The Real Journey

The Art of Passionately Lightening Up

2012-05-09T06:30:00.000-07:00

This month's Synchroblog topic is Lighten Up: The Art of Laughter, Joy, and Letting Go, and it hits home with me! I love that the Synchroblog coordinators chose the phrase "the art of" as part of their title, because I think that is exactly what is called for here: an artistic approach!

Humor and entertainment, or alcohol, or time with friends, or any of the other ways we each choose to "lighten up" can be healthy or can be a distraction from doing the things we each need to do and from facing the things we each need to face in order to have a satisfying life. "Healthy" ways of lightening up help us to more effectively see the big picture and to make the big and little choices we each need to make to pursue what we will each wish we had pursued when we get to the end of our lives. "Unhealthy" ways of lightening up cause us to forget (or never see to begin with) the way things really are and what we really want, and cause us to passively choose to neglect the things we could do to pursue the life we each really want. I will leave the negative side of that for a post that is supposed to be serious, and focus the rest of this post on how wonderful life can be if we lighten up without ignoring the things that matter!

When we fall newly in love, life is instantly brighter. The visions we had for our future and the ways we wanted to see ourselves are clearer and we have huge hope of them being realized fully. Then, as we move deeper into intimacy and make our commitments and consummate our relationship, we learn the art of lightening up in the clearest instance of any of our lives: we learn how to be lovers that don't pursue just our own orgasm, but pursue mutual orgasm. And there is no formula for that! It is an art of intensity where the goal is most easily achieved when we are fully present and fully alive but not obsessively focused on either lover's actual climax.

Life is like THAT. We are most full of joy and most fulfilled and most useful when we are focused outside of ourselves and not quite on those goals, and when we are fully present in the moment.

So there is no formula to living well! It is indeed an ART. But as we live it out, we learn how to be passionate, and how to lighten up. We learn how to know what is true and right and to live them out fully, and we DO lighten up as we do that, because we learn that it is not all about me and it is not all about my goals, and it is not even all about my experience of life.

Real joy is not something I pursue head-on, but is something that catches me unaware when I was practicing the art of living as best as I could.

Idolatry is something that calls me to focus on an end I am determined to achieve, through the means that I inwardly believe will get me to that end.

God is the One Who calls me to RIDE.

And I cannot lighten up, because I am too intense to do that. But God teases me and cajoles me into seeing reality as God sees it and as God wants me to see it, and then God surprises me with my own being's response to that reality!

Reality is GOOD, and I was made to climax regularly!

Leaving aside the metaphor of God as the Lover (which I first saw in scripture, with a whole book of the Bible dedicated to the metaphor, by the way!) and life as love-making, our faith is meant to be experienced in the reality of the moment, and not as a cocoon to protect us from real life. God wants to give us each the tools to enjoy fully the experience of REALITY as we walk it out in each moment, and to train us to be adults who walk it out in intimate communication with the Triune God. God's own presence to us and for us and through us is the sweetest and deepest experience of life, and -- for many of those who practice it for years -- becomes a much richer and more ecstatic experience than anything merely sexual could ever be. The metaphor breaks down as inadequate, not as profane nor as exaggeration!

So -- if you will relax into the passionate pursuit of the things that really matter, on the track of the real world you live in, with the Triune God as your perfect coach -- you WILL lighten up, and you will speed up, and you will slow down, and you will experience fully the life YOU were made to experience!

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Here’s the link list for this month’s synchroblog. Have fun reading through the list!

Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes – Lighten Up!
Maria Kettleson Anderson at My Real Journey - The Art of Passionately Lightening Up
Melody Harrison at Logic and Imagination – {I Don’t Do Joy}
Wendy McCaig - Lighten Up: Learning to Let Go From A Man Who Lost It All
Carol Kuniholm at Words Half Heart – Resurrection Laughter
R. Lee Bayes at Southern Humanist – Loving Light
Alan Knox – Be Sarcastic With One Another
Patrick Oden at Dueling Ravens - Truth, Beauty, and Yodeling Pickles
Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved – A Tricky Little Journey
Christine Sine at Godspace – Lighten Up: It Really is the Best Medicine
Glenn Hager - Margaritas, Metallica, and A Serious Case of the Giggles.
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – A Spoonful of Sugar
K.W. Leslie at More Christ – When Jesus Made A Funny
Maurice Broaddus – Why So Serious?
Ellen Haroutunian – A Laughing God

The State of the State (of the Kingdom of Me)

2012-03-01T10:39:00.000-08:00

Those who walked with me at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church will get "the Kingdom of Me" reference without explanation, but for everyone else, I better explain: Dallas Willard in The Divine Conspiracy talks about the Kingdom of God and the smaller kingdoms we all live within, and so we each have our own little world that is our own life and our own perception of reality, and that, for each of us, is "the Kingdom of Me". Today is a great day to reflect on that for me!

In 12-step groups like AA or Alanon or any of the many other iterations, during open share time, each person sits and listens to each who chooses to share, and "no crosstalk" means that no one is supposed to comment on another's share, but simply share their own story of the week or of life. In social media and in blogging, we have lots of "crosstalk" in our comments and in our posts responding to each other, but we also have a lot of time speaking our own piece and enjoying the love that others show as they "listen" by taking the time to read a post. I have come to realize the huge love that is given me by anyone who takes the time to read one of my posts with real attention, even if it seems that I wouldn't have any way of knowing they did so. We are all so interconnected, and the love that flows from those who give me that consideration is what creates anything good going forward. I am bound to you!

So, after those rambling disclaimers/explanations, here goes this "share":

I am now old enough to know that life is a mystery, and I can't dissect it and examine it and compile my notes and write them up and file them away and control life by knowing. I am old enough to have had a little of my innate narcissism kicked out of me, and old enough to realize that I don't have to be ashamed of my narcissism because it is human and natural. I am old enough to understand what makes life sweet is relationships, and that one of those relationships is between me and me, and that I can forgive myself and love myself and nurture myself with the same grace and kindness that I want to have toward anyone else I love. And I am old enough to have lived, and to be grateful for that life, and to be ready to die even while I am ready to live until 106. I'm also old enough to know that music and fiction and art express reality better than words do!

For the last week I have been hearing words from all of the different songs on the old U2 Album All That You Can't Leave Behind playing over and over in my head, and I realize it is because I am finally old enough to not just like that album but to live that album. It is the track to this part of this journey. I am grateful! So if you are curious, pull it out and listen to it, and you will learn more about this day in my life than I can write in a blog post!

I am grateful for my companions on my journey, and while this blog has been all about church and all about my life here and now, it is many early childhood friends and friends from young adulthood that come to mind now as having MADE me. I am so grateful for each! My family and extended family, of course, and Steve Sullivan and his family and friends, and Don . . . but the ones that jump out at me today in my memory and gratitude are:

The Sarbins (Adam, Sara, Debby)
Alan Maline
Joe Loftschulz
Chris Blake
Michell Martin
Mike Martin
Jean Watt
Stephanie Harlan
Jenny Harned
Nancy Jessen
Brian Borchers
Scott Turnbull
Dave Larson
Irma Jimenez
Wanda Dayvault
Kevin and Keith
Brett Westbrook

and the mental list goes on and on . . .

Many painful memories are just as significant as loving friendships! It's important to WANT to be friends with the people you are attracted to and rejected by, and important to learn to be friends with the people that love you in real ways, and important to learn to forgive ourselves and others for the realities in life that weren't what we wanted them to be. All these lessons have been the lessons I most needed!

So the "State of the State" (of the Kingdom of Me) today is GRATEFUL! Grateful for Omaha, and Burke High School, and Wheaton College. Grateful for my family -- expecially my nuclear family and amazing uncles and aunts and cousins who have given me a rich loving world that I took for granted until I moved so far away. Grateful for God's Grace, which I no longer need to understand to bathe in!

But most of all, the "State of the State" (of the Kingdom of Me) is amazed at what is in my cup and what is pouring out of this tiny little cup that is my own tiny little world. I am grateful that the Kingdom of God is available fully, right here and right now, and see that the Kingdom of God is coming . . .

Even when I am dead and in the ground, the Kingdom of God will be at work to bring beauty out of darkness and despair, whether my burial day is in less than a week or in 60 years from today. Life is good, and today I am alive and aware and grateful for eyes to see!

I AM just a blip on the computer screen, but while I'm here, I get to see each of YOU . . . and THAT is beauty and joy!

December Synchroblog: Following the Baby We Just Celebrated

2011-12-28T09:50:00.000-08:00

This month's synchroblog topic is explained here: http://synchroblog.wordpress.com/2011/12/

So Jesus came . . . Did you get what you expected? How has following Jesus led you into strange places and turned your life upside down? Or has it?

I don't have anything new to say on this that I haven't shared with many groups in person, but it bears repeating the story at least once on this blog.

I was born to conservative Christian parents who grew up themselves in Christian families. My dad grew up in a United Presbyterian church in the Twin Cities (Macalester), attended Macalester College (a Presbyterian-affiliated school), and was ordained as a deacon and then an elder early in his adult life. My mom grew up in a rural Evangelical Covenant church, attended North Park College (a Evangelical Covenant school), and joined Macalaster when she married Dad, also becoming a deacon and then elder in young adulthood. As they moved, they attended other churches, and ended up spending most of mid-life at the church that was my home church: Church of the Cross (PCUSA) in Omaha, Nebraska, where they were both active in lay leadership. They were (and are) very loving and ethical people, have rich prayer lives, a very deep knowledge and understanding of Scripture, and have always had a heart for those in need as well, donating time and money generously.

I grew up believing -- like most kids do -- that my experience was normal, and that my parents' reality WAS reality. I was very committed to following the Jesus that I'd been led to pray to nightly when I was first able to talk, and wanted to be a missionary (since full-time ministry stateside wasn't within our world-view in terms of my gender.) I grew up conservative politically and ethically, and was definitely a "good girl' as well as a committed Christian through my teens. I "followed Jesus" to Wheaton College, and had a rich experience there exploring community with my missions-minded friends as well as learning all I could learn.

I would bore most of you to tears if I gave you a blow-by-blow of the next 20 years, but the short story is that real life with real people led me to rework my theology and world-view in many places. I abandoned conservative gender roles (the idea of playing the "right" role for my gender in exchange for being protected in ways that men were not) only after trying that path over and over. I abandoned the idea that capitalism and conservative politics were synonymous with my faith only after trying very hard to reconcile them in the places I found dissonance. I moved from conservative evangelical toward progressive contemplative with great difficulty socially, because I always assumed that the people around me could see the same holes in our theology and practice that became clear to me, and so I had to suffer a lot of very deliberate active rejection (certainly not by all conservative friends and family, though) before I could let go of the idea that others were also looking for better ways to live the way Jesus taught us to live.

The truth is that most Christians are sincere about following Jesus, but also sincere in believing that those in leadership and teaching positions know and are teaching them the things that will really result in the lives -- individually and in community -- that Jesus was and is calling us to live. They persist in trusting that leadership and the status quo of the current church culture because they equate unquestioning submission with obedience to Jesus. This isn't new, of course -- for we are often taught about how the religious people of Jesus day tried to follow the scribes and pharisees in the same way and for the same purpose. Most adults -- even to death in their 90s -- never question the justice or rightness of what they have been taught since they were little by people they respected and still respect. That is the reality of community and faith. (Indeed, if those in leadership themselves question the status quo, they often find themselves no longer in leadership!)

I began my life thinking that following Jesus would make me like my parents, whom I still respect deeply, and would help me resist the parts of me that don't fit the ethic and culture of the conservative churches and families that surrounded me. Following Jesus would heal me of the "sin" that made it hard to fit the status quo or fulfill my ethical obligations under it. (Following Jesus is healing me of the sin that is actually rebellion against God in my selfishness and fear, as He teaches me His law of love.)

I never stopped following Jesus, even through really brutal times of paying the consequences for not being like my parents, for not fitting the ethic and culture that I thought was based on a good interpretation of Scripture, and for not fulfilling my ethical obligations under all that (meaning the gender- and conservative-culture-specific mores, not the universal truths that most cultures have recognized). Following Jesus led me to great grief and loss -- especially the loss of my self-image as a "true believer".

These days I know that Jesus loves me enough to want me to know what is true and to want me to live transparently with Him and my community of faith. He's not afraid of conflict or anger or rejection, and has been teaching me that I don't need to be, either. He has been teaching me to sort out the voices of family and friends and self, and to live with my focus on the wisdom in the community of faith that He shows me is more closely aligned with His intent and His words and the REALITY that He created and is creating.

The bottom line?: I followed Jesus because of my deep needs for community and acceptance and affirmation, and found that obedience made me an outcast . . . but that that was the deeper fulfillment of those deep needs. (I did find community with other followers, of course . . . but only after letting go of the narrower communities that I pursued acceptance from.)

AND there will be a new bottom line as life moves forward, of course. Because I'm not done, and neither is He.

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Here’s the list of links for this month’s synchroblog.
Glenn Hager – Underwear For Christmas
Jeremy Myers – The Unexpected Gift From Jesus
Tammy Carter - Unstuck
Jeff Goins - The Day After Christmas: A Lament
Wendy McCaig – Unwanted Gifts: You Can Run But You Can Not Hide
Christine Sine – The Wait Is Over – What Did I Get?
Maria Kettleson Anderson – Following The Baby We Just Celebrated
Leah – Still Waiting For Redemption
Kathy Escobar – Pain Relief Not Pain Removal

Down

2011-10-11T23:16:00.000-07:00

This month's sychroblog topic is Down We Go, and is not a book review of Kathy Escobar's book of the same name, but is about our experience of following after Jesus into the crowd who listened to Him introduce the sermon on the mount with the beatitudes, and thus about our experience of breaking with a life of upward mobility.

I do want to recommend Kathy's book! She does a beautiful job of articulating a wonderful view of faith, church, and ministry! If you are a regular reader here, you are likely to love her book and her blog.

My perspective is similar to hers, and probably similar to others who will post this month, but I have been led by life to a place that has some twists in the views I held even a year ago, let alone 3 or 5 or 10 years ago.

I still believe in community and in the bigger community of the CHURCH in the world, and still support my denomination in its polity and local congregations, but I no longer see any of that as being at the center of the action. Nor do I see wonderful communities like Kathy's, nor our larger communities like Emergent Village, nor our conferences or unconferences or virtual communities as central to what God is doing.

I support my women friends in ministry, and I support the wonderful women theologians and authors and speakers that have finally started to approach real leadership. I support other groups who have been marginalized as they finally start to get tiny bits of justice and real leadership roles as well. So I need to qualify everything I write next by saying that it should be practiced first by the WHITE STRAIGHT MEN and isn't intended to be a call to those from marginalized groups to give up newly acquired leadership roles and power. We each need to hear and follow real wisdom that applies not only to our own situation but to our impact on the larger systems!

But this is the thing: being able to read and write publicly is a mark of power. Having a computer and smartphone is a mark of power and privilege. Being able to use twitter and facebook and attend evangelical and emergent and progressive and denominational conferences is a mark of power and privilege. Being able to connect to those who organize a synchroblog and interact with other bloggers on a topic each month is a mark of extra time and energy and the ability to connect with that community . . . thus a mark of power and privilege.

Pursuing power and assuming power has its place (when it is done out of a life of prayer and submission in response to the call of God and others), but our ideas of church and ministry are more about career goals and a pursuit of the American Dream than they are about real service. God and the church and society need most of us to go get jobs where we are not paid for the books we write or the church role we fill or the speaking opportunities we can get, or even for the community of faith we can build from scratch. We need more people to actually live out a life of service and love in the midst of the daily reality most of America experiences . . . while holding down a job and getting the kids to school in the morning and to bed at night . . . and fewer people to start new churches or try to re energize the old ones.

There are many people looking for a savior, and they aren't going to find the REAL SAVIOR in any of our local expressions of ministry. That isn't to say that Kathy's church isn't as amazing as she feels it to be, or that I was not ministered to by St. Andrew's in my need, or that St. Mark isn't an amazing community of faith-with-feet. I wouldn't have just joined St. Mark again last weekend if I wasn't convinced that congregational life still has an indispensable role in discipleship and worship. But salvation isn't centered there! Individual, relational, and corporate healing and restoration and worship is not primarily led by those who make their living at it. God's primary means of grace in sharing the real gospel and infusing it into the lives of real people is through the lives and words and love of those who center their life around the gospel without assuming the role of minister or leader.

I love my friends who have been educated as pastors and preachers and scholars/professors/writers/teachers of theology and ministry and biblical studies, but I have watched the "job market" for them and the church and institutional politics in which they live. I have watched the competition and the stars and the losers in the game. And I have watched the economics of it all.

I love my friends who are laypeople and who love our congregations and seminaries and colleges, and support them financially and by many hours of volunteer time. Many of them have education and giftings on a par with those who earn their living through the church and the schools, but have done what they needed to do economically to be the support to a whole industry of faithful ministry to our generation. I see their hearts, and know God's love for them!

But to both I have the same message:

Let the church fail. Let the seminaries close. Let the denominations die. Let the old shell of God's power pass into antiquity.

We are called to all the old ideals. I still love the Book of Order and Book of Confessions of my denomination, and still am passionate about that vision of the CHURCH. But that's not my primary calling, nor is your primary calling to your ordination or to your vision of the church or of ministry.

Our calling IS down. We are called out of a pursuit of "the kingdom of heaven" the ways we thought we saw it or knew it, and called IN to a pursuit of loving action in the reality of our lives today. That means we get to translate a real faith to footsteps and words and hugs in our real homes and real workplaces, and on the streetcorner of the part of town that scares us, and with that guy sitting on the sidewalk by the Del Taco you go to each week.

Kathy has great points to make in her book about inclusion of those on the margins, and that has been a big theme in my life too . . . but we don't have to go to her church to experience that, and it isn't primarily in church that we MUST experience it. We are called to be people who make friends and who SEE people . . . the invisible people.

We should be engaging the people waiting for the bus as we jog by. We should be people who consider the mood we perceive tonight from the checkout clerk at Stater Brothers, and be able to compare it to her mood three days ago. We should be in prayer for the coworker that everyone hates and wishes would quit. But none of this should flow from that word I used in each of these sentences . . . that "should" word. All of this should flow from real transformation, real power.

Following Jesus in an incarnational demonstration of real spiritual power will usually come to us when we are filling the same kinds of roles in society that nonchristians fill. Following Jesus in a mystical experience of the Triune God will usually come to us when we fit our time of prayer and study into the same daily routines and pressures that our non-religious neighbors live daily. And following Jesus in fulfilling the great commission will usually be at its most powerful and effective point in our lives when we have learned to live what He taught us to do instead of writing about it, speaking about it, or marketing it effectively.

Anyone else down with me on this?

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The other posts in this month's synchroblog are here:

Alan Knox – How Low Can You Go

Jeremy Myers – Seeking The Next Demotion

Glenn Hager – Pretty People

David Derbershire – Reaching The Inner City

Tammy Carter – Flight Plan

Leah Randall – Jacked Up

Leah Randall (her other voice) – How Low Can We Go

Liz Dyer – Beautiful Mess

Maria Kettleson Anderson – Down

Christine Sine – There Is No Failure In The Kingdom of God

Leah Sophia – Down We Go

Hugh Hollowell – Downward

Kathy Escobar – We May Look Like Losers – Redux

Anthony Ehrhardt – Slumming It For Jesus

Sonja Andrews – Diversion and Distraction

Marta Layton – Down The Up Staircase

Fiction, movies, and TV

2011-08-09T14:55:00.000-07:00

This month's synchroblog is at summertime-summertime-sum-sum-summertime and this is my contribution. I took time over the past month to consider what books or TV programs or new movies I wanted to spotlight, and decided that we all do that on Twitter and FaceBook regularly, and that that wasn't my best contribution to this discussion anyway. I decided to post briefly about the importance of PLAY and ENTERTAINMENT in God's work in shaping us and using us, and to suggest that you seek out new joy in new places!

As I have watched my own boys and the children of others over the past 26 years, I have given up the old idea that the best thing I could do for my boys was to teach them to be disciplined and responsible. I do want them (and me) to grow up to be disciplined and responsible, but I want them to be equipped to use those skills to pursue things that really matter in the long run. The best thing I can teach my children (and myself) is to have fresh eyes to see reality daily and fresh ears to hear God and Others and Myself each day and to know which is which!

I do not know of any medium that opens eyes and ears like STORY does, and I'm so grateful that Jesus reaffirmed that by His example in how He taught and in how He lived. In my boys' lives I practice this regularly by reading to them almost every night (the little boys now, but the young adults too when they were this age) and by modeling a life that weaves STORY into every day. In my life this looks like piles of books that have been read and re-read, snatches of reading time that sometimes result in burnt food (oops!), trips to see movies, weekly TV shows that I schedule time to watch (recorded TV shows, usually) and no complaints from me about those time choices from others.

Like music, STORY has the ability to go right by my analytic, unfeeling brain and lodge in my gut, and change my view of my own world and my own role in it. As much as good analysis and good planning and good discipline are indispensable tools for dealing with reality once I've felt it and embraced it, they can't be my eyes or ears for REALITY itself, and they can take me a long way in the wrong direction if my map is wrong! My own story is so limited and my own experience so short lived that, without STORY, I am doomed to a wasted life focused on my own perceptions and achieving my own agenda. There is more!

Let me tell you a story:

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There once was a beautiful young woman who went to college and did everything right. She dated in appropriate ways. She chose a good career and got a good education and a good job. She fell in love and got married. She had 2 beautiful daughters that she and her husband raised to be fine young women who had lives like their mother. She added good things to the world in her line of work, and had friends, and had all the markers of a happy and healthy life.

Then one day someone changed the rules for what "doing everything right" was. People who hadn't done what was right were suddenly turning everything upside down in her world, and were labeling her as THE PROBLEM with their lives, and she was going to lose everything. She felt guilty and depressed, and took time to meet with some of those individuals and to form a new ministry, and to try to effect change in them and change in her own self and world to come to some sort of new stability. She was more or less successful in that effort, and once again had all the markers of a happy and healthy life.

Then the end came, and she got to find out what DOES happen when we die, first hand. She found out that it wasn't about following all the rules and looking happy and healthy. It was about having become someone who could authentically participate in the DANCE of LIFE, and could DANCE with the others swirling in that DANCE. And the ONE in the center welcomed her to the dance, but said how sad it was that she had wasted all the years of dance school which that ONE had given her. Still, she was free to participate with as much joy as she could find in the whirling dance that surrounded her, and should know that she did not need to be afraid.

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Those who know me know I am not the woman in the story above! But it is a story from my heart for all the Good Christian Girls I know out there, and tells my version of what I wish they could see and feel and live!

We have been given movies and TV series and books and each other to be able to see outside our own selves and our own hearts and our own subcultures, and to be able to enter in to the eternal dance . . . not just later, but right now.

Right here, right now I can plan my daily doses of STORY and let my world be contiguous with all the other worlds around me.

Right here, right now I can listen to your story and then tell it again for another, and let our lives fold together in the great dance of friendship and wonder.

Right here, right now I can let my work hours and exercise and financial planning and prayer time be opened up in new ways and pointed to new places as God uses STORY (even or especially ones that push me off-balance) to teach me what really IS and what really matters.

And right here, right now YOU can set aside the sermon you were writing or the funds you were managing or the classwork you were grading just long enough to get a fresh shot of JOY and MOTIVATION and PERSPECTIVE. Pick up a novel you like, and if it gets boring, pick up a different one. See a movie you like. Find a new HBO or SHOWTIME series to follow.

Then you can get back to work and prayer and relationships and "real life" . . . but it will all be different. You will be more of what God put you here to be, and you will do more of what God put you here to do. With purpose and joy.

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Please check out these other August posts by fellow synchrobloggers:

K.W. Leslie at The Evening of Kent – My Summer Reading List, Thus Far
Liz Dyer at Grace Rules – 12 Movies and a Novel
Steve Knight at Knightopia – Down We Go
Jeremy Myers at Till He Comes - A Book That Invades Your Dreams
Andrea at Andrea’s Balancing Act – What Do My Favorite Books Say About Me?
Tammy Carter at Blessing the Beloved – Loyalty and Valor
Steve Hayes at Khanya – Summer Reading
Kathy Escobar at The Carnival in My Head – movies + books = summer fun

Listening to the Wild Goose

2011-07-06T15:00:00.000-07:00

I have not had the time I'd like to put into this post, but decided to write it quickly and publish it anyway, because I do love the discussion I am seeing in this month's synchroblog. So here is my little reflection on The Wild Goose / The Holy Spirit:

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While I was driving from Yorba Linda to Crosslake, Minnesota last week I was sad that I would miss all the friends gathered at The Wild Goose Festival and at Big Tent as my sister and mother and I rushed to get ready for a party we had on July 2 for Josh and Julie, even though I knew I had made the right choice to be here instead of there. My family has had an exciting 6 weeks, with my son Josh getting married to Julie on May 28 in rural Illinois and with my son Mike getting married to Luisa on June 18 near California's central coast; and this season of life is one that I am soaking up. Still, I miss my friends and the opportunity to participate in all the ways they were listening together to God this week!

I read an article this week about congregations and sermons, and how the things that we are passionate about show up in our responses. The writer was bemoaning the lack of passion for sermons among most laity, compared to their response to their favorite teams or band or hobbies. And I realized that THAT is what I have in common with my friends: we are passionate about the right sermon, the right book, but especially about seeing ourselves and each other live contagious lives full of grace and mercy in joyful adoration of the GOD who inspires our passion. And as much as I love my family and enjoy time with them, I am SO grateful for all the circles of friends that shape my passion for God and for a life lived as God intended abundant life to be lived. In so many ways, all of those friends are "home" now even more than are any of my "real" homes.

I experienced a bit of dismay this week from some of the people I love about my love of people they don't think I should love. They don't understand how I could be passionate about people with whom they wouldn't leave their kids for an hour (because they don't know my friends, because they disapprove of how my friends look, because they disapprove of choices my friends make about career and marriage and politics, or just because - like me - my friends like to live too publicly in the eye of social media and to share too much too often) and they don't understand how I can align myself with their brand of Christianity. I tried to explain, but it not only fell on deaf ears, but stirred conflict that is not really useful conflict. ("Useful conflict" moves one or both of us closer to God's purposes in our relationship or in our understandings and characters; this did neither as far as I can discern.) I should have just listened!

As I listen to those outside my areas of passion and participation, I hear their values and their passions and their fears. I see what God has been up to in their lives. And I get a chance to be shaped by their experiences and conclusions and to be used by God in even more powerful ways that my words or actions can accomplish. Seeing the beauty that God is weaving in the life of another human lets me WITNESS to that beauty and to God's process . . . and it is that kind of WITNESS that I am most often called to be!

I have been learning not to deny my own passion, but to have authentic respect for the fears, values and passions that drive others. I used to think that real respect meant that I needed to adopt or affirm the fears, values, and passions of another. I used to think that not denying my own passion meant getting others to share it, or at least justifying it with all others. Now I know neither is true! Embracing and protecting my own passions flows from the same respect, love, and peace that empowers genuine respect of others and their "stuff". The Wild Goose is powerfully at work in me and in them!

A friend once told me that he was finding that getting older was bringing a greater tolerance for mystery, and as I get older I think that perhaps that is just a greater tolerance for listening and accepting the realities of life without needing to fit everything and everyone into a nice neat analytical spot. I think it is a mystery how chasing the Wild Goose becomes being inhabited by the Wild Goose. I think it is a mystery how learning to listen and contemplate reality becomes a life of passion and action and salt-filled words when needed. But maybe the greatest mystery is how a burning desire for a particular vision can become an abiding joy even in the "now but not yet" of it all!

My grandmother used to sing the words "trust and obey . . . for there's no other way . . . to be happy in Jesus . . . but to trust and obey" and even as I type them I think about the way we all must go through such a process to learn what trust means and to learn how to hear the commands we obey from Jesus filtered through so many places and people and Bible-teaching and filtered out of so many places and people and Bible-teaching. We make our choices about what rings true, and try it out, and refine or reframe our understanding, then try them out . . . and over time we learn to authentically hear the Wild Goose. But anyone who tells you that you can do that without first struggling (and last struggling too) has never really learned to recognize the voice of that ONE who calls.

We are each different, and we are each the same. God speaks to us each differently, yet to us all with the same vision as to the whole drama being directed from above. I am called to play my part, and to watch with joy as each other player does the same. I am to listen to the right director, and listen and watch my fellow actors with joy and respect.

Learning to listen to the Wild Goose (learning to trust and obey) is not a skill that can be taught and practiced and mastered. Oh, there are techniques that you can learn, of course . . . but life-making that is focused on proper technique and practiced skill can't hold a candle to life-making that is burning with real awe at the beauty of the Beloved and the amazement at being in the presence of the Beloved. Learning to listen to the Wild Goose comes from running away when you must and chasing when you must and being the "respectable man" when you must and being the "failure" when you must. Learning to listen to the Wild Goose comes from paying attention to all that God uses to instruct you about God and life and your call and your day today . . . and learning and failing and learning and failing. We are not called to triumphantly bring about heaven on earth. We are called to recognize heaven on earth in the mustard seed, and worship in amazement as it grows to a Kingdom.

I get just a few more days to live at my parent's house in the beauty of remote nature, and then I begin my trek with Noah and Brooks to our home in SoCal. I saw a wild heron spring up from the shore near my brother's cabin on Monday as we celebrated the 4th together there, and I rejoiced in the power of those wings and the unexpected intrusion in our space.

I am learning how to recognize beauty and power in the intrusion of all those things that don't fit my view of a safe, comfortable, livable world . . . the things that stir negative emotion before my heart can settle back into a rhythm of peace and joy and purposeful action or inaction.

I am learning how to let the Wild Goose teach me to live in the real world, even as I learn that I can't master an understanding of it all.

I am learning how to worship the real triune God with all my life, even as I come to terms with never really understanding even a corner of that majesty or wisdom or danger.

I am learning to listen to the Wild Goose!

********************************************************
Syncroblog posts on the Wild Goose:

Anna Snoeyenbos – Wild Goose Festival – A Spirit of Life Revival

Lee Smith - Goose Bumps: Opportunities Everywhere for Offense. A Fair and Objective Review

Ryan Hines – 30 Years Later – “Controversy” at Wild Goose

Karyn Wiseman – Flying With the Goose

Kyla Cofer – I went to the Wild Goose Fest and came back in love

Brian Gerald Murphy – Born Again (Again) at Wild Goose

Chris Lenshyn – Chasing the Wild Goose

Cherie at Renaissance Garden – Wild Goose Return

Deborah Wise – Wild Goose Chasing

Custodianseed – “every day they eat boiled goose”

Will Norman – Back from the Wild Goose Fest

Martin at Exiles in NY – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose

Kerri at Practicing Contemplative – Waterfowl in My Life

Allison Leigh Lilley – Chasing the Wild Goose and Catching the Wild Goose: Thanks and First Thoughts and A Pagan Goes To The Wild Goose – Part One

Abbie Waters – Jessica: A Fable

Steve Knight – Why Wild Goose Festival Was So Magical

Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying

Michelle Thorburg Hammond – I heart Jay Bakker and Peter Rollins

Matthew Bolz-Weber – Remembering Wild Goose

Paul Fromberg – Celebrating Interdependence Day

David Zimmerman – Wild Goose Festival: A Recap

Unfinished Symphony – Wild Goose Reflections – Part 1, Wild Goose Reflections – Part 2 Making Art Collages, Wild Goose Reflections – Part 3 Photoblogging, and Wild Goose Reflections – Part 4 The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Dan Brennan – U2, the Wild Goose, and Deep Freedom

Mike Croghan – The Wild Goose is Not Safe

John Martinez – The Table

Callid Keefe-Perry – Gatekeeping the Goose

Eric Elnes – The Inaugural Wild Goose Festival: Recovering Something Lost

Shay Kearns – The Power of a T-Shirt, Apologizing to Over the Rhine, and Public vs. Private (Part One)

Glen Reteif – Duck Duck Goose

Peterson Toscano – I’ve Been Goosed, What I Carried Into Wild Goose, and What I Blurted Out at Wild Goose

Seth Donovan – About More than “The Gays”

Exiles in New York – Greenbelt and the Wild Goose

Tammy Carter – Visual Acuity and Flying

TSmith – What I’ll Take From Wild Goose

Dale Lature – Wild Goose Reflection

Steve Hayes – Wild Goose Chase?

Minnow – Grace Response

Christine Sine – Encounters With A Thin Space

Jeremy Myers – Giving Up the Wild Goose Chase

Robert – Thoughts On the Inaugural Wild Goose

Anna Woofenden – Slippery Slope Reflections

Wendy McCaig – Loosing The Goose

Joey Wahoo – Into The Wild

Rachel Swan – goosed

Patricia Burlison – I Called Life

Jason Hess – While At the Goose

The Bec Cranford – Wild Goose

Anthony Ehrhardt – Chasing The Wild Goose on Independence Day

Joel DeVyldere – So Lost at Last-(In the Woods)

Maria Kettleson Anderson – Listening To The Wild Goose

Jamie Arpin-Ricci – Wild Goose Fest

Unfinished Symphony – #5 – The Last Post … for a while

The really important things

2011-06-12T19:05:00.000-07:00

My 9-year-old son Brooks had been bugging me to give him a planner like the one I use. He was delighted yesterday to get a Franklin Planner all his own, and spent a lot of time setting it up his way. I was amused and proud at a lot of what I saw there that I won't display publicly. He wants to be organized and effective!

But the best part was his "weekly compass", which I use along with my weekly planner and a master task list on toodledo.com and my iPhone. Mine is my way of focusing on what really matters, and doing first things first. And he knows that and checks mine out regularly!

So the pictures above document his list of roles and "big rocks" as he seeks to be organized and effective this week. "HAVE FUN DURING SUMMER" "EVERY SINGLE DAY OF SUMMER"!

He lives with me in my
"big picture"/"little picture"
over-analysis/intuitive
tasks/goals
prayer/obedience
world . . . and we talk all the time about really important ideas about life and living well.

And he preached a sermon to me with his hours of delight and preparation of this little planner, and the conclusion/goal on the weekly compass card. Everything we do is for a reason, and as much as he already knows my Christian-speak about what we are here for and what his purposes should be, he isn't confused at all.

He needs to do his daily chores (which we do from a list, and which are going very well in both how they are done and the attitude with which they are done) and he wants to plan his life. He likes knowing our travel plans and planning each day. But he isn't going to miss out on being 9 years old this summer.

Praise God!

Brooks climbing through a tunnel he made in the VCS sandbox, with Noah greeting him as he emerges

PresbyMEME: Why I am voting yes on Amendment 10A

2011-05-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Update 5/19/2011 at 9 p.m.: The vote tonight was 51 votes in favor of Amendment 10A and 131 against 10A; so it lost in Los Ranchos. It was approved by the 87 presbyteries necessary just 2 days after my post; so Los Ranchos didn't affect the fact that it will be the new wording after this year. I was not surprised that it lost in Los Ranchos. I was grateful to see 15 more people vote for 10A than voted for the equivalent measure 2 years ago. God is at work among us!

Original post:

In November, a meme was started by Bruce Reyes-Chow for those of us in support of 10A to post on “Why I am voting yes on Amendment 10a”. He added that those of us with no vote in our presbyteries should feel free to post too, with an explanation of our situation. That wasn’t comfortable for me, but in a few weeks Los Ranchos will vote; so here is my post! (I do not have a vote, but I am rooted here and grateful for the ministry of Los Ranchos churches -- especially of St. Andrew's Newport Beach -- in my life these past 15 years!)

If you are not familiar with PCUSA politics, a good page on this particular issue can be found at the Layman Online's vote chart page, and a very good summary of the arguments against the common fears and objections concerning 10A can be found at the resource link shared at the start of Bruce's meme post. In addition, the posts Bruce lists in response to this meme are rich in resources, and John Shuck has a particularly good selection of informative links in his "Countdown to 87" column down the right-hand side of his blog. (87 is the number of Presbyteries that must vote "yes" on Amendment 10A for it to pass.)

So now to Bruce's meme:

Answer the following questions in a few sentences, keeping in mind the attention span of most blog readers.
Post somewhere on facebook or your blog with the title "PresbyMEME: Why I am voting yes on Amendment 10a" and be sure there is a link back to this post.
Post a link here or send me a reply via twitter and I'll try to keep a running list here.
Track other responses and pass them along!

Questions for the PresbyMEME:

Name, City, State
Twitter and Facebook profiles
Presbytery and 10a voting date
Reason ONE that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
Reason TWO that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
Reason THREE that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
What are your greatest hopes for the 10a debate that will take place on the floor of your Presbytery?
How would you respond to those that say that if we pass 10a individuals and congregations will leave the PC(USA)?
What should the Presbyterian Church focus on after Amendment 10a passes?
How does your understanding of Scripture frame your position on 10a?

And my responses:

1. I am Maria Kettleson Anderson, Yorba Linda, California

2. Twitter and Facebook profiles:
http://twitter.com/mkettleson

http://www.facebook.com/mkettleson

3. Presbytery and 10a voting date:
Los Ranchos, Thursday May 19

4. Reason ONE that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
The story in Genesis is a beautiful picture of God's original purposes and of what the Triune God wanted us to know through Scripture about our origins. It was so important that we not only be rooted in a larger community but also be allowed to have an awe-filled committed partnership with "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh" that God revealed that our desire for that pulling away from parents and uniting with a compelling partner was indeed GOOD. As much as it is a reality that passion for ministry can propel us to celibacy, it is a scriptural reality that we are created to be part of a couple created by God. A vote for 10A is an affirmation that Paul said to the Corinthians that celibacy or marriage should be judged in the light of whether they enhanced or distracted from a pursuit of obedience to God, and that marriage was not a failure when resisting passion was a bigger distraction.

5.Reason TWO that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
Scripture is written in the language and culture of the person who wrote any particular book in the cannon. We understand that if the language says a table is female but a rock is male, that is just a feature of that language, and we do not insist upon making that a central feature of our pursuit together of the Kingdom. In the same way, patriarchal slave-owning culture was a part of the context of scripture that we have no trouble "translating" once we understand that God spoke through and in the midst of a language and culture, but did not condone every aspect of that language or culture. I believe God is in the process of restoring the Church to an understanding of persons, gender, and sexuality that is in line with God's original intent in creation, and that old cultural prejudices blind us to what Scripture as a whole really says. I believe that we fail ministry partners overseas who still live in patriarchal slave-owning cultures when we base our teaching on understandings of Scripture derived from their cultures rather than leading them in Godly understandings of Scripture.

6.Reason THREE that you are voting "yes" on 10a is...
Radical obedience to the Gospel of Jesus Christ calls us to speak what we know to be true, even when it may cost us "ministry" or "family" or even "righteousness" in terms of how we are seen. In Los Ranchos, taking a public stand to actually vote yes on Amendment 10A is an act of courage that is unimaginable to those who have built a life, community and career centered on all that is good and supportive and productive in the conservative community that is the best of Los Ranchos pastors and elders. This is so overwhelming that it is hard to even allow oneself to honestly consider that perhaps the conservative community could be wrong on this one, let alone to be willing to lose all that a pastor or elder would lose by breaking faith with friends on this.

Nevertheless, this is where Jesus' words about laying one's life down for a friend ring the most true, because the "ministry suicide" of taking a stand that "isn't your fight" will not only align you on the side of what is right and true, but also prepare a path for your friends to move forward in the things you know they sincerely embrace: obedience to God, a correct interpretation of Scripture, and a community that is united in being used by God to bless and transform the surrounding culture.

7.What are your greatest hopes for the 10a debate that will take place on the floor of your Presbytery?
My greatest hopes for the 19th of May are that each voter will have had the courage to honestly consider that 10A might be "of God" rather than "of the devil", and that those who have considered the arguments in favor of 10A and understand God to be calling them to vote affirmatively will have the courage to do that, even if it costs them dearly.

8.How would you respond to those that say that if we pass 10a individuals and congregations will leave the PC(USA)?
I would point out to them that their own ministries have never been focused on including all possible members at the cost of TRUTH, but that they have been willing to preach the Gospel faithfully even when that cost them members. In the same way, their focus here must be on what is true and right, and they must trust that the cost of obedience is never enough to justify disobedience.

9.What should the Presbyterian Church focus on after Amendment 10a passes?
The PCUSA should continue to focus on actively engaging Scripture and our culture: to be able to truly hear God's voice through God's word, and in obedience live transformed lives in community and be an agent of transformation in our world.

10.How does your understanding of Scripture frame your position on 10a?
It was in preparing each week to teach Bethel at St. Andrew's that I came to the place where I could not conform any longer to old positions on this issue. The whole of scripture is so clear about God's process of redemption and about God's goals for each of us and for all of us! It is our confessional understanding of Scripture that leads me here.

A New Local Church?

2011-02-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

Part of the reason I don't write a whole lot these days is that my life is so rich with thinkers and writers and speakers who can say what I think so much better than I can. They don't always form my beliefs, but they almost always articulate them SO well. And I have things I must do that no one can do better than me: love my kids into healthy adulthood, serve as the mom I am to my adult sons, and experience my own string of moments of this life given by God to me.

I never wrote on here of my process in leaving St. Andrew's briefly for St. Mark, or of why I returned, or of how I have been growing and changing in the year since I returned. My daily faith experience is strong, and I like my life, and some transitions must just happen as they happen. There is no way to "take control of the process" to make it better, but instead we must learn to relax into the process and let go of control.

I love contemporary Christian worship music, and I love many of my friends and many of the leaders at St. Andrews. I'm sure God is working in them and through them, just as God is working in me and through me. I want to affirm my respect and loyalty to them. They formed my community and beliefs for the years from 1996 to 2008 or 2009. And there I got the opportunity for 4 years to as a layperson teach the Bible to adults, to participate in the Adult Education ministry team, to participate in the formation and execution of a mentoring ministry, and to be on the first year of a Relational Discipleship ministry team. I loved all that, and it was formative!

Those of you who are family or who know me from Wheaton College years or earlier know how I have really always wanted to serve God in ministry. Back then I thought that had to be out of an appropriate place for my gender, which I saw as in submission to the male gender properly. But I love God with more passion than I love my kids even, and love the evangelical vision of centering our whole lives around ministry, even if we are called to be bivocational. At St. Andrew's I enjoyed many opportunities to aim for this lifestyle, and at Wheaton I was preparing for that kind of life.

That commitment has not changed for me at this point, but my journey has me at a point of exploring new places for community. I'm grateful for on-line community and for conferences, but they do not offer the service/ministry opportunities I need. And as much as I love to write, communicating ideals or goals is not equivalent to living them. So I am in search of a local church community that will ideally:

not make me suffer through traditional music for hours
not be 70% people who are 2 or more decades older than me (47)
not be intellectually impoverished
not be socially exclusive and unwelcoming to newcomers
not make my children suffer through boring or unnecessary programs
not make my children feel like they are disliked
not make me feel disliked

and

WILL be friendly to newcomers and to my children
WILL have a Pastor who doesn't water things down to the lowest common denominator and who has evidence of a brain that gets used regularly
WILL affirm my use of social media and blogging
WILL affirm my own right to exercise my brain
WILL evidence a genuine passion for each life to be centered around a living faith of their own that gets exercised in many daily ways, both individually and in community

I am sure there are many who feel their church fits the above, and perhaps for them it does. For it to fit for us, it must feel that way to us. Yes, that is subjective, not objective. And it should be.

Why would I consider leaving St. Andrews? Well, some of that is like it is when a marriage ends . . . best kept relatively private. But some of it is very public, and can be boiled down to this: read my posts over the years I have blogged.

Having said all that, I acknowledge the possibility that I will do my search again and end up back at St. Andrew's as the best place for me within driving distance. But it is time to look again and see if that is the case.

(To my readers who would suggest many local evangelical churches not far from our home in Yorba Linda: I already know that my search is limited to pcusa churches. I had 8 years (18 to 26) of exploring other denominations, and ended up at First Presbyterian/Glen Ellyn Illinois with great relief. I was born and baptised a United Presbyterian and there for the merger that formed pcusa, and know the worship style, polity, and beliefs of all major denominations. I am not only a Christian, I am a Presbyterian of the PCUSA variety, by choice. And I am near 3 Presbyteries with hundreds of local congregations; so "limiting" myself to that denomination is rather like limiting my food choices to ones that contain ingredients I'm familiar with. See earlier posts to understand my commitment to connectional presbyterian polity with high value placed on educated leaders and consensus over time.)

Meanwhile, we need some stability; so I will still show up at St. Andrew's worship with some regularity until we find someplace that might last as our church community for decades and is worth becoming the new place of stability and community. And First Presbyterian of Second Life still provides huge stability and comfort for me personally.

I welcome your prayers, and suggestions too! And if any of you want to visit a particular PCUSA church WITH us or invite us to a particular service at your own PCUSA church and serve as our hosts for that day, I would be most grateful! I am shy and hate being the stranger in the midst of friends.

Thanks to those of you who read my blog and comment to me about it. You shape me and my experience of community more than almost any other "tribe" in my life. Thanks also for the ways you share your experience of faith and life and community with me! What a gift!

"Equality" and "Identity" on MLK Day 2011

2011-01-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

I am grateful today for all we are celebrating as we celebrate Martin Luther King Day. My world is a richer place because a single person was willing to stand up for what he knew to be true and right, even though it cost him so much in his life and brought about his death. He changed our view of each other and of the world, permanently I hope.

I was thinking yesterday about how much religion and culture and worldview are just an extension of language. They are a shared representation of a reality that we can communicate about only because we have not only the words but the bigger concepts behind them as a construct of a shared understanding. And so often we are very unable to communicate because of the deep divide in our cultural or religious understanding of God's world, and so we lose much.

I listened to a friend talk about his view of marriage and scripture and marital ethics, and realized just how deeply patriarchal culture is still rooted in my real world, despite the friends around me who embrace gender equality. This friend who was sharing with me would certainly say he supports gender equality, and that he has been an active mentor and advocate for real women in real roles in ministry and community. Yet he still views the patriarchal worldview that is the "language" of our scriptures as an optional way of seeing the world, and does not judge it as evil but only as typical of another time. He is careful to not alienate those who see complementarian gender roles as scriptural, and reveals in many ways that he is at ease with white male power as long as he is the beneficiary and not the oppressor.

I see some of the conservative approach to Christian scripture as short-sighted and responsible for not only an inability to communicate but also for an inability to be real disciples, here and now. I do see scripture as the source of my worldview and daily practices, and the means to know God and the way God has revealed the Godhead to the world, but I also do not try to live a life where I primarily speak Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic instead of English, but use what we know of those languages to be able to understand scripture in my own English thoughts. In the same way, I learn all I can of the history and culture and worldview into which Scripture was written, and I use what I know to translate it to the world in which I live now.

I value the way we are all different, and do not think "equal" translates to "identical", but I do think it must translate to equal access to being heard, equal access to life paths, equal access to what we call "civil rights", and equal freedom to own and use capital and to exercise control over ones' economic path. We are still decades away from that being a full reality.

Women and men are not identical. If they were, there would be no great issue in making "gender equality" more of a reality. The challenge is to understand what is real and valuable in generalized understandings of gender and to understand what is much more culturally influenced, and to create a society that honors gender while still honoring freedom and equal access to life choices and capital and education and opportunity for genuine leadership in every arena.

I think the same is true of ethnic identities: we do not have to obliterate our different values and historical or cultural orientations in order to create a society that honors the ways that we are unique and the unique voice we can bring to our world while at the same time creating deliberate ways that society will be held accountable to provide equal opportunities and freedoms and resources to those that come from or embrace different identities.

A starting point for those of us that still claim a high regard for Scripture and Judeo-Christian tradition is a firm understanding of history and the cultural realities that were the behind the language of Scripture. For instance, I have heard it said that women were excluded from Jesus' words about divorce in the Sermon on the Mount because they were not the ones being addressed or because they were not at that time able as they are now to exercise the ability to divorce a spouse, but that with the change in culture today we should hear the words as applying to both genders equally. This misses the reality in the culture of Jesus' day and earlier Jewish culture that the women not only could not divorce but that they would not, because to do so would have required them to leave their children with their ex-husband, who in practical fact was the owner of his wife and children, and would have thrown them into a life with few economic options for survival or happy remarriage.

It is a better translation of Jesus' words from that culture and language to this one to understand that Jesus was protecting not only "the institute of marriage" but even more so the emotional, social, and spiritual well-being of women and children in a patriarchal culture in which they were mistreated just by the fact of being in that culture, even under the "headship" of the most godly and kindly of men (let alone under the typical socially-accepted "headship".)

A godly culture today will not preserve slavery or an old view of "covenant marriage" with words of ignorant complicity in a continuation of a cultural reality that Jesus was challenging (women forced into dependent relationships by the culture and men forced into the position of "owner" by the culture.) A godly culture today will honor the reality of the emotional entanglements of marriage and child-bearing even in the most gender-equal world and will seek to encourage practices of marriage and commitment that protect all impacted by those commitments. Agape/Hesed translates very easily to people who keep their commitments, are honest, seek to protect the helpless and dependent, and to provide increasing competence and independence or inter-dependence of all.

A godly culture today will not allow the culture formed by years of misinterpretation of scripture to serve as an idol that we encourage others to worship, most especially at the expense of real obedience to the real risen Jesus.

As an Evangelical committed to the authority of scripture and of shared community, today on MLK day I call on us all again to real Biblical literacy, that drinks deeply of all that our scholarship tells us about the world and languages in which the books of our cannon of scripture were written, and that thinks and prays deeply - together in community - about the ways that scripture translate to the values we are exhorted to have and the virtues we are exhorted to practice.

I call most especially for 4 values and their corresponding practices:

1) value the life-giving power of church-affirmed sexual union enough to affirm how destructive it is to not provide every social and legal help to a continuation of "marriage" when two people have shown themselves to be committed to a life-long relationship: to protect and help those individuals, their children, and the others the dissolution of their relationship would impact

2) value the reality of gender identity and the differences between our practice and perception of male and female and other: to provide for opportunity and choices and resources that allow the practice of traditional roles as well as the practice of new ways of expressing the fullness of all God created in each one of us as unique individuals and not keeping anyone imprisoned in an other's view of their gender

3) value the reality of TRUTH and lies and distortions enough to teach plainly all we know about our world and our selves and our scriptures and our God, and all we know to be falsehood: to provide true freedom of speech while also responding to hateful or false speech with censure when we know it to be lies or violent

And lastly, 4) value the clear and unequivocal call of Jesus to love each other and those who are our enemies and those who are strangers more than we value our own perception of our own best interest: to support and protect those who are immigrants (illegal or not) and those who are needy (dead-beats or not) and those who are different (mentally ill or not) even though it costs us "the American Dream" individually as we all invest in a future of opportunity and equality for all our children and grandchildren.

I am not calling for a departure from "good Christian ethics and values", but rather for an embracing of them like we have never seen before. Let us be people who honor the Other above ourselves, and feed the poor, and visit those in prison, and have real humility and mercy. Let us be people who know Scripture increasingly well, as we actually live it out and actually teach the reality behind it and know the REALITY behind it.

May I increasingly learn how to do this in my own life, and have at least a tiny impact on those around me that furthers the purpose and life whose huge impact we honor this day.

The Goal

2010-12-17T06:10:00.000-08:00

One of our amazing abilities as human beings is to focus our energy and attention on that part of life that we each currently feel to be deserving of our attention and focus, and to put on blinders to the parts we feel need to be ignored in order to give proper attention and focus and energy to the place we feel we must focus. This serves us well each day, because life is too big to even be fully observed daily, let alone processed and addressed. However, this leaves us very vulnerable to ignoring something crucial and pursuing something secondary. Above all else, it is this dilemma that our faith seeks to address.

I have grown up watching successful people define reality and faith and pursue with diligence the tasks and focus they needed to pursue to be good people, as they and those around them defined good. Evil was, practically speaking, anything which redefined reality or faith in a way that made their pursuits seem less logical or made them question everything they valued. And those who pursued other values or made it harder for them to pursue their own values and goals were "on the other side" and thought of either as those mistaken who needed to be educated or saved or as those deliberately choosing evil who needed to be punished and excluded.

It is interesting to consider how Jesus appeared to the "good" people of His day. There were people of faith and practice who had devoted their lives to following all God had revealed to the Jews, and who were eagerly awaiting the Messiah who would make the "not yet" part of their reward become "here and now". Some of them believed that to be fully possible without apocalypse, and some did not, but all were awaiting the Kingdom of Heaven, the Kingdom of God. And then Jesus showed up and turned their ideas of good and bad, their ideas of valuable and to be rejected, their ideas of THE GOAL upside down. And so it was the good people who took the lead in killing Him, the ones who had had a vision of "HOLY" and He was not it; it was not the "lost" masses who found Him offensive.

The ideas and values and goals of Evangelical Christianity are not far from the words of Jesus, but our exclusion of those who show up in our churches but don't fit our culture makes any grasp we have of TRUTH just as useless as the Pharisees' grasp of truth was to them. Jesus let people walk away from Him rather than follow His hard way, but His hard way was all about inclusion of any who would follow and lovingkindness to all they encountered along the way. We are proud of our grasp of TRUTH and a better way to live, and find it easy to just erase from our minds all those who object and leave for any reason. If we listen to them, it is as a technique to change them, not in order that our ideas and perceptions might be changed.

We assuage our discomfort with the masses who won't or can't fit our idea of reality by ministering to them in many ways, thinking we are obeying Christ's command to love. And certainly it IS obedience to offer food and childcare and clothes and other resources to those who need those resources. And we get many converts that way, because there are many who will willingly become part of our communities if they get that hand up. They fit well, if they will only be given the resources to become like us. But then there are many that we find we must write off, because they cannot or will not become like us, with our values and goals and lifestyles, no matter how much we help them, and no matter how much we then motivate them by withholding help until they are motivated to conform.

Our most revered leaders are those who do the best job helping us interpret and come to peace with all the places our ideology and culture just doesn't quite ring true, and help us silence that dissonance with new ways to "be in service" and new ways to shut it all out through "spiritual disciplines" and new ways to conform our own minds and lives and emotions to the culture they have been formed by. We pay them well and we give them power and reverence, and so we have spawned a whole class of seminary-trained would-be leaders who would like to get in on that action, and pursue it either by simple imitation of the vision and passion and leadership style or by a call to change (like mine) but internally motivated by a desire to play that role and have that career that those they would replace have had and played.

We have lost the abiltiy to revere each life, regardless of roll or beauty. Our leaders speak much that is true and call for much that is right, but they do it for the money to live and the role they trained to fill. Scripture calls for something different than their call.

The goal of each person is to be whole-hearted service of the rest. That is the great commission, if you take the command of the Risen Jesus to go and make disciples of every nation and to teach them to live as He taught His disciples, and you then look back at the way He taught His disciples to live. Corporate Christianity, with its buildings and salaries and budgets and structure, can have a role in that, but it will never be the central role that our passionate young seminarians were led to believe. They were betrayed by being allowed to believe that the best way they could serve the Kingdom was to go into full-time Christian service, and the rest of us were betrayed by thinking that we could settle for less than whole-life commitment to God and each other if we were not called into "full-time Christian service".

The goal of the Kingdom is the presence of the Triune God again among man, in a world reconciled to God and to one's own self and to each other and to this world in which we live. This is best served by lives lived as members of the economy, producing approximately what we each consume, and learning to live with each other even when we disagree. Those who are paid to comment upon that and to lead us in that, but that have no real experience in that daily routine and tedium (or who failed at that daily routine and tedium and so opted out into "ministry") may have power and a great ability to create and wear their blinders to the rest of reality, but they will not be able to "save" more than a very small part of their potential "followers".

The true disciples were and are bi-vocational. They were and are fishermen and tentmakers, merchants and tax-collectors, lawyers and writers and doctors. They centered their lives around following Jesus, but not as a way to earn a living! The church will certainly need to support some who are found to be most useful as leaders and teachers and administrators, and our educational systems have value . . . but our educational systems and institutional churches and service organizations and media and other ministries should not be sustained as industries in themselves when they have lost grass-roots support and usefulness and have become leeches on the living CHURCH which is the people who are really followers of Jesus.

God's goal for you is for you to find a way to live that supports your own needs financially through a genuine contribution to the needs of all, and that allows you to enjoy the moment and learn to hear and befriend the people around you, and be changed by that reality as you process it with times of solitude and with a life of study of scripture and truth from other sources.

God's goal for the Church is that it foster the ability of each individual to do just that, but as an authentic communion of individuals after that life, not as an idustry trying to create converts and services to justify its existence.

I don't have a single or a couple of "proof-texts" for this essay, mainly because I believe all of scripture combines to say exactly what I have said here. If you want to do your own study to confirm or deny that, I suggest you start with the Gospel of Matthew, then Luke, then Acts, then Romans, then Galatians, then James, then Colossians, and eventually cover the whole of scripture.

I will leave you with two passages to consider here though:

Colossians 3 (The Message)

"1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.
3-4 Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.

5-8 And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

9-11 Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.

12-14 So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

15-17 Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

18 Wives, understand and support your husbands by submitting to them in ways that honor the Master.

19 Husbands, go all out in love for your wives. Don't take advantage of them.

20 Children, do what your parents tell you. This delights the Master no end.

21 Parents, don't come down too hard on your children or you'll crush their spirits.

22-25 Servants, do what you're told by your earthly masters. And don't just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you'll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you're serving is Christ. The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn't cover up bad work."

Romans 12 (The Message)

"1-2 So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.
3 I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

4-6 In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we're talking about is Christ's body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn't amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned into all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ's body, let's just go ahead and be what we were made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren't.

6-8 If you preach, just preach God's Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don't take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don't get bossy; if you're put in charge, don't manipulate; if you're called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don't let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.

9-10 Love from the center of who you are; don't fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.

11-13 Don't burn out; keep yourselves fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don't quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.

14-16 Bless your enemies; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they're happy; share tears when they're down. Get along with each other; don't be stuck-up. Make friends with nobodies; don't be the great somebody.

17-19 Don't hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you've got it in you, get along with everybody. Don't insist on getting even; that's not for you to do. "I'll do the judging," says God. "I'll take care of it."

20-21 Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he's thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don't let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good."

Game Change

2010-11-01T13:50:00.000-07:00

Okay, a brief post to give the intro and overview to the posts to come:

I need to be in harmony (reconciled, in loving relationship, in the relationship I was created to be in) with God, with the person God created me to be, with the people who live around me and with me in my time and place (and place is the entire planet in this particular point in time), and with the natural world that I inhabit.

Sin is those things I do (or, more correctly, that part of me that causes me to do them) that breaks that harmony and throws me into chaos where I am not even at peace with myself, let alone with God or others or nature.

The "kingdom of God" in Scripture was always the goal of the redemptive process. The terms "the Garden of Eden", "Heaven", "Paradise", "the New Jerusalem", "the New Heavens and New Earth", and many other terms in Scripture point us toward that place of proper harmony.

In the covenant with Abraham and in the law of Moses, God provided for a move toward the fullness of the Kingdom with God's Own Presence, provision, and law. The ceremonial law pointed toward a time of full mending of the brokenness, when God would pour the Spirit of God out on God's people and they would walk in God's ways. Meanwhile, the law pointed toward God's ways and a means of restoring harmony (salvation, healing, reconciliation.)

Then Jesus came and declared "the Kingdom of Heaven is here", and in His teaching and ministry and life and death and resurrection gave us that GAME CHANGE. We dropped the old game with its old rules and old skills and old goals, and picked up a new game that He taught and then He poured His Spirit out on us after His Ascension that we might live in the Kingdom -- now, and forever after.

He said that you can't pour new wine into old wineskins, or they will burst. He said that we could abide in Him, and allow His Spirit to abide in us, and we would fulfill the law and the prophets. He said that we were not His disciples unless we obeyed Him, and that His command was that we authentically love and serve each other, and the stranger, and even our enemy. He said that the law and prophets were fulfilled in that authentic love of God as expressed in an authentic love of our neighbor. He modeled that love, and in His resurrected body commanded that we go and live that love and teach it to the whole world, that they would also be His disciples.

The apostles continued this teaching. When non-Jews were baptised in the Holy Spirit, they saw no reason to withhold the baptism with water that marked full inclusion into the community of faith. When the church council in Jerusalem was pressed as to what part of the law the non-Jews must be told to follow, the rules they selected were cultural and ethical rules shared by that wider culture, rather than anything rooted in the Torah. Paul later went on to argue against one of those rules, and another one of those rules is blatantly and easily ignored by all of us now. This does not teach us that we are to ignore shared rules, but rather that we are to discern together the rules that we should share in our new situation, and be prepared to change as our understandings and situations change, even as we now morally reject slavery of any kind (while it was yet affirmed by the early church and its leaders.)

The center of the ethics that surrounded the new Kingdom of God is the same center as the ethics that filled the law and the prophets in the Old Testament: Loving God and one's neighbor, with one's neighbor defined as anyone one actually encounters or impacts, even one's enemy. The way to fulfill this ethic was in abiding in Christ, in walking in the Spirit, in honoring the faith that had propelled all the saints of the Old Testament and of the early church. The goal was the same goal that had always propelled an ethic that worked: restoration of harmony with God, ones' own self, nature, and others.

The heresies of all time have either erred in saying that we could have the Kingdom without living according to the ethic of the Kingdom (as if we could have harmony while continuing to injure harmony daily) or that the only way to have the Kingdom was to religiously follow a new set of rules designed to be a shortcut to harmony and do away with the agony of real transformation to being people who authentically live in harmony with the world God created, the God who created it, the Others whom God created, and this person "me" that God created.

Jesus declared that both of these heresies would not give us the Kingdom, as did Peter and John and Paul and the writer of the book of Hebrews. You don't get to "Heaven" by following a new set of rules anymore than you got there by following an old one. You also certainly don't get to "Heaven" by settling for chaos, broken relationships, and pain.

The game change is from following the law - or any law - to following Jesus and letting Him teach us how life works, and letting Him teach us to live in harmony with that reality ... about God, nature, others, and me.

Gender, human sexuality, societal structure, economics, religion, politics, academics . . . everything yields to Jesus. As do we.

We can fight to look good and feel good by saying the Kingdom is all about controlling sexual impulses in favor of a culture of "Good Christian Families", but it is a distortion. Or we could fight to say that sexuality and the needs of a culture for a consistent ethic of marriage and family didn't matter, and say the Kingdom is just "all about freedom to do what feels right". There's a hint of truth both directions, but both miss out on the truth that can heal and save us.

Jesus made us. He knows how we work -- sexually, in marriage, in singleness, in passion that is unfulfilled, in passion that is pursued . . . He knows what drives us. He knows how the world works.

The law of the past was a tutor to point us toward reality. The ethic of the Risen and Ascended Christ is an ethic of reality and harmony and restoration of focus on what really satisfies.

You are not called to fight against "sin" and live your life in that battle. You are called to walk after Christ and enter into His new life, and be an agent of that new life for all who encounter you. You are free!

So "go and sin no more": change your focus from what you thought would satisfy you or make you holy, and focus instead on Jesus. Learn the life He will give you each day as His Spirit causes you to walk in ways that work and desire things that satisfy.

And embrace in fellowship all those who's "fruit" shows them to be those people too: people being healed of pursuing things that hurt the harmony of people with God and nature and each other and themselves, as they also walk intimately and daily with Jesus through this real life.

If God has poured the Holy Spirit on them and in them, and if God has declared that nothing can separate them from God's love, it is time to let them be in full fellowship as we all together pursue the things that authentically satisfy.

May we have eyes to see reality from God's viewpoint.

I'm a wimp

2010-10-31T14:54:00.000-07:00

I just dragged myself out of bed once again today - first here for this quick post, then to the shower so I can get the kids to their Halloween party at 4 without looking too scarey.

I'm sick. My writing waits, as does everything but the essentials.

I am a wimp when I'm sick. I hope I'll do better with it when I get old and infirm.

And my last vent (in a post to be deleted soon) is that churches should not limit themselves to adobe flash or windows media player or any 1 technology on their web sites. It drives me crazy that I can't use my apple products to view my own church's web site, nor the sermons of a pastor at another church that I like to follow. (I can listen to those sermons, but only view video if I haul myself in front of a pc. And I would have liked to watch my iPhone today.)

Oh well . . .

Now that shower.

A New Series of Posts

2010-10-29T15:54:00.000-07:00

I realize that I took a stick and poked a hole in a hornet's nest with my last post. There's no "undo" button for that; so I took shelter inside for a couple of weeks. I have realized that my goal is to get rid of the hornets and the hornet's nest and open my home for real community.

Today I am back outside with good protective gear and the right stuff to get rid of that thing, but that's just step one. I have many more steps ahead of me to create a truly hospitable environment for all and to create or restore relationships that will respond to my invitation to "come do life together". So today I have this post (a summary of the posts to come and my goal) and the first post (for tomorrow) as my writing goals. And I will keep them short and to the point this time!

To truly answer Paul's questions (and my Mom's questions and the questions of a few other friends who seem honestly interested in my thoughts), I need to cover A LOT of ground. For anyone who has read my blog consistently, they will recognize that I already covered most of that ground over these past 4 years. But I will again. And I also need to focus on a single audience, because my friends span such a huge range of worldviews and belief systems, and there is no way to address all of those ways of seeing all these issues. So I will focus on well-educated evangelical Christians like my Mom and the "kids" (now in their late 40s) that shared my years at Wheaton College.

The topics I will cover:

1) "A Paradigm Shift" (Tomorrow's post, answering "What is sin?" and giving the big-picture summary of all the topics listed next.)
2) What is the goal of our belief systems (and, specifically, what is MY goal and what do I believe to be God's goal)?
3) What is the role of the Bible in our lives today?
4) What is the "story" of the Bible, beginning to end?
5) What is the role of "the law" and "grace" in the life of the believer today?
6) What is the goal of sexuality and gender in the world and in the covenant community of faith?
7) How do we explain the Old Testament passages regarding homosexuality?
8) How do we explain the New Testament passages regarding homosexuality?
9) What is an appropriate ethic of gender and sexuality for me, now, in the time and culture in which I live?
10) In light of all the posts leading up to this, what do I believe we are called to do and teach about gender and sexuality?

I'll give you time to stop laughing now, before I finish this post . . . .

The thing is, we behave as if "playing telephone" with the important truths about life is what we're supposed to do, rather than something that just has consequences that are far too serious! They are so serious that we better each figure out those important truths on our own knees between us and God, after putting appropriate study and consideration into it all.

My goal isn't to pontificate on my own views and get you to agree with me. My goal is to get you to step back and think, and then invest the rest of your life into walking with God in a way in which you are in constant dialogue with the Triune God (and with all whom God brings into your life) about all these important, foundational issues that determine what you think and do and feel!

So if you're in . . . here I go.

National Coming Out Day from 1 Evangelical perspective

2010-10-11T16:00:00.000-07:00

I told Bet Hannon and Adele Sakler last week that I’d post today, for National Coming Out Day, as a straight ally to my LGBTQ friends . . . and I have composed at least half a dozen very distinct posts since then, each with a different focus and different twist. And this morning during my normal time of prayer I found myself composing blog posts in my head rather than approaching the throne of the Triune God. Hmmm . . .

Reality is that I am not going to change anyone’s mind in this post, but that I am going to anger or disappoint people who see things differently than I do now. But I believe obedience to the Triune God requires me to say all this today; so how do I go about this as a layperson with less credibility than many of you?

I finally decided to narrow it down to addressing the real people in my life, because there are plenty of places for any of you to get big general pronouncements of ethics or correct theology or correct exegesis. And I DO address the real people of my life with this issue, face to face and on the phone and in many other avenues. It is important to me.

Why is it important to me? Because, as Rachel Swan first told me, we each have our “queer card” (the place where we hide who we really are for fear of being rejected); and because I think this issue is a microscope that lets us examine the reality of our soteriology: What are we saved from? What are we saved for? How are we saved? What does that salvation look like when we walk it out? Finally, for all of us of any faith or no faith, this issue gets at the heart of “what is THE GOOD LIFE?” What will really satisfy us?

But I’m not going to do an essay on a satisfying life, or an essay on soteriology, or an essay on ethics, or an essay on community. When I did debate in junior high and high school, I learned how to study both sides of an issue to argue either side in a way to win the debate, and I also learned how to recognize that TRUTH goes way beyond talking points to win the debate. Each person who reads this is capable of choosing real study of both sides, and each person who reads this is free to stick blindly to their own side without really considering the other side beyond what it takes to win the debate against them in your own head. I can urge the first and caution against the second, but you are you and it’s your choice.

So instead, I’m giving you glimpses of my words to the people I love in regard to sexual orientation, ethics, and lifestyle:

To my boys, in age-appropriate ways and at age-appropriate times:

It is my heart’s desire that you experience the life God created you to experience, in every arena. I pray you love the Triune God and learn obedience and learn appropriate freedom. I pray you learn “how life works”, and can navigate that reality in ways that fulfill you and fulfill God’s purposes for you fully. I long for you to know scripture more and more thoroughly, for you to study many spheres of knowledge, for you to experience the reality of prayer, the reality of action, the reality of solitude, the reality of community, the reality of contemplation, the reality of hard work both physically and mentally. I long for you to have wonderful friendships and to grow into a fully satisfying sexual partnership that will last a lifetime. I am excited to see how that plays out for you!

Sin is what separates you from God or from others. Part of maturity is learning to recognize that separation and realize that God is after a healing of that separation, and that God personally provided THE WAY to real salvation. Accept God’s gift of life in Jesus Christ, and pursue that life with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength. It is our relationship with God that satisfies the part of us that nothing else can satisfy, and God so desired that relationship that God provided in Christ (in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection ) all that you need to be able to experience that life daily and for eternity as you turn away from the things that do not satisfy and turn to the things that DO satisfy.

Do not be afraid of your sexuality or of your identity as it develops. Sex is a wonderful part of the life God plans for most of us, and God will walk with you there just as God will walk with you in all the other areas of your life. Do not feel you need to run or hide from God because sex is sin. Sex is not sin. Turning from God toward something that you prefer over God is sin. Let God lead you even in your sexuality, and let God affirm you no matter what you experience there, and bring forgiveness and/or healing when you find you need healing or forgiveness. Sex is not just for procreation, but is for intense connection to another human being. Treat it with respect, treat yourself with respect, and treat others with respect!

Develop a community of friends and family around you that are safe for you. Tell them what is sacred and private. Let them nurture you as you nurture them. Do not feel you need to allow yourselves to be exposed to or hurt by those who prove themselves unkind or sick emotionally. Minister to those people, but know with everything in you that you do not need their approval.

It is my prayer that you will find me safe, even as you find me real and full of character flaws that have impacted you and will impact you. I pray you will forgive me, and I pray you will be able to build a relationship with me that meets your deep needs from me as your mother and as your friend. But you have the right to increasing privacy from me as you grow, and to complete privacy from me as adults. You get to choose as adults the role you want me to have in your lives.

Treat others with respect and love, and do not become people who are unkind for any reason. Most especially, do not become people who are unkind and who justify their unkindness by their religious beliefs!

To my straight, evangelical friends and family:

I am grateful for you! You model for me real love and real life, and God has used you to make me. You have taught me to think and live and love. You have shown me God’s forgiveness and restoration. Losing you would be devastating!

But today I need to tell you that the Bible we’ve been reading all our lives doesn’t say some of the things we thought it said. It DOES say that there is a law that leads us to the TRUTH. It DOES say that we are called to obedience in all things, even as we learn the freedom of obedience. But it doesn’t say that the gender roles we were taught are more than cultural, nor does it say that the sexual and marital ethics we were taught are the only way to fulfill the fruit of the Spirit at the end of Galatians. We ARE to be faithful, temperate people who use our sexuality to honor God and each other. But our ultimate calling is not to the Christian version of the American Dream. Our ultimate calling is to wholehearted devotion to the Triune God.

I believe that homosexuality is something we misunderstand in just about every way as a subculture, and I believe the main reason for that is that we are more invested in our idea of the Christian version of the American Dream than we are invested in the real Triune God or in God’s real people. I believe we need to repent, and commit ourselves to obedience even if it is painful because it turns all our ideas about gender and family and stability and safety upside down. I am not calling us to turn away from God’s WORD, but rather to actually hear it and live it in ways we are failing to hear it and live it now.

We are willing to turn our back on our homosexual parents, siblings, and children because we believe it is a sinful choice that God is against, and we have invested so much into that belief (in our rejection of them and in the cost emotionally to us) that it is scary to even consider that that stand goes against the whole of scripture even as we have ourselves preached it and taught it. We are caught between many rocks and hard places, because to even consider that perhaps God created them to have the desires they have with as much joy as God created us with our desires (let alone that God is glad for healthy expression of their sexuality and not just of our own) is to start to face our inconsistencies, fallacies, and guilt, and is also to expose ourselves to the same kind of rejection and social norming and persecution that we have exposed them to.

But we are called to extend the gospel to all, and to know that gospel ourselves as we do it. That means studying anew the letters of Paul and Peter and James and John. That means studying anew the words of Jesus. It means knowing Christian history. It means knowing science and philosophy and ethics. And most of all, it means living it out. We will be held accountable. Clergy won't get off the hook because of the vows they took to their denominational beliefs. Laity won't get off the hook because they were limited to the beliefs they were taught. Each of us will be held accountable for all that we could have learned from God through all the channels God tried to teach us . . . and the opportunities for that learning and practice are so rich for every single one of us!

In Jesus' parable of the sheep and the goats, the “what they did and didn’t do” that separated the sheep from the goats was not the ideology they embraced, or the forms of justice they espoused verbally. It was the ways they extended kindness to real people, or the ways they failed to extend kindness to real people. And the kindness was not extended in order to bring the objects of the kindness to faith, even, or to obedience. The kindness was extended in a lifestyle of kindness, oblivious to whether the object of the kindness was the Son of God Himself.

I do not mean to simplify our faith, or to simplify what obedience means. Study it out yourself. Analyze it again. But don’t miss living it.

To my gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer friends:

I ask you to forgive me for my silence that has been my part in creating a pain-filled world for you.

I thank you for your friendship, which has allowed me to experience myself and God and reality in ways I was not capable of experiencing without you.

I affirm that I do not believe an orientation is sin. I affirm that I do not believe homosexual sexual activity is sin, anymore than I believe heterosexual sexual activity is always sin. (If you believe in the concept of sin as that which separates one from God and from others, certainly you can see ways that either heterosexual or homosexual activity may be sinful in the wrong situations or with the wrong motives. If you do not believe in the concept of sin, then we stand separated by that belief rather than by our orientations or actions, but it is my hope that you will be willing to extend me your friendship anyway.)

I am amazed by your stories of faith and struggle and suffering and change. I am amazed by your perseverance in membership in faith communities that have rejected you. I am grateful for your dedication to TRUTH and for your courage in the face of a world set against you.

You are individuals with individual callings. I pray you will be wise in your choices in safe people, in safe places, and in safe communities, so that you can avoid victimization you have not chosen, even as you gear up knowingly for victimization as you push the world to be a safer place for our children.

You are my parents, my cousins, my children, and my friends. I want for you pretty much the same stuff that I wrote that I wanted for my own children. For all of us, but especially for you, I want a world where we have freedom to publicly believe what our hearts and minds actually believe, and where we can choose to live the way God leads us to live without fear of brutality or rejection or poverty.

May you experience fully God’s best for you . . . with the love and support of our culture rather than with its opposition and hatred!

To All of Us:

We cannot afford to not spend the emotional energy it takes to fully consider this. We cannot afford to be hardened into ideological numbness that lets us justify cruelty with phrases like "love the sinnner but hate the sin". If you are angry at me and about to unfriend me on FaceBook, feel free to unfriend me, but afterwards take time to consider why it provoked those emotions in you. Take it to God, and ask God to enlighten me if I am deluded, but also open yourself to ask God to enlighten you if God has something new to show you here.

I grew up listening to Focus on the Family, and come from the place where it was shocking to me to consider how a Christian could be a Christian and yet accept homosexuality as okay. One of the posts I considered writing was my story in how God brought me from there to here. But instead I have addressed us all with the challenge to be willing to fully live out each of our own stories without fear, and to accept each other as we encourage each other to do the same.

God created each of us. God created sexuality to work a certain way. God is bigger than our politics, and even bigger than our theology. I am clicking "publish" with the prayer that God will accomplish the Triune God's purposes on this day through this drop in the bucket.

Amen.

A blog post (not a logically-composed essay) on map-making, orthodoxy, heresy, and LIFE

2010-05-20T13:36:00.000-07:00

I was driving with the boys to school not long ago and saw the bumper sticker that read “Reality doesn't care what you believe”. I love that, and it meshes well with my understanding of what is real and what we project onto our view of reality.

As we were driving, I had my GPS navigation system on, and it told me I was going the wrong way because we were taking an on-ramp to our right onto the little highway we take to school, rather than turning left over railroad tracks onto a road that existed 6 months ago but doesn’t exist now. It was a good thing that I was willing to follow my own knowledge of reality even though the electronic map I was using reflected an old reality and had the authority of being the map.

My mind drifted to the doctrine of “limbo”, and the way that it arose from the theological discussions and arguments over the last 2000 years, and the way it was affirmed by the councils of the middle ages, and the way it was rejected finally in this last decade. Sometimes perspective cannot be clear until analyzed by those who come next – and sometimes our map of reality is more a tool to comfort us than a tool to base real choices on.

But, indeed, our beliefs do matter . . . because they are our map of reality, and most of our choices do come directly from our beliefs.

This morning I read this quote from Albert Einstein: “A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellow men, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them. The value of a man, however, should be seen in what he gives, and not in what he is able to receive.”

And that gets to the heart of any of our maps: where are we trying to go, and how do we know when we’re there? And if we don’t like it when we get there, are we supposed to stay there?

I love map-makers and map-sellers. I have profound gratitude to the writers and thinkers and speakers and teachers and pastors and parents who have formed me and formed my maps. It is a high calling.

But I am dismayed with the idea that we need to blindly stay with “orthodoxy” and avoid “heresy”. If our loyalty is to anything but reality, we are deluded . . . and if we are selling or teaching others that they should ignore reality in favor of some set of cognitive beliefs that we were taught and we are teaching, we are evil personified. The only thing to be gained from a blind loyalty to “orthodoxy” is a membership card to the current power class as they strive to retain power and authority.

None of that is to say that “orthodoxy” and the struggle to define it is not a worthy pursuit, or that denominations and individuals should not make judgments about what is true and what is not. We should and we must, because we must have working maps. (Am I a Presbyterian or what? Constant reformation, but decently and in order!)

It IS to say that individuals have a higher calling than map-making or map-buying, and so do denominations and churches. Our calling is to LIVE and LOVE and experience the reality we have mapped!

Whether one believes that there is a new heaven and new earth awaiting us on the other side of the grave and the resurrection of the dead (which I do still literally believe) or whether one believes that it is unnecessary delusion (a view which I respect and hear), one only has THIS MOMENT to live now, and will only have the current THIS MOMENT to live throughout that eternity. We can’t afford to neglect the parts of our map that cover the ground we can look around and observe personally to argue about the parts that are out of our current vision. If we do, we lose it all, moment by moment, as the important stuff leaks away because we were focused on stuff that comes later.

So this is my last post in my promised little set of posts, that I have taken forever to post: speaking hard realities as I see them.

Each individual has the ability and responsibility to choose their map, adjust their map, and move or sit. We each have 1 life, moment by moment. Don’t discount your own ability and responsibility because you aren’t clergy or even because “others know more about that than me.” This is your life, and it will be over before you know it, and no one but God can give you time after it’s done and you’re buried – and as I said before, even that time will only be able to be experienced moment-by-moment!
I have had the privilege of hearing the Christian scriptures and studying the Christian scriptures since I was a tiny child, and still find them full of truth and a wonderful guide to reality itself. Through them I have fallen in love with the Triune God, and through them I have learned to hear God speak to me in each moment. I have encountered the living Jesus, and so my own map is drawn with His help as I walk the land we walk together . . . with the Bible as the map handed to me before I set out, and any drawing taking the form of filling in details that I couldn’t see before or of reconciling interpretations of the symbols on the page to what I see around me. I highly recommend this life!
The primary “reconciliation” I’ve had to do between the way the Bible was interpreted to me by others and my own walk and observation of reality has much more to do with restoring focus to the roads and to the spot on the road on which I find myself, and much less to do with trying to fill in details that pertain to someone else’s journey 5 miles away and their description to me of how the map they were handed doesn’t match what they see. I see no reason to disbelieve them and judge them. Rather, I see on my map the clear command to extend love to not only my close companions but also to the enemy and the stranger . . . and what is less loving than claiming they are blind when they are looking at something that is out of my range of sight?
Because not only of my last point, but even more so because of my love for scripture and my high regard for it, I believe that I cannot show more loyalty to an old map than to my Christian brothers and sisters who don’t fit the Evangelical culture I grew up in – whether because of their sexual orientation, or because of their theological and philosophical orientations. My Lord’s primary directive to me is to love . . . and although that can include confronting that which I know to be wrong, I find much more often it means admitting that I haven’t seen the part of reality that they are talking about, and that I’d be arrogant and deluded to pretend I knew what was right.

So here I stand, a member of a conservative pcusa church that I love, and heading off to meet in person on Monday many friends that I love but have never seen face to face. I’ve never written a post on this blog about Twitter, but I recommend the ones by Adam Walker Cleaveland over the past few years. The ability to give love and extend real presence to me is not based on whether someone is part of my face-to-face world or part of my electronic communication. My mother and my adult sons are central figures in my life, and most of my communication with all three of them has been electronic and not face to face for more than a decade. My entire work life has been based on electronic communication and on technology. Physical presence is a wonderful gift when it comes from one that gives me their real presence regularly, but I also have a lifetime of experience with those who never really show up with real attention and presence but who denigrate the value of electronic communication. They have done as much to shape my love for Twitter as have my dear friends on Twitter.

So much of our generation can be summed up by telling again the story of Peter as God was preparing him to go to Cornelius. We see the sheet come down with all kinds of unclean things on it, and we are hungry! But we are pure, we need to be pure, we cannot defile ourselves! It is part of our self-image and part of our map to NOT partake of those unclean things! But the Holy Spirit says that our loyalty must be to GOD and to God’s reality, and not to an old map . . . not to our own orthodoxy. And eventually the true church will wake up and greet the messengers from Cornelius and go to him, and receive the blessing of having our own eyes opened as the flames of fire are poured out on those who were so unclean that we were not even supposed to cross their threshold.

This is the story that has been repeated over and over in every generation, and we can see it as we look back on Christian theological history. The Holy Spirit has never stopped.

So remember that reality doesn’t care about your beliefs . . .

But remember that we have a God Who not only cares about your beliefs, but Who also cares about every moment of your life and the life of every other “believer” and “heretic” . . .

And don’t miss out on knowing all you can know of God and of the life God is giving, moment by moment! This is not about being safe or pure or right! This is about avoiding the things that rob me and others of JOY and LOVE, and embracing not just a set of beliefs, but embracing a real God, real people and real life!

Decently and in Order

2010-03-18T12:40:00.000-07:00

My life is - as usual - crazy-busy; so my planned set of posts is taking a long time. This will be the 3rd of 4 planned posts, which I listed out 2 posts ago. The topic of this particular post is "speaking truth out of appropriate authority (and holding that truth unspoken when that is appropriate)".

First, though, on the "crazy-busy" thing: I spent a good 15 years of my adult life in salaried full-time positions working for someone else as I also raised kids. My life simply didn't allow enough time to even make sure I always had enough sleep, clean clothes for tomorrow, and all the bills paid even if there was money to pay them -- and I had no real choice in this. I did the best I could, and was always exhausted, and was never satisfied with the effort I could invest in any of the things I cared about, whether job, home, kids, or health. There simply wasn't even time to think of luxuries like reading or having real friends.

Now I have a situation where I can have a clean house, can NOT exist in a sleep-deprived state, can have real friends, can read books, and can write, work, and invest my time as my husband and I decide is best. My income is necessary for our current budget, but we have enough income to be able to make real choices as to the balance between smaller and bigger budgets and smaller and bigger amounts of my time being used for work. So my "crazy-busy" life is really very leisurely compared to what I experienced in my 20s and 30s, and it is VERY discretionary. I get to choose what I put in, what I take out, and the pace at which I juggle. And I love it, and am very grateful for the luxury. I know full-well how many other people in our economy have very limited choices in the life they feel forced into by work just to have a fairly minimum standard of living. This is not the world my mom and dad knew.

Okay . . . so WHAT did that have to do with the topic of this post? The topic of this post is modern Presbyterianism in the PCUSA, and the positions we all play if we choose to play in that ballpark. And my previous 2 paragraphs set the context in which my generation lives, which makes a big difference in Presbyterianism 30 years ago and Presbyterianism today. You can't understand what follows if you don't understand what I just said.

Each denomination has its own personality, and attracts people with certain characteristics. I won't presume to know what other denominations feel like from the inside, but I do have my own perceptions of them all, and some experience participating from the inside in many different places. The PCUSA is best known by the "decently and in order" quote, and by our commitment to an educated clergy. We are also known for our polity, which is not congregational but rather representative. We are also "reformed and always reforming", which means that we strive to understand God's word and keep applying it consistently as times change and our understandings change. In theory, this keeps us from becoming stagnant and Pharisaical. In practice it keeps us bound up in the politics of whatever the current tension is between the understanding of our grandparent's generation and the understanding of our children's generation.

I love the PCUSA enough that I keep choosing it even though it is not really very welcoming to my generation of women. We are the "missing generation", and that is largely because our parents and grandparents couldn't understand the life we have led and the values we have embraced. While the PCA simply maintained the rhetoric that kept women in their "scriptural" place, the PCUSA opened the door for women to climb to positions of power and authority equal to those of men -- whether as lay leaders in governance or as clergy in pastoral roles. What they couldn't understand was the response of my generation to that permission: we wanted a turning away from the old hierarchical structure rather than to assume the roles of leader over and against others who remained in subservient roles.

So if the PCUSA is representative and structured in polity, and if the women of my generation tended to reject authoritarian structures rather than become insiders to them, why would I embrace the PCUSA? Am I different, and I like hierarchy? No, as much as I love the women who have taken the challenge to climb and serve from positions of structural authority, that's not me. I love order that is deliberate and thoughtful, and I find that in the Book of Order, and I find that in our history, and I find that in our values. I also love education, and without an educated clergy an educated laity is an impossibility -- although I would very much like to see new initiatives toward an educated laity.

Our tradition allows for everyone to have a voice. Elders rule. Deacons serve. Ministers of the Word and Sacrament lead us and teach us and care for us. And everyone else can be a voting member who elects the nominating committee from which elders, deacons, and pastors are launched, and who can participate in the other ways provided for in the Book of Order. We all have a time and place where we can speak our perspective, if the intent of the Book of Order is followed by a given congregation or presbytery. None of this clashes with the values of my generation for teams rather than for hierarchy.

In practice, of course, most congregations have a preponderance of certain opinions and a culture that moves into squashing voices that don't match the majority. The values of the older generations support this with a very authoritarian view, that uses scripture and the Book of Order to justify an interpretation of "respect your elders" and "respect those in authority" that would see voicing a dissonant opinion as disrespectful. Those who don't fit are urged to find a different congregation or different denomination where they do fit. And so my whole "missing generation" has done just that, or has dropped out of church entirely.

The remedy, from my perspective, is to encourage a place for the voice of each person, and to discourage a culture that squashes different perspectives. I see many in the PCUSA and many in my own congregation who are doing just that, and building bridges for the survival of the best part of our polity and tradition even into the new century. I want to be part of that, and so I have acted deliberately to do just that. "Majority rules" can be good and godly only if the majority is committed to hearing -- authentically hearing and understanding and loving -- the voices of the minorities among us, and never trying to disengage from conflict until the conflict of the current generation gives way to consensus on those issue and moves on to the conflict of the next generation.

So I said this post was on "speaking truth out of appropriate authority (and holding that truth unspoken when that is appropriate)", and what that needs to mean to the PCUSA now is that each congregation and each presbytery and synod and general assembly takes care to encourage each member to voice their own perspectives on our life together, and to share their own stories of their own individual experiences of life. That won't make us congregational. Our polity is sound, and works well even if we hold authority in the tension in which is was designed to be held. It will make us authentically Presbyterian in every sense of the word.

And beyond what that means to the PCUSA . . . what that means to you and me and to every other individual is that we will practice Jesus' teaching about exercising lovingkindness toward each other and the stranger and the enemy. We will each speak our own truth even when that robs us of political clout because we don't mesh well with the powers that be. Even more, we will each champion the right to be heard of others, and actually LISTEN to them until we can imagine ourselves in their shoes, feeling as they do, living as they do, and championing positions that clash with our own.

This will take us beyond "authentically Presbyterian", and will lead us into a place where we are actually following the words of Jesus. That is my goal, and I am a Presbyterian (PCUSA) because I believe actually following the words of Jesus is best accomplished for me here, from the pew and from my home and from where I now click "publish post", at my desk at work.

(If you read this far, thanks! You have showed the kind of love I was talking about. Now share your voice somewhere so I can give you my time and attention in hearing you, because THAT is where it is appropriate to "hold the truth unspoken": when speaking my truth gets in the way of listening to yours!)

Authority (or "who do I submit to, anyway -- and in what ways?")

2010-02-13T09:00:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning at 5 a.m. thinking about the apostle Paul, authority, reality, and how much the way I believe he saw life colors the way I do. See the following passage from Colossians 3 -- translated by Eugene Peterson -- as an example of this in my life.

Colossians 3 (The Message): He Is Your Life

"1-2 So if you're serious about living this new resurrection life with Christ, act like it. Pursue the things over which Christ presides. Don't shuffle along, eyes to the ground, absorbed with the things right in front of you. Look up, and be alert to what is going on around Christ—that's where the action is. See things from his perspective.
3-4Your old life is dead. Your new life, which is your real life—even though invisible to spectators—is with Christ in God. He is your life. When Christ (your real life, remember) shows up again on this earth, you'll show up, too—the real you, the glorious you. Meanwhile, be content with obscurity, like Christ.

5-8And that means killing off everything connected with that way of death: sexual promiscuity, impurity, lust, doing whatever you feel like whenever you feel like it, and grabbing whatever attracts your fancy. That's a life shaped by things and feelings instead of by God. It's because of this kind of thing that God is about to explode in anger. It wasn't long ago that you were doing all that stuff and not knowing any better. But you know better now, so make sure it's all gone for good: bad temper, irritability, meanness, profanity, dirty talk.

9-11Don't lie to one another. You're done with that old life. It's like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you've stripped off and put in the fire. Now you're dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete. Words like Jewish and non-Jewish, religious and irreligious, insider and outsider, uncivilized and uncouth, slave and free, mean nothing. From now on everyone is defined by Christ, everyone is included in Christ.

12-14So, chosen by God for this new life of love, dress in the wardrobe God picked out for you: compassion, kindness, humility, quiet strength, discipline. Be even-tempered, content with second place, quick to forgive an offense. Forgive as quickly and completely as the Master forgave you. And regardless of what else you put on, wear love. It's your basic, all-purpose garment. Never be without it.

15-17Let the peace of Christ keep you in tune with each other, in step with each other. None of this going off and doing your own thing. And cultivate thankfulness. Let the Word of Christ—the Message—have the run of the house. Give it plenty of room in your lives. Instruct and direct one another using good common sense. And sing, sing your hearts out to God! Let every detail in your lives—words, actions, whatever—be done in the name of the Master, Jesus, thanking God the Father every step of the way.

18Wives, understand and support your husbands by submitting to them in ways that honor the Master.

19Husbands, go all out in love for your wives. Don't take advantage of them.

20Children, do what your parents tell you. This delights the Master to no end.

21Parents, don't come down too hard on your children or you'll crush their spirits.

22-25Servants, do what you're told by your earthly masters. And don't just do the minimum that will get you by. Do your best. Work from the heart for your real Master, for God, confident that you'll get paid in full when you come into your inheritance. Keep in mind always that the ultimate Master you're serving is Christ. The sullen servant who does shoddy work will be held responsible. Being a follower of Jesus doesn't cover up bad work."

The other key "passages" to me are each of Paul's letters, but especially his letter to the Galatians and his letter to the Romans and his letters to the Corinthians. In these he gives a view of life, a view of reality, and a view of authority that I have internalized. I'd sum it up like this:

God created us to have fellowship with us, both individually and in community. We were created with a hunger for creativity of our own, a hunger for intimacy, a hunger for discovery, and a hunger to sort and name . . . among many other hungers! And we were created with a huge hunger for exactly what we were created for: a hunger for fellowship (friendship and communion and intimacy and synergy and life) with God and with others. All of those hungers drive us.

God created us within a fixed universe with fixed TRUTH. We can argue with TRUTH or rebel against it or be ignorant of it, but it is there and unmovable. Our understanding of TRUTH and our articulation of TRUTH are only representations of it. They are not TRUTH. TRUTH does not change, but our cultural, linguistic, emotional, mental, scientific, and spiritual abilities to see it cause many different representations of TRUTH to be articulated and experienced and embraced. Good "religion" opens us to look past any representations toward the reality that is behind it. This is humility. We look with faulty eyes and speak from within a very limited view.

As much as we would like to list out the rules of the universe and keep ourselves safe by staying within those rules and teaching them, the historic teaching of TRUTH does not keep us safe or give us a full understanding of reality. What it can do is point us toward the source of TRUTH, the creator of TRUTH, and the ONE Who can guide us through reality toward meeting our own deep hungers and helping create a world in which others can also have their own deep hungers met. The Law (rules, philosophy, religion, science, etc) is a tutor to point us toward this Source and to give us a social framework to allow others to be pointed toward this Source.

I submit to the authorities around me (legal, political, educational, social, religious, cultural) when it is the right thing to do in my current culture and situation if I am truly walking in the best understanding of TRUTH I can muster. Most of the time rebellion against those who possess power over me just gets in the way of fully enjoying the things that I was created with a hunger to pursue -- meaning GOD and the image of God within me and others. I am called to show authentic love (agape/hesed/self-giving love) to others as evidence that I am in right relationship to this ONE Who Satisfies So Deeply and as the fruit of that right relationship. I don't always do that well, but God is committed to teaching me and shaping me if I am committed to telling the truth about my motivations and actions as best as I am able.

Sometimes I am called to rebellion, but it is -- in our context -- rarely rebellion in ways that end relationships deliberately or call down violent consequences. The rebellion I am most often called to practice is the rebellion of refusing to disbelieve my own eyes and ears and heart when those in power tell me I am deluded or lying. The rebellion I am most often called to is this hidden rebellion: to speak first to myself and to God the truths that I see (even when others say they are lies) and then to speak them to others when my conversation with God has shown that there is any profit in that kind of open rebellion.

Sometimes I must leave the fellowship of those who are united in proclaiming as truth some things that I believe are lies or distortions of the truth. I do not need to do this in order to correct them or change them, but rather to push on in my pursuit of the One Who is Changing Me.

My primary authority is Jesus Christ Himself, and the Creator God Whom He called Father, and the Spirit indwelling all His disciples because He promised He would not leave us as orphans. This is TRUTH unchanging, and forms the boundaries of all other authorities and of all my experience of what reality itself is.

My secondary authority is all the ways I can hear and experience and obey this Triune God Who is REALITY itself. I am being taught and shaped by you and by every other person God brings into my life. I am being taught and shaped by the written Word of God that is our codified scriptures. I am being taught and shaped by the shared spiritual practices of my faith tradition and those of others. I am being taught and shaped by the events of life.

My authority is NOT any of the religious or cultural or political structures that are so anxious to create order that they ignore the very real created order in all I have listed above.

Nevertheless, it is not usually in line with a real pursuit of the things that satisfy deeply to rebel against any of those who have power over me in these areas.

Unless it is.

Selah.

From the Pew

2010-01-25T13:15:00.000-08:00

In my last post, I promised to post "tomorrow" on the way churches tend to discourage volunteer efforts within the community, while encouraging overwork by paid staff. I have delayed posting on this as I have separated my thoughts out into several different threads. The first thread is looking again at what "church" IS, in terms of all our roles -- including paid and volunteer and "consumer". The second thread on this is on authority in the life of the non-paid non-vocational Christian. And then two related-but-separate threads are on speaking truth out of appropriate authority (and holding that truth unspoken when that is appropriate) and a thread that that leads to for me, in speaking boldly some of my insights from my own life that are not necessarily peaceable.

So this will be the first of 4 posts: for each of us, what role does the church play in our lives? What is the church, anyway? And what role should each one of us play in that church? (Yes, that's all one topic, and I plan to cover it in just several paragraphs. This is a blog, not a class; and these posts are meant to reveal one voice and one set of perceptions, not all that could be gleaned from a comprehensive study of the subject.)

The Bible is the story of a God who put us in community, from Creation to Noah to Abraham to the church in Acts. It is also the story of a God Who is innately in community within God, as seen in all the parts of scripture that reveal God the Creator, God the Incarnate One, and God the Holy Spirit. The purpose of the church, according to the whole of scripture and seen clearly in many passages precisely on this topic, is to be a loving community in which each person has a role and in which each role is honored -- to be a loving community that is in appropriate relationship with the Triune God.

The role the church should play in each one of our lives is a central one! It should be more central for you and for me than our family or than our workplace. The only more central relationship should be the relationship of each individual with the Triune God, but that relationship itself will lead directly to this community, and vice versa.

This is not to say that the local church is that central community in our lives . . . it is to say that the CHURCH -- world-wide and over time -- is that central community in our lives; but it is the real people in our lives day-in-and-day-out, at this place and time, who are the focus of that community for each of us. We do get to choose who those particular people are, to some extent (hence my December posts!) but we do not get to be lone-ranger Christians. A basic part of the definition of "Christian" as it shows up throughout two thousand years is that one is joined to the CHURCH in many practical ways on a daily basis. We are joined in ethics/values, creed, praxis, sacrament, membership, scholarship, relationships, caregiving . . . and in many other practical ways.

Paul says the CHURCH is to function as the parts of a body function to provide all the elements of life for an individual body. We individuals are to be working together in harmony and respect toward the end goal of "life as God means it to be for us, here and now". That includes much, of course -- but I don't have to get into that to make my point as to roles and added value.

The rest of our world is a marketplace. I train for my vocation, and you train for yours, and we in the world form an economy that ideally would also function something like the CHURCH. But the difference is that all humans -- no matter what their values and goals -- function as an addition or drain on the global economy. The CHURCH is made up of those who are attempting to fulfill the Great Commission, and both BE people who live the way Jesus taught his disciples to live and TEACH others to become His disciples.

To be part of the CHURCH does not require vocational training. To be part of the CHURCH requires that I center my life around the values that Jesus taught and that I both model and teach those values to others. (This does not take away from the value of training for credentials for formal vocational ministry, or the need for formal vocational ministry of many types. I'll talk more about that in future posts.)

The way we do CHURCH now tends to make it look much more like a marketplace activity than it should. We have a service or services we're offering to consumers or members; those offering the service or services are credentialed vocational Christians; and those who are consumers or members are good consumers or members if they consume the services and pay for them appropriately without becoming competition to those who make their living that way.

Many of my friends can give you a beautiful analysis of this from the ordained/vocational-Christian side, and they know they have my respect for all they have done to prepare themselves to lead us in lives of authentic discipleship and for all they do to manage their own lives in a way that both models following Jesus to us and encourages us to do the same. They do a nice job of personally attempting a faithful rendering of CHURCH; but we have so many cultural components that work against them!

My solutions "from the pew" would work over years to change our culture to one that encourages training in scripture and ministry for all able-bodied members and also encourages participation in the economy outside our churches for almost all staff. We should use the PCUSA-Book-of-Order type of credentialing for volunteer involvements, encourage vocational experience and training outside of ministry training for all potential Ministers of the Word and Sacrament, and move the Church away from being one more industry and back toward the call it should be for each and every Christian.

If we are going to live the way Jesus taught us to live and teach others to do the same, we need to reclaim the reformed and presbyterian vision of that kind of Church. We need to interpret it anew in the culture of a world economy in the 21st century where education is widely accessible and every one of my readers has access to a computer on the internet that joins us all to more information than any one of us could read in a lifetime, let alone learn. A high regard for education and high requirements for our vocational Christian leaders needs to take whole new forms at this point, because we are in a completely different world in terms of education and knowledge than in the early days of our tradition.

I'll end all this by apologizing for not being able to list the books and persons who walked me through to my views here. My ideas are not my own, of course. Like you, I live in a soup of information and analysis and story.

My story is mine though. As is yours.

And we are writing ours, together with God!

Value Added in Community

2010-01-12T17:12:00.000-08:00

I love the feeling of having been productive, and of having contributed something real to the efforts of a group. This is one of the greatest joys of life, in my opinion -- and I have wonderful memories of my years at Fremont Investment and Loan and of my years at Elmhurst Memorial Home Health Care/Services because I experienced in both places long stretches of being a part of productive teams of coworkers and managers.

This blog is mostly about faith and faith communities . . . but recently (partly because of Brian Borcher's interaction with me about my last two posts) I have been thinking about the kinds of communities I've been a part of, and cannot think of any faith community in my past or present that rivals the experience of being a part of the two workplaces I listed above. They model something that is missing in too many people in the faith communities I've been in: value added by each individual. There was a culture of creative responsibility and mutual respect that my faith communities have yet to emulate.

Now . . . faith communities are not work places for most of us. They are designed to care for those who cannot contribute added value, and that is as it should be. But those who can add value need to, and too often they do not. And even for those who are employed as ministerial or support staff, there are distortions in an understanding of the personal responsibility of each member of the community. The "paid staff" not only over-work, but they often discourage the contributions of work by volunteers -- for many reasons. (I will post next on some of my analysis of this "from the pew".) This is systemic sickness that is the fault of the laity as well as the paid staff, and creates sick churches with sick members.

None of this is new stuff to any of you, of course! It is as old as the Old Testament, and has been rehashed regularly throughout JudeoChristian history. The Protestant Work Ethic, the Priesthood of All Believers, the Body . . .

But my point is just this: I've posted years of posts on Christian Community and on Agape/Hesed and seemingly ignored WORK and PRODUCTIVITY. That was a huge distortion in everything I was trying to say! My ability to show any kind of godly lovingkindness or to participate in healthy community depends upon my ability to add value when THAT is my call. Economics and faith are much more directly tied in scripture than are sexuality and faith.

So I am going back to work on my IT stuff . . .

Where do you add value?

My Post on the Ignatian Disciplines/Discernment

2009-12-30T15:52:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to a post I wrote that's on the Emergent Outlier site: Living as an Ignatian Christian

Let me know if you happen upon this a few months from now and the link doesn't work, and I'll republish the article in full on this blog.

Socially Determined: A Follow-Up to My Last Post on "Who Will I Be"

2009-12-28T07:35:00.000-08:00

My friend Brian Borcher's disagreement with my last post (that the primary question is not "Who will I be?" but rather "What will I do today?") has been carrying my thoughts since yesterday, and I wanted to respond again to it and to clarify something else from that last post.

First, the clarification: I was "waxing poetic" on Gideon's place in my life, and although he was in the center group of friends over the last year on-line (and I believe I was one of those in his center group of friends on-line) there were many other people for both of us that we interacted with just as frequently as each other in all our on-line channels. In saying that he was at the center of who I was and who I had become, I was referring to the power of each of those chosen central friendships, and not elevating my place with him or his place with me above those other friendships that we each had that was similarly focused and that had similar time spent. In addition, I was specifically talking about the social dimension of life that I will address next here, and not about my primary faith commitment or about my primary family commitments and their centrality. The place of the Triune God at the center of each believer's life is unquestioned, or they are not truly believers; and the centrality of our spouse and children to each of us is just as unquestionable socially.

Second, my musing on Brian's problem with my question and his correction of it: As I see it, this is one of my primary paradigm shifts in the last 5 years. I would have been in agreement with Brian before that shift, but now really don't believe any of us CAN align ourselves with the purposes of the universe and choose to act in ways that fit without also choosing our friends and communities . . . and choosing our friends and communities ALWAYS includes choosing the roles we will play there. As I taught Bethel for these past 4 years, it was clear that the Bible teaches a communal faith, not an individual one; and as I have read and observed life over the same period, it has been clear that sociological forces are the most powerful forces on every element of our identity and experience, and that that is as God intended and intends.

So the illusion that I can detach from all others and attach to God directly is just that: an illusion. Even if I become a hermit like the early desert fathers or like other examples since then, I am attaching to my memories of others and their views of life. Detaching from others to solitude is necessary for spiritual growth and for learning to hear and feel the Triune God apart from others; but even in that exercise I am simply detaching from those who fill my little world of busy-ness to attach to the great cloud of witnesses that is the CHURCH from beginning to end and from East to West. I am never truly alone with God, for I was created a social creature.

We are born into a social world where our roles are imposed by others, as are our beliefs and values. To choose my roles, beliefs, and values, I must also change my community. This is born out in many spheres of human experience and study.

So when I got up this morning to print and use today's lectionary from the PCUSA, I joined myself with a multitude also practicing that discipline of reading for today. And when I engaged in my Ignatian meditations upon "seeking the grace", I joined myself not only to the women in my own Christian Life Community, but to a whole community over years and miles that have gone through the same exercises. And when I engaged in my other forms of prayer - old and "new" - I joined myself in community with all those others who are and have practiced the same forms and thoughts.

And then when I turn around and interact with my family and those at work and those I call friends -- both face-to-face friends and on-line friends -- I make choices about who and what is indoctrinating me into their values and view of life. I need to be deliberate about my choices, both in who I engage and in who I neglect, because they will be the ones -- both today and over time -- who choose the answer to my question "What will I do today?"

We are primarily social creatures, and all religions acknowledge this. It is a distortion to believe otherwise.

Both Jewish and Christian faiths of every flavor over every century have been faiths of communities and families, not faiths that could be practiced in isolation. There is no greater choice we make each day than our choices about whom we will engage and whom we will avoid. The social choices are our greatest moral choices, from which all matters of identity, cognitive belief, and action will flow.

If you are "stuck", consider changing your communities and friends.

If you are depressed or angry, find friends who will mediate those emotions for you and help you feel life in a positive way.

If you are joyful and productive, give thanks to God for the people in your life, and give thanks to them for the way they have enabled you to experience life.

My question "Who will I be today?" should be expanded to "What social environment and what roles in that environment do I choose today, and out of that, what will my actions be?" We do not get to choose our own identities, but our identities are a function of our social choices. I am not me. I am who I have been made to be by the interplay of the actions of the Triune God through community and my responses to that world. (And even Jesus' primary definition of "obedience" and "disciple" was a social definition, as He exorted us to love each other.)

Who will you be today?

Choosing Our Communities & Friends (in memorium of Gideon Addington)

2009-12-25T18:55:00.000-08:00

There have been many great blog posts written in the past 9 days, since the social media and blogging worlds realized that our friend Gideon Addington (@gideony) had passed away as a result of his own deliberate action to make it so. I don't need to rehash any of it. I will only reference one post here, but if you google you will find a plethora of posts and articles.

I considered blogging on my memories of Gideon and on the impact he made on me: how he changed me permanently before his untimely death, and how he is at the core of who I have become. I decided that I will instead return to blogging-as-a-spiritual-discipline to express more of what I am now, but that I don't choose to share publicly things that were shared by a friend privately with the expectation of confidentiality. Friends don't do that to friends, even after death - or perhaps ESPECIALLY after death.

But the key topic that has been swirling in my mind since last Wednesday is this: I AM my choices about my friends and my communities. I choose who I am as I choose my friends, and as I choose my friends, I choose who I will become.

We all have many circles that we only partially choose: the people with whom we work, the people with whom we are in family, the people with whom we attend school, etc. Of course we choose some of this -- our spouse, our college, where we send our resumes -- but a lot of it is just "luck of the draw". Those people often form our primary communities, and work unconsciously and consciously to indoctrinate us into their beliefs and values. When those beliefs and values settle easily into our consciousnesses, we are blessed . . . but often something inside us rebels!

And this is where our truly CHOSEN friendships come in! We can seek out those who enjoy what we enjoy, who are passionate about the things that compel our passion, and who think and feel in ways that we intuitively "get". Here, we choose our own selves!

C.S. Lewis spoke about "The Four Loves" on the BBC back in the mid-20th Century, and those talks are still available on iTunes and from other sources. The material is similar but not identical to what he later published in his book by the same title. He spoke of the 4 Greek words for love, and of how they play out in our lives. Storge is comfortable, familial love -- where those we don't particularly even like become so familiar that we call it love. Eros is the passion which is romantic love --- not just lust, but that yearning that can even seem detached from the physical. Agape is the love that our faith exhorts us to show toward all others -- to seek to be the tool of God in their lives for God's best purposes for them and for us. And Phileo is the love of which I write here -- a friendship-love that is joined by mutual interest and that welcomes into it many others who share the same interest.

I was friends with Gideon Addington in a way that was very special. We chose each other as friends because we had mutual interests and loved to discuss them. This love did not revolve around the life of either of us, but rather around theology and the church and books and music and culture. There is much that I did not know about him, and that he did not know about me . . . not because we chose actively not to discuss it, but because there were so many other things we DID choose to discuss. It didn't matter that he was a young man of 30 while I was a middle-aged lady of 45. The stuff that people discuss if they're infatuated with each other (Eros) didn't matter and never came up. Nor did we have to be "kindred spirits" in being in agreement on everything or with a strong intuitive connection. We were just chosen friends. By choosing him I chose toward who I would become, and by choosing me he did the same.

I have many others that I know through Second Life, Twitter and their blogs that are also in that same sphere for me: friends I choose, and by choosing them, I am choosing myself. That doesn't take away from what I reveal about myself (and choose to be) in my relationships with my husband and boys, or at work, or in academic or church pursuits. It doesn't take away from what I reveal about myself and choose to be in my relationships with my very dear sisters-in-friendship that are face-to-face or shoulder-to-shoulder friends in my chosen recreational and discipleship activities. But it does shape me in a way that those relationships cannot shape me, just as they shape me in ways that my virtual relationships cannot shape me. We push to our limits in each sphere of relationship, and then can escape into another sphere -- and the picture of those interlocking spheres and the way they reflect our time, attention, and love becomes the picture of ME, the picture of identity that is imposed and identity that is chosen.

One of the key identity issues for me has always been an issue of gender. I remember being 5 and seeing my dad take my just-turned-4-year-old brother out to hunt ducks, and being hit for the first time with the fact that I was supposed to fit a certain mold as a girl, and that I might not find that easy or nice. I won't bore you all with my musings and events through 45 years that lead me to today . . . but today I am comfortable in my own skin, and I know myself to be a woman that loves to have sex with men but that hates to fill the old cultural norms for women other than that. I love my butch lesbian sisters because I identify so much with parts of their identities, although I love to look "fem" and love to feel sexual tension with men who are attracted to women who like to share power and like to fill male cultural roles, even as they do the same.

Another key identity issue for me is FAITH. I love God, even though God cannot be defined. I do love the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and traditions . . . but I love God and the people of God even more, and one of my "callings" (defined here as a key part of my innate identity in my own experience) is to pursue an integrated knowledge of "revelation" and personal experience, as well as an integrated praxis of communion and service. I started out in a family that gave me the gift of deep faith and lots of knowledge of faith as a foundation for that deep faith . . . and I have been going on to build a network of chosen friends who ARE in their faith (creed and praxis) what I choose to be. I am so blessed by them, and these days every single one of them is pushing past their old limits toward something unknown, and they have the courage to do that. I love them.

I do not know what happened with Gideon. Those who were in his other circles of friendship and community are much better positioned to explain that than any of us, and it would be an affront to them for me to engage in my own speculation. I do know this, though: Gideon loved all his circles of community, as I do mine. He told me so and I still believe him. I also know this: Gideon allowed himself to be changed by his communities, and was fearless in pressing on toward truth. As much as I know the dynamics of depression and suicide, I also know the dynamics of hope . . . and I feel certain that Gideon hoped in the spiritual realities that we spent so many hours discussing in so many ways, and that that hope brightened even the darkness.

Each of you who are attached enough to me to have read this far in this post are people who are shaping my life and identity and experience of living. We are real people in all our communities -- chosen and not-so-much -- and truly are NOT alone. We form a great web of life -- the web for this generation. I am grateful to Gideon for his impact on me and on you, and I am grateful to each of you for your impact on me and on each other. I considered lacing this post with hyperlinks to the many excellent posts on virtual space and real community and faith and gender and sexuality . . . but each of you either already gets all that or wouldn't get it just by virtue of my hyperlinks, and it's not the point, anyway. My point is just this: we make choices in life, and there is no choice more important than "who will I be today" -- and that choice is made in not only my declared faith and my vocation and in all my public-identity choices, but even more in my daily choices about who I love and befriend.

I chose to love and befriend Gideon, and I choose to love and befriend you.

Who are your friends, and what are your communities?

My Conversion

2009-09-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

I am being converted -- day by day -- into someone who has more and more of an experience TODAY of all that our salvation is supposed to bring to us in our Eternity.

Last night I had a conversation with my second-born son Josh (an adult, a degreed and employed design engineer, and a Calvary-Chapel-style very-conservative-Christian) that revealed once again what sharp world-view differences there are between us at this point. I go to a church where I am being confronted often by the same reality of different views between me and many of the members – although perhaps the differences are not as profound between my worldview and that of the ordained staff. And on the other side of that, I am married to a man who has a very different sense of spirituality and faith than do most of the different classifications of Christians I could list off here (fundy, moderate Evangelical, reformed, Anabaptist, Liberal, Progressive, Emergent, Orthodox, even “seeker”.) On every side I find many more people with very different views of reality than mine than I find people who see it like I do.

In every case, conversation can be almost instantly shut down as we run into one of our surface differences – and to get past that would require layers of conversation about our views of so many other things. How can I talk to Josh about why I think it is a loving thing to spend my time building an IT business (his question to me) without addressing his assumptions about why women with children belong at home keeping the house clean and making a pleasant life for their family? This gets into his view of scriptural interpretation, his view of appropriate gender roles, and even his view of what a pleasant life for my family is and will be as they grow. It also gets into many deeper issues psychologically in his own story and his own conditioning – the very issues that lead me to such very different conclusions at 45 about how I can be most loving as a mother to my sons than the conclusions I operated under in his formative years!

The woman-I-was-in-earlier-decades would have sought to engage the people in my life in dialogue designed to convert them to my current point of view, or at least to defend my point of view and attempt to win their respect or understanding on some level, if not agreement. But the woman I am today understands that I have the task of sorting it out and LIVING IT OUT, and that THAT task is often at odds with actively trying to “convert” anyone else.

The fundamental call of the Triune God to me is to live in Truth and in Love, and the only way I can do that is by concentrating on my own “conversion” from ignorance to insight and from alienation to reconciliation. As I walk with the aid of the Father God, the Living Man Jesus Who Is Also God Incarnate, and the Holy Spirit Who Is Poured Out On God’s People . . . I take my own view of reality each day and allow it to be transformed to a different world-view today than I had yesterday, and I forgive myself for yesterday’s actions based on that old view of reality as I accept God’s forgiveness and as I forgive everyone else, and I walk forward changed and empowered with new motivation and hope. I become capable of offering love-in-action and respect to those around me who see things very differently than I now see them, and I become capable of making different choices than I could have made yesterday. I am being converted to a new faith daily, and I am being transformed.

What we believe matters. Our view of religion, philosophy, economics, appropriate social roles and actions for ourselves and others, and all the other disciplines of thought and vocation . . . they form the basis for our own choices daily, and for our expectation of the choices of others. But when we settle in on the ways we are separated from others in our beliefs and actions, we remove not only the bridge to reconciliation and relationship, but also to our own growth from yesterday to today to tomorrow.

Jesus’ call to love-in-action as the center to a life of obedience to Him was not just for the benefit of the people I impact each day, or for the benefit of all the people you impact. Jesus call to love-in-action is a center-point in a call to daily conversion to a deeper understanding of reality and to daily conversion to hope and peace and joy. In serving and respecting even those whom I believe to be deeply mistaken in the way they view the building blocks of life, I offer myself a practical daily way to experience real connection and real respect and real kindness – and in this reinforce the parts of my own world-view that hold up to the test of daily reality, and break down and replace the parts that just DON’T.

We cannot separate theology and praxis by allowing ourselves to be filled with pain and bewilderment at those who still “don’t get it”. We must forgive them daily in the honest place of solitude that we seek out deliberately, and we must then re-engage them in respect and love-in-action. Often that re-engagement cannot be in any attempt to reason with them, because the differences are just too huge to leap over with words. The re-engagement of an intuitive reality that is free from contempt, pain, anger, defensiveness, or pity will show itself in responses and actions that are truly kind and loving, and that kindness and respect may open the door to changes in the way they view things, bit by bit. Or it may not.

What daily lives that are marked by today’s best effort to live out this kind of kindness and respect and love-in-action WILL most definitely do is this: We can walk forward in our own daily conversion to a deeper walk with the Triune God and a deeper walk with others clearly on the same path and close enough to where we are to offer us “God’s love with skin on.” This daily conversion is the “from glory to glory” that Paul promised, and is the fruit that Jesus promised as we abide in Him and as His words abide in us.

May it be so in my life today.

St. Andrew's Pastor Nominating process, from my perspective

2009-07-27T07:18:00.000-07:00

Most of my blog has not only been a story of my personal spiritual walk, but has also been a story of my walk in a specific place: St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) in Newport Beach, California. I haven’t been posting with any frequency for half a year or more for many reasons, but the primary one is that the cognitive processing of my journey has been in a “listening” stage more than in a stage of outpouring of new conclusions. I recently went back and re-read my own posts here, and still find them to be a good reflection not only of my journey these few years but also of the trajectory I am on, both spiritually and intellectually, both theologically and in praxis.

St. Andrew’s is an interesting place. It is a very Evangelical, very mainline congregation – a combination that is unique and that was a good part of the reason it became home to me when I moved to California in 1996 – leaving First Presbyterian in Glen Ellyn, IL, which is equally Evangelical and mainline. We are full of people who are committed to a conservative faith, a conservative view of the family and of human sexuality, and also committed to living in loving relationship with each other and with God, according to the written rules of polity and the unwritten rules that have developed among us.

The thing I love most about the reality of the people around me at St. Andrew’s is their sincere commitment to do the right thing even if it costs them. The thing I find most uncomfortable about the reality of St. Andrew’s as I have experienced it personally is the exclusivity that comes from that same commitment to living in obedience as they have understood obedience. At times I feel very connected and nurtured and respected, and at other times I feel that if I were to reveal too clearly the places that I actually still need a Savior or the places that I don’t quite see things as they are taught from the front . . . well, that I would remain as I so often have felt over these years: like a little girl with her face against the glass watching a loving family from outside, but never invited in. (Of course, this sense of not actually being fully accepted socially and relationally is a common theme in most circles of membership, especially in large ones - whether conservative or liberal! It is not at all unique to me at St. Andrew's, and is not unique at all among churches!)

So now I will tell my personal story of the pastoral nominating process these few years – told as a church member who was never part of the inner circles of power, which are the (regular, not pastoral) nominating committee and the ministry committee at the center, and the session peripherally beyond that. I think one of the features of a larger congregation where there has been the same senior pastor for 3 decades is necessarily a political environment that holds dissenting viewpoints at arms length, and preserves a culture and theology that reflects those who are in accord with the status quo. I think there are themes that flow from this situation into what has transpired in our pastor search process these last few years, but they are not at all clear to me as one outside of that inner circle, and I suspect that if I were inside that circle I would be incapable of seeing anything outside the views that bound me to the others within it. In any case, this is just my understanding and reflection, and I may well have some details recorded here that are different from the official record or from any other person's account -- but I have done my best to be accurate and thorough without being overly tedious in details.

About 5 years ago the church became aware of the pending transition it would face as John Huffman Jr, the Senior Pastor of decades, moved to a normal retirement age and then past it. One of the Associate Pastors, Jim Birchfield, was a Bible teacher who drew crowds and fans even from other churches, and certainly from within St. Andrew’s. Like many associate pastors in other churches, he had his own circle of influence within the church and was at a stage where he was also being sought as a senior pastor in other churches. He also fit well into the inner circle of power at St. Andrew’s. So the conversations began about how sad it was that he couldn’t be considered for Senior Pastor when John retired.

(There are many reasons why associate pastors are excluded from consideration normally, including the one that is most mentioned, which is to prevent multiple internal associate pastors from competing for the spot. There is also a concern to avoid perpetuating an inner circle of power left by a long-time senior pastor, and additional reasons, including the ones which become clear with the rest of my story. But the starting point is simply that Jim normally would not be able to even be considered, and we wanted to change that.)

I was one of those who loved John Huffman’s preaching and also loved Jim Birchfield’s teaching, and actively prayed for a solution that would let us consider him in our coming search process, as well as one of those who talked about it with others active at St. Andrew’s. I was overjoyed to learn that our presbytery – Los Ranchos – had helped St. Andrew’s figure out a way that they could make that happen. The way was this: A co-senior pastor situation would be created, the second co-senior would be designated until a pnc had selected a new co-senior to call, the called pastor would replace the designated co-senior, then John would retire as the other co-senior pastor, and the called pastor would have his position amended to sole single pastor.

Our congregation agreed to this plan. Dr. Dennis Okholm, ordained and a parish associate, but with a career in theological academia, agreed to assume the designated co-senior pastor role and was so called and installed, and Dr John Huffman Jr had his position modified to co-senior pastor / head of staff. At the same time, Jim Birchfield was given the role of Executive Pastor and assumed not only the responsibility for almost all of the staff (Dr Huffman only kept a few reports out of the very large staff) and for the vision process that would take St. Andrew’s into the pastoral call process, but also continued many of his previous roles and pastoral relationships. He retained responsibility for the areas vacated by several program staff members in the previous decade and also took on these two major jobs of daily operations and planning for the future, and invested himself in it with apparent joy and drive.

Over several years, Jim led teams that researched our demographic and our perspectives as individual members of the congregation, wrote a comprehensive report, developed a comprehensive vision statement, created implementation teams for each element of the vision statement, and created a plan to actually execute and measure each element of the vision statement. He also hired staff to replace key ministry positions that were not called positions and participated in the redesignation of some called positions to new areas of responsibility. He managed the complete reorganization of the church, with its old entrenched “silos”. He had significant interaction with all of those in the inner circle of power, and so they – like all of us – had opportunity to not only see the ways Jim excelled but also the ways he was human.

A year ago a CPNC (Co-Pastor Nominating Committee) was recommended to and approved by the congregation. Every member of the CPNC was chosen as one who would have no associated controversy or disrespect by any of the various groups in the church community, and all were people who had great respect from all who knew them. They were people who would not only do their job well but would truly do it according to the values and interest of St. Andrew’s as a whole – and not only the inner circle of power.

The CPNC did its normal work – writing our cif, reading pifs, praying, talking, sorting –and ultimately chose a candidate other than Jim Birchfield. They made their final vote on June 29 – a Monday. They shared with Jim Birchfield that he was not their choice (and also who it was that was their choice) on July 3, as a courtesy before informing others. The following week, on July 9 and 10, Jim was given permission to inform the program staff, and on Saturday, July 11 at a Relational Discipleship team meeting informed the 12 people who were there (which included me.) That evening and the next morning, the congregation was informed by John Huffman that Jim had not been chosen, and that we would learn the name of the candidate who had been chosen the following weekend, after he had been able to inform his church. That Monday and Tuesday the cpnc and the presbytery and the program staff and the session all had meetings to understand what was happening and to try to manage some of the chaos that had ensued among the congregation with the announcement the previous weekend.

On Sunday, July 19 there was a 3.5 hour congregational forum in which some people expressed anger and grief, some expressed bewilderment and confusion, some took a clear position in unity with the cpnc and the process that had been followed, and some (like me) just listened, watched, and prayed. The following Wednesday evening, July 22, there was a second congregational forum in which some of the same venting went on, but which was focused more heavily on matters of order and on the financial arrangements that were part of the call. This meeting lasted 3 hours, and had more of a tone of peace and love to it, with some of the speakers specifically calling for mutual respect and love in convincing ways.

One of the significant points of order that was discussed in this Wednesday night congregational forum was that the normal use of a “substantial minority” in opposition to the candidate selected would not apply in this case because of the unusual circumstance of an internal candidate who had not been selected, and the expectation of a huge minority because of the anger and disappointment that the candidate was someone else. The Book of Order called for a simple majority, and the concept of a "substantial minority" to be considered was derived from the handbooks in use for the pastoral call process, not from the Book of Order. The concept of a substantial minority is normally used to counsel the candidate about how advisable it is to accept a call into a split church, or even to allow the church or the presbytery to reconsider the call. It was determined that in our situation the candidate fully understood what he was facing and that we as a congregation also understood that as we voted, and that the presbytery understood it as well.

On Friday, July 24, Rich Kannwischer and his family (who had flown in the previous evening) met with staff, elders, deacons, and pnc members for a luncheon. The following evening Rich preached, and he and his family met the congregation at receptions before and after the Saturday evening service. Sunday morning Rich preached twice, then was interviewed (as was the cpnc) at a called congregational meeting. He was then dismissed from the meeting for us to debate and vote on his call. The congregation approved a motion to release Dennis Okholm from his role as designated co-senior pastor (to return to parish associate) with little discussion. There was then substantial discussion once again on the call to Rich and the financial terms of his call.

A motion was made to recommend that a negative vote beyond 20% receive the consideration it would usually receive in this process but that had been determined to not apply here because of the special circumstances. There was debate, and then a verbal vote, which was not decisive. The vote was then retaken by both sides standing in turn, and the motion was defeated. There was more debate/discussion on the issue of the call, which met with increasing impatience from the congregation, who were hot and hungry and ready to vote. A motion was made to bring the discussion to a close and to call for a vote, and the motion carried. Ballots were distributed, marked, and collected face-down in the offering plates.

After voting, around a third of the members at the meeting left, and the rest were led in singing while the votes were counted. This time of singing was truly worshipful and warm. The results were finally announced (753 yes, 288 no), and Rich Kannwischer rejoined those on the platform to the warm applause of those who had remained and addressed us briefly, accepting the call. There were thanks to the cpnc committee members and to the guest moderator and to Steve Yamaguchi (executive presbyter of Los Ranchos) and Keith Geckler (stated clerk of Los Ranchos) and the cpnc were released from their roles. The moderator closed business appropriately, Rich gave us a benediction, and we went home.

My own reflections at this point are these: 1) there is a reason that Senior Pastors should come from outside the existing staff at a church, and I deeply regret the way this situation exposed Jim Birchfield to a 3-year working interview and the current result; 2) I am pleased with the work of the cpnc and with the polity of our denomination, and believe it has led us to the right candidate for our future; 3) I am glad for the way this has exposed us and shaken us up, and believe God will use that to refine us and heal the stuff that was well-hidden before this; and last 4) we’re all tired and hurting, on every side . . . and we need time now to rest, grieve, forgive, and move on toward a united future.

Adding my own analysis beyond that would not be helpful at this point, because I am also filled with mixed emotion, and because there is much to see as this coming year or two makes real the transition, with Rich starting September 1, John retiring in November, and Jim choosing to either invest himself fully into his role as head of Relational Discipleship or to simply do his job there while he actively pursues finding another call. All of us who have been active in lay ministry, all the support staff, and all the program staff have gone through major changes already in the last 2 years, and these next 2 years promise more of the same. I suspect that many – like me – will turn inward toward their own personal sense of call and walk, and trust God that He will be there as the story emerges and we each see where we fit in the new reality of St. Andrew’s. I also suspect that most will reinvest into this community, and that those who end up leaving will leave more because they no longer fit the conservative theology or because they find themselves unable to do the ministry that they are drawn to do than because of any of these changes in leadership, which seems at least to have perpetuated our heritage as a conservative evangelical church in our denomination.

So, with that unedited ramble . . . I am off to Forest Home for the week, and will have limited access to my blog, to email, and to FaceBook and Twitter. Thanks to everyone for your prayers!