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.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Ash Wednesday: Looking Forward to Christ's Passion
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?
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?
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
The Holy Spirit and the Feminine Divine
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.
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.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Coffee Hour vs. the Newsfeed?
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?
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?
Friday, January 27, 2012
Thoughts on Marriage, Part 2
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,
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?
"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?
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Thoughts on Marriage, Part 1
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...
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?
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?
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Judgment Free Zone
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:
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:
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?
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?
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