Cheesehead in Paradise

Advent: Meh

2009-12-08T12:06:00.002-06:00

I'm skipping Advent this year.

It's pretty easy when you're a displaced minister, a person without a church. I've had some invitations to worship at various colleague's churches, but I think I might want to go somewhere large enough to slip in and out unnoticed, and I have a large enough profile in this very small presbytery that I think it would be a challenge at any church in my denomination within driving distance.

So, for now I am skipping the whole thing. Not missing it so far.

So, Cheesehead...

2009-12-04T08:10:00.002-06:00

"How does it feel to have splayed the whole ugly story out there on the Interwebs?"

After months of coyly referring to "unbloggables" and even, for a short time, going the underground blog route, it's pretty much out there.

It feels okay.

To have this story to tell is pretty awful. But to have the support and affirmations of my bloggy pals has lifted my sprits in ways you cannot imagine.

"But Cheesehead...why would you tell your misery to the world?"

I admit, it does not make for cheery Advent reading. But I think (in fact I know) that I am not the only person to whom this has happened. And someone once told me that sunlight is the best disinfectant. So perhaps by shining a light on what sometimes happens in churches, we can at least acknowledge the problem, which might prevent it from happening somewhere else.

Yeah,I know. Sounds naive.

But: I have it on good authority that now that I am gone, Miss Thang has decided that this year's Childrens' Christmas Program (during Sunday worship) at St Stoic is...

wait for it...

The Nutcracker.

Yes. Baby Jesus just threw up a little in his mouth.

Suddenly I am feeling very lucky to be gone.

I May Have Oversold Part 2 of This

2009-12-02T07:49:00.002-06:00

I hope nobody is expecting part 2 to contain the warm and fuzzy resolution, like in a sitcom. This situation ain't made for tv.

First, about my tiny little sermonette. At the Saturday 11th Hour Preacher Party I sent out an SOS for sermon stuff to borrow, as I honestly did not think I would be able to write anything. Many of you sent me lovely things to borrow, with no strings attached. Thank you to all of you. Maybe it took so much of the pressure off, knowing that I could punt if I needed to, that I was able to write what I did. In any case, your generosity was exactly what I needed. I am ever grateful.

After the sermon,and a Prayer of the People that I regretted as soon as I began it, just because it was so damned long and wordy and mostly pointless, came the final hymn, My Shepherd Will Supply My Need. Yes, I know, not a traditional Advent hymn, but one of my favorites. And if you can't sing your favorite on the day you are tarred and feathered, when can you? Think of it as my last meal before execution.

Blue Eyes came and stood with me during the hymn,and for the last verse the EP came up and stood on the other side of me. Then we did the litany of resolution, which is not required, but I wanted it said: "This is over."

My benediction was simple: "Go in peace." then I left hand-in-hand with Blue Eyes, who was seated in the front pew, and we left out the side door,not down the aisle. In five and a half years, there was never once a "hand shake line" so it wasn't as though I was disrupting tradition. (Talking to the pastor after worship delays access to the cookies, so they simply don't do it. Priorities.)

We went straight to my office, or the empty room that used to be my office. I took off my robe and we just kind of stayed there for a while, hanging onto each other for dear life.

Meanwhile, my "party" commenced without me. When I say "party",what I really mean is regular old coffee hour. People milled in the same old tightly closed circles. The same people who have avoided me for months kept avoiding me. When Blue Eyes and I went back into the sanctuary,were coffee hour is held, a few people came up and hugged us and wished us well. A few people pressed cards into my hand, which I passed on to BE to hold for me. There were about a dozen people who were really sad and crying and needed to say a few kind things to us. The rest ignored us. If there was a cake or anything nobody offered it to me. There were no parting words of thanks,no gift.

After far too long, we knew we had to get out of there. We'd done what the EP told us we had to do: we'd shown up. We carried my things out to the car, went back in, and I handed my keys to the chair of the personnel committee, who just looked at me without a word.

In the car, I opened some of the cards. One was very sweet. Two were not. One contained a note of regret that I (me--Cheesehead) "had not been able to compromise in order to avoid all of this turmoil." The other listed four ways in which the writer hoped I improve before I take my next call. They were mostly suggestions on how to change my personality.

I just don't know what to say about that.

So yeah. This is over.

Tripping Forward On Hope (part 1)

2009-12-01T17:46:00.007-06:00

That's the title of the last sermon I ever preached at St Stoic, just two days ago. I borrowed the title from something I heard someone say at the conference I attended last month. After the first keynote, an old friend and I spent the rest of the evening, well into the wee hours of the next day talking--about The Troubles, our families, The State of the World. I had scribbled the words "tripping forward on hope" on a scrap of paper and told my friend that it would probably be the sermon title for my final sermon. He had me do an impromptu exegesis, right there in the hotel bar, around 11:30 at night, while we were waiting for our nachos to arrive. That one is a stickler for rigorous exegesis, let me tell you!

When the time came for the final Sunday, it was a pretty awful day, let me tell you. The house was clearly divided into people who were still willing to speak to me and people willing to sit in a worship service led by someone they were trying very hard to ignore. Very, very strange.

The service got off to a very bad start when I approached the chancel and noticed that someone had removed my chair. The chair I had sat in every Sunday for five and a half years. Someone had removed it from the chancel. Just removed it. I reached over at the last second and grabbed a choir chair to sit in, otherwise I would have had to stand the whole service.

When it was time to light the Advent candle, someone had emptied the box of matches I'd placed on the wreath. There were a half-dozen matches in the box when I sat it out on Wednesday, but those had disappeared by Sunday morning. I mimed lighting the candle, but there was no flame, and nobody came to my rescue.

When it came time for me to read the gospel, I just couldn't get the words out of my mouth, and just kind of quietly asked Blue Eyes if he would do it, and he came up and read cold. He is my hero. When it ws time to preach, I took a very long pause, a very deep breath, then explained that I would try to get through the sermon, but if I felt I had to stop, I would stop. I had already been humiliated over and over that morning, so there was no loss of pride in saying that. To my surprise,I was able to get all the way through it.

This is what I preached, more or less, with a few redactions: (I'll tell the rest of the story tomorrow)

"By the time our daughter was about ten years old, she had reached that time in life when young people, young girls in particular, reach that coltish stage. Like a young foal learning to stand up on limbs that had been folded up in the womb, they take tentative steps of independence for the first time on legs that seem far too long and spindly to support them.

She had hit a growth spurt right about then as it seems young girls do at an even younger age than when I remember being young. (And yes, I realize how much like my mother that statement makes me sound.) WonderGirl was—and she would admit this—a little clumsy.he bumped into things a lot.We went through a lot of ice packs and band-aids.When I watched her move through the world at that age, I realized that the problem was not really one of coordination, but of perception. She had grown so tall and strong so fast, and at such a young age, that her brain had not quite caught up with her power.She somehow misjudged some times where the world began and her feet, knees, elbows ended. Things that she could not quite perceive got in her way, caught her off guard, upset her balance, and often left a mark as a reminder that she was not moving through the world as a solitary creature—that things sometimes got in her way as she moved from point A to point B.

To her credit, she could have stayed home and avoided injury.But she didn’t.She joined the track team in 6th grade, and played volleyball in 7th grade, and in high school was a cheerleader for a season or two. Now, remember she comes from a long line of mathletes, drama dorks, choir nerds, honor roll dweebs, band geeks.We tend to be a rather proud but decidedly un-athletic tribe.

But it takes guts and determination to get out there and do things that people tell you that you are too clumsy to do. It takes guts to lace up your shoes for the last volleyball game knowing you haven’t scored a single point all season. It takes guts to move your long legs and knobby knees in a world that suddenly seems filled with sharp edges and every sidewalk seems to have some invisible crack in it that your inexplicably size 11 feet catch on. It takes guts.

It took guts for the gospel writers to encourage the church to watch and wait and keep their heads up for Jesus’’ immanent return, knowing that they had waited, and waited, and waited for almost two generations. And it most certainly takes guts to look up, raise one’s head when the hazards are all around, down at knee level.

It took guts for Jeremiah to write what he did to a people in the midst of a disaster, their very temple destroyed by an enemy that neither understood them nor respected their holy places and practices—a vastly more powerful enemy that was, frankly, afraid of them. When everything you know and love is laid to ruin, to hear and understand and believe that you will somehow come out on top takes a special kind of courage. The kind I’m not sure I’ve had much of lately.

It took some courage to call a newly minted pastor to a church that had been around for 160+ years. It took guts for me to come here and begin a new model of ministry when the only thing most people here remembered and liked was the Geographically Named Parish. There have been plenty of skinned knees and elbows, on both our parts, but I am proud that after every time I got unexpectedly tripped by the nearly invisible crack in the sidewalk, I got back up and kept on going forward.I'm grateful for every one who helped me to stay on track, who pointed out potential sharp objects, and gave me an ice pack when I needed it. I’m blessed to have been able to also do that for those of you who allowed me to.

This year we are entering a different kind of Advent.It is not the kind we th ought we would be entering—at least I didn’t. If we never felt the words “look up” were very concretely true before, this year they are pretty real in a way that is …well…different. But a friend of mine wrote this week that different is not the end of the world.

That coltish, long-legged user of Band-Aids stayed in California this Thanksgiving, and went to Oakland to spend the day with new friends. It was the first Thanksgiving in 22 years that both the kids were not sitting at the Thanksgiving table with me, whether the table was mine or a family members’. I needed her to be at that table with me this year, but she needed to be somewhere else. Part of her job of being a young adult is to be responsible to her employer and her schoolwork, and not traveling this year. Part of my responsibility of being her mother is getting out of her way and letting her stand on her own two feet in that way.

I never really thought about what it would be like when our kids were not available to celebrate Thanksgiving with us. I didn’t plan for this. What I did instead was try to raise them to be adults, not really planning ahead that this is what growing up means. And raising them day by day, inch by inch was far more satisfying than fretting ahead of time about Thanksgiving 2009 would have been.

In the same way, I didn’t really think too hard about what it would be like when I was no longer the pastor of this church. I didn’t plan for my leaving. What I did instead was try to serve faithfully, not really planning ahead that this is what serving sometimes looks like. And serving here, day by day, sermon by sermon, was far more satisfying and –dare I say—far more faithful than fretting about November 29, 2009 would have been.

It seems to me that this is rather like what the Christian journey is like. Yes, there are obstacles out there, and things that trip us up when we are not looking for them. But we are made—equipped-- to look up, to keep working ahead, to be brave and courageous even after catching our feet on an unknown, unseen, surprising sidewalk crack. It takes guts to get out there and keep on keeping on, even when we cannot anticipate all the dangers, or know how we will navigate all the obstacles. There are bruises. There are skinned knees. There are marks that we are not alone in this enterprise, that in the journey from point A to Point B we will encounter each other, and those encounters almost always leave a mark. And if we are brave, and have the guts our Creator gave us, we will simply go on living it day by day, discovering where our souls end and the world begins, tripping forward on hope.Thanks be to God."

Too Long For A Comment

2009-11-23T12:07:00.005-06:00

Thanks, all for your outpouring of support in light of yesterday's post.

I wanted to respond, but my comment was going to be far too long, thus this post.

First of all, I have to say that Scott's turn of phrase in "exquisite profanity" just earned that word combo a top shelf spot of new phrases I intend to use again and again at every opportunity. What a marvelous phrase! My new favorite thing!

Yes there shall be dust-shaking, and of course it will not happen in the pulpit. I'm thinking more of replacing the dust of this place with warm sand between my toes on an exotic island somewhere this winter, as my sweet, patient, Blue Eyes and I celebrate 25 years of marriage.

It would be easy for me to throw rocks at the presbytery representatives in this situation, but I was reminded by them repeatedly that they (E.P., COM) worked very hard to not take public "sides" in order that this could work itself out. I need to take their word for that. If you knew what is going on around here, you would understand why they cannot appear to make a lot of enemies.

It is also fair to say that in reply to the hurtful things the Personnel chair said, I also said some things that were very difficult for some to hear. I had my say and I took full advantage of it. I did not candy-coat what I saw (and continue to see) as places the church as a whole (me included) had turned our backs on the gospel. I know the EP anticipated this, and this is why he did not cut off the Personnel chair, I suspect. Each "side" got a chance. We are, after all, the Frozen and the Chosen. The Decent and the Orderly.

Part of my sermon yesterday included the borrowed phrase "The worst is over; the healing has already begun." (Eugenia Gamble) Yesterday in the car I remarked to Blue Eyes that what I really wanted to say was "You know when I told you the worst was over and the healing had begun? I really meant that for me, not you. Y'all are screwed!" And even though we both laughed deep and long over that, it is sadly very true. Right now they are not only without a captain, as it were, they are rudderless and without crew, and the sails are full of holes.

So, then.

2009-11-22T20:41:00.003-06:00

Today was the congregational meeting to recommend to presbytery to dissolve the pastoral relationship.

That's the polity language.

What really happened is that the chair of personnel told the congregation (which included a strange array of people who had not darkened the church doorstep since Easter--I likened it to rats scampering up to the top deck of the Titanic, when I was at lunch with Blue Eyes) that I was incorrigible, disobedient, and did not toe the line according to what his committee told me to do. He outlined his program of requirements designed to "tally, compute, and account for my effectiveness as a CEO." He related that I had failed all of the required activities as measured by 1) an increase in members and 2) an increase in offerings.

I had no answer to that, really, except the description of shared ministry that our denomination's constitution outlines.

He's right. I outright refused to encourage the leadership of our congregation to become emotional and spiritual cripples, which was what I was ordered to do. I was told repeatedly over the last eleven months that the session had no interest in participating in ministry, since that was what I was paid to do.

No turning back now. One sermon left.

God help them.

Overwhelmed

2009-11-17T13:01:00.002-06:00

I've been overwhelmed these days by:

Sadness
Grief
Anger
Helplessness
Fear
Worry

But also by the kindness and generosity of the blogging community. Words cannot express how meaningful and helpful your support has been. Every one of your comments is a treasure in my heart.

I promise I will write more when things settle down a little.

The letter I mailed today

2009-11-13T15:53:00.002-06:00

goes something like this:

Dear Beloved Children of God,

This letter may take you by surprise. It is certainly not the letter I expected I would write now or at any time in my ministry. I write it with a heavy heart.

Several weeks ago, the personnel committee of session began the process of contacting the presbytery asking for assistance in “helping St Stoic church to remain strong and vital.” After a series of discussions with the personnel committee, the session, the Committee on Ministry of the presbytery and the Executive Presbyter, we have come to some painful conclusions. The most painful of these is that the church’s ministry as envisioned by some persons in St Stoic’s leadership, and the ministry to which I am called as a Minister of Word and Sacrament, are so far apart that the best and most faithful way for me to continue to serve Christ’s church is to serve somewhere else.

A congregational meeting will be held on November 22, at which the motion to dissolve the pastoral relationship will be the item on the agenda.

Throughout this process I have been accompanied and supported by a colleague advocate, and have held utmost trust in the representatives of presbytery that the most positive possible result for my future ministry and that of the Church of Jesus Christ were top priorities. I have been affirmed and surrounded with love every step of the way by family and close friends, to whom I owe a great debt of gratitude. In the most difficult and painful of days I have leaned on our most gracious God, who has never let me down. I am blessed.

I look forward with hope to the next phase of ministry, and in anticipation to the congregation that God is preparing for me, and me for it. I look back in gratitude; thank you for allowing me to baptize your babies, teach your children, confirm your youth, open the Word in your presence, break the bread and pour the cup at your table, share in your worship, and bury your saints. I live today in regret only that there may be ministry that could have been shared here that must remain undone by me.

To those who risked welcoming me into your hearts and into your lives, and allowed me to do the same, I will always be thankful. I am comforted by these words in Jeremiah 29:11, which I offer as a prayer for us all:

“For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope”.

Together We Serve,

Cheesehead

One more thing about the paperclips...

2009-11-12T10:00:00.003-06:00

They were kind of metaphorical. Nobody is really asking me for an accounting of the paperclips or staples, but I am forced to sit and take stock of what in this situation is really mine--meaning, where did I make things better, where did I not make things better.

I really have inventoried my office, but mostly because I wanted to. Knowing what I brought here to this place: physically, theologically, spiritually, and what is just old baggage that they will have to deal with when I'm gone is a tiny step towards healing and someday, wholeness.

I'm leaving behind their junk: the stuff they brought into my office because this 97-year-old building has no closets, the precious membership records from the Civil War Era, their narcissism, their sense of entitlement, their crappy old computer.

The bright sticky notes written by the children on Reformation Sunday two years ago? Those babies are mine.

Also, my dignity. I'll be taking that with me, thankyouverymuch.

About the paperclips

2009-11-11T14:40:00.003-06:00

If you read on Spacehook that I was counting paperclips and wondered what the heck that was about, remember: I cannot take anything with me that was here when I got here. Nor do I want to, for the most part.

Now do you understand?

I Still Hate Wednesdays

2009-11-09T21:38:00.001-06:00

and my life is still largely unbloggable.

But soon I will have, um, lots of time for blogging.

Dots of stuff, some sucky.

2009-10-28T17:47:00.004-05:00

I have come to hate Wednesdays. I just do.
This Wednesday is without the redeeming quality of all Wednesdays: GLEE. WTF?
Yes, I know it is all about a baseball game. Whatever.
I will have an international visitor next week.
SQUEE!
I said some stuff to some people in a church building last Sunday evening, and they liked it.
Haven't done that in... a very long time.
I LOVE that friends are cheering me up and buying me meals and stuff, but is is making me fat. er.
Today somebody helped me plan to clean out my office. It depressed me and made this day a tiny bit suckier.
It is also premature.
I told Teh News to a friend today, but she was totally unable to hear me.
Another tiny bit suckier.
Somebody who should know better asked me today how I am doing. I told him the fracking truth.
Are you srsly still reading this crap?

E B. and Me

2009-10-23T21:37:00.004-05:00

I have this friend who I'll call E.B because her name is kind of like that, but more complicated, really. She has known me for many years, since my days "under care". We drift in and out of each other's lives on a rather random schedule. I knew it had been too long since I had talked to her when she asked me if WG had fun at the prom. I had to break it to her gently that WG lives in Semi Famous.

But I called her to tell her about The Troubles*. I have avoided telling her because, well...The Troubles** are embarrassing. They make me a sad statistic, a footnote in the volume titled "Things That Sometimes Start Out Okay But Go Terribly, Terribly Wrong".

But E.B. is in my corner, like so many people are. I told her what is going down, and her righteous indignation flared up like a torch! She is about 4'11" and about 90 pounds soaking wet, but man, can she be the momma bear to end all momma bears!

Once again, I'm really lucky.

* Not comparing this to any strife in Northern Ireland.
** Really not.

No Contest

2009-10-20T22:50:00.002-05:00

I made my first "no contest" plea today, by circling the words on a piece of paper.

A very nice gentleman (but a bit of a "low talker" as Seinfeld would say) flashed the red and blue lights of his motorcycle as he followed me at a safe distance yesterday evening as I went traveling down a fairly country road, albeit a few miles faster than the speed limit.

It is not the first time I've been caught going too fast. In fact, it is the fourth in about 25 years. It is the second since I moved back to Snow Belt 5.5 years ago, the most recent occurrence being right smack in front of my seminary friend's church two counties over as I was depositing his daughter back home after spending the night with Wonder Girl, her childhood friend in Semi-Famous.

The very first time in ~1986 I was driving to work at the mall and the Tracy Chapman song "Fast Car" was on the radio. I kid you not. The second was several years later as I was driving to an early morning CPE shift at Regional Trauma Center here in Snow Belt, before I moved to Semi Famous. Don't remember what was on the radio, but I had cut through a residential neighborhood and got caught in a speed trap. Then in front of my friend's church.

Now this.

Each and every time I have been caught I have been guilty. The patrolman had me dead to rights every single time. My name is Cheesehead, and I often exceed the posted speed limit.

My options on the reply form are either "Guilty" or "No Contest". Spouse and I had some discussion about the difference between the two pleas. There is not a lot, legally speaking. The consequences with each are exactly the same.

I am facing another kind of trial, though. One that is not so much legal in nature but emotional, psychological, social, and theological. There are those who feel that the evidence would show that I am guilty. It is not real evidence, as in a screen on a radar machine, but it is real to them, just the same. They are arguing it as if their very lives depend on it.

For the "peace, unity, and purity of the church" I am facing another "no contest" plea soon.

There will be no winners. Everybody loses.

Love Shouldn't Hurt--a sermon for Domestic Violence Awarenss Sunday

2009-10-17T16:35:00.004-05:00

Love Shouldn’t Hurt
October 18, 2009
Mark 10: 35-45

10:35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you."

10:36 And he said to them, "What is it you want me to do for you?"

10:37 And they said to him, "Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory."

10:38 But Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?"

10:39 They replied, "We are able." Then Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink; and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized;

10:40 but to sit at my right hand or at my left is not mine to grant, but it is for those for whom it has been prepared."

10:41 When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John.

10:42 So Jesus called them and said to them, "You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.

10:43 But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant,

10:44 and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.

10:45 For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many."

Her name is A, and she was my first college roommate. Tall, athletic and blonde, she was a communications major from a big city, the oldest child of a single mother who was, like me, in college on scholarship. Being a city girl, she seemed more worldly, and more street smart than anyone I, the country girl, had ever known. Another girl in our dorm suite had gone to A’s high school, and they formed a cohesive twosome that made me feel like the third wheel most of the time. They had dated more boys, been more places, and had more big-city experiences than I ever had. They could speak a whole secrete language about who they knew, where they had been, what they had done, and I just watched and listened.

Freshman year went on, and eventually we fell into a rhythm of school work, social life and dorm life. A and I both met young men who lived in our same dorm, just a couple of rooms apart. Her boyfriend was, like her, a city kid. Only he came from a well-to-do family and one of his parents was a politician in Michigan, the other a doctor. The boy I met is sitting in the choir today.

A and her boyfriend were inseparable, as is often the case when young love and newly won adult independence collide. Since I was her roommate, it meant that I spent a lot of time with him too—not always out of choice. I didn’t always like the way he spoke to her—the names he called her, the way he bossed her around. Their plans always seemed to revolve around his schedule, and she was expected to be available when he wanted to see her. But she was over the moon for him, and I certainly understood what that felt like. We both felt pretty lucky to have found such great boyfriends so early in our college career.

It was at the beginning of our sophomore year, however, when I noticed that things had changed over the summer. A lost a lot of weight that summer, had grown out her hair, and seemed to have some new habits that hadn’t been part of her routine freshman year. She wore a lot more makeup, and long pants and long sleeves, even in the non-air conditioned Indiana humidity of our campus in late August/early September. Since we were roommates who were young, and had known each other for a year already, we changed clothes in our room, of course. I noticed things I hadn’t seen before: an ugly black bruise in the middle of her back, a purple hand print on her leg, the way her eyes looked different this year when she took off her makeup. I asked her about those things, but A didn’t want to talk about any of that. She wanted to tell me about the couple of weeks right before school she had spent in Michigan with her boyfriend and his family. She wanted to tell me about how he came to her city during the summer and met her mother, how her mother had declared him the perfect boyfriend for A: strong, handsome, successful, and rich.

I saw less and less of A that year, as she spent more and more time with her boyfriend. We still roomed together, but we seemed to have little in common any more. Whenever I would notice something new about her—a sprained wrist, a black eye—she always had some explanation: she fell on the icy campus sidewalks with her arms full of books, she ran into the door. I began to think of her as the clumsiest person I had ever known. I believed every story she ever told me about how she got injured, because I didn’t know any better.

Eventually A moved off campus with a couple of our other friends, then moved in with her boyfriend and got engaged to him. It was my friend K who told me that A had shown up on her doorstep one night, crying and bleeding from an injury that her fiancé had inflicted. I was speechless when K explained that he had been beating her for years, but that she refused to leave him, refused to press charges, refused to consider a restraining order. “But I love him! And he loves me. And he’s always, always, sorry the next day.” she’d reply. Every time. But love—love that is genuine and true and lasting—shouldn’t hurt.

The Bible, written in patriarchal times and places, when women were regarded as property of whatever male had control of them, and men certainly lived under a certain set of carefully constructed expectations, is a tricky place to look for a text that deals with the modern-day subject of domestic violence. We can be sure that there were many women that Jesus encountered who had been abused by the men who claimed them as either wife or property. But domestic violence is not just a woman’s issue. Men are sometimes not the abuser but the abused. And it is even more difficult to find a text in scripture that deals with a man being overpowered by a woman. So, except for a few selected passages about women being submissive to men, it would seem that the bible has very little to say about the issue.

But what if we broadened the subject of power and the abuse of power to encompass how we treat each other, even outside of domestic relationships? The two brothers in this text from Mark, these sons of Zebedee seem to be pretty enamored of the idea of power. They make a bold and ridiculous request of Jesus that he hold them in the highest of esteem, almost even with him in the kingdom of heaven. Its ridiculous because, frankly, if you have to ask to be Jesus’ favorites, it probably doesn’t count for much, does it? That’s rather like voting for oneself for Miss Congeniality. And Jesus, who had a patience of …well…a saint, instead of telling them off, offers them a challenge. If they can go through everything he is about to go through, they can share the spotlight with him. Of course they cannot. Not really anyway.

James and John’s power play has a strange effect on the other disciples. It makes them jealous. Or maybe they are just sorry they didn’t think of it themselves. Power does strange things to people. It changes their perspective, makes them sometimes forget who they are and where they stand in the scheme of things.

Statistically, we know that many people who exert undue power and influence over others in ways that are destructive and violent have often been victims themselves. When I think of my roommates’ boyfriend, I wonder how he got into a situation where he felt he had to lash out at someone else, overpower someone else, and own someone else. Some of the most angry, vitriolic, unhappy people I have ever known are also probably people who have lost control and power over some other aspect of their lives. Thinking that there is no way of saving face in the face of this loss of power than taking it out on someone smaller, or less powerful, or more open and vulnerable, they find themselves in a prison of their own making, and from that place, seek to imprison and terrorize others. The only kind of love they understand is the kind that hurts.

And in every story in the Bible where Jesus encounters those who have been victimized by power, Jesus always answers with grace, with love. Not the kind of phony “love” that must beat a person to keep them down, but a love that builds up. Christ always invites a love and a relationship that is about trading places. Christ invites us not to become or create victims, but to lower ourselves willingly to serve another, just as they are serving us. Christ will indeed be martyred, but he recognizes that our call is not to be subservient to our fellow humans to the point of our own demise or victimization, but instead to live in service to others in relationships of mutuality. The power of Christ in the world, and the truth of the gospel are a great equalizer: we succeed together, we fail together. We are faithful together and we falter together.

If I had known then what I know now about abuse and violence and power, I would have probably tried much harder to get my friend away from her boyfriend. But I didn’t. In fact, they got married one week after Blue Eyes and I did, and I lost track of them completely. I do not know if there was ever a transformative moment in their lives, whether he was able to get the help he needed to realize how his own sense of extremely low self-worth, and his endless quest for power in the absence of self-esteem was destroying others around him. I don’t know if she ever fully understood that she was beautiful, strong and beloved as a daughter of God. I don’t even know if she is still alive, honestly. Many women and men who find themselves in those unbalanced relationships do not survive. They fall victim to a love that wounds, that destroys, and overpowers and minimizes. In other words, a love that is not real.

The love for each other to which we are called by Christ—the love which he modeled for us in his living and in his dying and in his resurrection—is a love that asks us to be willing to trade places with others, it asks us to be brave in the face of adversity, and to lean unto Christ when we cannot be brave. It affirms that we are created good and strong and beautiful and that we are beloved of our creator. It requires that we remember who we are and Whose we are, so that we never misuse power against others. It behooves us to deal gently with those who are victims and to trade fear for justice in the lives of those who victimize. It challenges, it builds up, it accepts the love of another, it transforms. And it never hurts. Thanks be to God. Amen.

When nursery rhymes come true

2009-10-15T08:26:00.001-05:00

The Cheese stands alone.

What has...

2009-10-13T14:26:00.001-05:00

two thumbs and just dropped 15 pounds in 3 weeks?

This girl.

Not good. Sounds good, but when stress is your diet, it is not good.

Hot Times, Autumn in The City

2009-10-07T16:06:00.003-05:00

Back of my neck's gettin' dirty and gritty.

I forgot how filthy the city can be.
I forgot how noisy the city can be.
I forgot how living in northern California is not for wimps.

Urban living requires different skills than suburban living. There is a lot more thinking ahead required when relying on public transport--even in what is probably the best public transport city in these United States. WG goes to the grocery store and only buys what she can take on the bus comfortably.

But I haven't forgotten everything.

Yesterday at the SFO BART station (and you will have to forgive me for my love of a good clean, effiicient subway system...I can blabber on about METRO and MARTA, too.) I was able to help some tourists. There were a couple of women from France who were going to just keep riding the AirTrain in circles (thinking it was BART) until it deposited them at Powell Street. (never) I helped them at the ticket booth, even when they were aghast that is costs $8.10 to get from the airport to downtown. A bargain, but not if you are exepecting it be a couple of bucks. I helped another group, visitors from Somewhere South, if their accent is any indication. I helped them to NOT get off the train at 16th and Mission when they really wanted the Embarcadero. The neighborhood of 16 and Mission sounds romantic. It is not, unless you know exactly what you are doing, and exactly where to cross the street. It is not, if this is your first visit to California.

Today I was standing outside on one of the most touristy street corners in San Francisco, waiting for WG to get off work so I could take her to a quick lunch before her first day of classes of her second quarter. I was trying hard not to look like a tourist, but I was carrying a backpack, which I had brought to WG to take to school. I had no less than five new "friends" offer to "help" me find which direction I wanted to go. I think they thought I was looking at a map because I was staring down at my phone reading spacehook. I was polite, but insistent that I was not in need of any help. Lets face it, I've been down that street before. They expect to be paid for telling you that the Anthropologie store is a half-block down on the left.

So here I am, half-visitor, half-local. My knowledge of this place is like a sweater I put on and take off as I need/don't need it. By late afternoon on Saturday I will be back to my suburban lifestyle, driving everywhere I need to go and loading up my trunk at the grocery store without a second thought. I will encounter few strangers in the up close and personal way I do on a crowded subway car. Few people will ask me for help. Few will offer help to me.

Sometimes I think the way I am about this city is not that far off from the way I am in church life. I can tell a person all they need to know about St Stoic, like how to navigate the worship or coffee hour, but I'm not FROM there. I'm not a native, compared to the handful of families whose people founded the church umpteen generations ago. I feel like an enthusiastic, committed visitor sometimes, like I am with this majestic city.

And one day, I will have to go home and take off that sweater, too. For the last time.

New Life

2009-10-03T12:13:00.003-05:00

This is an African Violet. African Violets were one of my maternal grandmother's favorite flowers. She raised them out on her "back porch" which was just really the back room off the kitchen. She had them sitting all over her Hoosier sink, each on its own tin pie plate for easier watering. Some of them were enormous.

I'm told that African Violets are petulant, finicky plants, just below orchids in temperament. To get a plant to bloom is an acomplishment. If one has an African Violet that is not bloomed, one certainly does not talk about it among other violet enthusiasts, but just keeps it to oneself.

This plant (yes, the one in the photo) is one I acquired at a St Stoic event. I think it was a door prize for successfully answering a trivia question about Eliza Doolittle. (Don't ask.) I re-potted it as soon as I got it home, but it never did very well. Someone patiently explained to me that I was watering it all wrong, so making that discovery helped to bring it back from the brink of death, but it always looked kind of sickly, and I was picking dead parts off it every other day it seemed.

Well, life got complicated this summer, on many fronts. I spent a lot less energy on "Audrey." I practically ignored her, just like I did the poor old hanging plants on my front porch. I stopped "deadheading" her, I stopped moving her around my sink to find the sunlight 'just so'. I stopped watering her so much, even though I hardly ever watered her at all to begin with. I haven't fed her in a couple of months.

Then...a couple of weeks ago, I turned her around to see a dark purple bloom! Now there are four such blooms, and a couple of buds. Her leaves are dark and glossy under the velvet. Its like she is brand new.

Some days the only prayer I can muster is to walk into the kitchen next to my sink and look on with delight.

It is a miracle. I needed a miracle, and here she is. Audrey's blooms and other things going on in my life could not have converged in a stranger time.

And...this story is about to get better. Not today. Probably not tomorrow or the day after.

But some day.

Attitude O' Gratitude

2009-10-02T11:05:00.003-05:00

I just had coffee with someone who is really an important friend in my life right now, who is helping me with a really important...eh...let's call it a project, shall we?

He asked me right up front how I am. I answered back, "I'm really lucky."

Let's just say he was taken aback by that response. I've been sad and angry and downright morose lately. I've not been fit company for human nor beast.

But today I feel really lucky. I would even say blessed, but its my day off and I try not to use too many churchy words on my day off. :)

I have a spouse who helps me connect the dots.

I have friends who know me and will call me all the way from another country to tell me they love me. Or even Mississippi. :)

I even have friends, who, even though they only know me as pixels on a screen, will pick up the phone and call me to listen to my troubles and offer their help.

Texas Towncar of Justice. 'Nuff said.

I mean, really. What more does a girl need?

I'm really, really lucky, I tell you.

Uh Oh

2009-09-30T23:53:00.002-05:00

Big, steaming piles of unbloggables.

Will not be able to write for a while.

I've got my health, my family, a roof over my head, and most importantly, Jesus.

You May Refer To Me As Part Of The Problem

2009-09-24T13:40:00.002-05:00

Is it just me, or has blogging died, or at least gone into a coma? I find myself spending more and more time on Spacehook and Blitter, and less and less time here. Even the remodel did not help.

I miss blogging, and I miss my bloggy friends. What say we try to revive the old gal?

Big frowny face here.

Transitions

2009-09-21T17:22:00.003-05:00

I remember the first time I came home from college for a weekend. It was a very, very memorable weekend. I don't remember how the discussion got started, but somehow my father ended up telling us the Deep Dark Secrets that I was on the brink of finding out: that he had an older brother, that his mother had killed his father, and that she had killed herself a few years later.

We had been told growing up that our father was the oldest of five children, and that both his parents had died of pneumonia a few years apart. That made reasonable sense for eighteen years. But when one of my cousins on that side of the family started sniffing around asking questions about medical history, and the likelihood of a genetic link to mental illness, I began to wonder.

I'd actually known about the older brother for a few years by then, having accidentally seen his name on a family tree at the house of my Aunt and Uncle who had raised my father after his mother was sent to the Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

But that first weekend, it all came out. All the sad details.

So...compared to that, I'd say WonderGirl's first trip home has been pretty successful. We've had some tense moments as she and I have played a little tug-of-war with her time and attention. I knew that she would want to see her friends. At least my head knew that. It was a thornier issue to wrap my heart around. It is hard to not call "Dibsies" on her when she is home so briefly. But tonight she is off to see her bestie, spending the night in her dorm and even going to class with her in the morning.

We transitioned into having her here surprisingly easily. I've walked by her room and seen her in her bed just like nothing has changed. I've given her unsolicited advice about the lack of vegetables in her very ironically vegetarian diet. She's thrown her belongings around the house like a champ. We've listened to our favorite musical soundtracks in the car (Rent, Wicked). I've admonished her about gobs of toothpaste in the bathroom sink and wondered out loud if she has caught on that a person can use a bath towel more than once without pandemonium breaking out. There has been a fair amount of eye-rolling, by both of us.

This has been a very memorable week for me in almost completely positive ways.

I did get to take her to my niece's wedding this past weekend, to show her off to family and friends. And I will get to spend part of tomorrow with her, then on Wednesday morning bright and early she will fly back to Semi-Famous to spend the last two weeks of her break working and having fun with her new friends.

And I will transition all over again.

Well, isn't that special?

2009-09-11T09:36:00.004-05:00

I've been away from my blog for several days, putting out fires and dealing with the forces of evil. We had a truly wonderful day away, and I'm really glad that my theology will not allow me to believe that I'm being "punished" for laughing and smiling and generally enjoying myself and feeling loved for 24 hours.

When I've had a chance to come up for air, I have a really good story about how my "mini-vacation" began 2 minutes after the benediction last Sunday. It's probably not what you think and totally caught me by surprise.

In the meantime, I owe my sanity to the IRL people who are hanging in there with me.

And this: My girl comes home in six days.

Gone fishin'

2009-09-06T08:04:00.002-05:00

Not really. But we are sneaking away to The Land of God's Left Hand. Back Tuesday-ish. Behave yourselves while I'm gone, and I'd better find this place looking pretty much as I left it.

And if the po-po gets called, I'm fresh out of bail money.