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Begin at the beginning. (on writing, and any other creative exercise)

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When you first start to write, it is not the time to edit. Don’t even slow down to check quotes or references. Just write. Write big and loose. Go wherever you feel called to. Jot down any idea that comes to you, even if it seems unrelated. The fact that the idea came to you while you were writing on that subject means it is connected somehow. It might be leading you somewhere really good.

I start with something I call seeds. Any idea can be a seed. Any idea can be the start to something great. I have a lot of them. I carry a small notebook with me at work so that whenever I have an idea I can jot it down. Those seeds then form the basis of what I start with when I have time to write.

Then is when I water the seeds. I take the time to add more words. I fill out the ideas. Sometimes my seeds are just a few lines, like four or five sentences. They are the basic ideas that I want to get across, but they aren’t filled out. I then take time to add to them so there is a logical connection between them. Then while I’m writing other ideas will come to me on that topic and I’ll add them. Sometimes I don’t know where these ideas are coming from, but I add them in anyway. This too is not the time to edit.

Once you feel like you are done, it is time to prune. Your seed has grown up into a big plant because of all the work you have done on it. Sometimes it has grown up too big and needs to be divided. Sometimes it is a bit messy and ugly looking because of typos or weird connections.

For me, there is a wave of energy that I feel when I’m adding to a piece, and when that wave dissipates I take the time to edit. Some sections work better than others. Some sections would work better being combined. Some sections need to be at the beginning, but I thought of them at the end. That is the joy of writing on a computer. It is really easy to edit.

I’m a big fan of writing longhand on paper because I don’t get distracted by the clicks of the keyboard on the computer and I don’t have to slow down to fix the weird autocorrect on the tablet. It is a lot more seamless. It goes faster. I think it is important that whatever tool you use to write, it doesn’t get in the way. You don’t think about it much, so you can concentrate on writing. But when I write on paper, I then have to type it up. I actually am envious of Neil Gaiman who has an assistant type up all his writing. The convenience of pre-writing on the computer or tablet is just too much to pass up so I’ve started doing that all the time. I’ve realized that I get about five hours during the week (in bits and pieces) at work that I am free to write. That is a lot of time.

Ideally, I’d get to write in several places at once. It would be nice to have three or four pieces I’m working on and be able to go to them wherever I am. I could start a topic at home on my computer, and then work on it a bit on my tablet at work, then finish it back at home on the computer. So far I’ve not found a way to do that. I don’t edit on the tablet because the last time I tried to cut and paste I lost three paragraphs forever. So I use it for raw writing. I then email what I’ve written to myself and I copy and paste it into a new Word document at home.

I usually have four or five different topics I’m working on at a time. Sometimes I’m more drawn to work on one. Sometimes I go to one because I don’t know what to write for the other ones yet. Sometimes I don’t feel like I’m ready to write on one because I am too close to it. Sometimes I feel like the yetzer hara, (the “evil inclination” that is referred to in Jewish philosophy) is trying to keep me from writing about what needs to be written about. I really want to blast on the “prosperity gospel” but I feel blocked right now. The fact that I’ve named it might give me the energy to work on it later.

I have at least 60 seeds on my computer. If I don’t have an idea of what I want to write about in the morning, I’ll look at them and see if any are interesting today. I’m ok with the idea that some may never grow. Some end up being grafted together. Some I’ll work on for a bit and find it is going nowhere. I then leave it and will work on it another day. Or not. At least I’ve spent some time on it. Any writing is better than no writing, and what I’ve done doesn’t go away. I’m closer to finishing that piece now. Even if I never finish that one, the fact that I wrote at all will help me with the next piece. Discipline and consistency is part of it. The only way to be a writer is to write.

I don’t feel like I have to have a finished post every day. I have a goal of three posts a week so I do have to be diligent and actually finish something every now and then. That is part of the problem – I have a lot of seed-starts. Because of the writing I’m doing at work on breaks I have a lot of one and a half page starts. Right now I’m getting a lot of new ideas so I’m trying to gather them in so I don’t lose them. I feel like I’m saving up for a dry spell when no ideas come. Then I’ll have pieces to work on because I’ve saved them now. Maybe I won’t have a dry spell, and ideas will keep coming and I’ll just have an excess. Who knows? Maybe the excess of ideas is a trick from the “evil inclination” to keep me from finishing up other things. Maybe even writing about writing is an excuse to not work on something important.

Sometimes writing is like going on an adventure. Sometimes it is like driving down a road. You have an idea where you think you are going. So you get started with the name of the city in mind. You drive a little way and you see an interesting store you’ve never noticed. So you stop. You get sidetracked. There is an alleyway that calls to you. Or you see a billboard for an attraction you’ve never heard of. You may never get where you were headed but that isn’t always the point. If you are writing creatively it is ok. Now, if you have an assignment then you have to rein it in and not go wandering everywhere. You may end up writing two different things- the one for the class and another for fun.

Sometimes the answer is within the asking. Sometimes just by writing the question you will hear the answer. That is the most magical part about writing. When done right, writing is like praying. You write, and you hear the answer. You learn from writing. You end up in places you never thought you’d go, and all from the comfort of your favorite writing chair.

How do you know when you are finished? Sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you’ll want to keep working on a piece over and over until you feel it is perfect. It won’t ever be perfect. It will be what it is right now. Sometimes it is good to just stop and let it go. You may have more to say on that topic later. Then write some more – but not on that piece. Start fresh. But just write.

By the way – the same rules apply for any creative exercise. Painting, beading, embroidery – the same is true. Just start. And then keep going. Or to quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland – “’Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.’”

All things work together for good.

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There is a song I heard on the radio this morning. The group is “Jesus Culture” and the song is “Your Love Never Fails.” The line that really got to me was “You make all things work together for my good.” It didn’t get to me in a good way. There was a very strong emphasis on the word “my.” And the verse didn’t sound right. So I looked it up.

Here’s the problem. That isn’t the verse. It is – “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” (NIV, Romans 8:28) This was written by the apostle Paul.

There is a big difference in these lines.

Yes, God works for the good. Not your good, necessarily. Good. The good. The good of all. All things work out how they are needed to work out to fulfill the will of God.

I want to yell – stop having a self-centered theology.

God didn’t even rescue his own Son. Defiled, reviled, spat upon, abused. Killed in a gruesome, painful, agonizing way. For nothing. For raising the dead. For healing the broken. For letting people know that they have within them the ability to mend the brokenness in the world if they but call upon the Holy Spirit.

Now, this verse from Paul is very good. It is very healing and hope-fillled. It is a good verse to hold on to when things seem to be falling apart. Divorce. Job loss. Cancer diagnosis. House fire. Tornado. Death of a friend. These are all terrible things to go through.

This verse reminds us that it isn’t our plan that is important. It is God’s plan. Remember the Lord’s Prayer? We say “Thy will be done.” Not “My will be done.” The prayer is a reminder to ourselves that we aren’t in charge. Thank God for that. Look what we’ve done to mess this place up already. We don’t know what we are doing. We shouldn’t be left in charge. But we remind ourselves every time we say that prayer that God is in charge. We aren’t giving God the power – we are acknowledging that He has it. “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.” It isn’t ours. It is God’s.

To say that God makes everything work out for our good isn’t true. We aren’t special because we love God. Yes, God loves us. God loves everybody. He went to the trouble of making everybody because He needs us and loves us. Sure, you are special, along with all 7 billion other people. Don’t start getting a big head about it. There has to be a balance – you are loved and special, but so is everybody else.

Let’s look at the story of Joseph, starting in the 37th chapter of Genesis. His brothers aren’t very nice to him, to put it mildly. He gets stripped of his cloak, thrown into a cistern and then sold off to traders who were headed to Egypt. It wasn’t looking very good there for him. His father was convinced by his brothers that he’d been mauled by a wild animal. He spent some time in jail because he was falsely accused to trying to entice his master’s wife. Eventually he got out and was seen as wise because he correctly interpreted a prophetic dream that Pharaoh had. Because of that dream he knew that a famine was coming and they had to conserve food.

Near the end of the story we find out that it all was for the good that all this bad stuff happened. In Genesis 45:4-7 (NIV) we hear “4 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! 5 And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. 6 For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and reaping. 7 But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.”

He forgave them. He told them that everything that he had been through had been so that his family would be saved. By extension, it meant that the entire future nation of Israel would be saved. If he hadn’t gone through that hard time, all the Jewish people would have failed to come into existence.

But he didn’t go through all that so that he, Joseph, would benefit.

There is a big difference.

God is awesome, and powerful, and amazing. But God doesn’t work things out so that we have a great life or an easy one. God does what God does because it needs to be done. We have to live through difficulties. If we love God, we trust Him. If we trust God, we know that it is all going to work out the way that it needs to. There is something Zen-like in this trusting, this faith. There is something very difficult and yet very easy about this. It seems very passive, but it is very active.

In silence, the tree

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In silence, the tree.
Sitting under a tree, so often, alone.
Alone, but with God.
My abandonment by my parents made me
seek my true Parent, my Source,
my beginning and my end.
Where I came from, and where I will go.

In death, the tree
still. A place of silence for mourners.
Grown from an acorn in the hand,
nourished by the ashes of bones.
Live giving energy from the litter of leaves,
life from death.

The tree of silence,
the tree I walked so fast to I thought
my lungs would burst.
To sit under, alone
when my parents were again
arguing. Unreasonable. Unlistening.

Under that tree I knew God was listening.

It isn’t our tree. It isn’t a shrine.
It isn’t the bodhi tree of the Buddha,
sat under by bored and scowling monks,
waiting, waiting, waiting.
It isn’t the tree in the garden,
the tree of temptation.
Who would put poisoned candy
within reach of children anyway?
(Is that the truth of Sleeping Beauty?)

It is the tree of Zacchaeus,
desiring to see the Lord,
stunned that he was noticed
and singled out.

It is the tree in a flood,
a place of refuge, a sure point.
It is the tree of the cross.

I sit at the base, alone
yet surrounded by then and now and
future, of past and far away
witnesses to the
Glory that is God.

It is the tree in the backyard
At the group home –
I didn’t know where I was.
I didn’t know who those people were.
I didn’t know how to get home.
But I knew that tree was safe.

The light was bright on my
pale skin, but I knew the leaves
would protect me.
Natural sunscreen, that green shade.

How frightened I was by that rope,
frayed, high up
like a snake, a lariat, a noose.
The electric fear even now
lets me know
I am safe.

My fear of death, of
harm to myself at my own hand
is so great I feel a charge,
a shock, a jolt.
That knife laid out on the counter is a sign.
My fear of it lets me know that I’m safe.

God is stronger than my weakness,
And God needs my weakness to
get in.

Epthatha.

(I was at a retreat on 4-6-13 and we were told to sit in silence and think about something that was big that happened to us for 20 minutes. We were to try to remember the sensations of being there. I thought I was going to think about when my parents died, but the image of me sitting under a tree came to me. I decided to go with it, and I thought about all the times I had sat under a tree. There are a lot. And I thought about what that meant. I spent a lot of time alone as a child. I’m coming to understand that. I’m beginning to process that. I think the abandonment by my parents caused me to seek God.)

Eve was framed.

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So many denominations teach that women are evil. They teach that all sin came from Eve. They teach that she ate from the forbidden tree and dragged Adam down with her. They use this twisted version of the story to justify not allowing women to be ministers, as well as justifying husbands being abusive to their wives.

Read the story for yourself, and then walk along with me here. Eve was framed. If you don’t have a Bible nearby, you can follow along with the website biblegateway.com. That is where I’m copying all these verses from, and I’ll be using the New International Version, partly because it is the default translation on that page. Feel free to use other translations. You’ll see the same story.

In Genesis 2:9 we learn that there are two trees in the center of the Garden of Eden. “In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” There isn’t just one tree in the center, like we are often told when others do the explaining for us. Already we learn that something might be different here. Maybe we have been deceived.

The Lord God created Adam first, in Genesis 2:7, and in Genesis 2: 16-17 we read “16 And the LORD God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.”

Then Eve is created. In Genesis 2: 18-22 we hear the story of how Eve was created from Adam’s rib. Please note that she wasn’t in existence when the rule to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. We are left to presume that Adam told her that rule. The rule is not repeated to her in the text. But we will soon see that something went wrong in the transmission. Just like in the game of “telephone” when we are children, the story changes a bit when it is shared from person to person.

In Genesis 3:1-3 we read “Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the LORD God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” 2 The woman said to the serpent, “We may eat fruit from the trees in the garden, 3 but God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die.’”

Wait. Let’s compare that with what God told Adam. Yes, He said to not eat of the tree of knowledge. He didn’t say anything about not touching it. There is our proof that something went wrong in the transmission, and that Eve wasn’t told this by God. Eve got this secondhand from Adam. Some might use this as an excuse that women should listen to what their husbands say as if it came from God. If that is true, then the husband needs to repeat what God said exactly and not start changing it.

And, let us remember that neither of them had yet eaten of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were innocents. They had no way of knowing right from wrong. They didn’t have the capacity to understand their actions at that point.

Then it gets really interesting. In Genesis 3:6 we hear this – “6 When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.”

Look at that last sentence. Adam was with her. He was standing right there the whole time that the serpent was tempting Eve. He didn’t speak up. He didn’t counter the serpent. He didn’t say anything. He let his wife do something that he knew to be wrong. He was fully aware of what was going on.

They eat the fruit together. Then the jig is up. They’ve become self-aware. They realize they are naked and they hide. God goes out to find them and asks what happened. Adam says to God in Genesis 3:12 “The woman you put here with me—she gave me some fruit from the tree, and I ate it.” How passive can you get? He sounds like she forced it on him. He knew what tree the fruit came from. He had the direct knowledge from God that he shouldn’t eat from that tree. He was standing right there with her when the serpent was trying to deceive her, and said nothing. And then he blamed her and acted like she forced the fruit on him.

Eve was framed.

Spiritual midwifery

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We can’t really teach feelings easily. It isn’t like we can say they have a certain color. We can’t use our normal senses to know that something is happening that we need to deal with. When you see the color red on a traffic signal, you know to stop. When you smell smoke, you know to look for fire. When you hear an ambulance siren you know to pull over to the right hand side of the road.

But we don’t have such easy clues with feelings. When we have feelings in our bodies we just have to experience them and learn what they mean. When we are children our parents teach us to recognize what it feels like to need to go to the bathroom. We learn that this feeling means we need to tinkle, while this feeling means we need to poop. Knowing what those feelings represent means that we then know how to handle them. We know to find a bathroom. We learn that we can’t ignore that feeling. The same is true of being nauseous. We soon learn that sad lurching feeling means it is time to get up close and personal with a sink or a toilet or a bucket. Something very unpleasant is about to come out. If we hold it in we will get very ill.

We don’t have that kind of training with other feelings. We don’t learn how to recognize and deal with pain, with anger, with anxiety, with grief. We don’t even talk about the feeling we have in out bodies when we feel these things. We don’t name what is going on, and we don’t train in how to deal with it.

When my parents died I was alone in my grief. I was young, and most of my friends were just as inexperienced as I in handling such an overwhelming situation. They didn’t know what to do so they did nothing. They left me alone. I didn’t have any idea of how to handle an estate, much less how to handle my feelings. Coming from a family where real emotions weren’t discussed didn’t help either. There was an elephant in the room and his poop was piling up. And there I was alone having to shovel it.

So I didn’t. I didn’t know what the problem was so I certainly didn’t know how to handle it. In the meantime I handled the estate and fended off my opportunistic brother. My brother disappeared for a year when Mom was sick and dying with cancer. You can be assured he showed up when it was time to handle the estate. He had not only not helped while she was dying, he had attacked me, saying I wasn’t doing enough to help her. Hopefully you see the irony in his words.

Because he was older, I was hoping I could look up to him. I was hoping to be able to get help from him. Instead I got pain, and deceit, and manipulation. In a time of great vulnerability I got swooped on by a vulture. There had been glimmers of this attitude of his all my life but especially while Mom was sick. She was so sad to realize how he was acting towards me. In a way, it wasn’t a surprise. The title of “big brother” was just a place holder. He had never protected me or mentored me as a child. Why would he start now? I said to her that it was like I was going to go on a hike up a rocky mountain, and I’d just bought a walking stick. I’d rather it break on the lower levels than break higher up when I needed it. My brother had shown me that he wasn’t dependable. I had learned that I would have to rely on myself.

But I still hadn’t learned how to identify and deal with my feelings about this. This was just a part of many co-occurring problems. Boundaries? There were no boundaries in my childhood. Both my brother and father stole from me. Both of them found it was easy. Both of them felt it was their right. Neither apologized or repaid me. Also, I’m just now coming to realize how much time I was alone as a child. Neglect is a form of abuse. I was tested and declared “gifted” in second grade. My Mom noticed how quickly I picked ideas up, so she thought she didn’t have to teach me. This makes no sense. Yes, I generally understand things quickly, but I still have to learn them. I didn’t come out of the womb with pre-loaded instructions like in The Matrix. She never taught me how to clean the house or cook or garden. I can write a fine English essay but I can’t keep house.

So there were many feelings at that time, and even now. Grief. Betrayal. Abandonment. Loss. I didn’t even know I was supposed to feel angry then. I didn’t even know that anger was healing. When you are angry you stop being passive. You stop letting things happen to you. In the beginning there is a sense of victim-hood. Move past that into knowing that you don’t deserve what has happened to you. Move right into a sense of here is my line in the sand, and from here you can go no further.

Perhaps we don’t recognize our own hard feelings because we are embarrassed about them. But if we don’t name them and face them we end up being consumed by them. When I didn’t process my grief, my anger, my loss, I turned it inward. It grew. It festered. I smoked pot for years to keep it at bay. Then I decided I wanted to get sober. I decided it was time to grow up. Four years after my parents died I quit smoking pot and all those feelings came back. I was constipated with grief. I was nauseous with betrayal. I got sick. I had been self-medicating for years but I’d only been covering up the symptoms, not treating the disease.

The result? I had a manic episode. Everything got amazing. Everything became suffused with the light of God. I felt safe and loved and protected in a way I’d never felt before, and certainly never felt with my family. But something was wrong. I didn’t sleep. For three days I was up, and my brain wouldn’t turn off. For three days I was higher than I’d ever been on drugs. I called other friends and they came to look at me and talk to me. They decided it was time to take me to the hospital.

It wasn’t a surprise to me that this was happening. My father had been manic depressive. It is as if you are raised in a household where a family member has diabetes. If you develop it, you figure out pretty fast what is happening and you know what to do. I was so out of my mind that the nurses at the mental hospital thought I had been taking acid or some other hallucinogen. It was a few days after being there and getting on medication (and sleep and regular food) that I started to approach being human again. One night I felt very ill, like I needed to throw up. I was on “constant eye” at the time, meaning there was always a nurse nearby watching me. One was very concerned when I had dry heaves and asked me what was wrong. I remember saying “I can’t speak it.” Out of the depths of my grief, that was all I could say. I didn’t have words. I didn’t know how to get this bad feeling out of me. Trying to vomit made sense somehow. Somehow she understood that it was grief that was eating me up inside. Through the grace of God she knew what was the cure. We went outside, by ourselves, in that cold January dawn and we sat at a wrought iron table. We talked about loss and pain and grief. It was then that I truly started to get better.

That nurse healed me more than any pill ever could. She identified the source of my pain and knew how to lessen it. It had become a huge ugly pearl inside of me That chunk of grief and loss and betrayal had grown and grown into something larger than any one person could ever think to process. It had grown up, layer by layer, year by year.

I think there are some feelings we can’t handle on our own, but our society prides itself on people being independent. We also have a lot of alcoholism and drug abuse. This is no coincidence.

I know it is hard to ask for help and it is also hard to know how to help others. What I am learning is that you don’t have to solve the other person’s problem. You just have to listen. Just like a midwife doesn’t make the baby come out, the caring person’s job isn’t to take out the problem. The job of both is to help the other person do it by being supportive and loving. As a spiritual midwife the goal is to make a safe place so the other person can give birth to themselves.

Hanging out with Jesus.

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I went to my spiritual director on Wednesday. I’m trying to think of a spiritual director as a guru for Christians. It was strongly recommended that I find a spiritual director because I had started the process to decide if I was being called to the ordained ministry in my church, specifically as a deacon. While that process is on hold, I’m still going to my spiritual director. I find she is very helpful. It is like therapy without any drugs or annoying office music.

We talk about all sorts of things, and a lot of them don’t seem to have anything to do with getting closer or farther away from God. She’s stated that her goal is for me to have “intimacy with Jesus.” These words are totally foreign to me as an Episcopalian. We don’t talk about Jesus being our buddy and pal in church. We don’t talk about inviting him into our hearts. We talk about him, sure, but we don’t really talk with him. We certainly don’t invite him to hang out with us.

She offered me a thought exercise yesterday that I found to be very powerful. Think of the story of Zacchaeus in the 19th chapter of the book of Luke. He was the short tax collector who wanted to see Jesus in the crowd, so he ran up ahead and climbed up a tree. Jesus saw him up the tree and called for him to come down and then invited Himself over to Zacchaeus’ house to have supper. Now that you have the story in mind – imagine that you are Zacchaeus. Imagine climbing up that tree. Imagine Jesus looking at you, noticing you up in that tree. Imagine how you would feel. Imagine him saying he wants to come over to your house to have supper. Your house. With you.

Try to get over the terror that your house isn’t clean enough. Do you have enough food? Where will everybody sit? Feel through how will Jesus respond to this. Remember, this is Jesus. He made a feast out of a few loaves of bread and some fish. He can handle half of a leftover hamburger and black olive pizza and two bottles of Killian’s.

That is the kind of intimacy that she is aiming for. To see Jesus as a real person who wants to be with you. Who wants to come over and spend time with you. Her recommendation is to invite him into everything you do, all day long.

I didn’t go right to work that day after seeing her. I went to tutor ESL kindergarteners, teaching them English. I think Jesus is totally down with that idea, so I had no problem inviting him along. I think Jesus is all about welcoming the stranger and making him feel at home.

Then I went to work. So I invited Jesus to hang out there too. Part of my job that day was cleaning up damaged books. I felt a little weird inviting him to hang out with me while I was cleaning muddy books. I felt a little weird inviting him into being with me while going through the mundane task of checking in armload after armload of books and movies that get returned. But then I thought about it. I like hanging out with my husband. Perhaps this is the same kind of thing. Real friends just like being with you, no matter what you are doing.

I’m OK with the idea of looking for Jesus in other people. This is seeing them in the way that Mother Theresa did – that every person was Jesus in disguise. I’m also OK with serving every person as if I was Jesus. This is serving them in the way that Saint Theresa of Avila did. She said that Christ has no hands or feet on this Earth but hers. The idea is to literally be the Body of Christ.

But I feel odd about inviting Jesus in to everything in my life. This sounds selfish of me to ask. Surely He has better things to do. Surely He has other places to be. Now I don’t think I’m proud. I eat leftovers. I regularly shop at Goodwill. I ask for financial assistance when I need it. But to ask Jesus to be with me, all the time? Isn’t that needy?

When I was writing this I felt the answer. He’s bigger than I can imagine. He is everywhere. He can handle being with me and with everyone else who needs him. And we all need him, even if we think we don’t. Even if we think we’ve got it all covered and everything is fine. Especially then.

I suspect Jesus wants to be with us, to be invited into everything we do, all the time. I suspect he’d love to be with us in our joyful moments as well as our sad ones. He’s just like a good friend – you share birthdays and graduations with them, but you also share the news of your cancer diagnosis and the funeral of your parents. Real friends want to be with you all the time. They may not know what to do in those hard situations, but they know that just being around is helpful.

I thought of those people who refuse to take Communion because they feel unworthy. I remember a conversation at church with a friend who didn’t want to let the priest wash her feet on Maundy Thursday. I think of both things like this – it is like being invited over to a friend’s house and then refusing their hospitality. They have made lemon and ginger tea and cooked up some fine snickerdoodles for me. And I say I’m not hungry? Actually, I am hungry, but I think I’m being polite by refusing. What really is polite is to eat the cookies and drink the tea and say thank you. To refuse hospitality is rude. They went to the trouble for you. They want to make you happy – and you can make them happy by drinking the tea and eating the cookies that they went to the trouble of making for you.

So in the same way it is polite is to accept the friendship that Jesus wants to offer. Again, this is a totally foreign concept in every Episcopal Church I’ve been to. I don’t know why. I hear that this isn’t the case in all Episcopal Churches. I know it is very Pentecostal, but I’m too Orthodox to think I’d enjoy that kind of service. I like the ritual, I admit it. But I digress. Perhaps if more people were introduced to this concept they’d open up to it. I certainly think it is a good idea. I just had to be told about it. So I’m telling you.

So I invited Him into every hard thing yesterday. I invited Him to help me with my painful feelings, and feelings that I’m uncomfortable with. I saw a cover of People magazine that talked about an actress’s “brave goodbye.” It was a story about her death from cancer. I was reminded of my Mom’s death from cancer and got angry at how her death was just as sad but nobody knew about it. She wasn’t mourned by thousands of people. And then I started to think about all the other people who die anonymously. There is no reason that a celebrity’s death is more heartwrenching. I remembered – invite Jesus in. So He stood with me with those feelings of hurt and loss and betrayal and pain. He stands with me now as I remember those feelings.

This is part of what we are to do. This is part of what I learned in the pastoral care class. We aren’t there to solve problems. We are there to listen. We are there to be there. We are there so people aren’t alone in their times of pain and loss and darkness. But in order for me to learn how to be there for someone else, I have to learn how to let Jesus be there for me.

Perhaps part of my problem is I’m not sure how to be a friend. Perhaps part of my problem is I don’t know how to be on the receiving end of a friendship. I’ve spent so much of my life with people who I thought were friends who it turned out were only around when they needed me. When I had a problem they vanished, like a backwards version of Casper the friendly ghost. I remember several people saying after my parents died that they didn’t know what to do for me. So they didn’t do anything. They didn’t even call like usual. They left me alone. So I learned how to stand on my own.

I think I’ve been that way a lot with Jesus. I’ve seen him as an idea, a historical figure, instead of a real person who is immediately available. I’ve seen him as out there, instead of in here, in my heart, in my life. This is a work in progress.

(I’ve intentionally not capitalized the pronoun “him” in here, in referring to Jesus. I’m trying to not distance him by using it that way.)

Elevator

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Today I’m going to meet Anne Lamott. She is signing her new book at the main branch of my library system. She is the author of “Traveling Mercies,” “Grace, Eventually,” and “Plan B.” All of these contain her thoughts on faith. She and Sara Miles are two of my favorite Christian authors. They both get into the trenches of faith and don’t pull any punches about how hard it is to live this life.

So many Christian authors talk about how wonderful their life got when they became Christian. They write that everything got better and easier. They live in really nice houses and drive really big cars. They write about the huge churches they started and how their congregation is growing every week.

This doesn’t synch up with what I’ve experienced.

I do not know what floor they got off on when they got on the elevator of Christianity. They must have gotten off on the floor that was marked “fancy stuff” and “easy street.” When I got on the elevator, I got off on the “broken people” floor. I got off on the “time for hard work” floor.

So many authors I’ve read have left me feeling like I didn’t do it right. That maybe I didn’t press the button hard enough. Maybe my prayers weren’t heard because I wasn’t trying correctly. Maybe my connection is faulty.

I feel like Anne Lamott and Sara Miles are my sisters in the trenches. They talk openly about how hard it is to be a Christian. Things break. New things don’t just start appearing. People are mean. Sometimes those people are the ones you go to church with. From reading Anne and Sara’s work, they’ve let me know I’m not alone in my experience. They’ve let me know it is OK for me to write about it too. They’ve affirmed me, and given me permission.

I feel that once you become a Christian, everything gets harder. You are aware of your responsibility. You realize how much you have not done well and it is time to make amends. It is like getting sober. In AA, part of the twelve steps is making amends to those people you wronged when you were drunk. Now you are aware of all the damage you’ve done, and now you have to try to fix it. There is no twelve step program in Christianity, or at least, not openly. But the same rules apply. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is the same thing. Part of showing love is making amends. You have to go rebuild that bridge if possible.

Anne and Sara both tell about how hard it is to go slogging into that muddy, raging river and digging up those stones to try to rebuild the bridge. They talk about how the person on the other side yells at you because they like the broken bridge just like it is, thank you very much. That person hasn’t been through the same experience you have, so he doesn’t want the bridge rebuilt.

But what about those who have decided to follow Jesus? Is it any easier to live and work with them? No. Not at all. You’d think we’d all be on the same team, working from the same playbook. You know, same Lord, same Bible. You’d be wrong, sadly. There are many times where I wonder what they are thinking when they say and do crazy things.

I just read about a lady who objects to the term “Deviled eggs” and they call them “Jesus eggs” in her house. It is this kind of stuff that I’m talking about. Then there are people who slaughter elephants to then take the ivory from their tusks and carve them into statues of Jesus. I can’t even begin to tell you how horrified I was when I read that story in National Geographic. It was a blog post from a local Rabbi that gave words to my feeling. Rabbi Rami Shapiro said “True religions teach you to see the Lord in the elephant, as the elephant, and not collude in the murder of the elephant to honor your Lord. Jesus died for your sins, not to excuse them.”

I’m not ready to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I think that Christianity has gotten a bad reputation, and it is often due to really whacked-out Christians. I feel the need to apologize for all of Christianity. We have sinned against God and our neighbors by not showing love. We have gotten sucked into the materialism. We have gotten greedy. We have gotten tripped up by the legalistic nature of religion. We’ve forgotten that Jesus came to fulfill the law – but by getting to the heart of it. Rather than fulfilling the letter of the law, he fulfilled the spirit of it. He worked on the Sabbath to heal a crippled man. So he broke one rule, but honored the real rule.

We humans often lack Jesus’ keen insight into what we are supposed to do. This is an understatement. The bad part is that there are a lot of sins that we Christians do, and we do them in the name of God. We are hostile to people who aren’t Christian. We are hostile to people who are Christian but aren’t members of our denomination. We are hostile to people who are in our denomination but don’t share our views. We argue over interpretations of the Bible – should we or shouldn’t we do this? We argue over whether we should have stained glass. We argue over whether women should be ministers. We argue over how old the Earth is. We argue over who can receive Communion.

We forget that everything that Jesus did was to teach us to love each other. To be servants.

Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do. Please send your Holy Spirit to us so that we can truly hear Your Word and be Your Body on this Earth. Give us the knowledge and strength to mend the divisions between us. Give us patient hearts to be loving and kind to everyone, seeing everyone as Your child. I ask this in the name of your Son, Jesus.

God is Love

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I used to be a bigot against gay people. Oh, sure I had gay friends. I was nice to all the gay customers at work. But, deep down, I was a bigot. That is the true name for it. I think it is important to be honest.

Plenty of people aren’t honest with themselves. They won’t admit that they are bigots. Plenty of people will say that they don’t judge gay people, but they just don’t approve of their lifestyle. They will use that “love the sinner, hate the sin” line. They will quote chapter and verse in the Old Testament section of the Bible where it says that homosexual behavior is an “abomination.” They will quote chapter and verse from a letter of the apostle Paul saying something similar.

I had been out of the Episcopal Church for a long time – I’d been out of church in general. When I returned a few years ago I learned about the schism that had been caused after the election of an openly gay, partnered gay man as a Bishop. This was in New Hampshire. Plenty of people left the church. They would rather leave the church than be a part of something they felt was wrong. I respect their right to do that. It is important to have choices and to be able to stand up for what you believe. I admit that I was a bit wary when I rejoined the church. This Bishop was not over my diocese, but I still thought about it. What if it happened here? And to be a Bishop, you have to be a priest first. What would I think if the priest in my church was gay?

Then I thought well, there’s the whole idea of sin in general. How much sin can any priest be a part of and I’m still OK with that? What if a priest is having an affair? What if a priest is an alcoholic? What is an acceptable level of sin? Are some sins bigger than others? And does it make it worse if the sin is openly admitted, and not even thought of as a sin?

Sure, I knew the line from Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” (NIV) and also Ecclesiastes 7:20 ”Indeed, there is no one on earth who is righteous, no one who does what is right and never sins.” (NIV) So that’s easy. We all sin. Everyone is a sinner. And sin is sin – there is no greater sin or lesser sin. It is an impurity, a “missing the mark.” It is any time you fail to act in the way that you know to be best.

Then I started to think about all the rules that went away when Jesus came. Things that were a big deal before him became non-issues. There are 613 commandments that Orthodox Jewish people must follow. The Ten Commandments are just a start. Everything changed with Jesus. After Jesus, men no longer had to cover their heads or have beards. It was totally OK to eat bacon. You could eat beef and cheese together. It was OK to mix wool and linen fibers when creating a garment.

Jesus boiled down everything to just two rules. He stripped it all away and made it a lot easier to follow. Matthew 22:37-40 tells us when He was asked what is the greatest commandment, “Jesus replied: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (NIV)

These words really got into me. They changed how I view sin. They changed how I view my relationship with my neighbor.

As Christians, we follow Christ. The rules of the Old Testament no longer apply. The opinions of Paul that are in the Epistles are only useful if they support what Jesus said.

What did Jesus say about homosexuality? Nothing. What did He say about judging others? Lots.

What did Jesus say we are to do? Show love. Love God, and love our neighbors. It is all about love.

Thus, being homosexual is not a sin. It is not in violation of either rule.

Thus, being judgmental against homosexuals is a sin. Saying that how they live is sinful is in fact, a sin. Making or allowing rules or laws to exist that are against them so that they are not equal members of society, is sinful.

I am pro gay rights BECAUSE I am a Christian.

Thanks be to God.

Security System?

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It doesn’t matter how good your security system is if you leave your front door open.

I got a letter from a company I’d never heard of telling me that they’d been monitoring my credit for me and they thought that there was a problem. They said that it looked to them like someone had been using my credit. Their remedy – fill out this form and include my social security number and send it to yet another company I’d never heard of.

The bad part is that I suspect that a lot of people will fall for this trick.

This is an elaborate pfishing attempt. Instead of an email from a bogus company with a suspicious link, this was mailed. Instead of giving away my email password, they wanted my social security number. The letter was well written – there were no grammatical errors.

I could have the best credit protection that money could buy and it would mean nothing if I just handed over my social security number to these jokers. Now, this doesn’t even address the idea that we shouldn’t be using social security numbers for anything other than social security, but we do, all the time. That may be the topic of another post.

My first clue that something was amiss was that it was written to one of my aliases. I’d subscribed to something, perhaps a magazine, a long time ago and used a bogus middle initial. They used this one. The bad part is that I don’t remember who I started that with so I can’t track down who sold my mailing address. But what if it had been my real middle initial?

I suspect that older people will fall for this. They are often a little more worried about their security and more trusting of authority figures. They don’t know that they need to check things out for themselves. They are used to teachers and doctors and ministers telling them what to do. If my Mom were still alive she would have filled that out and not even questioned it.

Filling out that form is exactly the same as opening my door to a thief. I pay for home security. Every day when I leave I turn the alarm on. The smart thief wouldn’t even have to wait for a day when I forgot to turn it on. The smart thief would just knock on my door and be dressed like a UPS driver. I’d open the door and he’d kick his way in and it would be all over.

Failure to think for yourself or check things out on your own is the same as leaving your front door open.

Be smart. Question everything. Don’t trust authority just because it is authority. Read the rules for yourself. Read the fine print. Read the Bible for yourself. Don’t agree just for the sake of agreeing, and certainly don’t take my word for it.

Any person who expects you to take what they say without question is highly suspect.

Unclean!

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I’ve heard a lot of testimonies about people who have become Christian. They say that their lives have become easier. They gave their lives over to God and it all got easier.

I don’t know what they are talking about. I think it gets harder.

In my opinion, when you become a Christian, you become awake. You are aware of the awesome responsibility that you have to be a force for good in the world. You switch from being passive to active.

Yes, there is a sense of your “Higher Power” as they say in AA. You aren’t in charge (and you never were), and you know that God is in charge. You can relax in that sense. And there is the sense that once you are saved, you are then set for when you die. You know where you will go.

But what about in between now and then? Do you just get to sit back and be smugly happy that you’ve got “it” and others don’t? Is being Christian some ugly game of musical chairs, where the loser gets condemned to an eternity in Hell? That doesn’t sound very nice. It also doesn’t sound very Christian. Not really. Not in the true sense of the word.

It does sound like the modern brand of Christian, unfortunately. There are plenty of folks who wear that name like a shield against the rest of the world. They use it like a “get out of jail free” card. They feel like it means they are set – they will live forever. But they then are arrogant about it. They lord The Lord over people. But life isn’t a game of Monopoly. It really isn’t about getting and buying more stuff and about screwing over other people on the way.

When I became Christian I didn’t get a full grasp of what it meant, and I suspect that I still don’t know the full depth of what my responsibilities are. I certainly don’t feel like I do it right all the time. I feel like it is a process, and instead of “Being” Christian, it is more like I’m “Becoming” Christian. It feels like every year I grow deeper into my faith and closer to understanding what the Bible means. I still find the idea of Jesus as “The WORD made flesh” really interesting and I think I have no real clue what that means. I think I have a glimmer of a hope of understanding it.

I feel like the most important thing about being a Christian is that it isn’t a free pass to Heaven. It is marching orders to the front lines of Hell. We are called to be Christ’s Body in this world. Literally. We are His arms and His legs. When folks say “How could God let that happen”, the real answer is “How can we, agents of God, let that happen?” We are to be a force for good. We are to bring forth God’s love. We are to let God work through us.

Jesus didn’t hang out in the swank part of town. He didn’t buy a huge mansion and wall himself off from the world. He was a man of the people. He walked out among average, everyday people who were lost and hungry and sick. He got right in the middle of the tangled knots of life and untangled them. He was a hands-on kind of guy.

He touched lepers. Nobody did that. Lepers were “unclean” in all the ways possible. They had an infectious skin disease that meant they had to live outside of the camp with other lepers. They didn’t get to see their families. They didn’t get to hang out with their friends. It was a lonely existence. They had to wear bells to announce they were lepers to anyone who might come near. If you touched a leper, then you too were considered “unclean.”

But Jesus didn’t care about that. He not only associated with lepers, He touched them, and He didn’t catch leprosy. He healed them.

It makes me wonder, how much of their healing was just being acknowledged by another person? How much of the healing was just being noticed AS a person? Every single person Jesus healed was precious to Him. He violated so many rules that were in place at that time – touching lepers, dead people, women who had menstrual problems. Any one of these conditions would render a person unclean in those days. None of these rules stopped him.

Jesus not only showed us what to do, he empowered us to do it. He showed us that we are to heal others. He gave power to heal to His disciples and through the power of apostolic succession we have that power too. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we have it. Be assured – if you are Christian, you have that power.

So what is our modern day leprosy? What are the conditions that people find themselves in that make them excluded from society? What conditions make people pariahs? What conditions create invisible social walls that make people “unclean” in our society’s eyes? Thus – what places are we called to break down those walls and build bridges?

How about mental illness? How about being a single mother? How about AIDS? How about being gay? There are others, but this is a good start.

If you are a Christian, you have the power to heal. You have within you the means to bring forth God’s mercy and healing. All you have to do is let it happen. You don’t need special training. Just pray, and Jesus will show you how. It is that easy, and that hard. It is terrifying at first. It goes against all of our social rules. Don’t talk to strangers. Don’t get involved. Don’t make a scene. We are called to be in the world, but not of the world. The rules of society no longer apply. Jesus broke rules all the time. We are called to do the same. This often means getting out of your comfort zone. This often means taking a risk. It isn’t easy, but it is essential.

Now, it isn’t about passing judgment, and it certainly isn’t about passing laws against people. These actions create separation. We are called to bring together all the lost sheep. We are to show love and kindness and mercy to everyone. We are not to tell others that what they are doing is wrong in our opinion. We are to love them. By loving them, we are healing them. We are healing the rifts that divide people into “us” and “them”.

How do you bring forth healing? One way is to treat every person as if they are Jesus in disguise. This is how Mother Theresa acted. She felt that it was her honor to wash Jesus’ wounds when she washed a leper. She held Jesus in her arms when a frail elderly person died. You don’t have to work at a non-profit to do this. You can do this in your everyday job. Treat each person fairly and kindly. Don’t gossip. Be patient. Show actual interest in each person. Give each person your full attention and your time. When you start doing this you may find it is a little overwhelming and exhausting. Keep it up. It gets easier. It is just like exercise – you get stronger the more you do it.

We are given two commandments – love God, and similarly, love your neighbor as yourself. Every person is a child of God. Every person has within her or him a spark of the light of God. So, treat every person with kindness and respect and love. In Matthew 22:37 we hear these words from Jesus – “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” We, as Christians, are called to show the same focus and intensity to “the least of these”, to the “unclean”, to everyone.