Category Archives: spiritual practice

The Ravages of Fear

everyday theology, musings, progressive christianity, progressive politics, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

alt-right-protestersThis morning I asked my friend, Erin why some people have a problem with political correctness. She told me, “They live in a different world than you and I do.” As we unpacked her statement over coffee and muffins, she talked about the fears people live with. Fear of losing their job. Fear of crime. Fear of things they don’t understand. Fear of change. Fear of the other.

If that is true, and I believe it is, then I understand the ravages of fear. Fear seems to give permission to behave badly. To lash out. To take a protective stance that may put others at risk.

Fear is the enemy within. It dehumanizes us to live in fear. It sucks out our compassion and generosity. We react from the reptilian part of our brain that either runs and hides or lashes out as we respond to perceived threats. And when we are afraid almost everything  feels like a threat.

My spiritual tradition, Christianity, invites me to a unique response to fear: love. I admit it is the struggle of a lifetime. It is counter-intuitive. It is also empowering. To love in the face of fear taps into a power so much greater than myself. When I live in love even the fear of death is trumped.  As my sacred text says: “There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out fear.”   1 John 4:18

The right plays on peoples’ fears and diminishes us a nation and belittles the concept of political correctness  even though ‘political correctness’ is just a term for kindness and respect for those who are different. I can’t be kind if I live in fear. That sends me down another rabbit hole: Fundamentalism plays on people’s fear of hell  doubles down with anti-political correctness. The thinking seems to be that  if I am kind and respectful to those who are different from me in their beliefs or understanding of the world, I am putting my immortal soul at risk.

One the other hand, the left seems to fear truth-telling. I began to hear the term ‘alt-right’ to refer to white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other extremists, during this election cycle. I cannot help but wonder why we are using ‘soft’ terms to refer to provocateurs and proponents of violence and hatred. We need to name ultra right extremists for what they are. Not out of fear. Not out of some sense of vengeance or retaliation, but because hatred needs to be rooted out of our culture and identity. Hatred, like fear, is an aspiration of the far right that we need to take seriously and oppose vehemently.

If fear is the opposite of love and hatred is the opposite of compassion then let us choose not to hate and choose not to fear. Let us be the radical left that names and stands against that which threatens life and liberty and risks kindness and compassion to those who are different from us- by nationality, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, ability,  or race.

 

 

Faith and Forgiveness

Christian feminist (radical and otherwise- or is it all radical?), Circle of Grace, everyday theology, musings, progressive christianity, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

ForgivenessThe truth is it is easy not to forgive. When I don’t forgive it feels like I have a protective layer against further emotional aggression. When I don’t forgive my anger feels righteous (whether it is or not). When I don’t forgive there is no way to siphon off my anger.

When I forgive someone who has hurt me deeply I kind of resent it. Perhaps that is not forgiveness. I would rather say it is not completed forgiveness. It has taken me a while to understand forgiveness as solely my internal process. Let me break that down:

Solely, mine alone, without any action or reaction on the part of another, mine to wrestle with, mine to resolve, mine to engage without expectation of changed relationship with anyone other than myself.

Internal, the change that forgiveness makes is in me. In me. In me. Forgiving changes my physiology. It changes how I view the world. It reorients me to something greater than myself, a way that my faith calls me to move in the world.

Process, I have come to understand that forgiveness for any unjust or emotionally harmful event is not a one-time thing. Sometimes I have to forgive a person who betrayed or hurt me several times a day. Each time I do, I move toward wholeness. Process is choosing over and over again to be the person my faith calls me to be. Sometimes I resent that I am choosing to forgive, but I choose it anyway. The process requires time and emotional energy to continue to make the choice  until it becomes my default response to painful memories, lost dreams, and dashed hopes.

I know I only do this because of my faith. It is easy to hold anger because the anger seduces me into believing I am protecting myself. It is my faith that instructs me to be vulnerable, to change the world by first changing myself. It is my faith that gives me the strength to continue the process of forgiveness because I don’t always gravitate toward forgiveness.

 

 

Making a Way

A Gracious Heresy, Christian feminist (radical and otherwise- or is it all radical?), everyday theology, musings, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

making a waySo I’ve been wondering: is listening truly the radical act I think it is?

I ask this because I hesitate to make absolute statements (even though some of you might challenge that if you follow me on Facebook). But here’s the thing- I post things that I ponder about or worry on or that confront my concerns, anxieties or things I dearly love or that move me or make me laugh. I post things that are beautiful. Relative to the amount I post, I write or comment very little.

Mostly I listen to reactions. When I feel moved to speak on a contentious topic I try to remain both authentic and vulnerable. And willing to change. Because, as my dear friend reminds me, true listening requires a willingness to change.

I am inviting people to listen with the ability to change, to empathize, to be challenged as a radical act of peacemaking and bridge building.

I get it how difficult it is to be vulnerable, real, authentic about one’s deepest self in the face of bigotry, hatred, and mostly fear.

I extend this invitation only to those who have the support and strength and willingness or ‘call’ to be that open. As a woman, lesbian, Christian, feminist and white, I am in no way suggesting this is the correct or only path for anyone. It is not the only way. It is one way and it is an important way but we also need people who resist. We need people to call out bigotry and hatred and injustice. We need people to stand for justice.

It is not an either/or proposition. The call to radical listening is a part of the larger picture. It is an invitation to mutuality and community. It is another kind of justice seeking. It is making a path through the wilderness.

 

 

Death and the need for mortality officers

everyday theology, musings, spiritual practice

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When my father, a retired army sergeant, passed away at the age of 79, the army sent a mortality officer to our home. He attended the military funeral and then, over the next several weeks, came to the house and walked my mom through all the required paperwork: getting the death certificates, contacting the army and civil service regarding retirement benefits, dealing with bank accounts and insurance.

In the midst of my mother’s and our family’s grief a sympathetic outsider helped manage all the details of death.

Recently my brother-in-law, a retired Air Force officer, passed away and I called the base nearby. They put us in touch with a ‘casualty officer’ who performed the same services.

As a pastor I have been a ‘mortality officer’ for members of my community at times. I have had to self-educate to figure out paperwork, social security, insurance, retirement, bills owed- the whole gamut of issues that come with death. I am willing to perform those functions and try to see it as a way of being present.

But as pastor my call is to be available for spiritual and emotional support.
I say all of this to name a need in our culture. We have sanitized death to the point where it is an alien event to many, many people. Some are hesitant to write wills because of a superstitious fear that we are inviting death. Widows or widowers are confronted with the possibility of losing the family home. How to probate a will. How to deal with the issue of no will.

We sanitize death and shut it away. Out of sight out and out of mind. And then when death touches our lives, we are at a loss.  Especially the unchurched, I would imagine. And everyone, whether they belong to a church or not, deserves support in the trying time of the death of a loved one.

Here is my thanksgiving: that the military takes such good care of its own.
Here is the question I am left with: how can we, as a people, provide ‘mortality officers’ for everyone?

retro- Wednesday- How Can It Be Different?

Christian feminist (radical and otherwise- or is it all radical?), Circle of Grace, everyday theology, retro-Wednesday, spiritual practice, Uncategorized

 

 

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originally posted August 16, 2010

How different can you ‘do church’ from traditional models?  So far the answer is a resounding ‘somewhat’.

Here’s the thing: we want to share power.  We don’t want to replicate any kind of hierarchy.  We named ourselves Circle of Grace because all the points on the circle are on an even playing field.  In theory that translates to equal or shared power.   In practice, people are often uncomfortable with the thought of exercising power.  Maybe they are afraid of being ‘wrong’ or maybe they are afraid they will have to ‘bring it’.

In our model everyone has a voice.  That’s a good thing.  What’s difficult (I’ll refrain from saying ‘bad’) is that not everybody is willing to exercise his or her power.  As feminists, we redefined power.  For us, power isn’t ‘power over’ anything.  Power is what we share.  For some of us it is uncomfortable – but we agree it is important.

This breaks down pretty significantly when commitment and responsibility are iffy.  It is a pretty big trade off.  For some reason, in hierarchical power structures those with power are able to require a certain amount of responsibility.   Not so much in a non-hierarchical situation.  In my bad moments, I hate that.  I hate that we don’t have a structure I can wrangle to get something done quickly, without discussion or dissension.  Sometimes I hate it that everyone has a voice but not everyone has the inclination to do the work that needs to be dome.

So how different are we from more traditional churches?  Sometimes not at all.  Sometimes power lands in the lap of a few because of lack of interest.  Kind of like state and federal elections.  We have the power to vote, but too many people don’t give enough of a damn to exercise their power.  As pastor, I am sometimes left with too much power by default.  (Default: no one else wants to do it)  Fortunately, I don’t want the power even when I have to exercise it.

Sometimes we are very, very different from traditional churches.  There is no power of ‘right thought’ or ‘right belief’.  One of the most challenging aspects of being in our community is that we are not bound by shared belief.  There may be someone who believes in substitutionary atonement and another who vehemently does not (in fact most of us don’t).  We have had times of members who opposed abortion and those who worked for choice organizations.  We have learned to make room for one another.

That’s the wonderful part.  It is wonderful enough to balance out the trials of a lumpy sharing of power.  How different can it be?  Different enough that we keep on trying to figure out how we’ve been socialized and work against what is easy or comfortable.  We know we are on a huge learning curve.  I guess that’s how different it is.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A modest proposal as to why and how it is okay for Christians to celebrate a Passover Seder

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My dear friend and celebrated scholar, Dr. Monica A. Coleman sent me a link to a blog by the Rev. J. Mary Luti who is pondering the question of Christians celebrating Seders.

http://sicutlocutusest.com/2014/04/11/no-christian-seders-please/

This is a thoughtful and well argued piece and I actually agree with most of her assertions but I think the topic requires further imagination.

First, the Seder as we have come to know it is not the precise meal Jesus celebrated with his disciples on Good Friday. Seders  did not begin to develop until after the destruction of the Temple, 70 C.E.  But it is likely that Jesus  was remembering the Exodus event in some fashion as the festival is prescribed in Exodus 12:14,  “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it  as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.”

At that meal Jesus invited us to another act of remembering in what we now celebrate as our communion meal. The Eucharist, for Christians, is an act of remembering spiritual liberation.  That being  said, I am not sure if it would be appropriate to insert Communion into a Seder celebration. But  if we did make that addition it would  be adding our story to the story of our ancestors- which every haggadah (telling) I have ever had the privilege to read or share in encourages the practitioners to do.

Rev. Luti also argues that ritual originates and arises from a community’s shared experience. As Christians, she asserts, we cannot celebrate a Seder out of anything like the lived experience of Jews.  I would respond with both ‘yes’ and ‘no’.  Yes, we cannot, nor should we attempt to claim that our lived experience ‘remotely resembles’ the lived experience of Jews. But if scripture is our shared story, and indeed a universal story, then it is also our story to tell. (I would note here that not all Christians are white and privileged.  And those who are white and/or privileged,  confront the pharaoh within when telling the Exodus story.)

As pastor of a progressive, feminist church (note the orange on the Seder plate) with a community of women and men, many races, gender identifications and sexual orientations, the Seder is a time of remembering Godde’s promises, given and fulfilled, and Godde’s call for us to live into freedom. In the remembering and telling the story each year we are encouraged, renewed, challenged and sent forth with hope.

I agree that the celebration of the Seder meal should never supplant the Exodus story with the Christian story as the ‘conclusion’ of Godde’s activity in history. The point of the Seder is to remember who we are, to remember Godde’s intention, desire and liberating acts for humanity, to own the places where we participate in our own oppression and the oppression of others, and to depart with the hope  of Godde’s continued redemption of humankind.

It is not a Christo-centric story. Neither is a story exclusive to Jews. It is our story, wherever we find ourselves in it. It is a story that brings both judgment and hope. It speaks to Godde’s movement in history and to the journey of the community of faith and of individual souls.  It frames for us an understanding of who Godde is and how Godde acts.  In the telling of our story each year,  we learn as we hear and speak the words,  listen with our bodies when we eat the lessons, and sing with our hearts as we insert our personal journeys and lives into the story.  This ritual returns us to spiritual center.

If Christians can celebrate a Seder meal in those ways then so we should for it opens us to greater understandings and deeper experiences. If we hear echoes of Jesus’ words for us to remember him in the story, then let our hearts be open to ways the Exodus journey might illuminate those words.

 

 

 

the theology of making pizza sauce

everyday theology, musings, spiritual practice

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Today I made pizza sauce.

I put two cups of organic grape tomatoes, two tablespoons tomato paste, two garlic cloves, salt, pepper, a pinch of sugar and italian seasoning into the blender and listened to the excited whir of ruby red flavor burst into a new thing.

I poured it into a saucepan and simmered it, uncovered until it thickened and intensified. The thickness of the sauce pushed back against the wooden bowl of the spoon as I stirred. And when I licked the spoon I caught traces of caramelization that that is both sweet and tart.

Tonight I will slather it on the homemade yeasted dough my mother has made and mound it with veggies and cheese. With a lovely romaine salad, it’s what’s for dinner.

I could have began this post with “I played with Godde today” or “today I tasted Godde” or  “today Godde fed me”.  Because using organic ingredients feels like and act of worship, honoring both creation and the Creator. Because cooking and feeding people is one of my spiritual practices. Because I find joy in creative acts. Because to taste food fresh from the earth, when I am mindful, is a sacrament.