Monday, December 24, 2007

The Lord Directs the Steps

"The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps."
— Proverbs 16:9

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A Prayer from Martin Luther

Look, Lord,
on an empty vessel that needs to be filled.
In faith I am weak—strengthen me.
In love I am cold—warm me and make me fervent
so that my love may go out to my neighbor.
I doubt and am unable to trust you completely.
Lord, strengthen my faith and trust in you.
You are all the treasure I possess.
I am poor, you are rich,
and you came to have mercy on the poor.
I am a sinner, you are goodness.
From you I can receive goodness,
but I can give you nothing.
Therefore I shall stay with you. Amen. — Martin Luther

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Hidden in Christ (quote)

"A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man should have to seek Him first to find her." — Maya Angelou

Sunday, December 2, 2007

The Golden Compass

I've tried to avoid the debate that has surrounded the release of the movie The Golden Compass. However, while avoiding homework and browsing Facebook, I came across a group called "Do NOT support 'The Golden Compass.'" It currently has 100,998 members.

OK. I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (of which The Golden Compass is the first installment, followed by The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) as a kid and loved it. I have the entire trilogy in audio format on my iPod. I've read other books by Philip Pullman and loved them as well. I'm definitely going to go see the movie.

Somehow, even though I was immersed in Pullman's writing as a child and love his work to this day, I remain a steadfast Christian. The fact that the children in the book supposedly kill God miraculously had no effect on my faith.

Then again, I don't think it's all that miraculous. How many Christians do you think have read or seen The Wizard of Oz? I couldn't count how many times I've seen that movie even if I tried. Why do I bring this up? Well, just think about it: at the end, the wizard, very clearly a God figure whom Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion (oh, and Toto, too) have travelled far to see, is revealed as a hoax. The curtain is pulled back and the Wizard of Oz is just a pathetic little man hiding behind smoke and mirrors.

Does anyone see the similarity behind L. Frank Baum's fraudulent wizard-god and Philip Pullman's story? Neither exactly typifies the Christian narrative, but The Wizard of Oz is one of the best-loved stories of a generation (or two...or three?), and I have yet to see anyone revoke their faith because they saw the movie or read Baum's fantasy novel.

I think there's a deeper issue in here of a psychotic need felt by some Christians to shield themselves and their children from exposure to atheistic themes in film and literature. Harry Potter got a bad rap, too. Once my dad was criticized by another pastor for allowing his children to read these anti-Christian books—he claimed that a child who read Harry Potter would have everything he or she needed to become a witch or a warlock. My father replied, "You know, my kids have read those books many times, and they just can't get that broom off the ground."

People, this is ridiculous. No child is going to walk out of The Golden Compass and decide that he or she should go kill God, just as no one who saw The Wizard of Oz in 1939 decided that God must actually be an old man behind a curtain. Go see the movie. Take your kids. They'll enjoy it. Let them read the books. Heaven forbid you should, well, forbid your child to read. Don't be so uptight. Faith is all about trust, and there is no trust in the line of thinking that leads people to protest a kid's movie because it might threaten their faith or their children's.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Prayer from Saint Anselm

O Lord my God.
Teach my heart this day
where and how to find you.
You have made me and re-made me,
and you have bestowed on me
all the good things I possess,
and still I do not know you.
I have not yet done
that for which I was made.

Teach me to seek you,
for I cannot seek you
unless you teach me,
or find you
unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire;
let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you;
let me love you when I find you.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Tired of Speaking Sweetly (poem)

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a "playful drunken mood"
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town. — Hafiz

Logical Fallacies and Faith

I get into trouble in debates sometimes. I'm perfectly capable of using rational, deductive methods to make my point, but I seem determined to abandon all reason at a certain point in every argument. Sometimes, however, I think faith calls for that. I would never pit faith and reason against each other; they can always work in tandem, and at times when they seem divergent, they seem to me to be occupy such different planes that it's like comparing apples and oranges—or maybe apples and elephants. In any case, I went back and looked up some of those formulaic logical fallacies I learned to avoid in high school philosophy class and found that two of them—appeal to emotion and appeal to tradition—could get me into a lot of trouble with a philosopher but are valuable, maybe even necessary, within Christianity.

The one that gets me most often is the appeal to emotion. I'll follow a logical argument and hold my own for a while, but at a certain point, it all breaks down and I make a flot-out appeal to the other person's heart. I know I can't stop bringing up this issue lately, but the place where thisgets me the most is in the homosexuality debate. I can be convinced by logic of the soundness of church tradition (which will come up later, obviously) and the sanctity of marriage, but in the end I always want to ask—what about Christ's mandate to love your neighbor? What do I do when a dear friend senses a call to ordination and is unable to pursue it—and I don't know whether to support him/her? Although in a strictly logical argument, my comment would be out of line and fallacious, I firmly believe that these questions are vital within Christianity. The way our logic causes us to treat other member of the body of Christ matters a great deal, and so I will not relinquish my insistence on the appeal to emotion even—and especially—when the logic is so sound.

I found it amusing that the appeal to tradition was listed in the fallacies I looked up; I had forgotten about that one. I was recently told by a friend that to resort to tradition (again on the issue of homosexuality) was ultimately a cop-out. I think this is incorrect, and I think this is what the fallacy of appeal to tradition assumes. However, 2,000 years of tradition cannot simply be ignored; we may indeed need to wrestle with it, and sometimes changes should be made—take the ordination of women, for example—but to discount it entirely is foolish and completely against the nature and continuity of the Christian faith over time. In the case of homosexuality, the appeal to emotion and the appeal to tradition both come up a lot and are often at odds one with the other. Both are valuable and need to be considered as more than logical fallacies.

Just to add on to the two fallacies I've discussed, another good one is the Ad Hominem fallacy. This is when an attack is made on the person making an argument, and that attack presumes to make the argument itself invalid. I see this a lot in Christianity. People are often turned off of the church because its members say one thing and do another. Philosophically speaking, hypocritical or inconsistent actions do not discount the credibility of the argument, but in the church, it matters that the words and the actions match up. Certainly no one is going to be able to have a perfect record in any given area; we all struggle with our sexuality in one way or another, so taking the moral high ground should never be the goal or the method of the debate on homosexuality. On one hand, we cannot claim that because Bob is a sinner, Bob cannot tell me not to sin; on the other hand, Bob should be aware of his sin and honest about it, because it does matter.

Just some thoughts about logic and faith I wanted to throw out there...

Friday, November 23, 2007

Thank you, Captain Obvious

I recently had a blog post on Theolog, Christian Century's blog, that was a shorter version of my post on 10/25. One thing I learned through the comments I received (and they came from a variety of people and opinions) is that a lot of people think that it is obvious that (in this example) homosexuality is wrong, or, conversely, that it is obvious that homosexuality is fine. What happens is that you get arguments over full inclusion, ordination and marriage rights among people whose basic assumptions about the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality itself are sharply at odds.

On many issues, though not on the question of homosexuality, I am often one of those people who presumes that certain tenets of the faith are self-evident. A lot of this comes about because I have grown up in the church and am—in some cases, but not all—more familiar with the scriptural and/or theological arguments surrounding an issue than your average person. Once I got to college, I started learning that this tendency towards the obvious is not always helpful. Suddenly I was around intelligent Christians who thought that certain things about faith were perfectly obvious—things about which I thought in polar opposite terms, which I, too, thought were obvious.

One of my friends supports the death penalty from a Christian perspective and claims that its use preserves the right to life. Just hearing this makes my head spin because it seems like such a blatant internal contradiction. However, my friend thinks his reasoning is perfectly sound, and when I counter his point, it's not as if it's the first time he's thought about it from a different perspective—he's heard similar views before, he's thought about it before. I will maintain that his argument is inconsistent, but if I am not careful about how I approach the argument, I shut off all further debate, which seems to me to be ultimately unhelpful.

What this calls for, I think, is a certain level of intellectual generosity—something, I admit, I'm not very good at practicing. Especially on the issue of homosexuality, plenty of people have thought long and hard about it and crafted scripturally based arguments that end up being utterly divergent in many cases. One does not have to relinquish one's own position in order to seek to understand another point of view, and one does not have to agree with the other person, but as Christians I believe it is important that even—and especially—when we hold to seeming extremes of interpretation, we cannot do so without allowing space for the other side to articulate its points, even if we think their ideas ludicrous.

The heart of the Gospel is not that we need to prove ourselves right in opposition to all those who are wrong. I am by no means calling for a wishy-washy universality or relativity of belief (heaven forbid); I am not saying that some things are not ultimately right, because some things are. The Trinity, Christ's death and resurrection, Christ's divinity and humanity—these things, and other dogma outlined in the Nicene Creed, are non-negotiable. However, where it concerns the adiaphora of the Christian faith, we must be able to understand, if not necessarily embrace, other points of view—or risk the fragmentation of Christ's body, the Church.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Confession

I recently went on a retreat with the Catholic Student Center here at Duke. The Awakening retreat happens every semester, and Duke just had their ninth one. Texas A&M, who passed the retreat tradition on to our school, will have Aggie Awakening #82 in the spring.

Although the whole weekend was an incredible experience for me—in ways I could not have anticipated or even hoped for—one thing in particular that we did the first night of Awakening got me thinking. After we had all been introduced, we ate dinner and heard a talk from a fellow student. Then the priest, Father Joe, stood up and announced that we would be participating in the sacrament of reconciliation that night.

I was fascinated. Having grown up United Methodist, I was used to the communal prayer of confession that we say together during worship, so the idea of confessing individually to a priest was new for me. I asked a friend if I could confess even if I were Protestant (the only one there, I should add), and when he said yes, I went in to see one of the priests who were stationed in various rooms around our retreat site.

As soon as I sat down, I announced that I was Protestant and had no idea what I was doing. The priest was very friendly and helpful, explaining the practice of confession to me before listening to me talk. When I was done, he said that they usually assign penance. Penance?! I thought. How cool!! I had to say three Our Fathers and was told to work on a relationship I had confessed to have been neglecting.

Since this experience, I've thought a lot about what it means to confess one's sins, and whether Protestants are missing out on an important part of the Christian life by foregoing individual confession. Certainly to confess the corporate sin of the church in one voice is vital, especially before taking part in the Eucharist. Then, too, many Protestants participate in accountability groups that require them to be honest about their sins and to be held to a standard of Christian living by fellow believers.

I wonder if it would behoove all Christians, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, to confess not only to the sins of the whole body of Christ but also to their own specific sins. Confessing to that priest encouraged me to take specific actions to ameliorate a situation with a loved one. On the ride home, I listened as one of the freshmen I was driving called her parents and asked their permission to take part in an activity about which she had been lying to them. She had confessed this to the priest, he had told her to be truthful with them—and she had done it.

The corporate prayer of confession may be an important way for a worshiping body to acknowledge shared sin, but does it motivate the individual to make real changes to combat his or her own shortcomings? Even if it means doing something as simple as being in truth-telling relationships of Christian accountability, I think Protestants especially ought to explore possibilities for confessing individual sin and being held responsible for answering to them.

This Is My Father's World (hymn)

This is my Father's world.
O let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet. — Maltbie D. Babcock

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Equipping the Called (quote)

"God does not call the equipped; he equips the called." — Unknown

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

A Poem by Emily Dickinson

It was too late for Man —
But early, yet, for God —
Creation — impotent to help —
But Prayer — remained — Our Side

How excellent the Heaven —
When Earth — cannot be had —
How hospitable — then — the face
Of our Old Neighbor — God —

"Miss Emily D," as my professor calls her

Peace Is the Opposite of Security (quote)

"How does peace come about? Through a system of political treaties? Through the investment of international capital in different countries? Through the big banks, through money? Or through universal peaceful rearmament in order to guarantee peace? Through none of these, for the single reason that in all of them peace is confused with safety. There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means to give oneself altogether to the law of God, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross. Which of us can say he or she knows what it might mean for the world if one nation should meet the aggressor, not with weapons in hand, but praying, defenseless, and for that very reason protected by 'a bulwark never failing'?" — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Church and the People of the World

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Tegel prison, summer 1944

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Love = Love

I have a t-shirt that says, "Gay? Fine by me." I have another t-shirt with stick figures in 3 pairs—one a man and a woman, another two men, the third two women—with the caption "Love = Love." I was raised to love people no matter what they look like or what they think or do, and for that I am grateful. But I don't wear those shirts often, because, for the first time in my life, I seem to be on the fence on an issue.

As seminary and possibly ordination waver on my horizon, I am finding that I have to think much more seriously about issues that I previously took quite lightly. As I have observed the strife in the Anglican Communion over the issue of ordaining a gay bishop and, more importantly—and at the heart of the argument—scriptural authority, I have begun to see how much is at stake. More recently, the question of ordaining gays has been brought very close to home as a young woman I know who wants to be ordained in the Methodist Church has come out as a lesbian.

To see people that I know and love being denied the fullness of their pursuit of what they perceive as God's call on their lives is troubling at the very least. I cannot ignore my church's stance on the issue, much less the scriptural basis in which it is grounded. The fact of the matter is that the Methodist Church, of which I am a part, does not ordain gays. Especially if I pursue ordination myself, there will be times when I will have to adhere to the tradition of my denomination, which may mean denying support to friends who want to be ordained. It breaks my heart to think about having to do so.

The church I attend in Durham, NC is a diverse congregation, and that includes diversity in sexual orientation and gender identification. I know that there are some people in that church who believe that homosexuality is a mortal sin, but they still share hymnals with our gay members and hug them during the passing of the peace—they may not agree with their life choices, but they love them unconditionally.

It seems to me that this is the church's best response to the question of homosexuality. A person's sexual orientation—not to mention race, age, gender, etc.—should never prevent them from being included in the worshiping body of Christ. I have seen myself what it can look like for a church to, as the old adage goes, love the sinner and hate the sin. If it were not possible to do so, how could any of us ever relate to one another? We know all too well that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

But several questions still linger. Why is homosexuality portrayed as so grievous a sin by the church when adulterers and the like, even among the clergy, are not always dealt with consistently? Is the issue of ordaining gays eventually going to follow the trajectory that the question of ordaining women did (at least among most Protestant churches), or is this a different kind of question? Are we really accepting gays into the body of Christ if we love them unconditionally but do not allow them to be ordained?

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Showing His Need (quote)

"He prays more by showing his need to the merciful shepherd than by any beseeching." — From Saint Anselm's Prayer to St. Peter

Friday, October 19, 2007

Images of Forgiveness

Washington National Cathedral, D.C.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

No One Is Beyond Redemption

This article was first published in Religio: An Undergraduate Journal of Christian Thought at Duke, in April 2007.

The United Methodist Church, of which I am a part, has stood against the death penalty for over 50 years. Many other denominations take a similar stance. American Christians especially must grapple with this issue because the U.S. is one of few developed countries that has retained the death penalty over the years. As the modern world has advanced, the overwhelming trend among industrialized nations has been to abolish the death penalty. Capital punishment is not practiced anywhere in Western Europe; in fact, this is a prerequisite to membership in the European Union. The company that America keeps in its use of capital punishment is less than flattering: other nations with high rates of execution include Iran, Iraq, Sudan, China, and Pakistan, countries whose human rights records are not among their best qualities.

The demographics of those against whom capital punishment is used in America evince a disturbing trend. A huge percentage of convictions are handed down to defendants who could not afford an attorney, and a majority of death row inmates are people of color. In 80% of capital cases, the victim is white, but only half of homicide cases nationwide involve white victims. Amnesty International's website summarizes this in a damning statement: "From initial charging decisions to plea bargaining to jury sentencing, African-Americans are treated more harshly when they are defendants, and their lives are accorded less value when they are victims" (www.amnestyusa.org). The fact that the people who are executed for crimes in this country are those who are already marginalized by society evinces the ease with which one can dehumanize criminals and distance oneself from the humanity of the accused.

Much time and energy has been spent on finding more humane ways of carrying out executions. Regardless of the extent to which certain methods of execution may or may not be "humane," the death penalty is an incontrovertibly violent act. Violence entails doing bodily harm to another person, and I can think of no bodily harm more permanent than death. One does not need the example of Eduard Delacroix's grisly death in the movie The Green Mile, or the real life example of Angel Nieves Diaz, whose 2006 execution in Florida took over half an hour, to recognize the face of violence in the death penalty. The danger that emerges here is one that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized well when he pointed out that "returning violence for violence multiplies violence" (Nobel Speech 1964). Peter Storey, a Methodist bishop in South Africa who helped lead the nation's protest against apartheid, made a similar observation: "If you justify violence for any reason, no matter how good and noble, you legitimize it for every reason, no matter how wrong and unworthy" (With God in the Crucible, Abingdon 2002). Both King and Storey had seen what violence had done to tear their countries to shreds and had heard the good news that with Christ lies the way of peace and reconciliation, a path not taken when recourse to violence, including the death penalty, is taken.

To support capital punishment is to say that some people are beyond redemption. This was not what Jesus declared when he stretched his arms out on the cross in an eternal gesture of welcome and forgiveness. This was not what Paul was telling the early Christians when he said, "while we still were sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Jesus was a victim of the death penalty, and he was flanked on each side by criminals being put to death. To the thief who cried, "Jesus, remember me," he responded, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:42-43). Who is this Savior who hangs next to sinners and tells them the gates of heaven are open wide to them, even as they endure state-mandated execution for crimes they willfully committed? This is the Savior we address thus: "Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace" (Book of Common Prayer). Christ's death and resurrection declares loudly that no one is beyond redemption, and the death penalty flies flagrantly in the face of this unconditional, forgiving love.

Capital punishment seeks to establish a system of justice, but it is enslaved to the concept of retributive justice. The famed Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa explains the difference between retributive and restorative justice eloquently in his book No Future Without Forgiveness as exemplified in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission held in post-apartheid South Africa. Archbishop Tutu writes that retributive justice, "whose chief goal is to be punitive...has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice...the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator" (No Future Without Forgiveness, Doubleday 1999). Tutu says that this approach looks at a crime as something personal, "something that has happened to persons and whose consequence is a rupture in relationships." In the legal workings of capital punishment cases, the perpetrator is the accused and the wronged party is the state. In actuality, it is all of us, including the perpetrator, who experience the crime as a tear in the fabric of humanity. The American justice system does not acknowledge this and provides the victims' families—not to mention the perpetrator's loved ones—little space for healing. Our legal system sees only the transgression of laws, not the rending of human hearts.

Christ came not so that everyone might get what they deserve in an "eye for an eye" system of justice. Christ came "that they may all be one" (John 17:21). Christ died and rose again that broken relationships might be healed and that all might be reconciled with God and with one another. To resort to the death penalty is to make permanent the damage done to human relationships in a violent act, first in the initial crime and again in the perpetrator's trial and execution. To say that the death penalty is the only option is to abandon hope that we, the body of Christ, broken and bruised, may one day be made whole. We as Christians need to believe that we are promised more than the suffering we now experience and to recognize that in our ability to forgive and to live in peace with one another lies God's greatest dream for us, his most beautiful creation.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Angels and Light

Clay was an all-around nice guy. A young, single doctor who was a member of our church when we lived in Davidson, Clay was a part of my family's life from early on in his involvement with the congregation. I remember being eight years old and joining a group of adults on a trip that my father led to Israel; Clay went, too. A group of mostly men would stay up late in the hotel playing spades on into the night, and I would watch and learn the game. Clay was an intense card player and would seem to be nearly at blows with our equally intense music director, but outside of a game of spades he was charming, friendly, and unfailingly kind to me.

I remember, too, when I was a little older and Clay had taken my dad and my younger brother out on Lake Norman in his boat. They returned late in the day with quite a story: Clay had somehow managed to ground his speedboat on a sand bar. Apparently he bore it with admirable nonchalance, until my brother, who must have been four or five years old, began asking why Clay had wrecked the boat...and wouldn't stop asking, over and over again. "Clay, why did you wreck the boat? Clay, how long are we gonna be stuck here?"

Then one day, Clay surprised us all. He called my dad and told him he had to come over to his house so he could show him something. Confused, my dad complied, and Clay led him into the spare bedroom. There, of all things, was a baby! Apparently Clay had decided that no one was ever going to want to marry him (why, we could never figure), but he really wanted a child, so he had gone and adopted Lauren without telling anyone. My dad was skeptical at first, but he quickly saw that Clay was going to really come alive in his new role as a father. As my dad describes it, it was as if you had been exploring a museum full of beautiful works of art and then had turned a corner to discover the treasure room, whose contents surpassed all expectations of beauty and value. That was how Clay's character blossomed as he parented Lauren.

Naturally, Clay wanted to have Lauren baptized in our church, and my dad was thrilled to perform the sacrament. Present in the service, as on every Sunday, was Mary. Mary was a wonderful, sweet woman, but a little strange. She had a mystical flair that seemed a bit out of place in our down-to-earth Methodist congregation. After church on the day that Lauren was baptized, Mary sought out my dad and told him she had had a vision. My dad was skeptical, but he had little choice but to hear her out.

I can only imagine the look of polite but feigned interest on his face as he heard her describe how, when Lauren was brought before the baptismal font, she saw the roof of the church lift off. A great light streamed into the sanctuary, she said, and shone on the child, and angels descended and gathered around to watch this baby girl being brought into the life of the church. My dad probably muttered a nervous "Wow" and disentangled himself from the conversation as quickly as possible. He didn't think twice about Mary's vision.

Five years later, almost to the day, my dad received a phone call. By then, Clay had moved with Lauren to Texas to take a job at a hospital out there. He and my dad had stayed in touch, but this was not a routine phone call. My dad listened in shock as Clay told him that he had an inoperable brain tumor and had six months to live. Clay was a doctor. He knew exactly what his chances were, knew just why surgery was not an option, knew the kind of swift, inexorable death that awaited him.

The news was difficult for my whole family. Clay was a young man, talented and likable, and should have had decades of life ahead of him. It seemed senseless that the malady he worked to relieve others of would now take his life. And then, too, there was Lauren. She was five years old now, a beautiful child with thick blonde hair and a crooked smile. Clay had already arranged for a new home for her after he passed. All that remained was to say his goodbyes and wait for the tumor to claim him.

The day after my dad heard the news, he received an unexpected piece of mail. It was from Mary. We had since moved to Charlotte and had not seen Mary in a while. Curious, my dad opened it to find a card with a strange illustration on the front. As he read Mary's enclosed note, he understood and was flabbergasted. Out of nowhere, five years after this vision that she hadn't shared with anyone but my dad, Mary had suddenly thought about Lauren's baptism again. Inspired, she had an artist do a visual rendering of the vision and had notecards made with the image. She had sent one to my dad just so he could see the picture and remember this strange little event from half a decade before.

Some people thought it meant Clay was going to be healed. Others shook it off as a weird coincidence. Some wondered if even then, at Lauren's baptism, there had been some shadow in Clay that had somehow been detected in Mary's vision. Many were sure that the child was under a form of protection that would hold her even after Clay passed. Even my dad, leery of visions and mystical experience, had to say that to call it a coincidence was ridiculous. Five years had gone by since Mary had had the vision. She must have recalled that day and had the painting done around the same time Clay was diagnosed. She mailed my dad the card before he got the call from Clay; no one in North Carolina knew before then that he was sick.

I'll admit—I'm not sure what this story means. But I do think that maybe it means that there is someone watching out for us. That doesn't mean that brain tumors will miraculously disappear; sometimes they do, but Clay's did not. What I think it means is that when God breaks into our hearts, we may find that we are closer to our neighbor than we first thought, perhaps closer than is comfortable.

Here's the artist's rendering of Mary's vision:

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Women in Ministry

The United Methodist Church recently celebrated its 50th year of ordaining women. Many other Protestant churches have made similar moves, but still others insist that Scripture shows that while men may be called to ordained ministry, women are not. With help from my dad, I decided to try and further explore the rationale and Scriptural basis for ordaining women.

The most commonly referenced Bible passage (with my apologies for what seems like prooftexting on both sides of this issue but is just an effort at being concise) is 1 Timothy 2:8-15. "I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent...Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty." In a way, this is passage is a blessing of the vocation of motherhood, something too often overlooked in today's society. On the other hand, it is a difficult text for women who feel called to the ministry. It seems clear from this excerpt alone, not to mention many other Scriptural references to similar decrees, that women should not be permitted to enter the ministry.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that the Bible was written and its stories and admonitions located in a specific time and place. The Word of God is itself timeless and transcends temporal boundaries, but the Scriptures were put into writing during a time when the dominant culture was a firmly patriarchal society. I don't know any Christians who abstain from eating pork after reading Leviticus, or who shun women as unclean during their menstrual cycle. True, those examples are related more to health concerns in a time before modern medicine, but the point remains: the culture of the ancient Near East plays a key role in determining what is included in Scripture, and what may have been extremely important to the Jews of the Old Testament or the fledgling Christian church may include concerns that had meaning in that time period but not necessarily in ours.

I do not say all this to suggest that we should ignore anything in Scripture that does not seem to fit with modern sensibilities. Much of what Jesus had to say doesn't fit with any sensibility except that of the cross—selling all one's possessions and giving them to the poor, for example (I'm certainly not saying that just because a decree like this is difficult it can be dismissed as irrelevant!). What I mean to say is that it is important not to get bogged down in those things that were specific to the time and place in which the Bible was written at the expense of hearing the heart of the Gospel. Another favorite text, this time on the other side of the debate, is the familiar line from Galatians 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." This is the heart of the Gospel.

When you look at the example of Jesus and his followers, it is easy to see the ways in which the disciples and their rabbi were countercultural in many ways, not the least of which was their inclusion of women. Luke 8:1-3 reads: "Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources." These were wealthy women of high standing who owned property. They were not along to do the dishes; they were on equal footing with the men present. Another example comes in Romans 16:7, where Paul names Junia (also called Joanna) as an apostle: "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was." In the book of John, it is a woman who first proclaims (preaches?) the gospel of the resurrection. Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and chooses her as his emissary to his followers (John 20:18): "Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord'; and she told them that he had said these things to her." What might be considered the first sermon was delivered by a woman.

Check out this piece by Steve Harper, who teaches at Asbury, for another good look at the Methodist practice of ordaining women.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Disturb the Peace (quote)

"You can't claim you're for peace if you're not willing to disturb it."
— Bill Maher

Friday, September 14, 2007

Just Out of Habit

The other night, I told a friend over dinner about some difficulties I've been having and about the ways in which God is working in my life right now. Excited about the vocational developments happening lately, I listed for her all the ways in which I'm engaging my spiritual life and discernment process—attending morning prayer daily, being involved in and leading my campus ministry group, going to my adopted local church, singing in two choirs (one leads a weekly, formal Vespers service, the other is a student gospel choir), taking Eucharist at least once a week, reading the Psalms, working on the undergrad Christian magazine here at Duke. At one point she stopped me and asked, "But are you getting anything out of all this? Are you getting anything out of the sermons you hear or the prayers you say?" I paused and gave her a quizzical look. "Well, yes," I replied, "but that's not the point. It's not about me getting something out of church. It's about me being formed by good habits."

The word "habit" has become a swear word in today's American church. If you go to church just out of habit, that's bad. If you pray just out of habit, your prayers are meaningless. If you engage with other Christians just out of habit, your fellowship is not genuine.

I think this view is contrary to the nature of the Christian life. Habits are not the enemies of faith but are the ways in which we are incorporated into its disciplines and practices. To use a pre-Christian example, Aristotle believed that the root of all ethics was couched in habit. The process of acquiring virtue was one of developing good habits.

In Christianity, we repeat certain prayers, formulas, and rituals to the point that they become habits. Many people these days think that if you say the Lord's Prayer or the Apostle's Creed out of habit, you don't really mean it. But what does it mean to mean it? What does it mean for prayer to be genuine? The key seems to lie in oneself, in the person's intentions and understanding of what they are saying or doing. However, I believe that the true purpose and value of worship lies far beyond any one worshiper and his or her intentions. The beauty of worship is that it is not about us. We should thank God that the validity of our worship does not rest on the sanctity of our intent, because what mortal would stand in judgment of such? However, if we allow the habits of the Christian life to pervade our lives, they will become a part of who we are and prayer can become a sort of divine reflex to serve us when we need it most.

I certainly would not advocate the practice of attending church weekly, saying the prayers by rote, and then leaving Monday through Saturday only to return the following week out of habit. It is important that church leaders instruct their parishioners in the importance and meaning of the practices of worship, prayer, service, and all other aspects of the life of the church. However, to condemn the habitual nature of the Christian life is to say that if you're coming to church just out of habit, you might as well not come at all. This is dangerous thinking. If people go to church expecting to get something out of the sermon or the prayers and then for whatever reason don't connect with what is said from the pulpit on that particular day, they leave disappointed because their needs weren't met, when it was never their needs that mattered (don't get me wrong, people's needs certainly matter in the church, but look at my post "Our Desires Are Too Weak" for a mention of the difference between felt needs and Gospel-preached needs). The times when we don't feel like going to church are often the times when we need most to be in church. We believe in a God on whom we can cast our weariness, our doubts, our boredom, and our pain. Worship is when God meets and redeems us, whether we really want to run into him there or not.

All in all, I think that part of my work in the church will be to redeem the concept of habit. The idea of being formed by disciplines that aren't necessarily under our control isn't a comfortable one for many. However, that is what the Christian life is about—being formed by God, not trying to form ourselves to what we think is genuine or meaningful.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

A Prayer from St. Augustine

O Lord, our God,
Grant us to trust in your overshadowing wings:
Protect us beneath them and bear us up.
You will carry us as little children,
And even to our grey-headed age you will carry us still.
We need not fear to find no home again
Because we have fallen away from it;
While we were absent our home falls not to ruins,
For our home is your eternity. Amen.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Whose Service is Perfect Freedom

At 8:00 a.m. this morning I stood in Goodson Chapel at Duke Divinity School and read from my pocket-sized Book of Common Prayer as a group of students (graduate students—I was the oddball) went through the daily rite of morning prayer. I went twice to morning prayer last week and every day so far this week; I'm hoping to make it a permanent fixture in my daily routine. As I prayed the Venite, the Nunc Dimitis, and the Psalms, I realized just how odd I am among my peers for actually enjoying—and even desperately needing—such a practice. Where for me a discipline like morning prayer is centering, formative, and vital to my spiritual life, to many Christians today it seems...well, boring. Where is the break? What has the church done to make formal worship "boring"?

I suppose I'm a bit of a weirdo when it comes to worship. I read liturgical theology for fun, for crying out loud. Nobody does that. But even though I know that I occupy a different spiritual and intellectual landscape regarding worship than most other people, I still feel a deep sadness anytime someone tells me that such-and-such a church is too boring or too formal. Has worship really become that dull? Or is our culture forming us with expectations that simply do not fit with what worship is all about? (There's another post hidden in here somewhere about habit, which I will address in full later on.)

Some churches really are boring. Eddie Izzard, a fabulous comedian (he's a British transvestite and is wickedly smart), makes a point in one of his routines about how oftentimes Christian worship sounds just plain painful. "There's something phenomenally dreary about Christian singing," he says as he goes on to provide a particularly dreary rendition of "Oh God Our Help in Ages Past." "They're the only people who can sing 'Hallelujah' without feeling." I've certainly been in churches like that (white churches...Izzard makes the distinction clear and revels in the raucousness of the worship of people of African descent), and it hurts, it really does. But somehow that image of dreariness has been projected onto all formal (or even mildly structured!) worship. People feel restrained, as if they are not free to "really" worship (whatever that means).

I thought about this concept of being "free" to worship during one of the collects we prayed from the BCP this morning. It says, "Oh God...whose service is perfect freedom." In serving God, in being bound to him, we are truly free. The notion of being unrestrained and able to do as you please just doesn't jive with the whole concept of forming one's desires to God's will. Maybe this is a problem uniquely my own, but I struggle with prayer and with focusing on worship, so to have a liturgy sanctioned by hundreds of years of practice is not limiting but rather freeing, and deeply so. I love praying the Psalms because through them I am able to make the supplications, lamentations, thanksgivings, and confessions that sit in my heart with no words to set them free. Sometimes I wonder if people even read the Psalms properly anymore. The Psalms make up a prayer book and, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer, when you pray the Psalms you are praying with the whole church and with Christ himself.

I wonder if some people are so averse to ordered, formal worship because individualism and uniqueness are so stressed in today's culture that the thought of being brought into a unified, disciplined practice with others seems undesirable. We all want to do our own thing. The thought of engaging in practices that put you in communion not only with other Christians today but also with Christians who lived and died hundreds of years before now doesn't invoke the kind of awe it once did (and still does for some of us). Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico is one of my favorite places in the world. What overwhelms me in watching the monks perform the daily office, praying seven times a day, chanting the psalms and taking Mass each morning, is that, aside from incorporating things like running water, solar power, and even internet (the monks have an online gift shop and post the daily martyrology on their webpage), their way of life has remained essentially the same for 1500 years. The monks in the desert outside Abiquiu, NM are walking with Saint Benedict himself, a millennium and a half dead. I wonder if there is a way in our post-Enlightenment world to recapture the minds of Christians today in such a way that the thought of being a part of something bigger than themselves is not oppressive or marginalizing but rather liberating and empowering.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Remembering Father Murphy

I can still hear the silverware clinking, the hollow, metallic bang of pots in the kitchen, the occasional sound of decompression as hot air from a stove or oven picked itself up and moved across a room. I can also hear voices, but not like those to which I am accustomed; boisterous men with facial hair that could put them on The Sopranos converse loudly, women with dark hair scold their olive-skinned children, who babble on in the lilting, bouncy tongue of the country in which I had found myself for the past several days. This perfectly Italian trattoria off the main square in Assisi remains with me not only in its sounds, but also in its sights. I can see the appropriately Umbrian, rural decorations creeping across the walls and the bottle of effervescent water (we had asked for “no gas” but had been disappointed upon our waiter’s return) in the center of the table. I can see the cozily crowded restaurant and its entrance, a door that seemed too small for a normal person from either end and required the customer to stoop down as he or she descended the stairs into the family-run eatery, or ascended them out.

Most of all, I can see my father’s face. Thinking back, I remember that this summer he had grown a goatee; my father has been clean-shaven all my life, so this was a novelty, and we had to buy him a small pair of scissors in Assisi with which to trim his facial hair because he wouldn’t stop picking at it. This time I don’t remember the goatee. I do, however, remember his eyes. They are a murky, hazel shade, discolored from their original dark brown by a case of Hepatitis C he had as a young man, and this time, they are shining in an odd way, partly with happiness and partly with tears.

Earlier that day, in one of our rare forays into a nearby internet café, my father had learned that Roland Murphy, his Ph.D. adviser, had passed away. Father Murphy was more than a professor to my dad; he was a mentor and a friend. I can’t remember in any sort of detail many of the stories that my dad told me that night in the trattoria in Assisi. But I do know that he regaled me for several hours with anecdotes about Father Murphy. I was sad to hear that such a good man had died, sad that my father was abroad when it happened and would be unable to attend the funeral, sad that he had no one but his 16-year-old daughter to whom he could reminisce. I felt curious to hear my dad talk about his own life, curious about this moral and scholastic giant to whom my father seemed to owe so much gratitude and affection. I felt confused by my father’s tears, though my dad has never been the image of the stoic, unfeeling patriarch and is in fact a bit of a crybaby. I listened politely, even interestedly, asked a few questions, and let the leftovers of my spaghetti carbonara (my new favorite Italian dish) grow cold as his storytelling stretched on into the night.

That night in Assisi seems so poignant to me now and may in fact have been the most spiritual moment of that trip, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Here I was, essentially on pilgrimage to the place where Saint Francis lived and worked; I had familiarized myself with the streets of the town, this town perched on a hill that seems to float in some ephemeral way. I had attended Mass in the basilica (this was years before I became borderline neurotic about the Eucharist). I had listened to and memorized much of my father’s treasure trove of stories about Saint Francis. I had visited the church of Santa Chiara and had seen the miraculously preserved body of this 13th-century saint and friend of Francis. Later in the trip, when we had moved on to Lithuania, I would have a wonderful moment in a small Franciscan monastery overlooking the Hill of Crosses, which had stained-glass reproductions of the famous frescoes depicting Francis’ life in its sanctuary. But for all the obvious inbreakings of God on that trip, perhaps the most meaningful one was also the most subtle—the experience of talking to my father over pasta, wine, and carbonated water, witnessing how the sad news of the death of a dear friend can elicit the most beautiful, joyful memories of a person’s life.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

A Prayer from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you.
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness.
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me...
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised. Amen.

Monday, September 3, 2007

God's Coming is Unforeseen (quote)

"God's coming is unforeseen, I think, and the reason, if I had to guess, is that if he gave us anything much in the way of advance warning, more often than not we would have made ourselves scarce long before he got there." — Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

Sunday, September 2, 2007

A Prayer from Teresa of Avila

May nothing move you;
May nothing terrify you;
Everything passes;
God never changes.
Patience be all to you.
Who trusts in God
Shall never be needy.
God alone suffices.

Friday, August 31, 2007

The Wounded Healer

I remember very clearly when my mother told me that Mr. Christie had died. I was in elementary school, probably age 7 or 8. Mr. Christie was an elderly man in our church. If I ever met him, I do not remember it, but for weeks after his death, like clockwork, I wept for Mr. Christie each Sunday morning in church.

I had always been an emotional child, ready to cry at the drop of a hat. Mr. Christie’s death and the weeks following are the first time I remember crying over someone not directly connected to me. Each week my mother would pack me off to Sunday School and I would seem fine, but somewhere along the hall between the classroom and the sanctuary on my way to worship, a switch would flip and the floodgates would open. I would start thinking about how Mr. Christie had swerved to avoid a head-on collision, saving his wife in the passenger seat while sacrificing himself, and my face would crumple up and the tears would begin.

What I have come to understand is that this somewhat strange event in my childhood actually speaks deeply to who I am as a person. I now see that my sadness over Mr. Christie was early evidence of the fact that I am very highly empathetic by nature. I am slowly learning that there are few people on this planet who truly ache for the pain of others, even strangers, and that I am one of them, for better or worse. I can't watch a commercial for St. Jude’s Children's Hospital without crying. Learning about my friends' personal darkness, talking a girl through suicidal thoughts, watching someone struggle with an eating disorder—these things lacerate my heart as a knife might carve into flesh.

I am beginning to see that my ability to empathize so fiercely with others' pain is both a blessing and a curse. I struggle constantly with discerning what may be a call to ministry, and the extent to which I can feel empathy sometimes obliterates my faith in myself as having pastoral responsibilities in the future. I am always the person that others go to with the darkest parts of their lives. My ability to empathize gives others the space they need to be open and honest, and even though the pain on my end can be crippling, for me (or anyone) to perform genuine pastoral ministry, it could be no other way. In his book The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen says, "no one can help anyone without becoming involved, without entering with his whole person into the painful situation, without taking the risk of becoming hurt, wounded or even destroyed in the process. The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others." Perhaps my tendency to be wounded sympathetically for others is not a sign of weakness in my potential as a pastor but is really the only way I can minister to another human being.

If ever I feel that my tears are a sign of weakness, I have to remind myself that even Jesus wept at the death of a friend. In times of tragedy, I believe there is often little else we can do than pray and weep. As a Christian and as someone who will one day be a minister in some capacity, empathizing with others, even to the extent that it causes me great pain, is a necessary—and involuntary—part of listening to, loving and accepting others, friend and stranger alike. As a child I wept for Mr. Christie; today I may weep for a friend struggling with depression or for the young man I worked with last summer who died in a freak accident a few days ago. However, these are not hurts for me to take from others and to bury in myself; my great consolation is that I do not have to bear any burden on my own. Every burden I take on, be it my pain or someone else’s, can be laid at the foot of the cross and transformed into something beautiful. I was created to empathize with others, but I was created by a God who will not let me carry that alone.

A Peculiar Means of Grace (revised from an earlier post)

Since October 2006, I have been engaged in one of the most interesting and transformative ministries I have yet to encounter. For almost a year now, I have been corresponding regularly with William Barnes ("Tim"), prisoner #0020590 at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC. Tim is on Death Row for the 1990 murder of two people.

As I have gotten to know Tim through his letters, he has become a unique source for information, questions, and challenges to my life. Tim converted to Islam while in prison and we converse often about religion and spirituality. Tim is not afraid to share his faith or to ask pointed questions about mine. Once he asked how Jesus could be born of Mary and also have in him the fullness of God. Tim couldn’t make sense of this, and it became my task to explain the Christian belief in the humanity and divinity of Christ. Tim challenges me to articulate my beliefs in very basic terms. As a student of religious studies, I am so used to inhabiting conversation space where words like "eschatological" and "soteriology" are second nature that to have to delineate the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith is not only humbling but also a reminder that communication and debate in the interfaith community is important, difficult, and requires practice.

One of my friends who is in seminary tells about his friendship with a Muslim graduate student. My friend was working in the library when his friend poked his head in the door and then turned to leave when he saw the room was occupied. When he realized he knew the person in there, he came back, nodded a greeting, then laid out his prayer rug and proceeded to pray. My friend was struck by the fact that this man felt comfortable openly practicing his faith in the presence of a Christian, and he wondered what he would have done had he been seeking a place to pray and had seen his Muslim friend in the room. For my friend, this man became a means of grace as the act of performing a spiritual discipline led him to reevaluate his own practices.

For me, Tim is also a peculiar means of grace. He ends every letter saying that he will pray for me and signs it "God bless, Tim." To know that a man in prison facing no escape but death is praying for me lends a great deal of perspective to how and for what I pray. Tim often quotes the writings of Muslim imams, talks about Ramadan during that season, and asks me questions about my own spiritual disciplines when describing his own. How often do I pray? How often do I fast? In a way, I've found that Tim's curiosity and candor have become a greater source of accountability even than some of the Christian communities of which I am a part.

When I agreed to write to a death row inmate, I knew it would be a unique experience. It has done all the things I thought it would: it has helped me get to know someone from a completely different sector of society, given me another perspective on the justice system, and challenged me to work for an alternative to the death penalty and to explore avenues of restorative justice rather than the punitive justice with which our country is so familiar. However, I did not expect my faith to be revitalized by conversation with a Muslim prisoner, and I do believe that Tim has been a means of grace in my life as a Christian.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Our Desires Are Too Weak

O Lord, I do not know what to ask of you.
You alone know what are my true needs.
You love me more than I myself know how to love.
I dare not ask either a cross or consolation.
I can only wait on you.
My heart is open to you. Amen. — Philaret of Moscow


John Piper (of whom, to be honest, I am not a huge fan, but I think he got this right) said in a sermon that he does not preach to felt needs. Although it is obviously important that a pastor be able to care for and tend to the needs of the members of a congregation/community, perhaps the greatest service a pastor can do for parishioners is to show them that their desires are disordered, weak, and in need of extensive renovation. C. S. Lewis once said, "Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak." Desire drives human existence, but we desire the wrong things and whatever part of us that might approach or border on correct desire is feeble and flimsy at best. We do not know what we need or even what we want, because the things we think we want and need will never bring satisfaction. If our desire is for money, we fall into the sin of greed; if our desire is for esteem, we fall into the sin of pride; if our desire is for food, we fall into the sin of gluttony; if our desire is for sex, we fall into the sin of lust; and on and on. These desires are disordered and weak. These desires can make our lives seem worth living in the eyes of the world, but they ruin our lives in the eyes of God. We were made to desire God so passionately that this desire would thoroughly ruin our lives on this earth. Jesus did not say that if we follow him, everyone will love us; he said, "If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you" (John 15:18).

Julian of Norwich
knew full well that if she were to pursue anything short of the fullness of God, she would always find herself lacking, her needs and wants unfulfilled. In her record of the divine revelations, she prays, "God, of your goodness give me yourself, for you are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, to be worthy of you. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In you alone do I have all." This is the desire for which we were created: to be worthy to abide in the fullness and mercy of God. Before partaking in Mass, the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico pray this simple request: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you. Only say the word, and I will be." There are desires that we can try to fulfill on our own. We can seek out power and prestige to sate our thirst for the approval of others; we can find someone who will sleep with us and slake our lust. But when our desires are reoriented and strengthened, we find that the only one who can satisfy those desires is God.

But here's the question: what can a preacher say every Sunday in the pulpit to shape and convert the desires of those in the congregation? How can a minister strike a balance between taking good pastoral care of people while turning their worlds on end? It seems to me that the task of caring for and tending to the perceived wants and needs of people while simultaneously telling them that their desires are misguided and weak would be extremely difficult and even delicate. Too often I feel that pastors spend so much time trying to meet people where they are that they forget that there is a better place to which they need to help bring them. On the other hand, plenty of people speak the hard truth that we want the wrong things and that the desires we do have are weak and pathetic, but in such a way that those who hear it feel attacked rather than loved and challenged. This is one of the most daunting of the tasks before me: to love and cherish those to whom I will one day minister as they are while shaking them out of the slumber that lets us be lulled into complacency by desires that do not align with the reality that we were made to want God more than anything else.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Peter Storey on Violence

"If you justify violence for any reason, no matter how good and noble, you legitimize it for every reason, no matter how wrong and unworthy." — Bishop Peter Storey, South Africa

I haven't been posting any of my own thoughts lately because I am just emerging from the whirlwind of moving into and setting up my apartment, and classes started for me yesterday. I hope to begin posting again within the next few days; being back at school has already raised a host of questions that I need to hash out for my own benefit and which I think might be of interest to a broader audience. Many thanks to everyone who's been reading my first few posts and who have encouraged me thus far!

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Refusing to Surrender (an old piece)

This is actually a reflection I wrote in May 2006 while reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship. It's a little scattered, but the questions and the musings are there, and I would like to revisit some of these thoughts in the near future.



"Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered. Go rather and be reconciled with your brother, renounce the sin which holds you fast—and then you will recover your faith! …How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer


I wrote this passage down in my journal on 3 February 2006. Certain words and phrases stuck out like sore thumbs jabbing me in the sides: refusing to surrender, your reason, prayer is difficult, your request for faith remains unanswered, at some point in your life you are running away from him. I read this passage over and over sporadically for the next few months and still revisit it in times of doubt.

My own refusal to surrender anything to God goes back quite a long way. I remember talking for years about how important it is to allow oneself to be vulnerable in the presence of God, to give up control and to trust him even when it seemed impossible, only to realize that I was utterly unable to follow my own teachings. I had never surrendered anything to God but a fragment of my free time, had never truly allowed myself to lean on him, had never relinquished control of my heart and mind as I thought I had. I still to this day maintain a fierce, tenacious hold on my life. I am slowly working my way back to God, slowly turning things over to his grace and will, but it is very, very slowly.

It was very profound to me that Bonhoeffer chose to list reason among those things that are perhaps not being handed over to God. I can completely identify with that. Despite my surface distaste for reason and my romanticized ideals of the subjective, I still rely entirely too much on my own understanding. I realize that much of my approach to ameliorating my faith comes from this standpoint; although I am working some on my spiritual life, most of what I am doing is building a stockpile of knowledge, of expanding my religious education, of becoming well-read, supposedly for the sake of equipping myself to be a better pastor one day, but I will be the first to admit that there is a certain amount of pride tied up in how much and what I get read this summer. I don't think that doing these things are necessarily bad, but I am keenly aware that I need to couple my theological expeditions with Scripture readings, personal prayer, and active engagement in corporal worship. Worship I actually have about down pat, but the Bible and prayer are still slightly foreign to me.

This leads directly into the next point, that prayer is difficult. I hate praying. I especially hate praying in front of groups. All my life, I was the kid who volunteered to pray or was called on to pray. At some point, I got sick of it and decided to make other people step up every now and then. This quickly turned into my total absence from that arena, and I wonder if that did not directly affect my personal prayer life, which has been virtually nonexistent for years now. When I am forced to pray in public, I hate every second of it; I get nervous, I sweat, I stutter, I fumble for words. Usually I simply refuse to do it. Last night, Dad asked if I would say the blessing at dinner, and I replied, "No thank you." As for my individual prayer life, I have tried on occasion to get into a habit of praying. I have found that one big problem is my attention span. I often get bored or distracted in the middle of prayers and suddenly find myself at the computer remembering that I was supposed to be talking to God. I found that journaling helps this some; I am more articulate when writing in the first place, and it helps me to train my mind on what I am doing. I also am more engaged and involved when I do this. Other things that have helped have been prayers, songs, or poems written by others with which I strongly identify; some that come to mind include Merton's Seigneur mon Dieu, Wesley's "Come O Thou Traveler Unknown," the occasional Rilke elegy, and plenty of Jars of Clay songs. I can pray through their words and make them my own because they speak profoundly to my experience and my needs. I would like, however, to do some praying that really is mine, and I will have to work on that. I need to begin to set aside time for prayer, but I am so often busy and I live with other people, so time and privacy are both scarce. Even when I am alone and have the time, prayer frightens me. I suppose that the only way I can ameliorate this situation is to actively pursue a healthy prayer life on my own. Yikes.

I have requested faith and often do not know whether that request has gone unanswered or whether I completely misunderstand what it means to be given faith. Faith is a funny thing, and too often we are taught to associate it with emotionality and warm fuzzy feelings. Although I disagree with this approach and find it destructive in many ways, there is still a part of me that has been so conditioned by mountain top experiences like mission trips and retreats that I find myself almost looking for that euphoric, spiritual feeling that is supposed to accompany belief in and communion with God. I don't particularly know how I will know when I truly have faith, but I’m sure patience is involved somehow. I read something helpful in Norwood's American Methodism, something that Peter Boehler said to John Wesley: "Preach faith till you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach faith." This sounds like Bonhoeffer's spiel on obedience and faith (also in Discipleship). He presents the paradoxical truth that one cannot have faith unless he obeys but that one only obeys when he has faith. This annoys me because I can't find the entry point to all of this. Maybe the whole faith and works thing is related – true faith is by definition accompanied by works, and true works cannot be done without faith. Or something, I’m just trying to avoid condoning works righteousness right now. In any case, I must learn to pray for faith, to preach faith, to practice obedience, and to do works of faith; and then, perhaps, I will one day have faith.

"How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" Good question. I know plenty about running away from God. "I cannot run, I cannot hide/Believe me now, you know I've tried." I spent years doing so, and to some extent I continue on that path even now. When I wrote my song "Prodigal," it was not yet titled, so I posted the lyrics online and asked friends for ideas for a song name. Suggestions that came back included "Prince of Peace," "All in All," and other sappy, happy, warm fuzzy titles. True, most of them drew on lyrics within the song, but I was bothered because none of them really got to the heart of what the song was about. Although the song does thank and extol God, its primary function is a prayer for forgiveness and reconciliation. I started thinking of titles that were not lifted from the text, and when I thought of "Prodigal," I knew there was nothing more perfect. This was not a song about Jesus, it was the lamenting, apologizing, entreating prayer of a child who had run away from her father and was painfully tiptoeing back. I am that prodigal child every day, when I refuse to surrender to God, when I choose reason over faith, when I shy away from prayer because it is too hard or inconvenient, when I half-heartedly ask for faith, and when I continue to run away, run away, run away. I must stop in my tracks, turn around, and go back to my Father. I hope to find a warm welcome.

Friday, August 24, 2007

A Prayer from Julian of Norwich

God,
of your goodness give me yourself,
for you are sufficient for me.
I cannot properly ask anything less,
to be worthy of you.
If I were to ask less,
I should always be in want.
In you alone do I have all.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Christian Scholarship (quote)

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall in the hands of the living God. "
— Søren Kierkegaard

The Fast I DON'T Choose

Since last October, I have been engaged in one of the most interesting and transformative ministries I have yet to encounter. For almost a year now, I have been corresponding regularly with William Barnes ("Tim"), prisoner #0020590 at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC. Tim is on Death Row for the 1990 murder of two people.

As I have gotten to know Tim through his letters, he has continuously challenged me in countless ways, but right now I'd like to focus on an issue he brought up in his most recent communication to me. Tim converted to Islam while in prison and we converse regularly about religion and spirituality. His conversion was not well-received by his family, with whom he has not been in contact since 1998. Tim regularly asks me about aspects of Christianity that he does not understand, but he also asks me about my own spiritual practices.

Most recently, Tim asked me how many times I fast in a year. On one level, I found the timing of his question exceedingly ironic, seeing as I had just started a blog called "The Fast I Choose" and have grown quite fond of quoting the passage in Isaiah to which that phrase alludes. On another level, I felt a little ashamed, because I had to admit to Tim that although I have tried fasting once or twice, I've never been able to go through with that particular spiritual discipline. True, I was told back in middle school that I was hypoglycemic, and I do get an awful headache if I don't eat for a period of time—but Tim's question came close on the heels with a conversation I had with a friend on the very subject. She and her husband are both hypoglycemic, but they fast regularly. After talking to her, I realized that my excuse, which was feeble from the beginning, probably sounded like every other reason people use not to fast.

The truth is, fasting isn't something that very many Christians do these days. The rate of obesity in America is embarrassingly high, and you can be sure that among those statistics are a large number of Christians, both lay and clergy. Clearly, fasting is not at the top of the average Christian's list of priorities; it only makes mine in the same way "a pony" made my Christmas wish list throughout my childhood. It would be nice if fasting were something we could do, and we take our hats off to those who practice that spiritual discipline, but it's not something we think we can—or would even want—to do ourselves.

I did a little poking around on the internet to see what information I might come up with on fasting. I know Wikipedia is taboo in academic circles, but it really is terribly useful on a surface level, and their article on fasting even had, in addition to explanations of the use of fasting in various religions, a list of Biblical references to fasting (not an exhaustive one, but a list nonetheless). Among those were passages from Exodus 34 (Moses fasts for 40 days while on the mountain with God), 2 Samuel 12 (David fasts when his son becomes ill as punishment for David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah), 2 Chronicles 20 (King Jehosaphat proclaims a fast to celebrate a military victory), Isaiah 58 (my favorite, of course), Jonah 3 (the people of Ninevah fast in order to stay God's hand in punishment), Esther 4 (the Jews fast in response to Haman's genocidal decree), Matthew 6 (Jesus warns that one should fast in private and not seek attention or approval through fasting), Matthew 4 and Luke 2 (Jesus fasts for 40 days in the wilderness before being tempted), among others.

What struck me upon reading this list was the variety of circumstances in which fasting was practiced. The general sense that I have always had is that a person fasts in repentance, and although this is certainly the case, it is not the only occasion on which people of the Old and New Testaments fast. Just in that list, fasting is used while in the presence of God, as a form of penitence and a prayer for healing, in celebration (and I thought feasts were the usual way to consummate a military victory?), in response to injustice, as a private exercise, and as a form of preparation for testing.

I and many others have boldly and often proclaimed the words of Isaiah 58:6-7, saying that the fast we choose shall be "to loose the bonds of injustice...[and] to share your bread with the hungry." This is indeed a call to justice, and Amos declares that even if we practice personal piety and fast faithfully, if we oppress others, God counts those acts for naught. It seems that I may have made the error of choosing a worthy fast while forgetting that the discipline of fasting was practiced by the Israelites, the prophets, Jesus himself, and the early church for a reason. Although some strains of Protestantism, as early as at the time of the Reformation, sought to abolish fasting because they believed that Catholics used the practice as a tool to earn salvation (I am thinking of Zwingli, who made a show of eating sausages during Lent), especially in the holiness movements, that particular discipline (among others) was often revived. In the early days of Methodism, my own denomination, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield were known to fast regularly.

Fasting can express repentance; it can be a means of seeking holiness; it can be a cry for justice; it can even be a form of celebration, the kind that recognizes and gives thanks to God as the sole provider of good things. When I wrote Tim back trying to answer his question, one thing I mentioned that makes fasting difficult is a lack of support, or at least a perceived lack of support, since I don't know many people who fast regularly. I wonder if it wouldn't behoove us all to give fasting a shot sometime, and although that is not something to be shouted from the rooftops, it wouldn't hurt (and would probably help!) to seek out a few fellow Christians for encouragement and even solidarity. If a question posed by a Muslim on Death Row can challenge me to work harder at this particular spiritual discipline, a community of Christians practicing it together might even be able to make fasting a celebration.

Monday, August 20, 2007

The Simple Way

I recently finished reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. It was an incredible witness to his vocation to the Philadelphia community The Simple Way and the road that got him there, and I would highly recommend it. However, I would warn you that if the book doesn't make you want to live differently, you haven't paid attention to what Claiborne is saying. The off-color nature of his story, the personable tone of the writing, and the snazzy packaging in which you find the book itself make it an easy candidate for "youthy" appeal and popularity, but Claiborne is not trying to be cool or youthy and to mistake him for such is to misunderstand his telling of the gospel. Read the book, but be willing to be changed.

"May God disturb you deeply." — Rev. Trevor Hudson, South Africa

Sunday, August 19, 2007

The Green Mile Seems So Long

Tonight I watched the movie The Green Mile on TV with my family. That film (and the book that inspired it—it's by Stephen King and I would definitely recommend the print version) is so saturated with emotion and difficult questions, and every time I watch it, something different latches onto my heart like a vise and twists until I hash it out. This time, the image of the guards on E Block tidying up the main room to prepare for an execution stuck with me. Watching them sweep the floors, set out folding chairs, and polish the one chair no one wants to sit in—but in which someone will have to sit—put me in mind of preparations being made for a show to be put on stage. I was appalled to watch the execution scenes as women in big hats and fancy dresses fanned themselves and their generally less well-dressed husbands as they calmly waited to watch another human being die. It was as if I had been transported back not to 1935 but to the 12th century and was watching as curious spectators gathered to witness a hanging.

Going along with that, I was struck by the things the people in the crowd had to say to the man being led to his death—struck not only by the nature of the comments but also by the familiar ring they brought to my ears, so used to being regaled with people's gallant declarations of support for the death penalty. I'll leave the actual issue to discuss another time; what I want to look at now is whatever it is in our human nature that makes the darkest parts of us well up at certain times.

The other day, I watched a video clip of Ann Coulter on a talk show. The day before, she had made a comment about John Edwards, and on this particular education, the audience was surprised to hear none other than Elizabeth Edwards' voice coming in over the line to speak to Coulter. Edwards was well-spoken, kept her composure very admirably, and had a very good point—namely, that Coulter's tendency to use personal attacks, often of a disturbingly cruel nature, on political candidates does nothing but paralyze actual debate over issues. I cheered Edwards on and scowled as Coulter rudely interrupted her (I don't care who you are, interrupting someone who's trying to make a sincere point is rude, and Coulter reigns supreme in that very activity), but I became extremely irked when the talk show host asked why Coulter felt it necessary to make fun of Hillary Clinton's and Monica Lewinsky's chubbiness in her book. Coulter stubbornly refused to answer the question unless he could produce the exact passage and give her the context; his response was that he himself was wondering what on earth the context could be. Certainly comments about Clinton's chubby legs have no place in political debate, but I found myself, someone who is none to comfortable with her own weight, muttering something bitter and terribly unkind about how skinny Ann Coulter is. At this point, I was engaged in a conversation about the subject with my father, who pointed out to me that I had just done the very same thing Coulter had done; I had made a personal attack, and the fact that I am sensitive about slights on people packing a little extra weight gives me no right to disparage those who are thin. Coulter, with her attitude of negativity, had appealed to my dark side and brought it out in full force.

I wonder if that very same thing were not happening at those fictional executions in The Green Mile, if that does not happen at executions today. When confronted with a person who murdered a friend or relative, who could honestly hope to keep the angry, primitive side of them from lashing out, as one character in the movie did, by shouting to "kill him twice, go on and kill him twice"? Darkness, grief, and evil breed their own. Perhaps that is why I was told again and again as I entered college to surround myself with good people. It was not in order to insulate myself from bad influences but to give the good in me a chance to be nurtured and encouraged, so that when I was faced with darkness in all its forms, I could enter into that situation without fear of being consumed by it, with the hope of consuming it with the love in which I had been growing. That is, after all, what Christian community is supposed to do; never to cut us off from the rest of the world, but to give us the strength and love necessary to go into the world and wrestle its demons without having to pretend we can do it alone. Alone, we succumb to the temptations of the world; as a community of people in communion with God, we can shed light even in the darkest places.

The question then becomes how to communicate this conviction, this hope, to the people who would sit on the front row in an execution chamber and shout, "kill him twice!" Oftentimes when I express my views about capital punishment, people respond with utmost confidence that if a member of my family were murdered, I would support the death penalty. But...no, I would not. Again, I'll save that whole discussion for another time, but for now, I will say that I at least would never want to watch anyone die, criminal or no—and aren't we all sinners, aren't we all murderers according to Jesus himself who said that he who is angry with his brother merits the same punishment as one who kills his brother (Matthew 5:21-22)?—and looking in the face of someone who had taken someone I loved and watching them die would bring me nothing resembling satisfaction. I wish I knew a way to communicate to those who believe that such a circumstance would bring them peace that there is a better way, a way of love and forgiveness...even now. To cry out for the death of another human being is to commit the murder, and it will not be an earthly government before which you or I will stand trial for such an act.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Fast I Choose

Welcome to the first post in my new blog. I don't have a terribly clear vision of what I want to do with this, but I have some vague inkling that I'd like to make it a space where I can explore and hash out how I and others in the church are doing theology and what impact it (necessarily) has on individual lives, communities, congregations, and the world. Ideally, it would be nice to have a place to reflect upon, make connections regarding, and garner support for various endeavors in social justice amid which I may find myself, and find myself wanting company. I've updated a LiveJournal nearly daily for over 4 years now, and I feel like it's time I carved out a spot in cyberspace where I'm doing something more and vastly better than whining about my personal life. Besides, writing is in my marrow, and if I hope to use it to establish and carry out orthodoxy and orthopraxis in my life and in the communities with which I identify myself, I figure I had better get some practice other than writing papers for school and recounting the day's events with sometimes overwhelming verbosity.

I felt the need to come up with a clever name for my blog, and who knows if I'll stick with the one I chose, but in a way it works because it's Scripture and it's all about social justice. Here's the context, in case you don't run in my particular faith circles and didn't catch it:

"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" — Isaiah 58:6-7

The preceding verses show that although the house of Jacob may fast and "lie in sackcloth and ashes" (v. 5), God says to his people, "[you] oppress all your workers" (v. 3) and perpetrate injustice against others. God will not hear the cries of a people who mistreat their brothers and sisters so. In the book of Amos, God declares that unless justice is carried out, he will not even hear their praise and worship:

"I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." — Amos 5:21-24

All of this is stuff that the good liberal Christian knows. However, I am aware of the subtle ways in which the most sincere efforts to pursue justice can fall short of God's vision for his fallen world. It is so easy to become an activist, to protest injustice everywhere, to raise a much-needed voice against oppression in all its insidious forms. But Stanley Hauerwas and others warn that it is possible for the church to get so wrapped up in standing against something—whether it is standing against war, against poverty, against homosexuality, against immorality, or any number of things—that she forgets what she is standing for. The church stands at the foot of the cross for the sake of all of God's children whom he longs to come to know him through relationship and community, which the church is meant to establish as mirrored in God's very nature as Trinity, three in one, a self-contained community of unconditional love.

So that's a handful of scattered thoughts posing as an introduction to this blog. Please to enjoy—or not, and either way, comments are encouraged. Also, the list of websites I've posted includes all kinds of resources: church websites, social justice initiatives, various nonprofit organizations, intentional communities, Christian publications, and some links of my own dealing with my music or projects with which I am involved. I'll be updating that list occasionally, so keep checking it out—you may find something of interest.

Monday, December 24, 2007

The Lord Directs the Steps

"The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps."
— Proverbs 16:9

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

A Prayer from Martin Luther

Look, Lord,
on an empty vessel that needs to be filled.
In faith I am weak—strengthen me.
In love I am cold—warm me and make me fervent
so that my love may go out to my neighbor.
I doubt and am unable to trust you completely.
Lord, strengthen my faith and trust in you.
You are all the treasure I possess.
I am poor, you are rich,
and you came to have mercy on the poor.
I am a sinner, you are goodness.
From you I can receive goodness,
but I can give you nothing.
Therefore I shall stay with you. Amen. — Martin Luther

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Hidden in Christ (quote)

"A woman's heart should be so hidden in Christ that a man should have to seek Him first to find her." — Maya Angelou

Sunday, December 2, 2007

The Golden Compass

I've tried to avoid the debate that has surrounded the release of the movie The Golden Compass. However, while avoiding homework and browsing Facebook, I came across a group called "Do NOT support 'The Golden Compass.'" It currently has 100,998 members.

OK. I read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy (of which The Golden Compass is the first installment, followed by The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass) as a kid and loved it. I have the entire trilogy in audio format on my iPod. I've read other books by Philip Pullman and loved them as well. I'm definitely going to go see the movie.

Somehow, even though I was immersed in Pullman's writing as a child and love his work to this day, I remain a steadfast Christian. The fact that the children in the book supposedly kill God miraculously had no effect on my faith.

Then again, I don't think it's all that miraculous. How many Christians do you think have read or seen The Wizard of Oz? I couldn't count how many times I've seen that movie even if I tried. Why do I bring this up? Well, just think about it: at the end, the wizard, very clearly a God figure whom Dorothy, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion (oh, and Toto, too) have travelled far to see, is revealed as a hoax. The curtain is pulled back and the Wizard of Oz is just a pathetic little man hiding behind smoke and mirrors.

Does anyone see the similarity behind L. Frank Baum's fraudulent wizard-god and Philip Pullman's story? Neither exactly typifies the Christian narrative, but The Wizard of Oz is one of the best-loved stories of a generation (or two...or three?), and I have yet to see anyone revoke their faith because they saw the movie or read Baum's fantasy novel.

I think there's a deeper issue in here of a psychotic need felt by some Christians to shield themselves and their children from exposure to atheistic themes in film and literature. Harry Potter got a bad rap, too. Once my dad was criticized by another pastor for allowing his children to read these anti-Christian books—he claimed that a child who read Harry Potter would have everything he or she needed to become a witch or a warlock. My father replied, "You know, my kids have read those books many times, and they just can't get that broom off the ground."

People, this is ridiculous. No child is going to walk out of The Golden Compass and decide that he or she should go kill God, just as no one who saw The Wizard of Oz in 1939 decided that God must actually be an old man behind a curtain. Go see the movie. Take your kids. They'll enjoy it. Let them read the books. Heaven forbid you should, well, forbid your child to read. Don't be so uptight. Faith is all about trust, and there is no trust in the line of thinking that leads people to protest a kid's movie because it might threaten their faith or their children's.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A Prayer from Saint Anselm

O Lord my God.
Teach my heart this day
where and how to find you.
You have made me and re-made me,
and you have bestowed on me
all the good things I possess,
and still I do not know you.
I have not yet done
that for which I was made.

Teach me to seek you,
for I cannot seek you
unless you teach me,
or find you
unless you show yourself to me.
Let me seek you in my desire;
let me desire you in my seeking.
Let me find you by loving you;
let me love you when I find you.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

Tired of Speaking Sweetly (poem)

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself
And practice His dropkick.
The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:
Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.
But when we hear
He is in such a "playful drunken mood"
Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town. — Hafiz

Logical Fallacies and Faith

I get into trouble in debates sometimes. I'm perfectly capable of using rational, deductive methods to make my point, but I seem determined to abandon all reason at a certain point in every argument. Sometimes, however, I think faith calls for that. I would never pit faith and reason against each other; they can always work in tandem, and at times when they seem divergent, they seem to me to be occupy such different planes that it's like comparing apples and oranges—or maybe apples and elephants. In any case, I went back and looked up some of those formulaic logical fallacies I learned to avoid in high school philosophy class and found that two of them—appeal to emotion and appeal to tradition—could get me into a lot of trouble with a philosopher but are valuable, maybe even necessary, within Christianity.

The one that gets me most often is the appeal to emotion. I'll follow a logical argument and hold my own for a while, but at a certain point, it all breaks down and I make a flot-out appeal to the other person's heart. I know I can't stop bringing up this issue lately, but the place where thisgets me the most is in the homosexuality debate. I can be convinced by logic of the soundness of church tradition (which will come up later, obviously) and the sanctity of marriage, but in the end I always want to ask—what about Christ's mandate to love your neighbor? What do I do when a dear friend senses a call to ordination and is unable to pursue it—and I don't know whether to support him/her? Although in a strictly logical argument, my comment would be out of line and fallacious, I firmly believe that these questions are vital within Christianity. The way our logic causes us to treat other member of the body of Christ matters a great deal, and so I will not relinquish my insistence on the appeal to emotion even—and especially—when the logic is so sound.

I found it amusing that the appeal to tradition was listed in the fallacies I looked up; I had forgotten about that one. I was recently told by a friend that to resort to tradition (again on the issue of homosexuality) was ultimately a cop-out. I think this is incorrect, and I think this is what the fallacy of appeal to tradition assumes. However, 2,000 years of tradition cannot simply be ignored; we may indeed need to wrestle with it, and sometimes changes should be made—take the ordination of women, for example—but to discount it entirely is foolish and completely against the nature and continuity of the Christian faith over time. In the case of homosexuality, the appeal to emotion and the appeal to tradition both come up a lot and are often at odds one with the other. Both are valuable and need to be considered as more than logical fallacies.

Just to add on to the two fallacies I've discussed, another good one is the Ad Hominem fallacy. This is when an attack is made on the person making an argument, and that attack presumes to make the argument itself invalid. I see this a lot in Christianity. People are often turned off of the church because its members say one thing and do another. Philosophically speaking, hypocritical or inconsistent actions do not discount the credibility of the argument, but in the church, it matters that the words and the actions match up. Certainly no one is going to be able to have a perfect record in any given area; we all struggle with our sexuality in one way or another, so taking the moral high ground should never be the goal or the method of the debate on homosexuality. On one hand, we cannot claim that because Bob is a sinner, Bob cannot tell me not to sin; on the other hand, Bob should be aware of his sin and honest about it, because it does matter.

Just some thoughts about logic and faith I wanted to throw out there...

Friday, November 23, 2007

Thank you, Captain Obvious

I recently had a blog post on Theolog, Christian Century's blog, that was a shorter version of my post on 10/25. One thing I learned through the comments I received (and they came from a variety of people and opinions) is that a lot of people think that it is obvious that (in this example) homosexuality is wrong, or, conversely, that it is obvious that homosexuality is fine. What happens is that you get arguments over full inclusion, ordination and marriage rights among people whose basic assumptions about the rightness or wrongness of homosexuality itself are sharply at odds.

On many issues, though not on the question of homosexuality, I am often one of those people who presumes that certain tenets of the faith are self-evident. A lot of this comes about because I have grown up in the church and am—in some cases, but not all—more familiar with the scriptural and/or theological arguments surrounding an issue than your average person. Once I got to college, I started learning that this tendency towards the obvious is not always helpful. Suddenly I was around intelligent Christians who thought that certain things about faith were perfectly obvious—things about which I thought in polar opposite terms, which I, too, thought were obvious.

One of my friends supports the death penalty from a Christian perspective and claims that its use preserves the right to life. Just hearing this makes my head spin because it seems like such a blatant internal contradiction. However, my friend thinks his reasoning is perfectly sound, and when I counter his point, it's not as if it's the first time he's thought about it from a different perspective—he's heard similar views before, he's thought about it before. I will maintain that his argument is inconsistent, but if I am not careful about how I approach the argument, I shut off all further debate, which seems to me to be ultimately unhelpful.

What this calls for, I think, is a certain level of intellectual generosity—something, I admit, I'm not very good at practicing. Especially on the issue of homosexuality, plenty of people have thought long and hard about it and crafted scripturally based arguments that end up being utterly divergent in many cases. One does not have to relinquish one's own position in order to seek to understand another point of view, and one does not have to agree with the other person, but as Christians I believe it is important that even—and especially—when we hold to seeming extremes of interpretation, we cannot do so without allowing space for the other side to articulate its points, even if we think their ideas ludicrous.

The heart of the Gospel is not that we need to prove ourselves right in opposition to all those who are wrong. I am by no means calling for a wishy-washy universality or relativity of belief (heaven forbid); I am not saying that some things are not ultimately right, because some things are. The Trinity, Christ's death and resurrection, Christ's divinity and humanity—these things, and other dogma outlined in the Nicene Creed, are non-negotiable. However, where it concerns the adiaphora of the Christian faith, we must be able to understand, if not necessarily embrace, other points of view—or risk the fragmentation of Christ's body, the Church.

Friday, November 16, 2007

Confession

I recently went on a retreat with the Catholic Student Center here at Duke. The Awakening retreat happens every semester, and Duke just had their ninth one. Texas A&M, who passed the retreat tradition on to our school, will have Aggie Awakening #82 in the spring.

Although the whole weekend was an incredible experience for me—in ways I could not have anticipated or even hoped for—one thing in particular that we did the first night of Awakening got me thinking. After we had all been introduced, we ate dinner and heard a talk from a fellow student. Then the priest, Father Joe, stood up and announced that we would be participating in the sacrament of reconciliation that night.

I was fascinated. Having grown up United Methodist, I was used to the communal prayer of confession that we say together during worship, so the idea of confessing individually to a priest was new for me. I asked a friend if I could confess even if I were Protestant (the only one there, I should add), and when he said yes, I went in to see one of the priests who were stationed in various rooms around our retreat site.

As soon as I sat down, I announced that I was Protestant and had no idea what I was doing. The priest was very friendly and helpful, explaining the practice of confession to me before listening to me talk. When I was done, he said that they usually assign penance. Penance?! I thought. How cool!! I had to say three Our Fathers and was told to work on a relationship I had confessed to have been neglecting.

Since this experience, I've thought a lot about what it means to confess one's sins, and whether Protestants are missing out on an important part of the Christian life by foregoing individual confession. Certainly to confess the corporate sin of the church in one voice is vital, especially before taking part in the Eucharist. Then, too, many Protestants participate in accountability groups that require them to be honest about their sins and to be held to a standard of Christian living by fellow believers.

I wonder if it would behoove all Christians, Catholics and non-Catholics alike, to confess not only to the sins of the whole body of Christ but also to their own specific sins. Confessing to that priest encouraged me to take specific actions to ameliorate a situation with a loved one. On the ride home, I listened as one of the freshmen I was driving called her parents and asked their permission to take part in an activity about which she had been lying to them. She had confessed this to the priest, he had told her to be truthful with them—and she had done it.

The corporate prayer of confession may be an important way for a worshiping body to acknowledge shared sin, but does it motivate the individual to make real changes to combat his or her own shortcomings? Even if it means doing something as simple as being in truth-telling relationships of Christian accountability, I think Protestants especially ought to explore possibilities for confessing individual sin and being held responsible for answering to them.

This Is My Father's World (hymn)

This is my Father's world.
O let me ne'er forget
That though the wrong seems oft so strong,
God is the ruler yet. — Maltbie D. Babcock

Sunday, November 11, 2007

Equipping the Called (quote)

"God does not call the equipped; he equips the called." — Unknown

Tuesday, November 6, 2007

A Poem by Emily Dickinson

It was too late for Man —
But early, yet, for God —
Creation — impotent to help —
But Prayer — remained — Our Side

How excellent the Heaven —
When Earth — cannot be had —
How hospitable — then — the face
Of our Old Neighbor — God —

"Miss Emily D," as my professor calls her

Peace Is the Opposite of Security (quote)

"How does peace come about? Through a system of political treaties? Through the investment of international capital in different countries? Through the big banks, through money? Or through universal peaceful rearmament in order to guarantee peace? Through none of these, for the single reason that in all of them peace is confused with safety. There is no way to peace along the way of safety. For peace must be dared. It is the great venture. It can never be safe. Peace is the opposite of security. To demand guarantees is to mistrust, and this mistrust in turn brings forth war. To look for guarantees is to want to protect oneself. Peace means to give oneself altogether to the law of God, wanting no security, but in faith and obedience laying the destiny of the nations in the hand of Almighty God, not trying to direct it for selfish purposes. Battles are won, not with weapons, but with God. They are won where the way leads to the cross. Which of us can say he or she knows what it might mean for the world if one nation should meet the aggressor, not with weapons in hand, but praying, defenseless, and for that very reason protected by 'a bulwark never failing'?" — Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Church and the People of the World

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Tegel prison, summer 1944

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Love = Love

I have a t-shirt that says, "Gay? Fine by me." I have another t-shirt with stick figures in 3 pairs—one a man and a woman, another two men, the third two women—with the caption "Love = Love." I was raised to love people no matter what they look like or what they think or do, and for that I am grateful. But I don't wear those shirts often, because, for the first time in my life, I seem to be on the fence on an issue.

As seminary and possibly ordination waver on my horizon, I am finding that I have to think much more seriously about issues that I previously took quite lightly. As I have observed the strife in the Anglican Communion over the issue of ordaining a gay bishop and, more importantly—and at the heart of the argument—scriptural authority, I have begun to see how much is at stake. More recently, the question of ordaining gays has been brought very close to home as a young woman I know who wants to be ordained in the Methodist Church has come out as a lesbian.

To see people that I know and love being denied the fullness of their pursuit of what they perceive as God's call on their lives is troubling at the very least. I cannot ignore my church's stance on the issue, much less the scriptural basis in which it is grounded. The fact of the matter is that the Methodist Church, of which I am a part, does not ordain gays. Especially if I pursue ordination myself, there will be times when I will have to adhere to the tradition of my denomination, which may mean denying support to friends who want to be ordained. It breaks my heart to think about having to do so.

The church I attend in Durham, NC is a diverse congregation, and that includes diversity in sexual orientation and gender identification. I know that there are some people in that church who believe that homosexuality is a mortal sin, but they still share hymnals with our gay members and hug them during the passing of the peace—they may not agree with their life choices, but they love them unconditionally.

It seems to me that this is the church's best response to the question of homosexuality. A person's sexual orientation—not to mention race, age, gender, etc.—should never prevent them from being included in the worshiping body of Christ. I have seen myself what it can look like for a church to, as the old adage goes, love the sinner and hate the sin. If it were not possible to do so, how could any of us ever relate to one another? We know all too well that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23).

But several questions still linger. Why is homosexuality portrayed as so grievous a sin by the church when adulterers and the like, even among the clergy, are not always dealt with consistently? Is the issue of ordaining gays eventually going to follow the trajectory that the question of ordaining women did (at least among most Protestant churches), or is this a different kind of question? Are we really accepting gays into the body of Christ if we love them unconditionally but do not allow them to be ordained?

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Showing His Need (quote)

"He prays more by showing his need to the merciful shepherd than by any beseeching." — From Saint Anselm's Prayer to St. Peter

Friday, October 19, 2007

Images of Forgiveness

Washington National Cathedral, D.C.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

No One Is Beyond Redemption

This article was first published in Religio: An Undergraduate Journal of Christian Thought at Duke, in April 2007.

The United Methodist Church, of which I am a part, has stood against the death penalty for over 50 years. Many other denominations take a similar stance. American Christians especially must grapple with this issue because the U.S. is one of few developed countries that has retained the death penalty over the years. As the modern world has advanced, the overwhelming trend among industrialized nations has been to abolish the death penalty. Capital punishment is not practiced anywhere in Western Europe; in fact, this is a prerequisite to membership in the European Union. The company that America keeps in its use of capital punishment is less than flattering: other nations with high rates of execution include Iran, Iraq, Sudan, China, and Pakistan, countries whose human rights records are not among their best qualities.

The demographics of those against whom capital punishment is used in America evince a disturbing trend. A huge percentage of convictions are handed down to defendants who could not afford an attorney, and a majority of death row inmates are people of color. In 80% of capital cases, the victim is white, but only half of homicide cases nationwide involve white victims. Amnesty International's website summarizes this in a damning statement: "From initial charging decisions to plea bargaining to jury sentencing, African-Americans are treated more harshly when they are defendants, and their lives are accorded less value when they are victims" (www.amnestyusa.org). The fact that the people who are executed for crimes in this country are those who are already marginalized by society evinces the ease with which one can dehumanize criminals and distance oneself from the humanity of the accused.

Much time and energy has been spent on finding more humane ways of carrying out executions. Regardless of the extent to which certain methods of execution may or may not be "humane," the death penalty is an incontrovertibly violent act. Violence entails doing bodily harm to another person, and I can think of no bodily harm more permanent than death. One does not need the example of Eduard Delacroix's grisly death in the movie The Green Mile, or the real life example of Angel Nieves Diaz, whose 2006 execution in Florida took over half an hour, to recognize the face of violence in the death penalty. The danger that emerges here is one that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized well when he pointed out that "returning violence for violence multiplies violence" (Nobel Speech 1964). Peter Storey, a Methodist bishop in South Africa who helped lead the nation's protest against apartheid, made a similar observation: "If you justify violence for any reason, no matter how good and noble, you legitimize it for every reason, no matter how wrong and unworthy" (With God in the Crucible, Abingdon 2002). Both King and Storey had seen what violence had done to tear their countries to shreds and had heard the good news that with Christ lies the way of peace and reconciliation, a path not taken when recourse to violence, including the death penalty, is taken.

To support capital punishment is to say that some people are beyond redemption. This was not what Jesus declared when he stretched his arms out on the cross in an eternal gesture of welcome and forgiveness. This was not what Paul was telling the early Christians when he said, "while we still were sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Jesus was a victim of the death penalty, and he was flanked on each side by criminals being put to death. To the thief who cried, "Jesus, remember me," he responded, "Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (Luke 23:42-43). Who is this Savior who hangs next to sinners and tells them the gates of heaven are open wide to them, even as they endure state-mandated execution for crimes they willfully committed? This is the Savior we address thus: "Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace" (Book of Common Prayer). Christ's death and resurrection declares loudly that no one is beyond redemption, and the death penalty flies flagrantly in the face of this unconditional, forgiving love.

Capital punishment seeks to establish a system of justice, but it is enslaved to the concept of retributive justice. The famed Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa explains the difference between retributive and restorative justice eloquently in his book No Future Without Forgiveness as exemplified in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission held in post-apartheid South Africa. Archbishop Tutu writes that retributive justice, "whose chief goal is to be punitive...has little consideration for the real victims and almost none for the perpetrator. We contend that there is another kind of justice, restorative justice...the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator" (No Future Without Forgiveness, Doubleday 1999). Tutu says that this approach looks at a crime as something personal, "something that has happened to persons and whose consequence is a rupture in relationships." In the legal workings of capital punishment cases, the perpetrator is the accused and the wronged party is the state. In actuality, it is all of us, including the perpetrator, who experience the crime as a tear in the fabric of humanity. The American justice system does not acknowledge this and provides the victims' families—not to mention the perpetrator's loved ones—little space for healing. Our legal system sees only the transgression of laws, not the rending of human hearts.

Christ came not so that everyone might get what they deserve in an "eye for an eye" system of justice. Christ came "that they may all be one" (John 17:21). Christ died and rose again that broken relationships might be healed and that all might be reconciled with God and with one another. To resort to the death penalty is to make permanent the damage done to human relationships in a violent act, first in the initial crime and again in the perpetrator's trial and execution. To say that the death penalty is the only option is to abandon hope that we, the body of Christ, broken and bruised, may one day be made whole. We as Christians need to believe that we are promised more than the suffering we now experience and to recognize that in our ability to forgive and to live in peace with one another lies God's greatest dream for us, his most beautiful creation.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Angels and Light

Clay was an all-around nice guy. A young, single doctor who was a member of our church when we lived in Davidson, Clay was a part of my family's life from early on in his involvement with the congregation. I remember being eight years old and joining a group of adults on a trip that my father led to Israel; Clay went, too. A group of mostly men would stay up late in the hotel playing spades on into the night, and I would watch and learn the game. Clay was an intense card player and would seem to be nearly at blows with our equally intense music director, but outside of a game of spades he was charming, friendly, and unfailingly kind to me.

I remember, too, when I was a little older and Clay had taken my dad and my younger brother out on Lake Norman in his boat. They returned late in the day with quite a story: Clay had somehow managed to ground his speedboat on a sand bar. Apparently he bore it with admirable nonchalance, until my brother, who must have been four or five years old, began asking why Clay had wrecked the boat...and wouldn't stop asking, over and over again. "Clay, why did you wreck the boat? Clay, how long are we gonna be stuck here?"

Then one day, Clay surprised us all. He called my dad and told him he had to come over to his house so he could show him something. Confused, my dad complied, and Clay led him into the spare bedroom. There, of all things, was a baby! Apparently Clay had decided that no one was ever going to want to marry him (why, we could never figure), but he really wanted a child, so he had gone and adopted Lauren without telling anyone. My dad was skeptical at first, but he quickly saw that Clay was going to really come alive in his new role as a father. As my dad describes it, it was as if you had been exploring a museum full of beautiful works of art and then had turned a corner to discover the treasure room, whose contents surpassed all expectations of beauty and value. That was how Clay's character blossomed as he parented Lauren.

Naturally, Clay wanted to have Lauren baptized in our church, and my dad was thrilled to perform the sacrament. Present in the service, as on every Sunday, was Mary. Mary was a wonderful, sweet woman, but a little strange. She had a mystical flair that seemed a bit out of place in our down-to-earth Methodist congregation. After church on the day that Lauren was baptized, Mary sought out my dad and told him she had had a vision. My dad was skeptical, but he had little choice but to hear her out.

I can only imagine the look of polite but feigned interest on his face as he heard her describe how, when Lauren was brought before the baptismal font, she saw the roof of the church lift off. A great light streamed into the sanctuary, she said, and shone on the child, and angels descended and gathered around to watch this baby girl being brought into the life of the church. My dad probably muttered a nervous "Wow" and disentangled himself from the conversation as quickly as possible. He didn't think twice about Mary's vision.

Five years later, almost to the day, my dad received a phone call. By then, Clay had moved with Lauren to Texas to take a job at a hospital out there. He and my dad had stayed in touch, but this was not a routine phone call. My dad listened in shock as Clay told him that he had an inoperable brain tumor and had six months to live. Clay was a doctor. He knew exactly what his chances were, knew just why surgery was not an option, knew the kind of swift, inexorable death that awaited him.

The news was difficult for my whole family. Clay was a young man, talented and likable, and should have had decades of life ahead of him. It seemed senseless that the malady he worked to relieve others of would now take his life. And then, too, there was Lauren. She was five years old now, a beautiful child with thick blonde hair and a crooked smile. Clay had already arranged for a new home for her after he passed. All that remained was to say his goodbyes and wait for the tumor to claim him.

The day after my dad heard the news, he received an unexpected piece of mail. It was from Mary. We had since moved to Charlotte and had not seen Mary in a while. Curious, my dad opened it to find a card with a strange illustration on the front. As he read Mary's enclosed note, he understood and was flabbergasted. Out of nowhere, five years after this vision that she hadn't shared with anyone but my dad, Mary had suddenly thought about Lauren's baptism again. Inspired, she had an artist do a visual rendering of the vision and had notecards made with the image. She had sent one to my dad just so he could see the picture and remember this strange little event from half a decade before.

Some people thought it meant Clay was going to be healed. Others shook it off as a weird coincidence. Some wondered if even then, at Lauren's baptism, there had been some shadow in Clay that had somehow been detected in Mary's vision. Many were sure that the child was under a form of protection that would hold her even after Clay passed. Even my dad, leery of visions and mystical experience, had to say that to call it a coincidence was ridiculous. Five years had gone by since Mary had had the vision. She must have recalled that day and had the painting done around the same time Clay was diagnosed. She mailed my dad the card before he got the call from Clay; no one in North Carolina knew before then that he was sick.

I'll admit—I'm not sure what this story means. But I do think that maybe it means that there is someone watching out for us. That doesn't mean that brain tumors will miraculously disappear; sometimes they do, but Clay's did not. What I think it means is that when God breaks into our hearts, we may find that we are closer to our neighbor than we first thought, perhaps closer than is comfortable.

Here's the artist's rendering of Mary's vision:

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Women in Ministry

The United Methodist Church recently celebrated its 50th year of ordaining women. Many other Protestant churches have made similar moves, but still others insist that Scripture shows that while men may be called to ordained ministry, women are not. With help from my dad, I decided to try and further explore the rationale and Scriptural basis for ordaining women.

The most commonly referenced Bible passage (with my apologies for what seems like prooftexting on both sides of this issue but is just an effort at being concise) is 1 Timothy 2:8-15. "I desire, then, that in every place the men should pray, lifting up holy hands without anger or argument; also that the women should dress themselves modestly and decently in suitable clothing, not with their hair braided, or with gold, pearls, or expensive clothes, but with good works, as is proper for women who profess reverence for God. Let a woman learn in silence with full submission. I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she is to keep silent...Yet she will be saved through childbearing, provided they continue in faith and love and holiness, with modesty." In a way, this is passage is a blessing of the vocation of motherhood, something too often overlooked in today's society. On the other hand, it is a difficult text for women who feel called to the ministry. It seems clear from this excerpt alone, not to mention many other Scriptural references to similar decrees, that women should not be permitted to enter the ministry.

However, one thing to keep in mind is that the Bible was written and its stories and admonitions located in a specific time and place. The Word of God is itself timeless and transcends temporal boundaries, but the Scriptures were put into writing during a time when the dominant culture was a firmly patriarchal society. I don't know any Christians who abstain from eating pork after reading Leviticus, or who shun women as unclean during their menstrual cycle. True, those examples are related more to health concerns in a time before modern medicine, but the point remains: the culture of the ancient Near East plays a key role in determining what is included in Scripture, and what may have been extremely important to the Jews of the Old Testament or the fledgling Christian church may include concerns that had meaning in that time period but not necessarily in ours.

I do not say all this to suggest that we should ignore anything in Scripture that does not seem to fit with modern sensibilities. Much of what Jesus had to say doesn't fit with any sensibility except that of the cross—selling all one's possessions and giving them to the poor, for example (I'm certainly not saying that just because a decree like this is difficult it can be dismissed as irrelevant!). What I mean to say is that it is important not to get bogged down in those things that were specific to the time and place in which the Bible was written at the expense of hearing the heart of the Gospel. Another favorite text, this time on the other side of the debate, is the familiar line from Galatians 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." This is the heart of the Gospel.

When you look at the example of Jesus and his followers, it is easy to see the ways in which the disciples and their rabbi were countercultural in many ways, not the least of which was their inclusion of women. Luke 8:1-3 reads: "Soon afterwards he went on through cities and villages, proclaiming and bringing the good news of the kingdom of God. The twelve were with him, as well as some women who had been cured of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary, called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna, the wife of Herod's steward Chuza, and Susanna, and many others, who provided for them out of their resources." These were wealthy women of high standing who owned property. They were not along to do the dishes; they were on equal footing with the men present. Another example comes in Romans 16:7, where Paul names Junia (also called Joanna) as an apostle: "Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was." In the book of John, it is a woman who first proclaims (preaches?) the gospel of the resurrection. Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene and chooses her as his emissary to his followers (John 20:18): "Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, 'I have seen the Lord'; and she told them that he had said these things to her." What might be considered the first sermon was delivered by a woman.

Check out this piece by Steve Harper, who teaches at Asbury, for another good look at the Methodist practice of ordaining women.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Disturb the Peace (quote)

"You can't claim you're for peace if you're not willing to disturb it."
— Bill Maher

Friday, September 14, 2007

Just Out of Habit

The other night, I told a friend over dinner about some difficulties I've been having and about the ways in which God is working in my life right now. Excited about the vocational developments happening lately, I listed for her all the ways in which I'm engaging my spiritual life and discernment process—attending morning prayer daily, being involved in and leading my campus ministry group, going to my adopted local church, singing in two choirs (one leads a weekly, formal Vespers service, the other is a student gospel choir), taking Eucharist at least once a week, reading the Psalms, working on the undergrad Christian magazine here at Duke. At one point she stopped me and asked, "But are you getting anything out of all this? Are you getting anything out of the sermons you hear or the prayers you say?" I paused and gave her a quizzical look. "Well, yes," I replied, "but that's not the point. It's not about me getting something out of church. It's about me being formed by good habits."

The word "habit" has become a swear word in today's American church. If you go to church just out of habit, that's bad. If you pray just out of habit, your prayers are meaningless. If you engage with other Christians just out of habit, your fellowship is not genuine.

I think this view is contrary to the nature of the Christian life. Habits are not the enemies of faith but are the ways in which we are incorporated into its disciplines and practices. To use a pre-Christian example, Aristotle believed that the root of all ethics was couched in habit. The process of acquiring virtue was one of developing good habits.

In Christianity, we repeat certain prayers, formulas, and rituals to the point that they become habits. Many people these days think that if you say the Lord's Prayer or the Apostle's Creed out of habit, you don't really mean it. But what does it mean to mean it? What does it mean for prayer to be genuine? The key seems to lie in oneself, in the person's intentions and understanding of what they are saying or doing. However, I believe that the true purpose and value of worship lies far beyond any one worshiper and his or her intentions. The beauty of worship is that it is not about us. We should thank God that the validity of our worship does not rest on the sanctity of our intent, because what mortal would stand in judgment of such? However, if we allow the habits of the Christian life to pervade our lives, they will become a part of who we are and prayer can become a sort of divine reflex to serve us when we need it most.

I certainly would not advocate the practice of attending church weekly, saying the prayers by rote, and then leaving Monday through Saturday only to return the following week out of habit. It is important that church leaders instruct their parishioners in the importance and meaning of the practices of worship, prayer, service, and all other aspects of the life of the church. However, to condemn the habitual nature of the Christian life is to say that if you're coming to church just out of habit, you might as well not come at all. This is dangerous thinking. If people go to church expecting to get something out of the sermon or the prayers and then for whatever reason don't connect with what is said from the pulpit on that particular day, they leave disappointed because their needs weren't met, when it was never their needs that mattered (don't get me wrong, people's needs certainly matter in the church, but look at my post "Our Desires Are Too Weak" for a mention of the difference between felt needs and Gospel-preached needs). The times when we don't feel like going to church are often the times when we need most to be in church. We believe in a God on whom we can cast our weariness, our doubts, our boredom, and our pain. Worship is when God meets and redeems us, whether we really want to run into him there or not.

All in all, I think that part of my work in the church will be to redeem the concept of habit. The idea of being formed by disciplines that aren't necessarily under our control isn't a comfortable one for many. However, that is what the Christian life is about—being formed by God, not trying to form ourselves to what we think is genuine or meaningful.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

A Prayer from St. Augustine

O Lord, our God,
Grant us to trust in your overshadowing wings:
Protect us beneath them and bear us up.
You will carry us as little children,
And even to our grey-headed age you will carry us still.
We need not fear to find no home again
Because we have fallen away from it;
While we were absent our home falls not to ruins,
For our home is your eternity. Amen.

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Whose Service is Perfect Freedom

At 8:00 a.m. this morning I stood in Goodson Chapel at Duke Divinity School and read from my pocket-sized Book of Common Prayer as a group of students (graduate students—I was the oddball) went through the daily rite of morning prayer. I went twice to morning prayer last week and every day so far this week; I'm hoping to make it a permanent fixture in my daily routine. As I prayed the Venite, the Nunc Dimitis, and the Psalms, I realized just how odd I am among my peers for actually enjoying—and even desperately needing—such a practice. Where for me a discipline like morning prayer is centering, formative, and vital to my spiritual life, to many Christians today it seems...well, boring. Where is the break? What has the church done to make formal worship "boring"?

I suppose I'm a bit of a weirdo when it comes to worship. I read liturgical theology for fun, for crying out loud. Nobody does that. But even though I know that I occupy a different spiritual and intellectual landscape regarding worship than most other people, I still feel a deep sadness anytime someone tells me that such-and-such a church is too boring or too formal. Has worship really become that dull? Or is our culture forming us with expectations that simply do not fit with what worship is all about? (There's another post hidden in here somewhere about habit, which I will address in full later on.)

Some churches really are boring. Eddie Izzard, a fabulous comedian (he's a British transvestite and is wickedly smart), makes a point in one of his routines about how oftentimes Christian worship sounds just plain painful. "There's something phenomenally dreary about Christian singing," he says as he goes on to provide a particularly dreary rendition of "Oh God Our Help in Ages Past." "They're the only people who can sing 'Hallelujah' without feeling." I've certainly been in churches like that (white churches...Izzard makes the distinction clear and revels in the raucousness of the worship of people of African descent), and it hurts, it really does. But somehow that image of dreariness has been projected onto all formal (or even mildly structured!) worship. People feel restrained, as if they are not free to "really" worship (whatever that means).

I thought about this concept of being "free" to worship during one of the collects we prayed from the BCP this morning. It says, "Oh God...whose service is perfect freedom." In serving God, in being bound to him, we are truly free. The notion of being unrestrained and able to do as you please just doesn't jive with the whole concept of forming one's desires to God's will. Maybe this is a problem uniquely my own, but I struggle with prayer and with focusing on worship, so to have a liturgy sanctioned by hundreds of years of practice is not limiting but rather freeing, and deeply so. I love praying the Psalms because through them I am able to make the supplications, lamentations, thanksgivings, and confessions that sit in my heart with no words to set them free. Sometimes I wonder if people even read the Psalms properly anymore. The Psalms make up a prayer book and, to paraphrase Bonhoeffer, when you pray the Psalms you are praying with the whole church and with Christ himself.

I wonder if some people are so averse to ordered, formal worship because individualism and uniqueness are so stressed in today's culture that the thought of being brought into a unified, disciplined practice with others seems undesirable. We all want to do our own thing. The thought of engaging in practices that put you in communion not only with other Christians today but also with Christians who lived and died hundreds of years before now doesn't invoke the kind of awe it once did (and still does for some of us). Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico is one of my favorite places in the world. What overwhelms me in watching the monks perform the daily office, praying seven times a day, chanting the psalms and taking Mass each morning, is that, aside from incorporating things like running water, solar power, and even internet (the monks have an online gift shop and post the daily martyrology on their webpage), their way of life has remained essentially the same for 1500 years. The monks in the desert outside Abiquiu, NM are walking with Saint Benedict himself, a millennium and a half dead. I wonder if there is a way in our post-Enlightenment world to recapture the minds of Christians today in such a way that the thought of being a part of something bigger than themselves is not oppressive or marginalizing but rather liberating and empowering.

Saturday, September 8, 2007

Remembering Father Murphy

I can still hear the silverware clinking, the hollow, metallic bang of pots in the kitchen, the occasional sound of decompression as hot air from a stove or oven picked itself up and moved across a room. I can also hear voices, but not like those to which I am accustomed; boisterous men with facial hair that could put them on The Sopranos converse loudly, women with dark hair scold their olive-skinned children, who babble on in the lilting, bouncy tongue of the country in which I had found myself for the past several days. This perfectly Italian trattoria off the main square in Assisi remains with me not only in its sounds, but also in its sights. I can see the appropriately Umbrian, rural decorations creeping across the walls and the bottle of effervescent water (we had asked for “no gas” but had been disappointed upon our waiter’s return) in the center of the table. I can see the cozily crowded restaurant and its entrance, a door that seemed too small for a normal person from either end and required the customer to stoop down as he or she descended the stairs into the family-run eatery, or ascended them out.

Most of all, I can see my father’s face. Thinking back, I remember that this summer he had grown a goatee; my father has been clean-shaven all my life, so this was a novelty, and we had to buy him a small pair of scissors in Assisi with which to trim his facial hair because he wouldn’t stop picking at it. This time I don’t remember the goatee. I do, however, remember his eyes. They are a murky, hazel shade, discolored from their original dark brown by a case of Hepatitis C he had as a young man, and this time, they are shining in an odd way, partly with happiness and partly with tears.

Earlier that day, in one of our rare forays into a nearby internet café, my father had learned that Roland Murphy, his Ph.D. adviser, had passed away. Father Murphy was more than a professor to my dad; he was a mentor and a friend. I can’t remember in any sort of detail many of the stories that my dad told me that night in the trattoria in Assisi. But I do know that he regaled me for several hours with anecdotes about Father Murphy. I was sad to hear that such a good man had died, sad that my father was abroad when it happened and would be unable to attend the funeral, sad that he had no one but his 16-year-old daughter to whom he could reminisce. I felt curious to hear my dad talk about his own life, curious about this moral and scholastic giant to whom my father seemed to owe so much gratitude and affection. I felt confused by my father’s tears, though my dad has never been the image of the stoic, unfeeling patriarch and is in fact a bit of a crybaby. I listened politely, even interestedly, asked a few questions, and let the leftovers of my spaghetti carbonara (my new favorite Italian dish) grow cold as his storytelling stretched on into the night.

That night in Assisi seems so poignant to me now and may in fact have been the most spiritual moment of that trip, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Here I was, essentially on pilgrimage to the place where Saint Francis lived and worked; I had familiarized myself with the streets of the town, this town perched on a hill that seems to float in some ephemeral way. I had attended Mass in the basilica (this was years before I became borderline neurotic about the Eucharist). I had listened to and memorized much of my father’s treasure trove of stories about Saint Francis. I had visited the church of Santa Chiara and had seen the miraculously preserved body of this 13th-century saint and friend of Francis. Later in the trip, when we had moved on to Lithuania, I would have a wonderful moment in a small Franciscan monastery overlooking the Hill of Crosses, which had stained-glass reproductions of the famous frescoes depicting Francis’ life in its sanctuary. But for all the obvious inbreakings of God on that trip, perhaps the most meaningful one was also the most subtle—the experience of talking to my father over pasta, wine, and carbonated water, witnessing how the sad news of the death of a dear friend can elicit the most beautiful, joyful memories of a person’s life.

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

A Prayer from Dietrich Bonhoeffer

O God, early in the morning I cry to you.
Help me to pray
And to concentrate my thoughts on you.
I cannot do this alone.
In me there is darkness.
But with you there is light;
I am lonely, but you do not leave me;
I am feeble in heart, but with you there is help;
I am restless, but with you there is peace.
In me there is bitterness, but with you there is patience;
I do not understand your ways,
But you know the way for me...
Restore me to liberty,
And enable me to live now
That I may answer before you and before me.
Lord, whatever this day may bring,
Your name be praised. Amen.

Monday, September 3, 2007

God's Coming is Unforeseen (quote)

"God's coming is unforeseen, I think, and the reason, if I had to guess, is that if he gave us anything much in the way of advance warning, more often than not we would have made ourselves scarce long before he got there." — Frederick Buechner, The Sacred Journey

Sunday, September 2, 2007

A Prayer from Teresa of Avila

May nothing move you;
May nothing terrify you;
Everything passes;
God never changes.
Patience be all to you.
Who trusts in God
Shall never be needy.
God alone suffices.

Friday, August 31, 2007

The Wounded Healer

I remember very clearly when my mother told me that Mr. Christie had died. I was in elementary school, probably age 7 or 8. Mr. Christie was an elderly man in our church. If I ever met him, I do not remember it, but for weeks after his death, like clockwork, I wept for Mr. Christie each Sunday morning in church.

I had always been an emotional child, ready to cry at the drop of a hat. Mr. Christie’s death and the weeks following are the first time I remember crying over someone not directly connected to me. Each week my mother would pack me off to Sunday School and I would seem fine, but somewhere along the hall between the classroom and the sanctuary on my way to worship, a switch would flip and the floodgates would open. I would start thinking about how Mr. Christie had swerved to avoid a head-on collision, saving his wife in the passenger seat while sacrificing himself, and my face would crumple up and the tears would begin.

What I have come to understand is that this somewhat strange event in my childhood actually speaks deeply to who I am as a person. I now see that my sadness over Mr. Christie was early evidence of the fact that I am very highly empathetic by nature. I am slowly learning that there are few people on this planet who truly ache for the pain of others, even strangers, and that I am one of them, for better or worse. I can't watch a commercial for St. Jude’s Children's Hospital without crying. Learning about my friends' personal darkness, talking a girl through suicidal thoughts, watching someone struggle with an eating disorder—these things lacerate my heart as a knife might carve into flesh.

I am beginning to see that my ability to empathize so fiercely with others' pain is both a blessing and a curse. I struggle constantly with discerning what may be a call to ministry, and the extent to which I can feel empathy sometimes obliterates my faith in myself as having pastoral responsibilities in the future. I am always the person that others go to with the darkest parts of their lives. My ability to empathize gives others the space they need to be open and honest, and even though the pain on my end can be crippling, for me (or anyone) to perform genuine pastoral ministry, it could be no other way. In his book The Wounded Healer, Henri Nouwen says, "no one can help anyone without becoming involved, without entering with his whole person into the painful situation, without taking the risk of becoming hurt, wounded or even destroyed in the process. The beginning and the end of all Christian leadership is to give your life for others." Perhaps my tendency to be wounded sympathetically for others is not a sign of weakness in my potential as a pastor but is really the only way I can minister to another human being.

If ever I feel that my tears are a sign of weakness, I have to remind myself that even Jesus wept at the death of a friend. In times of tragedy, I believe there is often little else we can do than pray and weep. As a Christian and as someone who will one day be a minister in some capacity, empathizing with others, even to the extent that it causes me great pain, is a necessary—and involuntary—part of listening to, loving and accepting others, friend and stranger alike. As a child I wept for Mr. Christie; today I may weep for a friend struggling with depression or for the young man I worked with last summer who died in a freak accident a few days ago. However, these are not hurts for me to take from others and to bury in myself; my great consolation is that I do not have to bear any burden on my own. Every burden I take on, be it my pain or someone else’s, can be laid at the foot of the cross and transformed into something beautiful. I was created to empathize with others, but I was created by a God who will not let me carry that alone.

A Peculiar Means of Grace (revised from an earlier post)

Since October 2006, I have been engaged in one of the most interesting and transformative ministries I have yet to encounter. For almost a year now, I have been corresponding regularly with William Barnes ("Tim"), prisoner #0020590 at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC. Tim is on Death Row for the 1990 murder of two people.

As I have gotten to know Tim through his letters, he has become a unique source for information, questions, and challenges to my life. Tim converted to Islam while in prison and we converse often about religion and spirituality. Tim is not afraid to share his faith or to ask pointed questions about mine. Once he asked how Jesus could be born of Mary and also have in him the fullness of God. Tim couldn’t make sense of this, and it became my task to explain the Christian belief in the humanity and divinity of Christ. Tim challenges me to articulate my beliefs in very basic terms. As a student of religious studies, I am so used to inhabiting conversation space where words like "eschatological" and "soteriology" are second nature that to have to delineate the fundamental beliefs of the Christian faith is not only humbling but also a reminder that communication and debate in the interfaith community is important, difficult, and requires practice.

One of my friends who is in seminary tells about his friendship with a Muslim graduate student. My friend was working in the library when his friend poked his head in the door and then turned to leave when he saw the room was occupied. When he realized he knew the person in there, he came back, nodded a greeting, then laid out his prayer rug and proceeded to pray. My friend was struck by the fact that this man felt comfortable openly practicing his faith in the presence of a Christian, and he wondered what he would have done had he been seeking a place to pray and had seen his Muslim friend in the room. For my friend, this man became a means of grace as the act of performing a spiritual discipline led him to reevaluate his own practices.

For me, Tim is also a peculiar means of grace. He ends every letter saying that he will pray for me and signs it "God bless, Tim." To know that a man in prison facing no escape but death is praying for me lends a great deal of perspective to how and for what I pray. Tim often quotes the writings of Muslim imams, talks about Ramadan during that season, and asks me questions about my own spiritual disciplines when describing his own. How often do I pray? How often do I fast? In a way, I've found that Tim's curiosity and candor have become a greater source of accountability even than some of the Christian communities of which I am a part.

When I agreed to write to a death row inmate, I knew it would be a unique experience. It has done all the things I thought it would: it has helped me get to know someone from a completely different sector of society, given me another perspective on the justice system, and challenged me to work for an alternative to the death penalty and to explore avenues of restorative justice rather than the punitive justice with which our country is so familiar. However, I did not expect my faith to be revitalized by conversation with a Muslim prisoner, and I do believe that Tim has been a means of grace in my life as a Christian.

Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Our Desires Are Too Weak

O Lord, I do not know what to ask of you.
You alone know what are my true needs.
You love me more than I myself know how to love.
I dare not ask either a cross or consolation.
I can only wait on you.
My heart is open to you. Amen. — Philaret of Moscow


John Piper (of whom, to be honest, I am not a huge fan, but I think he got this right) said in a sermon that he does not preach to felt needs. Although it is obviously important that a pastor be able to care for and tend to the needs of the members of a congregation/community, perhaps the greatest service a pastor can do for parishioners is to show them that their desires are disordered, weak, and in need of extensive renovation. C. S. Lewis once said, "Our Lord finds our desires not too strong but too weak." Desire drives human existence, but we desire the wrong things and whatever part of us that might approach or border on correct desire is feeble and flimsy at best. We do not know what we need or even what we want, because the things we think we want and need will never bring satisfaction. If our desire is for money, we fall into the sin of greed; if our desire is for esteem, we fall into the sin of pride; if our desire is for food, we fall into the sin of gluttony; if our desire is for sex, we fall into the sin of lust; and on and on. These desires are disordered and weak. These desires can make our lives seem worth living in the eyes of the world, but they ruin our lives in the eyes of God. We were made to desire God so passionately that this desire would thoroughly ruin our lives on this earth. Jesus did not say that if we follow him, everyone will love us; he said, "If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you" (John 15:18).

Julian of Norwich
knew full well that if she were to pursue anything short of the fullness of God, she would always find herself lacking, her needs and wants unfulfilled. In her record of the divine revelations, she prays, "God, of your goodness give me yourself, for you are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, to be worthy of you. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In you alone do I have all." This is the desire for which we were created: to be worthy to abide in the fullness and mercy of God. Before partaking in Mass, the monks of Christ in the Desert Monastery in New Mexico pray this simple request: "Lord, I am not worthy to receive you. Only say the word, and I will be." There are desires that we can try to fulfill on our own. We can seek out power and prestige to sate our thirst for the approval of others; we can find someone who will sleep with us and slake our lust. But when our desires are reoriented and strengthened, we find that the only one who can satisfy those desires is God.

But here's the question: what can a preacher say every Sunday in the pulpit to shape and convert the desires of those in the congregation? How can a minister strike a balance between taking good pastoral care of people while turning their worlds on end? It seems to me that the task of caring for and tending to the perceived wants and needs of people while simultaneously telling them that their desires are misguided and weak would be extremely difficult and even delicate. Too often I feel that pastors spend so much time trying to meet people where they are that they forget that there is a better place to which they need to help bring them. On the other hand, plenty of people speak the hard truth that we want the wrong things and that the desires we do have are weak and pathetic, but in such a way that those who hear it feel attacked rather than loved and challenged. This is one of the most daunting of the tasks before me: to love and cherish those to whom I will one day minister as they are while shaking them out of the slumber that lets us be lulled into complacency by desires that do not align with the reality that we were made to want God more than anything else.

Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Peter Storey on Violence

"If you justify violence for any reason, no matter how good and noble, you legitimize it for every reason, no matter how wrong and unworthy." — Bishop Peter Storey, South Africa

I haven't been posting any of my own thoughts lately because I am just emerging from the whirlwind of moving into and setting up my apartment, and classes started for me yesterday. I hope to begin posting again within the next few days; being back at school has already raised a host of questions that I need to hash out for my own benefit and which I think might be of interest to a broader audience. Many thanks to everyone who's been reading my first few posts and who have encouraged me thus far!

Sunday, August 26, 2007

Refusing to Surrender (an old piece)

This is actually a reflection I wrote in May 2006 while reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book The Cost of Discipleship. It's a little scattered, but the questions and the musings are there, and I would like to revisit some of these thoughts in the near future.



"Is there some part of your life which you are refusing to surrender at his behest, some sinful passion, maybe, or some animosity, some hope, perhaps your ambition or your reason? If so, you must not be surprised that you have not received the Holy Spirit, that prayer is difficult, or that your request for faith remains unanswered. Go rather and be reconciled with your brother, renounce the sin which holds you fast—and then you will recover your faith! …How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer


I wrote this passage down in my journal on 3 February 2006. Certain words and phrases stuck out like sore thumbs jabbing me in the sides: refusing to surrender, your reason, prayer is difficult, your request for faith remains unanswered, at some point in your life you are running away from him. I read this passage over and over sporadically for the next few months and still revisit it in times of doubt.

My own refusal to surrender anything to God goes back quite a long way. I remember talking for years about how important it is to allow oneself to be vulnerable in the presence of God, to give up control and to trust him even when it seemed impossible, only to realize that I was utterly unable to follow my own teachings. I had never surrendered anything to God but a fragment of my free time, had never truly allowed myself to lean on him, had never relinquished control of my heart and mind as I thought I had. I still to this day maintain a fierce, tenacious hold on my life. I am slowly working my way back to God, slowly turning things over to his grace and will, but it is very, very slowly.

It was very profound to me that Bonhoeffer chose to list reason among those things that are perhaps not being handed over to God. I can completely identify with that. Despite my surface distaste for reason and my romanticized ideals of the subjective, I still rely entirely too much on my own understanding. I realize that much of my approach to ameliorating my faith comes from this standpoint; although I am working some on my spiritual life, most of what I am doing is building a stockpile of knowledge, of expanding my religious education, of becoming well-read, supposedly for the sake of equipping myself to be a better pastor one day, but I will be the first to admit that there is a certain amount of pride tied up in how much and what I get read this summer. I don't think that doing these things are necessarily bad, but I am keenly aware that I need to couple my theological expeditions with Scripture readings, personal prayer, and active engagement in corporal worship. Worship I actually have about down pat, but the Bible and prayer are still slightly foreign to me.

This leads directly into the next point, that prayer is difficult. I hate praying. I especially hate praying in front of groups. All my life, I was the kid who volunteered to pray or was called on to pray. At some point, I got sick of it and decided to make other people step up every now and then. This quickly turned into my total absence from that arena, and I wonder if that did not directly affect my personal prayer life, which has been virtually nonexistent for years now. When I am forced to pray in public, I hate every second of it; I get nervous, I sweat, I stutter, I fumble for words. Usually I simply refuse to do it. Last night, Dad asked if I would say the blessing at dinner, and I replied, "No thank you." As for my individual prayer life, I have tried on occasion to get into a habit of praying. I have found that one big problem is my attention span. I often get bored or distracted in the middle of prayers and suddenly find myself at the computer remembering that I was supposed to be talking to God. I found that journaling helps this some; I am more articulate when writing in the first place, and it helps me to train my mind on what I am doing. I also am more engaged and involved when I do this. Other things that have helped have been prayers, songs, or poems written by others with which I strongly identify; some that come to mind include Merton's Seigneur mon Dieu, Wesley's "Come O Thou Traveler Unknown," the occasional Rilke elegy, and plenty of Jars of Clay songs. I can pray through their words and make them my own because they speak profoundly to my experience and my needs. I would like, however, to do some praying that really is mine, and I will have to work on that. I need to begin to set aside time for prayer, but I am so often busy and I live with other people, so time and privacy are both scarce. Even when I am alone and have the time, prayer frightens me. I suppose that the only way I can ameliorate this situation is to actively pursue a healthy prayer life on my own. Yikes.

I have requested faith and often do not know whether that request has gone unanswered or whether I completely misunderstand what it means to be given faith. Faith is a funny thing, and too often we are taught to associate it with emotionality and warm fuzzy feelings. Although I disagree with this approach and find it destructive in many ways, there is still a part of me that has been so conditioned by mountain top experiences like mission trips and retreats that I find myself almost looking for that euphoric, spiritual feeling that is supposed to accompany belief in and communion with God. I don't particularly know how I will know when I truly have faith, but I’m sure patience is involved somehow. I read something helpful in Norwood's American Methodism, something that Peter Boehler said to John Wesley: "Preach faith till you have it, and then, because you have it, you will preach faith." This sounds like Bonhoeffer's spiel on obedience and faith (also in Discipleship). He presents the paradoxical truth that one cannot have faith unless he obeys but that one only obeys when he has faith. This annoys me because I can't find the entry point to all of this. Maybe the whole faith and works thing is related – true faith is by definition accompanied by works, and true works cannot be done without faith. Or something, I’m just trying to avoid condoning works righteousness right now. In any case, I must learn to pray for faith, to preach faith, to practice obedience, and to do works of faith; and then, perhaps, I will one day have faith.

"How can you hope to enter into communion with him when at some point in your life you are running away from him?" Good question. I know plenty about running away from God. "I cannot run, I cannot hide/Believe me now, you know I've tried." I spent years doing so, and to some extent I continue on that path even now. When I wrote my song "Prodigal," it was not yet titled, so I posted the lyrics online and asked friends for ideas for a song name. Suggestions that came back included "Prince of Peace," "All in All," and other sappy, happy, warm fuzzy titles. True, most of them drew on lyrics within the song, but I was bothered because none of them really got to the heart of what the song was about. Although the song does thank and extol God, its primary function is a prayer for forgiveness and reconciliation. I started thinking of titles that were not lifted from the text, and when I thought of "Prodigal," I knew there was nothing more perfect. This was not a song about Jesus, it was the lamenting, apologizing, entreating prayer of a child who had run away from her father and was painfully tiptoeing back. I am that prodigal child every day, when I refuse to surrender to God, when I choose reason over faith, when I shy away from prayer because it is too hard or inconvenient, when I half-heartedly ask for faith, and when I continue to run away, run away, run away. I must stop in my tracks, turn around, and go back to my Father. I hope to find a warm welcome.

Friday, August 24, 2007

A Prayer from Julian of Norwich

God,
of your goodness give me yourself,
for you are sufficient for me.
I cannot properly ask anything less,
to be worthy of you.
If I were to ask less,
I should always be in want.
In you alone do I have all.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Christian Scholarship (quote)

"The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand, we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in the world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church's prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall in the hands of the living God. "
— Søren Kierkegaard

The Fast I DON'T Choose

Since last October, I have been engaged in one of the most interesting and transformative ministries I have yet to encounter. For almost a year now, I have been corresponding regularly with William Barnes ("Tim"), prisoner #0020590 at Central Prison in Raleigh, NC. Tim is on Death Row for the 1990 murder of two people.

As I have gotten to know Tim through his letters, he has continuously challenged me in countless ways, but right now I'd like to focus on an issue he brought up in his most recent communication to me. Tim converted to Islam while in prison and we converse regularly about religion and spirituality. His conversion was not well-received by his family, with whom he has not been in contact since 1998. Tim regularly asks me about aspects of Christianity that he does not understand, but he also asks me about my own spiritual practices.

Most recently, Tim asked me how many times I fast in a year. On one level, I found the timing of his question exceedingly ironic, seeing as I had just started a blog called "The Fast I Choose" and have grown quite fond of quoting the passage in Isaiah to which that phrase alludes. On another level, I felt a little ashamed, because I had to admit to Tim that although I have tried fasting once or twice, I've never been able to go through with that particular spiritual discipline. True, I was told back in middle school that I was hypoglycemic, and I do get an awful headache if I don't eat for a period of time—but Tim's question came close on the heels with a conversation I had with a friend on the very subject. She and her husband are both hypoglycemic, but they fast regularly. After talking to her, I realized that my excuse, which was feeble from the beginning, probably sounded like every other reason people use not to fast.

The truth is, fasting isn't something that very many Christians do these days. The rate of obesity in America is embarrassingly high, and you can be sure that among those statistics are a large number of Christians, both lay and clergy. Clearly, fasting is not at the top of the average Christian's list of priorities; it only makes mine in the same way "a pony" made my Christmas wish list throughout my childhood. It would be nice if fasting were something we could do, and we take our hats off to those who practice that spiritual discipline, but it's not something we think we can—or would even want—to do ourselves.

I did a little poking around on the internet to see what information I might come up with on fasting. I know Wikipedia is taboo in academic circles, but it really is terribly useful on a surface level, and their article on fasting even had, in addition to explanations of the use of fasting in various religions, a list of Biblical references to fasting (not an exhaustive one, but a list nonetheless). Among those were passages from Exodus 34 (Moses fasts for 40 days while on the mountain with God), 2 Samuel 12 (David fasts when his son becomes ill as punishment for David's adultery with Bathsheba and murder of Uriah), 2 Chronicles 20 (King Jehosaphat proclaims a fast to celebrate a military victory), Isaiah 58 (my favorite, of course), Jonah 3 (the people of Ninevah fast in order to stay God's hand in punishment), Esther 4 (the Jews fast in response to Haman's genocidal decree), Matthew 6 (Jesus warns that one should fast in private and not seek attention or approval through fasting), Matthew 4 and Luke 2 (Jesus fasts for 40 days in the wilderness before being tempted), among others.

What struck me upon reading this list was the variety of circumstances in which fasting was practiced. The general sense that I have always had is that a person fasts in repentance, and although this is certainly the case, it is not the only occasion on which people of the Old and New Testaments fast. Just in that list, fasting is used while in the presence of God, as a form of penitence and a prayer for healing, in celebration (and I thought feasts were the usual way to consummate a military victory?), in response to injustice, as a private exercise, and as a form of preparation for testing.

I and many others have boldly and often proclaimed the words of Isaiah 58:6-7, saying that the fast we choose shall be "to loose the bonds of injustice...[and] to share your bread with the hungry." This is indeed a call to justice, and Amos declares that even if we practice personal piety and fast faithfully, if we oppress others, God counts those acts for naught. It seems that I may have made the error of choosing a worthy fast while forgetting that the discipline of fasting was practiced by the Israelites, the prophets, Jesus himself, and the early church for a reason. Although some strains of Protestantism, as early as at the time of the Reformation, sought to abolish fasting because they believed that Catholics used the practice as a tool to earn salvation (I am thinking of Zwingli, who made a show of eating sausages during Lent), especially in the holiness movements, that particular discipline (among others) was often revived. In the early days of Methodism, my own denomination, John and Charles Wesley and George Whitfield were known to fast regularly.

Fasting can express repentance; it can be a means of seeking holiness; it can be a cry for justice; it can even be a form of celebration, the kind that recognizes and gives thanks to God as the sole provider of good things. When I wrote Tim back trying to answer his question, one thing I mentioned that makes fasting difficult is a lack of support, or at least a perceived lack of support, since I don't know many people who fast regularly. I wonder if it wouldn't behoove us all to give fasting a shot sometime, and although that is not something to be shouted from the rooftops, it wouldn't hurt (and would probably help!) to seek out a few fellow Christians for encouragement and even solidarity. If a question posed by a Muslim on Death Row can challenge me to work harder at this particular spiritual discipline, a community of Christians practicing it together might even be able to make fasting a celebration.

Monday, August 20, 2007

The Simple Way

I recently finished reading The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. It was an incredible witness to his vocation to the Philadelphia community The Simple Way and the road that got him there, and I would highly recommend it. However, I would warn you that if the book doesn't make you want to live differently, you haven't paid attention to what Claiborne is saying. The off-color nature of his story, the personable tone of the writing, and the snazzy packaging in which you find the book itself make it an easy candidate for "youthy" appeal and popularity, but Claiborne is not trying to be cool or youthy and to mistake him for such is to misunderstand his telling of the gospel. Read the book, but be willing to be changed.

"May God disturb you deeply." — Rev. Trevor Hudson, South Africa

Sunday, August 19, 2007

The Green Mile Seems So Long

Tonight I watched the movie The Green Mile on TV with my family. That film (and the book that inspired it—it's by Stephen King and I would definitely recommend the print version) is so saturated with emotion and difficult questions, and every time I watch it, something different latches onto my heart like a vise and twists until I hash it out. This time, the image of the guards on E Block tidying up the main room to prepare for an execution stuck with me. Watching them sweep the floors, set out folding chairs, and polish the one chair no one wants to sit in—but in which someone will have to sit—put me in mind of preparations being made for a show to be put on stage. I was appalled to watch the execution scenes as women in big hats and fancy dresses fanned themselves and their generally less well-dressed husbands as they calmly waited to watch another human being die. It was as if I had been transported back not to 1935 but to the 12th century and was watching as curious spectators gathered to witness a hanging.

Going along with that, I was struck by the things the people in the crowd had to say to the man being led to his death—struck not only by the nature of the comments but also by the familiar ring they brought to my ears, so used to being regaled with people's gallant declarations of support for the death penalty. I'll leave the actual issue to discuss another time; what I want to look at now is whatever it is in our human nature that makes the darkest parts of us well up at certain times.

The other day, I watched a video clip of Ann Coulter on a talk show. The day before, she had made a comment about John Edwards, and on this particular education, the audience was surprised to hear none other than Elizabeth Edwards' voice coming in over the line to speak to Coulter. Edwards was well-spoken, kept her composure very admirably, and had a very good point—namely, that Coulter's tendency to use personal attacks, often of a disturbingly cruel nature, on political candidates does nothing but paralyze actual debate over issues. I cheered Edwards on and scowled as Coulter rudely interrupted her (I don't care who you are, interrupting someone who's trying to make a sincere point is rude, and Coulter reigns supreme in that very activity), but I became extremely irked when the talk show host asked why Coulter felt it necessary to make fun of Hillary Clinton's and Monica Lewinsky's chubbiness in her book. Coulter stubbornly refused to answer the question unless he could produce the exact passage and give her the context; his response was that he himself was wondering what on earth the context could be. Certainly comments about Clinton's chubby legs have no place in political debate, but I found myself, someone who is none to comfortable with her own weight, muttering something bitter and terribly unkind about how skinny Ann Coulter is. At this point, I was engaged in a conversation about the subject with my father, who pointed out to me that I had just done the very same thing Coulter had done; I had made a personal attack, and the fact that I am sensitive about slights on people packing a little extra weight gives me no right to disparage those who are thin. Coulter, with her attitude of negativity, had appealed to my dark side and brought it out in full force.

I wonder if that very same thing were not happening at those fictional executions in The Green Mile, if that does not happen at executions today. When confronted with a person who murdered a friend or relative, who could honestly hope to keep the angry, primitive side of them from lashing out, as one character in the movie did, by shouting to "kill him twice, go on and kill him twice"? Darkness, grief, and evil breed their own. Perhaps that is why I was told again and again as I entered college to surround myself with good people. It was not in order to insulate myself from bad influences but to give the good in me a chance to be nurtured and encouraged, so that when I was faced with darkness in all its forms, I could enter into that situation without fear of being consumed by it, with the hope of consuming it with the love in which I had been growing. That is, after all, what Christian community is supposed to do; never to cut us off from the rest of the world, but to give us the strength and love necessary to go into the world and wrestle its demons without having to pretend we can do it alone. Alone, we succumb to the temptations of the world; as a community of people in communion with God, we can shed light even in the darkest places.

The question then becomes how to communicate this conviction, this hope, to the people who would sit on the front row in an execution chamber and shout, "kill him twice!" Oftentimes when I express my views about capital punishment, people respond with utmost confidence that if a member of my family were murdered, I would support the death penalty. But...no, I would not. Again, I'll save that whole discussion for another time, but for now, I will say that I at least would never want to watch anyone die, criminal or no—and aren't we all sinners, aren't we all murderers according to Jesus himself who said that he who is angry with his brother merits the same punishment as one who kills his brother (Matthew 5:21-22)?—and looking in the face of someone who had taken someone I loved and watching them die would bring me nothing resembling satisfaction. I wish I knew a way to communicate to those who believe that such a circumstance would bring them peace that there is a better way, a way of love and forgiveness...even now. To cry out for the death of another human being is to commit the murder, and it will not be an earthly government before which you or I will stand trial for such an act.

Saturday, August 18, 2007

The Fast I Choose

Welcome to the first post in my new blog. I don't have a terribly clear vision of what I want to do with this, but I have some vague inkling that I'd like to make it a space where I can explore and hash out how I and others in the church are doing theology and what impact it (necessarily) has on individual lives, communities, congregations, and the world. Ideally, it would be nice to have a place to reflect upon, make connections regarding, and garner support for various endeavors in social justice amid which I may find myself, and find myself wanting company. I've updated a LiveJournal nearly daily for over 4 years now, and I feel like it's time I carved out a spot in cyberspace where I'm doing something more and vastly better than whining about my personal life. Besides, writing is in my marrow, and if I hope to use it to establish and carry out orthodoxy and orthopraxis in my life and in the communities with which I identify myself, I figure I had better get some practice other than writing papers for school and recounting the day's events with sometimes overwhelming verbosity.

I felt the need to come up with a clever name for my blog, and who knows if I'll stick with the one I chose, but in a way it works because it's Scripture and it's all about social justice. Here's the context, in case you don't run in my particular faith circles and didn't catch it:

"Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" — Isaiah 58:6-7

The preceding verses show that although the house of Jacob may fast and "lie in sackcloth and ashes" (v. 5), God says to his people, "[you] oppress all your workers" (v. 3) and perpetrate injustice against others. God will not hear the cries of a people who mistreat their brothers and sisters so. In the book of Amos, God declares that unless justice is carried out, he will not even hear their praise and worship:

"I hate, I despise your festivals,
and I take no delight in your solemn assemblies.
Even though you offer me your burnt-offerings and grain-offerings,
I will not accept them;
and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals
I will not look upon.
Take away from me the noise of your songs;
I will not listen to the melody of your harps.
But let justice roll down like waters,
and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." — Amos 5:21-24

All of this is stuff that the good liberal Christian knows. However, I am aware of the subtle ways in which the most sincere efforts to pursue justice can fall short of God's vision for his fallen world. It is so easy to become an activist, to protest injustice everywhere, to raise a much-needed voice against oppression in all its insidious forms. But Stanley Hauerwas and others warn that it is possible for the church to get so wrapped up in standing against something—whether it is standing against war, against poverty, against homosexuality, against immorality, or any number of things—that she forgets what she is standing for. The church stands at the foot of the cross for the sake of all of God's children whom he longs to come to know him through relationship and community, which the church is meant to establish as mirrored in God's very nature as Trinity, three in one, a self-contained community of unconditional love.

So that's a handful of scattered thoughts posing as an introduction to this blog. Please to enjoy—or not, and either way, comments are encouraged. Also, the list of websites I've posted includes all kinds of resources: church websites, social justice initiatives, various nonprofit organizations, intentional communities, Christian publications, and some links of my own dealing with my music or projects with which I am involved. I'll be updating that list occasionally, so keep checking it out—you may find something of interest.

 

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