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.

Beads are prayers

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The English word “bead” comes from the Anglo-Saxon word “biddan” meaning “to pray.” A woman was said to be “doing her beads” when she was using her rosary. Beads and prayers are the same thing. Sometimes I like to express certain religious ideas in bead form. This was the original intent of this blog, but I couldn’t figure out how to add pictures. Thanks to help from a coworker and some dogged persistence on my part (and no thanks to two different WordPress books), I’ve figured out how to marry up words and pictures. Here are two examples of how I speak in bead, when it comes to religious topics.

This necklace is referencing two verses from the Gospels. The fish refer to when Jesus said to his new-found disciples “I will make you fishers of men” (Matthew 4:19). The grape leaf and the purple bead together (a symbolic grape) refer to when He said “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” (John 15:5) (translations from the New International Version)

I also like the medal. It is a Sacred Heart medal. Rather than being a crucifix that depicts Christ’s agony on the cross, the Sacred Heart shows us the depth of His love for us. It also reminds us that we are to create within our own hearts a sanctuary for Jesus.

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This bracelet depicts the world before and after Jesus. Start at the bottom at the 6 o’clock position and go counter-clockwise to follow the story. The small dark green bead represents the beginning of the Jewish people. The large green bead (both are antique watermelon beads) represents their many years waiting for a Messiah. Then the red bead is for the Holy Spirit, next to the blue bead for Mary. This combination symbolizes humanity saying Yes to God’s requests for us to bring forth His love into this world. The following bead has all three colors of green, red, and blue. It is the merging of history and destiny – Jesus as the culmination.

jesusbracelet

I believe it is good to have prayers made visible.

The History of the Church, in beads.

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I’m attempting to explain the history of the Church in bead form. I apologize for the dark pictures – this is a work in progress. (edit – I’ve added new pictures that are brighter. )

Here is a picture that gives an idea of what the whole thing looks like.

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And another –
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It all starts with the cross.

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Then the large fancy beads near it represent the Byzantine era. I chose blue, purple, and red because those were the colors God said to use for the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

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This section represents the Middle Ages. One church, so one unifying pattern. Lapis lazuli represents the material used by monks in their illuminated manuscripts. The red is antique “white hearts” from the African trade to remind us of history and time.

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Here is another picture of this section –
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This section has the three colors of the temple, but it is casual and a little jumbled. There is a pattern if you look hard. This is now, the age of strip-mall churches and Mega churches.

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And also here –
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Pure and unadorned, the color in this section has the best of blue and purple to it, and was started off with red, the color of the Holy Spirit. Blue is also the color of Mary – a human being who said Yes to God and allowed The Divine to work through her to bring forth healing and redemption to our world. This is the future. This is what we as the Church are being called to.

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Better lit –
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What is “Christian”?

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Rene Descartes talked about the color teal. You can tell someone what is blue and what is green, but they won’t understand what “teal” is unless you tell them what it isn’t. They need a boundary. You have to show them what is no longer blue enough but just green enough that it is teal. For instance, peacock green is teal. Emerald green is not.

The church is the same way. We have reached a point where it is important to draw the line between what is Christ-like and what is not.

There are people around today that are calling themselves Christians. They band together and say they are part of a church. Perhaps you know the group I’m referring to. I refuse to name them because I refuse to give them any more press. That is what they thrive on. They are like bad toddlers. They love attention and will resort to throwing a terrible tantrum. They throw their tantrums by protesting at military funerals. They carry signs that say things like “God hates (fill in the blank)” They are illogical in their actions. They are an embarrassment. There is nothing Christian about their actions.

Now maybe they are doing the rest of the church a favor. Let’s go with the idea of the Church as the Body of Christ. The apostle Paul talked about how each part does what it has to do and it is not for the other parts to feel jealous. The head can’t do anything without the arms and legs to take it where it needs to go. The arms and legs can’t do anything without the head directing them. All the parts of the body are mutually dependant.

Perhaps this group is the asshole. Every body has one, so why not this Body? It is important to get the waste out. It is important to remove the parts that are not helpful. Perhaps by their over-the-top actions they are showing us the worst we can be. Perhaps by viewing why they think they think that the term “Christian” applies to them, we can see how far off the track we have gotten.

The Christian church has gotten a lot of bad press recently, and it is its own fault. To many non-Christians, the word “Christian” is synonymous with self-centered, ignorant, and judgmental. This is entirely the opposite of what Jesus intended. He wanted us to be servants – to be His body in this world. He wanted us to do God’s will, in the same way that He did. He wanted us to be submissive to God and to treat everyone as if they are our neighbors.

Everyone. We are to treat everyone as our neighbors. Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, gay, homeless, drug addicted, mentally ill – you name it. Everyone who is not us. That is part of the meaning of neighbor – if they were part of our family, they would be living with us. Neighbors are everyone else, but they are close enough that they are still part of us. They aren’t necessarily friends, but they are fellow humans. We have a relationship with them, often by accident. We don’t choose our neighbors, we choose the house.

And here’s the biggest thing I want to try to get across. Not everyone has to be Christian, or follow Christian rules. WE have to be Christian. We have to serve them as Christ would. We do not have the right to impose our belief system on them, especially in the laws we create. To expect that other people follow a particular religious belief system that is not their own is exactly the same as Sharia law. Americans are deeply concerned that Muslim-influenced laws will begin to creep into our society. We don’t want to be forced to pray towards Mecca five times a day. We don’t want men to not be allowed to shave their beards. We don’t want women to be forced to cover themselves from head to toe.

Then why is it OK for Christians to try to make laws that push their belief system on others? Abortion. Gay marriage. The death penalty. These are hot-button issues. People are varied in their opinions. While one person’s viewpoint is perfectly valid according to their belief system, it is opposite another person’s also perfectly valid viewpoint. What I believe is for me to follow. I do not have the right to force you to follow my beliefs.

Take abortion for instance. I personally am against abortion. I see it as murder of an innocent. But – I will not take away someone else’s right to it. I feel that every child should be a wanted child. What I would rather focus on is better sex-education and better contraception. I believe that nobody ever wants to go through the ordeal of abortion – so I’m more interested in them never having to make that decision.

As for gay marriage, I’m for it. I’ve never understood the reasons that Christians have against gay marriage. If you don’t want to be married to a gay person, then don’t be married to a gay person. This seems simple enough. The same can be said of abortion – if you are against abortion, don’t have one.

I think what may be the issue with many Christians who are against gay marriage is that they are against homosexuality in general. They quote from Paul’s letters and from the Old Testament about injunctions against homosexuality. But they seem to miss the fact that Jesus, our Lord, says nothing about homosexuality, and says a lot about not judging other people. It isn’t our place to tell others what we think they are doing wrong. It is our place to do what we know to be right, and part of that is to show love. There is nothing loving about telling someone they are going to hell. There is nothing loving about excluding someone from your family or fellowship because of who they love.

Another issue is the idea of women in church. For many denominations, women cannot be ministers. This is following on the ideas of the apostle Paul, not of Jesus. Now, I’m not a Paulian. I’m a Christian. So if what Paul says adds to the message of Christ, then I’m for it. If it takes away from the message of Christ, then it is not helpful. I think it is important for people to read the Bible for themselves and to use the brain that God gave them, rather than expect their minister or their denomination to tell them how to think. When I read the Gospels for myself I found a lot about love and acceptance and not judging. I read a lot of stories about Jesus appreciating the service and ministry of women.
The bad part is that the loudest people get all the attention. They are hostile and rude, and are sullying the name of Jesus. They are bearing false witness to who Jesus is. But they are reminding us that we need to be able to think for ourselves and to make a point of countering their bad actions with good actions. We need to get out the word that Jesus came to show love, and we do that by showing love. I don’t hate the rude people who say they are Christians. I pray for them.

Food for Fuel

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I have heard of different vegetables being used to create ethanol. The current selection that researchers use are beets, soybeans, and corn. On the surface this sounds like a great idea. Instead of discovering more pockets of oil and converting it to gasoline, why not discover new ways to create different fuels? All of these vegetables are easy to grow. They are renewable unlike oil. We can always grow more beets. We can’t create oil. It is something that once it is used up there isn’t any more. Need more vegetables – just plow another field.

But then I started thinking about it in a different way. This is food for fuel. We are transforming food into fuel. It isn’t that we are transforming something we don’t need like kudzu into fuel. In that situation we would have a win-win. We want to get rid of kudzu. It chokes trees. It destroys landscapes. Or how about crab grass? Scientists can start with my yard. It would save a lot of work for my husband every summer.

Do we really need more energy? Is that the most pressing concern we have going these days? Is fuel more important than food? There are starving people all over the world. How many people are starving or suffer from food insecurity every day? The last report I read is one in four here in America have problems getting enough food. So they can get gasoline to get to the grocery store, but they can’t afford to buy actual, fresh, nutritious food.

But apparently our society thinks we need more fuel, more gasoline. Or rather, we need more ethanol to water down our gasoline. Because our cars don’t actually run on ethanol. As the price of gas keeps going up we notice that the amount of gasoline in our fuel keeps going down. More and more ethanol keeps going in. Some car manufacturers even say that this is dangerous for your car. You could destroy the fuel pump using anything less than pure gasoline, and that kind of damage isn’t covered by that expensive extended warranty you bought.

But what other damage are we wreaking with this insatiable appetite for fuel? People are starving. But instead of being able to fill their mouths, they are able to fill their gas tanks. Somehow we have our priorities reversed.

Perhaps part of the problem is that we need to seriously assess our “need” for so much fuel. My cousins in England rarely have to drive anywhere. There is good public transportation. There are markets in the neighborhood that you can walk to. They don’t have to have a car for most things. Cars are expensive. They are seen as a luxury, unlike here where they are seen as something that every teenager feels he has the right to have.

The price of gasoline keeps fluctuating, yet we don’t seem to see the cliff that we are hurtling towards. We go through the crisis of high gas prices and when it is over everything returns to normal. A lady I know freaks out when it reaches over $4. Every time she says if it stays this high she is going to have to quit her job and find another job closer to home. At the time of the last large spike in gas prices house was 60 minutes away. Now her house is 40 minutes away. Still she complains when the prices begin to creep up. The last time she started in on her litany I pointed out that gasoline is a limited resource. There won’t be more. The price will only continue to go up. So it makes sense to wean ourselves from this addiction. She could take the train for free but she would have to walk two miles from the train station. This is way too much inconvenience for her. Perhaps that is the root of many problems. We want things to change but we don’t want to have to work for the change. And it certainly can’t involve any time or effort on our part.

Deaf to God.

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What is it that people don’t get about God? Why do they see God as a magic trick or an imaginary friend? Why do they think of believers as chumps? Why are the words “believers” and “freethinkers” opposites?

I can’t ever not remember believing in God. I have always known of God. If faith is believing in things not seen then yes I have faith – because I have not seen God but I still know He’s real. I hear Him. I feel His presence. I know He listens to my prayers. But just because my eyes don’t perceive Him doesn’t mean I don’t know of His reality.

Now, to clarify, I don’t see God as a Him or a Her. God is the Creator. God is above gender. God doesn’t need anything or anyone else to create. But our language doesn’t have a third person singular designation for something that is genderless other than “it” and that word just doesn’t have the weight and presence I feel is needed when talking about the Creator. And as to the term “God” – it is a descriptive. I remember someone getting very angry with me and saying “He has a name!” Yes. But which one? “I am that I am,” or “I am” or “YHWH” or “Yahweh” or “Jehovah” or “The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Israel”? Our Jewish friends feel it is rude to say the name of God. They will write “G_d” or they will say words like “Hashem” which means “The Name.” The Arabs have 99 names for God, which really describe His qualities. God is Love – that is an appropriate name too.

I know is that it is comforting to know that I am not driving the bus. I am not in charge. Something larger than me has it all worked out. My goal is to get closer and closer to this Creator and align myself with Him. I remember having some rune stones when I was younger and one of the explanations for a particular rune was “I will to will Thy will.” I think that sums it up well. I’ve heard it is better to want what you get rather than to get what you want.

I’m OK with the idea of not doing something “right”. I’m ok with “messing up”. I’m ok with it not coming out like I thought it would. Because that too is part of the plan. “All things work together for good for those who follow God,” so the apostle Paul tells us. All things. Even the stuff you don’t think is OK. Judas was filling his role when he betrayed Jesus. He wasn’t in his right mind. It was as if he was possessed. And then, he came to. When he realized what he had done he killed himself. But his actions were prophesied by the prophet Isaiah. Betrayed by a friend for 30 pieces of silver. It had to happen that way. So even “bad” has to happen. Sometimes it is our need to define a situation as “bad” or “good” that becomes a problem in itself.

I used to feel really self-conscious about what I feel is my calling. I first heard the voice of God at 12 while standing in my back yard in Chattanooga. What I heard I would do has perturbed and confused me for the rest of my life so far. It doesn’t even seem possible. It doesn’t make sense. Adding to it – I’m bipolar. I was diagnosed at 30, but I had the first signs of it at 17. I’ve talked to psychiatrists who were also priests (that’s a trick to find) to see if that was a sign of the disease. You know what I mean. Lilly Tomlin tells us that if God talks to us, we are crazy. This is what society says. Yet we take seriously the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Noah, Isaiah, and Moses talking with God face to face. We don’t even question that it happened. So why can’t this happen to us, now? These stories should be considered blueprints – not myths. Here’s how you know that God is calling you. Listen. It isn’t just a story.

Samuel lived in a time where God hadn’t spoken in a while. He had to be taught what to do in that situation. “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening,” is what he was told to say the next time he heard his name called out by God. Perhaps we need to say this. Perhaps we need to stop talking so much. Perhaps we need to turn off the talk radio and the reality TV and put down the latest thriller novel. Perhaps we don’t do this because we are afraid of what we might hear.

I think we would rather sleepwalk through our lives than hear God’s voice. And we don’t even have to hear it to know what to do. We have the Bible to tell us.

There was a homeless guy from Poland named Bogdam who had sort of moved into the post office that is in my neighborhood. He was very pleasant and about 60 years old. He seemed content. I had made a point of talking with him every time I saw him. One day I had picked up supper for myself at Captain D’s and was on my way home. The post office was on the way, and I started thinking about Bogdam. I prayed – God, should I give him my supper? Send me a sign. And instantly the answer was – you have a sign. You have the whole of the Gospel telling you to “feed my sheep”. You don’t need anything else. Of course give him your supper.

So perhaps we don’t often hear the voice of God because we ignore the message we already have with us. We know what to do. Now it is time to take it seriously.