This Is Your Life, Part 2

Yesterday I shared the news that my grandmother had died, my mixed feelings about that, and one of the things I've come up with in thinking about my reaction to her death: be today the person you want to be remembered as when you're gone.

Today's post is going to be longer, but I hope you bear with me. The other things I've learned from my grandmother's life are things that have been on my mind for a while. In my last semester of seminary I had to write part of a sermon series, and I chose to write on hospitality. The sermon from that series that I actually wrote was on hospitality when it's difficult, and it heavily featured my grandmother's relationship with me and my family. Here are the two sections about her:

Today we’re going to get down to the potentially ugly business of offering hospitality to the people who make it difficult, to the people we don’t like, to the people we know but we kind of wish we didn’t.

My mom’s mom is one of these people for me. She is a difficult guest, to put it lightly. She has always lived close to my family, and back when she was still driving, she would invite herself over to our house unexpectedly and then criticize my mother for not cleaning for her arrival. If we did happen to invite her over, she was even more harsh. My grandmother’s visits have always been punctuated with rude remarks, barking demands, and sharp criticism.

For example, this past Thanksgiving Jeff and I went to pick her up for the family celebration at my cousin’s house, as she no longer drives. My grandmother and my cousin live at opposite corners of a large rectangle formed by four freeways, each of which runs very nearly perfectly north-south or east-west, making the distance the same either way. Yet, as Jeff and I drove her to my cousin’s house—doing her a favor!—she spent the entire ride complaining about how long it was taking and criticizing Jeff for not taking the other way, her preferred way. We spent the evening in what was largely a beautiful celebration with the majority of my family as well as Jeff’s immediate family. Yet, it was punctuated every few minutes by her yelling demands for attention or service, as though none of the other twenty people in the house were busy, were themselves trying to eat dinner and enjoy themselves, or were a three year old and a three month old who frankly needed the attention more than her. She told me, yet again, that I was getting pudgy and if I wasn’t careful about eating so much I’d end up like my mother. Then, on the way home, as we took “her way,” she spent the entire time not saying how nice it had been to see everyone, what good hosts my cousins had been, how good my mother’s and mother in law’s and aunt’s cooking had been, how cute her great-grandchildren were, or how nice it was for Jeff and I to go out of our way to take her home, but saying, “See, isn’t this so much faster? I don’t know why you didn’t take this way the first time. Nobody ever listens to me.” (For the record, I timed it. It wasn’t faster.)

...

Sometimes, the person to whom it is most difficult to offer hospitality is related to you, and you really can’t get out of it.

And you know what?

Whether that person is your grandmother or your annoying neighbor, your sometimes-friend or your kid’s awkward best friend, they are probably the ones who need your hospitality the most. They are probably the ones who hear least often that they are appreciated, that they are valued, that they are loved.

My grandmother has had a difficult life, and unfortunately she has reacted to it by becoming someone who is difficult to be around; yet, because she is difficult to be around, her fears of abandonment are confirmed and her feelings of loneliness are amplified, making her still more bitter and spiteful. She never says so because I think she may have forgotten how, but I think she feels best when she sees us, even if she is still finding something else to complain about, because we are reminding her that she is not alone.

This Christmas when our youth sold items made for us by congregation members, I bought my grandmother a simple length of knitted red yarn held together with a big gold safety pin that Jody had made. It was an afterthought; it hadn’t sold by the end of the sale, and it just struck me that it was my grandmother’s favorite color. Plus, she’s complained all my life about how cold her neck is. So I paid the few dollars we’d priced it at to bump up our sales a bit more, stuck it in an envelope, and sent it down to Texas. It has been years since I have heard my grandmother as happy and as truly grateful for something as she was when she called me to thank me for that little neck warmer. There was no anger, no guilt, no rudeness in that phone call; just gratitude for an act of kindness that seemed to me so small and insignificant, for having been remembered.

So there are two things here that my grandmother's life taught me. 

First, to always think about why a person might act the way they do. Without excusing the abuse my grandmother put us through, I can acknowledge and understand that the way she treated us was the result of a lifetime of being treated poorly herself. It doesn't make what she did ok, but it makes her easier to forgive- easier to love anyway.

Second, to remember that the way you treat others- even in interactions that seem insignificant to you- can drastically impact their life. I saw this both ways with my grandmother. The way that she treated me has left indelible marks on my life, both in scars and in my lifelong resolution to be as little like her as possible. On the other hand, I saw from time to time how even small kindnesses that I could show her made her, for a while, a kinder person again. As someone who struggles with depression myself, I've come to think of the good things that I do and that others do for and with me as things that hold back the darkness; I know that my grandmother also struggled with depression, and I like to think that times when she called me and I put on my calmest, kindest voice for her were times that held back her darkness for a while. 

Moments of connection are what keep us human, and some people just don't get enough of those moments. I think in the end that may have actually been what killed my grandmother. I used to say she was living on pure bitterness at this point, but as she cut people off I think she, in a not insignificant way, died of loneliness. She wasn't alone when she died, but she was still lonely. She just gave up. No one should die that way, and it's one of the saddest things about all of this. I may not exactly mourn my grandmother's life, but I mourn the life she could have had.

So, one more time. This is your life. Are you who you want to be?

This Is Your Life, Part 1

Tonight something happened that was worth resurrecting my blog- my grandmother died. Some of you know of her as the crazy grandma or the evil grandma. As you can imagine, I'm kind of ambivalent about the whole thing.

My grandmother- my mom's mom- was bitter, racist, manipulative, and abusive. She caused me and my family untold pain and left each of us with mental and emotional scars that can't be denied. So honestly, I'm not sad that she's dead.

I am sad, though. I'm sad for the lifetime she wasted, the relationships she ruined, the energy that she put into holding onto all the wrongs that had ever been done to her and taking them out on everyone around her. I'm sad for the kind person that she occasionally was, and for the way that that person was consumed by the bitter, lonely woman she was when she died.

Lately my motto for getting myself to a healthier place physically, mentally, and emotionally has been "become today the person you want to be tomorrow." I think tonight I'd like to amend that: "be today the person you want to be remembered as when you're gone." Or, as Switchfoot put it 10 years ago, "This is your life- are you who you want to be?"

Two Sets of Three Important Things

Okay, friends. Truth-telling time. Because I, like a woman I like to pretend is my friend, believe that telling the truth heals both me for telling it and you for hearing it. And, like her, I think telling the truth means using the words that I really used, so I apologize if my occasional cursing offends someone. It's the truth.

Last night, like many nights in the past few months, I found myself curled up on my couch, desperately unhappy for no good reason. I didn't want to do any of the things I love to do or see any of the people I love to see, and the fact that I couldn't bring myself to move from my spot on the couch just drove the unhappiness home further. I found myself thinking back over the past couple of years, and thinking about all of the days like that one. Days when I just didn't feel like me, because the me I know wouldn't say or do the things I said and did. Days when I just didn't want to do things that I love to do anymore. Days when I felt totally helpless against the stupid, unreasonable unhappiness that kept bubbling up. Days that had been coming more and more frequently.

Because the human brain has the extraordinary capacity to observe itself, and because I'm training to be a counselor, the observing part of my brain finally looked back at the rest of its sad self and thought, "Heather, I think maybe you're depressed."

I considered this.

I said it out loud. "Jeff, what if I'm depressed?"

"That would make sense."

"Dammit."

And then I wanted to tell that observing part of my brain to shut the hell up because it cheerfully started rattling off things I should do about my depression- things that already help me hold back the darkness, like cleaning and working out and checking things off my to-do list, and things that I keep failing to do because I don't want to make time for them, like seeing a counselor instead of just reading my own counseling books. And the thought of doing all that felt exhausting and made me want all the more to just spend the rest of my life curled up on my couch, with no one expecting anything of me, preferably with an unending bowl of macaroni and cheese in my lap to eat and cry into.

Because the best thinking happens in bed, safe in the darkness and under the covers, I dragged myself there. And I thought, "So what? On days that I don't do the things that help me, I'm sad. That's got to be normal. Everyone feels like that. But then... if that's all it is, then that means that all anyone ever does is spend their life running from the dark." And that supremely cynical thought was also so not me.

So I asked Jeff, "What do you think makes people happy? Not just not-sad, but happy. Content. Good."

And he said the first set of three important things.

"People who love them."   Check.

"Something fulfilling to do with their life."   Check, check, check.

"Reasonable expectations."    Shit. 

I had a flashback to my recent site visit at my internship. My supervisor and friend, Chett, said that my growing edge was that I tend to have unreasonably high expectations, both of myself and of others, and that it hits me hard when those expectations aren't met.

"Is that all my problem is?!"

No, I don't think it is. I still really ought to see a counselor. It's not like the past two years of my life- the past any years of my life, for that matter- have been stress-free. When I was in high school I had to have my stomach scoped because I was having terrible, inexplicable stomachaches, and what they saw instead of normal smooth, pink stomach lining were long, red, angry streaks like someone had been literally been clawing the inside of my stomach. The only thing they could come up with was stress, and the only thing I could say was, "But I don't feel stressed!" So either my brain is really bad at recognizing stress, or I've been so perpetually stressed for my whole life that I literally don't know otherwise. Considering both my life and how much my body fails in other ways, either is really possible. The point is, I don't think changing expectations will make everything better for me or for anyone else who's feeling depressed. Sometimes things get messed up and it's not our fault, and we need all the help we can get to make things good again.

Nevertheless, I lay there thinking about what Jeff and Chett had said and I came up with the second set of three important things. Three things that I've thought at different times in my life, but I think have to be held all together for me to really be able to love myself and love everyone else like I and they deserve.

People are good.   I have had arguments with friends for the past two years about whether people are really good or not, and I really do think they are. I think that, at their core, people are good. But that by itself doesn't work.

People are broken.   This is how I grew up thinking- people are inherently messed up. And while I think that people make mistakes and are truly messed up sometimes, I don't think that's the whole story. We have to start with the fact that we are good, and then acknowledge the undeniable fact that we are also broken. But, no matter what,

People are worth loving.   People are beautiful, wonderful, broken messes. I am, and you are, and both of us deserve to be loved neither because of or in spite of that fact. People deserve to be loved because they are people. I think God must hold all three of these together when She looks at us, too.

Painting that and writing this was my therapy this morning. It's not perfect or even very good at all, but I'm making myself keep it this way because I'm not perfect either, and that's the point. So while I don't expect the sad days to go away completely, I hope that looking at that every morning helps me to remember who I am and who you are, and to take it a little easier on both of us. I hope you can do the same.

A Year-ish Worth of Work Finally Pays Off

Remember that one time when I started this blog and said it would include things like recipes and crafty things that I was working on? And then I only ended up writing about what was happening in my life, and eventually only writing about theology because that's 80% of what happens in my life now?

For that matter, remember that one time when I wrote things?

I won't make any promises about keeping things up-- that always seems to end in embarrassment as I utterly fail to do so-- but this seemed worth resurrecting my blog for at least a day.

I MADE THIS.

I have been making this, rather, over the course of the past year. And by that I mean I started at the end of last summer, stopped for the entirety of the school year and most of this summer, and finally finished it this week.

It's a jewelry tree, if you're unfamiliar with the idea. I had been wanting one for a long time but all of the ones in the stores seemed way too expensive and way too small, so I decided to just make one myself. Wanna see how?

Here it is, in 20 easy steps. With lots of pictures!

Step one: Fold a thick gauge wire into the shapes of branches, with little loops for leaves.

Congratulations! This was the easiest step.

Step two: Start wrapping the branches in thin wire for support and prettiness, but without wrapping the leaves.

Step three: Accidentally get the thin wire horribly, irrevocably tangled. Cry.

Step four: Have your husband or some other kind soul untangle the wire for you.

Step five: Finish wrapping the branches, but leave the bottom four or five inches (the bent part) unwrapped to make "roots" later.

Step six: Buy the fabric, thread, and needles to make the leaves where earrings will hang.

Step seven: Get scared at the prospect of sewing anything by hand, even something so simple as this.

Step eight: Give up for almost a year.

Step nine: House sit for a friend who is both wonderfully supportive and a fantastic seamstress. Decide that the residual skill and encouragement lingering in the house is enough that maybe you can actually do this, and finally sew the first leaf on.

Step ten: Finish all the leaves in a few days because they were actually really simple.

Step eleven: Starting with the tallest branches and working your way down in batches, start using the thin wire to wrap again, this time wrapping several branches together to build the branches into a trunk.

Step twelve: Because it's been a year since you used it last, forget how ornery the thin wire is. Make a huge tangle again, but decide that this time you're going to fix it yourself, dammit.

Step thirteen: Create a wire octopus on your living room floor as you try to untangle the stupid wire, using decks of cards to hold the wire down without bending it.

Step fourteen: Wonder why in the world you have so many decks of cards. Be grateful that you've collected them anyway.

Step fifteen: Get the wire untangled and slowly add more branches until they have all been included. Wrap as far down as you'd like your tree to stand up, still leaving a few inches of the "roots" on the ends of the thick wire to make your base. (see first picture)

Step sixteen: Mold a pack of air-drying modeling clay into a mound and "plant" your tree in it, pushing the roots down into the clay until they're covered. Leave little bits of the roots showing through the clay if your artistic heart desires it.

Step seventeen: Force yourself to wait the 24 hours while your clay dries. Try to resist the urge to continue poking at the clay.

Step eighteen: Finally put your jewelry on the jewelry tree you made all by yourself.

Step nineteen: Stick the whole thing on a lazy susan so you can actually get to all of your jewelry.

Step twenty: Admire!

Hungry

Today I am hungry.

We haven't run out of food; we're not that poor, and even if we were my congregation would never let us starve. I'm hungry because I've committed to fasting one day each week during lent, from sunset to sunset, and to give what I would have spent on food to those who go without on a daily basis.

Maybe it's because of that second commitment that when I fast my mind isn't necessarily on God the whole time.

For me being hungry is out of the norm, and being hungry makes me think about God, for sure. It makes me grateful for how incredibly blessed I am and it reminds me of God's desire that all might live. God wants me to have what I need.

But that always brings my thoughts around to the fact that there are 925 million other people in the world who are hungry today, and they didn't choose it as a lenten discipline.  God wants them to have what they need, too.

Meanwhile, I probably have way more than I need. I'm choosing to abstain from it today, but it's there, waiting for me.

Coincidentally, in my postcolonial voices class today we read and discussed 1 Corinthians 11:17-34, where Paul writes about the abuses of the Lord's Supper. Some people in Corinth were overindulging on food and drink while others were leaving the table hungry. This is also the passage that I've heard as a warning to never take Communion without confessing my sins first, because Paul says that whoever eats and drinks (takes Communion) without discerning the body eats and drinks to their own judgment. Today it was offered as possibility that Paul is actually referring to the Body of Christ, which he describes so famously in the next chapter. In some early copies of this text it actually says "without discerning the body of the Lord."

What if this warning is actually to the Church that lives in abundance while so much of the world goes without? What if, by our tacit acceptance of our own abundance in the face of so much need, we are opening ourselves to judgment? Isn't the continued suffering and want in the world the very indictment that so many lay against our claims to seek the good of all creation? We eat and drink to excess while one seventh of the world is hungry. My congregation would never let me starve, but we let 5,000,000 children starve every year.

Our Communion table, our place where all are made equal and made one in the Lord, judges us.

God wants everyone to have what they need, and God wants us to be a part of that. I don't know whether you decided to give something up or to take something on for this lenten season, or if you even observe lent at all. But as Christians, as human beings, I ask you to start to think for these next 38 days (and beyond) about what you can live without so that others might live.

Not Their Prophet

A couple of weeks ago I shared a little bit of my own struggles with a desire to serve the last and the least (I cannot say that phrase without Relient K in my head, by the way. They have a song for everything I'm thinking.) that is always balanced by my recognition that I come from a position of power and  don't want to just make things worse.

Then, last Wednesday and Thursday, I had an idea.

Which I promptly forgot to write about. To be fair, it was because I got to spend all weekend in Austin!

I was there for the MFSA board meeting but I also got to go to some of my favorite restaurants and see some of my favorite people.

I actually did write a blog post while I was there, it just wasn't for my blog. If you're interested, you can read it here.

But back to the point.

Wednesday night was the weekly chapel service that I help to plan and Thursday morning was my class called Postcolonial Voices, which is both difficult and amazing. Postcolonial studies is a bit much to explain here, but one of the main ideas is that you can't ignore any point of view or restrain any voice. That's part of what makes it hard to define.

Wednesday night I was one of the readers, and the passage was Deuteronomy 18:15-20.

"The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people; you shall heed such a prophet. This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said: ‘If I hear the voice of the Lord my God any more, or ever again see this great fire, I will die.’ Then the Lord replied to me: ‘They are right in what they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people; I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet, who shall speak to them everything that I command. Anyone who does not heed the words that the prophet shall speak in my name, I myself will hold accountable. But any prophet who speaks in the name of other gods, or who presumes to speak in my name a word that I have not commanded the prophet to speak—that prophet shall die.’"

This has always been one of my favorite passages (yes, even before I admitted to myself that just maaaaaaybe I was feeling a call to ministry) because, in some small way, I do see myself as a prophet. There are times when I do feel like there's a message that I've been called to share, and I guess that's part of what this blog has become.

But did you catch the end, about speaking words that haven't been commanded to you? Harsh. I've gotta say that this is one part of the Bible that makes me uncomfortable, that makes me wonder about who wrote it and when and why, though that isn't what I've been thinking about this week.

This week I've been thinking about how the end of that passage actually brings me back to the beginning of the passage, which brings me to the "Aha!" moment I had in class Thursday morning as we talked about listening to each voice.

The passage starts with "God will raise up for you a prophet...from among your own people."

Well we've already established that, in most ways, the people I am afraid of doing harm to with my desire to help are not really my people. I can't claim that history. I am a white, Christian, educated American with more or less enough to get by, even if I am a poor grad student.

I am not the prophet called out from the wounded and oppressed people of the world. I cannot speak on their behalf. I cannot share their stories- the stories are theirs to share or not. Those words have not been commanded to me to speak.

What I can be is the prophet called out of my own privileged, powerful people, and call them to better lives.

I can call my own people to share their power, to use it wisely, to honor the value of those that we have made outsiders.

To borrow some of God's words from Micah's mouth, I can call us- because Lord knows there are days when I need reminding- to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God. To love God and love neighbor.

That is a message I can share.

That, if nothing else, is what I can do to make the world a little bit better, a little bit brighter, a little bit more like the kin-dom of God.

"Why do Americans have such nice backpacks?"

The internet is pretty stinkin' awesome.

We have a finite amount of time and energy, which means that- whether consciously or not- every day we have to decide in what and, more importantly, in whom we are going to invest that time and energy. Realistically, statistically, we can only have so many friends. But with the magic of the internet, now we can actually keep tabs on all those people with whom we never had the time or inclination to invest in an actual relationship but that we really did like or find interesting. Or just attractive, whatever. No judgment here.

The point is, while my parents' generation would've had to work really hard to keep up with everyone they knew in college, I can find almost anyone I've ever known in a matter of minutes. Sometimes I read their blogs. That's what brought on this post.

See, there was this guy who was kind of peripheral to one of my two core groups of friends in college (the one I had in common with my husband); he'd hang out with us sometimes, but I hardly ever saw him, much less had deep conversations with him. He did, however, have a reputation for being a great writer, so I was all over it when I happened to notice several months ago that he was entering the Peace Corps in Cameroon and keeping a blog. I've loved reading it even though I hardly know him because he's a fantastic writer and is living something that I can only dream of doing. His most recent entry, though, left me a little disappointed.

Quick disclaimer: Barrett, I can't imagine you'll ever read this. If you do, no offense intended. You just made me think. Thanks!

K. Onward. I swear I'll make my point soon.

While he's there he's teaching a technology class. One day one of his students raised his hand to ask a question- a rare thing- but his question had nothing to do with the subject of the class. Instead of asking how to make his document double-spaced or how to spell a word in English, his student asked, "Why do Americans have such nice backpacks?"

Talk about a sucker punch.

Now, as I was reading this I thought, "Yes! I'd love to read what he has to say about a question like that." But no. One of the three Americans the student mentioned by name is a new girl in his town, and the post transitioned smoothly into talking about her and then into talking about teaching there in general. I felt like he'd put in this great hook for his post and then completely ignored it.

So I guess this is what I wish he'd talked about. Why do Americans have such nice backpacks?

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is how we- we, anyone from the predominantly white, richer-than-most-of-the-world, colonial super power that is the United States- can ever hope to go anywhere or serve anyone without coming off as completely paternalistic. How do we name our own power and privilege and still express our honest and heartfelt desire to press our palms against the wounded places of the world, as Don Miller so beautifully puts it? How can we ever look someone in the eye without immediately hanging our heads in shame? How do we say, "I know that this is my fault, but I want to help you make it better?"

How do we try to share an education that could change the course of someone's life for the better when the backpack we carry to class probably cost us more than our students will see in a year?

When I posed these questions to my good friend at Wesley his response was simply, "We can't."

Ugh. I'm too optimistic for that. And maybe in this case that's unreasonable, but it still grates on me.

Maybe he's right. Maybe I do have to just suck it up, accept the awkwardness, apologize, and if they want to accept me, wonderful; if not, the thousands of years of colonialism that make up my ancestry don't give me the right to beat them over the head with my helping hand.

But something in me says no. There has to be more than that apology, critical as it is. There has to be a way for me to meet the people who are so distinctly "other" on ground that is level nevertheless. And I think that means two things- it means humbling myself and seeing the other with love and respect. Really, it means one thing. It means a relationship, one where each of us sees the other as nothing more or less than a human being, a child of God, a creature of unimaginable beauty and complexity.

And really, that's all I've got. I don't know what steps to take to make that happen. Maybe it's too much for me to ask after all. I'm hoping that it'll be something I'll learn when I go on my immersion through Wesley next winter break. But I suspect that, as it always seems to be, it's about respect and love. That's what keeps us human.



(As always, but especially today- please, share your thoughts!)

Exercise and Exercises

First, a quick rundown:

-I survived finals without a single meltdown. Progress!
-I've gotten four of my five grades back so far and am pretty happy with them. The fifth won't come in for another month at least because that's just how my professor works, and my perfectionist, OCD self is slowly coming to terms with that.
-We went to Texas for 10 days over Christmas and it was wonderful. We saw almost all of our family and our closest friends. We even saw Les Mis with my college roommates and saw one of Jeff's friends one last time before she leaves for Argentina for 3 months (buena suerte, Kendall!). Oh, and my nephew is adorable and quite possibly the happiest baby ever. Basically, good times all around.

Now, my actual thought for today:

New Years has come and gone, and resolutions have been made (and broken, I'm sure). One of the most popular resolutions is to get in shape, right? And, at least within the Church, another of the most popular is to be more dedicated with spiritual practices. We go out and buy our gym pass or that perfect new devotional, or we decide that this year we'll try yoga or lectio divina, and we go merrily on our way. For about a week.

Then we miss a day. But it's cool, it was just one day, and we rally.

Then we miss a couple more.

Then a few more.

Then the guilt sets in.

Then we think, ahhh, forget it. I'll try again next year.

And then I remember one of the best pieces of advice about spiritual exercises that I've gotten in 23 years: God doesn't care if you miss a day or if you miss a week. God just cares that you're trying.

Now, that's pretty simplified and (as most advice can) can be used to write off an awful lot of slacking, but the sentiment holds true. We're not perfect, and very few of us have the discipline to hold to a regimen of anything for the rest of our lives, whether it's physical or spiritual. But what matters is that we keep trying. We keep going back. The thing about strict workout plans or read-your-Bible-in-a-year plans is that while they can be really useful they can also make us feel so guilty when we miss a day that we quit entirely.

No, several weeks of inactivity followed by one day of exercise isn't a very good pattern for losing weight, but that doesn't mean that getting on the treadmill today without a clearly defined workout plan is a bad idea. You'll still get that benefit today, and having done it today will make it easier to do tomorrow. Reading your Bible or journaling or praying today won't make you an automatic saint, but it'll make you think about your faith a little more in your day-to-day life, and- who knows!- maybe you'll think about how your faith ought to affect your actions when you get put in a stressful situation tomorrow. 

In both our physical exercises and our spiritual exercises, we shouldn't let long periods of idleness prevent us from taking a small step today. That small, unguided step might be the beginning of a habit that we can keep up, one built on grace rather than guilt.

And maybe that applies to blogging, too.

Justice Looks Like...

This morning I've been thinking a lot about why it sometimes seems like conversations between self-proclaimed liberal Christians and conservative Christians hardly ever seem to get anywhere. If I'm honest I fall into the former camp, even if I may not like the stigmas associated with those kinds of labels. So as a liberal Christian, generally spending my time with other liberal Christians, the verse I hear quoted most often is Micah 6:8- "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

It seems so simple.

Do justice.

Love mercy.

Walk humbly.

Now I'm not sure that anyone is really very good at humility, but at least it's easily agreed upon, and people try. At least, I am able to make it through my day claiming the name of Christian by hoping that humility is one of the things we strive for.

Mercy is the same way. I don't think anyone would disagree that mercy is something we are called to. We may not live it out all the time, but we're working on it.

Really, it's justice where we hit a snag. Do justice. Do what is fair. Do what is right. Do what is deserved- that's what justice means. Administer the response that is deserved.

The disagreement , it seems, is over what is deserved. What does this person or that group deserve?

If you think that they deserve judgement and punishment for the choices they make- or worse, for who they are- and I think that they deserve love no matter who they are or what they've done, then yeah, we're going to have an issue. So what does justice look like?

What I keep coming back to is the fact that I am called, first and foremost, to love. Love God, love everyone else. And loving means being patient and kind, not rude or boastful or selfish or irritable, and keeping no record of wrongs but rejoicing in truth. It means wanting what is best for the other person even if it makes me uncomfortable to do so. If God loves me despite everything I've done and calls me to do the same- and even moreso if I believe that God does the same for everyone- then who can I possibly judge?  How can I do anything, or think that anyone deserves anything, but love? What could justice possibly look like besides extending my hand in peace and mercy to everyone I see?

So we come back to loving mercy and walking humbly. Doing justice means both of those things. Being a Christian and being just means loving to be kind, loving to extend mercy. It means being humble enough to recognize that the decision about what anyone truly deserves is beyond me.

I don't know if this kind of thinking will be enough to move anyone's conversations forward, but I keep going because I believe that love changes hearts. Love changes the world. And that's what justice looks like.


(Crossposted on OnFire)

The Church in One Service

This might not be my best post ever, but I just need to take a minute to acknowledge how beautiful my congregation's service was yesterday. It felt like just about everything that the Church does all wrapped up into one service.

First, yesterday was All Saints Sunday- the first Sunday after All Saints Day (November 1) when we remember the saints who have gone before us. This year was particularly difficult for me. November 4 was the anniversary of my grandfather's funeral and today is one month since the death of my good friend's father. In place of a sermon there was a microphone for people to come up and share the names of those they were remembering, especially those who've died in the last year, and then each person lit a candle for every name that they shared. The candles were in the windowsills all around the sanctuary, representing the "great cloud of witnesses" that surrounds us. It was a beautiful image, and I thought I could be strong, share my names, and enjoy the beauty of the moment. Nope. I'm not sure that anyone even heard the second name, and I could barely see the candles as I lit them. It was a good kind of cry, though, the kind that really does make you feel better when you're done, and the just bask in the peace of so many remembered loved ones. The strength of generations of ancestors and examples was tangible.

From remembering our past we shifted to looking to the future as we celebrated the baptism of a good friend of mine who moved here from Iran several months ago. She is a dear, beautiful person, and her joy and excitement was absolutely catching. Her desire to learn and keep asking hard questions is inspiring. After she'd been baptized, she and another friend joined our congregation. Watching two young adults join a "dying" Church was truly beautiful. It made me wonder what exactly would draw them to a congregation- what people my age are looking for. If I had to narrow it down, I'd say that it's three things: the presence of honest, deep relationships, the space to ask deep questions and have deep conversations, and the opportunity to serve together in a way that makes a difference in the world.

That brings me to the last part of the service. Not only was it All Saints Sunday and a baptism Sunday, but it was also a Communion Sunday. I already wrote an entire post about how important I think Communion is so I won't go into that again, but I just want to say how perfect it was as the end of this service. We had remembered, we had welcomed and celebrated, and in Communion we were made one and sent out to be the Church in the world. The only thing that could have made this service a more perfect picture of the life of the Church is if we had gone out and actually served together in some way that afternoon. Nonetheless, it was beautiful.

So. That might not be the most typical service at my congregation, but it's a decent description of what we do as the Church. Remember. Welcome. Celebrate. Give thanks. Share. Send. Serve.

A Confession

I have a confession to make. It’s not much of a confession, actually, if you know me very well. 

I love youth fiction. Love, love, love it.  

Two caveats. 1, no, I am not a creeper. I am, however, a youth minister and have been a teacher in some capacity for the last four years. I can’t help but get curious when I see my kids reading or hear them talking about a book. 2, I hate, hate, hate sparkly vampires and muscled werewolf men and anything that could possibly be labeled “Paranormal Teen Romance.” Ugh. That subset of youth fiction is antithetical to the whole reason that I love the wider genre.  

I spent the first half of this week grieving with and supporting one of my best friends and her family as they worked through the death of her father and all of the arrangements afterward. The majority of the second half of the week was spent at the hospital or with my dad back at home as he experienced inexplicable, excruciating pain in his right leg. When I wasn’t doing those things or trying desperately to pull together enough focus for the homework I brought with me, I was reading- for the fourth time- the Hunger Games trilogy. I’ll be the first to admit that, at least sometimes, the genre is attractive because it’s easy. It’s written to be engaging and accessible to an easily distracted demographic. It’s a good story told simply. This week it let me just relax my mind and be for a while in a world that wasn’t mine.  

The real reason that I love youth fiction, though, is because it opens the mind. It stretches the idealistic imagination. It challenges the reader and the world to be something more. I believe this wholeheartedly, and I am not alone. I have seen articles about it; a girl I knew in high school now has an entire blog devoted to it.  

Some of my favorite books fall into this category. The Hunger Games, obviously. I was one of the lucky generation that got to grow up alongside the Harry Potter series and it will always make the list of my top 10 books of all time. I got sucked into the Percy Jackson series thanks to a student of mine while I was in college. Then there are the older books like The Giver, The Phantom Tollbooth, the Chronicles of Narnia, A Wrinkle in Time (and all of its family of stories), The Little Prince, Ender's Game, and one book that no one but me seems to have read called The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.

The thing that I love about these books, besides the fantastic stories and memorable characters, besides the incredible imagination behind each of them and that each of them encourages, is the way that they encourage us to take a look at the world around us. Just to notice it, first of all. To take the time to see the world in all of its strangeness, its beauty, and, yes, its pain. But it doesn’t stop there. The really beautiful thing about these books is that they challenge you to see the way the world could be, and to do something about it. 

Really great youth fiction teaches two things. First, the important things in life are not money and stuff; the important things are family, friends, kindness, love. And it teaches that you, no matter how young or how old or how small or unskilled or unimportant, you can change the world if you try. Maybe you can’t save it, but it isn’t always about saving the world. It’s about making your little corner of the world a better place to be, a place where there is peace and acceptance and hope.

Truly great youth fiction says to every reader, in the words of one of the greatest writers of children's books of all time, "Don't give up! I believe in you all. A person's a person, no matter how small!"

Don't Wait

I'm writing this on the plane on my way to Houston. Normally I'd be excited beyond belief right now. Not today. Today I'm going home to be there for one of my best friends and her family as they mourn the loss of her father. He had ALS. It was overwhelming how quickly he declined, but it was inspiring that his spirit- his sense of humor, his faith, his love for his family- never did. He was a great man and I am honored to have known him even in the small capacity that I did.

While I'm in town this week I do hope to spend some time with my parents and grandmother. My dad has a disease called Lewy Body Dementia. He's been sick for 12 years now. He is an amazing man.

No one expected him to be around for my high school graduation. Or my college graduation. Or my wedding. But he was, and he's still here. My best friend never expected to loser her dad at 23. But she did. It doesn't make sense, any of it.

I can't explain why things like this happen, why good people die young or die old, why it's stunningly fast or painfully slow. All I know is that I've already attended the funeral of one good man this week, a man from my church in DC, and now I'll be attending another next week. And I hate that funerals are this outpouring of affection for the one we've lost- not because that in itself is bad, because it's not. We need that as release, we need to celebrate that life. I hate it because I always wonder, "How many times did we tell his person how much we loved and appreciated them while they were still here?" If it's our family, sure. We're pretty good at that. But not always. And how often do we say to our friends, even our acquaintances, "You know? I really appreciate you. You are such a good ________, and I love the way you ________. You always make me laugh/appreciate life/feel better when I'm upset. I'm so glad to know you." Why don't we tell people the wonderful things that we'd wish we could have told them if they were to die tomorrow?

We don't know when our time here will be through. I want to leave this world a better place by the things that I do, but more than that I want the people I love to know just how much I love them. I am heartbroken to be going home for the reasons that I am, but I am so grateful for the opportunity to see my family, to hug them and tell them I love them face to face.

So go tell your family, tell your friends- tell them how glad you are that they are a part of your life. Take advantage of time with them. They are what make life beautiful. And they should know it.

Life and Other Things

Sorry Steve. You're awesome, but I'm calling you out a bit here.

Maybe it's not the best idea to make arguing against something one of my bosses said the focal point of a blog post, but since I have pretty much the coolest bosses ever I'm banking on him getting the gist of what I'm saying and not focusing too much on me disagreeing with him publicly :)

On Monday I was at my internship and- wait, I haven't mentioned my internship, have I? As part of my degree requirements for seminary I have to do field training. Since I've worked in churches basically my whole life and already have a job at one outside of school, my field training is actually at a non-profit/caucus group of the United Methodist Church called the Methodist Federation for Social Action. I love, love, love it. I love the people, I love the work, I love the things we stand for and the things we do. It's amazing. So this quote needs to be in that context. Let's try that again.

On Monday I was at my internship and one of my bosses, Steve, made a comment about how he couldn't be working a project we're doing because he had to assess the state of the house he's trying to sell in upper New York. What he said was, "Yeah, that's life- it gets in the way of things sometimes."

That really bothered me. I think the heart of what he was saying agreed with what I'm about to argue here, but the way he said it just kinda made me say "Whoa! What's that about?!"

Life is not the little things that get in our way. It's not home repair or paying bills or unexpected hassle or work. Life is in the things that give you joy, the things that keep you getting out of bed every day, the visions for the future that keep you pushing back against the world, the things you are passionate about. It's the people you love and the time you spend loving what you do.

For Steve and all of my other lovely coworkers, the things we do at MFSA are what we are passionate about. They are what give us hope and courage. So, when Steve said that I think he really just got his nouns wrong. For so many people, though, I feel like they would've agreed with what he said at face value.

Man. Life just gets in the way sometimes, you know?

Gets in the way of what?! That's what I want to know.

No. Sometimes we let things get in the way of life. Sometimes we let things that don't matter, things that no one will care about or remember in 50 years, get in the way of the people and the time well spent that make our time on this earth matter.

I happen to love my schoolwork, my job, and my internship. I find fulfillment in all three, and often the things that I get to do as a part of my work are a big part of what gives my life meaning.  But truly, it is the people I love that make my life worthwhile. It is because I've been able to focus my work around people that I love my work, and it's for the people that I would drop anything. They don't get in the way of life, they are my life. Sometimes I let things that don't matter get in the way of them.

So let's all get our nouns straight, shall we? That project at work, that unexpected expense, that traffic jam, that super-important-item that you lost: that's not life. Being there for a friend, spending time with your family, laughing and crying together, making the world a better place: that's life. Don't let anything get in the way of it.

The Pictures I Didn't Take

There's this website called unphotographable. I love it. And there were so many things this weekend that I didn't take a picture of, and so many that I couldn't have even if I had wanted to. Here are a few of them.


This is the picture I did not take of two little old church ladies- happily walking down the hall hand in hand.

This is the picture I did not take of my friend Tyler dancing to Christ Has Broken Down the Wall, across the stage and down the aisle and around the room, dancing so beautifully that I couldn't help but cry.

This is the picture I did not take of the joy on my friend Justin's face as he received his first reconciling stole, one of a beautiful crowd of 700 joyfully bestowing them on one another.

This is the picture I did not take of a family, the mother offering communion to her two little boys, and the five year old offering it to his mother in return.

This is the picture I did not take of my friend Mittie standing up to sign the chorus of We Are Called and watching it spread across the crowd.

This is the picture I did not take of the Reverend Amy DeLong, standing up to do what she was called to do, still a reverend and still a faithful, loving companion to her partner Val.

This is the picture I did not take of a grown man in tears as he told us about the recent affirmation of our LGBT  brothers and sisters by the Presbyterian Church (USA), or of the tears in the eyes of the crowd as he told us that he believed we would be next.

This is the picture I did not take of 50 young adults crammed into a tiny room to make a plan of action because they are committed to a church that is not always committed to them.

This is the picture I did not take of a room full of people dancing unabashedly in joy and hope.

This is the picture I did not take of 700 people, hand in hand, singing and praying for the church to draw the circle of their love wider.


If you were at Sing A New Song and want to share some of the pictures you didn't take, please leave a comment. I'd love to see them.

Expansion!

Well, instead of the blog post I wrote for yesterday, I have for you all a link to that post on the other blog which I will now be contributing to from time to time. Woo!

http://umonfire.blogspot.com/2011/08/raising-dead-waking-sleepers.html

I hope the flood of blog posts these past few days hasn't been too much for everyone. It's almost been like I'm a real, full-time blogger who's dedicated to writing. In any case, I have one more post about SANS that I'll try to get up later today, and then classes start up again tonight so I'll probably be back to my once a week goal. We'll see how it goes.

I hope you've enjoyed the updates about my experience at Sing A New Song, and I hope maybe you've learned something or gotten a new idea. If you want to hear any of the talks that I referenced, you can watch the videos (hopefully they will all be up soon!) on the SANS website.

http://sans2011.org/multimedia/videos/

I'd recommend any of them. All of the speakers had such great things to say!

If you've been reading all weekend, thanks for making this journey with me! And if you've kind of zoned out, well, things will get back to usual this week. Though I am really excited about my last SANS post, so I hope you at least read that one.

Peace!

The Images of God

Because so many people left early this morning, yesterday's services and closing banquet were the last parts of the conference that many people were a part of, which meant that we've already had the "sending out into the world" feeling. Yesterday's words of encouragement were to remind us that each of us bears the image of God.

What was really awesome, though, was extending that to think of ourselves as bearing the many images of God.

We are who we are.
We will be who we will be.
We are the cloud.
We are the fire.
We are the gentle whisper.
We are the voice crying in the night, "awake!"

God is active in the world, and God is active through us- we work it out in our lives, in the church, in the world.

We have the power of God behind us, and we will shake the earth.

Unity, Not Uniformity

I would sum up yesterday’s many wonderful speakers with this: our goal is to seek unity without losing identity.

The day was bookended with affirmations of who we are as Reconciling Methodists and what it is that we hope for in the future. Reverend Amy DeLong spoke in the morning about hypocrisy and bullying in the church. She encouraged all of us there to resist the temptation to deny who we are, who we have been made to be. In the evening Bishop Joseph Sprague outlined his vision for the “new song” that we are singing; we work for safe jobs and living wages, for education and organization, for peace, and for the recognition and equality of all human beings.

Yet sandwiched there in the middle was the reminder from UCC Bishop Yvette Flunder that, just as we claim our identity as the church despite outcry from those who would claim otherwise, we likewise cannot exclude those who disagree with us from the body of Christ. We are all unique organs performing specific functions and all held together by the skin of the love of Christ, to borrow Bishop Flunder’s (and Paul’s) analogy. We are all the church together, yet that does not mean we lose sight of who we were created to be.

We may have our disagreements. They may seem enough to rip the church apart. In the past, they certainly have. But even disagreement over the very nature of God did not stop the biblical authors: we have in the two creation stories two very different representations of God. We have a God who is distant, who creates with words and stands back from it all to observe; on the other hand, we have a God who gets down in the dirt and works with divine hands to create and participate. But what truly matters is that we are given both! The authors might have disagreed about what kind of God they worshiped, but they could still stand together as God’s people.

We are called to unity in the body of Christ, but unity is not the same as uniformity.

Hope

For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been in Huron, Ohio, since Tuesday. I’m here for a conference called Sing A New Song- it’s a partnership between the Reconciling Ministries Network and the Methodist Federation for Social Action (where I’ll be interning for the next two years), and it’s basically a chance for United Methodists who care about justice issues ranging from LGBT rights to stewardship of the environment and everywhere in between to get together, encourage one another, and dream about and work toward a better future.

So if I had to choose one word to describe yesterday’s kickoff events, it would be hope. Hope for this weekend. Hope for the future. Hope for the church. Hope for the world.

That was definitely the theme of the young adult forum I got the chance to be a part of for a little while yesterday morning. What gives you hope? What do you hope for in the future of the church? What stories (biblical and non-biblical) give you hope and encouragement as you continue to work for peace and justice?

You know what gives me hope?

We do.

For many people (especially in local congregations!), the first thing that comes to mind when they think of young adults is, “Where are they?” But at this conference, 1 in 7 participants are under 35. And that’s after all of the people who were unable to come because school starts this week. That’s awesome.

The message of last night’s kickoff service was that we are the church, too. We—young adults, LGBT, people of color, the poor, anyone who has ever felt hated by or left out of “the church”—we are the church, too. And we can change it. We can choose to live in a better way because that’s what we are called to. That’s why we are here. That’s why we work—because we believe that the church, the world can be better.

We have hope. And we carry hope out into the world.

Sitting Is Bad For The Mind As Well As The Body

Uninspired.
Lethargic.
Apathetic.
Aimless.
Sleepy.
Bored.
Boring.

This is what you become when you watch multiple seasons of Doctor Who uninterrupted.

Goodness, I need school to start again. My brain needs a jump-start.

A State of Mind

This has been stewing in my brain since I was in Texas a month ago. And by stewing since, I mean it’s come up from time to time but I’ve been ridiculously busy and just now wrote it down.

At the end of June I was so very blessed to be able to spend two weeks in Texas seeing dear friends and family, hanging out in my favorite places, listening to country music and southern drawls, and of course eating the most wonderful food on the planet. Seriously, two absolutely amazing weeks.

Then this past week two of my best friends, my roommates from college, came to visit! We spent three days walking all over the city, hitting all the major highlights (and some of my favorite places that aren’t quite so thronged with tourists). We ended every day so tired and sore (and hot and cranky) that we could hardly move, but it was so good to be with them. Plus, watching our favorite movies and having sleepovers every night because we kicked Jeff out for the weekend was lovely :)

So Texas has been on my mind, and I finally just jotted down what I was thinking. It hasn’t had much revision and I don’t even know how to qualify it (poetry, I suppose?), so no guarantees. But here it is.

Texas is not Bible thumpers, raging conservatives, and unbearable heat.

Texas is green trees,

red earth,

and wide, blue sky.

Texas is the dust of a rodeo

and the sound of the state fair;

it’s the roar of a city,

the bustle of people,

junebugs on an otherwise silent summer night.

Texas is smiling speech,

shootin’ the breeze

in that slow drawl,

that musical twang.

Texas is big family dinners

blessed by a deep family grace.

It’s comfort food and

comfortable conversation.

Texas is southern hospitality.

A smile, a wave,

wide arms and an open door,

friends and strangers alike.

Texas is,

it has been said,

an obsession approaching a religion.

It is home.

“A Texan outside of Texas is a foreigner.”- John Steinbeck