Your Face Is Lovely

I'm spending my summer working at my church in Durham and living in community with 5 other Duke undergraduates. We have a variety of communal spiritual disciplines and the like, one of which is our weekly Thursday night worship and theological reflection. Last night, our theological reflection ended with three girls crunched together on a couch crying as we all prayed for each other. It was pretty amazing and, I think, healing in some way.

What had started as a discussion of how to begin a conversation with a homeless person with whom you seem to have nothing in common evolved into talking about why one of my housemates was upset by catcalls received from those seeking help from the shelter where she works. I think she surprised herself with the intensity of the emotion that was elicited when we pressed the issue. Another female housemate of mine spoke up and shared this verse from the Song of Songs:

O my dove, in the clefts of the rock,
in the covert of the cliff,
let me see your face,
let me hear your voice;
for your voice is sweet,
and your face is lovely. — Song of Songs 2:14

She said that a mentor of hers had once told her about this verse in order to help her understand why comments about a woman's physical appearance can be so damaging and hurtful, even when they're supposedly complimentary. In this verse, she said, Jesus calls you to a cleft in the rock, where it's just you and him, and says "let me see your face." He sees you and knows you as you are, and he tells you that you are beautiful. This, she said, is what women really, truly long for, but that deep desire is often confused with a desire for attention from men and can sometimes be destructive. The reason that catcalls can be so upsetting is that they cheapen the whispered "your face is lovely" and compound the world's insistence that what matters most is the approval of man (mankind and, in this case particularly, men).

I didn't put it as eloquently as she did, but the conversation deeply affected me and is forcing me to think and pray hard about my self-image and the kinds of attention I seek. Of course, these issues are nothing new to me, but hearing that verse and her interpretation of it gave me a greater sense of the degree to which this really matters. I'll be praying about this a lot.

Just To Waste It At Your Feet

I want to take my passion,
Put it in a bottle,
Just to break it at your feet.
I want to take my affection,
Put it in a bottle,
Just to waste it at your feet. — Misty Edwards

The Devil Made Me Do It

This summer, I'm living in a house in Durham with 5 other Duke undergraduates. We're all doing internships at various churches and nonprofits in the community, and we share meals and do spiritual formation together. We all come from different backgrounds—there are 2 guys and 4 girls; 2 black and 4 white; 2 Pentecostal/nondenominational (black), 1 nondenominational (white), 1 Baptist, 1 Catholic, 1 United Methodist. Needless to say, I'm already being challenged in a lot of ways, and I'm learning a lot.

At our morning Bible study today, we looked at Luke 4:31-37. In this passage, Jesus goes to Capernaum and casts out a demon. We talked about authority for most of the time, then someone asked, "Wait, are we saying that demons actually exist?" and that opened a whole new can of worms. Present at the table were 2 people who had seen demon possession, 3 who had not, and me...who is leery but not unbelieving.

Later, I had a conversation with one of my housemates (who had not been present at the Bible study). It's intriguing to me that I have 2 housemates who consistently use language like "child of the Devil" and the like, while the rest of us pseudo-mainliners don't often hear the Devil spoken of, certainly not personified.

Thomas Merton, in Seeds of Contemplation, says that what the Devil likes most is attention, and the best way to make the Devil mad is to ignore him. You don't want to give the Devil credit for everything bad that happens, or blame the Devil for sins you commit yourself. You don't want to have to see demons around every corner and live a life of defensiveness and apprehension.

Then again, my housemates for whom the Devil is a part of their everyday spiritual vocabulary seem to take sin and temptation much more seriously than mainline Christians do. For them, the tempter is very real and very present, and he/she needs to be recognized, met and rebuked. It is important to pray constantly and not to open yourself up to possession or temptation.

I wonder if, by glossing over the Devil and demons and the like, mainline Christians domesticate sin and temptation. Perhaps the best way to piss the Devil off is to ignore him—but if we are fallen and sinful, is that just going to make us more susceptible to falling further?

For the record, I've seen mental illness that was diagnosable but which also was able to be commanded and controlled by prayer. Maybe in Biblical times demon possession was their name for mental illness. Maybe we don't like to acknowledge the face of evil in depression and other disorders. My dad said that twice in his ministerial career, he has prayed over someone to have demons cast out, because they've been such extreme cases that he hasn't known what else to do, and there is Biblical precedent. So...yes. I'm not talking The Exorcist here, but it's still pretty fascinating, not just intellectually, but in how it affects the ways in which people meet and conquer temptation.

I Pray for You, You Pray for Me

Today I had a jarring but bittersweet experience. I met a man named Paul who had come to Asbury Temple to get food. He started talking to me while he was waiting for Julius to bag his groceries. He told me that he was bipolar, that his mother had died two weeks ago, and that he just wanted to die himself. A lot of what he said was incoherent, and honestly I was terrified because I didn't know how to respond, but something calmed my heart and allowed me simply to listen to Paul as he rambled.

I didn't actually find out his name until the end of our conversation because he wouldn't tell me at first because he doesn't trust people. I told him I only wanted to know so that I could pray for him, and he started crying. Finally I learned that his name was Paul, and as I left to go back upstairs, I told him I'd be praying for him, and I asked if he would pray for me. That made him cry again, but by then it seemed that he was in a better place, and as I left I heard him excitedly telling Julius that I had asked him to pray for me and that he was going to do so.

I can't remember where I learned to do that, or if it was even something I learned and not just the Spirit moving, but I somehow doubt Paul has ever been asked to pray for someone. I suspect prayers are often offered for him, but never solicited from him. I also suspect there's something empowering and meaningful about being given the responsibility of praying for someone. So...yeah. It's like in the song "I Need You to Survive": "I pray for you / You pray for me / I love you / I need you to survive." I pray for you, you pray for me. Only in this way can we be made whole.

The Parable of the Young Man and the Old (poem)

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned, both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake, and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets the trenches there,
And stretched forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one. — Wilfred Owen

Loving in Sadness (a quote from G. K. Chesterton)

"When you do love a thing, its gladness is a reason for loving it, and its sadness a reason for loving it more." — G. K. Chesterton

Sorry, Blame It On Me

This past weekend, I attended the United Methodist Student Movement's 2008 Student Forum at American University in Washington, D.C. Focusing on the theme "Be The Change," we spent the weekend in worship, fellowship, and learning about the legislative process in the United Methodist Church and the issues facing church and society today.

This issue of racism and the church's response came up frequently. On Friday, there were a variety of immersion trips into D.C. My group focused on gentrification and toured the historical Shaw neighborhood, the location of the 1968 race riots and, of course, Ben's Chili Bowl. Other groups learned about civil rights, women's rights, racism of mascots and so on. We were blessed to have present at Forum representatives from the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference; we heard from a number of people regarding the church's responsibility to honor the indigenous people of this country and participated in a letter-writing campaign urging the Washington Redskins to change the name of their mascot.

One thing that struck me in particular was beautifully framed in a sermon delivered by Jennifer Battiest of the Oklahoma Indian Missionary Conference. Jennifer described some of the injustices that persist in this world and reflected on the ways in which the church often refuses to shoulder responsibility for past crimes. She cited R&B singer Akon, whose song "Sorry, Blame It On Me" begins with an apology for his own misdeeds but then goes on to apologize for things he did not do but for which the guilty party refuses to take blame. Jennifer reminded us of another person who long ago took blame that wasn't his. She asked us why we can't use that as a model for righting wrongs that perhaps we did not take a part in personally but, because we are the body of Christ, for which we are collectively responsible.

Later, I was having a conversation with a group of students attending Forum, and one of them, a young white man, told us that he was tired of being preached at. Why, he asked, should he be made to feel guilty for things he didn't do? I reacted very strongly to his question in part because, just days before the conference, I had read Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye. In this heartbreaking but compelling story, Morrison tells about a young black girl, Pecola Breedlove, who prays every day for the blue eyes that are so beautiful on the white baby dolls she had seen all her life. This summer, I will be working at Asbury Temple UMC in Durham, North Carolina, a predominantly African-American congregation. I will spend a great deal of my time working with the children of the surrounding community. I am white, and I have blonde hair and green eyes. I somehow must become a role model for these children while affirming them in their own identity. As long as little black girls are told that their dark skin and eyes don't match the standard of beauty in this country, I will be accountable for that sin and for combating that and many other injustices perpetrated by history and by our media.

The important thing in situations where the church or some sector of the church is guilty of injustice is not that those of us who are privileged guilt-trip ourselves into oblivion. However, as long as individuals and groups are marginalized and oppressed, even because of sins committed hundreds, even thousands of years ago, the church must be brave enough and compassionate enough to take responsibility and action. Paul notes that being part of the body of Christ means that "If one member suffers, all suffer together with it" (1 Corinthians 12:26). If even a single member of the body of Christ is oppressed, we are all oppressed. None of us can be whole until all are honored and loved. Practically speaking, this is not easy, because as much as this is a communal effort, it takes individuals who are willing to take the blame and be the change.