. . . a life lived aware of the gifts.
. . . receiving the gifts with "thank you."
. . . taking time to ponder the gifts and the grace it implies.
. . . taking time to use the gifts with an eye toward good stewardship.
. . . not wasting the time the gifts afford.
. . . hard to express.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
On Bullying
[note: this is something I wrote a few months ago, when all this was in the news. It was intended for a specific audience and, for whatever reason, was never used. I ran across it and I decided that it was still worth sharing somewhere.]
I imagine many of you have seen recent news stories on teenagers committing suicide after having been bullied by schoolmates, one in nearby Spring. This has been weighing on my mind quite a lot. The current focus of the stories have been teens who are gay or are perceived to be gay (which makes it especially personal for me), but everyone knows there are a number of reasons bullies choose their targets. Weight, academic achievement, religion, economic status, fashion choices . . . these are just the ones that come to mind at the moment.
As a nerdy, fat, goody-two-shoes, sissy boy growing up rural Texas, you might assume I was a target of some bullying. The potential was certainly there, but when I read of what some kids are enduring (or not) these days, I cannot say I was seriously bullied. What I endured might be better categorized as being "picked on" now and then, but I was never the victim of physical violence and the verbal abuse was comparatively mild. No one ever told me I should go hang myself.
When I think back on why getting picked on never escalated to anything more serious, I can come up with only one answer: the adults in my life. The teachers at school, the adults at church, my parents and extended family—they didn't put up with the meanness that lies behind bullying. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I do not recall anyone really being bullied in my schools as I grew up. There were popular kids and unpopular kids, but not blatant abuse. It was a wonderfully safe place to grow up.
What breaks my heart most of all about the recent suicides is that these teenagers felt as if there were absolutely no adults they could turn to for protection. This is inconceivable to me. Had things gotten out of hand for me, there were any number of adults around I could have turned to for help. How do these teens not feel the same?
I have no children and only limited interaction with children. Since these recent news stories, however, I find myself paying more attention to the few kids around me, whether at church or in the store where I work or on the bus. I find myself listening to their language, how they treat one another as well as how they're treated. Kids should feel like there are adults around them who care and will protect them. If I ever hear something that is outright threatening, I pray that I have the courage to say something and the wisdom to say the right thing.
I ask that you, too, pay attention to the children and teens around you and step in if things are getting out of hand.
There is a YouTube video series from adults who were bullied as kids, telling kids that "It Gets Better." These are messages of hope and I applaud them. I also believe that kids shouldn't have to wait for it to get better. My encouragement for all adults is that we make it better. If a nerdy, fat, goody-two-shoes, sissy boy growing up in rural Texas can have a safe childhood thanks to the adults around him, surely every child can have one, too. The key to that sentence, however, is "the adults around." Let's be the adults around.
I imagine many of you have seen recent news stories on teenagers committing suicide after having been bullied by schoolmates, one in nearby Spring. This has been weighing on my mind quite a lot. The current focus of the stories have been teens who are gay or are perceived to be gay (which makes it especially personal for me), but everyone knows there are a number of reasons bullies choose their targets. Weight, academic achievement, religion, economic status, fashion choices . . . these are just the ones that come to mind at the moment.
As a nerdy, fat, goody-two-shoes, sissy boy growing up rural Texas, you might assume I was a target of some bullying. The potential was certainly there, but when I read of what some kids are enduring (or not) these days, I cannot say I was seriously bullied. What I endured might be better categorized as being "picked on" now and then, but I was never the victim of physical violence and the verbal abuse was comparatively mild. No one ever told me I should go hang myself.
When I think back on why getting picked on never escalated to anything more serious, I can come up with only one answer: the adults in my life. The teachers at school, the adults at church, my parents and extended family—they didn't put up with the meanness that lies behind bullying. My memory may be playing tricks on me, but I do not recall anyone really being bullied in my schools as I grew up. There were popular kids and unpopular kids, but not blatant abuse. It was a wonderfully safe place to grow up.
What breaks my heart most of all about the recent suicides is that these teenagers felt as if there were absolutely no adults they could turn to for protection. This is inconceivable to me. Had things gotten out of hand for me, there were any number of adults around I could have turned to for help. How do these teens not feel the same?
I have no children and only limited interaction with children. Since these recent news stories, however, I find myself paying more attention to the few kids around me, whether at church or in the store where I work or on the bus. I find myself listening to their language, how they treat one another as well as how they're treated. Kids should feel like there are adults around them who care and will protect them. If I ever hear something that is outright threatening, I pray that I have the courage to say something and the wisdom to say the right thing.
I ask that you, too, pay attention to the children and teens around you and step in if things are getting out of hand.
There is a YouTube video series from adults who were bullied as kids, telling kids that "It Gets Better." These are messages of hope and I applaud them. I also believe that kids shouldn't have to wait for it to get better. My encouragement for all adults is that we make it better. If a nerdy, fat, goody-two-shoes, sissy boy growing up in rural Texas can have a safe childhood thanks to the adults around him, surely every child can have one, too. The key to that sentence, however, is "the adults around." Let's be the adults around.
Thursday, February 17, 2011
in/of/it
This world.
Culture. Language. Stories.
We create it, and it in turn creates us.
Someone took the time to record the story of the man under the Bodhi tree.
Another man retreated to a cave near Mecca to await revelation, and the story ended up in a book.
Despite countless men dying cruelly on the Roman cross, the story of one such death is recorded in four well-distributed accounts.
And these stories have shaped cultures, changed lives, influenced decisions, created peoples.
A few weeks ago, I asked if it weren't time to start telling new stories. I believe it is, even as we continue to reckon with these old stories.
Because the stories we receive and the stories we tell shape the world around us, shape us. I grew up hearing stories of Jesus and it has shaped me, for good and ill, out of obedience and rebellion, and I do not know who I would be if I had grown up hearing stories of Muhammad or Siddhartha. The way the stories of Jesus were told to me, the language in which they were told, the context within which I heard them---all of these have unique impact on me. Hearing Lutheran Sunday school lessons in central Texas via the English language is undoubtedly different from hear the stories in Coptic, in an Egyptian desert. In either place, the community around me would have also been shaped by the stories as well, shaped by the storytelling style (colorful leaflets or oral tradtion?), language, human history.
These things are on my mind, cross my mind regularly. American Christianity lives in a tension of trying to engage the larger, commercial, capitalist culture and trying to set itself apart from it. Immersion or separation. Sometimes it's both. We immerse ourselves in the capitalist culture by setting up Christian shops and we separate ourselves from the mass media culture by setting up Christian shops. It's all a bit of a mess, and it's hard to tell where we really are in this world.
St. Paul would have us know that we are in the world but not of it. We are bound by, bound in the culture within which we find ourselves. It's as simple as trying to have a conversation with a teenager without knowing who Justin Bieber is or missing a reference because you don't recognize the name of a Super Bowl quarterback. To engage the world(s) that knows these things, we have to know something of them, too. We are in the world, a world we create with these cultural touchstones, and to engage that culture we need a passing knowledge of them.
But we need more imagination. I recently read this blog post and generally agree with what its author is saying, but I think there is one more step to it. The way the author writes about our failure of imagination is still a reaction to the culture. It's not leading the culture.
How do we lead the culture with our stories? How do we engage the world we're in without becoming of it?
I write stories and those stories are very much shaped by having grown up hearing stories about Jesus. Still, I acknowledge I'm writing in a tradition that is very much a part of the cultural tradition I've received---the literary short story. Is working within that tradition capitulating to the culture being of that world instead of merely in it? If I write a play (and that's distinct possibility), how do I exercise an imagination that it not of this world, but can still engage it?
Are these even important questions?
Stories explain the world and shape it at the same time. I think what I'm circling in on here is that I believe art-making can be a means for engaging the world, the larger culture, but if we are too quick to co-opt the world (as in, say, sales goals), will we be recognizable as being anything else but part of that culture?
I'm not sure I'm quite getting at what I'm trying to say.
So I'll close, echoing how I started.
We create culture, art, stories. The culture, art, and stories in turn create us.
Is it possible to get ahead of that cycle so that what we create creates a new creation?
Culture. Language. Stories.
We create it, and it in turn creates us.
Someone took the time to record the story of the man under the Bodhi tree.
Another man retreated to a cave near Mecca to await revelation, and the story ended up in a book.
Despite countless men dying cruelly on the Roman cross, the story of one such death is recorded in four well-distributed accounts.
And these stories have shaped cultures, changed lives, influenced decisions, created peoples.
A few weeks ago, I asked if it weren't time to start telling new stories. I believe it is, even as we continue to reckon with these old stories.
Because the stories we receive and the stories we tell shape the world around us, shape us. I grew up hearing stories of Jesus and it has shaped me, for good and ill, out of obedience and rebellion, and I do not know who I would be if I had grown up hearing stories of Muhammad or Siddhartha. The way the stories of Jesus were told to me, the language in which they were told, the context within which I heard them---all of these have unique impact on me. Hearing Lutheran Sunday school lessons in central Texas via the English language is undoubtedly different from hear the stories in Coptic, in an Egyptian desert. In either place, the community around me would have also been shaped by the stories as well, shaped by the storytelling style (colorful leaflets or oral tradtion?), language, human history.
These things are on my mind, cross my mind regularly. American Christianity lives in a tension of trying to engage the larger, commercial, capitalist culture and trying to set itself apart from it. Immersion or separation. Sometimes it's both. We immerse ourselves in the capitalist culture by setting up Christian shops and we separate ourselves from the mass media culture by setting up Christian shops. It's all a bit of a mess, and it's hard to tell where we really are in this world.
St. Paul would have us know that we are in the world but not of it. We are bound by, bound in the culture within which we find ourselves. It's as simple as trying to have a conversation with a teenager without knowing who Justin Bieber is or missing a reference because you don't recognize the name of a Super Bowl quarterback. To engage the world(s) that knows these things, we have to know something of them, too. We are in the world, a world we create with these cultural touchstones, and to engage that culture we need a passing knowledge of them.
But we need more imagination. I recently read this blog post and generally agree with what its author is saying, but I think there is one more step to it. The way the author writes about our failure of imagination is still a reaction to the culture. It's not leading the culture.
How do we lead the culture with our stories? How do we engage the world we're in without becoming of it?
I write stories and those stories are very much shaped by having grown up hearing stories about Jesus. Still, I acknowledge I'm writing in a tradition that is very much a part of the cultural tradition I've received---the literary short story. Is working within that tradition capitulating to the culture being of that world instead of merely in it? If I write a play (and that's distinct possibility), how do I exercise an imagination that it not of this world, but can still engage it?
Are these even important questions?
Stories explain the world and shape it at the same time. I think what I'm circling in on here is that I believe art-making can be a means for engaging the world, the larger culture, but if we are too quick to co-opt the world (as in, say, sales goals), will we be recognizable as being anything else but part of that culture?
I'm not sure I'm quite getting at what I'm trying to say.
So I'll close, echoing how I started.
We create culture, art, stories. The culture, art, and stories in turn create us.
Is it possible to get ahead of that cycle so that what we create creates a new creation?
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Good and Evil and What to Do
A "conversation" on Facebook has me pondering on the unsolveable problem of evil. Disease, war, famine, natural disaster . . .
It's a concern of comfort for someone who is experiencing these things. There are bits and pieces in the Bible that suggest (okay, say outright) that God creates good and evil, God brings blessing and curse. And there are places that suggest that evil comes from somewhere else.
When someone is hurting, it's almost impossible to have this conversation. Feeling like God is against you is not when you want to hear platitudes about God's love and care. If this is care, who needs curse?
My sole contribution to this conversation was:
"There is the theory that the Hebrew scriptures are the history of Israel's wrestling with God, that the encounter at the Jabbok is paradigmatic for reading all of the Hebrew scriptures. (I believe it was a Jewish scholar's writing where I r...ead this.) I'm not sure I can elucidate further on that. I think it helps to read with an eye towards mythological or analogical or something other than literal storytelling.
"What does your experience tell you? Does God bring you your pain? Does God bring you the disease that takes loved ones, the violence that divides families, the natural disasters that devastate the good and evil alike?
"Luther has us teach our children:
'The Sixth Petition
'And lead us not into temptation.
'What does this mean? God tempts no one. We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory.
'The Seventh Petition
'But deliver us from evil. What does this mean? We pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.'
"In both cases, of scripture and catechism, I'm reminded of a dying's friend's word: "Which God will you believe in? The one you read about in books, or the one who comes knocking at your door?" He said this as he explained the thing God healed most in him as he was dying from his disease was his distrust of God, his suspicion that God hated him and cursed him with the disease. The God that came knocking on his door told him about Love. And compassion. Suffering with. "
Like all answers, it is inadequate. I don't disagree with anything I've said, but in a moment of suffering, I know it's inadequate.
So where does that leave us? I'm not entirely sure. But when I went to bed last night, this conversation was on my mind. As I was turning out lights and thinking about suffering, I was reminded of light shining in darkness. I was thinking about lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. In the face of unanswerable questions of suffering, perhaps the only answer is care, compassion, kindness. Not words spoken, but actions done. Striking a match rather than speaking a curse.
I woke up this morning with this quote on my mind. I'll let Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have the final word here:
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. "
It's a concern of comfort for someone who is experiencing these things. There are bits and pieces in the Bible that suggest (okay, say outright) that God creates good and evil, God brings blessing and curse. And there are places that suggest that evil comes from somewhere else.
When someone is hurting, it's almost impossible to have this conversation. Feeling like God is against you is not when you want to hear platitudes about God's love and care. If this is care, who needs curse?
My sole contribution to this conversation was:
"There is the theory that the Hebrew scriptures are the history of Israel's wrestling with God, that the encounter at the Jabbok is paradigmatic for reading all of the Hebrew scriptures. (I believe it was a Jewish scholar's writing where I r...ead this.) I'm not sure I can elucidate further on that. I think it helps to read with an eye towards mythological or analogical or something other than literal storytelling.
"What does your experience tell you? Does God bring you your pain? Does God bring you the disease that takes loved ones, the violence that divides families, the natural disasters that devastate the good and evil alike?
"Luther has us teach our children:
'The Sixth Petition
'And lead us not into temptation.
'What does this mean? God tempts no one. We pray in this petition that God would guard and keep us so that the devil, the world, and our sinful nature may not deceive us or mislead us into false belief, despair, and other great shame and vice. Although we are attacked by these things, we pray that we may finally overcome them and win the victory.
'The Seventh Petition
'But deliver us from evil. What does this mean? We pray in this petition, in summary, that our Father in heaven would rescue us from every evil of body and soul, possessions and reputation, and finally, when our last hour comes, give us a blessed end, and graciously take us from this valley of sorrow to Himself in heaven.'
"In both cases, of scripture and catechism, I'm reminded of a dying's friend's word: "Which God will you believe in? The one you read about in books, or the one who comes knocking at your door?" He said this as he explained the thing God healed most in him as he was dying from his disease was his distrust of God, his suspicion that God hated him and cursed him with the disease. The God that came knocking on his door told him about Love. And compassion. Suffering with. "
Like all answers, it is inadequate. I don't disagree with anything I've said, but in a moment of suffering, I know it's inadequate.
So where does that leave us? I'm not entirely sure. But when I went to bed last night, this conversation was on my mind. As I was turning out lights and thinking about suffering, I was reminded of light shining in darkness. I was thinking about lighting a candle rather than cursing the darkness. In the face of unanswerable questions of suffering, perhaps the only answer is care, compassion, kindness. Not words spoken, but actions done. Striking a match rather than speaking a curse.
I woke up this morning with this quote on my mind. I'll let Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. have the final word here:
"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. "
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Telling New Stories
Political rhetoric escalates and then when a public official is shot . . . the political rhetoric escalates placing blame. I played my part in that until I realized I was just being another ideologue, defending the indefensible but preferred (and not even fully liked) political party.
We need to learn to tell new stories.
Somebody at at a nonprofit with the word "family" in it (so you know you can't be against them because you can't be against "family") railed about how a purple heart was given to a soldier because he had risked his life to save a comrade, not because he had bravely gone out and killed a bunch of the enemy. The "family" man said giving the medal to the saving soldier "feminized" the medal, that we were "feminizing" the honor because we were afraid of giving a medal for killing a bunch of the enemy. And I wonder what is not brave about being feminine? What is so brave and medal-worthy about killing a bunch of people?
We need to learn to tell new stories.
Last fall, I went with a friend to see Avatar, the crazy long rehash of old stories in (admittedly) pretty 3-D. Really, it's a beautiful film to look at. But the story is old and while it was discussed as some sort of touchy-feely, white-guilt-about-the-Native-Americans parable, I couldn't help but think it advanced the discussion not at all. The good guys and bad guys are distinctly drawn---and they all act reprehensibly. There is the aggressor, there is the revenge moment when we see---and cheer cheer cheer---the moment of comeuppance, when the villain gets his right between the eyes. Boom! Hooray! An old story of violence met with violence. Is this the only way?
We need to learn to tell new stories.
I am a Christian and I cherish the stories of the Bible. I count myself lucky that I grew up in a tradition that does not treat the Bible literally, but does take it seriously. I can read of slaying giants and conquering nations and see the metaphor---or else even have the freedom to read some stories as being more important than others, the "canon within the canon." But it seems that as we, as a species, becomes more technologically advanced, we also become more literal. We are losing (have lost?) the ability to read stories and find a deeper meaning than the simple events presented, and I'm afraid we see---and love!---the violent, the bloody, the destruction that justifies our violent and destructive ways more than we see the call to stand up to evil, to speak truth to power (as has become the cliche), even to the point of self-sacrifice, without become evil ourselves.
In 2008, a dear woman and fine poet, Anne McCrady, published a chapbook of poems called Under a Blameless Moon. In the poem that gives the collection it's name, we see the reflection of a mother, wondering how her grown son learned to believe in a "good kill." She comes to this gut punch of a conclusion:
Maybe I was the one who taught him
this version of a soldier's song...
didn't we sit together
beneath a blameless moon
while I told him the story
of David launching the stone?
We need to learn to tell new stories.
Don't we?
We need to learn to tell new stories.
Somebody at at a nonprofit with the word "family" in it (so you know you can't be against them because you can't be against "family") railed about how a purple heart was given to a soldier because he had risked his life to save a comrade, not because he had bravely gone out and killed a bunch of the enemy. The "family" man said giving the medal to the saving soldier "feminized" the medal, that we were "feminizing" the honor because we were afraid of giving a medal for killing a bunch of the enemy. And I wonder what is not brave about being feminine? What is so brave and medal-worthy about killing a bunch of people?
We need to learn to tell new stories.
Last fall, I went with a friend to see Avatar, the crazy long rehash of old stories in (admittedly) pretty 3-D. Really, it's a beautiful film to look at. But the story is old and while it was discussed as some sort of touchy-feely, white-guilt-about-the-Native-Americans parable, I couldn't help but think it advanced the discussion not at all. The good guys and bad guys are distinctly drawn---and they all act reprehensibly. There is the aggressor, there is the revenge moment when we see---and cheer cheer cheer---the moment of comeuppance, when the villain gets his right between the eyes. Boom! Hooray! An old story of violence met with violence. Is this the only way?
We need to learn to tell new stories.
I am a Christian and I cherish the stories of the Bible. I count myself lucky that I grew up in a tradition that does not treat the Bible literally, but does take it seriously. I can read of slaying giants and conquering nations and see the metaphor---or else even have the freedom to read some stories as being more important than others, the "canon within the canon." But it seems that as we, as a species, becomes more technologically advanced, we also become more literal. We are losing (have lost?) the ability to read stories and find a deeper meaning than the simple events presented, and I'm afraid we see---and love!---the violent, the bloody, the destruction that justifies our violent and destructive ways more than we see the call to stand up to evil, to speak truth to power (as has become the cliche), even to the point of self-sacrifice, without become evil ourselves.
In 2008, a dear woman and fine poet, Anne McCrady, published a chapbook of poems called Under a Blameless Moon. In the poem that gives the collection it's name, we see the reflection of a mother, wondering how her grown son learned to believe in a "good kill." She comes to this gut punch of a conclusion:
Maybe I was the one who taught him
this version of a soldier's song...
didn't we sit together
beneath a blameless moon
while I told him the story
of David launching the stone?
We need to learn to tell new stories.
Don't we?
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Seasonal Thoughts
It's barely still the 9th day of Christmas as I write this.
Throughout Advent, the season of hope and expectation, I've wondered what I was hoping for, what I was expecting.
Then, on Christmas day (one of them, anyway---it may have been the second day of Christmas) someone wished me a Christmas full of wonder. Now I've been wondering what I wonder at.
The year 2010 sort of bruised me up a bit. I don't think I've let on to people around me just how much. They know some things, not everything, or not the extent of everything if they do know. And I'm cryptic and vague about it even now, so how could anyone know? Well, I whine enough as it is and I'm afraid if I talked about all the ways I've felt bruised this year, I'd just sound whinier. No one likes a whiner. Especially me.
But here's what I hoped for and expected through advent: While I'm in a rough patch, I'll not always be here. I've been in rough patches (some rougher) and they pass. I hope and expect that I'll not be bruised forever, that there will---once again---be healing and restoration and joy. As is the way with our faith, it already is here and not yet. But I hope for it and expect it. We profess a faith in a God who will bind up the brokenhearted.
And here's the wonder of Christmas. Incarnation. We have a meaty faith. There is flesh on the bones of this creed and we are the flesh that carries it forward. It's so hard sometimes, when the flesh is bruised (literally or metaphorically) and there are so many ways that the Body of Christ is bruised and hurting. The wonder of Christmas has been seeing that so often the bruises come from the very people who bring healing. Like me. The wonder of Christmas is that I can find myself as the incarnation of so many parts of the gospel stories. I am Herod wanting to protect my own power and I am the wise men who thwart power's machinations. I am the one who tries to throw Jesus off a cliff and I am the one who washes his feet with tears. I am the one flogging Jesus as well as carrying his cross. I am Mary Magdalene running to tell everyone Jesus is risen and I'm Thomas refusing to believe.
I cry out "Rabouni!" and "My lord and my God!"
The bruised and broken Body of Christ teaches me about bruises and breaks. Sometimes I touch the wounds and recognize the One I've followed all these years.
It's now 2011. It's so arbitrary to have this mark on the calendar for us to resolve to do differently, if not better. It is, after all, just another mark on the calendar. Any other day would do. (If you asked Martin Luther, he would say everyday is made for resolution---although he called it "repentance.") Still, there is something in our human nature that likes these marks on the calendars, these clear demarcations of "that was then, this is now." Bono once told us "Nothing changes on New Year's Day," and to an extent he was right. On the other hand, we have some choice in the matter. Don't we?
I'm rambling, I know, as I am want to do in my blogging. I really didn't have a plan when I sat down to write. I just knew I wanted to write during this season of wonder and incarnation. If you get something out of it---count it a Christmas miracle.
As for me, I'm going to bed, remembering 2010, with all its bruises, was then. 2011 is now.
God still binds up the brokenhearted. And we still cry out Rabouni! and My Lord and my God! We say Merry Christmas! and watch for resurrection.
Throughout Advent, the season of hope and expectation, I've wondered what I was hoping for, what I was expecting.
Then, on Christmas day (one of them, anyway---it may have been the second day of Christmas) someone wished me a Christmas full of wonder. Now I've been wondering what I wonder at.
The year 2010 sort of bruised me up a bit. I don't think I've let on to people around me just how much. They know some things, not everything, or not the extent of everything if they do know. And I'm cryptic and vague about it even now, so how could anyone know? Well, I whine enough as it is and I'm afraid if I talked about all the ways I've felt bruised this year, I'd just sound whinier. No one likes a whiner. Especially me.
But here's what I hoped for and expected through advent: While I'm in a rough patch, I'll not always be here. I've been in rough patches (some rougher) and they pass. I hope and expect that I'll not be bruised forever, that there will---once again---be healing and restoration and joy. As is the way with our faith, it already is here and not yet. But I hope for it and expect it. We profess a faith in a God who will bind up the brokenhearted.
And here's the wonder of Christmas. Incarnation. We have a meaty faith. There is flesh on the bones of this creed and we are the flesh that carries it forward. It's so hard sometimes, when the flesh is bruised (literally or metaphorically) and there are so many ways that the Body of Christ is bruised and hurting. The wonder of Christmas has been seeing that so often the bruises come from the very people who bring healing. Like me. The wonder of Christmas is that I can find myself as the incarnation of so many parts of the gospel stories. I am Herod wanting to protect my own power and I am the wise men who thwart power's machinations. I am the one who tries to throw Jesus off a cliff and I am the one who washes his feet with tears. I am the one flogging Jesus as well as carrying his cross. I am Mary Magdalene running to tell everyone Jesus is risen and I'm Thomas refusing to believe.
I cry out "Rabouni!" and "My lord and my God!"
The bruised and broken Body of Christ teaches me about bruises and breaks. Sometimes I touch the wounds and recognize the One I've followed all these years.
It's now 2011. It's so arbitrary to have this mark on the calendar for us to resolve to do differently, if not better. It is, after all, just another mark on the calendar. Any other day would do. (If you asked Martin Luther, he would say everyday is made for resolution---although he called it "repentance.") Still, there is something in our human nature that likes these marks on the calendars, these clear demarcations of "that was then, this is now." Bono once told us "Nothing changes on New Year's Day," and to an extent he was right. On the other hand, we have some choice in the matter. Don't we?
I'm rambling, I know, as I am want to do in my blogging. I really didn't have a plan when I sat down to write. I just knew I wanted to write during this season of wonder and incarnation. If you get something out of it---count it a Christmas miracle.
As for me, I'm going to bed, remembering 2010, with all its bruises, was then. 2011 is now.
God still binds up the brokenhearted. And we still cry out Rabouni! and My Lord and my God! We say Merry Christmas! and watch for resurrection.
Saturday, December 11, 2010
More About Dead People
I'm really not obsessing on death. It just so happened that I made a quick trip to Austin yesterday and I passed the cemetery where my parents are buried. It had been a while since I'd stopped in there and I had my camera along. It's the season of advent and so there's something about death and hope in these sorts of stops and, I guess, in wanting to take a picture of the headstones. Death and hope . . . are there really any other themes?
Anyway, so I have these few pictures of the headstones. Like my feelings about touching a dead body from my last post, I find cemetery visits to be somewhere akin to reminding myself that there is physical evidence of these people, of the memories I have of them. On top of that, most of the people I know or am around these days never had an opportunity to meet my parents. As silly as it sounds, these pictures are some sort of evidence that I am not the free-floating element that I may appear to be. I have antecedents.
So the above is the headstone of my parents. And my shoe. I really was trying not to get my foot in the picture, but there it is anyway. Okay, evidence of me as well as my parents.
Above are closeups of Mama and Daddy's individual sides. It's a little shocking to see how long ago it was that they died. When I turned 40, I remember thinking what had happened in the last decade and I remembered I was 30 when Mama died and I couldn't quite make sense of the fact that she'd been dead for a quarter of my life. I'm now 47, so she's now been dead for over a third of my life. And Daddy died when I was 25. In 3 years, he'll have been dead for half my life. It's simple math and the passage of time, but it all seems unlikely that they would be absent for such large chunks of my life. I guess they really aren't. I dream about them regularly, even still.
The above picture is to give some idea (if the gate picture didn't) that this cemetery is out in the country. There's not a building in sight. This shot also gives my parent's wedding date. All Saints Day, 1939.
And if you still don't believe this is out in the country . . .
Those are a few head of cattle just on the other side of the cemetery fence. I find this exceedingly appropriate. We raised cattle on on our farm and I think Mama and Daddy both enjoyed them, but I think Mama especially loved her cows. When Daddy died, Mama sold all the cattle---a decision she and Daddy had made before he died, so she didn't have to fool with feeding cattle by herself. One of my brothers, Glen, bought most of the cattle and kept them on the farm, so Mama saw them all the time anyway. Glen came out to the farm to take care of them, but Mama was the one telling him which cow was about to calf and things like that. When Glen had calves old enough to sell, Mama bought some of them, so she could have her own cattle again. Glen was coming out to feed his, so he could help with hers, and she felt better knowing that some of the cattle she was watching were actually hers again. I sort of laughed at her and she laughed with me. But if you love cattle, what are you going to do?
None of this is particularly theological or religious. It's all rather sentimental, really. It makes little difference, theologically, if Mama is buried near where cattle graze (and if she were able to watch them, it would make her crazy that they weren't hers, so it's just as well that she can't) and having a gravestone to visit isn't any more certain hope of resurrection than ashes scattered on a lake. This is my experience, though, and even if some of my musings on it are fanciful . . . well, even religious/theological musings can be a little whimsical now and then.
Sometimes, I just like an excuse to talk about my parents.
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