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Monthly Archives: June 2013

Waking up (answering the call)

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I’m often very slow to answer a call. Whether it is a call from nature or a call from God, I’m slow. I’ve just realized this. I’ve just put these things together. I’m figuring that by working on one, I’ll be working on the other at the same time. At the very least, noticing where there is a weakness means that it doesn’t have control over me.

I used to think it was just that I was slow to answer God’s call. After all, I’m bipolar. How am I supposed to know if it is God talking or if it is the disease talking? Now, bipolar disorder doesn’t usually manifest with hearing voices, but I’m just being careful. How do I know I don’t have an extra twist to my diagnosis? There are enough people who say they hear from God and it is more than obvious in their actions that they are making it up.

I think our society has done an amazing job of teaching people to question hearing from God. We joke about hearing voices in your head. Even mainstream church has taught people that hearing from God is something only prophets in the Old Testament did. It isn’t something that is done today.

I’ve long questioned what I’ve heard. I’ve long fought against it. I know things before they happen. I feel compelled to go up to total strangers and ask them if everything is OK, only to find out that it isn’t and they need help.

I’ve long fought against this, and been slow to respond. My church didn’t teach me how to recognize the voice of God, and that is the one place that should have. When I did finally come to accept what I was hearing, I was very slow in responding. I didn’t act. I feel that I’m going to get in further than I know what to do. I’m going to show up to something like a spiritual heart attack and all I have is a band-aid.

This is why I went to get training. I went to my minister three years ago and asked for training and oversight. I keep coming across people who are broken and hurting, and I want to help but I don’t know how. I want to gain the skills necessary to be helpful to them in their time of emotional crisis. I want to learn how to provide spiritual first aid. I figure training would help me to get over my hesitancy to answer God’s call. I’d know what to do. I also asked for oversight, so that others would make sure I was on the right path. Again, I didn’t want to be misled by my mind.

But my motives were questioned. I was put on hold. Three years went by before the process (the priest decided I was being called to be a deacon) even began, and then when it did I had to provide proof of when and where and by what priest and I was baptized. I had to provide proof of when and where and by what bishop I was confirmed. I had to provide certified copies of my college transcripts. I had to write my spiritual biography. I had to provide my financial records, to prove that I was a good steward of money.

This is all for a non-paying position. This is all for a job that would be over and above my real job that paid the bills, which was 40 hours a week already.

And I still hadn’t learned in that time how to discern if that voice I was hearing was God’s.

I did get to go to a Pastoral Care class, and that was helpful. On the surface, it was learning how to be a chaplain in a hospital. Deeper, it was about learning how to listen to people, really listen, in a deep way. It was about how to set aside my own fears and concerns and provide a safe place for the other person to get out their fears and concerns. It was like learning how to be a spiritual midwife.

I also got connected with a spiritual director. In order to go through the process, I had to meet with a spiritual director once a month. The fee for that is out of my own pocket. A spiritual director is kind of like a guru. She or he is trained in a divinity school usually, and the goal is intimacy with God. I’ve learned more from my spiritual director than I’ve ever learned from any minister in any church.

But I still haven’t learned how to determine what is God and what is in my head, and then to respond faster. I’m relaxing into it, however. I’m becoming my own teacher. This isn’t what I wanted, but it has to happen somehow. I’ve not gotten the help I wanted or needed from supposed experts, so I’ve gone off on my own.

It is sad that I asked for training on how to help people and I got challenged on it, and then I got delayed. I’d think that the desire to help people wouldn’t be so special that it needs a committee and assignments and paperwork. I think of all the people who are still just as lost and broken three years later, who still need help and didn’t get it because I was delayed.

I’m hurt. I’m angry. I feel deceived. I feel like I’ve been insulted and my time and energy has been wasted. I feel like I was being trained to wedge myself into the machine that is the church, to learn how to wait and respond to the bureaucracy of the church rather than how to wait and respond to the voice of God. The church would tell me that the two are the same, but you know a tree by its fruit, and something is rotten here.

I’m frustrated when I see someone who is homeless. I want to treat the cause, not the symptom. To give them a banana and a $20 bill is only going to help them right then. What about tomorrow?

There is a program in Nashville called Thistle Farms. It takes women off the streets, women who are drug abusers and prostitutes, and teaches them how to be human again. It is a two-year program, where they detox and learn job skills. While I admire the efforts of this program, I want to go backwards. I want to prevent people from becoming drug addicts and prostitutes to start off with. I want to prevent homelessness.

I don’t want to treat the symptom. I want to treat the cause. And I don’t know how.

And meanwhile I’ve left church because they not only didn’t support me but delayed me in my journey to understanding my calling. I’ve left church because the priest told me to not talk about God. I’ve left church because when I posted a blog about how far off the track I think church has gotten from the message of Jesus I got attacked instead of listened to.

I understand, a little. I understand how hard it is for members of the church, especially the priest, to accept that we are going in the wrong direction. I understand, because I felt that in church. I felt that I’ve wasted a lot of my time in church listening to somebody else’s interpretation of the Bible rather than being taught how to interpret it for myself – how to make it real, how to make it applicable to daily life.

It’s like I was given a really tasty cake every week but not taught the recipe. I want to learn how to make that cake myself. Then I want to share it with others.

That is part of what I’m trying to do here, with this blog. I’m trying to replicate what I’ve tasted, what I’ve experienced without a cookbook. I’m winging it. I think that just trying to figure it out on my own I’m getting pretty close to what it is.

I’m angry at every church I’ve ever been in for standing in my way. I’m angry at them for clipping my wings. I know it isn’t personal and it isn’t intentional. I feel like it was done to them too, so they didn’t know any better.

So in the meantime I muddle along. And I think there is something in the idea of getting faster at answering any call.

At the risk of getting too personal, I have a hard time waking up and going to the bathroom. I tend to lie there, in a mild state of discomfort, rather than getting up and just going. Or I have a tendency to be really cold and unwilling or unable to move enough to get a blanket to cover myself. I’m wondering if working on these things, these known physical needs, will help me with the rest. I’ll lie around, quietly miserable, and not do anything to help myself. I feel kind of paralyzed.

It is really hard to get disciplined when you are asleep.

It is hard enough when you are awake. It is hard to stop any bad habit and start a good one. It is hard to make time to exercise. It is hard to choose nutritious food rather than junk food. It is hard to divorce yourself from mind-numbing television shows and soul-eating relationships.

I feel that many of us are waking up, now, to ourselves, to our callings. I’m grateful. Our energy will carry over to others.

Notes from yoga class.

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A yoga class is kind of like a cab ride. You need to tell the driver where you want to go. If it is a basic, gentle class and you get a substitute teacher, you need to let her know what you expect. If she is working you too hard you may end up hating the class and the teacher. You don’t need that kind of energy at any exercise class, but especially a yoga class.

There is something amazing about yoga. It improves you physically and emotionally and mentally. It is about acceptance of your body as it is and about working on it to get better. It teaches physical and mental balance. There is something about twisting your body that unwinds your mind.

Yoga people end up also often becoming vegetarians. They are interested in organic food and recycling. The exercise is like an adjustment for your soul. It becomes a way of life that you take off the mat and into the world.

I’m so grateful for the generations of yogis who have learned all these moves. They have gone through hundreds of years of experimentation. I get to benefit from all their learning. They know that this posture helps with anxiety, and this posture helps with digestion. I don’t have to learn that from scratch, and I appreciate that.

This is true with everything. I don’t grow my own food. I don’t build roads. I don’t know about medicine. But I benefit from others that have been there before me. They are adventurers. They are trailblazers.

But there is something else that yoga teaches. You need to claim your class, and your life. If it is too much, either ease off or ask the teacher for a modification. The teacher doesn’t know that it is too much for you, or that you’ve broken your arm twice, or that you are pregnant.

It is amazing when I’ve spoken up about a problem in yoga class, or at work, or at school, and other people will chime in that they agree. Only then can the issue be addressed. Otherwise we would all continue to quietly suffer and become resentful.

The other people weren’t brave or confident enough to mention that there was a problem. Think of all the pain they could have saved themselves and others just by speaking up earlier. Perhaps they weren’t quite awake yet – they were suffering but didn’t know what the cause was. Perhaps they were just used to taking it, used to feeling bad. Perhaps they were taught by teachers or parents that their voice didn’t matter.

What are you being silent about?

What is broken, or doesn’t work, or is a problem, that you’ve just decided to accept? Are you waiting for someone else to speak up? What if everybody else is doing the same?

(This was begun on my Kindle while waiting for yoga class to start. It is very busy on Monday mornings and you have to get there early to get a space. I dislike wasting time so I wrote. I completed this after the class.)

Prosperity liars. (It isn’t the Gospel, it is deceit)

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I’ve always suspected that there is something wrong with the “prosperity gospel” preachers. I also think there is a connection between them and the “name it and claim it” people. At least the “name it and claim it people aren’t using religion and their authority of being a minister to delude and deceive. They are simple charlatans. But the ministers are what concern me. They have taken the Gospel of Jesus and turned it into the worship of money. They have made an idol of money and twisted religion into personal gain. They are taking Jesus’ message of selfless service and turning into selfish gain.

I’ve recently found a verse that specifically addresses this issue. Jesus says in James 4:3 “You ask and don’t receive because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your evil desires.” (HCSB)

Your motives for prayer have to be for good things. Not good things for yourself. Good things for the world.

They seemed to have missed that bit.

Often the “prosperity gospel” ministers use this parable of the talents to justify their message. It can be found in Matthew 25:14-30. You can look it up quickly on any Bible website – I use Bible Gateway. They point out that the one who didn’t make more money was punished. They don’t get that the servants were to make more money for their master – not for themselves. The master is God.

The parable isn’t really about money – it is about using your gifts well. “Talents” were a form of money, but it is a useful word, because “talent” also means ability or gift. An ability to sing or dance is a talent. An ability to encourage others or to write is a gift. It isn’t about money but about whatever way that God has blessed you. You are to use it to help others. If you yoke up your talents with the power of God, you’ll multiply them.

It can be likened to the story of the loaves and the fishes. One version of this story (it happened twice) is to be found in Matthew 14:13-21. I’d like to bring attention to the fact that early in this section, Jesus felt compassion for the people who had gathered, and he healed them. He didn’t heal them to make a name for himself, or to get bigger ratings on his TV show. He felt compassion. This should be the motivating force behind everything.

Then, when he took the five loaves and two fish, he did these things. He looked up into heaven. He blessed them (gave thanks). Then he broke them. Then he gave it to his disciples to give it to the people. 5000 people were fed, and there was a lot of food left over.

This is what Jesus wants. This is what God wants. This is the kind of prosperity that we need, and that we have access to. Take what is given to us, remember that it is from God (everything is), give thanks for it, and then be willing to break it. It has to be broken to let God get into the mix. We break things by “casting our bread upon the waters.” We break things by trusting God – we offer it forth. When we invest our money or time or effort in a worthy goal that we don’t know will succeed, we are breaking it. We aren’t holding onto it. It is the holding onto it that is the problem. When we hold on to it we aren’t trusting God to fulfill His part.

The other part of the problem is what do we intend to do with the fruit of our labor? Is it to help others, or ourselves? We really have to examine our goals in everything we do. Do we do it to build up our names? Do we do it to become famous and sought-after? Or do we do it in a sense of servant-hood, in a sense of letting God work through us?

In Acts 4:32-37 gives us a story of the early church, where we find that things were entirely different than they are today. “32 Now the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common. 33With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. 34There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold. 35They laid it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need.” (NRSV)

This is what the church is supposed to do. TFrom those who have, to help those who don’t have. People help each other out, and not just members of the church. The people who most need help are those who will never set foot in a church. And the help I’m talking about isn’t trying to convert them. Often people need a sandwich, not a sermon.

It isn’t about “every man for himself.” It certainly isn’t about your tithe paying for the light bill or anybody’s salary or for stained glass windows.

Part of the prosperity gospel” is saying that a sign that God loves you is that you are rich. They give the impression that God shows that he loves people by giving them lots of stuff, by making them prosperous. The unspoken assumption is that if you are poor, it means that God doesn’t like you at all.

What about in the Beatitudes, the “Blessed are…” phrases in Matthew 5:1-12? There’s no mention of the rich.

In fact, Jesus told a rich man to sell everything he had and follow him. Matthew 19:21 21 “If you want to be perfect,”[j] Jesus said to him, “go, sell your belongings and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow Me.”

He follows in verse 23 saying “23 Then Jesus said to His disciples, “I assure you: It will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven! 24 Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

If your minister is telling you that God wants you to make more money, run away. Your very soul depends on it. You are being deceived.

Authority and abuse.

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Abuse is abuse no matter who it comes from. It is easy to spot someone being abusive if they are a stranger or a bad guy on TV. It is much harder when it is a person in authority, or a person you should be able to trust. I’ve already written about some of this before but it is important enough to say again from a different perspective.

We are taught to give people the benefit of the doubt, and to give them second chances. We are taught to put our own needs second, or even last. We are taught to put up and shut up. But if someone is abusing you, you have not only the right but the obligation to tell them to stop, and if they don’t stop, then you have a choice. Continue to be abused, or leave the relationship.

I’ve already provided a list of helpful books in the “resources” section that I call “survival books”. They aren’t about how to start a campfire with a bit of string and wood, but they will keep you alive. Pick one or two of those to read and you’ll be on your way.

I was abused psychologically by my brother for many years. The breaking point was when I realized that if he was anyone other than my brother I would have left him years ago. I was operating under the Christian idea that I’m supposed to love my brother. While “brother” isn’t just literally “brother” but “everybody”, it is extra hard when that actual brother isn’t a nice person. He was (and probably is still) manipulative. He didn’t care about other people’s feelings. He only cared about what it meant to him.

After reading “Difficult Conversations” and “Codependent No More,” I decided to tell him how his behavior towards me made me feel. He backed off for a little bit, but then started with the same behavior all over again. He started slowly so I wouldn’t notice. It worked. Soon he was back to his same level of manipulation and guilt-trips and harassment. Soon I was feeling guilty for even saying anything. Perhaps I deserved this treatment. Perhaps I was supposed to take it. After all, this is my brother. Our Mom expected him to take care of me after she died. Older brothers are supposed to do that, right?

Then something amazing happened. I realized that he had addressed me as “Sister” for many years. I wasn’t even “Betsy.” I was a placeholder. I wasn’t a person. So I started to think. If he was anybody other than my brother, I wouldn’t even be talking to him. He isn’t a nice person. He certainly isn’t a friend. He can’t even be spoken to without expecting a confrontation. He was the kind of person where you could say “What a beautiful day it is outside!” and he would say “Are you saying it is time for me to mow the lawn?!” Every conversation went like that. He assumed that you were attacking him in some indirect way. My sister-in-law (a counselor) thinks he might be a paranoid schizophrenic. Perhaps he is. I don’t know. I just know he isn’t a nice person, and I took his abuse for way too long.

I want to encourage you to analyze your relationships. If you are not being treated as a valuable person, as a friend in all your relationships, then you need to speak up. Tell that person how you feel. Tell them how their words and actions make you feel. If they don’t take your words to heart, leave.

It is better to be alone than be in a relationship that is abusive. Our society doesn’t say this. Our society says that being alone means that something is wrong with you. I say that being together with an abusive person is far more wrong. Walk away. You can do better.

Now – here’s the big thing. This applies to everyone – regardless of position. We are taught to trust our family, and our friends, and our teachers, and our church. They are not to be questioned. They are supposed to be good to us. But remember the saying that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. People gain a certain level of power when they are in positions of authority. They gain even more when we give them free reign.

So if your parent, or your priest, or your politician does not treat you in a healthy, respectful way, speak up. If they don’t change, leave.

Fear is a terrible motivator. Let’s try love instead.

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Not too long ago I realized that fear was a terrible motivator for change. If you used fear as a motivator to lose weight, your fear usually ended up making you seek the very things that you didn’t need. You’d be afraid of diabetes or cancer but instead of using healthy coping mechanisms like exercise or meditation, you’d go back to smoking cigarettes or eating “comfort food” which is sadly never healthy. And then you’d be stuck in that ugly cycle again.

Love is a better motivator. You love how you feel after you eat a well-balanced meal. You love how you feel after you have a good night’s sleep. You love how you feel after you’ve had a walk around the block. Or you love your granddaughter, and you want to live long enough to see her get married and graduate from college. Or you love the book you are working on, and you want to finish writing it.

If you are working towards something, rather than running away from something, you are more likely to have good results.

I think the same thing is true with following Jesus. So many people try to sell the idea of Jesus as the boogeyman. They use him as a guilt trip, and try to drag you along for the ride.

They will say that you are going to burn in hell if you don’t follow Jesus. Or they will say that you can’t go to their church if you don’t follow him the way that they follow him. Or they say that you will be condemned by God. They are motivated out of fear. They will do what their pastor says, they won’t question anything, and they will stay within the lines of whatever proscription their church has set up for them.

I don’t know about you, but that kind of motivation never worked well for me. I’m a questioner. I’m a person who likes to ask “why”. In fact, I need to know the reason why I have to do something in order to know how to do it. It isn’t that I’m being difficult. I’m not trying to get out of whatever task I’ve been assigned. I just need to understand the “why” so I can understand the “how” and the “what”. Fortunately I had teachers who translated this as “gifted” instead of “obstinate”.

I never wanted the Jesus these fear-lead people were selling. The mean, overlord, high-school principle Jesus. The micromanaging boss Jesus. But sadly, these were the loudest people. This version of Jesus wasn’t what fit with what I read in the Gospels either. I needed a Jesus who was about love and service. I needed a Jesus who taught me how to humble myself, but not in a way that was belittling. I mean humble in a way that lets the light of God shine through, but using me as the lens. This way, I’m still there, but I’m not in the way. I become a vehicle, rather than a driver.

Consider two dogs. One is a service dog. He’s been trained to help a blind person with their daily life. He resists his own inner nature to chase the squirrel when he is crossing the street with his companion. This keeps his companion safe and headed in the right direction.

Or, alternately, there is a stray dog that got yelled at all the time by her owners. She was never trained how to behave properly, and she just gets yelled at every time she does wrong. All she hears is yelling. So this dog ran away from home and now cowers in fear all the time, never knowing when she is going to get yelled at.

The service dog has been humbled, but it is out of service and out of love. He resists his own inner nature that causes him to stray and act without thinking of the consequences. He serves another person, helping that person throughout the day. He is a guide in the truest sense. And it all started with proper training. The trainer taught the dog how to be the best dog it could be, with positive commands and encouraging desired behavior and ignoring unwanted behavior.

The other dog has been humbled, but not out of love. There is no direction or goal in that humbling. It is a scattered and destructive kind of humbling. That kind of humbling is a lessening. Sadly, that kind of humbling is what many churches want to do. They want to focus on sin rather than redemption.

If you yell at someone for doing something bad, then that is all they will be able to think about. It ends up becoming pathological. We all desire attention. But if we don’t get attention for what we do that is good, and we only get attention for what we do that is bad, even if it is negative attention, then that is what we will continue to do.

Jesus took away all the “don’ts” in the commandments. He gave us what to do. We are to love. We are to love God and our neighbors with all our heart and soul and strength and mind.

Now, personally, I’m the kind of person that needs a little more instruction than that, so I supplement my Christianity with Buddhism and Judaism, with a little bit of Hinduism and Sufism thrown in for flavor. Some Christians would cringe at that, but I hope to change their minds. We are told to love our neighbors. How can we show them love if we don’t understand anything about them? The more I learn about other faith traditions, the closer I get to God. It is all motivated out of love. God made all of us different because he needs us that way. God doesn’t want us to all be the same. That would be as boring as garden full of the same kind of flower or an orchestra with just one kind of instrument. I like daylilies and piccolos, but I also like roses and kettledrums. I think God does too.

I love the fact that I can take a yoga class (Hindu) in a YMCA (Christian), while listening to music that has Caribbean steel drums and Tibetan throat singing and Chinese hammered dulcimer. I love that I can go to a Chinese buffet and get Japanese and American food too. I love that we are waking up to the beauty of each other and celebrating our differences. I think this is part of what the Kingdom of Heaven is all about.

Stones

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I have a friend who needs more sleep. It will help with his anxiety and depression. It will help with his heart condition. It will help him to be more focused and less forgetful. He knows this, yet he keeps staying up late and getting up early, so every day is a repeat of the last and it is full of failure and pain. But like with liquor or drugs or any other vice he has to want to change and then there has to be grace in there somewhere too. It is hard to be stuck where you are, going around in circles. It is like Sisyphus, forever pushing that stone up a hill.

What stones do we have? Guilt. Shame. Anger. Fear. Hate. Racism. Abuse (of self or others). Drugs. Some of these stones are given to us by our parents, by classmates, by society. Some we pick up ourselves throughout our journey in life.

After a while it becomes very hard to carry all that weight. Sometimes we continue to carry our stones out of habit. Sometimes it is out of a sense of duty or obligation. Sometimes it is out of fear – what if we don’t know how to act without it? We’ve carried it around so long that we started to define ourselves by it.

I knew a guy who is an alcoholic. That is how he defines himself. He doesn’t say that he is a person with a drinking problem. The problem has become his personality. He has decided that “messed up” is who he is. He carries around this stone like it is a normal thing now.

I know women who stay with the same boyfriend for years even though it is plain that he is no good. He sits on the couch playing video games all day while she goes to work and supports both of them. He makes fun of her in public. But she stays, because she’d rather be in a bad relationship than no relationship at all. He is her stone. He weighs her down. But she doesn’t know how to move on. She doesn’t need him financially, and he isn’t helpful emotionally. But she’s defined herself by “being in a relationship”, even if it is unhealthy.

We are like that with our stones. We’d rather stick “with the devil you know” than to be on our own.

My Mom wanted to quit smoking for years, but she knew that my Dad would never quit. She thought it would be too hard to quit while he kept smoking. So she kept it up, all two packs a day of it. He finally left us to go live back home with his Mom (in his 50s) and then we found out my Mom had lung cancer shortly thereafter. She quit smoking then, but it was too late. She died at 53. Then he died just 6 weeks later. They had both killed themselves out of habit and an inability to change.

I wonder if Dad ever thought the same thing – that he wanted to quit smoking but didn’t think he could if Mom kept smoking? Wouldn’t that have been ?

I wonder if our friends and coworkers are like that? I’ll quit gossiping if you do. I’ll quit telling racist jokes if you do. What if we are playing chicken with each other? What if we are keeping ourselves back because of others? Who is going to be brave enough to take the first step and just drop the stone she is carrying that is slowing progress down?

Not taking care of our bodies is another stone. Overeating is a form of self-abuse. There is a pain that comes from being overfull. There is pain that comes from the guilt and shame of the addiction itself. Somehow the punishment (the obesity, the disability that comes with being so large) is seen as deserved. Sometimes the problem is that the person feels lesser-than, that he doesn’t deserve to feel good, to feel love. Sometimes becoming obese is a way to keep people away.

Sometimes people say they are too old to change. This too is a lie we tell ourselves so that we don’t get better. We think we can’t, so we don’t even try. As long as you are alive, there is hope. And if you start trying to get better, you’ll gain more life. You are only dead when you give up. As long as you keep trying to grow, you’ll get stronger.

One way to drop that stone is to realize that you are carrying it. You’ve carried it for so long that just dropping it outright seems impossible. Try doing it in little steps. Journal about it. Journaling helps you notice progress. It is like writing a letter to yourself.

I’m sending you a letter, now. I used to be where you are. I still have stones I’m carrying. The things I’ve done to grow and stretch have given me the insight and strength to get over and around other stones. I’m sending you this letter to let you know that you can do it. It is hard. It takes a lot of work. You’ll fall and fail quite a bit. You’ll stop doing the work for a while and then remember and start back up again. That is normal. You aren’t failing. You’re being human. I’m cheering you on.

In a way, I’m also sending a letter back in time to myself, to let myself know that there is hope. I’m 44 now. I was nowhere near this balanced and aware and healthy at 24. I wonder where I’ll be at 64? At 84? I need to remind myself to be gentle with myself but not allow myself to fall off the path completely. I’m trying to remind you of the same. Forgive yourself your failings, but keep on working on them.

I wonder if we can get a letter to Sisyphus and tell him to just walk away from that stone? Forget pushing it up the hill. It is easier to climb up the hill unburdened.

Krispy Kreme – The One True Doughnut

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Today is National Doughnut Day, and I’m here to preach to you the Gospel of Krispy Kreme. Sure, there are other doughnuts, but they just aren’t even in the same league. Krispy Kreme is a melt-in-your-mouth bit of yumminess that is unique among doughnuts. They are yeast doughnuts.

All other doughnuts are nice, but they are cake doughnuts. Cake doughnuts are dry. They crumble. They have to be eaten with milk or coffee. They make you feel full much too fast. Cake doughnuts are only acceptable the day they are made. They aren’t even really great that day, but they are passable.

Krispy Kreme doughnuts are soft and tasty for several days after purchase. But the best time to eat them is when they are hot. The stores have a huge neon sign letting you know that are making doughnuts right then. There is even an app for your iPhone that will let you know when they are making doughnuts at a location near you. How is that for customer service and satisfaction? Also, their website says that the ingredients are vegetarian and kosher – win!

The best part is that you can even watch the doughnuts being made. In other places they are only visible when they are ready to be sold. It is not only cool to watch them being made, but it proves that this company is trustworthy. No sneakiness here! No skulking around in the back, making doughnuts on the sly. At a Krispy Kreme store you can see the doughnuts ride in the proofer, rising up on perforated metal trays like a vertical Ferris Wheel. Then they come to their bath of hot oil, where they bob along like contented rubber duckies. Shortly they are turned to cook the other side with beautiful acrobatic flip. They then travel to a metal conveyor where they glide under a shower of white cream, coating them with a delectable thin layer of liquid sugar that cools to a crackly consistency. It is just magical to watch the entire process.

But the proof of the glory of Krispy Kreme is their motto. “Hot, Fresh, Now”. If that isn’t a mantra, I don’t know what one is. Even their shape is meditative. The original, plain doughnuts are round, like the infinity of time and space. They are empty in the middle, to remind you to empty your mind. They are like a beautiful visual Zen koan.

I accept that there are people who like other doughnuts. I’m sad for them that they don’t appreciate the glory that is Krispy Kreme. I’ll eat other doughnuts if I have no other choice, but I’ll be thinking about the tender, moist, sweet goodness of Krispy Kreme the whole time.

My friends, I tell you that Krispy Kreme is The One True Doughnut. All other doughnuts are OK, but as for me and my house, we will eat Krispy Kreme.

Thankfulness or Blessing – what comes first?

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What comes first, the thankfulness or the blessing? We give thanks for our food before we eat it. It is sitting right in front of us. But we normally give thanks for our blessings after we receive them, if we remember to give thanks at all. Often we are so caught up in the fact that we finally have what we want that we forget to be thankful.

But what if we are thankful before we get what we want? What if we pray our prayer of thankfulness even before we can see what we are going to get? What if we are thankful even before we know what we are going to get?

Jesus tells us to pray as if we already have received. In Mark 11:22-24 “22 Jesus replied to them, “Have faith in God. 23 I assure you: If anyone says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will happen, it will be done for him. 24 Therefore I tell you, all the things you pray and ask for—believe that you have received them, and you will have them.” (HCSB)

Then you may think, but I don’t have that much strength in my prayer. I can’t pray that well. I have doubt. It is hard to believe. In Matthew 17: 20 we learn from Jesus that not much faith is required. “For I assure you: If you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” (HCSB) Just pray for it, and know that God will do the rest. A tiny bit of faith is a lot in God’s hands.

Does God need us to pray before we get our blessing because it is already on the way? Might it be that we need to be prepared to receive our blessing?

I have noticed that when I pray before anything, I’m the one to change first. I start looking for God. I start looking to see where God is going to pop up and surprise me. I pray before helping patrons at work. I pray before leaving my house. I pray before meeting with friends. I am trying to be in a constant state of prayer. I’m not very good at it, but I’m trying.

I remember when I used to smoke pot. I’d smoke, and I’d wait to see what happened. Food would taste better. I could hear parts of an album that I’d never noticed before. In reality, all of that was already there. I just put myself in a position where I was looking for it. I expected to experience life in a different way. I think prayer is the same way. I think prayer opens us up to receiving God. We open the door and God steps in.

I think that God was going to send us that blessing anyway, but we just wouldn’t have noticed it. How often do we take things for granted? How often do we think that what we have is just OK and not that much?

I heard once that praying before meals proves that we are not animals. One goal in Judaism is to be a mensch, a real person. We need to become human, to win over our animal nature. The goal of true alchemy is to transform the lead of our animal nature into the gold of our human nature.

Praying makes us human. Praying makes us better.

So what should we pray for? A new car? Extra money to pay off our mortgage? The get-rich-quick pastors of the megachurches would tell you that. Their message is the “prosperity gospel”. The fact that it has to have an extra word to describe it should be a clue that it isn’t the Gospel of Jesus.

Pray for big stuff. Pray for things not for yourself. God is big. God wants to hear from you. That is part of why God made you.

Pray for nuclear disarmament. Pray for peace and understanding among the nations. Pray for an end to war and greed. Pray for people to wake up to their true nature. Pray for us all to take care of ourselves and our planet.

Don’t be hesitant. Pray hard. Pray without ceasing. Pray as if we already have it. And remember that God always answers prayers. Sometimes it isn’t what we want it to be – but it is always what is needed. Pray for the grace to be able to accept God’s answer. But most importantly, pray.

Renew, rebuild, revive

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Is it really possible to renew or renovate? Can you really ever make something old new again? Once it has worn out and you replace some pieces, it isn’t exactly like it was. It is a little different. The wood is a different kind. The handling is a little different. It may be “like new” but it can never truly be the same, down to the core.

When people try to reform a movement they are trying to renew it. They are trying to bring it back to what it was at the beginning. Their intentions are good, but they don’t realize it isn’t really possible. Things have changed. The times have changed. The reason for the movement that started it all off has gotten lost or forgotten.

We can’t really renew the church. We can try to reform it. We can try to rebuild it. We can try to take all the bits that work and piece them together like a jigsaw puzzle. We can take it all down and start again from scratch. Or we can muddle on like we are and try to reform it from the inside.

But one way or another, something has got to change. Too many people look at Christians like they are crazy, and with good reason. Too many Christians are filled with hate instead of love. Too many Christians think their obligation to God is filled if they sit in a pew on Sunday and then do nothing else the rest of the week.

What is the best way forward? Is it to go into the past and read the Gospels in the original Aramaic? Is it to pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit?

I write this not to attack the church, but to awaken it. I want this to work. I believe in Jesus. I believe in the work that he started and I believe that it can be brought to fruition. I believe that love can save the world.

This church, this Body of Christ, is one big dysfunctional family. It is going to be hard for some people to hear these words. Folks hate the idea that their family is broken. But pointing out that it is broken is the beginning of healing.

This is like being in recovery. When a person starts on the path of recovery, she often loses friends. Her best friends were her drinking buddies. When they see her getting sober and still enjoying life, they tend to get hateful. They rarely decide to follow her on the path. They’d rather stick with what they know, even if it is destructive and misguided, than go with something new.

So this isn’t renewal. It is revival. It is new life that I’m proposing. But to have a revival and then continue to do the same old thing won’t work. We’ve added too much to this thing we call church. The extra stuff gets in the way and slows us down. It doesn’t go where it should. We need to strip it clean.

The Lord’s Supper should be an actual meal and it needs to be shared with people who aren’t members. It needs to be shared not with the goal of making them become members. It needs to be shared because people need to be fed. There need to be no restrictions on who gets to eat.

We need to take out all the ritual and the magic show. We need to remove the hierarchy to show that everybody is equal. Everybody needs to be trained to be ministers. All of us have talents that are needed.

I remember a time that I was playing a game of volleyball with the Episcopal student group when I was in college. The priest was there with his son. His son was young and wanted to play, but because he was small his dad thought that he would get hurt, possibly by being tripped over. His son was very upset by this. I saw that he was very good at serving the ball – and I know that I’m terrible at it. I modified the game and made him the server. I explained that his Dad didn’t want him to play only because he was concerned about him getting hurt. This way he got to help out the game and not be in the way. Everybody was happy.

This is part of what we need to do. We need to look at what is essential, and change things. We need to make this work. We need to include everybody.

I’d hate to think Jesus died in vain.

TMJ as a teacher.

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I have TMJ problems. My jaw doesn’t line up properly. Overuse, and the ligaments in my neck hurt. The more I talk, the more pain I’m in. It isn’t a large pain. It isn’t terrible. But it is just annoying enough to keep me mindful.

I’ve become very conscious of everything I say. It is as if I have a bank account and I’m being careful of what I spend. Each sentence needs to be worthwhile.

I remember when a teacher in junior high had an assignment that we had to come up with a list of just twenty words. These were (hypothetically) the only words we would be allowed to say for the rest of our lives. This is something like that.

If it hurts to talk a lot, then you have to pick your words carefully or suffer the consequences. What do you have to say? What can be dropped?

This is totally in line with the Buddhist idea of right speech. Every word you say needs to be true, kind, and helpful. Is it necessary? Is it useful? Or is it mindless chatter, meant to fill up the silence? Is it gossip?

There is a great saying that “It is better to remain silent at the risk of being thought a fool, than to talk and remove all doubt of it.” (Maurice Switzer)

There is a Ghandi quote as well that I’ve also heard attributed to the Quakers. “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”

We are afraid of silence. We fill our houses and our heads with noise. We have iPods and cell phones attached to our ears constantly. Every store has music playing. The TV blaring on, all the time. When was the last time you were silent for longer than 20 minutes, and not asleep?

This disorder has become my teacher.