Field Notes #1: Arrival in Stanley

Okey dokey. Here's my next blog series: "Field Notes." Tomorrow, I officially start my summer field education placement. The Field Ed program at Duke Divinity School offers summer and academic year opportunities for students in church and agency placements, many of which (mine included) are funded by the Duke Endowment. Two units of field ed, one of which should be in a church setting, are required for successful completion of the M.Div. degree. Here are a few quips from the Field Ed website:

Field Education provides an opportunity for students to discern their vocational identity through contextual learning. Settings vary, from parish to non-profit and from domestic to international.

As part of the Field Education program, each student commits to:

• Explore ministerial roles and identity, work to clarify and test his or her call, build and strengthen skills for ministry
• 40 hours per week of preparation and presence for a 10-week summer placement
• 13-15 hours weekly of preparation and presence for a 30-week academic year placement

This summer, I'll be at Hill's Chapel United Methodist Church in Stanley, North Carolina.

The church isn't quite where Google Maps has Stanley tagged, but it's basically on the west side of Lake Norman. At the moment, I'm actually staying at a house that is right on the lake. I'll be moving into the old parsonage, but it's currently being renovated (the building will also include new offices, meeting space and more--it looks GREAT, even if it's still a bit of a mess), so for now I'm with the Edwards family. They are wonderful folks with a beautiful home and two adorable Yorkies. Check out the video below to see Lilly, one of their pups (who is sitting on the bed with me as I type this), begging for my pita bites.

(I LOVE dogs.)

Earlier, the pastor, Dr. Val Rosenquist, gave me a tour of the church. They recently tore down their old sanctuary and education building, but I was surprised by just how much space they still have. Their Family Life Center is a great location, where their contemporary service usually meets and where all worship is currently being held. They usually have a 9:00 a.m. contemporary service and an 11:00 a.m. traditional service, but starting May 30, they'll go to one blended service at 10:00 a.m. I'm looking forward to seeing what the differences are in the normal services tomorrow and then learning what it means to have a "blended" service. I'm hoping to have some opportunities to observe or help with worship planning and maybe with music, too.

Besides great spaces for worship, meetings, Sunday School, events and more, HCUMC has some really fun stuff out back. Behind the church is a playground, a baseball field, a basketball court, a track, a volleyball court and a picnic patio. All those things are open to the public, and apparently they are all frequented by members of the community. What a great hospitality and outreach resource! I'll definitely be jogging the track some this summer, and I brought my softball glove and can hopefully track down a basketball, so who knows.

Tomorrow I'll report about my first Sunday at HCUMC! I'm now off to have dinner with the Edwards and get ready to play music at Maddi's Southern Bistro in Huntersville's Birkdale Village tonight at 9. Music is going to be the sort of me-time supplement to my field ed--I had a fun show last night at eeZ Fusion & Sushi, also in Birkdale.

What I'm Reading #2: The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message (Paul Tillich)

The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message, by Paul Tillich

This slim volume is actually a collection of three lectures delivered by Paul Tillich. The description on the back of the 2007 edition aptly describes its content:

The Irrelevance and Relevance of the Christian Message is a transcript of Paul Tillich's 1963 Earl Lectures at the Graduate Theological Union. Delivered just two years before his death, these lectures present Tillich's heartfelt and deeply personal understanding of the relevance of Christian preaching and Christian theology.

Why, Tillich asks, has the Christian message become seemingly irrelevant to contemporary society? Is the gospel able to give answers to the questions raised by the existentialist analysis of the human predicament? Yes, he answers--but in order to do so Christian teaching and preaching need to undergo dramatic renewal, the root of which requires an affirmation of love as central to Christian identity. Further, we need to recognize that this task is not limited to preachers and theologians; all of us together are responsible for the irrelevance of the relevance of the gospel in our time.

I picked up this book at the suggestion of Leif Erik Bergerud (he doesn't know this (well, he does now), but my boyfriend and I refer to him as "Odin" because he totally has a Viking name), my predecessor in managing the New Creation Arts blog. I had posted about Another Level, a church that meets in a bar. I was intrigued by their approach and impressed by how they are able to reach out to a population that usually feels unwelcome in traditional church settings.

This encounter was just one more instance of me wrestling with the question of how far relevance can go before it renders the Christian message meaningless. On the other hand, as Tillich points out, irrelevance makes the gospel just as empty to outsiders (and even to supposed insiders). Tillich's talks were delivered almost 50 years ago, but they are just as alive and relevant (ha) today as they were in his time. I wonder if he ever imagined just how much of a buzzword "relevance" would become. A church I'm familiar with in Durham uses the motto "where reverence meets relevance." I even saw something about a church promoting "contemporvant" ("contemporary" + "relevant") worship.

Of course, there's a delicate balance to be struck here. The problem with getting too fixated on making Christianity relevant is that it makes our culture the standard. One could argue that we should be asking how we can make our society more relevant to the gospel. Of course, that would require a transformation of our world to the point that it would be unrecognizable in many aspects, so that's just not feasible. The gospel needs to be palatable to real people living in the real world. Tillich's suggestion of clinging to a core message of love is a profound move; it takes the gospel straight to the heart of being without compromising it. And his emphasis on the priesthood of all believers makes the participatory nature of faith a central aspect.

I suggest you check this out for yourself. After all, it's only 63 pages long.


Favorite Quotations:

"Tradition is good. Traditionalism is bad."

"What about the attack of 'relativism' against all contents of belief and ethics? There is no relativism with respect to the experience of the Unconditional in oneself. But there is the relativity of all history with respect to the religious symbols and the ethical commands. They are not unconditional. They are historically conditioned and changing. They all stand under the one unconditional criterion: agape, the Christian word for love. This is not a law, but is the negation of every law. It is in itself unconditional because nothing can transcend love and nothing less than love is sufficient. But what love is in the concrete moment is open to the creative understanding of the situation and does not have the character of a law we can define and obey."

"I believe it is the unique greatness of Christianity that it shows the positivity of life in the principle which has had many names in Christian history but which I like to call 'the acceptance of the unacceptable,' namely, the acceptance of us. ...the unacceptable must first be accepted and only then can be transformed."

What I'm Reading #1: The Inner Voice of Love (Henri Nouwen)

One of the first things I did to start organizing my stuff to be packed up for the summer was to visit my bookshelves (there are several around the house) and pull out books that I want to read, which have had to be tabled for the duration of the school year. I've decided that this summer I'm going to start posting here about books I read. This is partly for the benefit of you, gentle reader, but also for my own benefit. In the past I've worked on writing reflections on what I read, which is immensely helpful in retaining information; and if I can keep this up, I have no doubt it will be a useful preaching and teaching resource that will either prevent me from having to dig back through endless volumes or at least assist in that process.

So, without further ado, here is the first installment of "What I'm Reading."

__________


The Inner Voice of Love, by Henri J. M. Nouwen

Henri Nouwen is one of my spiritual heroes. I first discovered him through his book The Return of the Prodigal Son, a profound meditation on the Rembrandt painting of the same name. It was during the reading of that book that I declared Nouwen to be "my spiritual twin." Since then, I have also been moved by his books The Wounded Healer, Compassion and Out of Solitude.

Imagine my delight when I walked into the bathroom a few months ago to find The Inner Voice of Love sitting on top of the toilet. (I live with 5 other people and grew up with a dad who read in the bathroom so frequently that we took to calling it his library, so this did not faze me at all.) I picked it up and hungrily read the introduction, where I learned that "my spiritual twin" at one time went through a 6-month period of deep depression for which he was institutionalized. This threw me for a minute, but I also found it deeply comforting, as this past semester was incredibly difficult for me emotionally; to know that such a religious giant went through psychological struggles not only made him more human, it affirmed me in many ways.

The Inner Voice of Love is a collection of writings from Nouwen's time of trial; the subtitle is "A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom." It is a series of spiritual imperatives on which Nouwen meditates in the midst of deep pain that is potent but also that clings to an often unseen hope. I read the first entry, "Work Around Your Abyss," and immediately went to my computer and ordered a copy online to pick up at Barnes & Noble the next day. Since then, I have been using this book as a sort of daily devotional, reading each imperative with its 1-2 page reflection and meditating on it in my own journalling. It has been directly relevant to the point of being shocking at times, and it has been immensely helpful for my spiritual and emotional growth over the past few months. Each imperative is a candid acknowledgment of Nouwen's personal shortcomings with an admonishment to press on and to seek closer communion with God. This book has fed my deepest hunger, and I will be sad when I finish reading it.


Favorite Quotations

"A seed only flourishes by staying in the ground in which it is sown. When you keep digging the seed up to check whether it is growing, it will never bear fruit." -- from the section "Acknowledge Your Powerlessness"

"The pain of your loneliness may be rooted in your deepest vocation." -- from the section "Find the Source of Your Loneliness"

"Your healing is not a straight line." -- from the section "Keep Returning to the Road to Freedom"

"It is obviously good not to act on your sudden emotions. But you don't have to repress them, either. You can acknowledge them and let them pass by. In a certain sense, you have to befriend them so that you do not become their victim." -- from the section "Befriend Your Emotions"

"God does not require of you what is beyond your ability, what leads you away from God, or what makes you depressed or sad." -- from the section "Claim Your Unique Presence in Your Community"

"You shall love the alien as yourself"

This morning, I saw this posted as a friend's Facebook status:

"JUST SO I UNDERSTAND THIS...YOU PASS THE NORTH KOREAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET 12 YRS HARD LABOR, YOU PASS THE AFGHAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET SHOT. YOU PASS THE AMERICAN BORDER ILLEGALLY YOU GET A JOB, DRIVER'S LICENSE, ALLOWANCE FOR A PLACE TO LIVE, HEALTH CARE, EDUCATION, BILLIONS OF DOLLARS SPENT SO YOU CAN READ A DOCUMENT. WE CARRY PASSPORTS IN OTHER COUNTRIES OR FACE JAIL TIME. REPOST IF YOU AGREE"

My only direct response to this is...so our standards of comparison are North Korea and Afghanistan now? And getting shot in Afghanistan happens a lot more often for a lot more reasons than crossing the border illegally...

My indirect response comes from the fact that when I saw this, I had just read the daily office from the BCP with my housemates. The Old Testament lesson for today is this:

"When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God."
-- Leviticus 19:33-34

I was so grateful for this. I don't really know how to respond to all the nastiness I see getting slung around online over Arizona and immigration and whatnot, and it turns out I don't have to say a thing. I can just point to these verses. Because, interestingly enough, most of the people I know who are rabidly anti-immigration are...Christians. I'm not demonizing those people--I have many friends and relatives who fall into that category. I'm just saying.

I wasn't going to blog about the issue at all, but this news item pushed me over the edge.

I Hate Gender Inclusive Language

...and apparently I like obnoxious blog post titles. Let me just say, I hate gender inclusive language less than I used to. My attitude a few years ago was sort of like, "What the heck is this gender inclusive crap? Women, get over it and stop whining! You can hold your own if you want to." Things have happened in the past few years that have softened that a bit. I find myself correcting gendered language in others' speech and writing (not obsessively, don't be afraid to talk to me!) and being aware of how much we characterize God as a "he." I now agree that it is something to which we as a church need to be attentive. I'm not going to get into that too much here, but trust that there are lots of personal and theological reasons for my change of heart.

Here's where I still have a gripe. On a final exam the other day, I found myself using the phrase "God God's self" in order to avoid employing a masculine pronoun. I HATE writing or saying "God's self." Since English doesn't have a neutral pronoun, it may be the only viable solution, but it feels so impersonal. Sure, it's a useful construction for highlighting God's transcendence and omnipotence, but if you always emphasize that aspect of God's being, you run the risk of forgetting that this is a personal, relational God.

I'm almost tempted to start writing "God Yourself" or "God Thyself," realizing that the switch from 3rd to 2nd person could be confusing. But the idea came to me after recalling Buber's I and Thou. Buber says that we address things and people either as an "it," which we may use, or as a "thou," with which we may enter into relationship. I don't want to address God as an "it." I want to address God as a "thou." Though of course, on the other end of the spectrum, when we abandon language that reminds us of God's omnipotence, we are tempted to make faith all about Jesus as our personal buddy.

This post is jumbled and inarticulate because I don't have an answer and am mostly thinking out loud. I almost want to invent a gender neutral 3rd person pronoun to use for God, though referring to "God shimself" just reminds me of cruel jokes we made in middle school and sounds silly. Any thoughts?

Wisdom as Relational Justice in Proverbs 22:1-16

Yesterday I turned in my exegesis paper for the second semester of Intro to Old Testament Interpretation with Dr. Stephen Chapman. I actually experienced something like postpartum depression because I had so enjoyed working on this paper all semester. It's 18 pages long with lots of footnotes, so I'll limit this post to a few key excerpts. If you decide you want to read my whole paper (which includes the passage itself), you can link to the PDF on my Duke webspace here.


Introduction/Thesis:
"Proverbs 22:1—16 includes sayings on various subjects, all of which inform an understanding of wisdom not as an intellectual inclination but as a commitment to living out discerning and just relationships in light of Israel’s status as God’s chosen people. Statements on poverty and wealth begin and end the passage, framing a sustained call to interpersonal, relational justice. Although the aphorisms on poverty, wealth, discipline and generosity may on the surface appear to be aimed at reinforcing an unequal status quo, when understood in its cultural and canonical context, this passage carries an ethical imperative that shapes a definition of justice as relational, personal and distributive."

A Killer Quote:
From J. K. Nyerere's Man and Development on Proverbs 22:2 ("The rich and the poor have this in common: the LORD is the maker of them all."): "At this time in man’s history, it must imply a divine discontent and a determination for change. For the present condition of men must be unacceptable to all who think of an individual person as a unique creation of a living God. We say man was created in the image of God. I refuse to imagine a God who is poor, ignorant, superstitious, fearful, oppressed, wretched—which is the lot of the majority of those He created in his own image. Men are creators of themselves and their conditions, but under present conditions we are creatures, not of God, but of our fellow men."

Theological Reflection (Paragraph on Charity and Justice):
"There are two words in Hebrew that can be translated as 'justice,' משפט (mishpat) and צדקה (tzedakah). Neither is found in 22:1—16, but the ideas embedded in the language inform the theology of this passage nonetheless. In his book The Dignity of Difference, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks meditates on the distinction between these two terms: 'Mishpat means retributive justice or the rule of law. ...Tzedakah, by contrast, refers to distributive justice.' Tzedakah does not have a direct synonym in English; Sacks explains that this word contains the ideas of both charity and justice—two terms that are translated separately and therefore perceived as being mutually exclusive in both Latin (iustitia and caritas) and English. When [David J.] Pleins claims [in The Social Visions of the Hebrew Bible], 'Proverbs rarely moves beyond charity,' he is interpreting through a lens that is tempered by his temporal and linguistic location, a lens that is incongruous with ancient Israelite ideas of justice."

Reese's Pieces: Irrefutable Proof of the Existence of God

My grandfather is awesome. He's a retired bishop in the United Methodist Church, and he's just the jam. Today he told me something that just upped his awesome factor:

Bart Ehrman's official title is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. Gray endowed the chair specifically for the purpose of keeping a Christian presence in the faculty of UNC's Religious Studies department. Ehrman is a self-professing agnostic (formerly Christian).

Now, it turns out that James A. Gray is my grandfather's cousin. My grandfather commented today that if Gray knew that an agnostic occupied his namesake chair, he would roll over in his grave. This is funny enough coming from a 70-something-year-old man, but it gets better. My grandfather once met Ehrman and actually told him this. Ehrman didn't seem perturbed.

This story just makes me giggle. And I'm not going to debate Ehrman here--Richard Hays, Stephen Colbert, my dad and many others have done a far better job than I could. I just want to clarify one thing: my problem with Ehrman is not that he's agnostic. It's his reasons for leaving the faith.

Ehrman is making gobs of money off books where the thesis is basically "OH MY GOSH THERE ARE INCONSISTENCIES IN THE BIBLE AND IT MIGHT NOT ALL BE 100% HISTORICALLY ACCURATE AAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!" I *might* be mocking, but I can't help it if I'm snarky and sarcastic by nature. Anyway, the thing is, Ehrman presents his problems as if he's the first person to notice them. But if no one had ever realized that not all 4 Gospels were exactly the same...why would we have 4 Gospels in the first place? The point is that Ehrman is wrestling with legitimate questions in a way that ignores the fact that the church has been dealing with them for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Since I have papers to write and don't feel like going into this anyway, I'm just going to leave you with this gem:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bart Ehrman
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News