PS - Shout Out Time

Earlier this year, while attending my friend's wedding in Mexico, one of my friends who has known me for a good chunk of my life told me "Maybe you just haven't found what you're right for," when I told him with tears in my eyes that I was so tired of failing at everything.

Last night, one of my friends whom I've know literally almost ALL of my life told me something similar.

I'm going to actually listen this time. Doug and Peggy, you're the greatest. Thank you.

Blue Like Jazz - These Words I'm Eating Are So Tasty

I've been reading Blue Like Jazz.

Backstory: I tried reading it summer of 2008 as a loan from a certain ST just prior to the Shane Claiborne Jesus For President event in Denver. I tried for like a month or two to read it and then gave it back to her. I couldn't get into it. Miller starts the book with Daddy Issues. I know this is a deeply personal thing to him, and he is actually doing something to help kids without fathers, and I'm so sorry that it turned me off. But I guess I've mostly dealt with my own issues regarding my father and at the time was so tired of the endless, exhausting associations of masculinity with God when I was desperate for a heavenly Mother instead. After talking to Nadia about it, and how she was sort of at a point where she appreciated such work but it wasn't really what she was into, I was okay with saying maybe it's just not relevant for me. Or more accurately, I said at the time that I was beyond the point in my spiritual journey where it would be relevant for me.

As Nadia put it last night, Jesus, the Boyfriend, has a way of getting up in your shit.

I borrowed it on a whim from Nate. He said to skip the first chapter. I did. Sorry, Mr. Miller.

I'm eating my words. I actually like the book. I mean, Miller rarely says anything I haven't heard before, but he's so honest about his struggles and honest about the difficulty of following Christ and being alive that I really, really appreciate it, especially now. Even though sometimes I think "Geez, dude." Sometimes I laugh, though (K-DON. All Don. All The Time. LOL!). And that makes up for it.

The chapter on money made me flip my shit, though. He wrote about tithing and when I read it it sort of broke through this barrier that I'd had regarding my own fears about my economic situation. I went upstairs and got my pledge card for my church. I wrote on the back of it "I am going to send 10% of every paycheck I get in 2010. I don't know how much that will be because I don't have a job right now. This is an exercise in faith. Please pray for me." And I wrote a check that I hoped would cover the rest of my 2009 pledge. I sealed it in the envelope and put a stamp on it. Then I cried and cried and cried.

I hate feeling so helpless, living on the charity of people I love when they need their money for other things, but they don't want to see me out in the cold, or without the things I need. And I am so grateful, that the least I can do is actually give back to God what is God's.

I have failed in so much, in my chosen career, in my relationships, in what I thought I was supposed to do, even in what I thought I had to do. I even failed to protect myself from one of the biggest hurts I've ever experienced. But as I said, I'm done feeling shame and guilt.

Nate says at every one of our services that God takes the walls we build around our hearts out of fear and pain and hurt and makes them into a table on which we are served the bread and wine, the body and blood. I believe it now, because I have seen it with my own eyes.

Nunc Dimittus. Ya rly.

So I have been given some early Christmas presents in barriers transformed. Thanks to Nadia, and Roshi Doshi, and Ben, and Nate for the help. And to Mr. Miller, whom I haven't even met.

Proof God Loves Me and Wants Me To Be Happy

A Chipotle opened up a few weeks ago on Niagara Falls Boulevard.

I take my happiness where I can get it.

Every tear will be wiped away

I am done pretending that I am anything but a broken, messed up, sorrowful, sorry piece of humanity that needs the love of God so very much.

I am done pretending that the last two years of my life didn't smash me to a complete pulp.

I am done pretending that I am not hurt, done covering up my wounds so they won't make other people uncomfortable or tell me that I need to let go when I can barely get through the day half the time.

I am done pretending I don't have post traumatic stress disorder. Because I do.

I am done with not feeling things because it is easier, easier for me, easier for other people, only to have those feelings grow until I do feel them and they take over my life.

I feel like someone else has been living in my skin for so long, but it's been me this whole time. And Jesus has relentlessly pursued me, never giving up on me. I felt at one point that I would be gifted with the ability to cast out demons. I guess I've started with my own.

I've had a headache for a month. My stomach has ached for five days.

I am done with shame. I am done with guilt. Everything, everything is in the hands of Christ.

Good riddance, 2009. Leave and never come back.

she knows the war's not over
knows there's bleeding to come
knows she's far from the only woman or girl
trusting this world no more than the hands
trust rusted barbed wire

- andrea gibson, blue blanket

On Being (Or Not Being) A Handmaid of The Lord: Thoughts on the Magnificat

There is a prolific amount of literature on the American book market revolving around proper womanhood as it relates to being a Christian. Many of these books have some kind of pink on their cover, or tend to involve flowers like roses. Or that stereotype of female Republicanism, pearls. They tend to be books of affirmation, as if trying to tell women that it’s ok that their lives are in a frazzle, because they’re serving, just like Jesus wants them to be. Or books promising to rescue them from feminism and shunt them back into being housewives through religious guilt. Never mind the reduced incomes of their families, or the fact that their spending might be too limited to buy books like these anymore. This cultural product of the white Victorian upper middle class a century or more ago must be preserved as the sacred will of God, like free market capitalism and the American flag. Or something.

The books for teenage girls are all about purity. Now, whenever someone talks about purity in the Christian sense I sort of want to throw myself down a flight of stairs. Purity is to me code for something that the people I love and I do not have and will never attain, no matter how hard we try. Purity is code for righteousness, judgment, and looking down on others in a Christian burden we’re-here-to-save-you-from-yourself kind of way. Purity is code for theology of glory.

Much ink has been spilled over the special meanings that purity has taken on for Christian girls. It makes me shudder in light of the fact that a girl or a woman has worth that is not and should not be based on her sexual purity (whatever THAT means). She has intrinsic worth based on her existence as a living human.

I spotted a book in the teen section of a Christian bookstore the other day that had the title “Guys Like Girls Who…” A handsome, relatively nonthreatening young man was on the cover. I suppressed a scream. Because I’m with the girls on the site Jezebel (ha) when it comes to this: we should define ourselves in terms of who we are and what we like, not in terms of what a man wants us to be.

Bbbut doesn’t Jesus want us to be a certain way? I hear some of you whimpering back there. Doesn’t Jesus want us to be his handmaids?

The word handmaid gives me flashbacks to Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, where female fertility is rigidly controlled in an infertile, religious, fascist society. The title was totally intentional. I strongly suggest reading it.

Here’s the thing: if you’re female and straight, and you enter into a relationship with a man, he should respect you for who you are and love you for it. If you find yourself changing to be with him, then he is not the right one for you. The funny thing is, someone can tell you that and then turn around and act completely different. They can tell you all this stuff about how you should be your own person and then treat you like shit for not conforming to their standards of what they want you to be. And you can change and silence yourself out of love, and fear, and find yourself plunging into these ever-deeper waters of “If only I do this, maybe then things will get better.” But they won’t. Because the problem isn’t you. And by this time, you’re in so deep you can’t tell down from up anymore, the sun is just a vague memory, and you have to begin the painstaking work of getting back to the surface and reclaiming who you are. Simply because the man you were with didn’t recognize or give a damn about the value of it in the first place. And you feel shame and guilt for ever having experienced love for someone who valued you so little and treated you so poorly.

(I experienced this in my first serious relationship. Talk about messed up.)

We’re sold this package of heterosexual love and marriage by a culture that wants our buying power, our mental and physical energy, and our bodies but isn’t really interested in affirming who we are as people. American Christian culture gets even more insidious by imposing religious guilt in their insistence that we conform with this soul-crushing handmaidenhood, this uncomplaining wife and mother who will do whatever is asked of her by her husband, church, and community because it is the will of God.

People recoiled in horror at the wives on the YFZ ranch who were interviewed on national television following that raid on their compound in Texas. I wonder if some of those conservatives understand that this is what they’re asking for.

(The scary part would be finding out that yes, it is, and they’re okay with that.)

What is being a handmaid really about, though?

The word is used in the song traditionally known as the Magnificat (depending on your translation), sung by Mary when she goes to visit her cousin Elizabeth and understands this having the Messiah thing is the real deal. You can find it in Luke 1:46-55. It’s a text that is similar to that of the song of Hannah, who was a barren, middle-aged woman before God granted her a son, Samuel, who became the high priest of Israel in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 2:1-10). Both songs are about the mercy and power of God, and how he will give good things to the hungry, the lowly, the barren, while sending away the rich and powerful with nothing.

Richard Rohr, in his book Things Hidden, describes Mary as being the ultimate servant of God, who doesn’t ask “Why me?” or see herself as unworthy of God’s blessing; she accepts it with arms wide open, even at the risk she was taking in her own time and place in doing so (an engaged woman found to be pregnant before the wedding with another man’s child could have been sent home by her fiancé and stoned to death under the law). She sees herself as being worthy of God’s blessing and her place in the making of the new covenant between God and the world. It is at once a humble, handmaidenly act. It is also up there with some of the bolder moves in the entire Bible. Without Mary, there wouldn’t have been an Incarnation, a Jesus. And the presence of Jesus as a Messiah in Mary’s culture? A BFD, as the kids say these days.

The Bible is quite littered with women making gutsy moves for God and Jesus, women killing men, aiding and abetting conquerors, going down to the empty tomb and then being loudmouthed about it, preaching the Word, messing with inheritances. There are a lot of infertile women having babies, a lot of prostitutes getting rewarded for their help.

Being a handmaid of God isn’t about conforming to societal norms. It’s not about purity (see St Paul and Martin Luther). It’s not about ‘proper womanhood’, or tied up with having the perfect house, perfect husband, perfect children, perfect life. It’s about having the guts to do the right thing and follow Christ.

At some point, maybe the cultural baggage surrounding following Christ will no longer include rampant consumerism, obsession with purity (hello? Grace anyone?), being judgmental, hatred, subsumed violence against women, and fear.

Following Christ involves servanthood, which rings of the collective boot that for a long time has been pressed into the neck of womankind. But it’s actually a rejection of the patriarchal violence of both the law and the trappings of the Roman Empire, both of which bled into the early church. It’s a rejection of the hatred of women that has permeated our culture for too long. The songs Hannah and Mary sing aren’t about the victory of the oppressors, the righteousness of the rich. They’re about the lowly being lifted up, the hungry being fed.

The impure having the blessing of God.

Following Christ is a call to see the divine in each person, male and female, because in Christ there is no male or female (Galatians 3:28). It’s a call to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8).

Now that’s something I can dig.

I got the kingdom of heaven in a packet of yeast

I randomly got invited to a Donald Miller webinar via a comment on here, even though it got canceled, but I was excited. Someone is paying attention to the stuff I'm writing! I feel kind of like Julie in Julie and Julia...someone other than my mom is reading! Except my mom isn't reading. But Mr. Cubik's Rube is, and I am grateful for his loyal readership, even if we completely disagree on all things religious. I also have two official Blogger followers, one of whom I know personally and one I haven't met, so that's cool too. And a new commenter stopped by yesterday! *waves*

The day after my newest job disapparated into thin air, I was sitting at the kitchen table having breakfast with my grandparents and my aunt. I was kind of peaceful, all things considered, since the environment at that job was less than optimal, let us say. I was thinking about fastnachts, which are a kind of German doughnut traditionally made for Lent. My mom's cousin (I have a zillion cousins of various degrees around here) sent me the family recipe for it, so I was going to make some. It involves the use of a packet of yeast and letting the dough rise several times. Then I remembered Jesus saying that the kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman hides in the dough. Matthew 13:33 to be precise. When I made the fastnachts that weekend, I mixed yeast in dough and left it by the woodstove for two hours. When I came back, the dough had doubled in size.

It's goofy Christian metaphor time!!!!!one!!eleventy!

All my life Christ has had a presence that has been fairly constant, but in the last few years, it sort of kicked into overdrive. I became a very religious person rather quickly. And every time I thought I'd reached some sort of plateau, something new would present itself and I'd be led in a direction I hadn't even known existed half the time, let alone considered. It's like I was some kind of dough and the yeast started going to work. I started going to UPUMC in the fall of 2006. In May of 2007 I joined. I went to a book signing by Tony Jones in February 2008 and met Nadia. By that fall I was on the worship committee at House, knowing I'd be going back to school for a PhD in Religious Studies at some point. I've been reading voraciously about 'emerging' theories, philosophies, theologies, worship styles. Take This Bread was given to me, and made me realize that I wanted to be ordained too.

It's like God keeps upping the ante, even as what I thought my life would be like personally and professionally has fallen into shambles. It is during this time I've really come to understand theology of the cross. I am weak, broken, arrogant, egotistical, whiny, and messed up, and I can't do shit without the help of God. Knowing that I am completely at Her mercy was a scary place to come to, and doesn't make any sort of rational sense, and yet here it is. Everything has come down to this, and as I look for new employment and look forward to the future, I hope that my next steps will be guided to where I can do the most good for the situation I'm in.

As for the 'emerging' church, I'm keeping my eyes and ears open. I'm involved with Organic Faith here in Buffalo, which doesn't actually define itself as 'emerging'. It's a great little fellowship. I'm also interested in the conversation, who controls it, who gets left out, etc. Christianity21 was a clever way of making sure women's voices are getting heard. But if women and POC don't continue to have their voices heard in the arena, the point will be moot. Hence this blog, even if only 5 people read it.

Up soon, I hope to have a book review of The Next Reformation. I was going along pretty well with it until a particular line stopped me dead in my tracks. And I am itching to write about it! But I have to finish the book.

In conclusion: yeast. Doughnuts. Mmmm...doughnuts. I should stop at Tim Horton's on the way home.

Just a note - a real post later

The selection of books at the local Christian bookstore is extraordinarily depressing, even if they can order a Rob Bell book for my grandma to give to someone. I look at the authors and titles available and understand Carl Raschke's claim that modern Christianity is nihilistic. It certainly seems to be full of scribes and pharisees...

Just a personal beef...I feel like whenever I hear people say, "Jesus is coming" I want to yell, "He's already here, you're just not paying attention." I'm mad at them for being oblivious to the Christ around them. I'm mad at myself for the same reason.

The two girls behind me are talking about weddings. This also makes me feel nihilistic.