It was recently pointed out to me that I haven't posted in over a year. I'm not sure why. A lot has happened, and a lot hasn't changed. I have nothing of note to say at the moment, just random offerings, but I think it gives you an idea of where my head is right now.
German
theological vocab word of the day:Sitz Im Laben.
This is a phrase the German theologians used to shift the focus of reading the
bible from a historical reading point of view to that of reading legend.
So we aren't looking for the "What is happening in this bible story?" as much
as we are looking for the sitz im laben - "Why is this story being told?" An important distinction to make I think.
-I have just saved you about 100 pages of reading and hours of class lectures... you're welcome.
Random Quote from my music library: "It's not the end of
everything it's just the end of everything you know ... head vs heart equals bicycle vs a car."
- Bob Schneider, "Bicycle vs Car" from Lovely Creatures
Alex Quote from Friday:
"Are you going to turn that down when we get to school? Cause I'm going
to open the door, and I have to live with these people 8 hours a day 5
days a week and I don't want them to think I listen to that stuff...
It's YOUR music, not mine."
-We
were listening to Nirvana when she said this. Can I just add that it breaks my heart a
little that she disowns Nirvana which was my all time favorite band when
I was her age. At the same time, that she can't identify with Kurt
Cobain's lyrics is probably a very good thing.
Insight from my spiritual director:
The most complicated role in life I am tackling at the moment is
"mother." That the best thing I can do is to pray for my daughter every
day. The best best thing is that I reminder her, tell her, show her
that I love her every single day - no matter what. The rest is in God's
hands.
-
I found this to be really powerful and so I just wanted to pass it on
even though I realize you might have theological differences.
On a Political Note: What the hell America? Let's just stop, realize that we are human beings and then start over - this time with dignity and understanding.
Oh, Holy Mother, Divine Creator of All, we are your children, the sons and daughters of your flesh and your heart. Our very waiting for you in Advent is itself our confession.
We are waiting for you, Emmanuel, to remember your touch and the fragrance of your essence, we long for you; hear our call.
We are waiting for you, Messiah, while the proud are still powerful, the mighty are still exalted, and the hungry stand unheard at the door.
We are still waiting for your son Jesus, your incarnation in human form, because we have not known you in our siste; we have not loved you in our brother; we have not served you in our neighbor.
In this time of great meaning, in the stillness of Advent love and light, enlighten us with your presence. Draw back the veils that we might see, and harken the doors to open, that beauty and ecstasy may live in our homes and hearts more fully.
This is our hour of greatest need. Hear our deepest confession; heal us and make us new through the good tidings of your presence in our lives. Amen.
Last night, in honor of Halloween Alex wanted to watch a scary movie. I don't own any horror slasher flicks, not that I think there is inherently wrong with them I just don't enjoy having the crap scared out of me and I don't find violence to be entertaining.
So we looked to see what was offered by way of streaming on Netflix. The answer to THAT was not much, but they did have Night of the Living Dead. A classic. We got to the part where the zombies chase the girl into the house and we had to turn it off. Alex was too scared. So we watched Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein instead. Spooky, but funny - my idea of a good time. And it got me thinking. What are my all time favorite Halloween movies. I came up with my top five - the order is subject to change.
5. Spaced Invaders - I haven't found this movie anywhere recently. It was made in the early 1990s about four aliens who crash land in a small town in Iowa on Halloween night. Hilarity ensues.
4. Arsenic and Old Lace - I'm not sure how many times that play has been made into a movie, but I love the version with Cary Grant. Fun, scary and the fact that Boris Karloff plays Jonathen - the mass murdering brother who "looks like Boris Karloff" makes it even better.
3. Meet Me in St. Louis - I know, it's not a classic Halloween film, but Halloween in is in it. I can still hear Margret O'Brian crying, chocking back tears... "HE TRIED TO KILL ME!"
2. It's the Great Pumkin Charlie Brown - needs no explanation.
1. The Mummy - with Boris Karloff. To me, this is the classic 1950s horror film. Karloff is scary beyond all reason and gives you all the suspense and none of the gore.
Today, 70 percent of American households will open their doors and offer candy to strangers, most of them children; 50 percent of Americans will take photographs of family or friends in costume; and the nation as a whole will spend more than seven billion dollars.* In terms of dollars spent, it is the second most popular holiday of the year in this country, after Christmas.
For the Celtic people of Northeastern Europe, November 1st was New Year's Day, and October 31 was the last night of the year. Celts believed it was the night that spirits, ghosts, fairies and goblins freely walked the earth. Archaeologists aren't entirely sure what all the traditions were, but they believe the holiday involved bonfires, dressing up in costumes to scare away evil spirits, and offering food and drink to the spirits of family members who had come back to visit the home.
It was Pope Gregory III in the eighth century A.D. who tried to turn Halloween into a Christian holiday to divert Northern Europeans from celebrating an old pagan ritual. He made November 1st All Saints Day, and October 31 became All Hallows Eve. Instead of providing food and drink to the spirits, Christians were encouraged to provide food and drink to the poor. And instead of dressing up like animals and ghosts, Christians were encouraged to dress up like their favorite saints.
In the United States, Puritans tried to outlaw Halloween, in part because of its association with Catholicism. So it was the Irish Catholics who brought Halloween to this country, when they immigrated here in great numbers after the potato famine in the 1840's. Since the Irish were largely poor and oppressed, Halloween became a holiday for them to let off steam by pulling pranks, hoisting wagons onto barn roofs, releasing cows from their pastures, and committing all kinds of mischief involving outhouses. Treats evolved as a way to bribe the vandals and protect homes.
But by the late 1800's, Victorian women's magazines began to offer suggestions for celebrating Halloween in wholesome ways, with barn dancing and apple bobbing. And by the early 20th Century, it became a holiday for children more than adults. In 1920, the Ladies' Home Journal made the first known reference to children going door to door for candy, and by the 1950's it was a universal practice in this country. By 1999, 92 percent of America's children were trick-or-treating.
What's interesting about Halloween is that it has no real connection to the majority religion of this country, it does not celebrate an event in our nation's past, it does not involve traveling to visit family, and it doesn't even give us a day off work. But it gives us the chance to try out other identities. For one day, people can feel free to dress as the opposite gender, as criminals, as superheroes, celebrities, animals, or even inanimate objects. But Halloween retailers report that the most popular costumes remain some variation on witches, ghosts, and devils.
*according to an article I say on yahoo this morning.. and the 92 percent thing is something I read a while ago, it may not actually be 92 percent, but it was 90 something.
I know it’s been a while and this is going to sound like an odd thing to post about, but it’s been bugging me. So I’m posting.
With Mitt Romney, a Mormon, running for president there have been questions raised about the Mormon Church’s relationship to Christianity.
I want to preface what I’m about to say with this: I’m not attacking Mormons. They’re nice, good people. I’m not questioning a Mormon’s ability to be a good president. Being Christian should not be a prerequisite for holding public office, especially in America where freedom of religion is the law of the land.
I also recognize that there are lot of people who are Christian who don’t agree. I realize that there are some things that I believe that other Christians don’t. That doesn’t make me not Christian. There are some things that other Christians believe that I don’t. That doesn’t make them not Christian.
That said, Mormon’s aren’t Christian. There are key doctrines of faith that unite Christians with each other and at the same time distinguish Christianity from other faiths. These are the doctrines that make Christians not Jewish. Or Muslim. Or Buddhist. Or Mormon.
I realize that there is a lot of nuance in any faith, and I’m not at all claiming to know or understand the totality of what the Mormon Church professes. These are just key doctrines in which Christians and Mormon’s differ.
Christians teach:
Belief in one eternal triune God,
the Almighty, Jesus the Christ, and the Holy Spirit
maker of heaven and earth,
of all that is, seen and unseen.
God has no beginning and no end.
Mormons teach:
God the Father is only one of countless gods,
He used to be a man on another planet.
He became a god by following the laws and ordinances of that god in that world.
Christians teach:
Jesus is the Christ, and is “one Being with the Father”
through him all things were made.
He came down from heaven,
was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary
and became truly human. Mormons teach:
God brought one of his wives with him to this world
with whom he produces spirit children who then inhabit human bodies at birth.
The first spirit child to be born to god and his wife was Jesus.
Second was Satan.
We are all also spirit children.
Christians teach:
Jesus was crucified, died and was resurrected for the sake of our salvation. Salvation is understood to mean the forgiveness of our sins through the grace of God.
Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. Christian hope is looking forward to the day of resurrection when God’s kingdom will be united with earth and have no end.
Mormons teach:
One must follow the laws and ordinances of the Mormon church in order to earn forgiveness.
Salvation is both forgiveness of sins and the promise of universal resurrection.
Mormons can say they are Christian all they want, but that doesn’t make it so. When one group starts with a belief in one eternal God that created the universe and the other group starts with the belief in a man who became one of many gods back when he lived on a different planet, they aren’t sharing a common frame of reference.
I swear I'm going to stop posting Youtube videos as soon as the novelty of being able to watch videos on my computer wears off.
Today I bring you a song from my childhood. So I took care to find kids singing this song. I learned this song while I attended a Church of Christ elementary school. So I took care to find kids singing without instruments. We sang this song all the time, in class, in the halls in chapel, on our way to chapel, at recess, and even after recess. So I took care to find a group of kids who looked like they were passing time, and just having some fun doing it.
I don't know why I had this song stuck in my head all day... I just did. I hope it sticks in your head too.
I'm including this version just for the heck of it and so you can see the lyrics of the full version. I think the group has great harmony, but they sing the song way too fast and without the right amount of fevered excitement.
Before you watch this though, I think you need to be prepared for the image of Jesus knocking on the door... it could cause nightmares.
The day Alex was scheduled to return home she missed her flight. I love how the people who heard this wanted to know how that happened. It seems like the premise of epic tale of struggle and woe. And I guess it could have been if you think about the guy who recently died from playing is Xbox because that was what she was doing with her father two hours before her plane was scheduled to be in the air. In their defense, her father likes to point out that the airline moved the departure time up by 15 minutes.
Whatever the true cause, she missed the last flight out of Small Town California so I was just going to have to wait to see my baby. I had to WAIT. This waiting went on for DAYS. Ok - Hours. Many, many hours. As many hours as there are between 12 PM Saturday and 3 PM Sunday, which doesn't seem like many right now, but at the time, as the minutes were amplified by my baby's absence and the thought that she would miss the next flight as well, it seemed like all of the hours that ever were, a collection of time so vast that I could have witnessed the Colorado River carve out the Grand Canyon, one layer of dirt at a time.
When she finally arrived home her eyes were glued to her new iTouch. Curse you Steve Jobs and all your fancy products and seductive marketing. I guess on the bright side of things she wasn't all that bothered when I left her a few days later to attend a gathering of Exploring Candidates. It was interesting and refreshing to meet other people who are heeding the call to ordained ministry. And the fact that the Candidates got to take the written portion of the psychological test assessment together made the three hour ordeal just a little bit easier because not so secretly everyone knows we're bat-shit-crazy. Why else would we be there?
As fun as that was - the best part of the weekend had to Sunday after noon when we went to see Smurfs. I'm not saying that you should rush to your nearest theater so see this one. Its cheesy ball and predictable and just plan dumb in parts, but as a person who was raised by Smurfs and Doogie Howser, M.D. it was an opportunity to relive the best parts of childhood for 90 minutes. The day they remake He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra Princese of Power my life will have come full circle.
I got really excited the other day when I was watching FOX NEWS of all networks and they cited a poll that shows 59% of Americans think we should leave Afghanistan now that Osama Bin Laden is dead. This is progress. I thought, the American people are coming around. The American people are starting to motivated less by fear and more by rational thinking.
I thought that until I was reading an Article on NPR.org today which cited a poll that shows 41% of Americans believe dooms day will arrive by the year 2050. That's almost half. Almost half of the American population think that dooms day is just 39 years away. That's in my life time. Almost half of the people living in the United States of America - and industrialized, secularized nation - think that I'll only be 67 years old when Jesus starts raising people from the dead. According to 41% of the Americans who answered the poll cited by NPR I will see zombies walk this earth before I die.
That blows my mind. Is that the divide in this country? Fifty-nine percent of us are rational, thinking people and the other forty-one percent are just bat shit crazy.
Today is Ash Wednesday. My evening will end with a service in which a United Methodist Minister will ask the congregation to come to the altar. People will go to the altar and kneel and the minister will dip the side of his thumb in ashes. He will take the purported ashes of last year’s palm branches and spread them on congregants’ foreheads in the form of the cross. The gathering of unholy sinners will leave the red carpet and stained glass windows of the sanctuary with ashes emblazoned on their foreheads and feeling just a little holier and just a little subconscious about flipping the bird at the guy who cuts them off in traffic. You can’t flip someone off if you are holy.
I do not start this day a holy person. I woke up well rested having fallen asleep at 9:30. Being a secretary is exhausting. Handling ten tasks at once for eight hours is exhausting, but soaking in a hot bath for thirty minutes proves restorative so I soaked. I soaked and talked on the phone and went to bed and slept soundly. Waking up at five o’clock in the morning is easy when you have slept soundly and so this morning I woke up and was ready for the day to begin. I anticipate lunch with an old friend as I eat my Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast and marvel at the quiet darkness as I drive through the neighborhood, depositing my daughter safely with her grandparents. The road out of town was quiet and soft in the early morning glow of street lamps. My car drives itself as I listen to James Naughton read the words of Earnest Hemingway's Moveable Feast in his deep baritone voice. Heading east into town I am hypnotized by this baritone and I listen even if I did not care for Hemingway’s words and I wonder how many people in their twenties even know who Gertrude Stein was or why his portrait of her is so stunning.
This trance is broken when I finally slip out the door of the downtown garage and onto the street that is full of people and the air that is full of garbage and bus fumes. These streets are not quiet. Cleaning women are making their way home and typing women are making their way to work. The only men I see are wearing hard hates and blue jeans. Men in suites don’t come to work this early or else they never walk on the street.
And so this day begins. This day, the first of the holy season of reflection and preparation, begins like any other with simple peace. In the quiet God’s simple assurance of unconditional love speaks volumes. In placing ashes on our foreheads we wear the grace of God and Her love feels absolute and forever. So what happens between the quiet and the ashes? What happens when I walk through air that is full of garbage and bus fumes? God's love is total, unconditional, absolute and forever. The state of grace—God's attitude toward us—is eternal. I am the one who changes with fumes. To receive the love of God is to recognize it is all around us, above us and beneath us; speaking to us through every person, every flower, every bag of trash, every trial and situation.
For the next forty days I give myself the challenge to remember this simple statement once written by the Franciscan monk Richard Rohr - Stop knocking on the door: You’re already inside!
It is Christmas Morning, but of course you know that. Unless you live ten miles up a box canyon deep in the Wasatch Range with only your dog Boomer and are demented from drinking bad water, you are inhaling Christmas morning air and "Joy to the World" is stuck in your head like a five-inch nail.
On Christmas Eve the Church was packed for the 3:00 service, the 4:30 and 6:00 candle light services were beautiful. Slient night drift through the rafters. I left the church and listened to NPR share the Christmas music of Olde England while I drove to Old Navey and bought a new pair of jeans and a couple of shirts. For myself.
I know its Christmas and we are all to be selfless and giving, but with my daughter away I am indulging in simple acts of selfishness. For example if I feel like if I feel like having a mocha, I just step into a Starbucks and get one. A small one, no pastry, but it feels luxurious. Why mocha? How does it further God's work on earth? I don't know. I just like it.
I had planned to return to church for the 11:00pm communion service, but after driving around I found myself near an old Catholic church. I slipped in the back in time for Mass in Spanish. Mass in Spanish is pretty wonderful. It's like a big family reunion at which I know nobody and so nobody is mad at me. Nothing said in Spanish offends me doctrinally or any other way. I squeeze into the crowd, under the placid stone faces of saints, the sweet smell of burning wax and a hundred varieties of cologne, and feel the religious fervor, and tears come to my eyes, and I light a candle, say a wordless prayer, and out into the cold rain I go.
A woman gets a keener sense of the divine in a church that is not your own. Maybe Luther and Calvin and Jan Hus and all them were dead wrong and literacy is not the key nor an understanding of Scripture, and maybe the essence of Christmas is dumb childlike wonder and the more you think about it, the less you understand. Which makes me glad I am no smarter than I am. Let's go have Christmas lunch.
Sistine Chapel painted by Michelangelo, 1512 photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Today is All Saints Day, an observance that can be traced back to the reign of Pope Gregory III in the eight century. In 1512 Pope Julius II chose this day to display Michelangelo's paintings on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for the first time. The chapel itself was built about twenty-five years earlier, and various Renaissance painters were commissioned to paint frescoes on the walls. It was Pope Julius II who commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling.
Michelangelo was 33 years old at the time, and he tried to point out to the Pope that he was known for his sculpture, not his painting, but the Pope wouldn't listen. So Michelangelo used his skills as a sculptor to make the two-dimensional ceiling look like a series of three-dimensional scenes - a technique that was relatively new at the time. It took him four years to finish the job, between 1508 and 1512. He worked from a scaffold 60 feet above the floor, and he covered about 10,000 square feet of surface. Every day fresh plaster was laid over a part of the ceiling and Michelangelo had to finish painting before the plaster dried.
For several centuries, art historians had believed that Michelangelo was more interested in form than in color, because the frescoes he painted were so dark and dull. Then, over a ten-year period during the 1980's, a group of restoration experts removed hundreds of years of dirt, smoke, and varnish from the Sistine Chapel's ceiling, and it turned out that the frescoes were some of the most colorful paintings of the whole Renaissance.
The German writer Wolfgang Von Goethe wrote, "We cannot know what a human being can achieve until we have seen [the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel]."
Centuries of saints, known and unknown have pass through this world and touched our lives directly and indirectly. Some of these saints I have known as personal friends of mine, some I have known only slightly and some I never had the pleasure to meet. We cannot know what human beings can become of until we honor what those who came before.
I have to say that something I find frustrating is the idea that there is a moment when a person is called to do something. Even if it isn't a lighting bolt there is suppose to be a divine whisper or a specific mentor or moment when the final piece of a thousand piece puzzle lands in just the right place. I don't feel "called" into ministry. I feel drawn.
Perhaps it is just semantics, but to me the words are different. I don't think I am fulfilling a call as much as I am continuing a journey to discover what it means to not just believe in God, but to love God, to travel with God, to see the world as God has created it.
I don’t know how to look at God. I don’t know where to look. I don’t know what to look for. It is God in us that loves God. And all we can do is get ourselves out of the way. It is the Spirit in me that recognizes the Spirit. It is the body of Jesus that I am that loves Jesus. The eyes that can accept God in me and the eyes that can accept God in you are the same set of eyes. That is how all self love and other love is finally one love and from the same Source. How we do one is how we do the other.
The more I have wrapped my mind around this idea, the more I have felt drawn into ministry. In speaking was a pastor about telling my call story I was advised not to focus on the "why", but to just explain the "how", but for me I think the two are inseparable. I have been drawn towards ministry as I have come to see God inside of me and inside of others.
I got lost at church when I was eleven. I wasn't really lost. I knew I was sitting in the Associate Minister's office. My parents didn't know that and at that time in my life, they were the ones who determine who and what were lost. It was three weeks before my Confirmation Class was going to be asked to stand in front of our congregation to confirm our baptism and become full members of the church. I had decided that I would rather not. I would rather not be confirmed in my faith. I had been reading a lot of books on the subject and I wasn't completely convinced yet. I had read about the early church, the history of how the Bible came to be. I had read about the historical Jesus and wondered what the difference between the myth of Jesus, divine human and the myths of all the other divine humans actually was. If the answer was it was because the story of Jesus was in the Bible, then I really wanted out. I was sure there was nothing remarkably sacred about the book at all.
As I sat in Associate Minister's office explaining that I had too many questions to confirm the truth of anything, he smiled and nodded his head. He totally agreed. There are a lot of questions one has to ask and the confirmation of faith is not something to be entered into lightly. Associate Minister agreed that confirming a person so full of doubt would be misguided and wrong, but then he said something else. He said that I would never not doubt. That if I was looking for a divine burning bush or a person who could explain all questions away, I was in search of the wrong thing. Associate Minister explained that doubt is the most important part of faith. Those who don't doubt their faith, their motives behind faith and what they are doing in the name of their faith are scary. He told me to think it over some more. Then he called my frantic and pissed off parents and drove me home.
That was the first time I realized that faith isn't supposed to be something you KNOW like you know two plus two is four. Faith isn't something you can memorize with flash cards or underlined in a book.
That was also the first time I ever thought about being a minister. How fun would it be to sit around and have theological and philosophical discussions every Sunday afternoon? That's not what ministers do with most of their time. It didn't take long for me to figure that one out. Ministry is a really complicated thing. A really complicated thing that involves people. I hated people. Ministry was not for me.
* As a side note, I was confirmed with the rest of my confirmation class. **As a double side note, this is Part I of a multi-part series in which I will try to articulate why I feel that I have been called into ministry.
There has been a lot of talk on a national scale the last few weeks about bulling. With the advent of the Internet bulling has become this thing that doesn't just exist in school or on the walk home, thanks to twitter, Facebook and other social media, its something that can be now be shared with a world wide audience. When a kid, any kid, that is struggling to find out who they are suddenly finds themselves the butt of an international joke, I can see how they would feel desperate.
I was taunted while I was in school. I wouldn't really go so far as to say that I was bullied, because I never really felt physically threatened. I was an outsider because I always identified more with adults than I did with kids my own age. I liked watching the news and reading about politics. I knew all the answers in history class, could read a novel in one day and I spent a lot of my free time playing with orchestras. All of that is stuff that doesn't earn you a lot of friends in the school yard, but I was never completely alone. I had friends who were just as freakish in one way or another as I was. We were all picked on in equal measure for various reasons so I never felt like I was being especially singled out, but I had friends who did take it personally and still hold a lot of the emotional scares from it.
Any time a person is bullied its wrong and horrible. When it comes to gay youth, however, our society has so many institutionalized anti-gay policies that reinforces the idea in bullies' heads that it's okay to treat gay people as if they are worth less than straight people and their mistreatment is somehow justified. It's everything from gay men not being allowed to donate blood, to gay men and women not being allowed to serve openly in the military, to gay marriage not being recognized nationwide to gay adults not being able to adopt nationwide. Congress has even battled for years to exclude attacks against gay people as hate crimes. Main stream religions all voice an anti-gay worldview. Institutional Christianity requires that LGBT people loathe themselves and their sexuality as the minimum price for admission to the Feast. Most LGBTs shook the dust of the Church off their feet a long time ago. That there are still any openly gay Christians at all is testimony to the power of the Holy Spirit.
With the recent up swing in LGBT kids being bullied to death, Dan Savage has launched the It Gets Better Project on Youtube to let LGBT kids know that there is life for them once they leave high school. So many of the videos are really inspiring. It's important that anyone who is a victim of bullying for any reason realize that ending one's life is not the answer. There is so much to live for and to experience and to give up before you ever really get started is a horrible waste. Discovering who you are is a beautiful thing and you can find a community and a family that is going to love you for you and you will be able to thrive. It's worth going through the hard times and the truly bad moments to experience that.
Alex and I arrived at our church parking lot on Saturday morning and walked into the almost cliched crowed of kids standing around in clusters, about to board the white church school bus, their luggage piled in a near by van, this is a large Life Event. Kids from nice homes are being abandoned by their parents in broad day light and sent off to church camp in the hopes that it will jump start the process of the confirmation of their Christian faith.
Most Christian denominations that practice infant baptism, like us United Methodist, have some means of forcing their twelve year olds, to take an oath of confirmation so that they can become, "full members" of the church. For us, this is a slow and life defining process. There is more drama in this parking lot than the most dramatic pictures on the silver screen. At twelve most kids are struggling to decided who they are and where they fit and now we add on the question of Who You Are In Christ. Its a loaded question that know sane twelve year old who takes it seriously can answer.
In moments like these I am reminded that my childhood is not far removed from Alex's. Five years separate the moment I was confirmed in the church and her birth. That is insane when I think about that way. I like to think that my involvement in these things do a lot to remind the other parents that no matter what they do, no matter where they live, these defenseless, clueless, helpless children will grow up all too soon. Parents are defenseless when it comes to protecting their children from perhaps that one bad choice that will forever alter the course of their lives.
When I was that twelve year old kid ready to launch into the world of campfire songs and wacky messy games and rope course team buildings, I had imagined that I would grow up to be musician who lived in the streets of New York City and had the power to magically changed the world. But life didn't happen that way. Instead I turned sixteen and had a baby. I eventually broke up with my baby's father and graduated from college with a degree that would allow me to work in law firm and assit in the defense of billion dollar corporations. Instead of moving to New York City I have stayed close to my neighborhood and my family. Instead of questioning my faith in God for all eternity (as I was sure I was distended to do when I almost entirely refused to be confirmed at twelve) my faith has become the one thing of which I am certain.
Some people believe that God has revealed His Truth to us and not other - the barbarians - and it is His will that we Train our children to know his Truth that they might grow to vanquish the others and be protected when death and destruction rain down from Heaven. Others believe that our understanding of God is incomplete but that He has bestowed Grace and this beautiful world on us, and other gifts, which should be shared, and we should walk softly and give thanks and praise His Name.
I'm not sure how we did on the softly part, but this weekend we tought the children to do a lot of walking, and sharing and appreciating of beauty - even those ants... and the roach in the cabin. While I came away from the weekend exhausted and I sit here Monday afternoon with a body that is reminding me rock climbing was never meant to be my calling, I give thanks for this day and the weekend, which was perfect.
I'm alive! Somewhere between a mini wine tasting adventure on Saturday and waking up on Sunday, I got sick. I was sick and I couldn't breath. That combination made for a holiday weekend of drug experimentation and fog. Today, is the first time I have truly felt that cloud lift. I'm not sure how much of my wine adventure is still left with me after all the sinus altering substances I have consumed, but I'll try to see if I can come up with some lessons from the day spent on east Texas roads.
Without a doubt, the biggest lesson I learned this weekend is that you don't have to spend thousands of dollars on stainless steal holding tanks and solid oak barrels in order to open a winery. I learned that its all that pricey equipment that makes boutique wine cost between $25 and $30 a bottle. I learned that you can accomplish the same essential process using plastic barrels that are usually used to make things like orange juice. That this kind of second hand equipment makes it possible for a boutique wine maker, who no doubt loves his craft, to charge a mere $8 a bottle.
I came away from that experience, having tasted the plastic wine, and listened to the wine maker explain his love with a new appreciation for the expensive equipment. I know every word from that wine maker's mouth was meant to make us see that we have been ripped off all these years. That these wine boutiques are blowing money on "over priced" equipment and passing the costs on to us. I learned this weekend that not all wine is created equal. One processes is not as good as the next. Yes, it is possible to make wine in a plastic barrels, but if you want to enjoy a glass of boutique wine with dinner, $25 might be a good price to pay.
This was an interesting lesson for me. I'm not a wine connoisseur. When I buy wine to take to a party I usually follow two main guidelines: Label and Price. The bottle has got to have a cute label, and if the wine is apply named, its even better. The last bottle of wine I bought was named "Procrastination" and it cost less than $8. How could I have passed that one up? Point being, I have had my share of massed produced cheap wine. I have no idea how they make it, but I have a feeling that its not made in plastic.
And now that I've ranted about plastic wine I feel rather shallow, but I can't help it. I turned on the news this morning to hear the BurnTheKoranGuy making demands and our public officials all but begging him on bended knee to reconsider his actions. I'm tired of thinking. I'm tried of trying to form reasonable arguments with unreasonable people. I'm just done. Can we not, as rational people, just all agree that the terrorist of Al-Qaeda do not represent all Muslims and Muslim nations and the wacko BurnTheKoranGuy and his church do not represent all Christians in America? Apparently we can't.
So for now, while I feel like mental Swiss cheese I just want to laugh at plastic wine and the good intentions of the man who makes it.
This Sunday will mark the Christian feast of Pentecost. Celebrated since the 3rd Century, Pentecost commemorates the decent of the Holy Spirit onto the Apostles as tongues of flames. Pentecost - from the Greek word for fifty days - falls fifty days, or the seventh Sunday, after Easter.
I'm not sure why, but the coming of Pentecost has reminded me, more than any other Christian celebration this year, that our lives are cyclical, and the seasons come and go as if we were simply turning a giant wheel. I suppose its that there is something found in Pentecost, flaming tongues not withstanding, that is... its ending. After this the church falls into ordinary time. Ordinary time is what happens when God isn't being born as a baby or walking out of a grave or lighting our heads on fire. No, those things aren't ordinary.
Ordinarily we go about our daily lives and, unless we are looking for something divine, we probably won't notice anything miraculous at all. Ordinary is what happens when we arrive at work every day, do our jobs and then return home to fix dinner, read books and go to bed. Life takes place in the ordinary. While we celebrate these feasts as a way to remember that God is out there and the Divine has moved in unbelievable ways, I find that I am called to remember that the Divine is always present. Always nudging us in subtle ordinary ways. If there is one thing that I draw from the bizarre story told in the second chapter of Acts it is that we all speak different languages. We all experience the world in different ways. Life is certainly not one fits all, and if the story of Pentecost is to be believed, God isn't either.
I might be alone when I say this, but I have never heard a burning bush speak my name, or had a blinding light tell me to change. I have plenty of things that I am unsure of, but what makes me love and seek the Divine are the constant reminders of the generosity and mysteries of life. The poet reading their work, cheap wine at a not- so-fine restaurant, art in the gallery, and musicians in the park. The inspiring novel read at the bus stop amid gas fumes and the drawn faces of the passersby. I have done a lot of things that I regret, but they are also why I cling to the mercy of God's grace. I'm pretty sure that most people can learn mercy with out screwing up as much as I have, but I don't think I could have come to love God in any other way. At times my life has seemed insurmountable, but I mount up every ordinary morning and ride.
I came to church as a pagan this Easter, though wearing a Christian skirt and white blouse, and sat in a the balcony and ran the power point slides that project all our hymns and confessions on big screens, and there I was, a skeptic in the hen house, thinking weaselish thoughts.
This often happens around Easter. God, in His humorous way, sometimes schedules high holy days for a time when your faith is at low tide, a mud flat strewn with newspapers and children's beach toys, and while everyone else is all joyful and shiny among the lilies and praising up a storm, there you are, snarfling and grumbling. Which happened to me this year.
God knows all about it so I may as well tell you. Holy Week is a good time to face up to the question: Do we really believe in that story or do we just like to hang out with nice people and listen to organ music? There are advantages, after all, to being in the neighborhood of people who love their neighbors. If your car won't start on a cold morning, you've got friends.
I don't think it will come as a shock to anyone who has read the Christan Gospels that clearly, no one knows what really happened that first Easter Sunday. Anyone who can count may wonder how we fit three days between a death on Friday night and a resurrection on Sunday morning. Did God not mean three literal twenty four hour time periods? The Jews got stone tablets and the Mormons arranged for an angel to bring them their holy text, but ours was hammered out through a long contentious political process, sort of like the tax code, and that's something you don't care to know more about.
This Saturday I gathered in a circle of old friends to reflect on Easter. Turns out, they don't believe that a physical resurrection took place. There is so much power in the symbol, isn't that enough? So many stories in the bible are symbolic, why does this one have to be real? If the story wasn't meant to be literal, 2,000 years of believers have gotten something fundamentally wrong. Something deep inside me says there are some very logical people trying to have everything both ways. He was either God incarnate or he wasn't. He was either physically raised from the dead or he just died. What happens to the story when you chop off the fairy tale ending?
There is comfort for the doubter in the Passion story. You are not alone. Jesus's cry from the cross was a cry of incredulity. The apostle denied even knowing Jesus three times. The guy spent years with Jesus, saw the miracles up close, the raising of Lazarus, the demons cast out, the sick healed, the water-walking trick, all of the special effects, but when the cards were down, he said, "Who? Me? No way." He repented. I would too, but not quite yet. Skepticism is a stimulant, not to be repressed. It is an antidote to smugness and the great glow of satisfaction one gains from being right.
You know the self-righteous — I've been one myself — the little extra topspin they put on the truth, their ostentatious modesty, the pleasure they take in being beautifully studied and cool and correct when others are falling apart. Jesus was rougher on those people than He was on the adulterers and prostitutes. So I will sit in the doubter's chair for a while and see what is to be learned back here.
Today is Maundy Thursday, or Holy Thursday, commemorating the Last Supper Jesus held with his disciples before his arrest and crucifixion. The name "Maundy" comes from the Latin word Mandatum, or commandment, because at the Last Supper Jesus gave his disciples a new commandment: to love one another.
Mary Poppins and Alice United Kingdom, Epcot ~by Katy, 2007
