One more thing

Also?

I read this  that made me feel less like a psycho, and got me thinking about this.

What would I do without Stewart/Colbert and snarky politics blogs?

Let's talk about anything but the rain

I'm sitting here, attempting to postpone further the writing of my sermon.  So far, so good!  I'm also waiting to see how many of the trees around my apartment get blown down in the tropical storm.  We're currently looking at two--one giant, one smaller.  All this has freaked out my dog to the point that he won't go out the front door anymore.  I think he might have the right idea.

I have been thinking this past week about (of course) Sarah Palin.  Just like almost everyone else in this country.

Now, I don't like Gov. Palin.  At all.  I don't like her to the extent that I was ranting to anyone who would listen about her for the past week.  I don't like her policies, her record, her way of presenting her record, her accent, or her pride in being 'folksy.'  Really, I don't like her--and I was kind of disturbed by that.  There are a lot of famous people I don't care for, but I tend to not obsessively dwell on it.  

And the conclusion I came to was this.   It wasn't just that her politics make my skin crawl and her hypocrisy is somewhat astounding.  (Though, there is that too.)

This woman makes my life harder.  Each and every day, she makes my life and my work more difficult.  This is why I don't like her.

She plays into stereotypes that were hatched in 1950s sitcoms.  Women must work to be pretty all the time--and the prettier they are, the more capable.  But not too capable--heaven forbid they admit to ambition.  No, they just run for the local PTA to help their kids. After all, their kids are their proudest accomplishment!  And they don't worry too much about big problems like Iraq or global warming or pay equity or even decent sex education (probably a mistake, looking back)--they just praise the decency of the nice old man who gave them their job and smile and look pretty.  

So, by playing that part so very nicely on a national stage, Sarah Palin just made it that much harder for everyone else.  At work, the next time someone compliments my hair instead of my sermon, she made it easier.  The next time someone tells me they're glad the church hired me because I am so young and cute, she made it easier.  The next time someone tells me my sermons are too complex for me to give, she made it easier.  

These people aren't malicious--they're just doing what their culture tells them to.  And so thank you, Gov, Palin, for reinforcing all that for a new generation.

Oh how the pastries have fallen....

Why, Dunkin' Doughnuts, why?  

I used to like you a lot--your 24/7 operating hours, your over-hyped coffee that was still marginally better than deli coffee, your nice location on my way to work on Sundays, and the cheap addictiveness of your doughnuts.

And then you had to go all crazy on me.

Other people less lazy about blogging have already talked about this, but here I go anyway.  

You pulled the Rachel Ray ad from your website after several wingnuts complained that the scarf she was wearing looked like a traditional Palestinian kaffiyeh, and thus advocated terrorism.  You then posted an apology online.  

SERIOUSLY?!

There are so many things wrong with this that I hardly know where to start. Let's start with the more esoteric, shall we?

The kaffiyeh is a traditional Middle Eastern head covering.  It has enjoyed widespread use in many countries, not just the Palestinian territories.  Generally, the color palette indicates the wearer's place of origin.  (Black on white is Palestine, Red on white is mainly Jordan, white on white is the Gulf, etc.)  And even then, no one can quite agree on the symbolism of the colors--different Palestinian groups favor different designs--the most prominent of which (in the West) was Yasir Arafat, who wore a distinctive black-on-white one.  Along with the Jordanian kings, and the Saudi royal family--lots of pictures of them online--look them up.  And Lawrence of Arabia, and anyone who had to walk around in the desert for a prolonged period of time.  So there's no way the symbol is limited to the Palestinians, or stranger yet, Palestinian militancy.

But, hey, didn't it first really enter the American consciousness when Arafat showed up?  He wore one!  That makes all kaffiyeh-wearing wrong!

Yes, he did, in fact,  the PLO wore them all the time, and so does Fatah (favoring the ones that Arafat used to wear.)  But, if you haven't done your homework, then you don't know that Arafat wasn't an Islamist.  In fact, he didn't get along well with them at all.  They (Hamas, mainly) defeated his Fatah party in the recent elections.     Remember the whole Fun in Gaza Summer 2007?  Fatah doesn't get along well with Islamist political parties--they tend to fight to the death.  Last time I was in Ramallah, half of the legislature had fled the city, in advance of the anniversary celebration of Fatah.  They didn't want to get arrested as a celebratory gesture.  

So really, EVERYONE in the region wears head scarves.  No one color-coordinates with the people whose politics they endorse.  It doesn't symbolize advocacy of anything, except the position of not dying from heat stroke.  

Ok, then, maybe the simple scarf isn't so evil after all.  It looks nice, keeps you cool in summer, warm in winter, what else could you want?

Oh wait, there's one more thing.  One more reason why this is ridiculous.  (wait for it.....)

IT WASN'T A KAFFIYEH.  NOT AT ALL.

That's right.  It was a lovely silk paisley scarf that terrified the wingnutty side of America.  GOD.

There are SO MANY things that bother me about this--the implication that I'm being lectured to by a SCARF, the implied lumping together of all Palestinians, everywhere, always, into 'terrorists', or the fact that it was all a LIE to begin with.  How paranoid do you have to be, how terrified of the big, scary Other, that you invent this story and run with it?  Have we gotten so afraid of shadows that we start screaming stereotypes and wrong information whenever we find the least opportunity?  

Belgium.  I'm moving to Belgium.  

Hallmark theology

(am I blogging again so soon out of guilt for not blogging for a year?  Or because I'm bored without furniture?  You decide!!)

I have a younger brother, who works as a bouncer, at a bar, in Boston.  (Apparently, it has other job benefits besides alliteration.)  He wants to be a writer of some variety, or just to be the next Jon Stewart.  He and I have certain things in common, including a tendency to get bored easily, and to amuse ourselves with random jokes and sarcasm.

His latest endeavor is Christian cards.  At Christmas, he and I went to a local Hallmark store, and he asked this middle-aged woman where the religious cards were kept.  I thought she was going to hyperventilate, she was so happy.  She took him right over to the 'Inspirational' section, and proceeded to show him various cards that she found profound, and the boy just stood there, all thoughtful and respectful and whatnot.  Little did that poor woman know that he was just going to get them home, and mock them without mercy or pity.  (the Boy on the Creed:  'He will come again?'  Seriously?!  If I sleep with a girl, and don't call her, it's pretty clear I'm not coming back--how come we haven't gotten the hint after 2,000 years?!?')

So I've decided to share my graduation card with the interwebz, because it is one of his finer efforts.  The actual card text is in regular, the Boy's comments are in italics.

(Front of card:)

GOD is with you as you Graduate!

What makes us special is the signature of God on our lives. --Max Lucado

(Arrow to Lucado quote)  Taught Sunday school to 4yr olds;  that's where the quote's from.

(Inside the card, front flap:)

"For I know the plans I have for you', declares the LORD, 'plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you a hope and a future."  Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

If he didn't know his own plans that HE made, wouldn't that make you question if the Lord has his shit together?

(Inside card: text)

Wishing you a future alive with promise, rich with possibilities, filled with the wonder of His Love for you.  Happy Graduation.

What I love about this card is that it only talks about God loving you.  It makes no indication that the sender of the card has ever met, or even knows you.  The jist of it is: " God loves a graduate, and Boy! does his plan involve you in some possible way!'  While making no mention of 'Oh, by the way--this card isn't from God.  It's actually from a person you've met before."  Cards are stupid.

Gee, thanks brother!  :)

Somewhere Different Now

So, yes, I haven't posted in like a year.  Can we just not dwell on that?  Just ignore it in the hopes that the giant elephant will go away?  Thanks.

In recent news, I have moved!  To Virginia Beach, and a real (more than one room) apartment!  It features amazing, unheard of luxuries---a freezer!  A washer/dryer!  Cabinets under the counter!  It's AMAZING!!!!

But also, it has a new and wide variety of ways to terrify my dog.  Now, as those of you who have been aroun

d in the past year (not me so much) know that my dog is a wonderful, affectionate being with a remarkable cuteness.  You also know that he is a gaping hole of emotional need and fear.  When he sees me come home, he doesn't run and jump on me, he runs and throws himself down at my feet, staring at me until I pet him.  This continues until my arm cramps up, or I leave again, in which case, he lies on the sofa, miserable and dejected-looking.  He is deathly afraid of anything stick-like, chihuahuas, people vacuuming upstairs, cats, grass, you name it.

So now that we've moved to a less urban place, my apartment complex surrounds a pretty lake, with pretty ducks, and a pretty fountain.  See?  (This is the view from my balcony.  I have a balcony.  Don't hate me.)

So now Bowie's new phobia is the water.  He'll sniff right up to the edge, then leap back and cower.  Then he'll do it again a few seconds later.  While this is amusing to watch, it makes for really boring walks.  Next week, I hope to introduce him to the ducks!  

Also:  this.    My senior sermon from back in November.  The reason that certain Filipino priests now run up to me and yell 'Surprise!' then laugh hysterically.  (and yes, they did spell my name wrong.  Oh well.)  

Dead Turkeys and whatnot.

(ya'll knew I had to work in a dead animal reference somehow, right?)

So it's almost Thanksgiving, that wonderful prelude to Christmas mania.  A time to be thankful.  Else how would we know when it was tasteful to start displaying all our Christmas paraphernalia?  

I am going to my grandmother's house.  I expect a rousing good time along the lines of a classic play, written by the love-child of Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee.  (My great-grandfather was called Big Daddy.  How I wish I was kidding.)   So, I leave to you my senior sermon, which I delivered last week.  It went well.  Really well.  Pretty much all sermons I give, I immediately want to rewrite so as to make them not suck quite so bad.  This one, on the other hand, I enjoyed giving, and don't despise.  See what you think.  I believe I actually pounded on the pulpit at one point.  

Isaiah 49:4-13,  Matthew 28 (it will become obvious)

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be always acceptable in your sight, O God our strength and our Redeemer.  Amen.

 

This passage from Isaiah is one of my all-time favorites. [ In fact, I have a huge, Religious-Studies-geek crush on whoever wrote 2^nd Isaiah, right up there with Cyrus the Persian, and Josephus the historian.  I’m not proud. ] 

2^nd Isaiah contains some amazing stuff, and he really earns his prophetic stripes.  He’s right up there with Jeremiah, at times, in his willingness to say things that upset people—that over-turned everything they knew.  In our time, today, I have a hunch we tend to forget how earth-shattering and shocking this passage would have been for the Israelites of the Exile.  Isaiah to us has been mellowed out a fair amount by Handel and the overproductive Christmas card industry. 

         We have to remember that Isaiah is talking to a group of people who know themselves as the Chosen People.   That is who they are!  Never more so than when the going gets tough, and the Babylonians destroy Jerusalem and send them all into exile. 

         Did not God save them from the land of Egypt, when they were enslaved?  Did YHWH not bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey, and aid their ancestors to defeat the current inhabitants of that land?  Did not God give Moses the law at Sinai, to show his people how to live in holiness, as God himself is holy?  This is a special people!  A set-apart people!  Inheritors of a unique relationship with the one true God.   Everyone else can do their own thing—this is who we are. 

         Yet, here comes Isaiah, and says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the survivors of Israel.  But I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”

         Surprise!!!!

         In one fell swoop, the assumption that being the Chosen people, having a special relationship with God is a two way street gets blown apart.  We belong to God—God does not belong only to us, and God can, and does! pay attention to whoever God wants.  God is bigger—much bigger!-- than the claims of a small band of Near Eastern monotheists in the sixth century BCE, and God is bigger than our claims, and we forget that at our detriment. 

         When I worked with Sabeel—the Palestinian Christian Center for Liberation Theology in East Jerusalem, I was surprised to discover that many of the Palestinian Christian communities in the region had stopped using the Old Testament in their liturgies since 1948.  Almost all of these were liturgical churches, so this was an immense and deeply- felt loss for them, but it was explained to me time and again that the familiar readings had become too viscerally painful.  For, if you belong a group of people who trace your lineage back to the earliest Canaanites, through Jesus’ first disciples, how do you read, how do you hear, the story of the Exodus? 

It becomes not a story of liberation, and God’s saving action, but the story of the Canaanites,--your people-- being once again driven from their ancestral lands in the name of a God they aren’t allowed to claim.  The fall of Jericho becomes a tragedy, not a victory.  And you know what that feels like.

All made worse, and more poignant, by the rhetoric, which flies from some of the religious extremists in modern Israel, who cite biblical precedent for plans to transfer Palestinian populations to other countries, or to expel further populations from the West Bank.  Saul lost the kingdom because of his mercy toward the Amekalites, they say—we won’t meet the same fate.

One of Sabeel’s great missions, then, was to reclaim the scripture for the indigenous Christians.  This was a living and Spirit-filled document, they believed, and the God they know was not like that, so how to explain this?  And so, they turned to Isaiah. 

They turned to Isaiah who sends the Chosen people out to all nations, as a universal symbol of God’s care,  and calls a Persian king the Messiah of God, and they turned to Jonah, who was sent by God to the Assyrians, right after they pillaged the Northern Kingdom!, and they turned to Ruth, a foreigner—a Midianite!-- who became the mother of King David.

          And of course, they turned to God, who so refused to be confined in heaven by human expectations, that he came to dwell among us in human form, and consecrated all human existence as holy and worth honoring. 

         And what was so humbling to me was that it is working.  In ways few people could have predicted, the scripture, all of it!, is once again becoming a source of strength to these people as they struggle, as well as a place of common ground with Israeli Jews.  It is the spirit of God at work—the Spirit that cannot be confined despite all of our ill-founded human attempts to the contrary.  That can’t be confined to the claims of the Palestinians alone, or the Israelis alone—the God that works outside of context, and who ultimately unites us. 

         And that, is our saving grace.  The God who refuses to be confined by our contexts and our narrow vision is the God who constantly acts to save us from them.  Acting in ways we couldn’t have predicted, with people we are unfamiliar with, pushing us outside of our boxes and our boundaries. 

         This is what redeems us--because  in the history of the Church, we have, to put it mildly, messed up quite a few times.  We’ve given into our contextual blinders, and it’s led us into disaster after disaster.  Translation problems led to schism, missionary zeal disguised imperialist intentions, and then, there were the Crusades.  Not to mention that our track record with minorities is mournful.  It has been so much easier to claim that we know what God looks like, acts like, believes, and we’ll form our church in that image. 

         But somehow, SOMEHOW, we’re still here.  Despite our humanness, despite our human proclivity to do exactly, precisely what we know, somewhere, deep within us we probably shouldn’t be doing, the Spirit still moves.  God is not confined those times we manage to get it right, or a scarier thought still--, to our mistakes.  We belong to God—God doesn’t belong only to us.  God is beyond our contexts, however blinded we might get.  God works through even our mistakes to up-end history. 

As Bp. Mark McDonald once said, “The Bible was given to the slaves to civilize them, and produced Harriet Tubman.  It was distributed in Africa to create calm and it created Desmond Tutu.”  Our misguided attempts to confine God, to recreate others and God in our image were eventually broken by the Spirit, and in ways that can be unsettling.  After all, there are reasons we like to keep God in our small confinements—it’s comfortable for us!  It makes life easier.  Each time we face the Spirit of God, it’s a challenge.  It’s a stretch.  It’s a leap.   We’re changed forever in sometimes-not-so comforting ways.  God becomes bigger, less manageable.  Less like us.  More like God. 

          And this is ultimately why we’re sent to preach the gospel to all nations.  Not to make them like us—that would fail miserably, and we’ve already tried that a couple of times.  But we go in order to break free from our own confining ideas about God, and how God works, and who God cares about.  We go and preach to learn more about God—how God works with other people.  To learn more about each other, and to learn more about ourselves.  To lose our blinders. 

[]

          There is a story from the Passover Haggadah  that is read when the traditional ten drops of wine are spilled out of the wine glass, about halfway through the meal.  The story goes,  When God closed the Red Sea over the heads of the pursuing Egyptians, and the Israelites were saved, there was great rejoicing among all the angels in heaven.  One of the angels noticed that God was not participating in the jubilation, and so he approached the divine throne.  “Why are you singing?,” YHWH asked him, “My children are drowning.”   

         It is when we learn to spill the wine from our cups, when we learn that God stands above our partisan celebrations, When we learn that God is god of Israel and Palestine, and white and black South Africa, and everyone on this earth—then and only then, will we have fulfilled the great commission.    Amen.  

It's like, you know?

(ya'll remember that TV show? The girl from Dirty Dancing was in it, only she had a nose job, and no one recognized her any more. So her career suffered. Ironic!)
So I'm still alive, and have finally survived most of this insane semester. This is no mean feat. This semester has featured, for me, the following:
-numerous interruptions of my class schedule, to the point where I show up for the wrong class, at the wrong time, on the wrong days.
-Dying relatives, accompanied by predicable familial meltdowns, in the style of Tennessee Williams. (Hey, we are a traditional and a highly literate people, even in our dysfunction. Respect!)
-the annoying return of Headaches from Hell, which have been persistent since roughly August.
-These, in turn, result in the equally annoying return of Prophetic Visions! And while it has a cool title, it's not that fun. Julian of Norwich and Hildegard of Bingen may have enjoyed seeing multiple copies of things, and zooming lights, but I am not a fan. Neither are the people that I am talking to when my world splits double. Evidently, it is unnerving to have me start tilting my head from side to side in an ill-fated attempt to have your image revert to its solitary self again, while jabbering on about atonement theory. Or something.
But! On the happier side of things! The semester is almost over, which means I get a nice long break.
Also, I've spent the last week hanging out with extremely cool conference people, as part of my official part time job. (This should not be confused with my Work-study Coordinator job, or my Field placement job. Or my taking-over-the-world job.) The conference was on the intersection between catholicity and globalization. Which sounds odd, but turned out to be very interesting. I was the liaison between the Conference center at the seminary (still not done, but one day! Inshallah.) and the conference participants. We had present the IFI (Philippine Independent Church), Church of Sweden, old Catholic churches, and Episcopalians.
And it is times like these when I remember how closely life outside of high school mirrors high school. And yet doesn't at all.
Much of the ecumenical work of the church is political backstage work--who's talking to whom and why, what might upset that relationship, how can we avoid that, should we send a gift? What kind of gift? How should we phrase this bit of text so as not to offend anyone, and if we stop talking to this person, how will that affect all our other relationships, because if person A is in close communion with person B and we stop talking to person A, then person B will cut ties with us. (Like most parties I went to in middle school, someone inevitably ends up in a corner, alone and in tears.)
But! At this conference, it turns out that all that stuff (which, don't get me wrong, is important in its place) is prelude so you can actually talk to people! And the people are doing incredible things! Which, I think, is actually why we were talking to them in the first place. Not so much because we wanted to line up theologies to march in pretty rows. That's never going to happen. But the actual basis of these things is that you honestly like the churches you work with--you respect what they do, where they do it, and you want to help out as you can, in your own unique way.
Next up: two sermons. Promise!

Rules of Life 2007

I got a Facebook message from a friend from high school notifying me that she had unearthed something I had written way back then. I had a habit of compiling random and amusing (I thought) quotes from different sources, and dubbing them 'Rules of Life!'. And I then collected them all into one uber-book upon graduation, as I recall. My friend had recently found her copy, and apparently found it quite funny. Her favorite rule was 'In the eyes of the Lord, we are all ostriches.'
Which, is no doubt true, but I don't quite recall why I thought it was so profound when I was seventeen.
There were others, though. Classics from years before: 'Silly putty is not intended for use as ear plugs.' 'A refrigerator is not an exit. Do not be fooled by signs to the contrary.' These sound random and nonsensical to me now, but they made sense at the time. There is actually a warning on the back of Silly Putty (the brand name stuff, mind you) that says that it is not, in fact, to be eaten, or used as ear plugs. Imagine the law suit that prompted that! And in high school, because I got bored in class almost every second of every day, and had no wireless internet to distract me, I carried Silly Putty with me. And learned these things.
Similarly, in the basement of the community theatre where I performed a lot, there was a refrigerator, above which there was an exit sign. There used to be a door there, but now, there was a prop refrigerator, and no door, just an old exit sign, that mislead people, and the fire department. Again, boredom makes a lot of things funny.
But thinking back, these were the rules that were elucidated. There were all the other high school rules that weren't, and were just as important. 'Carry saltines with you at all times, because bomb scares will close the cafeteria, and you'll spend six hours sitting in a packed gym with no food.' 'The more hall passes you have stored in your backpack, the better off you are.' 'There will be people who will never talk to you on principle. There will be people who will always talk to you. Discern the difference and let it go. Questioning it is for college.'
I think the rules of life we live by change with every period of our lives. There are different rules I live by now; rules I've changed, and rules I've added and rules I've thrown out. Rules different people have taught me, and rules I've decided are better left not followed.
What are your current favorite rules of life?