Respite

You may have noticed that today is Saturday, and the post before this is from Wednesday. Yes, my friends, I have failed at my goal of posting every day in Advent. I was so distracted having Sabbath and fun on Thursday and Friday that I didn't get anything written here. I apologize, and I hope you won't think I'm terribly disappointing for having not posted as regularly as I'd hoped.

Thursday was a full workday, and then I traveled a few hours away to visit a dear friend. We spent the evening relaxing and playing, sharing in conversations both holy and goofy. It was exactly the sort of unwinding and fun that I needed in the midst of this crazy season. Then on Friday I returned to town just in time to go out with some friends. We saw White Christmas on the big screen, then enjoyed a much-needed girls night out. Again, it was just what I was looking for. But both nights I was busy and out late, so I didn't get to my keyboard to write.

Today has been a much quieter sort of day. I finally hit the deadline for my sermon, so I spent several hours wrestling with ideas and trying desperately to make the words come out clearly. I wasn't the only one struggling this week, though. A few of my friends were also down to the wire on sermon-writing this week, and all of us seemed to be struggling with the same problem: redundancy. The season of Advent and several of the weeks leading up to it are all focused on the same major themes in the lectionary: preparing for Christ's return and the eschaton, which involves repentance and hope. The texts almost seem to repeat themselves. The gospels and Isaiah tell us over and over again to prepare the way, to repent for coming judgment, to look with hope for God's promised future. And after several weeks of these same things, my friends and I found ourselves wondering how many times, how many different ways you can say, "Jesus is coming, look busy!"

A few days ago, a church member asked me how long it takes to prepare a sermon. I explained that it varies. There are weeks when the passage speaks directly to your heart and your context, when God seems to put a word directly into your mind and it flows almost effortlessly onto the page. And then there are weeks like this, when you read and exegete and pore over commentary after commentary, and then sit staring at a computer screen for hours, typing and deleting, typing and deleting, muttering under your breath, and giving your dog and any other bystanders the distinct impression that you've lost your mind. I have struggled and wrestled and I have a manuscript draft. Tomorrow when I preach it we'll see whether the Spirit spoke in the struggle.

This evening I popped "The Preacher's Wife", one of my favorite Christmas movies, into the DVD player. I've seen it probably thirty times, but today I saw things I'd never seen before. For the first time, I recognized the clergy burnout in Henry, one of the main characters. Most of the movie takes place during Advent. You see Henry struggling with the feeling that his ministry is failing, worrying that he's not making any difference. You see him struggling to manage all of the church obligations with his family responsibilities, concerned that the church won't have enough money to get through the year or really serve their community. He doesn't even recognize the angel in his midst or believe that God sent help.

Every time I watched this movie before, I saw Henry as a bit bumbling. I'd watch him working instead of spending time with his family, I'd listen to his negativity and his hopelessness, and I'd think, "What a fool! How could anyone get like this?" But that was before I was a pastor. Now his actions make some sense. I get what Henry means when he says he has to make hospital visits in the evening or go to meetings. And I understand how he could wonder if his work is making a difference, or if there will be enough money or energy or resources to accomplish all that we've been called to accomplish. I don't fully understand the family pressures, but I know how he could lose faith like that. It's a temptation every time a meeting goes badly, every time a hospital visit is heartbreaking, every time you preach a sermon to blank faces. But I hope that whenever that temptation becomes overwhelming I'll see a glimmer of hope, a glimpse of God at work. So I'll keep looking for it.

She's Out of Your League

This evening, instead of writing the two sermons I need to finish by Sunday, I went to the movies with a couple of friends. We didn't really know what to see, but we were looking for something funny and stumbled upon "She's Out of Your League." It's not great cinema by any stretch of the imagination. The acting is mediocre, the humor is shallow and sophomoric, and it's a predictable plotline. But I think that this movie, more than most I've seen lately, has an important message for guys of my generation: GO FOR IT.

The main character in the movie, Kirk, is a self-proclaimed loser. He's an average guy, not particularly attractive, lacking in education, and stuck in a dead-end job. He meets a beautiful, successful woman who is, apparently for no good reason, interested in him. He goes out with her several times and they both seem very interested in each other, but he keeps coming back to his friends and wondering why she'd ever like him. He has no confidence in himself.

I'm not sure if it's just the men I meet, or if this really is as widespread as it seems, but a lot of the guys I run into need some lessons in confidence and assertiveness. I see guys across crowded coffee shops and bars and I can tell by their eye contact, facial expressions, and body language that they're interested in me, but despite encouraging glances and signals, they don't have the guts to come over and strike up a conversation. I have male friends who don't have the guts to make moves on girls they really like. And it makes me wonder: is there something in the way these guys are socialized, in their upbringing or experience that makes them such chickens? Why is it that seemingly decent guys, men who are intelligent and reasonably attractive, are so convinced that they have nothing to offer that they refuse to even risk starting a conversation with a stranger? Is the fear of rejection so petrifying that their feet turn to stone and can't carry them across the room?

I have asked guys out before. I have made the first move. But the thing is, I'm tired of doing it. All day long I'm in charge of things. I have to be assertive and decisive, I have to face people and risk rejection, I have to be in charge. At the end of the day, I'm tired of it. I would like to meet a guy who doesn't force me to make all the moves and decisions. I would like to meet a guy who can start a conversation, express romantic interest, and even go in for a kiss without obvious prompting from me. Why, I ask, is that so hard to find?

Or is it that all of the guys who have confidence and assertiveness have already made their moves successfully and gotten married? Most of my male friends who are my age and married seem to have plenty of confidence and assertiveness. So, are all the guys who are still single in their late twenties either those who haven't had the guts to make moves earlier or those who made moves and are such jerks that their moves were rejected over time?

I wonder if young men struggle as much with confidence and body image as young women, but it's not talked about as much. There's lots of literature about adolescent girls and self-image issues. I wonder if guys have the same problems, but we don't have studies identifying it or language for articulating it. Is it that these issues go untreated because they are unknown, so twenty-something and thirty-something guys are still struggling with them? Or is assertiveness just a dying trait in the male species? There is a sociological study here, I think, but I don't have the time or resources to dig into it.

Since I can't do an official study, I'll try something else. Men: I challenge you. Go start a conversation with someone you don't know. If you're single, try asking out someone you just met. If the girl says yes, bully for you! If she says no, she'll probably have more respect for you because you at least had the courage to try. Either way, I don't think it will be as bad as you fear.

The Blind Side

Today was an incredibly long day, and I faced some unexpected setbacks in one of my major projects. Most unexpectedly, I spent the day talking with a building inspector and filling out building permits. So, by the end of my 12-hour day, I was exhausted and a bit grumpy. But a friend called and invited me out to see the Blind Side after my meeting. I'm reading the book, and so far I've really enjoyed it. And the movie exceeded my expectations. Sandra Bullock did a fantastic job portraying Leigh Anne. By the end of the movie, I had released all the stress of the day and I found myself smiling again.

Half-Formed

My view of the world is based upon a continually-changing set of theories. My way of thinking, my values, and the purpose of my actions are based on more solid, less changeable things, but the way I see the world is shifting constantly because of changing experiences and attitudes, and I like to formulate expendable theories based upon those shifting views. Here are a few of my more recent theories:

1) There ought to be a periodic table of people, based primarily on reactivity. Some people are extremely reactive, and whenever they're faced with stress or anxiety, they blow up or boil over. Other people are mostly stable, but react to specific situations or other elements badly. The goal for leaders is, I think, to be like Noble gasses, almost completely non-reactive. Leaders need to inspire, true, but when anxiety is introduced into a system, when people are freaking out, the job of leaders is to remain calm, to respond instead of reacting. People should be required to at least be aware of their people-periodic number, and to warn others so that they can be treated accordingly.

2) The creators of the movie The Wizard of Oz were secretly inspired by the Epistle of James. (Note: this is the movie. The book was more likely inspired by a bad acid trip.) Think for a moment about the last scene in Oz, when the wizard is helping the Tin Man, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion. He tells them that they already had the gifts they were looking for, but it was as though they didn't have those gifts because they didn't evidence them. Once they have claimed and demonstrated their gifts in their journey to help Dorothy, they are given tokens that reaffirm their possession and use of the gifts. The wizard tells the Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man in turn that they already have what they were looking for, "But there's one thing they have that you don't have," and presents them with a token marking their gifts based upon their actions. Perhaps what James is trying to say is, "Where I come from, there are people who all day long do nothing but faithful things. Those people are called Christians. You are like them, but there's one thing they have that you don't have: evidence. So, in honor of your acts of faith in Jesus Christ, these are acts of piety and grace. Do them, and all the world will know you have faith.

3) Someone, somewhere needs to invent a neuter personal pronoun for the English language. She and he both imply gender, and it objectifies. This leaves me with no adequate pronouns for describing my as-yet-unborn niece or nephew or God. It leaves me at a loss for words more often than I'd care to mention. If a new pronoun is not added soon, I'll have to think of my own. I'm leaning toward "teb", but I'm also taking suggestions.

The Rest of the (Call) Story

For the sometimes-enlightening, often-exasperating, and always-complicated commissioning process, I had to write my "call story". Through the course of seminary and the ministry process, you end up writing and telling this story again and again in various forms to a large number of people. Over time, it becomes streamlined into a brief tale that hits briefly on the highlights on the way to saying, "So, can and will you help me keep writing the story?". However, in that streamlining, important bits of the story are lost. There are small anecdotes, rabbit trails off the main path, that I have to bypass in getting to the main points. Yet, these rabbit trails helped me to get to the main points. Without them, I might never have had call story to tell. Not to mention that, while there was a required bibliography for that section of my papers, it was aimed at books; my call was as much shaped by films as books, but that part is harder to describe. So, since I had to leave these influences out of my papers, but I still want to get them out there, I'll include them here.

The first time I really showed any evidence of a call was in early elementary. My parents heard noises from my room one night after they'd put me to bed and turned out the light, and came into the room only to find me singing to my stuffed animals. I had my illustrated children's book of Bible stories, from which I had done a reading. I had explained the passage to my plush congregation, and I was going on to the closing hymn when my parents came in to check on me. They told me that I could continue the service in the morning, but I had to go to sleep. I don't think I got around to giving the benediction the next day, and the incident was forgotten for many years.

When I was in junior high, my two favorite movies were "Auntie Mame" and "The Trouble with Angels". Interestingly, both of these movies starred Rosalyn Russell, and both gave me an image of who I wanted to become. I loved the way Auntie Mame found the joy in situations and lived a life full of adventure, travel, and exciting people. I loved that her escapades were considered unacceptable by some, yet she was incredibly loving and compassionate, if in her strange, disorganized way. I wanted to be just like her. I particularly liked "The Trouble with Angels" because of the mischief that Mary and Rachel got into. I wanted to emulate their cool, trouble-making ways. I was always a bit saddened by the end, though. I couldn't understand how Mary could make the choice she made. I didn't see how she could be both troublemaker and devout religious servant. Only later, as I began to discern my own call, did I begin to understand how I could be both Mame and Mary at the same time.

High school brought participation in ASP, which was one of the most formative experiences in my faith development. In the mountains of Kentucky and Tennessee, I wrote about faith, sweat, and sawdust. I saw God in the faces of Appalachian teenagers and heard God's voice in the buzz of circular saws. I watched hopes come to fruition and I began to recognize that God was working in my heart and through my blistered hands. Most of all, I saw God in JB, a man whose house I worked on my first summer as a volunteer. JB was a carpenter by trade, and he could have done all the work we were doing both better and faster. But he had developed a rare lung disease and could no longer work. As we worked on his home, he explained things and guided our work with a patience and a humility that amazed me. He sat on the porch with his oxygen tank, encouraging me as I used a power drill for the first time. Through ASP, I learned that God uses all parts of us: our brokenness and our strength, our skills and our inexperience, for a glory that we often do not recognize or understand.

As strange as it might sound, performing in a competitive showchoir also prepared me for ministry in ways I never would have anticipated. I was never a particularly good singer or dancer, but performing helped me to gain a confidence in front of people that I would otherwise have lacked. I learned how to use my facial expressions and body language as communication tools. I learned to disguise my nervousness and have poise, even when wearing sequins and fake eyelashes.

In early college, I was fascinated by semi-religious movies. I watched Saved!, Keeping the Faith, and Dogma over and over again, pulling out themes of religious life. I was fascinated at the way the characters in Saved! managed to hold their faith and their questions in tension and I was challenged by the responsibilities of call and commitment to church in Keeping the Faith.

By odd coincidence (or divine providence, I don't know which) I picked up a copy of a book called Grace at a publisher's booth at the Earth Day festival my sophomore year of college. As a sometimes-pianist, the keyboard on the cover caught my eye, and I bought a copy. I then promptly put it on my shelf and forgot about it for a few months. By the time I picked it up again, I had begun to discern my call to ministry, but didn't really know what to do about it. As I read, I saw connections with my own life, and gained the courage to pursue my vocation.

When I went home for Thanksgiving, just after I recognized my call for the first time, I was terrified to tell my parents. My father is Catholic, and I had never thought to ask him what he thought of women in ministry. So, when I got home, I told my parents to sit down, and I told them a very abbreviated version of my call story. When I finished, my father replied with, "Of course. We knew." I was stunned. I hadn't told them anything. When I asked about it, he continued, "Well, it was revealed to me in meditation a few weeks ago. I told your mother (at this point, Mom nodded) but we didn't want to tell you and mess up your discernment." I didn't know how to respond. I've never been one to put a lot of stock in mystical experiences, but that gave me an affirmation that was very valuable to me.

Then a stranger gave me a great gift: a district superintendent from a conference other than my own, after some consultation with me, assigned me a candidacy mentor. In our process, candidacy mentors can be either helpful or exasperating, but mine was an incredible blessing for me. I looked up to that mentor, who seemed at times to be the person I wanted to grow into in a few years. I saw a woman who was close to my age working in ministry, which I had never seen before. She showed me that I could be in ministry and still be myself. She inspired me to make progress in an arduous process of bureaucracy, which has allowed me to get as far as I am by this point. If we could put people in our bibliographies, she'd be on mine.

I'm sad that I had to leave these bits out of my explanation of my call for commissioning. The page limits on my commissioning papers forced me to leave out several bits of myself, my story, and my beliefs that I think would give the church a more accurate picture of who I am. And in all the paperwork, I often lost track of the call and the passion that led me to writing them in the first place. These help me to remember that God was forming me long before I began the process, and God will continue to shape me through and after it. For now, I think it's enough that I know where I've been and I believe in the road I'm on (at least most days).

Did They Know?

Benjamin Franklin: "Don't worry, the history books will clean it up."
John Adams: "I won't be remembered by the history books. It will all be 'Franklin did this, and Franklin did that, and Franklin did some other damn thing. Franklin smote the ground and out popped George Washington, fully grown and on his horse. He then electrified him with his amazing lightning rod and the three of them, Franklin, Washington, and the horse, conducted the entire revolution by themselves."

I watched the movie 1776 today, as is becoming my habit on Independence Day. As I watched it, I began to wonder: did our forebears realize what kind of legacy they would have? Did John Adams know, when he pushed and pushed for independence, that over two hundred years later people would still be talking about and celebrating what he did? Did Benjamin Franklin realize when he had his portrait painted that hundreds of years later people would walk around with his picture on their money? Moreover, did he have any idea what that the electricity that he began playing with then would be absolutely essential to the way many people live their lives now, so many years later? Did Thomas Jefferson know that his words would be quoted for centuries to come? I doubt it. I think they probably knew what they were doing was important, probably realized that it would have long-term consequences, but did they realize they were creating a new nation that would thrive and become a world power?

It got me thinking about the consequences of our actions, and about what people will think about our generation two hundred years in the future. Is it possible that, centuries from now, people will be quoting things my friends and colleagues have written? Could it be that our inventions, our ideas, our creations will endure?

I remember the giant stone ruins I saw in the Middle East, the enormous pillars that have remained standing for thousands of years. I wonder if the lowly stone cutter and the engineers and well-muscled workers who put up those pillars knew that thousands of years later people would travel from around the globe (another concept they could not have grasped) to see their work. Will our buildings last that long? Will they endure the weathering and time to stand as a testament to our existence thousands of years in the future?

I've been contemplating time a lot lately. I've been thinking about the four thousands years of worship that have taken place at Palmyra in Syria, and about the period of time that people have been continuously dwelling in the city of Damascus. I thought about how, despite the fact that they're practically newborns in the grand scheme of history, how much impact the founders of the U.S. have had on the world. Understood philosophically, time is both a force and a social construction. Time is a force in that it is something that exists in the realm of nature, and which is beyond our control. Time passes, the sun rises and sets, the seasons change, organisms grow, die, and decompose, ad nauseum et infinitum. But time is also a social construction. Humans created calendars and clocks, defined years, months, hours, minutes, and seconds. We are the only creations, so far as I can tell, that actually keep track of time. Animals perhaps keep track of seasons for hibernation and food storage. Plants grow as the seasons set forth, but they do not count the hours and minutes, they don't set deadlines, and they certainly don't keep concrete schedules.

So, what is it about our humanity that makes us want to keep track of time? Why do we count the days of our lives, numbering the days and the years, ticking off hours and minutes? Is it our sense of looming mortality? Are we trying to keep track of our time so that we can make the most of it? Or is have we created calendars and timepieces so that we can live better together? Our time-tracking certainly makes it more possible for us to arrange to meet one another, to make working and traveling together a possibility. Keeping track of time allows us to have commerce and communication, to organize our interaction. Yet, does it really serve us? When we worry about wasting time or losing time, when we allow our calendars and clocks to limit us or dictate how we live, is that healthy? When we forget that we have created time and instead allow it to rule us, what does that do to our freedom? Do we realize how small we are in the grand scheme of things? Do we recognize the possible consequences of our actions in the long run? Or are we so trapped in our keeping track of seconds that we forget to think in terms of centuries? And how would we act or live differently if we thought with a longer frame of reference?

As I write this, I doubt that anyone will read this a month from now, much less in two hundred years. I know that I've spent minutes typing this that I will never get back. But I care a lot less about the minutes I've lost and a lot more about the possibility of making a positive change for the people two hundred years from now. So I guess I'll keep writing.

Headmasters' Portraits

“Imagine you’re in a room, a large room, decorated however you like. It’s your space. Now you notice that around the walls there are pictures. Looking closer, you see that these are portraits of people who have been important to you, people who have inspired you and touched your life. Think about who is on your walls. They are with you, a part of who you are…” - a supervisor in my program.

When I was given this exercise to do, an image of the headmaster’s office at Hogwarts leapt to mind. Granted, I altered it a bit, gave it a deep burgundy plush carpet, put in some big, cozy armchairs and added a few more bookshelves, but it was a large office with a big napping couch in the corner. And, as I was instructed, portraits covered the walls. They were too numerous to fit in a single line at eye level, so there were several rows with many, many pictures. However, while the supervisor only imagined still images, the room I imagined has Hogwarts paintings: pictures that can move and talk. The people who have influenced my life aren’t just silent memories, they are vibrant individuals who still affect the ways I think, act, and express myself.

There are people with great wisdom. These are teachers, relatives, people I know from church. They are people who share wisdom born of experience and reflection and steeped in years of living. Some are verbose, composed speakers, while others speak softly and say only a few words, yet they all have an impact, all have made a difference in my life.

There are people who provide incredible support. They are the people whose love and care give me the confidence to face the world each day. As I realized last year, I have been able to travel far away and do things that seem brave only because I knew that there were people, however far away, who were standing by me and cheering me on. These are the folks who see the best parts of me, even when I cannot recognize them myself.

There are the true friends, though some of them also happen to be blood relations. These are the people who are deeply attached in my heart that I cannot imagine my life without their influence. We have shared such intense experiences and conversations that they have molded my identity.

And then there are the challenges. People whose portraits I would not have chosen to include on my walls, but whose presence in my life has so altered me that I cannot leave them out. These are often people I dislike, people who have hurt me, but who have taught me invaluable lessons. I have been thinking a lot about those people lately, reflecting on things they said and ways they wounded me, and about the ways I have grown through healing from them. These are the people who called me names, shattered my dreams, tore apart my confidence, and criticized the deepest parts of me. Yet, from them I have developed a strength and resilience that is essential to me now. And so, they, too, are present in this room, impacting my life and identity. Most of those portraits are silent now, like Muggle photographs in the wizarding world, they cannot speak or move.

So as I continually refine my identity and redecorate that space, the portraits remain. I consult them when I’m struggling, think about what different people might have done or said, how they might have advised me. Sometimes the portraits inspire me to call the actual people they portray, but often they are just a reminder, a perspective or bit of wisdom to be considered. Many of them probably have no idea that they have such a place of honor, such an influence. They likely go through their days without knowing how grateful I am to have known them.

Max Lucado once wrote that if God had a refrigerator, our pictures would be on it. I don’t know about that, but I do know that your portrait is on someone’s wall somewhere, and probably on mine, too.