A good thought to keep in mind

Sexual promiscuity is not the unforgiveable sin. Let's not forget those featured in Jesus' genealogy (Judah, the man who slept with his daughter-in-law, mistaking her for a prostitute; David, the king who murdered the husband of his mistress), nor those winning mention in the Hebrews 11 Hall of Faith (Rahab, the prostitute who sheltered the Israelite spies, and Samson, the man with a weakness for beautiful women). The Bible, in weaving its long history of redemption, is not a storybook of heroes. Failure, even sexual mistakes, has not once tied God's hands. He accomplishes what he wills through the worst of us.
. . .
Virginity is not a moral merit badge. Whether or not we have had sex before marriage, we are all lawbreakers (James 2:10). None can feel superior, not even the virgins among us.

- Jen Pollack Michel

I like the title of this article.  (And the article, which you should read.)  And the author's exasperation.  Because I share it.  Lately, I've been running into numerous articles where it is obvious that to some Christians, virginity (at least in women) IS considered something akin to our Holy Grail.  It's the thing that gives us worth, the most important thing to protect!  We can be ignorant or mean or liars or gossips, but heaven forbid we fornicate because there is NO GOING BACK. 

Seriously?  Is that really, truly what church leaders think, or are they just going overboard trying to get their point across (badly)?  I do understand that sexual sin is slightly different (the only one a person can commit against their own body, I believe is sort of how it was described), but why do we glorify it like this?  Come on, people.

Yeah, I know, odd coming from someone who hasn't fornicated or even wanted to, but I really feel that some of the messages we are giving are really twisted all out of biblical proportion.  And we are really hurting people by our ignorance and cruelty here.  How should we deal with it?  Good question.  Any good answers?

even in the dark

"At the heart of the good news is a call to suffer with others. To take the time to listen and struggle and wait and love others. Hope is not always cheery it is the conistent, authentic expectation of light even in the dark."

 - Kevin Williams in a comment on Addie Zierman's blog How to Talk Evangelical

Frequently, hope is grim, gallows humor, one soldier in the trenches to another.  Sometimes it's calm, knowledgeable assurance that has seen the darkness and the light on the other side.  Rarely is it really 100% chipper cheerfulness.  At least, this has been true in my experience.  Yours?

Easter Saturday 2013

This year, I am wearing shades of blue because they are beautiful, and sometimes you need to wear beautiful colors so that every time you look down you are lifted up.  I have no idea if this is an appropriate seasonal color liturgically.  It's probably not secularly, either, because I am not wearing spring-y pastel blues, weak and watered down.  I am wearing dark, rich jewel tones: peacock, teal, turquoise.

I am celebrating Easter by going to church on Saturday at a place that is not my local church.  It is more than half an hour away, and the drive was crowded, the roads oddly packed.  The day started out wet and sloppy, but by now it is bright with sun and 10 degrees warmer than the professional weather guessers predicted.  Water from the thaw runs in the gutters, pools around the grates, rages onto convergence points, carries away trash and newly uncovered  flower clusters hidden for this day when I am celebrating resurrection and new life. 

One year, I wrote a poem about Saturday and how wretched the day before Easter must have seemed to all of the people who loved Jesus.  Today, I doubt I could be in that same somber, sober place.  There is too much light and warmth and the stink of new life everywhere.

Tomorrow, the weather guessers tell us, it will be cold and miserable and dark and snowy.  This sanctuary will still be bright with all of its windows, and early service attendees will be blinded if there is sun.  I hope there is sun because I think we all need a good spring blinding to remind us it's not all winter.

Do what you know

“We’re all dying because of chronic disease because of bad behavior. It’s not enough to go see the doctor once a year and have him tell you what to do. It’s not that people don’t know what to do, it’s that they don’t do what they know,” says Lavoie, co-director of the Montreal Behavioural Medicine Centre in Canada.

When I read the above article (part of keeping up on current med-tech trends for work), I found myself struck by the above statement.  And how much it made me think of a Bible passage where the writer talks about how the one who believes will keep Christ's commandments, not just talk about them.  And that passage in the Bible where the writer talks about how frustrating it is that we don't do the things we want to/should do (but instead do the things we don't want to do because we are trapped in this body of death).

To paraphrase: It's not enough to go to church every Sunday (even a doctrinally solid church) and be told what to do.  We know what to do, really.  We just don't do it.  Do we not really believe it?  Are we being lazy?  I think that one passage about doing what we don't want to do and who can save us from this body of death ends with one of those long, rolling, buoying passages about how Christ saved us, will save us, is saving us, and all praise to Him.  Amen.  But we're also told to work out our salvation in fear and trembling.  We are told to do what He commanded.  We are told our actions should reflect where are hearts are, what we really, truly believe.  Sometimes, our actions mostly reflect laziness and sloppy thinking.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed by all the health research and study results.  Today, They definitely conclude that this behavior Will Kill You.  In two years, They will proclaim that this behavior is The Best Ever.  It's hard to know what's really healthy sometimes.

But we all know the basics.

• eat more unprocessed foods, especially whole grains, beans, fruits, and vegetables.
• move more (get up and walk around, challenge your muscles and your cardiovascular system).
• don't stress yourself out over things you can't control.
• do justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.
• be a good steward.
• love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength.
• love your neighbor as yourself.

We know the basics, but do we do them?

If we really believe they are important, won't our actions and behaviors change to reflect what we really believe?  I pray it may be so for me.

Renting as a spiritual discipline

I miss living in a house.  I miss the sound the furnace makes when it turns on as I sprawl on the floor under a blanket above one of the vents.  I miss knowing the temperature is not controlled by the people below me blasting their heat they don't have to pay for until I'm in shorts and a t-shirt with all my windows open enjoying a balmy 83 degrees indoors as the snow falls outside.  I miss not having to turn up a DVD or music to block out the raging domestic arguments around me at night when I'm trying to unwind.  I miss control, silence, solitude, ownership of space.

House prices are decent right now.  My credit is excellent.  I could find a good place if I wanted.  I could have my control, silence, solitude, and ownership of space.  But the economy is still a little rocky.  Layoffs are happening; there is no job security, and I'm crippled and exhausted and in debt from being crippled and retraining myself to get a job despite being crippled.  It's probably not a good time to purchase a home.

But when will be a good time?  When will I be safe enough?  When will I be comfortable enough?

Maybe it's better to rent because it means I am not comfortable, not safe, not in control, not "owning" a place.  Maybe that reality can be seen as a reflection of the one where we are strangers, aliens, pilgrims passing through, peregrinating, as St. Augustine called it.  Every mortal life is but a breath, and all that, but we are to be even less attached because we know this place isn't home.  It's not our destination; it's our journey, etc. 

I long for rest, but I won't find it here, won't find it in the control, silence, solitude, and ownership of space here.  That's all an illusion. 

As a renter on a month-to-month lease, I am in an enviable situation.  I am flexible; I can be mobile should I be needed or should I find a more stable job elsewhere.  Wherever I am, I should be content.

Maybe until I am, I need to keep renting to remind myself that I don't belong here, that my real home is where my heart is, and my heart is with God even if I'm in this crappy apartment building listening to her yell at the toddler again and again as I have the AC on because it's warm enough for my allergies to prohibit opening the windows, but folks still have their heat on below me.  Some days it's a really good thing to know that this is not my home.

What to do when you find out

Someone in my small group was talking about how he's not sure what to do when he finds out about the brokenness in other people that he's never encountered before.  He's a sunny soul, and he's a bit slammed upside the head when he discovers others have had so many clouds and so much bad weather, and the things he says can hurt them without him even knowing it.  And that this is considered insensitive and makes other people angry, as if they can realistically expect everyone else to know all about all their triggers and never accidentally press them.  What is he supposed to do, never open his mouth because anything he says can and will be used against him by the other people he is trying to interact with?  This could paralyze him, but he is a sunny soul, so he just kind of keeps going.  Not a bad plan, actually.  Sometimes that sun is what attracts the souls covered in freezing rain.  And sometimes it's not.

A friend of an old classmate recently posted this piece about what Christians should know about interacting with those who have suffered from "religious abuse".  At its heart, it is really a kind (but angry) explanation of how what Christians often say (usually knee-jerk statements usually unfiltered by a fully thinking brain) can be disrespectful and hurtful to those who've been injured by religion in the past.  Know these things, don't be that person, respect me and my negative experiences by engaging me with your whole being, not just your Christianese platitudes meant to dismiss me or make it all better: that's what this piece is about.

I'm glad I had the chance to read this article.  It brings up a lot of questions.  I'm curious about the working definition of psychological religious abuse, in particular, because the line between abuse and growing up in a family that had religious beliefs you didn't agree with and now repudiate is really blurry to me.  What is abusive and what is merely insensitivity or well-meaning religious dedication?  (These questions interest me because I've been reading so many other articles in the past few years about how parents should stop stressing about ruining their kids and just do their best to love them.)

I guess this article doesn't change the answer I would give this person in my small group or the way I live: know that this is true and others are broken and jagged in ways you don't know, and go on, trying always to understand, to think before speaking, and to speak thoughtfully in love.  I prefer avoiding people anyway, so I don't talk to them much, and I tend to just keep my mouth shut around people I don't know (leaving the awkward foot-in-mouth times to happen around those I'm more familiar with), but for those who like to interact with people, your chances of offending them by being ignorant are higher.  Be conscious of body language, ask for clarification, ask for forgiveness, learn from each mistake. Just keep going and loving people, even when you inevitably hurt them.  And pray for them.  (Just don't tell them about it because that's a communication stopper. :)  And pray for you, too, that God will help you be sensitive and fully engaged with each person you encounter, that He will give you wisdom.

How do you cope with the fact of other people's hidden triggers?  How do you live knowing that your edges can cut other people without you knowing it?

Church as body

church as body
broken

wholeness waits

on the other side of

destruction, redemption,

resurrection

Not a new idea, but I find myself really understanding it in a very personal way lately.  Body as one unit made up of many parts, sometimes all doing their own thing.

• I can't stretch my hamstrings because my joints are too loose, so to go far enough to get a stretch, I have to strain the tear in my hip, which hurts.  
• I need to loosen the overworked muscles in my leg that have been kindly keeping my hip in place despite the tear, but to stretch them, I strain the hip tear, which makes the muscles tighter and angrier in the end.  
• I need to strengthen my upper body to help stabilize the tear in my shoulder, but when I do yoga, core work, or anything beneficial to my upper body, the injuries in my wrist, elbow, and shoulders protest vociferously.

and so I seek
equilibrium of some kind
strengthening without
damaging pain because
movement without pain
may not be possible.

Perhaps this is why the church seems wearily familiar to me when I see it as conflicting ideas and opinions clashing against each other, accomplishing nothing worthwhile, a noisy gong and clanging cymbals, a sound and fury signifying nothing.

When I started writing this piece, I was thinking it would end more positively, like,
our bodies are broken like this,
and the church is called the Body of Christ,
so of course it will be broken like this, too,
so it should be familiar, and I can't blame it for being what it is, right?

But I can't fix my body and haven't really had much luck improving the overall health of the Body, and I
am tired of being broken
in a broken world
surrounded only
by broken people
just like me.  Familiarity
breeds, well, you know
how the saying goes (and that it's not positive).

The thing that gives me hope is that I haven't given up on either body.  Sometimes I just get discouraged when I am forced to face that fact that I cannot make either body healthy, perfect, and pain free.  And sometimes my individual body is so loud, I have no coping to spare for the bigger Body.  Avoidance can be a reasonable strategy.  At times like these, I'm glad for my small group. They are
my tiny connection
to the Body, the place
where I can use my gifts
(even if imperfectly) to bless
others and be blessed.  A smaller group of broken people, a manageable number to care too much for.  And for now, that will have to be enough.