Where are the Bumper Stickers—Whimsy & Joy gone missing

For those of you who have been wondering why it's been a while since I've written—here or elsewhere, I can only say that I've been feeling like Alexander in a continuous loop of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days (if you don't know this children's book, hear it here). Mostly it's been a lot about work, stress, budget and staffing issues, but it also had to do with having to replace the oil tank ($$$) and then the computer hard drive crashing ($$$) and having to set up a new computer. Or so I thought, but I discovered that a lot of other folks are also feeling stretched too tightly.

As I got up and left the house in the dark this week, I wanted to blame the extension of daylight saving time as a contributor to the stress and sense of being overwhelmed that everyone I've talked to is bearing, from colleagues to neighbor to friend to grocery clerk. But although I don't think the early morning dark helps, it's also not the cause. It could be the economy, but at least all of the people I talked to are working, so that's an indirect cause for many of us.

So, I decided that I needed to pay attention, and yesterday on the way to work I started looking for bumper stickers. In previous reflective periods of my life, I have come to value bumper stickers for their inspirational value and as a barometer of how people are feeling about the world. My problem this week: there are hardly any bumper stickers, fun or otherwise, on cars anymore! I realize it's a limited sample, but I commute through what was at one point in the past twenty years, although perhaps not today, one of the most densely populated cities in the United States, and there are a lot of cars on the road and parked on the streets. There were two or three slightly tattered presidential election bumper stickers, one religious sticker in Portuguese (although my Portuguese is nearly non-existent, I recognize the words for God and Jesus). Just when I'd decided that bumper stickers have become useless as a societal barometer, a car pulled in front of me with this bumper sticker:

"Don't Postpone Joy."

That was the catalyst and proof. I've figured it out. The reason we're all so stressed is we don't have enough whimsy in our lives. And that bumper sticker is excellent advice.

So, what joyful, whimsical thing can you do?

Clue 1: it doesn't require money, or shopping.

Clue 2: it has to be personal to you.

Clue 3: smiles probably help and may be essential.

Clue 4: Don't stress over it, but answer the question: What brings me Joy?

Clue 5: Having answered that, act on your answer.

I also will acknowledge that for many of us our work is not what brings us joy. I don't know what it takes to change our attitudes about our current job or to change our jobs while we are in them or by leaving them (harder in this economic climate), but we need to find something more in our work that gives us peace and/or joy. I'm inspired to assert this is possible after reading this poem by Wendell Berry. I highlight the lines that caught my attention relative to my last few weeks at work. What would it take to have work that is more like Sabbath?

Wendell Berry from Sabbaths, #VII

What if, in the high, restful sanctuary
That keeps the memory of Paradise,
We’re followed by the drone of history
And greed’s poisonous fumes still burn our eyes.

Disharmony recalls us to our work.
From Heavenly work of light and wind and leaf
We must turn back into the peopled dark

Of our unraveling century, the grief

Of waste, the agony of haste and noise.

It is a hard return from Sabbath rest

To lifework of the fields, yet we rejoice,
Returning, less condemned in being blessed

By vision of what human work can make:
A harmony between wood-land and field,
The world as it was given for love’s sake,
The world by love and loving work revealed

As given to our children and our Maker.

In that healed harmony the world is used
But not destroyed, the Giver and the taker

Joined, the taker blessed, in the unabused

Gift that nurtures and protects. Then workday

And Sabbath live together in one place.
Though mortal, incomplete, that harmony

Is our one possibility of peace.

When field and woods agree, they make a rhyme
That stirs in distant memory the whole
First Sabbath song that no largess of time

Or hope or sorrow can wholly recall.

But harmony of earth is Heaven-made,

Heaven-making is promise and is prayer,
A little song to keep us unafraid,
An earthly music magnified in air.

I would be glad if you would share with me what your joyful act is, and what thing you can and will do to make your work more like true Sabbath, rather than your Sabbath more like work, something I suspect that more of us know how to do.

If you don't know the difference between work and Sabbath, I would suggest that you follow God's example to find out about Sabbath: see that what you have created is good and rest on at least the seventh day. Or perhaps you just need to remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Without a doubt joy and the holy are closely related.

The Future of Faith—in Review

I just finished reading The Future of Faith by Harvey Cox. Clearly this is essential reading for a blogger who writes about growing in faith, but I would highly recommend this to you all. While I can't resist saying that this is vintage Harvey Cox, given that the book is published this year as he celebrates his 80th birthday, this book is a really broad brush of the history of Christian faith. His definition of faith ends chapter 2 as follows:

The three ways we encounter the great mystery—the universe, the self, the other—all leave us with a sense of uneasiness, incompleteness, and dissatisfaction. … Faith, although it is evoked by the mystery that surrounds us, is not the mystery itself. It is a basic posture toward the mystery, and it comes in an infinite variety of forms. (p. 35)

Cox calls the era from the time of Jesus to the time of Constantine the Age of Faith, where people believed and acted upon Jesus' teaching that the Kingdom of God is at hand, or what Cox teaches as the "Reigning," rather than the Kingdom, of God.

Clearly the object of Jesus' own hope and confidence—his faith—was the Kingdom of God. (p. 45)

By the third and fourth centuries CE things were much different in the Christian churches than the work toward the "Reigning of God" that Jesus had lived and taught. Central in the book are several strong chapters summarizing "the devolution from faith to belief," (the subtitle to chapter five) as followers of Jesus lost their way as People of the Way: 1) by developing creeds, 2) by agreeing to or allowing apostolic succession, and 3) by merging with empire under Constantine. [I recognize and readily admit my own, and perhaps Harvey Cox's, Baptist biases in decrying this devolution, being non-creedal, non-hierarchical, and an advocate of the separation of church and state, and as a matter of full disclosure, I note that Harvey Cox and I are members of the same Baptist church.] The next era is the Age of Belief, where

Along with the "imperialization" of the church and the glorification of the bishops, now "faith" came to mean obeying the bishop and assenting to what he taught. Faith had been coarsened into belief, and this distortion has hobbled Christianity ever since. (p. 98)

These chapters are insightful summaries of the politics, theology and history that shaped Christianity over the next fifteen hundred years.

The primary thesis of this book, however, is that the Age of Belief is drawing to a close, and a new age is dawning—the Age of the Spirit. As a part of that new age, Cox asserts "fundamentalism, the bane of the twentieth century, is dying." (p. 1) It is an assertion not yet proven. In his final chapter, Cox compares the changes in the "nature of religiousness" in Christianity to similar changes in Islam, Buddhism, and Judaism.

The change assumes different shapes, but some of them overlap. With globalization, religions are becoming less regional. Christians, Buddhists, Muslims and Hindus now live on every continent. Religions are also becoming less hierarchical. Lay leadership and initiative flourish in all of them… In addition many are becoming less dogmatic and more practical. Religious people today are more interested in ethical guidelines and spiritual disciplines than in doctrines. They are also becoming less patriarchal, as women assume leadership positions in religions that have barred them for centuries, sometimes for millennia. … [But] as these changes gain momentum, they evoke an almost point-for-point fundamentalist reaction. (p. 223)

Optimistically, and perhaps prophetically, Cox then concludes his summary of the fundamentalist reactions across the world's religions by saying,

All these, however, are in the true sense of the word "reactionary" efforts. They are attempting to stem an inexorable movement of the human spirit whose hour has come. (p. 223)

I can hope that the Age of the Spirit is dawning. If it is, and we embrace some of the harbingers of that age: local congregations acting as followers of the Way—acting on the teachings of Jesus; reaching out to the poor and needy, theologically summarized in liberation theology as a preferential option for the poor; and applications of two core beliefs of Spirit-filled Pentecostalism, that promote change and act against materialism:

conversion ("you must be born again") and holiness ("be not conformed to this world"). In political and cultural terms conversion means that people can change and that therefore fatalism—either personal or societal—is not acceptable. Holiness means that you need not buy into the latest mind-numbing fads of the commodity lifestyle. You can be "in but not of this world." (p. 211-2)

In these movements that are part of the Age of the Spirit, there is great joy and vitality. The church, at least as a global whole, is not dying, but is being born anew. People are engaging with one another, with the mystery, and with the stories that hold the tradition.

As a side note, making a connection to the power of story telling that I recently recounted, and as an ah-ha moment about my own and other fellow Baptists' secret love of ritual (a Baptist friend recently ascribed her love of the communion ritual to being a "closet Episcopalian"), Cox writes:

Most people describe the Baptist denomination, in which I grew up, as not having any rituals. Even Baptists often make this claim. But it is not true. Rituals are enactments—in song, story, visual representation, and gesture—of the narratives that inform a people's identity. (p. 39)

Certainly Baptist sermons, hymns, and Sunday school posters were and are full of song, story and visual representations.

By the time we were ready to leave Sunday school, these sagas had become permanent features in the topography of our imaginations. They did exactly what rituals are supposed to do. (p. 40)

Read The Future of Faith. Harvey Cox tells the story of Christianity and of some of his own encounters with the key movers and shapers of faith of the last fifty years, Gustavo Gutierrez and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, among others, and engages our imaginations in the possibilities for the Age of the Spirit to come.

Confronting the Powers that Be—in Yourself

Last week I "let someone go." The person was in the probation period of the new job, and we said, "You are not a good fit for this job." It was unfortunately true, despite my high hopes—somehow concepts weren't translating into results, despite my efforts to figure out why and to provide alternative approaches and explanations. If/when those alternatives don't work, I know that I can't change other people. It's not that people can't learn, but they have to be in a state of mind to do so. I can't make a person learn who is distracted by their own life's crises or problems, or who is not really engaged in the task at hand. You have to focus and pay attention and want to learn in order to translate concepts to results.

Of course, I say that from the position of being the person doing the hiring and firing, that is to say from the position of power and privilege. I've had to do this before and it always makes for sleepless nights, nausea, and other feelings of discomfort. The day I stop being discomfited about firing people, is the day I need to stop having that kind of power.

As often happens, my friend Bob sent a timely reminder in his morning scripture reading a couple of days after my exercise of power.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. (Philippians 2:3-4)

I would like to think that I exercised my power in the interests of others, given that my agency receives public funding, and we need to be accountable, but surely at least one person was probably not happy at the results.

Then, as if I hadn't been confronted about my own power and privilege issues enough, this link arrived in my email box: On "Real" Christians and Christian Privilege. Click the link to read the whole, but here is a sample.

Christianity, at least (and especially) in America, is a privilege—and, like any privilege, it can be uncomfortable to face the ugly reality of what other members of a privileged class can do to non-privileged folks, even if you don't do it yourself. I'm white, I'm straight, I'm cisgender: I understand the impulse to distance oneself. But as a white person, I am obliged to acknowledge that the history of white supremacy in America is one of slavery, of lynchings, of segregation, of sundown towns, of internment camps, of genocide, and of all manner of institutionalized racism. I don't get to say (nor do I want to) that the KKK aren't "real" white people. …

The "they're not real Christians" refrain rather quickly loses its strength as a consolation to someone barraged by hatred from people calling themselves Christians. Even the liberal Christians I know had a harder time choking out that line after watching Donohue et. al. exact their "not real" Christian terror campaign upon me, because it sounds so hollow when you're telling someone with an inbox full of prayers they'll burn in hell as soon as they die (and hopefully soon).

In this arena of power and privilege, I claim gray—it is not black and white. As a follower of Jesus, that is, as a Christian, I have been told by other "Christians" that I'll go to hell for being who I am, or I've been told that some churches would never consider me as a minister because I'm a woman.

For many progressive Christians, "coming out" as a Christian is a challenge because the label had been usurped, at least in the United States, by the kind of "real" Christians described above. In a recent sermon I challenged a congregation of "progressive" Christians to come out as Christians, following the text of David's anointing (1 Samuel 15:34 - 16:13):

In mainline and especially in liberal and progressive churches we have ceded the idea of conversion to the conservatives, and I think that's an error. We are all David. We are called to be other. Like David, it doesn't mean that we are perfect after we recognize that, but God calls us out. …

Once I started going to seminary, I started having conversations with people about God, faith, beliefs, the meaning of life, but not so much before then. Going to seminary caused me to come out as a Christian. It gave me a reason or perhaps an excuse to come out as a follower of Jesus, as a believer in God. Realizing that I was other, that I was called to be other gives me a reason to claim my difference and share it.

What is your reason or excuse to come out and share with someone outside of these walls what this faith community means to you, or what our prayer time means to you, or what God is doing in your life or how you hear a story from the Bible reflected in your own everyday life? When you do the work of social justice that so many of you are called to do, do you tell people about the faith that motivates you to do so, and if not, why not? It's one thing to be called to be different, to be other; it's quite another to figure out how you really need to live that out and speak out about our difference. When we are called out, how do we live faithfully as other, as different?

We don't want to be different. We want to enjoy our privilege. But with any exercise of privilege there must be corresponding responsibilities, and that's where we need to pick up this conversation. What are our responsibilities as Christians?

Yes, there is privilege in being a Christian in a nation where Christmas is a national holiday, but Yom Kippur and Ramadan are not. But does the story of the birth of a child to homeless refugees make us take action to help refugees, or to help those who are homeless? If not, what did you really learn from the Christmas story? We must act and call our sisters and brothers who are Christian to action.

Yes, there is privilege in being a Christian in a nation where the Lord's Prayer is part of our Presidential Inauguration, rather than a Jewish Sabbath prayer or the Muslim call to prayer, adhan/azzan, or Hindu or Buddhist prayers. But then our responsibilities as Christians then lie in listening to this prayer and in forgiving our debtors, as we ask God to forgive our debts. How might we do that? One idea that recently caught my eye: Common Security Clubs.

Yes, there is privilege in being a Christian, and yet are we following Jesus in having compassion, taking care of the sick, giving the hungry something to eat, as Jesus did when he fed the 5,000?

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” Matthew 14: 14-16

Food pantries are in great need now. If you can afford it, take five cans off your shelves and give them this week, and buy five more cans so you can do it again next week. Many local grocery stores have donation bins.

Equal access to health needs to become a given, not a privilege. We who are privileged with health or access to health care: let your representatives know that extending access to health is something that Christians want.

You have power and privilege simply because you are able to read this.

May we each claim our power to work for change, acknowledge our privilege and act upon the responsibilities that go with privilege.

Wilderness: Practices of Getting Lost and of Finding Yourself

In the 1980's I joined a women's business networking group as I was bumping into the glass ceiling in corporate America. Many of the other women were in similar positions. It meant that we were juggling what it meant to be a woman in the business world, to be talented, to be successful, and for many of us, to be other things that we couldn't talk about at work. Over the course of a year's worth of monthly meetings I developed relationships where some wonderfully deep conversations occurred, often in the parking lot after dinner, where we talked about those things that we couldn't talk about at work. One courageous woman told me she had been hospitalized for mental illness and was still being treated for bipolar disorder.

Having been lost in mental illness, she was trying to make her way back. As I recall, she was networking to try to find a job, but in the process she was becoming an advocate for people with mental illness. In talking with her, I realized how we, in our society then (and still now), put shame and blame on people with a mental illness that we would not on people with most physical illnesses. I think that she was perhaps the first person I had met who came out as having a mental illness, and her courage and passion for justice stays with me still.

I'm savoring the reading of An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor. Chapter 5 is "The Practice of Getting Lost," subtitled "Wilderness." Wilderness is an important Biblical metaphor and Taylor makes the case for getting lost as a spiritual practice—a way to practice for the inevitable wilderness experiences that life will throw at you. The left turn away from your regular route home that adds ten minutes to your ride has the potential of opening your eyes in important and necessary ways.

The road leads me into the ghost town of an old mill on the river, where the hulks of deserted buildings perch at the edge of the river like a herd of petrified mastodons. Turning away from them, I follow the wind road past an old softball diamond, complete with ramshackle bleachers, where the mill workers must have played at one time. Before I know it, I am lost in the lives of those people as well—living in mill houses, going to the mill church, working for mill owners who paid them in chits they could use at the mill store—which, like the softball diamond, has fallen into ruin." (p. 71)

How do we truly love our neighbors if we have no idea of who they are or where they live? As long as we stay on safe and well-known paths, we don't risk seeing places where injustice and greed cry out for us to do justice instead. But even closer to home, as a spiritual practice, Taylor suggests that taking the small risk of getting lost prepares us for the wilderness.

These are benign forms of getting lost, I know, but you have to start somewhere. If you do not start choosing to get lost in some fairly low-risk ways, then how will you ever manage when one of life's big winds knocks you clean off your course? I am not speaking literally here, although literal lostness is a good place to begin since the skills are the same: managing your panic, marshalling your resources, taking a good look around to see where you are and what this unexpected development might have to offer you. (p. 72)

Popular religion focuses so hard on spiritual success that most of us do not know the first thing about the spiritual fruits of failure. When we fall ill, lose our jobs, wreck our marriages, or alienate our children, most of us are left alone to pick up the pieces. Even those of us who are ministered to by brave friends can find it hard to shake the shame of getting lost in our lives. And yet if someone asked us to pinpoint the times in our lives that changed us for the better, a lot of those times would be wilderness times. (p. 78)

In the book Gifted by Otherness, the authors make the analogy between patterns of spiritual growth and coming out. The journey toward spiritual maturity has three iterative phases: an awakening or conversion, crossing the wilderness or facing the shadows, and then returning to the world. (p. 111) I say iterative because this process doesn't happen just once on the way to spiritual maturity. Author M.R. Ritley puts it this way:

Coming out is the common heart of our particular journeys as gay men and women. For lesbian and gay Christians it is an inextricable element of our spiritual pilgrimage. For some it is the fulcrum of a spiritual conflict that estranges us from God or from the church, for others, the precipitating crisis that forces us into a deeper search for God. Almost never can the process be described as neutral. … Coming out is not peripheral to who we are as people or as Christians, rather it is the very form our spiritual journey takes, the means whereby God calls us out to be a people. (p. 110)

The example and experience of crossing the wilderness is a gift and a model that lesbians and gays can bring to the church and to spiritual communities. Coming out of the wilderness is as important as getting lost or going into the wilderness.

This week, my friends Ralph and Leslie were on the front page of their local newspaper. Ralph had been the Director of Human Services and a pastor in that city, and on the front page of the paper he courageously came out as having early onset Alzheimer's disease. Ralph has always been an advocate for human rights, and continues to be as he faces how he and Leslie and their family and friends will deal with this journey. Our faith community is very involved with them as they journey, and we are all growing spiritually.

"People think if you have Alzheimer’s, you are crazy or feeble," Leslie said. "But it’s not true. That’s one message we want to get across."
Ralph is neither. Bright-eyed and active, he does chores, cooks, fixes broken items around the house and is an avid reader. "People think of Alzheimer’s as the worst thing that can happen to them, but it’s not," he said. "I like to think that life, any life, is a gift."
Of course there are problems. And it’s not easy, but Ralph and Leslie believe that with the right kind of support, one can still lead a fulfilling life.

I know from my own pastoral experience that people with memory disorders and those who love them are entering a wilderness. In many ways, Alzheimer's is a process of continuing to get lost, sometimes literally. But it is also an opportunity to seize and pay attention to this moment, just as Taylor describes.

"The thing that’s most important, Alzheimer’s or not, is that you are a person," Ralph said.
Leslie added, "For people who fear it, it’s not the end of the world or the end of life. I’ve learned from Ralph to appreciate things more — like the moments we have."

What we fear is that we too may get lost. What we need to learn is how to live our way through the wilderness, and notice what and who is around us in our journey in this moment.

I also happened upon another courageous coming out this week by black pastor and gospel singer Tonex. Speaking about coming out in a TV interview and the reaction he got, he said:

You know, it's not easy growing up in a Pentecostal/Evangelical church, where everyone is pretty much anti-gay, although it's common knowledge that some of the most anointed musicians and singer-songwriters have, or have dealt with, same-sex attraction at some point. For me, it was particularly taboo because of my upbringing and the ministerial call on my life. I then had to think about the repercussions of this revelation. But I knew I had to get free. That interview was cathartic for me.

Take the time to watch the TV interviews available in three segments online, or at least segments two and three. In my research on the status of welcoming and affirming churches, I found no historically black churches/denominations that were even having conversations about this, so this is a big hurdle, a dangerous wilderness, for our black brothers and sisters. Listen as well to his musical response: "This is All of Me."

Wilderness is freeing, and scary. I don't know if a practice of getting lost intentionally, as Taylor suggests, will help us deal with our own wilderness times, but perhaps I'll take a left turn on the way home tomorrow and see what I notice, and live in that wilderness moment.

The Practice of Wearing Skin and Fellowship

One of my daily morning practices is stretching, and I pray as I stretch. My first few prayers are done just in breathing, as I stretch my legs and hip joints to one side and then the other. Breath is ruach, the Spirit, and I invite the Spirit to dwell in me fully again each morning.

After several more stretches have limbered my joints enough to consider standing up again, particularly now as mornings are chilly, I turn and do what yoga practitioners might call an extended child's pose, kneeling with my hands stretching out as far in front of me on the floor as I can. It's a great shoulder stretch, but now it invariably reminds me of the Baptist-Muslim National Dialogue conference I went to in January, and the Muslim Friday night prayers I had the opportunity to participate in.

At that conference Cheryl Townsend Gilkes from Colby College made the connection between the historical fact that many of the slaves brought over to American colonies from Africa were Muslims and many were forced to convert to Christianity by slave owners. But she pointed out that the Islamic influences lingered on in the spirituals.
And so as I stretch in this pose, so similar to the full outstretched Muslim prayer prostration, I remember and hold the stretch long enough to sing a couple of lines: "When I fall on my knees, with my face to the rising sun, O Lord have mercy on me."

As I get up and stretch my hamstrings and calves, I stretch on each side and sing another song that I learned in Sunday School, that was perhaps a reminder of the Muslim calls to prayer:

Whisper a prayer in the morning,
whisper a prayer at noon,
whisper a prayer in the evening
to keep your heart in tune.

Once I've stood up I continue stretching and praying, mentioning those people whom I am praying for by name—opening the world for God's presence in their lives. Then in my final stretches, I pray for myself.

I think it's very appropriate to pray and pay attention to the body, to the aches and tight spots. I'm continuing to read An Altar in the World by Barbara Brown Taylor and she talks about the "practice of wearing skin":

(p. 43) The daily practice of incarnation—of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh—is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the gospels. Why else did Jesus spend his last night on earth teaching his disciples to wash feet and share supper? With all the conceptual truths in the universe at his disposal, he did not give them something to think about together when he was gone. Instead, he gave them concrete things to do—specific ways of being together in their bodies—that would go on teaching them what they needed to know when he was no longer around to teach them himself.

What do those concrete things remind us to do now? Where do we find incarnation these days?

Over the weekend I attended the Northeast regional gathering of the Alliance of Baptists. The Alliance is either a movement or a fledgling denomination. This gathering did not remind me of church business as usual, although a lot of the elements were familiar, but they are thinking about what gathered believers need and want in associational fellowship, while maintaining Baptist principles and a commitment to welcome, hospitality and fun, as well as to social justice and peace. In the preaching, in the singing, in the communion, in their covenant and in the fellowship before and after, these people are doing a fine job of remembering that we are the body, and acting on what Jesus taught—we need to care for the body. I knew a few people there and was warmly welcomed by both those I knew and those I didn't know. The conversations were lively, supportive, and interesting. It really was fun, and such a spiritual boost—that's what a fellowship will do: bring joy (and yes, we sang Leaning on the Everlasting Arms).

Recommended reading from the gathering's sermon: The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why by Phyllis Tickle:

"Phyllis Tickle offers a creative and provocative overview of multiple social and cultural changes in our era, their relation to previous major paradigm shifts, and their particular impact on North American Christianity. This is an immensely important contribution to the current conversation about new and emerging forms of Christianity in a post-modern environment—and a delight to read!" —The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church

"Tickle, author of God-Talk in America and PW's founding religion editor, observes that Christianity is holding its semimillennial rummage sale of ideas."

What is trash and what's worth keeping in the rummage sale? That would be prophecy… All of my reading and encounters convince me that we are and need to be in a time of great change about our religious institutions and spiritual practices. Does ordination (making/protecting order) in/through today's church and denominational structures make sense in this time that we are called to embrace or create change? Since institutions by their nature are resistant to change, they protect homeostasis by choosing/ordaining leaders who will keep the same old order. On the other hand would Luther have had the same impact if he had not been ordained within the institution that he was trying to change? Can you tell I'm waiting on the next step in the ordination process?

While I wait I'll just continue to practice wearing and appreciating my own skin, and hope that you will do the same. As Taylor put it:

(p. 42) One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours.

Blessings to us all!

Truth Values and The Future of Faith

It was a week that drove me to chocolate in quantity, up until Thursday evening when I left work behind to head over to Harvard Yard where Harvey Cox was celebrating his retirement after 44 years. Harvey exercised his ancient cow grazing rights as Hollis Professor of Divinity, by bringing a lovely Jersey cow to the yard, named Faith.

Harvey asked our church choir to sing Robert Louis Stevenson's poem The Cow (set to the tune of Amazing Grace) and then one verse of Amazing Grace as the benediction to the event, so I was part of the event, as well.

Harvey was also celebrating the publication of his latest book The Future of Faith, and I took the opportunity to get an autographed copy. This is an important book, perhaps a necessary one for people of faith, as a guide to what lies ahead in the Age of Spirit, as we leave behind the Age of Belief, the Christian era since the Emperor Constantine's takeover of Christianity in 355 CE.

Harvey emphasizes that beliefs and faith are not the same thing, and that we are leaving behind the Age of Belief where a list of items that we must believe was enshrined in our religious lives. Rather, in the Age of Spirit we have increasing numbers of spiritual, not religious people, who do not believe in all/any of the items in the creeds, but instead understand that practicing our faith is more than reciting a litany of what we believe. Actions speak louder than words, and doubt is perhaps a necessary part of the way of faith. For Harvey this was highlighted when an acquaintance described himself in conversation as "a practicing Christian, not always a believing one." (p. 16) I've only had time to read the first thirty pages, but recommend this book to you.

In Harvey's speech at cow/retirement celebration event, he said the arguments about science versus religion are dead (or at least need to be). His perhaps prophetic look at faith (like all prophecy, we'll have to wait to see) dovetailed nicely with the second profound event of my week—an outing with friends to see the play Truth Values by Gioia DeCari at the Central Square Theater. It only has one more week in the run, and I highly recommend it. It is a one-woman show, an autobiographical look at the actor/author's years in trying to make it through the math maze as a Ph.D. student at M.I.T. She captured in her writing and in her acting the essence of the time and place, and of the dilemmas and sexism facing women in math and the sciences.

In one early scene DeCari attended the Good Friday service at the MIT Chapel and is struck by a mathematics professor's reading of Pilate's question to Jesus: "What is truth?" That reading spurred her research about truth values. But what are those? Not what we unsuspecting lay people would think. In one interview about the play, she said,

I especially liked the idea of using the math research I was doing at the time as a central metaphor. The title, “Truth Values," is a technical term for the notion of true vs. false. My research examined the consequences of adding other values between true and false, sort of a formalization of the idea of nuanced choices. This resonated with the choices I was facing in my life at the time…

The common theme in both Harvey's celebration and book and in DeCari's work is that a binary, black/white approach to human behavior and motives, to passions and faith, to truth and beliefs, and human relationships with creation, is inadequate. Asking if you believe in one creedal statement as a litmus test of Christianity is as untenable as asking if, because you are a woman, why aren't you at home raising babies rather than learning math.

DeCari's play reminded me of how much I don't want to be put in a box because someone has a preconceived notion about who I am, or should be. I suspect and hope that Harvey Cox's book will help us find a path out of the belief boxes that Christianity has been trying to maintain for the past sixteen hundred years into a faithful and faith-filled life.

Moral: Faith and art (with a side of chocolate) are better than just chocolate for a tough week.

Clutter, Distraction, Fear and Song

One of the things about paying attention (see posting of August 23, 2009) is that you begin to notice things. Duh. So in this last week or so, I've begun to notice things around my house: the piles of paper on my desk, the magazines and catalogs on the stairs by the front door, the extra jars of applesauce and salsa on the kitchen counter, the bag of books I packed for my weekend away that I didn't read, the new CDs that haven't found their way into the CD rack because it's full, the bushes in the front that really need to be pruned, the grass that is overgrown on the curb...

I've also begun to acknowledge my feelings about this time of transition: no longer in seminary, seeking a call, taking steps toward ordination, changes in my current job and new people to supervise at my workplace, state and national economic uncertainties, friends and colleagues with undiagnosed illnesses, and my daughter starting high school. Most of those changes are scary, although some are scary with potential for joy.

And I made the not so amazing leap that perhaps the clutter and mess has a strong connection to my fears. Serendipitously, yesterday morning I read this poem by Wendell Berry from Sabbaths (San Francisco, CA: North Point Press, 1987). (This volume is out of print--I found it at a used book store in North Adams, MA while on vacation.)

1979: I
I go among the trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.

Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.

Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.

After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing
the day turns, the trees move.

Now the mess and clutter also has something to do with having been in seminary for the past five years while working full-time. Housekeeping, beyond levels necessary for general health and sanitation, has been low on my list. So, my lack of energy for and interest in housekeeping stem from habit and frankly from the need for rest after pushing through the last few years. But this poem was to the point: I need to sit with my fears until I don't fear them and then I'll find my song.

A couple of weeks ago at work at staff meeting we had a time management discussion using the PBS produced DVD by Julie Morgenstern, Time Management from the Inside Out. I've taken time management seminars and taught time management seminars, so I was a bit skeptical that I would learn much. Morgenstern's first premise is that you have to find and have life balance and identify your big picture goals in each area of your life, and that time management is about living your life in the way that's best for you. In order to figure out what's blocking you in doing that, she has a three-level diagnostic: that there are technical errors, external realities, and psychological obstacles. A one-hour video didn't give me enough time to think about and apply the diagnostics, so I borrowed the book. One clue that this book is not designed to make you merely more efficient: an exercise called "keep a joy journal."

(p. 145) If you've been so focused on taking care of other people that you've lost touch with what makes you happy, try keeping a "joy journal" for a month or so. Start paying attention [note to self, a recurrent theme?] to what delights you. … Whenever you notice you have just done something you've enjoyed, jot it down in your journal. … Give yourself permission to love what you love, whether it is cleaning out your refrigerator, reading poetry, or painting your kitchen.

I also noticed that she first wrote a book Organizing from the Inside Out. Since clutter issues seemed to be more troubling than time management at the moment, I thought this might be a better place to start. So on the way home I stopped at the library and checked it out.

Highlights of what I've learned so far in using her diagnostics about my clutter.
Biggest technical error for me, and #1 on her list: "Items have no home." See list above of things I noticed about clutter in my house. [Where do you put your magazines?]

Most prominent External reality #3: In Transition. Say amen to that one.

Psychological Obstacle #1: Need for Abundance [Otherwise, why would I have extra jars of applesauce and salsa?—I just think it's part of being hospitable. My friends vote my house the best place to visit in case of an emergency.] Her solution: find ways to organize rather than reduce. See technical error #1 again—where is the home for those extra jars?

Psychological Obstacle #7: Need for Distraction

(p. 32) Disorganization can serve as a convenient preoccupation to help you avoid issues or tasks you don't want to deal with or face. To put it another way, as long as you have a closet to clean or a stack of papers to sort, your mind remains distracted, leaving no room for weightier concerns you find uncomfortable or difficult to think about.

Oh, is that what this clutter is about? Is it a way not to think about my fears about the changes in my life? If I clean up the clutter, will I have time and room to deal with the feelings I'm not wanting to feel? Eek! Morgenstern suggests that you need to think and analyze using the diagnostics, then strategize about what to do and then attack. So I'm still analyzing and strategizing.

Nonetheless, I cleaned off the table between the recliners in the living room yesterday. I pruned the bushes and trimmed the edges. I took the books out of the bag and designated a shelf for those not yet read. I recognized that the magazines need a home.

Just those little things created some space to reflect and feel. So, yesterday afternoon I sat down and began to write a song. It's not done, still needs work, but in song I begin to capture what is important for me, and I noted writing does bring me joy, whether in blog essays, lyrics, or music.

"After days of labor, mute in my consternations, I hear my song at last, and I sing it."

May your labors on this Labor Day weekend also bring you to song.