2.19.12

{inside journey at christ church}

1.15.12

{the altar table at Journey at Christ Church}

The Cathedral of Aldi

A few weeks ago we got a very inexpensive juicer at Kohl's. We didn't pay much for it, but we've fallen in love with morning smoothies made with fresh carrot juice. In fact, carrot juice is the reason we went juicer shopping in the first place. A quart of it costs nearly $6. If you juice it yourself it costs about $1.49. At that rate, our little juicer investment will pay for itself in about three months.

And it was the hunt for inexpensive carrots that first led me to Aldi. {Aldi is a chain of bargain basement grocery stores that stretch from Kansas eastward. They carry "off brands" at very low prices. I used to be far too snooty a grocery shopper to give Aldi the time of day. But a girl will do what a girl has to do for fresh carrot juice!}

So, I've been shopping there for the last three weeks but it was while I was there this past Saturday that I realized that going to Aldi is a little bit like going to church – for those who won't give church the time of day.

First off, going into this store is not for the faint of heart – or for the uninitiated for that matter. Just like going to Catholic Mass or a good old fashioned baptism at a Baptist church, Aldi has some rituals that can be intimidating to a visitor on a weekend morning, beginning with making sure you have a quarter with you if you want to shop with a cart. There are no signs to tell you this. You are left to figure out for yourself that the only way to unlock your cart from all the others is to insert your quarter and pull. The quarter dangles there, locked in it's own little purgatory as you shop. It taunts you with it's nearness, but the only way to get your quarter back is to take your cart back to the line up when you are done buying your food and lock it back in place. When the lock clicks, your quarter pops back out.

The store has only four aisles and like most houses of worship on a Sunday morning, it seems as though everyone knows what's going on except you. The off brand wines are seated next to the gum, that is wedged near the salad dressing. The breakfast cereal is cozied up with the canned beans who have become best friends with the cat treats and taco seasoning. Everything is all mixey-mingley in Aldi and everyone seems to be alright with that. {ok. maybe i'm just wishing there were churches like this?}

Like only a precious few faith communities I've ever experienced, grace abounds at Aldi. If you forget your quarter no one yells at you. They don't laugh at you and make you feel bad for being so dumb or sinful. No one stares or whispers. And, *gasp* they still let you shop there. You simply ask the cashier for one and she lends it to you, without a second thought. And that grace soon spills over to the other shoppers in the store. I have yet to arrive and find the first cart in line without a quarter already there, that some other shopper left for the next patron to find. I kind of doubt that there is a lot of quarter thievery going on at Aldi. It seems like people kind of respect this quiet, pay-it-forward kindness.

After you pay for your groceries you notice the other little Aldi quirk. There are no bags. No plastic, no paper, no nothing. If you haven't brought your own you can wander the store looking for empty boxes on the shelves. If you strike out there, you are kind of out of luck. And perhaps this is what I like most about Aldi – shopping there demands mindfulness. It asks you to pay attention and plan what you are doing. If you don't have bags you must think about how you will transport your purchases to your car. If you remember to bring your reusable bags you feel good and virtuous about your environmental impact and your choices for food.

Aldi asks you to take responsibility for your cart and for your money and for your time.

Those might be the best reasons for going to church too. I don't go because I have nothing else to do. I don't go because all the right people might be watching. I go because I'm hungry. Because it offers a path of responsibility and choice that makes a difference in the world.

Now if only you got your offering back when your car drove off the lot. . . {kidding, kidding}

Signage

"Society evolves not by shouting each other down, but by the unique capacity of unique, individual human beings to comprehend each other."

~ Lewis Thomas • The Medusa and the Snail

For a long time, years even, I've wanted to take pictures of the messages that churches choose to post outside their doors. Most are trite. Some are ugly. Many are just innocuous and make the institution seem irrelevant to most who might be search for God, or searching for hope. The majority of these messages make me wonder what the church envisions the outcome of their sign might actually be. Or maybe wonder if they even care.

My original idea for the pictures may be flawed, but I've always thought that if I collected enough of them, placing them side-by-side, I could find messages that are completely contradictory – you know, "God Loves You" next to "God Hates Fags" for example.

Now that my camera is my constant companion, it might be the right time to start my little project. Maybe I will even be surprised to find that mainline denominations aren't exactly the religious equivalent of Fox News.

But I'm not holding my breath.

Connections

{click to make the image bigger!}

I went to a church last Sunday where I felt welcomed. That's a big deal because, you know, I've got my baggage and all. It was relaxed. The band was good. The people were friendly. And, maybe the best part? The coffee was awesome! kidding. . .kidding. . .

The real best part was that it's now Friday morning and I'm still thinking about the sermon. In a nutshell, it was this:

Imagine a wagon wheel. The outside, larger circle is the world. The inside, smaller circle is God. We are the spokes, radiating out. Notice that the closer the spoke gets to God, the closer we become to one another. The closer the spoke gets to the world, the more isolated and alone we become.

Of course, I didn't do the sermon justice. But being a visual person I found the illustration of connection fascinating. . .bordering on obsessive. . . I saw the damn thing everywhere I went. So, of course, I started taking pictures. And, of course, that got me thinking. . .

What if the actual connecting points to God are just as easy to find, if only we are paying attention?

Guess I'll have to go back to church on Sunday and see if that's where this sermon series is headed.

If not, at least I know there will be good coffee. . .

Old Scars

I think I've been spending the last three and a half years growing around a scar shaped like Open Door Community Church's absence.

At last, perhaps, the hurt has been fully absorbed.

It's funny. You don't really notice when pain is finally gone. When you live with it for a long enough period of time it becomes something like a shadow that follows you - bothersome at first, just another quirk of life after awhile. Then, one day, you look for your old companion and you realize that ever-aching tender place is nowhere to be found. You poke around, trying to find the hurt and all you find is a healed up scar and the realization that you are so much more than the sum of all your sorrows.

When the article appeared in the Courier a couple of weeks ago about the church, my cell phone rang off the hook and I got a ton of emails from people who felt betrayed and hurt all over again. My heart understood their pain, but here's the only advice I could find – let the scar tissue grow.

Perhaps, in the end, pain is nothing more than another form of baptism – when you arrive on the other side you have been transformed, regenerated and are ready to live again.

Ash Wednesday Reflections

:: 40 candles in our small living room is beautiful.

:: Being with people who let you tell the truth is amazing.

:: Being given permission to doubt yourself creates space for faith to enter.

:: Church isn't an institution, a building or a system. It's humble, funny, quirky, fearful, seeking people.

You Are Precious In My Eyes

Ash Wednesday has always been the religious day that resonates most closely with my soul. I love the quiet, internal focus that it demands, coupled with the external actions that repentance brings about.

For a religious day that is mostly about death, sin and repentance, it seems strange that Ash Wednesday should bring me such deep joy and the closest I've ever come to actually feeling as though I were in God's presence.

Tonight we're going to celebrate it in a cozy little community way in our living room. I love to be creative on this day so tonight we will combine 40 candles, some ashes, a song by Adele and some clay to think about what it means when God says "You Are Precious In My Eyes."

You are humbly invited to join in. • 7:00 p.m. • Our House • You don't need to bring anything but an open heart.

Words and Pictures :: Souvenirs

Some people bring back salt and pepper shakers as a way to remember their travels. Some folks like refrigerator magnets. For others, no trip is complete without a souvenir t-shirt proclaiming where they went and what they survived while there. Others look at their postcard collections, carefully arranged by dates of travel so they can remember exactly where they were at any given moment in their wanderings.

Souvenirs. Mementos. Keepsakes. Reminders. Remembrances. Tokens. Memorials. Relics.

Objects a traveler brings home for the associations formed with it.

During my 44 years of travel I think my souvenirs are old church hymns. Hum a little bit of In the Garden and I am immediately transported to Mamaw's front porch swing, the sounds of her singing floating through the old screen door while she cleaned up the breakfast dishes.

And He walks with me

And He talks with me

  And He tells me I am His own

  And the joy we share as we tarry there

  None other has ever known

Holy, Holy, Holy was the first hymn I ever fell in love with. It was hymn number 1 in the old, red Baptist Hymnal. When I was old enough to read, but not old enough to understand why the sermon droned on and on I would pull out the hymnal and try to entertain myself. Today when I hear the majestic chords of this grand old hymn I'm a little girl again, bare legs sticking to the wooden pews, trying not to wiggle so as to avoid the glares and pinches of my mother.

Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!


  Early in the morning our song shall rise to Thee;


  Holy, holy, holy, merciful and mighty!


  God in three Persons, blessed Trinity!

It seems like I spent most of my childhood in church. We were there Sunday morning for Sunday School and then worship. Sunday nights had potluck dinners and more worship. Wednesday nights in our small town were sacrosanct - no school activities were allowed, no homework was to be assigned. It was Church Night. We had GA's (Girls in Action), RA's (Royal Ambassadors) and then Prayer Meeting. 

When I think of all this church the hymn that comes to mind first is Just As I Am. I've probably sung this song more than a thousand times. It's an "invitational." In the Baptist tradition, every service is an opportunity for you to come to Jesus and be saved. While the congregation stands and sings the pastor waits at the front of the sanctuary for someone to come.

Just As I Am had become  kind of a joke to me until Ash Wednesday of this year. It has about eight verses and sometimes, while waiting for someone to go forward and get saved, I would put my head down and pray for someone just to go. get. saved. – Get. it. over. with. – I. am. hungry. But Ash Wednesday surprised me this year. I was in an Episcopal Church. (Baptists don't celebrate Ash Wednesday. Way too Catholic.) I was feeling spiritually lost and wondering how to find my way back. Quietly the choir started to sing.

Just as I am, though tossed about 

  with many a conflict, many a doubt, 

  fightings and fears within, without, 

  O Lamb of God, I come, I come. 

I remembered my way home. I wept. The very nice lady who was sitting next to me, being as welcoming to a stranger as she could possibly be, making sure I could navigate the Episcopal Prayer Book, handed me kleenex and never said a thing. 

When I got a bit older my dealings with the church became more complicated and painful. My dad was now a Baptist preacher. I was learning things about myself that I couldn't reconcile with the pictures of God that were being painted for me. More than anything in the world I wanted to please my Dad. God? Well, hopefully there would be time to iron that out later.

Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling, 

  calling for you and for me; 

  see, on the portals he's waiting and watching, 

  watching for you and for me. 

  Come home, come home; 

  ye who are weary come home; 

  earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, 

  calling, O sinner, come home! 

The more I came to understand myself as a lesbian the farther I felt from home. It wasn't that I wanted to go. I just didn't see any other way. Everything I knew about God said I had to go. In a tit-for-tat attitude I declared myself free of the religious straight-jacket I felt was being thrust upon me. 

Then one day, years later, I made a friend. He was a gay, recovering Baptist too. We were on a car trip to Chicago and were playing a game only two nerdy, churchy adults would play in the car – trying to stump each other with a church hymnal. One of us would call out the name of a hymn and the other would have to sing it. He had as much baggage with God and the church as I had. I called out Blessed Assurance and of course he knew every word. What Baptist worth his salt doesn't?

Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine!


Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine!


Heir of salvation, purchase of God,


Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.

  This is my story, this is my song,


  Praising my Savior all the day long;


  This is my story, this is my song,


  Praising my Savior all the day long.

I can't speak for him, but I suspect that both of us heard the refrain of that song with new ears that day. We also have a story. We also have a song. Our story of encountering God might be different from most other's stories. It might be painful. It might be difficult to hear, but we have stories too. They are ours and we are loved.

All of these hymns are my souvenirs. They are the yardstick that measure my life journey, the criterion by which I keep myself on course. I'm sure that more will be added to my collection as the years progress. 

There is one that means more than all the rest. It's been in my "life hymnal" from the days of barely being tall enough to see over the pew in front of me. I've sung it when I just wanted church to be over. I've sung it when my heart has been broken and I've hummed it under my breath when I've celebrated all the life that I can handle. 

I want it sung at my funeral as one last glimpse of the way I desired to live my life.

When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,


  When sorrows like sea billows roll;


  Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,


  It is well, it is well, with my soul.

Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come,


  Let this blest assurance control,


  That Christ has regarded my helpless estate,


  And hath shed His own blood for my soul.

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!


  My sin, not in part but the whole,


  Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,


  Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight,


  The clouds be rolled back as a scroll;


  The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend,


  Even so, it is well with my soul.

And, let the people of God, even the gay and lesbian ones, say Amen!

**********************************************************

To read more stories of souvenirs go here.

This is my favorite version of It Is Well. It's sung by the group 4Him. This is the version I crank up in my car and sing like no one is watching!

Two Years

This weekend I started reading Barbara Brown Taylor's new book An Altar in the World: A Geography of Faith. It's a follow up to her incredible book Leaving Church and in it she shares how she began to find life, purpose and God outside the walls of the institutional church. This book had me hooked from the introduction. On the third page she writes that when she was asked to speak at a church in Alabama she struggled with what to say. The wise old priest asked her a single question – and this question has been burning a hole in my soul since I read it.

"Come tell us, what is saving your life right now?"

What is saving my life. . . right now?

My answer has to be that somehow, every single day, I am learning to be just a little bit more alive. Somehow I am learning to forget the rejections that would only lead me back to a time in which I questioned my value as a child of God. I am remembering that permanence is a mirage and that in the beginning God brought order out of chaos. I'm remembering that God still brings creation out of chaos and that God calls it good.

I'm also remembering that Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so, little ones to him belong, they are weak but he is strong. Yes. Jesus loves me.

Those are the things that are saving my life. Right now.

It's been two years this week since Open Door asked me to resign. It's kind of funny, but I just remembered that today. And, rather than feeling like a punch in the stomach, the way it has felt for the last 24 months, today it just felt like a road sign of the edge of life's highway. I saw it. I read it. I kept right on driving. 

The evidence of how far down I had gone in the last two years was that it never really occurred to me until today that all the pain that I had been experiencing was plain old, garden variety, run of the mill grief. I was mourning the death of a dream and coping with the loss of so many things – my personal calling, a church full of family and friends and the certainty of the purpose and vision that had driven me. In metaphorical ways I had laid down my life for something, and then, with no warning, it was gone.

I could have, and would have, pointed that out to anyone else. It took me two years to figure it out for me. I went through all the stages, some of them many, many times. That anger one, even now, still raises its ugly head every now and then.

1. Numbness, Denial

2. Yearning, Anger

3. Sadness, Withdrawl

4. Reconstruction, Working Through

5. Acceptance, Hope

Moving towards acceptance and hope is the stage where I'm finally beginning to feel the sun warming my bones again. The anger is beginning to be transformed into laughter. When I got the call that told me that a certain leader in the congregation who was instrumental in my departure is now stripping in a bar with his new boyfriend I laughed out loud. I laughed until it hurt. I laughed. But, I didn't cry. That's moving towards acceptance.

I can't change the past. I can't change him. I can only change me. Changing me is all that matters. I get that now.

Later on in her book Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the spiritual practice of getting lost. For her, every human foible is an opportunity to meet the Divine. In writing about the spiritual fruits of our individual failures she says, 

"When we fall ill, lose our jobs, wreck our marriages, or alienate our children, most of us are left alone to pick up the pieces. . .When the safety net has split, when the resources are gone, when the way ahead is not clear, the sudden exposure can be both frightening and revealing. We spend so much of our time protecting ourselves from this exposure that a weird kind of relief can result when we fail. To lie flat on the ground with the breath knocked out of you is a solid resting place. This is as low as you can go. You told yourself you would die if it ever came to this, but here you are. You cannot help yourself and yet you live."

And yet I live.

What is saving my life right now? The laughter that comes with acceptance and the hope that warms me like the sun.

Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning.

– Psalm 30:5

Seekers

I have a friend who did not grow up going to church. It just wasn't a priority in her family. What she knows about the Bible is what you pick up from just being a smart person engaged in the world. She didn't know what the 23rd Psalm was until I started reciting it. Then she knew she had heard it at every funeral she'd ever been to.

She is at a point that many of us reach in our lives when we begin to feel the need to intensely search ourselves and the lives we have created for meaning above and beyond the simple answers we've always relied on.

It's not an easy place to be.

Wasn't it Socrates who said "the unexamined life is not worth living?"

I know a whole bunch of people who are perfectly content to live an unexamined life. I can't speak for my friend, but for me, the work of examination, wrestling with the questions and learning to live with my answers is very much worth the work it demands.

She has started going to one of those mega-churches in Colorado. They are mega for a reason. The music is top-notch. Every service is a production with lights, multimedia, precision and dress rehearsals. The sermons are funny, challenging and the preacher is self-effacing and humble – a guy you can relate to.

We've been talking a bit about her faith journey. Church "insiders" would call her a seeker. That's a word I love. With any luck, I want to be a seeker my whole life.

seek – verb

1. to go in search or quest of

2. to try to find or discover by searching or questioning

3. to try to obtain

4. to try or attempt 

5. to go to

6. to ask for; request

7. to make inquiry

Her new church is "seeker friendly" meaning it doesn't use a lot of churchy language, the context and content are relevant, the format is informal and you leave feeling good about having been there. She sent me a link to Sunday's sermon yesterday and I listened to it. We wrote back and forth for awhile about the central point of the preacher's sermon – What are you willing to sacrifice your life for? What cause, idea, problem or situation so gets under your skin that you are willing to sacrifice your time, your money or your energy to do something about it?

It's an interesting question. The sermon was about money and it ended with the offering plates being passed – much to the groans of many who were uncomfortable being trapped in a 50 minute (!) sermon about money. The twist was that when the plates were passed, they were filled with one-dollar bills. Each person was to take one and come up with a plan about what they were going to do with it to make an impact in the world. He encouraged everyone there to use it to make an impact that would last forever.

My friend and I bandied around some ideas. The preacher said that you could add a few of your own dollars or you could use a few of the dollars of those who were seated around you so I told her that my idea was to collect all the dollar bills from the people there who were interested in making some of the most wounded people in society feel welcomed in that church and start an outreach to gay bars. I also laughingly told her that if I could only get 4 or 5 dollars I would definitely see that as a sign!

I was being kind of tongue-in-cheek about it, but that's exactly what I would do with it. . .

Then I remembered another question that I have struggled with my whole life with God –

"What would you do right now if you weren't afraid?"

Ouch.

Stop Shooting the Wounded

Last Sunday afternoon at the Y I ran into someone who used to come to the church I pastored. She was pretty active for about six months or so. I knew that she found our little space because she was deeply wounded and needed a place to heal. She told me at the time that she wouldn't be there forever but that she had gifts she needed and wanted to use. We could offer her the time and space she needed. True to her prediction, she was ready to move on a few months later. I kind of lost track of her.

As we chatted for a few minutes last week she apologized. She already knew about Open Door and its foolishness. She had heard how they had lost their way and that they were just a "smoke and mirrors" image of what they were called to be. She asked if I had found a new spiritual home. "No," I said, "I really poured my heart and soul and everything I had into that place and I'm just not ready to try to find something that I'm not sure exists." She agreed. Then she added, "I just want to say that I'm sorry that we're all part of an institution that shoots its wounded instead of helping them heal." 

Most of this week I thought about that conversation.

Then on Friday night I got a letter in the mail (real mail. . .in an envelope and everything!) from my Aunt Nancy. It was the kind of letter that you only receive a few times in your life and almost always at a time you really, really need it. It was full of kindness and encouragement and the kind of positive things that people really need to say to each other a lot more often. Tucked in with the letter was a newspaper article she had cut out. It was entitled, "Location Provides Peaceful Place for Preachers" and was about a local man who had built a free vacation cabin for preachers and their families to use. She asked me to pay particular attention to the statistics cited in the article.

• 1,500 pastors leave their churches every month due to spiritual burnout, moral failure or contention in their churches.

• 80% of seminary graduates leave the ministry within the first five years.

• 70% of pastors suffer from depression - most do not deal with it.

• 50% of pastor's marriages will end in divorce.

• 80% of pastor's spouses wish their spouse would choose another profession.

• The majority of pastor's spouses said that the most destructive event that had ever happened in their marriage or their family's life was the day their spouse entered the ministry.

It was kind of a relief for me to read those statistics. I think it meant that what I knew in my heart was actually true – I was depressed. I was alone. I wasn't prepared. It was hard. And, maybe most importantly – I did the best I could do at the time.

If you read this and go to church - tell your pastor that you appreciate them. You may not agree with everything they say or do. You might think they only work on Sunday or that they just work at the church for the money (there were those who said those things to me!). No matter what you think, give them a little encouragement. It goes a long way.

If you read this and don't go to church I can't say that I blame you. I don't really want to be a part of an institution that shoots its wounded any more either.

Belief

Yesterday I downloaded John Mayer's album "Continuum." Wow.

Listen to "Belief."



"Belief is a beautiful armor
But makes for the heaviest sword
Like punching under water
You never can hit who you're trying for."

Anybody else see a hell of a church service hiding in there? I wish I didn't have to. . .

Chalktalks and Flannelgraphs

This morning the local Baptist church brought in some posters and games for their Vacation Bible School that needed to be laminated. As I looked at the 1960's looking pictures of Jesus and his disciples I was transported back to the musty church basements of my childhood.

Just the mention of Vacation Bible School stirs up memories of Kool-Aid, plaster of Paris and popsicle sticks for me. It was always one of the first activities of summer. School hadn't been out for long but already I was missing the schedule and activity of school. Bible School filled the void, if only for a week.

We would start the morning with an assembly. All of us were lined up by age groups with the little kids going first. As we marched into the sanctuary we sang campy Bible songs. We recited the Pledge of Allegiance and then the Pledge of Allegiance to the Christian flag ("I pledge allegiance to the Christian flag and to the Savior for who's kingdom it stands. One brotherhood uniting all mankind in service and in love." I can't believe I still remember that!) There was always some kind of lesson and prayer before we broke up to go to our classrooms. Each class would march out, one by one, with everyone singing again.

The day continued with the same kind of regimented precision. Stories, crafts, songs, snacks, recess, more activities and memory verses before being dismissed for the day. It went on for a week.

I guess VBS isn't like that anymore. Too old fashioned. Too analog in a digital childhood. But the flannelgraphs worked for me. So did chalk talks and puppet shows.

There's no denying that the church hung a lot of baggage on me. I've wrestled with God much like Jacob did. In ways both big and small I walk with a spiritual limp. But I "continue to work out (my) salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in (me) to will and to act according to his good purpose." (Philippians 2:12b-13)

One of the memory verses that I learned in Bible School forms and continues to refine my theology even today.

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" 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." (Matthew 22:36-40)

If only the Church were listening.

Here's an example of a chalktalk if you have no idea what I'm talking about.

All for the Low, Low Price of $40

To Those Who Did Not Disappear
Hey. My name is Matt. I'm writing this near the end of August in the year 2000. I just turned twenty-four years old. You are reading this because recently a lot of people vanished from the face of the earth. Perhaps their clothes and jewelry just fell to the ground, their bodies disappearing without a trace. I'm sure you are wondering what happened, why it happened, and can it happen again. You're reading this because you were not one of them. You are one of the people remaining on the earth. I'm writing this because I'm one of those who disappeared, and I want you to know why. It was the rapture.

You will NOT BELIEVE this website.

Copied directly from the site:
"We have set up a system to send documents by the email, to the addresses you provide, 6 days after the "Rapture" of the Church. This occurs when 3 of our 5 team members scattered around the U.S fail to log in over a 3 day period. Another 3 days are given to fail safe any false triggering of the system.

We give you 150mb of encrypted storage that can be sent to 12 possible email addresses, in Box #1. You up load any documents and choose which documents go to who. You can edit these documents at any time and change the addresses they will be sent to as needed. Box #1 is for personal private information such as "passwords" and letters to be sent to your closest lost relatives and friends.

We give you another 100mb. of unencrypted storage that can be sent to up to 50 email addresses, in Box #2. You can edit the documents and the addresses any time. Box #2 is for more generic documents to lost family & friends."

This whole thing just blows my mind. For the low, low price of $40 annually they will store your emails designed to speak for you – presumably from the great beyond. Rather casually, they encourage you to include your bank account, credit card and life insurance information in the messages that they will store for you. . .

“In the encrypted portion of your account you can give them access to your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables, and powers of attorneys' (you won't be needing them any more, and the gift will drive home the message of love). There won't be any bodies, so probate court will take 7 years to clear your assets to your next of Kin. 7 years of course is all the time that will be left. So, basically the Government of the AntiChrist gets your stuff, unless you make it available in another way.”

All for the low, low price of $40. . .and of course, we would NEVER accidentally compromise your banking, brokerage, hidden valuables or power of attorney information. . .but how would you know. . .you’ll be gone. . .

And people wonder why mainline Christianity is dying??

A Year Out

“Once you do something significant with your life, everything else you do just becomes a way to eat.”

That’s one of a couple of thoughts I keep having anyway.

It’s been almost a year since I was asked to resign from the church that I helped birth. A year is a long time. Conversely, it’s also just one thin ring on the tree of my life.

I don’t know where I thought I would be a year out. I still feel sad. Occasionally I still feel angry. Sometimes I just don’t care. Sometimes I’m excited that Open Door is still alive.

The people there are wonderful. We started attending again in January. They were welcoming – with only a couple of notable exceptions. The way I’m feeling isn’t their fault.

The second thought that I keep having is this – “Why am I still there?”

If the purpose of Church (I use the universal church here) is to allow humanity to exercise the gifts, abilities and skills that God has given to each to further God’s work in the world. . . then what the hell am I doing there?

Let me reiterate – the people at Open Door Community Church are wonderful. This has nothing to do with them. It’s all me.

Many years ago, as part of a Servant Leadership class, we wrote mission statements for our lives. This is what I wrote, long before anyone ever dreamed of a church where gay and lesbian people would be welcomed in Findlay. Long before I had any inkling that preaching would be my strongest gift or that teaching would be a close second.

“To reclaim, reconnect and rejuvenate faith and justice issues with those whom my life intersects.”

I’m not – and I can’t – do any of that now. Is it even still my calling?

I made mistakes. Big ones. Ones that hurt people. But does that negate every gift that I have?

The “why am I still there?” question inevitably brings around the thought that “once you do something significant with your life, everything else you do just becomes a way to eat,” which connects to “why am I still there?” and the spiral of frustration is born.

I don’t believe that God has given up on me. I just have to be patient while She and I figure it out I guess.

Everyday People

This song has been stuck in my head all day. I'm not really sure why. . .it would make a great church service. . .

Good Friday and Wooden Crosses

It's Good Friday. It's Holy Week and nearing the end of Lent. I used to always do my best worship planning during Lent and Easter. That seems strange now, being that Lent is about emptiness and all. But I loved coming up with visual and participatory worship settings that drove home the messages of Lent.

There was always a service that I wanted to do on Good Friday. I wanted to make a HUGE (read "life sized, big enough to actually crucify a person on") cross. Maybe out of old barn beams. Rough. Full of splinters. Unrefined. I wanted to lay it out in the altar space where every time anyone moved around the worship area you had to step over it. I wanted it to be in the way. You know. . .like Jesus is supposed to be in the way in our lives as we move around making our day to day decisions.

On Good Friday I wanted to do a first person telling of the crucifixion story from Jesus' perspective. Not in Bible English. But in a creative writing, everybody writing and feeling the story together kind of way. I wanted to end the service with a time of contemplation about what it was that actually nailed Jesus to those splintery boards. What kind of brokenness and sin did it take for Jesus to willing stretch out his arms and say, "It's all gonna be OK. Just give it to me."

In the quiet contemplation I wanted all of us to take small pieces of paper and write down the brokenness in our own lives that Jesus needed to heal. And then, one by one, we would have brought those things to the cross, and each of us – alone – would have nailed those things there. Hammer blows ringing out as the service ended.

That was my idea anyway.

Sometimes we just need to hear the piercing sound of a hammer on metal and feel the splinters slicing through our skin. We also need to know, in an intimate and personal way, that somehow it's all gonna be OK.

Happy Easter.

Left Behind

I got my Dad’s church newsletter in the mail this week. I don’t know why I keep receiving it, but there it was. So I read it.

“The Pastor’s Corner” article made me cringe. Following are two excerpts.

“I believe the next big spiritual event that is coming to the world is the rapture. By rapture I mean the instant removal of all TRUE Christians to Heaven by the Lord. . .”

“For many years I have believed that the Rapture would happen on an EASTER SUNDAY. Jesus body rose from the grave on Easter Sunday. . .what better day for the Lord to raise the bodies of dead followers of Jesus? To me there is no better day! And as those bodies are rising from the grave, we living followers of Jesus will be caught up together with them (Raptured) to meet our Lord in the air. . .Oh Happy Day! Friends, it could happen this Easter Sunday, March 23rd, and I am praying that it will. Question: Are YOU going with US?”

This prevailing theology of the End Times comes primarily from this passage from I Thessalonians 4 “13But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. 14For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. 15For this we declare to you by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will by no means precede those who have died. 16For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first. 17Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever.”

What my father wrote in his article struck me as flawed on so many levels. Besides the immediate arrogance (“Are YOU going with US?”) there is a sense of fear and doom brought on by this idea about God and the end of the world that has been mainstreamed by the Left Behind series of books.

What irritates me so much about this theology is that the apocalyptic texts in the Bible were originally written to encourage those who had been marginalized to meet their stress and fear with confidence – not with panic. The writings were meant to bring about a sense of confidence that God was working things out with peace, joy and justice. Instead, what the fundamentalist churches are doing is using every human being’s fear of being excluded to bring about the change THEY want to see.

Whenever I am confronted by this kind of warped theological argument I take it right to the standard of the work that the Holy Spirit does within each believer. “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23) When a way of talking and teaching about God doesn’t engender these characteristics, I’m very, very careful.

These theologies espoused by my father and so many fundamentalist churches just don’t reflect the God I’ve come to know.

First Disillusionment

My faith heritage comes entirely from the Southern Baptist Church. Where I grew up in Kentucky that was pronounced “babdist” and nearly everyone I knew attended some incarnation of the Babdist church.

All during elementary school I knew a girl named Andrea who I envied. She had curly hair that hung in perfect ringlets. I never remember Andrea coming to school in jeans. It seemed that she wore a dress to school every day. Often they were little pinafore dresses. My favorite ones were plaid. She had patent-leather Mary Janes that she wore with short white socks that had ruffles around the top.

I thought Andrea was perfect.

My admiration of Andrea reached its peak when we were both in the fifth grade. She rode my bus and when we would drop her off at the end of her very long driveway, you could see their beautiful house at the top of the rolling Kentucky farm where they lived. It was an immaculately maintained home – massive and historical.

Andrea had a lot of brothers and sisters. She was the youngest and I always wondered if she was lonely in that huge house with no one her age to play with.

I never really talked to Andrea all that much. It wasn’t that I was too shy or that I didn’t WANT to talk to her. It was that my church had slyly implanted feelings of fear about Andrea into my head. Mixed with those low-grade fears were mild feelings of moral superiority and a breezy attitude that I had the upper hand in all things God related.

Andrea’s family was Catholic.

Looking back, my childhood envy of everything that was Andrea, colliding with my inbred fear of all things Catholic, began my first disillusionment with evangelical Christianity.

I had been taught that God wanted everyone to become a Christian. Every sermon had been peppered with phrases like “accept Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior,” “invite Jesus into your heart” and “get right with God.”

I had also been taught that if a person didn’t become a Christian during his or her brief stint at life that he or she had bought a one-way ticket to hell. This wasn’t a concept to be debated or questioned. It was a literal place where those too stubborn (or too stupid was always the implication) would roast for eternity.

And my church had been clear that Catholics were on the first train car, in the first-class compartment on the express train to H E double toothpicks.

Let me be clear about how confusing and tumultuous this felt for me. The people at my church were good people. They hugged me and loved me and encouraged me. They praised my successes and spurred me on when I could do better. They taught me Bible stories and songs in Sunday School and helped me make shoebox dioramas of missionary heroes in GA’s on Wednesday nights. (GA’s were “Girls in Action.” The male version were RA’s, “Royal Ambassadors.” Yes, they were separate classes. No, I won’t think about the sexist bullshit right now. . .) They taught me that God loved everyone – if they would just get saved.

They also taught me that it was my job to tell the people I knew that Jesus had died for their sins and that they could go to heaven too if they would just pray a simple little prayer with me. It was my job to lead people to the Lord and I better get right on with it – because there were heathens living all over the place. And there were Catholics on my bus.

Imagine how this felt to a sensitive, thoughtful, young girl. I truly wanted to do the right thing. I wanted to make Jesus smile and my church love me more. I wanted to please my parents and my teachers. I truly wanted Andrea to go to heaven too.

As I turned out, I never did “witness” to Andrea. Perhaps it was that I was too afraid. (Jesus is frowning as I write this even now.) Maybe I didn’t confront her because my Mother told me that I could never be friends with her – and I never was. (Jesus is still frowning.)

In my heart of hearts however, I know that I never witnessed to Andrea because I was just beginning to understand that everything wasn't as black and white as my church had taught. (A slow smile spreads over Jesus’ face as he quickly shoots me a wink and a knowing nod.)

This epiphany is what keeps me searching for the face of God – to this very day.



Georgetown Baptist Church – where I was a G.A. and learned the value of all things potluck!