the church." On the other hand, there will be "increasing interest in religion and Christianity" among college students and young adults but "they will continue to avoid the institutional church."

-The main theological shift will be away from doctrine of divine transcendence toward a "doctrine of panentheism," which holds that "God is in everything," in contrast from pantheism, which says "God is everything."

Whoa. All of those things actually happened, and they constitute our everyday reality right now. It's hard to believe sometimes that folks back then could never have conceived of these things, but on the other hand, a lot of UMC local churches today still behave as if it's 1969. They are denying the reality around them, or at least, refusing to participate in it.

Could there be a better way to deal with these new spiritual realities in our world than to refuse to participate? I think so. There must be a way to engage them while standing firm in the faith. And that, my friends, is the delicate balance of living a life of faith in our day and age. What do you do to keep your balance in your faith journey?

The Occupy Movement: A Call to Repentance

2011-10-05T21:20:00.003-04:00

This Saturday, I went to visit Occupy Boston with my friend, Brother Anthony, who was in town for the weekend. I have been following the formation of Occupy Boston since the first General Assembly a couple of weeks ago, but I had been following it online. I arrived just as the march of the day converged at the Federal Reserve building in downtown Boston's financial district. The patch of ground that OB is occupying is Dewey Square, which is in between that building and the Bank of America building. As soon as I arrived, I was introduced to the "people's mic," which is a procedure by which people can make speeches even if they don't have a permit to use a bullhorn. The speaker says a phrase, and then all the people around her/him repeat it loudly so that the whole crowd can hear. I also immediately spotted these young ladies holding a handmade sign:

photo is mine

I realized then that it was Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and a time of repentance and making amends for one's sins against others. I thought that their sign really demonstrated... well, why they're demonstrating. They are upset that Wall Street bankers are getting away with theft against the American people, and they haven't been held accountable for their actions- actions that have impoverished millions of Americans and forced them to leave their homes.

I only took a quick tour of the camp, but right away I got the sense that folks were there for the long haul. They were about the business of building a movement. I will definitely have to return frequently. While I don't agree with, say, the anarchists or the socialists, I do agree with the main message of the movement- fairness and accountability. Equality. Democracy. No one knows where this movement is going, but I am excited to find out!

I hope you'll stick around for what I hope will become regular installments about the movement. I think we can all agree that we are all accountable to God for our actions. And that a nation that purports to believe in equality and ethics should hold wrongdoers accountable too. Our justice should become more and more like God's justice. It's time to start thinking about where we went wrong and what we can do to make things right. In a sense, it's time for a Yom Kippur for the whole nation.

Anger: Righteous or Not?

2011-09-28T20:30:00.000-04:00

One of my dear friends, Brother Anthony, is a postulant in a Capuchin Franciscan friary in NYC. Being a postulant means that he is in the process of becoming a friar (sort of like a monk), similar to my process of ordination. Part of his postulency requirement is that he do service with those in his neighborhood who are less fortunate, and Anthony chose to work in a soup kitchen for his homeless neighbors called Neighbors Together. Last week, he blogged about having to turn people away who wanted second helpings, because more people were expected to come in later. He wrote,

Yesterday I was angry with myself for being angry on the serving line at the men who were angry at me because I could not give them more food. I told one of the men that "we're all hungry," meaning that everybody who comes to Neighbors Together is hungry and needs a meal. This man said to me that not everybody is hungry, meaning that not everybody has to come to Neighbors Together.

Anthony also mentioned that he asked his neighbors to write letters on paper plates to their Representative in the House of Representatives. He intends to mail them to the Rep. so that he knows how many people the soup kitchen serves. After reading the letters, he says he feels angry and frustrated at the inequality that causes some to be so poor and while others flourish.

I have to admit, sometimes I get angry about the inequities that cause my own neighbors to live on the street in Central Square, Cambridge. Last Saturday, I distributed sandwiches with a new friend from church, Sophie. At first, we wondered why we didn't see anyone. Then right before it was time to go, folks came streaming into the square. The Korean Presbyterian church down the street had been serving meals on Saturday nights, but the head chef's laptop had been stolen and they blamed the homeless guests. They closed the soup kitchen until a new security system with video cameras could be installed. Thankfully, we had plenty of food- folks took every last morsel we carried. That was their dinner. They had counted on someone else to give them a warm meal. That someone had the prerogative to cancel that meal with no notice and for any reason at all. Our neighbor's stomachs do not have the prerogative to just stop being hungry.

As always, I'm glad I participate in H-EUMC's sandwich ministry, and I was blessed by our interactions this week. But sometimes, like Anthony, I get angry. Sometimes anger can be righteous, like Jesus when he overturned the moneychangers' tables in the temple, and sometimes it can be unproductive, resulting in "hardening our hearts," as Anthony put it. It can be hard to tell the difference. So it's important to remember to use our anger as motivation to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. When we do that, our anger is righteous and is not unproductive or futile.

Have you ever felt angry about something that just wasn't right and you couldn't do anything about it? How did you respond? How do you think Jesus would want us to respond to these things?

An Interruption... Or an Invitation?

2011-09-21T13:29:00.000-04:00

Vinita Hampton Wright over at the Sojourners blog caught my attention with her article "Life: Interrupted." It's short but profound. She writes:

I've come to believe that one aspect of maturity is the ability to see life's interruptions not as interruptions but as necessary events and journeys. If we think of the unexpected as an interruption, then our attitude will be to get rid of it as fast as we can-so that we can get on with our "real" or "ordinary" life... But most interruptions are not so easily dispatched.

Interruptions are life. The unexpected is simply the life you have but don't yet know about. The wise woman accepts that reality. What does she do with the unexpected, the disruption, the unwelcome call or caller? She engages with it, with everything she has. She looks for the layer of grace and God-ness that is always there, somewhere and somehow. She pays attention and looks for the wisdom waiting to be tapped in the day that has suddenly changed direction.

I am really stuck by the idea that interruptions are life, since I have always treated them as a bother. Recently, my life was seriously interrupted when we had to leave our apartment due to dangerous construction going on in our bathroom. I felt that I was displaced and have "lost" a week of productivity. In reality, the only thing I lost was my routine. That week was just as much a part of my life as every other week. Wright's article reminds me to adjust my attitude toward unexpected changes or interruptions. Difficult as it may be to change my attitude, doing so will make me a more mature person. Time to get to work- being interrupted!

9/11 Remembrance

2011-09-14T12:46:00.002-04:00

I remember where I was when 9/11 happened. I was a junior in high school. I was in Mr. Burnett's second period history class taking a current events quiz. Mr. Fortune burst into the room and said, "Mr. Burnett, what are you doing in here?" He said, "Current events." Mr. Fortune replied, "Well you'd better turn on the TV because there's a current event going on right now!" When he turned it on, I was bewildered by the sight of the World Trade Center towers with smoke coming out of one. Eventually, the bell rang. By the time I arrived at third period A Capella Choir, a second plane had crashed into the second tower. Mr. Guiliano led us in singing "America the Beautiful" and then told us to sit, talk, and pray. Mercifully, my other teachers that morning actually taught class. The TV monitors in every room and all over the school, that were used as clocks, were all tunes to the news. When I got to lunch, the footage had changed. People were throwing themselves out of the Towers and into the street. I threw my nachos away untouched.

That evening, after praise band practice, I was looking at the Times-Gazette and talking to my mom while she made dinner. I asked her, "What's the use of doing something like that? I mean, bombing people? I don't see the point." My mom said, "I don't see the point either." I said, "I don't see a point to guns or bombing or anything that kills people. I guess I don't believe in killing people." Mom agreed. That day, in our kitchen, I became a pacifist.

photo credit: Denise Gould

9/11 was a life-changing experience for me, as it was for so many of us. Last Sunday, to commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11th, Harvard-Epworth invited a special guest to come. Pastor Scott talked about the pain that Bostonians felt that day. I had forgotten until that day that the flights into JFK that crashed into the Towers came from Boston Logan. People in this area lost their loved ones who had been on those flights. The guest that Pastor Scott, and, I learned, my good friend Lane had invited to church was Mr. Izhar Khazmi, a lay person from the largest mosque in Boston. I expected him to talk about something profound and spiritual, but he didn't. He just talked about what it was like for him and his family, who had come with him, on 9/11. He talked about how he works in Boston's financial district, and how the FBI had come to his office to interrogate him because he is Middle Eastern and Muslim. He said that was the only difficult thing he experienced at the time, and that his coworkers and friends were very supportive of him during that time. His son and wife talked about how grateful they are for the support of their neighbors, and how wonderful it is to be American. They said they were a little nervous about coming to a Christian church, but they were very glad they came and very glad to meet us. Mr. Khazmi's son is a BU student, like I was, and he was glad to meet me at coffee hour.

In a sense, it was a pretty extraordinary morning because it was a time of remembrance and interfaith learning and sharing. In another sense, it was pretty ordinary. We worshiped, sang, ate, asked questions, and met new friends. Just like any other Sunday. And then we all went back to our homes and took Sunday afternoon naps. I feel very fortunate that, 10 years after 9/11, we had such an "ordinary" Sunday. We have homes and places to nap. We have food and friends. 10 years later, we still have each other, we still have our safety, and we still have our country. It is still good to be American, as Mr. Khazmi reminded us. We have a lot for which to be thankful this week. It is time to remember, to love one another, and to forgive.

Where were you on September 11th, 2011? How have you remembered it this week?

The Be-Attitudes

2011-09-07T13:02:00.001-04:00

Next Sunday is the first Sunday of the regular school year for Harvard-Epworth UMC, and all the church's programs are gearing up for a new year. Unlike churches in the Midwest, New England churches tend to take a hiatus over the summer and many programs are temporarily suspended. It will be good to get back into the swing of things, see all my friends who have been away, and start fresh for the year.

This year, I am leading the Young Adult Bible Study during the Sunday School hour. I have never been a Bible Study leader before. I'm a little bit nervous, but more excited than nervous. Since I'm not sure what everyone would be interested in studying, we'll start with the Beatitudes, otherwise known as the Sermon on the Mount, found in Matthew chapter 5.

I think it will be a good starting place because they are immediately applicable to our everyday lives. I always think of the Beatitudes as Be-Attitudes. They show us the Christian way of being, thinking, and orienting ourselves to the world. They show us the upside-down Kingdom of God, in which those who are last- in life, in loss, in wealth- will be first in God's Kingdom. They challenge us to be peacemakers in a world full of war and conflict. The Beatitutes are an important part of the Gospels. In fact, my dad told me that in Jewish thought, the first thing mentioned is always the most important. And the Beatitudes are Jesus' first teaching in Matthew. It is pretty obvious that Jesus most wants us to know what God values and the kind of people God wants us to be.

Somebody on the web made a Wordle of the Beatitudes.
Wordles are not subject to copyright.

I hope that this year, I can live up to the Beatitudes. I hope that I can do more than just talk about peacemaking and thirsting for righteousness- I hope that I can do it. And I hope that my attitude will reflect the kind of person I am Be-ing, and I hope that I am being the kind of person Jesus talked about in the Beatitudes.

Do you have a hope for the upcoming school year? What is the hardest Beatitude to live up to and why?

"I'm not religious, I'm spiritual."

2011-09-02T12:47:00.001-04:00

This week, a UCC pastor made a splash in the blogosphere with her article, "Spiritual But Not Religious? Please Stop Boring Me." She discusses how she dreads telling her seatmates on airplanes that she's a pastor. She writes,

On airplanes, I dread the conversation with the person who finds out I am a minister and wants to use the flight time to explain to me that he is "spiritual but not religious." Such a person will always share this as if it is some kind of daring insight, unique to him, bold in its rebellion against the religious status quo. Next thing you know, he's telling me that he finds God in the sunsets...

Like people who go to church don't see God in the sunset! Like we are these monastic little hermits who never leave the church building. How lucky we are to have these geniuses inform us that God is in nature. As if we don’t hear that in the psalms, the creation stories and throughout our deep tradition.

Being privately spiritual but not religious just doesn't interest me. There is nothing challenging about having deep thoughts all by oneself. What is interesting is doing this work in community, where other people might call you on stuff, or heaven forbid, disagree with you. Where life with God gets rich and provocative is when you dig deeply into a tradition that you did not invent all for yourself.

In many ways, I have had the same attitude as Rev. Daniel. As Christians, we are part of a spirituality that happens in community. We don't just go off by ourselves and be spiritual alone. We come together and learn and challenge each other. I have always been annoyed with my family members who refuse to talk about their spiritual lives because they aren't challenged, and as a result, don't grow spiritually. People who don't grow can become boring because they're so predictable.

Well, my friend posted this blog entry on Facebook, and I ended up getting into a long conversation with one of her friends who called out Rev. Daniels. She is spiritual but not religious, and she found the attitude of the post to be condescending. She pointed out that people who are spiritual but not religious struggle too. Maybe I just haven't met anyone who isn't religious and who still grows spiritually- perhaps my experiences have been limited. While Rev. Daniel's blog post was something that didn't challenge me, my interaction with a friend of a friend on Facebook did. Perhaps I can be challenged and encouraged to grow, even by someone who is not religious. Perhaps I can learn from everyone in my life.

Have you ever learned something unexpected from someone who didn't initially take seriously? How has your attitude toward that person changed?

A Storm is Coming

2011-08-24T12:55:00.008-04:00

Everyone on the East Coast is talking about Hurricane Irene right now. It's supposed to be a category 5, which is very powerful. The last time a category 5 hurricane (Hurricane Bob) hit Massachusetts, it caused many millions of dollars in damage. My parents were going to come and visit for my birthday this weekend, but they are seriously thinking about canceling. A lot of people are very anxious and afraid. Even though I find it silly how afraid they are, I am still stocking up with lots of food, water and supplies.

image from http://www.extremeinstability.com

Awhile ago, I read a blog post about so-called "Doubting" Thomas. Nadia Boltz-Weber writes,

Is it just me, or does anyone else think it's kind of weird how we've named Thomas, "Doubting" Thomas? We don't give the other characters in the New Testament little nicknames ... like needy Nicodemus or Co-dependant Martha. But poor Thomas is stuck with Doubting Thomas.Yet, the fact of the matter is this: When Jesus encountered Thomas, Jesus didn't label him Doubting Thomas. He didn't judge him. He came to Thomas just as he was, doubts and all, and offered him peace.

Nadia concludes that God's love is stronger than our doubt. I think that, in the same way, God's love is stronger than our fear. 2 Timothy 1:7 says, "For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline." God takes away our fear and makes us loving people. Perhaps that would be helpful to know for the people who are knocking into each other at the grocery stores and hoarding supplies. They remind me of this song by Nickel Creek:

Have you ever reacted to a situation out of fear? How have you allowed God's perfect love to replace fear in your heart, and how did that change the way you think and act?

What is a spiritual practice?

2011-08-18T21:12:00.000-04:00

Hey folks, I am not feeling well this week, so I don't have many of my own thoughts to share. But I have read plenty of articles while planted on the couch, so I thought I'd share a blog that made me think. Christine over at GodSpace recently posted an article about spiritual practices that was made by a group that took a really innovative approach to spiritual practice. The video embedded in it says, "Spiritual practices are useful if they help us grow." That reminded me that spiritual practice does not always have to be sitting and reading the Bible. It can be a lot of things, as long as they help us mature spiritually.

I encourage you to check out this article. Have you ever tried a spiritual practice that seems unconventional? Did you feel it helped you grow spiritually? Have you ever wanted to try one of these things and not had the guts to do it?

Vacation in God's Creation

2011-08-10T14:10:00.001-04:00

Finally, I'm back! I hope you have not been too bored with God Talk for the last three weeks. :o) I was not able to post much because I was on vacation in Ashland and in Michigan. It's good to be back home, but re-entry into the workweek after vacation is always rough. I've been looking forward to the weekend since Monday.

I am so glad I had the chance to visit with so many of you in Ashland. Of course, the highlight for me was being able to share a message with you in church and enjoy coffee hour afterward. It was also good to go to visiting hours for my confirmation mentor, Jan Barnes. When I was attending First UMC Ashland as a teen, she taught me all about the liturgy we used each Sunday, the hymns we sang, and the symbols in the sanctuary and the stained glass windows. Jan encouraged me to be involved in church, to make new friends, and to be aware of God's love for me every day. I remember when she took my best friend and me swimming one afternoon in one of FUMC church members' pool. The three of us ate pizza and had all kinds of goofy fun in the pool! It was hard after she got Alzheimer's, because she didn't remember my face, but my dad says she always asked after me when she saw him. I'm glad I visited with her family and told them about Jan's impact on my life when I first became a United Methodist. They seemed glad that I am carrying on Jan's passion for beautiful Christian worship.

For the second half of my vacation, I traveled with my husband and his family to Petoskey, Michigan for a wedding. Stephen and I don't have a car, so we really enjoyed using his mom's car to road trip our way up to Petoskey. Northern Michigan is one of the most beautiful places in all of God's creation, I think. The forests are old and majestic, and Little Traverse Bay has several very nice beaches. The sunsets over Lake Michigan are some of the most beautiful in the world! They reminded me of the sunsets we saw when we were on our honeymoon in Hawaii. At the rehearsal dinner, I was given a Petoskey stone as a favor. Petoskey stones are bits of rock that date from the era when Michigan was covered in ocean. There were lots of coral living in the sea, and when the sea dried up and the coral died, the reefs were compressed and the outlines of their skeletons were preserved. You can see their little coral mouths in the stone!

It reminded me that God's world is very old and has gone through many transformations in order to become what I see today.

I was also soberly reminded of why I am a United Methodist when I realized that the rehearsal dinner would be held in a casino. By Michigan law, all casinos outside Detroit must be tribally owned and operated. The casino to which we drove was on a reservation. The dinner was decadent: luscious appetizers, filet mignon, chocolate mousse with raspberries, and wine from a huge rotating cabinet in the center of the room that went all the way up to the ceiling! My parents in law took me in a separate door just for the restaurant so that I wouldn't have to walk through the casino, out of respect for my moral position on gambling. That was very nice of them. Still, the delicious tastes I enjoyed were juxtaposed with the knowledge that they exist as a lure to get people to stay longer at the casino, so the house can take more of their money. I looked around at the other people eating in the restaurant and wondered how many of them could actually afford to throw their money away at a casino. Were they harboring hopes of getting rich quick? I was glad to put my hope in God that night, and know that God will take care of me, as the hymn says, "come what may."

All in all, it was a good vacation. I'm so glad I could take some time off to reconnect with family and friends, enjoy God's creation outdoors, have some fun, and take a few moments to sharpen my social consciousness.

How do you experience your spirituality when you are on vacation? Do you feel that God meets you wherever you happen to be vacationing?

Second Helping: Forgiveness

2011-08-05T22:43:00.000-04:00

I'm still on vacation, and this week I'm in Petoskey, MI attending a wedding in my husband's family. Until I get back home, I don't have much time to write, but in the meantime, here is a story I hope you'll like:

Doing the Right Thing by Saia Veikoso

If you were in church last week, you remember the story I told about a man who lost his eye when a shooter walked into his workplace. This is a story by a Togan United Methodist who also lost his eye, and he has another interesting perspective on forgiveness.

New GBGM website!

2011-07-27T22:44:00.012-04:00

I'm a bit busy today, as I will be traveling to the Midwest tomorrow- I will see many of you soon! :o)

So I thought I'd leave you with a great video from the General Board of Global Ministries from their new website devoted to ministry with the poor. The video plays automatically when you go to the homepage.

First-World Problems

2011-07-20T12:50:00.000-04:00

This week I'm crazy-busy getting a sermon ready to preach in two Sundays, so I'll make a proper blog post next week. For now, check out this video of the First World Problems rap. It's funny, but the reason why it's funny is that we all share in the little annoyances of life in a developed country. It really puts things in perspective.

Hat Tip: Jeremy over at Hacking Christianity

God and Harry Potter: the Invisibility Cloak

2011-07-14T12:31:00.000-04:00

OK, I'll admit it right off the bat: I am so excited about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 coming out tonight! I've got Potter on the brain. :o)

A Catholic writer over at The World is My Cloister caught my attention this week with a post about an icon of Abraham and Sarai welcoming an angel. My minor in undergrad was in art history, so I loved her analysis of the shapes in the icon and how she talked about the Genesis text. What really caught my attention, though was her statement about Harry Potter's Invisibility Cloak:

Do you remember the invisibility cloak in Harry Potter? I think I know where she got the idea from. The blue of this figure can only be seen in snatches beneath his ethereal robe. Perhaps I found the reason that God is so elusive? He has an invisibility cloak? God the Father rests his hands on a staff, a symbol of authority. Behind him is a house, a dwelling place for God.

I find it interesting that she thinks that God is elusive. My experience has been that God is always to be found- in fact, God wants to be found by us.

Actually, when I think about it, when Harry dons the Invisibility Cloak, he is almost always found. Sometimes he is found by a friend and sometimes by an enemy. In Deathly Hallows Pt. 2, he uses the cloak to sneak into Gringotts, the wizard bank, an is almost caught by the bank guards. The cloak is really a temporary fix to the scrapes in which Harry finds himself. Harry is still detectable when he has to sneeze, bumps into something, or is around an animal that can smell him.

In a sense, God is like that too. Perhaps you can't always see God, but you can still detect God's presence. You know God is with you when you are touched by a song. you hug a longtime friend, or you are going through a hard time and still find the strength to go on.

Perhaps it is not God who is elusive; perhaps it is our God-awareness that is elusive. It can be difficult to maintain the awareness of God in the everyday... it's a learned discipline. It would be nice to have a Marauder's Map to help us see where God is at all times. But if we did, we would always see God's footsteps moving along beside us. We don't need to build a house for God because God is here; God's home is with us. We just need to know how to be aware of that.

Have you ever had a hard time finding God in your everyday life? How did you find God again?

JOSHUA team 2011 deaprts!

2011-07-06T22:14:00.000-04:00

This week, members of our church departed for the JOSHUA mission in the Ohio Valley District of our conference. Steubenville is in the southeast part of Ohio, so it is located in the Appalachian foothills and it serves the people there. Appalachia is known for having the worst poverty rate in the US, and the people there are in deep need of education and public health assistance.

A significant amount of our annual JOSHUA team is made up of Youth Group members, but plenty of adults go too. I remember working for a few days at the JOSHUA mission when I was a youth. At that time, the kind of work I was doing was totally new to me, and I had a hard time getting my mind about why I was doing it. Unbeknownst to me, I was participating in social justice ministry.

At the time, I wondered, "If we really want to make a difference with these people, why aren't we sharing the Gospel with them?" This week I discovered an article that addresses this concern, "Social Justice vs. Evangelism." Maggie Canty-Shafer explains that they are really two sides of the same coin. They both contribute to what she says is "holistic ministry." She quotes Dr. Ron Sider, who wrote a book about this topic, Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger:

Sider says that without social works, evangelism appears to be all talk. But without sharing the hope and good news of the Gospel, ministry lacks the Holy Spirit’s transformative power. Neither side of social justice ministry is complete without the other. “People are both spiritual and material beings,” Sider says. “Addressing only half the problem only gives you half of the solution.”

Social justice ministry is the arm of evangelism through which we care for the physical and emotional needs of our neighbors. It isn't just a prelude to a carefully-prepared rendition of the Romans Road. In social justice ministry we become the hands, feet, and voice of Jesus Christ. We are Christ's presence with all who are suffering. Just as Jesus communicated God's saving grace in his gentle touch and kind words, we do the same here and now. While some Christians get the idea that God will judge them based on how many people were saved because of their witness, Matthew 25:31-40 tells us that God will also judge our lives based on how we treat those whom society casts aside:

‘When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, “Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?” And the king will answer them, “Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”

Jesus' ministry included proclaiming God's love with his mouth and showing it with his hands and feet. We are called to do the same. Our Christian walk with God is not only about our relationship with God; it's about how we relate to all God's children. Social justice ministry is one of many facets in our relationship with God.

JOSHUA is a great chance for our youth (and young at heart!) to learn about social justice ministry. Please join me in holding our team in prayer during their spiritual and physical journey.

Worship vs. Social Justice?

2011-06-22T12:16:00.091-04:00

When I arrived at seminary and my classmates started to ask me about my interests, they were surprised when I mentioned both social justice and liturgical arts. I wondered why, until I attended a church with a very strong social justice emphasis. This church wrote its own liturgy to meet its unique needs, but it eschewed more formal elements of standard UMC services like processionals/ recessionals, always saying the same words during communion (it liked improvisation), and even the usual expectation that everyone stay quiet during worship. It was a church that reached out to people who were homeless, mentally ill, had developmental disabilities, were deaf/blind, and who had been assaulted. The church was proud to welcome others just as they are, including any distractions that might come along with these guests.

I enjoyed my time at the church, but I missed some of the elements of liturgy that this church left out. Surely, I thought, United Methodists can conduct a church service that is beautiful and meaningful while still warmly welcoming those who are different. But some of my classmates seemed to think that embracing formal liturgy means a church has a cold atmosphere and strict behavioral guidelines.

A church doesn't have to have a formal liturgical style to decide that "outsiders" are too much trouble to tolerate, as Rachel Held Evans remarks in a recent blog post. It makes me so sad to read her story of a young man asked to leave worship because he has Cerebral Palsy. Rachel acknowledges how hard it is to welcome others, especially because they don't only disturb the decorum of services- they disturb our sense of self:

We have one place for the un-cool people (our ministries) and another place for the cool people (our church services). When we actually bump into one another, things can get awkward, so we try to avoid it... The truth is we’re all guilty of thinking we’re too cool for the least of these. Our elitism shows up when we forbid others from contributing art and music because we deem it unworthy of glorifying God, or when we scoot our family an extra foot or two down the pew when the guy with Aspergers sits down. Having helped start a church, I remember hoping that our hip guests wouldn’t be turned off by our less-than-hip guests. For a second I forgot that in church, of all places, those distinctions should disappear. Some of us wear our brokenness on the inside, others on the outside. But we’re all broken. We’re all un-cool. We’re all in need of a Savior.

I wonder if perhaps the sense of decorum projected in formal liturgical church services has come to signify more than "the work of the people" (leitourgia). Perhaps it represents the way we like to view ourselves: proper, put-together, acceptable to others. But as Rachel points out, even if we're put-together on the outside, we might be a complete mess on the inside. We need to remember that liturgy does not exist to make us look good, or to make us acceptable to God. God already accepts us just the way we are.

Liturgy, as "the work of the people," is our communal response to God. In a word, it's worship. We are not truly worshiping God when we try to put up an attractive front for others. We are freed for true worship when we stop trying to keep up appearances (including "decorum" in church) and come to God just as we are. When we are fully present in worship- in all that we are, good and bad- we are better able to experience God's love and show God's love to newcomers.

However we worship, we have the opportunity to shed our pretenses and be open to God and to others. Here in Boston, the Paulist Center is a Roman Catholic parish that does a great job of doing formal worship well, and also being a warm and welcoming community. Even though the words spoken and the symbols used are in "High" liturgical style, they are spoken with a warm tone of voice and signified with an open posture. I felt so welcome when I visited, even though as a Protestant I could not fully participate in the service. My experience at the Paulist Center helped me realize that social justice and hospitality do not need to be sacrificed for a beautiful worship service.

Both social justice work and well-executed liturgy are responses to God's love for us. God reaches out to us in so many ways in our everyday lives, and we can respond to God in many ways. The fluid, dignified movements of a pastor in worship and the simple movement of sharing a sandwich or a handshake are really the same movement on the inside: our hearts are moving toward God. And in turn, we are called to show God to others- through our actions in worship and through our service to the community.

Have you ever found it difficult to welcome someone in church who is somehow different? How do different worship styles help you feel close to God?

The Methodist Connexion

2011-06-15T13:07:00.002-04:00

Yes, you read that right: this post is about the Methodist connection, or as John Wesley used to say, the connexion. This is the time of year that seemingly normal Methodists around the world turn into nerds, take vacations from their jobs and travel to Annual Conference to legislate. Well, Annual Conference season isn't just about legislation. It's about Methodists gathering by regions (aka Conferences) to worship, greet old friends, share our favorite foods at table, and have Bible study.

In East Ohio (the Annual Conference in which Ashland is located), conference is held each year at LakeSide, OH, a chatauqua on Lake Erie. I have many fond memories of LakeSide from the time I was a young teen until I left for seminary in Boston. I remember long talks on our porch (and my friends' porches), passing bags of candy around when legislation got boring, daily trips to Cokesbury, putt-putt golf, and Bible study on the pier.

LakeSide's pier. Photo credit: Cheryl Duell, EOAC 2011

And of course, there's the food: Patio Ice, Sloopy's pizza, Moose Track ice cream, and freshly made donuts and orange juice at the Patio each morning. Even if it was cold cuts in a friend's kitchen, each meal at LakeSide was special because it was spent with friends. The highlight of every Annual Conference is the ordination service, when pastors and future pastors are ordained and commissioned for ministry. The bishop and their friends and mentors lay hands on them and pray. Then they are presented with new red stoles (for Pentecost!) and either a chalice and patten set (Elders) or a bowl and pitcher set (Deacons) to symbolize their new roles.

June is a poignant time for United Methodists everywhere, whether or not they can make it to conference. Whenever we gather for Annual Conference, we sing a classic Charles Wesley hymn, "And Are We Yet Alive?"

And are we yet alive,
And see each other’s face?
Glory and thanks to Jesus give
For His almighty grace!

Preserved by power divine
To full salvation here,
Again in Jesus’ praise we join
And in His sight appear.

What troubles have we seen,
What mighty conflicts past,
Fightings without, and fears within,
Since we assembled last!

Yet out of all the Lord
Hath brought us by His love;
And still He doth His help afford,
And hides our life above.

Then let us make our boast
Of His redeeming power,
Which saves us to the uttermost,
Till we can sin no more.

Let us take up the cross
Till we the crown obtain,
And gladly reckon all things loss
So we may Jesus gain.

These are just six short verses, but they tell our story as a people of God. Each year we look back on the hardships we have faced and remember those who have gone home to be with God (there's a hymn for that too, "For All the Saints"). Though we have come through "troubles, mighty conflicts, fightings, and fears," we are still "preserved by power Divine." We're still here, by the grace of God, and we meet again. God gives us strength to endure our trials and continues God's saving work in our lives "to the uttermost." We reaffirm our commitment to give our lives to Christ, forsaking the world, and strive toward Christian perfection.

Annual Conference reminds us that we are not alone in our walk with God. We are connected to a larger community of believers who support us in our faith in life, and in death, inspire us to deeper faith and holy living. They remind us of what is most important in life: our relationships with God and with others. In our special traditions as Methodists, both the sacred and mundane moments we share in community draw us closer to God and to one another.

Have you ever been to Annual Conference or another event in which you set apart some time to be in community with other Christians? What are the moments you remember and why are they important to you?

It's Pentecost!

2011-06-08T12:57:00.001-04:00

As you may or may not know, this Sunday will be a Church holiday unlike any other for the whole year: Pentecost. On this feast day, we tell the story of how the Christian Church began its mission in the world (see Acts 2). When I attended Christ UMC in years past, I remember Pentecost being explained to the children as "the birthday of the Church." Well, it's true that this day is the day we celebrate how the Church began, but it is not the whole point of celebrating Pentecost.

Pentecost is the day we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit into our lives with the transforming power of God's salvation. The Spirit dwells within us all the time and empowers us to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ to the whole world. This coming of the Spirit is the big news of the day of Pentecost!

This is my absolute favorite holiday of the year because I used to be a Charismatic Christian. Yes, that means I was one of those weird people who would speak in tongues in worship: I was the definition of a Jesus Freak. Even though I no longer speak in tongues, the times that I did it as a child made a strong impact on my spirituality. I experienced God in a physical way that most other Christians have never had. I believe in the Holy Spirit and her power because of the time I spent in prayer using a personal prayer language given by the Spirit. I learned in a very tangible way that the indwelling of the Spirit in our hearts is definitely something to celebrate.

Recently, I have seen "Happy Birthday Church" cakes and heard Pentecost sermons focusing on the gifts of the Holy Spirit... all except for speaking in tongues, of course. These things make me feel disappointed because the Spirit of Pentecost cannot be contained in the late-90's spiritual gifts fad or a brief historical lesson. The coming of the Spirit in our lives is the result of God's saving grace and the means by which God's sanctifying grace transforms our lives and beckons us toward greater personal holiness.

As Methodists, for whom sanctification after salvation is very important, we cannot afford to miss the most important part of Pentecost. After the departure of Jesus from this earth, the Holy Spirit is now God-With-Us. The Holy Spirit is the One who transforms us from Christian to Even-More-Christian. And the Holy Spirit sends us to do God's mission in the world, empowering us to do the hard work of ministering with those whom society casts aside.

By the way, I will be baking a cake for this Sunday's coffee hour. It will be a Pentecost cake, but it will not say, "Happy Birthday Church." It will say, "Come, Holy Spirit!"

UPDATE 6/11: I seriously did bake a cake! Here it is

What can I say? I love cake. :o)

Being a Friend

2011-06-01T22:10:00.061-04:00

My good friend from seminary will be coming to visit this weekend! I am so excited that Joy will be here in just two days. We decided to read a book together and discuss it when she arrives. The book we chose was recommended by one of my Facebook friends: Friending: Real Relationships in a Virtual World by Lynne M. Baab.*

I have, in all honesty, had to cram this book in the last couple of weeks because I've been so busy. But I am so glad I took the time to read it. I'm almost finished and will certainly be done by the time Joy arrives.

In her book, Baab discusses what it means to be a friend in today's world, when friends are far-flung across states and even continents, and so many different forms of communication are available to us. She shares her wisdom out of a lifetime of experience being a friend across the miles. Baab discusses lots of elements of being a friend, like acceptance, forgiveness, taking initiative, giving, thanking, and praying. She also devotes one chapter to the image of Jesus as our friend.

When I was a youth in East Ohio, one of our CCYM presidents said during a Thursday night devotion, "Knowing that Jesus is my friend is what gets me out of bed in the morning." That's a powerful statement, and I'm not sure I can say the same thing for myself. I consider my relationship with God important, and I look forward to my morning devotions, but it is hard to consider Jesus my friend. All of Baab's excellent suggestions for keeping up earthly friendships don't quite translate to a relationship with the Divine.

Baab does a good job of describing the Godhead as relational in nature, and states that the relationships among the members of the Trinity serve as an example for human relationships. She then cites John 15:12-15 (NRSV):

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

This verse nicely illustrates Jesus' relationship with us. Christ is not over us, ordering us around, but is sharing his life with us and taking part in our lives. I love this theology, and I understand her point that God's example teaches us how to be better friends.

But still, I have to ask: how are we to be Jesus' friend? There is no audible voice of God with whom to have a conversation. There is no tangible body of Christ to hug; the closest we come to that is during communion, when we experience Christ's presence among us in ritual. We can't friend Jesus on Facebook (well, OK, we can, but that's not really Jesus behind that Facebook account; it's a regular person).

So what does it mean to be a friend of Jesus? Well, I think Baab's elements of friendship can serve as a guide: acceptance, forgiveness, taking initiative, giving, and thanking. We can accept God's grace and thank God for the blessings in our lives when we pray. When we give to others and do the difficult work of accepting and forgiving them, we are forgiving Jesus too (Matt. 25:40). By making time to read the Bible, we are taking taking the initiative to get to know Jesus.

I've just come up with the ways in which we can befriend Jesus. Even so, I don't really think of my relationship with Jesus as a friendship. It just... is what it is. I don't really try to describe it to others.

How do you think about your relationship with Jesus? How do you maintain it?

* I was not given this book and I was not paid to write about it in this blog. This blog post contains my true opinions about the book.

The Flip Side of Central Square

2011-05-25T12:48:00.045-04:00

Last weekend, as I always do on the third Saturday of every month, I participated in our church's Outdoor Ministry with homeless residents of Harvard and Central Squares in Cambridge. A team from our church gathers each month to make and distribute sandwiches, juice/ water, and brownies to those among us who are living on the street. This ministry began when one of our seminary students realized that the homeless in Cambridge were fed Sunday through Friday, but not on Saturday. We endeavor to make sure folks have something to eat on Saturday.

I have been a part of the sandwich ministry for almost a year, but this is the first time I brought my husband along. He is a paramedic in the Boston area, so he sees homeless people in the hospitals and picks them up in his truck. His perspective on homelessness is much different than most other people as a result. My spiritual "mom," Margie, was with us too, and it was her first time distributing sandwiches. Generally, we try to visit briefly with each person. We ask how they are, if they are keeping warm, and whether they have a place to stay that night. We also remind them that the Outdoor Church will be taking place the following day.

Last month, I was really challenged by a guy named Tommy. He was disabled and very cold when I met him. While my usual partner, Lane, chatted with his friends, Paul and Emily, I went to buy him a small coffee to help him warm up. When I returned, Tommy declared he didn't want any coffee, but asked if I had any alcohol. I was taken aback. "Who asks a Methodist for alcohol?" I asked my husband later, adding, "If I was a nun, he wouldn't have asked me for alcohol!"

This time, Tommy greeted us right away. We asked how he was and whether he wanted any food. He refused food, just like last month, but pulled out his bottle of cheap vodka. I asked if he was finding a place to stay lately, since he is disabled and I was concerned whether he would be able to get to a local shelter. He told us that he had just come from the Boston Medical Center (though his perception of time may have been dubious), where doctors had again confirmed his diagnosis with lung cancer. He said that they wanted to take out his whole lung, but he didn't want to attempt that kind of intense procedure. Stephen agreed that recovery from surgery like that is very difficult. He said that he felt he deserved it because he had smoked for decades. Then he said something that made me really think: he wants to die on the street. Tommy said he preferred to drink himself to death and die while passed out or sleeping than to die from cancer while lucid. I thought about how painful it is to die of cancer, and can't say I blame him.

Still, it was an unexpectedly candid moment on the street. Not everyone will talk to relative strangers about their own death. It was a picture of what end-of-life decisions look like when a person hits rock bottom. It was also a reminder that chronically homeless people are so alienated from society, they feel more at home on the street than they do in society's institutions like hospital.

The Church is another one of society's institutions, though it is Christ's body at the same time. Housed people who go to church are so far removed from the trauma of everyday life on the street that they can have a difficult time relating with homeless neighbors. And homeless neighbors often feel uncomfortable in a building like a church, which is why churches like the Outdoor Church exist. Reaching out across the housed/unhoused divide can be daunting.

Yet we are called, in our hesitance and trepidation, to reach out anyway.

Central Square is known for its addicted homeless population, partly because there is a shelter that focuses on addiction in the neighborhood. It's easy to walk by my neighbors on the street every day without giving them a second look. In my mind, Tommy transformed from "addict" to "person" that day. My conversation with him reminds me that all the homeless people in my neighborhood are people just like me. Reaching out, even once a month, definitely takes me out of my comfort zone. I do it anyway, though, and when I do, I am confronted with a glimpse of God's Kingdom that I didn't expect.

Fleeing from God's Wrath?

2011-05-18T12:18:00.089-04:00

Last weekend, I sang the Verdi Requiem with Back Bay Chorale, and it was quite the experience! I recommend you start the (rather long) YouTube video I embedded now so you can get a taste of that experience as you read.

For those of you unfamiliar with Guiseppe Verdi, he was an Italian opera composer, so his work is very dramatic and bombastic. He wrote the Requiem for an opera great who had died the year before, and used the stark contrasts of operatic music to show depict fear of hell and hope of peace in the next life. I felt the bombastic music very acutely because, as a first soprano, I was placed directly behind the bass drum and three timpani! We had eight (!) trumpeters, which also contributed to the "wall of sound" effect the audience experienced.

My conductor is a lifelong Christian. He observed that while Verdi was a secularist, his Requiem places a lot more emphasis on fear of hell and God's wrath than other requiem settings in the Western musical corpus. He theorized that Verdi might have been more afraid of God's judgment or the afterlife than some of his more devout fellow composers because he did not have a personal relationship with God.

Verdi might have been interested to read about the recent discussion around Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins, if he had been alive today. The existence and nature of hell is still a widely debated issue in the Church today, and for good reason. On the one hand, we want to see those who perpetrate injustice get their comeuppance. On the other hand, what kind of loving God sends God's own special creations to a place of torment? My take on it is that hell may not necessarily be in the afterlife; sometimes that "eternal death" and torment can be a part of our existence here on earth.

As a Methodist, I must heed John Wesley's admonishment to "flee from the wrath to come." We don't know how Wesley thought about hell, but we know he had a healthy respect for God's judgment of evildoers- including us! He was motivated to be sure of his salvation by fear of what might happen if he was not forgiven of his sins. Sometimes I think that Methodists today take our salvation for granted, more often considering the "free gift" element of God's grace than our deep need for it.

Singing the Requiem last week gave me an appreciation for our need to flee from God's wrath. I was called upon to depict the coming of God's anger and to beg for God's mercy (Kyrie Eleison) and God's liberation from sin and death (Libera Me). That music is seriously scary!

When I sang, "Liberate me, O God, from eternal death," I thought about how Paul said that the earth is crying out in labor pains as we, God's people, birth God's Kingdom of peace and love in the world. We still need to be liberated from sin; God's Kindgom is coming, but it's not all the way here yet. Likewise, I myself have been forgiven, yet I have not yet reached Christian perfection. I still sin, and need to be constantly made more holy through the work of the Holy Spirit in my life. When I sang this piece, I cried out to God to save me from my sins now and the sins I will commit (or omit) in the future.

We as Methodists must "flee from the wrath to come" ...but we run right into the arms of our Savior. Our God is both just and merciful. Although we continue to sin, God welcomes us with open arms every time we come running back. That is what Verdi didn't know. Because he saw God as a one-dimensional judge, he didn't realize that God's love contains both God's justice and mercy. I certainly hope that at some point before his death, he experienced God's love and forgiveness. If he did, he probably had a deep appreciation for his salvation. May we all appreciate our salvation as deeply as Wesley.

UPDATE 6-29: I just found an article by Rev. Larry Hollon on this very same topic: John Wesley and the idea of hell on earth. It describes JW's Industrial Revolution context, and I think all Methodists should know this!

Resurrecting Hope

2011-05-11T12:27:00.004-04:00

At last, warm weather has come to Boston- it's about time! I've been outside over the weekend. :o) This week is super-busy for me, because my choir is in performance week for the Verdi Requiem. I'll post more about that later.

For now, check out this beautiful post by my friend Susan over at the Contemplative Cottage: Resurrecting Hope. It's about the parallel between growing flowers and growing faith.

I'll be back next week with my sanity and some thoughts of my own. See you then!

Church Unity: United Methodist or Untied Methodist?

2011-05-04T22:32:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to tackle this topic, but didn't quite know how until one of my favorite bloggers, Rachel Held Evans, held a synchroblog on Church unity. Her Rally to Restore Unity urges us to "take it down a notch for Jesus."

This project began partially as a result of the recent firestorm over Rob Bell's new book and John Piper's flippant response, a three-word tweet. But it is also a response to the current climate of vitriolic and mean-spirited rhetoric among Christians, especially on the Internet. In the midst of knee-jerk reactions made possible by Facebook, Twitter, and user-friendly blog platforms, she encourages us to stop and think before we post, comment, or tweet.

Rachel is also encouraging us to stop and think before we jump into decades-old or even centuries-old debates: predestination, premillenialism, evolution, women in ministry, abortion, homosexuality.

In seminary, these debates played out in miniature form in the classroom and writ large over entire school years. During one of many section discussions, I heard a fellow student jokingly call our denomination the "Untied Methodists."

These days, especially with voting on General Conference delegates coming up, I have begun to wonder if we United Methodists are truly united. Hanging around LakeSide at Youth Annual Conference and Annual Conference for years, I heard plenty of heated discussions. Lately, though, I have really listened to my fellow churchgoers and have been disturbed by the "us" and "them" talk. It scares me that we fear and dread talking to fellow United Methodists who think differently than we do, and we even go out of our way to avoid these conversations.

Though we theme our conferences "One Body," we are factioned along ideological lines, hermeneutical commitments, and social positions. At conference, we play out our old ecclesiological disputes in terms of biblical interpretation and homosexuality. In marriage, couples often say that they have the same fight over and over again. The same thing is happening to us. Though we think we are fighting over the primacy of Scripture, it is really about the tension in our relationships with one another. Thank goodness we lay ground rules to help us behave civilly even if we cannot be kind in heated moments.

We gather, we worship, we fight, and we go home. Outside of conference, we still tiptoe around women in ministry, racial inclusion and other issues that have long been put to rest at the General and Annual Conference levels.

This pattern makes me so sad for our denomination. I am dismayed to see us locked in patterns of conflict. Can we stay together- United- while we work through bitter disputes, even as other mainline churches experience schism? Or will we become "untied"? Will we allow lines in the sand to become stronger than the ties of fellowship?

Our history shows that we can do either. In 1844, the Methodist Episcopal Church split over slavery to become the MEC and MEC South. But then in 1936, it reunited. In order to reunite, the MEC had to stop ordaining women and created the Central Conferences, which segregated the church by race. Reuniting came with a price: that price was justice for women called to ministry and African-Americans.

The story of the MEC, one of the UMC's ancestors, tells us that unity comes with a price. That price is compromise, and sometimes ethical compromise is contrary to God's demand for justice. Disunity also comes with a price. A church that breaks away loses the richness and diversity of being one body with many others who are different, and who can teach us new ways to believe.

As we prepare for another General Conference, we must pray for God's Spirit of unity. We have a lot of learning to do in order to live together harmoniously. Being ""One Body" in Christ" takes work, perseverance, courage, and love. The fruit of all that work is that our "body of Christ" is Jesus' hands and feet in the world. We must learn to abide with one another so that we can carry out God's mission.

Therefore, I propose a new action item for General Conference 2012. I would like to amend our Conference procedure to include the following: Eat. Together.

Potlucks NOT Polemics

Because you can’t argue if you’re stuffing your face.

“It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles.” – Jesus

This Joyful Eastertide: Living as an Easter People

2011-04-27T19:06:00.000-04:00

This post has been a long time coming, partially because I've been struggling to live on the other side of the cross: the resurrection. In his Easter sermon, my pastor, Scott, talked about how he somehow felt it wasn't quite Easter. With American wars continuing, the recent earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the plight of America's poor in the hands of politicking budget-makers, he just had a hard time celebrating. Scott said he and his wife, Lin, felt the same way on the Easter after their daughter passed away. He concluded, "Easter is about letting go of Good Friday and taking a chance on life. And Easter is hard."

Last Sunday morning, I felt like Scott was speaking directly to me. I only feel that way once or twice in a year, but isn't it great when you feel the sermon was crafted just for you?

Anyway, I've been feeling rather un-Easterly lately. It seemed strange to sing of life in the face of death, destruction, and threat of disaster (even if the disaster may not happen to me). My spiritual outlook is stuck in a space best described in a hymn Carl Daw wrote in response to 9/11:

When sudden terror tears apart
the world we thought was ours,
we find how fragile strength can be,
how limited our powers.

From this abyss of doubt and fear
we grope for words to pray,
and hear our stammering tongues embrace
a timeless Kyrie.

But as Scott pointed out so well, we sing Easter songs on Easter whether we feel like it or not. We cannot allow the griefs of this world to keep us from celebrating the life springing anew in Christ that surrounds us. As an Easter people, we sing instead:

This joyful Eastertide,
away with care and sorrow!
My Love, the Crucified,
hath sprung to life this morrow.

Refrain:
Had Christ, that once was slain,
ne'er burst his three-day prison,
our faith had been in vain;
but now is Christ arisen,
arisen, arisen, arisen.

Living as people filled with Christ's life and love can be a challenge when the outlook looks grim. Scott is right- it's not healthy to spend our lives brooding on our losses and trials. For a worrier like me, that can be a tall order. This is where faith comes in.

On my scowly days, it's an act of faith to live with the hope of Christ's resurrection in view. I feel like I'm still in the dark, but the spiritual reality is that a new day has dawned in the world- Jesus lives! It's hard to behave like I believe in the resurrection when I don't feel it on the inside. But that's part of what it means to have faith. As the early Christians realized, our behavior shapes our inner selves, so I'd better act like I know Jesus is alive. When I do that, I take another step on my journey toward God... and I trust the Holy Spirit to bring me the rest of the way.

Do you ever have a difficult time living into the Good News of Jesus' resurrection? What do you do on your bad days to stay connected with God?

Triduum and Grief

2011-04-23T11:02:00.000-04:00

This year, as usual, I find myself either in choir rehearsal or service (or both) on almost every day of Holy Week. Although Holy Week is a crazy time for all those in the ministry professions, most years I find myself feeling still. (I should note that I don't have to plan all these services and run a church office, I just have to show up and sing.)

Other years, I have felt uncomfortable with Triduum, which is the time between the Maundy Thursday service and the Easter service. One year, I felt I had been grieving enough in the season of Lent, and did not attend Triduum service because I couldn't handle grief for Jesus on top of everything else. One of my pastors at H-EUMC lost her mom last week, and she is not coming to Triduum services.

This year, however, I feel oddly comfortable. This space in which we contemplate grief, suffering, and death, seems familiar. For once, I feel as if everyone else is on my wavelength. I think it's because I have been grieving the losses of my Boston University community and my expected life plan, while enduring the mini-losses of job-hunting. According to the small tally I keep on my fridge whiteboard, I sent out 45 resumes and had 10 job interviews last summer. I got two temp jobs out of that effort; I am still in the hiring process to become a full-time salaried worker at the second.

One of my BU profs, Shelly Rambo, wrote a book on trauma theory and the Gospel of John's theme of "remaining." She says that Christians must pay more attention to Holy Saturday. In the aftermath of trauma, faced with grief and the fragmentation of experience, we remain with the Holy Spirit.

God is there.

Yesterday, as I sat in the Good Friday service at Marsh Chapel, I realized that God has been here with me in my grief during the last year of un/deremployment and transition out of academia. It hit me when Dean Hill quoted Psalm 139:7, in the King James version: "Whither shall I go from they Spirit?" Here is the context. I used the KJV for its poetic quality.

¹O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me.
²Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.
³Thou compassest my path and my lying down, and art acquainted with all my ways.
⁴For there is not a word in my tongue, but, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether.
⁵Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thine hand upon me.
⁶Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is high, I cannot attain unto it.
⁷Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
⁸If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
⁹If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
¹⁰Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
¹¹If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall be light about me.
¹²Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee. (Psalm 139:1-12, King James Version)

Psalm 139 reminds us that God is there in our darkest moments. When Jesus was dying on the cross, God was there. When we walk though the wilderness, God is there. Dean Hill, in his fondness for alliteration, called these places "the holy habitation of the Most High."

Even in the times when we think God is far away, or even that God has abandoned us, this place where we dwell in sorrow is a holy place. It's the place where God dwells with us.

Lent and Fasting, Part Deux

2011-04-13T19:51:00.000-04:00

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about fasting as a Lenten practice, and the fast begun by faith leaders and Congress members out of concern for the looming budget cuts. I've also been thinking a lot about my call to ministry, and what exactly I'm supposed to do with my life. I know what I should do morally, but vocationally, not so much.

Well, today a friend of mine posted this video on Facebook:

Yet again, my thoughts focused on suffering Americans and my feelings of powerlessness to help others. As I wandered the official website, www.hungerfast.org, I found this article on how to join the fast. It explains that there are many ways to fast, and that those who participate can choose the method that works well for them.

Since I have a very high metabolism I didn't think that I would function well with low blood sugar. I had no idea that fasting can also be done by forgoing solid food and only drinking for one day, or that one can fast just one meal a day, or that one can use the method of Ramadan, in which one eats a large meal after sundown. Imagine that! Even though I have been a Methodist for 16 years, I had no idea that there are options for fasting.

Realizing that needy Americans and our immoral budget proposals have been on my mind (and in my status updates) for most of the last month, I decided to take the plunge. I'm going to fast from solid food one day a week until the new budget goes into effect. Perhaps I can't lead a march on Washington, but I can do this. So I will.

I may not know what I'm doing with my life for the next five years, and I may not be sure what I will do with my life in the long term either. But I know what to do with my life right now: I'm going to witness to God's concern for the poor.

God cares that all God's children have what they need.

Probably the most oft-quoted verse from the book of Amos is the part about "let justice roll like a mighty stream." The context of this verse, Amos 5:18-24, is an oracle of destruction delivered to the rich in Israel during the 9th c. BCE. It's pretty scary to read:

Alas for you who desire the day of the Lord!
   Why do you want the day of the Lord?
It is darkness, not light;
¹⁹   as if someone fled from a lion,
   and was met by a bear;
or went into the house and rested a hand against the wall,
   and was bitten by a snake.
²⁰ Is not the day of the Lord darkness, not light,
   and gloom with no brightness in it?

²¹ I hate, I despise your festivals,
   and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
²² Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
   I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
   I will not look upon.
²³ Take away from me the noise of your songs;
   I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
²⁴ But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.

Amos and other prophets whose oracles ended up in the Hebrew Bible said some fearsome things about what will happen when God's judgment will finally come down on sinners.

The point for Christians today is that God will not put up with oppression of the poor. In 9th c. Israel, the rich had enslaved their own countrymen (the poor), and priests had blessed all their efforts to build up their own wealth and land. God sent Amos to prophecy because no one was listening to God. Someone had to tell slave owners, corrupt rulers, and capitulating priests what was going to happen. God was going to judge them for letting the poor go hungry and keeping all the food and land for themselves.

Those who take the Bible seriously must also take seriously God's concern for the poor. Today Christians have different ways of thinking about God's judgment than the ancient prophets, but the spiritual meaning is clear. God cares for all God's children. And those who love God should care too.

I'm showing I care. I'm fasting to witness to God's care for the poor, and God's objection to policies that further deprive those who are already hanging by a thread.

___________________________________________________________________________

UPDATE 4/19:
After speaking with some friends at Bible study and my alma mater, I realized I needed to clarify some things. First, John challenged me to differentiate among the many budget bills in Congress. Although the 2011 budget took effect on 4/14, Congressman Ryan's 2012 budget drastically cuts health care for seniors in order to continue Bush-era tax cuts. John kindly reminded me that this will not come to a vote until October.

My good friend Anthony is a veteran faster. He asked me about the particulars of my plan, and gave me some good books to read. I plan to take them out of the seminary library and share my favorite parts with you. He also suggested that I try my weekly fast for one month, and then discern whether I should keep fasting until the vote on the 2012 budget. I will take his suggestion and update in a month!

Lenten Thoughts

2011-04-06T18:33:00.000-04:00

Right now I don't have a lot of time to pause for a blog post, but check out this amazing one from my friend Susan over at The Contemplative Cottage. She pairs Lectio Divina exercises with her beautiful photography and the result is stunning and deeply spiritual. I loved this post in particular because I've been thinking a lot about my call to ministry lately.

Fasting and Justice

2011-03-30T23:34:00.000-04:00

As anyone who reads the paper these days will notice, the current budget battles in Washington, D.C. are coming to a head as the April 8 budget deadline looms. One of the major concerns during this time is where the cuts are proposed: human services and food stamps are on the chopping block, while defense is untouched and corporate tax loopholes remain unnoticed.

In response to current proceedings on Capital Hill, some Christians are fasting in order to call attention to inequity reflected in the current budget proposals. Bread for the World president Rev. David Beckmann, Sojourners founder Rev. Jim Wallis, and NY Times food blogger Mark Bittman are all publicly fasting.

Now, I know that in Matthew's Gospel, Jesus warns against publicizing one's fast. He said,

Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven... And whenever you fast, do not look dismal, like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces so as to show others that they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that your fasting may be seen not by others but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matt. 16:1, 16-18)

Of course, we should not be fasting so that we look pious and gain others' respect. The purpose of fasting is to set aside more time for prayer and to improve our focus on God. Jesus' warning to not to use fasting for our own ends or personal glorification is very appropriate. Yet this is not what faith leaders are doing right now. St. John Chrysostom wrote that time spent fasting is time apart from the distractions of the world. Accordingly, in this article, Rev. Wallis says he is using his time that would otherwise be spent eating to gather with Christians and pray.

By fasting, Revs. Wallis and Beckmann are standing in solidarity with those who do not have enough to eat. They are calling attention to the problem of hunger in America, and protesting the current budget proposal that would severely reduce funding for food stamps.

Last summer, I was a camp counselor at a youth center in Cambridge. The state-provided lunches that the kids received were pretty unpleasant. Baloney sandwiches with soggy buns, shredded beets, "potato salad" that looked like a small lump of mush... if you can make it taste nasty, these kids got it. Most of the kids turned up their noses at the lunches. Some of them had lunches packed by parents, while others bought 15-cent Cup-O-Noodles packages at the corner store. A few kids ate the lunches and went back for seconds. Those kids didn't have enough to eat at home. One of the girls, Kay,* didn't have anyone at home who cooked; she got dinner by going to her aunt and grandmother's house. Kay was aware that only the poor kids ate the state lunch and would throw it away even when she told me she was hungry. She wouldn't eat when she was going to her aunt's in the evening, but when she was going home, she would quickly consume all the food offered to her.

"Hunger in America" is just a concept until you meet a hungry child. Now when I think about food stamp reduction, I wonder how many hungry and under-nourished kids at the youth camp will be affected. Maybe they won't even be able to buy their daily ~~sodium overdose~~ Cup-O-Noodles.

In this time of Lent, often fasting is taken lightly. We mildly deprive ourselves of small luxuries such as chocolate and Netflix. The spiritual power of fasting, however, comes when we experience real deprivation such as loss of food and sleep. Acute physical discomfort grabs our attention in ways other small annoyances cannot. This Lent, our faith leaders are fasting in order to call attention to a deadly serious issue in our society today.

I can't join them in fasting, because I don't function well with low blood sugar. But I join them in spirit. This fast is not a political demonstration. It's a deeply spiritual exercise begun out of concern for those in America whose voices are not heard. And it is begun out of respect for God's justice. God cares that all people's needs are met, and God is angered when those with more resources hoard them from others who have less. As a person who cares about what God cares about, I must ask myself: what can I do as part of my spiritual practice to model God's justice? Are any of my daily habits hurting my poorer neighbors? This Lent, I am called to ponder my relationship with my neighbors and to think about what kinds of spiritual practices might call others to do the same.

What do you think of Wallis and Beckmann's endeavor to fast? What about the connection between our spiritual practices and God's justice?

* Name changed.

Perceiving God in All 5 Senses

2011-03-23T21:55:00.000-04:00

I want to share with you the trip I took yesterday to Portland, ME. You will recall that a couple of weeks ago, I sang a very challenging concert with the Back Bay Chorale: Rachmanioff's Vespers. Well, we reprised our performance for the good folks of Portland, which is about a 2-hour drive from Boston. The concert was hosted by the Cathedral Church of St. Luke, and I just love cathedrals! They make my senses come alive and heighten my awareness of God.

Sight

Of course, when one enters a cathedral, the sense of sight is immediately arrested, and the eyes are drawn upward toward the heavens. This church's website states that it is built in a modified English Gothic style, but I think it's pretty conventional neo-Gothic because of how "boxy" the space is. Here is a picture I took of the Chancel area. It was taken on my iPhone, so it's not the best quality, but it shows how the square construction of the walls contrasts with the intricate Gothic-style woodwork.

This is a close-up of the Rederos, which is the term for the wooden facade behind the altar. It is grand, intricate, and definitely gives a sense of awe.

"Central in the Reredos itself stands the Virgin Mary with the Child in her arms. She is known as Our Lady of Portland and has a unique quality in that she was carved with the Native American communities in mind. Her dress and hair are modeled after typical native fashion and the Baby Jesus is wrapped as a papoose. The figures of the Blessed Mother and Child are almost life-size."

(from the church's website)

This is me in the pulpit. it's not the greatest picture of me, but I just couldn't resist. Notice the four wooden carvings on the front of the pulpit set into the stone carving. They are the symbols for the four Gospels. In this symbolism, each Gospel is associated with a real person whose name correlates with the Gospel, usually assumed to be disciples of Jesus.

This is a ceramic tile at the center of the floor of the Chancel area. It beautifully shows the symbol for St. Luke (which makes sense).

In art, Luke is represented by a winged ox because he begins his gospel with an account of the priest, Zachary, (Zechariah), sacrificing in the temple. The ox represents Christ's sacrifice. -Father Hinsperger

This is the only picture of a stained glass window I could get to come out decently (most windows must be photographed professionally). I took this because they depicted my mom's favorite Scripture, "Let the little children come unto me" (Matthew 19:14).

Touch

This is a kneeler I found. Each one was hand-stitched by church members. The Cathedral Church of

St. Luke takes textile arts seriously, and has actually created a guild of kneeler-makers. I never thought cross-stitch could be elevated to high art! I also was surprised to see this kneeler, which depicts the Creation. I was very surprised to find that magenta can be a pious color! The quality of the stitching was consistent and very comforting to touch.

The wood carvings were all done in black ash, which is a hard wood and has a distinctive texture. Behind the nave, there is a chapel for small worship services. Its ceiling is cone-shaped and made of wood with gilt paint, which is really unique. Another unique thing about the chapel is this picture of the Madonna and child, called "American Madonna." It is the only such picture that shows Jesus as a child, not as an infant. I thought it was interesting that Mary is wearing a rose robe, not the traditional light blue color with which she is usually associated.

Sound

The acoustics in the Cathedral are very live, which is my favorite type of acoustic in which to sing. It covers a multitude of vocal sins. I did a longer post earlier about the music of Rachmaninoff's Vespers, but I will embed another video for you to hear. This is the last movement of the piece and sits extremely high in the soprano vocal range. Since it's at the end of the piece, it's very exhausting to sing, because one's energy reserves are low by that point and it takes even more effort to push through even this very short piece.

After the concert, exhausted but happy, we got on the bus for Boston. When we got there, we all piled into carpools and headed home. My carpool was headed from Newton to Cambridge by way of Brookline, which necessitated driving by Boston College.

Taste and Smell

As we drove into Cleveland Circle around midnight, my friend Mary Margaret spied a food truck that sells grilled cheese sandwiches. We were all thinking of midnight snacks, so we made a U-turn and returned to the truck. Roxy's Gourmet Grilled Cheese did not disappoint!

James, our cashier, was nice enough to pose for a picture with Mary Margaret and Candace. He was interested to hear of our adventures in Maine and made some excellent sandwich suggestions. Thanks to him, Roxy's may be coming to a BBC event sometime soon!

Mmmm, grilled cheese... this was the Turkey Bomb: turkey, gouda, chives, and cranberry cream cheese. It was a culinary masterpiece! A person cannot live on bread alone, Jesus said in last week's lectionary reading. He was right- you gotta add the cheese!

"O taste and see that the Lord is good" Psalm 34:8

In this instance, God's goodness was warm, gooey on the inside, and perfectly crisp on the outside. Perfection.

God time doesn't always have to be when we're alone. For me, I felt God's presence in every aspect of my day: surrounded by friends, expressing profound and cathartic music, eating my favorite foods, and losing myself in the space of the cathedral. Choir tours are one of the most socially and artistically intense experiences, but I always feel closer to God when I immerse myself in music and my beloved community.

Have you ever experienced God even when you're surrounded by people and noise?

Being a Young United Methodist

2011-03-16T21:26:00.067-04:00

Over at United Methodeviations, Dan Dick has an interesting blog post: "Wanted: Young People (Some Restrictions Apply." He is interested in young people's involvement in the church. In his post, he spends a lot of time analyzing young adults (like me!) and concludes,

"We can’t change young people into cookie cutter clones of our ideal young Christian church-goers."

Instead, he says, our churches should prepare to be more open to young people in five ways:

make it okay to ask questions, even in worship
put as much attention and focus on spiritual formation and Christian service as on worship
share power — let new comers have ideas, responsibility and authority (this does NOT mean put them on a committee!!!)
understand that the “radical hospitality” that 35 and olders enjoy is not the same as the under 35 crowd; be friendly, authentic, and respect boundaries — most under 30s are not coming to church to make friends (yet); they are scoping out the lay of the land to see what the church believes, what it teaches, what it expects, and what it can do to help the individual grow. Impress newcomers with your integrity and impact, not smiles and cookies.
Young adults are very interested in what the congregations knows and believes. Anything that sounds canned or rehearsed will be viewed with suspicion. Any question that can’t be answered will cause raised eyebrows.

I agree that young adults are who we are, and can't be expected to fit some kind of United Methodist mold. As I said in my earlier post on being a United Methodist, there is no one United Methodist identity. There are many ways to be United Methodist, and older adults need to do all they can to accept young people's spirituality and ways of being (and vice versa).

I think that Dan's tips above address the cultural age gap between younger and older adults (especially 1, 4, and 5). These tips also identify problem areas in our churches (2, 3, and to some extent 4). Having young people as part of the local church can point out when our concept of hospitality is too narrow, neglected areas in worship, and our structure of operations is not inclusive of all age groups. These are all very important things that need to be improved in the UMC.

It is true that the aging Boomer generation holds the vast majority of power in the UMC, and that needs to be rectified- young people can contribute fresh ideas and new voices to decades-old conversations. Our perspective can help the UMC become more balanced in our outlook. And our passion for articulating our theology and purpose can help the UMC become more focused in the decade to come.

Our age group is focused on service and impact, so we can make a positive contribution to the UMC in our emphasis on mission. Hospitality immediately comes to mind as an area in which we can help expand the UMC's mission and many of us have a heart for the poor and those who have been affected by devastating circumstances. I think that improvement and expansion of mission is probably the area in which our generation will have the most impact in the UMC.

So what can young people do to contribute to the church? Show up! And participate. If someone discourages you from joining a committee or starting a ministry, don't give up! Jump in and start contributing in the ways in which your heart leads you- now.

What can you do if you are an older adult? Welcome young people into the ministries of the church! Find out more about what our church believes so you can talk to them about it (I suggest you begin with our Social Principles). When you start to feel defensive or protective of your ministries, stop and ask yourself if the young person you're with might have a valid point. Realize that this is her/ his church too. Think about how you can make room for young people in your church.

Because young adults are not the future of the Church- we are the Church.

If you are a young adult, how do you feel about getting involved with a local church? If you are an older adult, how do you feel about the young adults in your midst? Do you talk to one another?

Mardi Gras/ Ash Wednesday

2011-03-08T13:16:00.000-05:00

This week marks an important transition in the Christian calendar: from the excitement and awe of Transfiguration Sunday to the somber tone of Ash Wednesday. Today, Mardi Gras (aka Shrove Tuesday) and tomorrow, Ash Wednesday, mark our passage from the season of Common Time to the season of Lent. During Lent, United Methodists and other Christians take time to observe 40 days of introspection, penitence (confession), and sometimes fasting.

Last week at work, two of my coworkers decided to celebrate the Mardi Gras season by decorating a King Cake. The King Cake is usually eaten around Christmas outside of the US, but is associated with Mardi Gras in the US. Inside, a small prize is hidden, and whoever gets the prize has to buy next year's King Cake.

Joey got the prize this time. It was a tiny plastic model of the baby Jesus. Not gonna lie, it was kind of creepy... they had ordered triple berry filling, so it looked like an albino fetus covered in red goo. Oh well, it tasted good, so we will probably order another cake from "the Best Little Bakery in Southern Mississippi" next year. Today, many churches in my area are having pancake suppers to celebrate Shrove Tuesday.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, so our church is having a 6:00 service for which I will sing, then is kicking off the traditional Lenten Bible study. On Sunday, my friends, Doug, Lane, Jaime, and I had the usual pre-Lent "so what are you giving up this year?" conversation. Lane said he might give up Dunkin' Donuts, which is located just outside his office building. Jamie said he had totally forgotten about Lent until that moment.

Rev. Ann S. Howard cautions that Lent is not for our own self-improvement efforts, but is a time to live into our humanity. Her post over at The Beatitudes Society blog muses:

Maybe this Lent I'll shape up. I'll give up that nasty habit, I'll be nicer to my nosy neighbor, I'll spend more time doing good deeds, I'll waste less time. I'll really make an effort this year. And then, maybe I'll be back in the game, just like that baseball player. By Easter I will be an exemplary Christian, batting 1000. I don't think so. Lent is not 40 days and 40 ways to self-improvement. Lent is the invitation to settle deeply into our humanity, bruised knees, bruised egos and all. This kind of settling in is different from coming up with disciplines that might make us better.

Settling into our humanity like this means we can give up the illusion that we get somehow better by muscling our way into spiritual disciplines...[it] means that we can give up the heavy lifting, spirituallly-speaking, and simply receive the gift of Lent. To "remember that we are but dust" is the reminder that we live by grace. We live by God's extravagant love and radical forgiveness. Lent gives us time to discover these gifts, and live as if we accept them.

h/t Cassi McDaniel

We need to examine our motives for what we choose as our spiritual practice for Lent. Expecting too can lead to giving up our practices by day 5 or 6. Conversely, we might not expect enough. For instance, if we decide to give up something that isn't all that important to us, that's not really fasting. The practice of fasting for Lent can take many forms, as long as it calls attention to our need for self-examination and repentance.

Lent is about considering how we live daily, and whether our habits and attitudes are in line with the Gospel. For the ways that are not, we repent. Repentance means that we allow ourselves to feel regret and sorrow over what we have done wrong, and think or pray about how we can do better in the future. Repenting requires us to commit to doing the right thing next time. It can be a painful process to admit we have done wrong, but repentance is the first step to healing. This first step is realizing how much God loves and values us, even while realizing that we have done wrong. It might feel crummy, but an awareness of our need for grace and God's generous gift is necessary in order to be changed into disciples of Jesus Christ.

Becoming a disciple is an ongoing process. It's not as if we're "saved" once and then don't have to do anything else. Being a Christian means that we allow the Holy Spirit to shape us into the likeness of Christ. Taking time out for reflection and repentance is a very important part of that process of transformation. Our continuing conversion depends on deepening awareness of God's generous love for us, and striving for holiness in our everyday actions is our response to that love.

How have you practiced repentance? Has it been challenging for you? What is your Lenten practice this year, and how will it help you to be self-reflective and repentant?

As for me, I am just trying to continue my daily devotional practice. My devotions call me to repentance and holiness every day, so if I can get through Lent without slacking off (Saturdays included!) I'll be doing necessary reflection.

Music as Prayer

2011-03-02T23:52:00.000-05:00

As those of you who read my opening post will remember, I sing in a civic choir in Boston called the Back Bay Chorale. This week, we're gearing up for a performance of Rachmaninoff's Vespers, which has got me thinking about music's role in my prayer life.

The Vespers is a piece that is designed to be sung throughout the vespers service on Holy Saturday and into the wee hours of the morning on Easter Sunday. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, everyone gathers for the all-night vigil about 10 or 11 PM, and it finally ends at about 4 AM. Then after church they have a huge feast to celebrate Christ's resurrection, including the congregation's traditional foods. One of my Greek Orthodox friends told me about chowing down on all her Greek favorites, then slinking home around 7 or 8 AM, exhausted. No wonder she usually spends Easter Sunday sleeping!

This concert is a real challenge because it is sung in Old Church Slavonic, which was a regional dialect of Greek used in the 9th c. CE to translate the Koine Greek of the Bible into a Russian equivalent (basically, it's a transition language that's dead except for liturgical use, like Latin). The letters don't look even remotely familiar, and some of the sounds are hard to make. Plus the singing is very athletic, and sits very high in the soprano part, so it takes a lot of energy to sing.

Even though it is a very difficult piece to sing, I love the Vespers movements' Biblical and theological themes. For instance, #9, "Blessed Art Thou, O Lord" tells the story of the women disciples who go to Jesus' tomb on Easter morning. The Tenor and Bass sections narrate how the women take myrrh and spices to the tomb, and meet the angel. Then the Soprano and Alto sections come in and sing the dialogue: "Women disciples, why do you weep? Behold the tomb and understand: the Savior is risen from the dead!"

I also love #6, "Rejoice, O Virgin!" It's the Orthodox version of the Hail Mary, but it uses an arcane theological term that has a lot of meaning: Theotokos, which means "Christ-bearer," or more literally, "Birth-giver to Christ." If you read the Wikipedia page I linked to, you'll read about the Nestorian controversy. But what it won't tell you is that early Christian women were a big part of the support for understanding Mary's role as the bringer of God incarnate into the world (Christianity: A Social and Cultural History, ed. Kee). I love that this translation of the prayer uses Theotokos because this term came about due to women's participation in theological conversation in the 4th c. CE. "Virgin" in our culture today just refers to a state of being of an unmarried woman, but Theotokos sets Mary apart as a special woman chosen to do God's work. I've embedded #6 below, which is short but the most beautiful movement in the whole piece, I think.

When I sing these movements, it's very hard to get everything right: all the notes, words, rhythms, and the dynamics our conductor gives us. As I concentrate, though, I delve into the meaning of the words and how the music expresses them. Immersing myself in creating the music lifts my spirit and pulls me into a more earnest participation in the story of God's love for humanity. The ancient Church fathers and mothers who lived in the Egyptian desert called this "mindfulness." In other words, the more I concentrate on my activity and doing it well, the more I am focused on God.

Another Church father, Irenaeus of Lyons, once said, "Those who sing pray twice." I think he said this because singing requires mindfulness- attention to the task, to the faith expressed in the music, and to God. When I sing, I pray once with my lips and again with my spirit.

Are there any things that you do to focus your attention on God? If you don't have your own practice like gardening or painting, try really paying attention to the music and words of the hymns next time you go to church. When we pay attention to doing even the most mundane things, we can connect with God in the everyday.

God Time

2011-02-16T22:34:00.000-05:00

It's a topic many Christians subconsciously avoid in conversation: the daily devotional. We talk about it in vague terms, asking each other things like, "How is your walk with God?" or "What is God teaching you these days?" Then we answer in equally nebulous language, sidestepping the fact that our devotional life is sporadic. Spiritual "checking in" conversations often don't even touch on whether we have read the Bible recently (does Bible study count?) and the fact that most of us usually forget to pray unless we're in trouble. We all understand: we're busy people! Life is hectic. How can we fit in a spiritual practice into the daily craziness?

I admit, I am one of those people who evade questions about my spiritual practice. Lately, though, I have made an effort to stop making excuses and start having some meaningful devotional time. My mom sent me a book for Christmas called When You Pray by Reuben P. Job. It contains small devotional tidbits for each week of the Revised Common Lectionary, along with short Bible readings for each day of the week. I'll admit, she sent it to me around Week 4 of the book, and it took me until Week 12 to actually crack it open. But I finally did after I had an epiphany: I realized I have spent every morning on the bus to work surfing Facebook on my iPhone and texting friends and family. That's approx. 20-25 minutes every day that I could spend differently. The Reuben Job book is small enough to pass for a Kindle, so I can slip it into my purse and do my devotions en route.

I quickly discovered that I would not be reading my Bible passage before grabbing my bagel (still hot, ow!) and making a run for the bus stop. So I need a portable copy of the Bible that I can read while on the bus. Luckily, I found this amazing Bible and study tool on the App Store by OliveTree. The $.99 app comes with the King James Version already loaded, naturally, because copyright laws didn't exist in 1611. So for $9.99 you can get an extension for the New International Version, and for $13.99 you can get the New Revised Standard Version. The NRSV is the most scholarly translation on the market, so I sprang for the NRSV extension. It helped that my mother-in-law had given me a $15 iTunes gift card! Thanks to her generous gift, I read the Bible on my iPhone this morning while hurtling into another part of the city.

By the time I'm crossing the Charles River for the second time, I'm done reading and ready to pray. This past Sunday, I committed to pray for my fellow church member and former seminary professor, Dr. Inus Daneel. He is a missionary to Zimbabwe for 6 months out of every year, but the worsening situation there forced him to relocate to South Africa during his 2010 trip. Inus has just returned to South Africa and plans to visit Zimbabwe. Every morning, when I take time to pray for Inus and those he engages, I am aware that they are in a whole different world thousands of miles away. Yet God connects us at all times, and I remember that when I pray for them.

Granted, it's dangerous to blog about my spiritual practice, having done it only three times. I'm hoping this will be an ongoing way to set aside time for reflection and prayer. It's only 20 minutes of reading a few Bible verses and a spiritual quote, and praying. Yet it makes all the difference in my day. I've been more inclined to thank my bus driver for his good driving, and I walk into the office with a smile on my face and a spring in my step. In 20 minutes, I could watch an episode of one of my favorite shows, Big Bang Theory, on my Netflix app. I could surf Facebook. I could check my email. But when I use that same snippet of time to read and pray, my whole outlook changes.

It strikes me that recent technology allows me to take my devotional time anywhere- even on a noisy, crowded, and sometimes smelly city bus. Has technology made it easier to find quiet time? Or has its omnipresence made it harder to find time and space for prayer?

How do you experience technology's influence on your life? Is it helpful or hurtful to your spiritual practice?

An Un-Manifesto

2011-02-09T22:25:00.018-05:00

When my friend, Jeremy, started his blog, he published a Manifesto explaining the name for his blog and what it was going to be about. This blog isn't quite as well-focused, but there will be some recurring themes. Its name, God Talk, means that this is a place to talk about God, and it's a place to talk about us too. For now, I'm the main author, so some of the content will reflect some of my interests and spiritual practices. You can expect posts on:

- God in the world/ in our lives
- The arts
-Theology
- Christian service/ social justice
- Being a Methodist

If you've stumbled upon this blog and don't know much about being Methodist, fear not! There's a post in the works about what it means to be a Methodist. :o)

It seems that Wednesdays have been good times to post. They're after the beginning of the week, so by that point I've already digested Sunday's sermon and my spiritual thoughts for the week are percolating. Although I was not able to post regularly in January due to illness, I hope to be posting regularly on Wednesdays from here on out..

So that's it. I hope to tell some stories, share some experiences, discuss other bloggers' thoughts, and hopefully, we can come up with some of our own thoughts. I look forward to growing in faith with you!

Snowed In

2011-02-02T23:51:00.002-05:00

Tonight I was wandering through the online sections of my local paper, the Boston Globe, and stumbled upon a story: another snowstorm is going to hit our area in a few days. My spouse and I groaned. Another one? It all started with the Blizzard of 2010, a major weather event that buried the East Coast in two feet of snow. Another one came on its heels and dumped another couple of feet. Then another snowstorm came last week. Work was not canceled. There is no more room in the streets for the snow, and cars are completely buried. Bostonians are fed up with the snow, and a fourth storm is on the way. This one is supposed to slam the Midwest with snow and ice. Some of you, if you live in Ashland, might find also yourselves snowed in. All this snow is getting tiresome. I'm starting to feel walled in by snow.

The revolution in Egypt this past week has taught me about the grinding poverty in Egypt, and helped me to see why the rebellion is happening. The people there are angry because the government has failed them so profoundly. They do not have basic services that Americans take for granted, like public education, help to buy food and yes, even semi-reliable public transportation. Egyptians are also angry because their government is corrupt and dishonest. Mubarak claims it is a democracy- but he has been "re-elected" for more than 30 years! Egypt is actually a corrupt dictatorship.

Even though I don't know what it's truly like to live in Egypt, I'm feeling fed-up like the Egyptians. For them, there's no end in sight. Young people don't have the education they need, they have no job prospects in sight, and the exorbitant costs of living compared to actual income make them feel trapped. They despair of ever climbing out of poverty. When you're poor, the devastating blows just keep coming.

The cries of my weather-wearied psyche and the angry cries of Egyptian protests remind me of a refrain found in Scripture: "how long, O Lord?" The plight of the Egyptians sounds a lot like the prophet Habakkuk's use of this refrain in Habakkuk 1:2-4:

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
   and you will not listen?
Or cry to you ‘Violence!’
   and you will not save?
Why do you make me see wrongdoing
   and look at trouble?
Destruction and violence are before me;
   strife and contention arise.
So the law becomes slack
   and justice never prevails.
The wicked surround the righteous—
   therefore judgment comes forth perverted.

Habakkuk probably prophesied in 7th century Israel (BCE), which was before the Babylonians conquered Israel in 586 BCE. When he cried out to God, the worst was yet to come! He begged for deliverance even before his people were chained and deported.

Surely the Egyptians are fed up with facing the economic violence done to themselves and their families by the corrupt government. Only they've been feeling this way for 36 years! They have realized that "the law becomes slack... therefore judgment comes forth perverted."And enough was enough a long time ago. Yet their journey to freedom and a truly democratic state will be a long one. For those who are now crying out for deliverance, the wait will be a long one.

By comparison, my complaining about the weather seems silly. It's the same feeling though. January is only now ending, and the relative hardships I face in this bitter cold and walls of snow will not go away anytime soon. I have to sit here for awhile.

The comfort in this is that even when everything is totally out of my control, I can cry out to God. My circumstance might not change. But how I feel about it might change, because I know I've got a God who cares about what I'm going through. Even though there are Coptic Christians in Egypt suffering more than I, God cares about what I'm facing too. God listens to both of us, Christians half a world apart, when we pray. So here I sit, but I'm not sitting alone.

Welcome and Introduction

2011-01-26T22:40:00.000-05:00

Dear Friends,

We at Christ UMC are so glad you're here! We've designed this blog to be a place where you can stop by during the week to connect with our church family and other Methodists. God Talk is a safe place to think over matters of faith and life. Whether or not you are a Christian, whether or not you are Methodist, we welcome you here.

Please take a look around. There's a post about how and why we talk about God, to familiarize you with how Christians approach the idea of God. We encourage you to comment on posts with your thoughts and questions. Please be mindful of your interactions with everyone here, so that we treat each other the way we'd like to be treated face-to-face. General guidelines for conduct are found here.

There will be a few contributors to this blog. First is the Rev. Dr. Jane Jacques, a Deacon in the United Methodist Church and professor at Ashland Theological Seminary. To me, she goes by Mom.

Then there's me. I am a member of the Christ UMC Diaspora living in Cambridge, MA. I came here to get my M.Div. at the Boston University School of Theology, which I earned in May 2010. I'm still here while my husband studies pre-health, and I work as a customer service representative. Since I was 18, I have been a candidate for ministry in the United Methodist Church. Christ UMC started me on that journey by approving me as a candidate for ministry even though I was only 18. Now I am a certified candidate working toward provisional membership in the East Ohio Conference. My local church involvement is with Harvard-Epworth UMC, which is full of dynamic, generous, welcoming, loving people who truly care about all those in their community. My favorite things to do at church are Cancel Choir, Young Adult Group, our outdoor ministry with my homeless neighbors in Cambridge, and United Methodist Women.

During the week, I sing with the Back Bay Chorale and hang out with friends and family. My husband and I have a pet: our tropical fish, Fizzy. We like to go letterboxing together, watch cartoons, play board games with friends, and follow our favorite comic books. I love to learn about all the world's cultures, especially their food and dance traditions.

I look forward to getting to know you, and to sharing this space for reflection and growth with you!

God's Peace,
Carolyn

God Talk: Why Do It?

2011-01-15T13:20:00.000-05:00

Talking about God is important. We don’t have to read very far in Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew scripture and the Christian Bible, before we see that humans, who were created to be in relationship with God and with each other, can benefit in both of those relationships by conferencing a little bit on what relationship with God should look like. Consider, for example, how differently events might have gone if Eve and Adam or Cain and Able had talked things out. God talk is the plan that God gave the Hebrews when they asked how to form their children in faith. (You can see that in Deuteronomy Chapter 6.) It still works that way, as studies in faith formation show us that God talk in families is the strongest predictor for success in passing faith to children. We can do God talk in families of choice, as well. Church is that kind of a family; so is an internet forum.

Discussion in this space will focus on considering who God is. What is God like? Over the next year, we will read some of what A.W. Tozer had to say about God from his book, The Attributes of God: A Journey into the Father’s Heart ¹ and reflect on it together. Tozer was a well known preacher and author who believed we can know what God is like, and that it is important that we do. “History shows,” he wrote, “that no tribe or nation has ever risen morally above its religion. . . . Christianity at any given time is strong or weak depending upon her concept of God. . . . Our religion is little because our god is little. Our religion is weak because our god is weak. Our religion is ignoble because the god we serve is ignoble. We do not see God as [God] is.” ²

Writing as he did, in the mid-twentieth century, Tozer did not concern himself with using gender inclusive language for God. The portions that we share here from his work will be presented as he originally wrote them. In our time we should be conscious that our use of language has changed. We recognize that apart from the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, God does not have gender. You can change Tozer’s gendered language for God as you read, just as I did, above. As you read, consider, also, how you could update any exclusively male language for humans that you may see in his work. The truth he shares is timeless; the way we express it can and should change to reflect our expanding awareness of the value of persons.

Attention to the value of persons brings us to one final consideration: rules for participation in this discussion. We will keep our approach to communication considerate and respectful toward other participants. God talk is a friendly discussion. “God,” Tozer writes, “is kindhearted, gracious, good-natured and benevolent in intention. And let us remember that God is cordial.” We can’t do better than to follow God’s example. Entries that violate common courtesy will be deleted. Basically, if you’re not baiting, or bashing others’ views, you’ll be OK. But just to be clear, you should read the details concerning respectful discussion in the footnotes. ³

That said, let’s get started. We’re going to begin with an excerpt from Tozer’s chapter on God’s goodness. Read, reflect, and feel free to respond.

A local church will only be as great as its conception of God. An individual Christian will be a success or a failure depending on what he or she thinks of God. It is critically important that we have a knowledge of the Holy One, that we know what God is like. Of course we can know from the Scriptures – that’s where we go to get our information. We can know some of it from nature too: “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork” (Psalm 19:1). But while the pen of nature writes without too much clarity, the Word of God is very, very clear.

It is very important that we know that God is good. We read that God is good and doeth good that that His lovingkindness is over all His works. . . God is not only infinitely good, He is perfectly good. God is never partway anything! When I say that God is kindhearted, I mean that He is perfectly so. I do not mean that there are ever times when God isn’t feeling good and isn’t kind. . . . I joyously announce to you that what God is, He is immutably. God never changes. What God was, God is. What God is and was, God will be.⁴

Think on these things, and share your thoughts. Then watch this space.

The God Talk forum is created by Dr. Jane Jacques. Jane is an ordained deacon and teaches as an adjunct professor of spiritual formation at Ashland Theological Seminary, Ashland, Ohio.

¹Reprinted from The Attributes of God Volume 1 by A.W. Tozer, copyright © 1997 by Zur Ltd. Used by permission of WingSpread Publishers, a division of Zur Ltd., 800.884.4571. The book is available for purchase at www.echurchdepot.com Just click on Manufacturers, then WingSpread Publishers to see a list of books. This site is for churches to purchase things; www.wingspreadpublishers.com is for individuals to purchase.

²Tozer, 40-41.

³http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html The Core Rules of Netiquette are excerpted from the book Netiquette by Virginia Shea. Click on each rule for elaboration.

⁴Tozer 41- 44.

Guidelines for Participation in God Talk

2011-01-05T22:51:00.000-05:00

When you comment on the God Talk blog, you agree to the following guidelines. Please read this post thoroughly before using this Website.

First off, let's cover Typical netiquette rules:

1. No shouting (usually shown by ALL CAPS).

2. No rants.

3. Don’t take offence at how people respond; don’t give offense by the things that you say to others. Remember that without the inflections and facial expressions that we employ in face to face conversations, communication is not always clear. We may need to ask for clarification, and will need to be patient in providing it.
4. Don’t worry a lot about spelling, grammar and punctuation, but remember that producing messages that are readable and understandable is part of good communication. Some of us are better at writing than others, but we all have good thoughts to share. We all mentally correct for our errors when we’re typing, and so we may not see them at the time. We will probably all be grateful to have grace extended to us when we err, and so we need to readily extend grace to others as well.

And now, some Biblically-based guidelines for online interaction from the folks at Sojourners:

We will strive to create safe and sacred spaces for common prayer and community discussion as we come together to seek God's will for our nation and our world.

1.) We believe Jesus' teaching that "Blessed are those who make peace" (Matthew 5:9). We acknowledge that most of us have been guilty of violence in our hearts and with our tongues. We hold ourselves to the higher standard to which Christ called us: to refrain from not only physical violence but violence of the heart and tongue. "Do not commit murder. Anyone who murders will be judged for it," and "Do not be angry with your brother or sister" (Mathew 5:22-23).

2.) We commit that our dialogue with each other will reflect the spirit of the Scriptures, which tell us, in relating to each other, to be "quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry" (James 1:19).

3.) We believe that each of us, and our fellow human beings, are created in the image of God. This belief should be reflected in the honor and respect we show to each other, particularly in how we speak. "With the tongue we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God....this ought not to be so" (James 3:9,10).

4.) We pledge that when we disagree, we will do so respectfully, without falsely impugning the other's motives, attacking the other's character, or questioning the other's faith. We will be mindful of our language, being neither arrogant nor boastful in our beliefs as we strive to "be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2).

5.) We recognize that we cannot function together as citizens of the same community, whether local or national, unless we are mindful of how we treat each other. Each of us must therefore "put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body" (Ephesians 4:25).

These points outline how Christians are to treat each other on the Internet and face-to-face. Anyone who participates in this discussion, needs to respect our community guidelines when reading and posting comments. Comments that do not abide by these guidelines or contain inappropriate content will be removed by the blog administrators. If you do not agree to all the terms and conditions of this agreement, then you may not access the Website.

I know all this sounds very formal, but clear guidelines for behavior are an important part of making this a safe space for all to explore spirituality. This is a safe space for all people, and a large part of that safety comes from knowing we won't be attacked for any of our thoughts or questions. Part of our welcome to one another in this cyber-space is creating safety for all who come here, and this is a responsibility for all of us.