Wednesday, December 28, 2011

Congregationalist Article 2012


Hey Know Noise Readers,

Peace be with you. 

I know that last post was Scrooge-ish. Here's a follow up. Just the peaks and valleys of (a pastor's) life being played out on a blog...

Blessings in 2012 to all of you.

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First Congregational Church of Battle Creek 
Congregationalist Article 
January 2012

I am thirsty for Wayne Muller. Thirsty for what he thinks, writes, and encourages in those brave enough to behold his spiritual guidance. He is exactly the person for us to journey with as we walk together in religious community this New Year. And here's a bit of a confession that leads to my assurance that Wayne is right for us right now. 

From the 18th to the 25th of December we hosted 8 worship services, including the Longest Night Service and a funeral for a beloved young man who died of a heroine overdose at the age of 27. We did Reel Theology for young families, Christmas baskets for the community, and our youth visited home-bound members to sing Christmas Carols. The heights and depths of Advent and Christmas joy, sadness, bewilderment, and profound reverence were touched this holiday season, of that I am sure. I am constantly in awe of how we show up, as a people committed to the Gospel, committed to the truth and love of God. We show up in the spirit of justice, with the hunger of hope, witnessing in action our belief that God's incarnation doesn't beckon us to sit it out but rather to go more and more intimately into this life's despairing and abundant realities. 

And Christmas about maxed me out this year. All I could do was curl up in a ball and watch back-to-back basketball games on Christmas day once our two worship services came to an end. The exhaustion was palpable. I'd shown up in all the ways I could and given every ounce of energy I had during the Christmas season. Yet, all I could do for most of the evening, as I sat on the couch, was think about the cards I didn't send, the parties or dinners I didn't attend (because I was double booked or too tired), the people I didn't see, the gifts I didn't give and why I didn't do more. 

Crazy. Do any of you ever experience this thing? This not enough thing? 

Please don't hear this as a laundry list of complaints. I love what I do for a living and wouldn't trade it for the world. In fact, it is because I love what I do that I'd like to get into the deeper significance of this not enough thing. I also suspect that I am not alone in this struggle. I see many of you, particularly those of you who show up consistently in the ministry of this church, wrestling with similar push and pull.  

In our culture, we are constantly asked to do more and to do more quickly. Technology has increased our capacity to 'get things done' with the click of a button. The market place and media have become around-the-clock enterprises that never shut down, shut off or shut up. Some call this progress. I'm not sure. What I do know is that more and more and more--whether the demand is coming externally or internally—often becomes the catalyst for burn-out, depression and feelings of guilt. We pair this culture of excess with our inherited Protestant work ethic, the idea that we achieve salvation through works of righteousness, and there's a recipe for spiritual malaise.

Tom Ott and I recognized this cultural and Protestant recipe being cooked up in our midst over a year ago and began working with Wayne. We wanted coaching from someone who could help us discover another way, a rhythmic, sustainable way of embodying faith. I remember the first time I heard Wayne’s voice on the phone. There was blessed reassurance in his deep, thunderous tone. I felt an abiding calm the minute he opened his mouth and in most of our encounters I find myself in tears because the beauty of his presence overwhelms me and brings me home to the truth of who I am and who God is. Over the course of our sessions with him, I have discovered the true spirit of Sabbath (not as practice, but as embodiment) with/in Wayne Muller. His writing, his speaking, his praying, his suggestions, all of it brings me into a greater awareness of and faithfulness to the divine giftedness of this life which is enough.

And so, if you are burned out after Christmas, are disillusioned with this culture that’s compulsively calling you to busy-ness while simultaneously flushing your self-esteem down the toilet, or if you just want to take your shoes off and feel the holy ground unfolding as you walk upon the Earth—I want to invite you to journey with us, with Wayne Muller, for the next 10 weeks as we explore “A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough.”       

Friday, December 23, 2011

Pastoral Confessions on Christmas Eve's Eve

I did the funeral of a 27 year old yesterday. He was an incredible soul: creative, compassionate, empathic to a fault. And he was a heroine addict who died of an overdose. 

Today I opened my browser to find out that Gov. Rick Snyder wrote LGBT discrimination into law in my (now) home state of Michigan. 

For the last month, it's become increasingly painful for me to witness the rampant materialism and hypocritical hype of "charity" that characterize (most) North American celebrations of Christmas. Mass consumption of things and food are the markers of this cultural tradition matched with seasonal acts of sappy "service" that serve only as band-aids to social systems that need disinfectant and surgery. 

...

Weary
Skeptical
Angry
Disillusioned

...

I am militant about honoring the life of Jesus. I am militant about justice. I am militant about our world being a place where sacred flesh (all flesh) can thrive. This world is NOT reflecting what Christmas is about, what Jesus enfleshed or what the beloved community can be. And so I'm having a hard time celebrating/ritualizing this "holiday." Please forgive me...

Maybe when the candle light goes up in the air
maybe when people I haven't seen for a while, people I love hug me 
maybe when lyrics familiar, laced with grace come out through my throat without any effort
maybe when people see the stable as ultimate indictment of privilege--maybe then I'll feel it.

But until then, please forgive me.  

Monday, December 12, 2011

A Portal

So the following link serves as a portal for me. An entry and lens into some of the embodiments that most speak to, remind, and invigorate me. Yet I cannot post this in more public venues because of the language. Balancing personal and professional ethics never ceases to befuddle me. How can something this beautiful be censored? And out of respect to what, exactly? My questions to wrestle with, I suppose. In the meantime, I share...here.

http://fuckyeahdykes.tumblr.com/

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Rant

I don't want to have any more conversations about individuals or specific acts when it comes to the following: violence, mental health, addiction, sex, race, ability, religion, over-privilege, under-privilege, employment or education. If there's no systems analysis, I don't want to hear it or talk about it. Period. End of story.  

Monday, December 5, 2011

To The Women/s: A Poetic Letter/Plea at the Horizons of Feminist & Continental Philosophy

Some of you have more to say now. 
Others look away with greater judgement and speed than before.
Still others drop off gifts, quietly, sometimes anonymously--
gifts color-coded, gifts cloaked in generational grind. 
Yet another group of you can't look at me without crying
because images of your abortions, miscarriages, 
your torturous waiting that turned into a never,
that he left you for some vagina-that-could,
come flooding every time my engorged belly passes by.
Little girl creatures stare and stare and stare:
as if I'm some new constellation in the sky, 
begging for a name and mythology all my own.
The oldest, those closest to death
say things so unfiltered, it's almost refreshing. Almost.

New tongues and traditions between us 
and though I am delighted, I have something to say:
I see you. 
I see it all. 
But I saw you before, too. 
Do you know that? 

Before you began applying the universal woman/mother hermeneutic upon my flesh,
before you tiptoed through the entrance of a 'tolerable' discourse 
in this culture that tries to annihilate anything authentic and creative between-women
outside of its Cosmopolitan, Better-Homes-and-Gardens, Madonna/Whore jurisdictions-- 
I yearned for you.
Yearned for your speech, 
your glances and judgements, 
your quiet and anonymous gifts, 
your tears. 

I've wanted to see/hear/touch/love all of you all along. Not just about this. 
Not just about the labor of our love externalized, as Irigaray would say. 
But about the labor of y/our interiority too.

Your questions, desires, and mad-ass plans to do it different,
the burning shame you hold because of too many nevers,
the way you touch yourself when the loneliness has become too stifling,
the way you make sense, the way you become incensed.
The books that burst you into belly laughter.
Why you cry in church like that.
Your stories and songs outside the obligatory and caved-in.
I've wanted all of you, all along. 

I do not confess my longing,
as the framers of autocratic/phallic/fuckery would propose,
from a location of hyper-feminine, dyked-out insatiability.
This is not a petition of one who wears black leather, fish nets and red lipstick.
Does anyone else yawn in the face of such simplicity? 
These are the yearnings of one who occasionally
glimpses the "one" we are not because of the dynamic, difference we are.
And it sets me free. Not to be you. But to be me, and in being totally me,
the possibility to love you, to love the ineffable us, which is 
after all the greatest gift I can give this unborn daughter
coming into our fold, a line of flight her very own.