22 August 200710:33 PM
I’m sitting here with three of my favorite men: Jon Stewart; Barack Obama; Erik Vorhes (not my favorites in that order…). It’s a lovely way to spend the evening.
And I’m thinking about the time, about a year and half ago, when we kinda sorta had brunch with Barack. We were out for late afternoon brunch with friends in Hyde Park at a great restaurant. When I (pregnant, and thus frequently needing a pee break) got up to use the bathroom, I noticed that the baseball-cap wearing guy out to eat with his daughters, possibly after taking in the Sox game, in the booth directly behind us looked quite a bit like our fine U.S. Senator. (OK, I like Durbin, too. But, not quite the same star-power, huh?) When I came back, I tried, quietly and politely, to see if my fellow diners agreed that this was, indeed, the man himself, and that some of our party were separated from him by only the high-backed booth between us. Had it not been for the wall of the booth, I’m sure we would have been one big happy brunch party.
So, everyone else went to the bathroom in turn, and agreed it was him. (Mr. Obama–I hope we were polite and not too annoying. None of us asked for an autograph–we wanted you to have a nice morning out with your little girls.)
Anti-Spread update: 4818.6 miles left to go to Rome. (They better be ordaining women by the time I get there because let me tell you, I am NOT coming back.)
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21 August 20078:33 PM
I decided to bike today as part of the anti-spread campaign–more miles.
The current tally: 4821.6 to Rome.
But, while I was getting my bike out of the basement, I started having a little pity party for myself. Not to go into too much detail, but let’s just say it was along the lines of “I’m almost 30, what am I doing here?” and precipitated by (a) the leaky foundation in my basement (b) the incredible number of spiders in my basement (c) the spider that landed in my hair when I came out of the cellar with my bike and (d) the fact that, in spite of the spider zoo that is my basement, yard, and entire falling-apart-house, there are still enough mosquitoes in my weedy backyard for me to get 5 bites in 1 minute.
Fleeing the mosquitoes, I climbed on my bike and started listening to a couple of sermons. (Yes, this is a minister-nerd-thing: I listen to podcasted sermons while I exercise. Also, I know it’s best not to bike with headphones.) The first one, from this church (great sermons, by the way) was about Naaman the leper. Much simplified, but the basic point was that we are not in control of our lives. What we plan, what we think we deserve, is not what we always end up with. (Again, very simplified–listen to the sermon yourself if you want to understand this better.)
OK, I think, point taken. We don’t get to lay out perfect plans for ourselves. That’s God’s thing.
I was biking, too, along the river here, which is very very swollen. After being crabby about the puddle in my own basement, I biked past a family who were sandbagging to keep their entire house from flooding. Yes, yes, I know: puddle/completely flooded house.
Ten miles, a couple sermons and a few good songs later, I’m back in front of my house, looking at the paint peeling, slapping mosquitoes, and listening to a song I never listen to. Suddenly, the song clicks: it’s based on Job 1:21. Blessed be your name, Lord. Whatever the circumstance. Mosquitoes, peeling paint, puddly basement and all.
Not a bad journey for 10 miles.
[ Filed under Journal | 2 Comments ]
19 August 200710:45 PM
- Hebrews 11:39-12:3
- Fox Valley Presbyterian Church
If we at Fox Valley Presbyterian Church needed a new pulpit Bible, we’d take out the catalog of a church supply company and place an order. Within a week, our new Bible would arrive. And that would be that.
But in the mid 1990s, the Benedictine monks of St. John’s College and Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota decided on what might be the most inefficient, drawn out, and least cost effective way of procuring a public Bible since the middle ages.
In fact, they decided to do exactly what was done in the middle ages: they commissioned an illuminated manuscript: an entire Bible, written by hand, and delicately painted and illustrated with tiny pictures in the margins, woven through the text, and some entire pages of magnificent painting. These “illuminations†are not there just to make the text itself glow, but also to illuminate and engage our own imagination as we read Scripture, to tie our experience to what we are reading. In the middle ages, the illustrations in an illuminated manuscript came out of the time and experience of those people. And in the St. John’s Bible, many of the pictures come out of the time and experience of people today.
A most surprising example of this is in the front illustration for the Book of Acts. The artist was looking for a way to illustrate the concept of the church— the cloud of witnesses , the people of God, gathered together, rejoicing. And he created a scene of a great city, and with motifs based on…the people in the stands of the stadium at St. John’s College during a football game.
Now this artistic choice does not sit easily with me. It’s beautiful, like everything else in the manuscript. (I’ve left my copy out in the gathering space so that you can take a look.) As one of only a few women in my seminary class, I quickly got sick of reminding my ale classmates that they might want to use something besides football and golf for sermon illustrations. And, as a proud graduate of a college whose football team has suffered many a defeat in the St. John’s stadium, I’m not entirely convinced that place is an embodiment of God’s church.
But two weeks ago, when I was in Washington DC, this image suddenly made sense to me. I spent a week at a conference on the grounds of the National Cathedral. I lived for the week in the shadows of that great church, near to the sights and sounds and smells of a church that dwarfs and dominate everything around it. Anytime I needed a sense of peace and a sacred space, I could wander into the wide , cool openness of the Cathedral
The sights and sounds of a cathedral are very much the embodiment of the cloud of witnesses, the communion of saints. If you’ve visited a cathedral or large church, you may know this feeling already. Because, wandering through the space of a great cathedral with the living, you are also so aware of the dead, those who have gone before you. Not only are there nooks here and there where someone might be buried, but you can look up at windows and carving, capitals and columns, mosaics and murals. And looking back will be the faces and stories of nearly every Bible figure there is, and many of the great women and men of Christian history.
All that openness, all that empty space that waits for the sound of a choir or organ to fill it with praise. And yet, even in the silence, you feel that this is a space that is not “unused†even when it is silent. It resonates with the presence of God’s people.
And suddenly, that St. John’s Bible illumination in Acts made sense to me: the stadium, and the cathedral, both places that that are shaped by the spirit of the crowd that gathers there.
We know that the author of Hebrews had never stood in the middle of a great cathedral—those buildings were centuries away yet when Hebrews was written. But stadiums were part of life in that world—The best comparison the author could think of, for standing surrounded by sinners become saints who are all part of the great cloud of witnesses.
The 11th chapter of Hebrews is a cathedral made of words. It lists the men and women of faith who went before.
For an entire chapter, this author has erected monuments to the heroes of the faith— Abel and Enoch, Noah, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, Rahab, Gideon, Samson, Samuel, David, Their stories are not stories of people who were not perfect or always faithful. They strayed and wandered, and made mistakes. But, in moments of great faith, some of them pulled off some pretty amazing things: toward the end of the list is a string of unnamed person after person who endured what sounds like the worst of horror flicks. What every one of them gets credit for is not that they did such great things. They make the list because God witnesses to their faith.. God is the one who accepts whatever they were able to offer and credits them as faithful. Even when they could barely hold onto a claim of faithfulness, God held onto them.
And yet, even with that wonderful idea of a God who holds onto us, I find myself uncomfortable with verse 39:
Yet all these, though they were commended for their faith, did not receive what was promised.
It sticks out in the middle of this passage, after holding up these people on whom God placed so much value, people who God counted as faith-filled. It makes me wonder if God is unfair, shortchanging some folks just because they were born before God had the time to fulfill some sort of master plan.
But the writer goes on to talk about corporate fulfillment. Somehow, this fulfillment is made all the better by all of us being in on it together.
We are not a society, though, that like the idea of group accountability. Ask any high school student, or high school parent, how they feel about group projects and you’ll probably get an earful. I remember a number of particularly lengthy, heated phone calls about group work from parents when I taught high school. I also remember thinking that group work might be the best preparation for marriage that my students would ever had. I was never so grateful for things I had learned about marital counseling in seminary when I had to spend an hour with a “couple†whose research project was falling apart.
But Hebrews is clear on this: in God’s way of accounting faith, it’s not the faith of the individual that matters: it’s the faith of the community. And the community is like the long corridor of a cathedral—it stretches back through time and space.
All these faithful people are like the pillars in a great building—they are not magnificent on their own, it is the accumulation of them, and what they do together, the way they soar up to the sky and hold up the roof, they way they are strong enough for the walls to be filled with windows to let in the light, the way they line up one after the other to make a long corridor, this is what is amazing about these heroes of faith.
Sadly, God’s people don’t seem to be doing such a great job of working together to hold up the cathedral. We are splintered and splitting. If it is not about identifying ourselves as one denomination or theological flavor or another, we are arguing about who is right and who is wrong, who is conservative and who is liberal, who has been left out and who ought to be included. I am frequently in awe of the way, as Christians, that we can talk about the need to make peace and smooth over our relationships with those of other faiths when we maintain a stony silence with some of our closest companions in faith—other Christians.
Another young pastor friend of mine came back from the Presbyterian General Assembly in 2006 and said he was very sad. On the way to the meeting space where Presbyterians from all over the country were gathering to be church together, he said he had to walk through a hall filled with the booths of every imaginable faction and interest group of the Presbyterian Church (and, yes, as a denomination, we do have factions). He did not experience this as diversity, but as division.
It’s often hardest to mend the relationships that should be the closest—it’s easier to make up with someone who lives next door than it is to make up with someone who sits at the same dinner table.
And yet, we are part of the same structure, built on the same foundation as other Christians. Our focus, our purpose, should be the same. And healing does not come by pointing fingers at each other to blame, to say who started it. It comes by remembering what we hold in common: Jesus Christ. And it comes by remembering, somehow, beyond our wildest understandings, our faith is strongest and most beautiful when it is taken into account together.
In a cathedral, the greatest spaces for sculptures and windows are usually reserved for Christ. The giant corridor created by the pillars and soaring arches often point to enormous round windows, and, often, these windows show images of Jesus. The focal point of the entire space is Christ. And much of the light and color that pours down that hall of witnesses is from these giant windows.
And again, Hebrew’s author speaks as if he’d been in a cathedral space. It is Jesus, he says, who is the focal point, the place where we should look. There is support in being surrounded by this cloud of witnesses. But the thing that keeps us going is Jesus. We are surrounded by others, but it is Jesus who is the pioneer and perfecter, the first and the last.
Yesterday morning, I was on the Chicago lakefront, watching groups training for the Chicago marathon. You could tell that many of them would not be doing this if it were not for the 10, 15,20 other people running with them in matching shirts. They were watching out for each other. They had support along the way—people with water and encouraging news about the miles left to go. It made me wonder if churches ought to have running teams rather than softball teams.
These training groups owe much of their success to other volunteers, people who love to run and who want other people to get involved and enjoy running. No one in any of these groups is going to finish the marathon first. Many of them are running at a pace where they’ll be struggling along at the back of the pack long after the earliest finishers have finished, had a massage, eaten a hearty lunch, and gone home for a nap. They are what people in the running world refer to as “penguinsâ€, runners who waddle a bit, but do it anyway just for the fun of it. Penguins run best when they run together because they are surrounded and supported by other people who do not care if they jiggle when they run, people who shout encouragement, people who will stop to help you if you trip and fall. Everyone’s goal is the same, and it’s collective, not individual—they all want to finish, and they want as many as possible to make it across the finish line.
It’s easy to think of Jesus as the first person in the race, the one who everyone’s eyes follow, the one who breaks across the line before anyone else in an incredible show of endurance. But if Jesus is not just the pioneer, but also the perfecter, if Jesus is not just the first, but also the last, what does that look like?
There’s a story about a marathon runner who ran with the penguins and almost didn’t make it to the finish line. A few miles from the end of the race, he slowed to a walk, slunk off to the side of the road, and was about to sit down. But then, another runner came over to him, and said, “Hey, get up. It’s not that far. You can do this. I’ll stay with you. You just stay one sept behind me and watch my feet. Do what they do, and we’ll finish this together.†As they ran, the tired runner could tell that the guy in front of him had some energy left, probably enough to push himself and gain some time in the last few miles. But he didn’t. He stayed with the tired one, paced himself so that they could finish together.
Dear friends, we are surrounded—it is not just in a stadium, or in a great cathedral, or in the middle of an enormous race. It is not just here, in this place, in these pews. The whole world resonates with the presence of the people of God, the one who went before us, and the ones who are around us even now. Sometimes, we can barely get along with each other. But the amazing truth in Jesus Christ is this: we are all in this race together, and we are surrounded by the love of God in Christ Jesus, the one who goes before us, and the one who comes close to us; the one who wins the race, and the one who helps us limp to the finish; the one who is perfectly faithful, and the one who inspires our faith. Thanks be to God.
[ Filed under Journal, Sermons | 1 Comment ]
18 August 20078:54 PM
(My Mom gets credit for the title. She said I had to tell this story.)
I’ve been wearing girlier (is that a word?) clothes since I got back from my conference. Most likely, this is because spending a week with other young clergy womenfolk will remind one that (a) one is feminine, and so are other young woman pastors and it’s OK to be girly and (b) other young women pastors wear great clothes, and one has such clothes in the closet and ought to wear them.
But, it might also be that God seemed to use my halter top for good. Here’s the story:
We had a free afternoon and evening, so I wore my (modest for a) halter top (there is really no cleavage going on with this thing), black with a classy splash of white floral embroidery. That morning, I got a few compliments, and explained that I don’t wear it much at home because halter tops don’t feel too “minsterish” to me and I wonder if it’s appropriate. My fellow women said this was silly. It looked good and I should wear it.
When a group of us went on our way to see a movie that afternoon, we ran into a little trouble when a mysterious package shut down the Washington Metro. As we gathered on the sidewalk with nearly everyone else in Washington, on what must be Washington’s hottest, humidest day in ages, to board overcrowded buses, the 5 of us who were headed to this movie decided this might be the time to hail a cab and see if the cabbie would cram 5 of us in. Now, I have lived in cities, but I am cheap (seriously cheap–I am Dutch–we are the cheapest people in the world), and I have maybe hailed a cab twice in my life. But it was hot out. So I just stepped right up to the curb and stuck my arm out and hailed that cab with authority. At least, I attributed the fact that the cab came to me rather than the guy standing nearby me to the authority thing, but I think it might have been the halter top.
Our cabbie was a gregarious man from an undetermined Asian country. He asked why we were all in town. I said, “Would you believe, we’re all women-preachers?!” He said, “Tell me, what does your Bible say about you wearing clothes like that?” (Odd question, since I think he stopped because of the halter top…) I told him it really didn’t say anything about halter tops. However, this again made me question the decency of a woman pastor wearing a halter top.
But this started a really wonderful conversation. I decided to be brave and do what our conference speaker had suggested: take your next sermon text along with you at all times and ask people you randomly meet during the week what they think about the scripture text you are working on for your next sermon. So I did. Unfortunately, the book of Hebrews is a pretty long string of argument and my Muslim cabbie had a tough time jumping into the middle of things with me at the end of chapter 11. But, we slogged through it for awhile.
This led to him telling me about his feelings about the more public religious figures out there–that most of them, Christian, Muslim, what have you, are in it for the power. (I taught him the idiomatic expression: “Full of hot air.” I think he’ll be using that a lot in the future.) But, he really likes Joel Osteen. He listens to him often. (Yes, a Muslim cabbie listening to Joel Osteen. Truly, we are in a new era of globalization.)
And, he tries to read the Bible and Koran to compare the two. He wanted to get his hands on a copy of the Torah as well. I felt very helpful explaining to him that since he had a Bible, he basically had the contents of the Torah as well. We talked a bit about the story of David and Bathsheba (his choice, not mine…for awhile I was worried that this choice of stories might circle back to my halter top again). He really liked the way Nathan called David out.
And then, I found out that his Bible was one that some Mormons gave him. And I was appalled. Not because he was stuck with this bad translation, but because I had almost stuck my nice little pocket TNIV into my purse that morning. But then I didn’t. And if I had, I would have given him my TNIV.
Now, you have to understand that I am the granddaughter of a minister who has spent the bulk of his career working to get Bibles into people’s hands (not just figuratively–he worked for a Bible distribution agency–they would talk about great years as ones where they got X thousand Bibles to Y country). And here I was with a guy who needed a Bible and I didn’t have one on me. I began thinking about running into a book store to pick one up.
But then, we got to the movie theater, and that was the end of it. You never know what will happen when you wear a halter top.
[ Filed under Journal | 4 Comments ]
16 August 20079:02 AM
I’m joining Stacey on the anti-spread campaign. This is about being healthy, taking care of myself, fitting in my suits, and maybe, someday, again running a long race.
The idea is to see how long it takes to walk/run/bike to Rome. If I were really headed there, it would be partly for the food (which I would deserve after that much mileage) and partly to tell the pope that they should start ordaining women as priests (which he would have to consider if I managed to bike across the ocean because that would make me a pretty incredible woman).
Feel free to join in. (I think we need a button for blogs, too.)
St. Charles, IL to Rome: 4839 miles
My walks/runs for the last two days: 5.042 miles
Miles to go: 4833.95
Dang. That’s a lot of miles. Stacey–should this become a collective venture?
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14 August 20075:07 PM
I stuck around in DC for a few extra days after my conference. It was different to be there alone as an adult. I’ve done the DC thing a few times as a kid, and the previous time as one of 90+ junior high kids (a recipe for disaster) Here are a few good and not so good moments:
- Saturday at dusk I walked through the Vietnam memorial. It is quieter than I remembered–there aren’t as many people there. It felt less fresh in the memory, which is a little sad because it is such a huge gash in our history. But then, coming up out of the memorial, I could see the top of the capitol lit up and I felt mad. I am sick of politicians referencing Vietnam when they talk about Iraq, but not doing anything about it. If they feel that strongly, why don’t they act, and if they want to act now, why didn’t they do something earlier? (On the other hand, I know it must be difficult: if we just leave, it’s something like walking into someone’s house, trashing it, getting its family members to fight with each other, and then leaving them to pick up the mess.) God help us. And I mean that in the theological sense, not the taking-the-name-in-vain sense.
- I love the National Gallery of Art. Partly because, back on that junior high trip, I think I was dating my love-interest for 5 minutes in one of the galleries when a few intermediaries got us to agree we were “going out.” It was over by the time we got to the National Archives, but it was a good 5 minutes. But really, I love the National Art Gallery. I should have been an art history major. I should have ditched the religion major since I repeated most of it anyway in seminary–this might be the thing I now regret most in my life. All things considered, that’s not too bad a regret.
- Sunscreen is my friend, and I forgot to pack some. I am a lobster. People at church today seem to think I spent the week at the beach.
- The pillars of the Lincoln Memorial are really comfortable for leaning against–they have these scallops in them that are back shaped. The back side of the memorial is quiet in the evening.
- I found the WWII Memorial overwhelming. It was big and flashy. I agree with that war, but it felt triumphant, and I think even good wars are sad.
- I went for a walk around the White House. I think I saw Air Force 1 take Karl Rove away. That is a moment in history that I’m willing to be a part of.
- The last time I was there, one of my junior high classmates stuck his camera through the fence bars to take a picture of the White House and many many men with guns jumped out of the bushes and took aim. This time, I noticed what I am sure was a sniper on the roof. I hope junior high kids today are smarter than my classmate.
- There is a church in DC that has pew kneeling cushions embroidered with the names of each president. Even though it’s across the street from the White House, it’s still a little weird. If you get upset that your church has an American flag in front, but you can’t do anything about it, just think about that and remind yourself that it could be worse.
- And a true confession: when I visit a place like DC, there’s a little part of me that is convinced that somehow, I’ll be walking around and someone important will think, “Why, look at her. She looks to be someone who has a great intellect and keen theological insights on the issues of the day. And what great hair–with a little work, she might even be good on camera. We could use someone like her in the nation’s capitol.” And thus, I become trusted theological adviser to some important person. God’s way of slapping some sense back into me: the only person who recognized me for someone who might have some theological insight was the lone guy protesting outside the Supreme Court who saw my cross necklace and started saying something about some passage in Matthew. When I ignored him and walked on by, I think he maybe said something about me being in league with the anti-Christ.
All in all, it is pretty humbling to walk around this town and recognize how much power resides there and to hope in the most American little part of your heart that you maybe have some teensy bit of influence. However, I think I might have a stress fracture in one foot from all the walking, too. So, mostly, I just feel woefully out of shape. (And sunburned.)
[ Filed under Journal | 3 Comments ]
10 August 20079:34 PM
Inspired by Wendell Berry’s “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” this was written by a group of young pastor mama’s at the Cathedral College of Preachers conference this week.
Sing to the Lord a new song, for she has done marvelous things.
Don’t get old before your time.
Breastfeed in a pew.
Love your children
…and your parishioners.
Make beautiful things.
Get pedicures, with or without nail polish, because it is about the sole.
Play with your inner child…don’t let her hide.
Make mudpies.
Love your body and massage your spirit.
Dance a little in the pulpit.
Worship worship worship with God
and one another
AND not as the leader.
Escape from perfection.
Take a Sabbath day. Start with a Sabbath minute if that’s where you are.
Don’t give up on the church.
Just say NO to mama guilt,
Night meetings can go on without you.
Say thank you to your partner every day for joining you on the journey.
Blog.
Don’t be indisepensible.
Turn off your cell phone.
Don’t go into the office on your day off.
They will find you if the building is on fire.
Don’t die in every ditch.
Preach.Preach.Preach.
Plant tomatoes; God grows in the garden.
Walk in the grass barefoot.
Go barefoot.
Replace hierarchy with collegiality and competition with empathy.
Find a sermon in the diaper pail.
Exercise as a way to rejoice in your body.
Take vacations with the Holy Spirit.
Negotiate for the sisterhood, brotherhood, all!
Pray pray pray.
Make friends,
have friends,
keep friends.
Love your eccentricity.
Know your clergy tax law.
Claim your body.
Claim your voice.
Claim your shoes.
Sing to the Lord a new song, for she has done marvelous things.
[ Filed under Journal | 3 Comments ]
10 August 20079:24 PM
If you’re in the ministry world, it’s not too long before you encounter a fine black and white photo of a group of distinguished gentlemen in the their fine suits, perhaps with cigars and pipes, gathered on the steps of a venerable building to record an “event”: denominational meetings, men’s organizations, clergy clubs, seminary faculties.
My seminary had a wall of just such venerable fellows, the retired and expired professors, who looked down on us as we presented sermons in preaching class. They held a special place in my heart because they taught my dad and my grandpa. (And, true confession, also held one of them in particular dear, since liberated his portrait from the wall for a week and allowed it to live in my living room and took it on a few little field trips to interesting places…like our rival seminary.) But, it did kind of stink that the “theys” on the wall were all “hes”.
This week, I’ve been participating in one of the more subversive things I’ve ever done. (And, yes, I know, this does not make me particularly subversive.) I’ve been at a conference at the Cathedral College of Preachers in Washington, DC. This is a place that was founded to be filled with the men in those venerable pictures: nice suits, serious faces, a few pipes here and there, gathered on the steps of an Oxford-esque building for their photo.
But this week, the halls of that building have been filled with woman preachers. And, young woman preachers at that. I’ve never been here before, but there were a few times I when I knew that our presence made this a very different place:
- Standing in an atrium space for cocktail hour and making an incredible amount of ear-splitting noise as we talked and talked (and then yelled and yelled, because otherwise we couldn’t hear the person next to us). We were noisy because we were so excited to meet other people like us. People we had never met but already knew!
- Eating in a dining hall filled with women and only one man. Probably the first time that has happened in these halls.
- Talking openly about some rather “womanly” topics.
- Feeling free to walk from the bathroom to our bedrooms in jammies.
- Writing sermons in the library and computer area, with people comfortable enough with each other to sit on the floor, sprawl on a bench, and write up a storm without worrying that anyone else was more of a rock-star preacher than we were.
- Singing full voice in chapels, full, healthy female voice.
It’s been a very good week.
[ Filed under Journal | 1 Comment ]
Today is the 30th anniversary of the Chicago Picasso sculpture’s installation. No one has ever known what it is. All I know is that I’ve always had an overwhelming desire to slide down it. Listen to Studs Terkel 
But it’s also a sad time for public art in Chicago. The Berwyn car kabob is about to be replaced by a Walgreens. This kabob has always caught the nature of the Berwyn experience for me. Quirky, tacky, but still kind of cool. Where else do you find public art in the middle of a has-been auto-mall with crappy stores? I’ll miss the kabob.