Google Search

Last week, a photography student of mine did a presentation on one of my favorite artists, Richard Misrach. As she talked about one of his photo series entitled "Golden Gate," I did a Google image search. This photo is a screen shot of the results.

Questions

Just some words from Thomas Merton today.

"The greatest of disadvantages is that we are too prone to welcome everybody else's wrong solution to the problems of life. There is a natural laziness that moves us to accept the easiest solutions - the ones that have common currency among our friends. That is why an optimistic view of life is not necessarily always a virtuous thing. In a time like ours, only the coarse grained still have enough resistance to preserve their fair-weather principles unclouded by anxiety. Such optimism may be comfortable: but is it safe? In a world where ever lie has currency, is not anxiety the more real and more human reaction?

Now anxiety....is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they first be asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions - because they might turn out to have no answer. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask."

from, No Man is an Island

Hope

During the summer before my second year of seminary, I took an intensive seven-week Hebrew class. Summer language classes are tough, but the professor who taught my course was so engaging that I would estimate 9/10 of the students finished the class with a love of Hebrew that they didn't anticipate. If prospective students were visiting campus, they often came to sit in on the class. I always loved wondering what these students thought as they sat in on the class - not only because it was Hebrew, but also because it was Hebrew being taught by a man who clearly loved the language, and loved teaching the language. One thing this teach would say to every student who visited was that "knowledge of a biblical language is the third most important tool a person can have when working in the field of ministry." It was during the fifth or sixth week that one of my classmates finally asked what the first two tools were. My professor stopped, and looked up and sort of smiled in a way that said he'd been waiting for someone to ask.

"The first," he said, "is a genuine sense of call. The second is a broken heart."

I think about this a lot in my work, about the ways those experiences that have been particularly hard in my life have been the ones that allow me to empathize with people, even when their experiences are different from my own. I catch myself wondering how to allow that broken heart to sensitize me to the reality of the world as it is, and keep perspective on how it should be without letting the broken heart be the thing that defines my existence. How do I allow myself to be present with people in the abyss without getting lost in it myself?

I'm not sure, but I think laughter is a good answer, and community - even better is laughter in community. Hope, it seems, is vital for giving a sense of something that lies beyond the present struggle. This is why authentic community is so important - it has the potential to draw us outside of ourselves and our struggle, and helps us to recognize that the stuff we are experiencing does not have to be the only stuff we know. It allows us to put on a wider lens in a way, to see that what we see now is not all that there is, or at least to hope for it.

What is hope? By Rubem A. Alves

It is a presentiment that imagination is more real
and reality less real than it looks.
It is a hunch
that the overwhelming brutality of facts
that oppress and repress is not the last word.
It is a suspicion
that reality is more complex
than realism wants us to believe
and that the frontiers of the possible
are not determined by the limits of the actual
and that in a miraculous and unexpected way
life is preparing the creative events
which will open the way to freedom and resurrection....
The two, suffering and hope, live from each other.
Suffering without hope
produces resentment and despair,
hope without suffering
creates illusions, naivete, and drunkenness....
Let us plant dates
even though those who plant them will never eat them.
We must live by the love of what we will never see.
This is the secret discipline.
It is a refusal to let the creative act
be dissolved in immediate sense experience
and a stubborn commitment to the future of our grandchildren.
Such disciplined love
is what has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints
the courage to die for the future they envisaged.
They make their own bodies
the seed of their highest hope.

Genderbread Person

Not much to share this evening. I just had a great evening talking with the youth about gender. We used this genderbread person to talk about the differences between gender identity, gender expression, biological sex, and sexual orientation. I am constantly amazed by the way these youth articulate their thoughts. We certainly didn't talk about this stuff when I was in high school....

Where are we going, and why am I in this handbasket?

I've spent a lot of time in my life thinking about hell. I suppose that's an odd way to start a blog post, but there it is. I don't know when I was first introduced to the idea of hell, but I can remember from a very early age being aware of the fiery pit I'd be thrown into if I was bad. Funny, as I write that now it occurs to me how similar my childhood image of God was to Santa Claus: a sort of old white guy in the sky, making a list of who's naughty and nice. Only, instead of being given either a favorite toy or a bag of coals, I'd get eternity either in the clouds or burning in a fiery pit. After a junior high visit to a Baptist church camp, I think I must have prayed for Jesus to come into my heart about 500 times, afraid that if I didn't pray the right way or ask for forgiveness for each and every sin, I'd be destined to hell. I could go on about this process for a while, and how my views of heaven and hell (and transcendence, for that matter) have changed over the last few years, but I'm more concerned at the moment with talking about the implications of telling someone they are going to hell.

I had a friend ask me recently if I'd been aware of the conversations going on in the PC(USA) about comments that were made at a recent conference of people who gathered to talk about the inception of a new Reformed body. The problem, the speaker asserted, is not about a lack of clarity or divisions in the church, or ineffectiveness. The problem is that "people are going to hell...I wonder who is ready to be a servant and a partner and a soldier in an army that is advancing against hell?...Will you devote the rest of your life to be part of such a church?" (The Presbyterian Layman, vol 45, No.1/Jan/Feb 2012).

Now, I'm not entirely certain about the full context of this quote; but, from what I can gather as one of the members of the offending denomination from which members of this conference wish to depart; and, considering a big part of their frustration is about the PC(USA)'s changing ordination standards (opening up the way for LGBTQ people - including those just like me - to be ordained), I think it's safe to assume that I am likely one of those headed to hell. I, and a whole lot of people who, at least to me, seem to be faithful, with a genuine concern for how to maintain unity as a body in the midst of an ever-changing world. So, while I can happily disagree with the gentleman's implication that I am going to hell, I am deeply troubled by his claim and his language.

On one hand, I am frightened by the militaristic language that calls for a charge against hell, because I wonder about who that army is going to fight against. More troubling, though, is how easy it is to dehumanize a person (or a group of people) who is demoralized in such a way. If I am able to write someone off as immoral, hell-bound, then how am I able to see them as my neighbor, or as part of the body of Christ with me? How can I listen to them, protect them, advocate for their basic human rights? What's more, if I see them as bound for hell, and I see my job as a soldier in the war against hell, what's to keep me from doing all I can to make sure they are not able to follow through with their "agenda," to do all I can to prevent them from equal access to jobs, safety at home and work, to having a family, and being part of a faith community?

After a while, being told that you are going to hell starts to wear on you. Hearing time and again that you are what is wrong with the world starts to wear on you, starts to dig in, bury itself in your gut, in your bones. You carry it with you; if you have kids, you pass it along, they carry it in their bones. You start to recognize that the laws and policies of the world were not written for you, that "equality," is a relative term. Whether alienated because of race, class, sex, sexuality, gender identity, it seems that for too long the tendency has been to simply cut off the limb found to be most offensive, or to set up barriers that make sure we don't actually have to interact. If we can't see it, it doesn't exist.

Gregory of Nyssa states that:

“If my sister or brother is not at the table, we are not the flesh of Christ. If my sister’s mark of sexuality must be obscured, if my brother’s mark of race must be disguised, if my sister’s mark of culture must be repressed, then we are not the flesh of Christ. It is through and in Christ’s own flesh that the ‘other’ is my sister, is my brother; indeed, the ‘other’ is me….The establishment of the Church is re-creation of the world. But it is only in the union of all the particular members that the beauty of Christ’s body is complete.”

This notion of being a body is fundamental to the Christian experience. Being a body, though, is difficult, particularly when the realization of it opens our eyes to the fact that we are no longer able to dehumanize the "other," or to send them to send them to hell. It's messy, and it involves opening up to the notion that the Spirit might move in ways we do not expect.

Stranger things have happened.

Poem Sunday

So, this blog is in part supposed to be a sort of Lenten practice. As today is Sunday, and a feast day, I like the idea of just sharing a poem. It's a favorite of mine, by Wendell Berry.

Do not Be Ashamed

You will be walking some night

in the comfortable dark of your yard

and suddenly a great light will shine round about you,

and behind you will be a wall you never saw before.

It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape,

and that you are guilty:

you misread the complex instructions,

you are not a member,

you lost your card or never had one.

And you will know that they have been there all along,

their eyes on your letters and books,

their hands in your pockets,

their ears wired to your bed.

Though you have done nothing shameful,

they will want you to be ashamed.

They will want you to kneel and weep

and say you should have been like them.

And once you say you are ashamed,

reading the page they hold out to you,

then such light as you have made in your history will leave you.

They will no longer need to pursue you.

You will pursue them, begging forgiveness.

They will not forgive you.

There is no power against them.

It is only candor that is aloof from them,

only an inward clarity, unashamed, that they cannot reach.

Be ready.

When their light has picked you out

and their questions are asked,

say to them: "I am not ashamed."

A sure horizon will come around you.

The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop.

But....How is that even possible?

A couple of weeks ago, one of the MSW (Masters of Social Work) interns whom I work with told me about a conversation she'd had with her classmates about me.

"I told them that you were in seminary, and about the work you want to do [with sexual minorities and the church], and they all kind of just looked at me and asked, 'But....How is that even possible?'"

I don't know if her classmates are religious and didn't understand how someone could be queer and in the church, or irreligious with the same question, but I chuckled a bit when she told me the story. There are so many people for whom "religious" and "queer" are mutually exclusive adjectives; and, in today's climate, sadly, this makes sense. To put it simply, church is not a place where most LGBTQ people feel safe. Even as I write that, I feel the weight of it: for many sexual minorities, church is not a safe place.

I recently read Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited for the first time, which was first published in 1949. In the first chapter, Dr. Thurman tells the story of meeting a Hindu principal of the Law College at the University of Colombo in Ceylon. After coffee, the Hindu man stops and asks Mr. Thurman basically to justify how he can be a Christian. He talks of the slave trade, and how many of the slave traders were Christians, quoting Paul, who gave the sanction of religion to the system of slavery. He talks about the segregation, lynching, and burning of Black men and women. He closes with this challenge to Dr. Thurman:

"I am a Hindu. I do not understand. Here you are in my country, standing deep within the Christian faith and tradition. I do not wish to seem rude to you. But, sir, I think you are a trader to all darker peoples of the earth. I am wondering what you, an intelligent man, can say in defense of your position." (pp 14-15)

I do not wish to draw too close a parallel between the experiences of marginalization felt by people of color in US history and sexual minorities (primarily because I think drawing too close a parallel loses the nuances of the varied experiences of oprression, but I'll get to that in a later post), but I have asked myself more than once if, by staying in the church, I am am a traitor to the people who have been abused by the institutions that use their claim on Christian "values" to condemn anyone who does not fit the mold. Why stay? Why be a part of an institution that, by-and-large has made it abundantly clear that I am not welcome? Maybe I'm just stubborn, or oblivious, or incredibly naive (I'm sure I've been called all three). I guess I stay because it still seems worth it to me, and I can still maintain a hope in something that transcends all of the junk that people shout "in the name of Jesus."

During my first year of seminary I took Greek and two semesters of New Testament. Every time I translated a passage I felt as though I'd been given a gift...that's really the best way I can explain it. Each time I translated a passage and learned about the context of the stories, and the people who wrote them, I found myself amazed by the message of liberation that was woven throughout. And then....well, I thought about what had been done in the name it.

I think I stay because....well, I am stubborn. I stay because I recognize that I, and the many justice-seeking people I've met in the church, believe that there is still potential to turn this ship around. I stay because I have seen and felt for myself the transformative power of love in a faith community. I stay because I cannot in good conscience let the only voice proclaiming the words of Jesus be a hateful one. I stay because I cannot, even in the darkest moments of my doubt, keep from believing that I am loved, and that part of being loved is to share that love.

Just as oppression makes a theological claim, so too does love. Not the kind of trivialized, greeting card, 2-Dimensional love that is laced with good feelings and artificial sweetness, but the kind of love that gives a person who has been pushed down time and again the strength to stand up, even in the face of the person who has pushed them down. It's the kind of thing that refuses to be reduced to social status or skin color or sexuality or gender identity.

Martin Buber wrote that, "We cannot avoid using power, cannot escape the compulsion to afflict the world, so let us, cautious in diction, and mighty in contradiction, love powerfully."

What better response to the hatred and oppression that is done in the name of religion than to love powerfully? I stay in the church because I believe it still has the potential for this kind of re-orienting love.