Gospel reading: Matthew 4.12-23
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
It's a little unsettling for me that this topic follows "The Feminist Impasse". Because when I think about being a chosen one or an insider, I remember the clan of boys that my brother and I ran with on Western Hills Drive.
We weren't officially a group and didn't have a name. But the Little Rascal's "He Man Woman Hater's Club" might have been more appropriate than we'd like to remember. There were girls on the block. But we had very little use for them. At least no polite uses.
Those childhood relationships expose something that remains true, even when we've grown up enough to be polite, or fall in love. They expose a tension between inclusion and identity.
Asked to choose between inclusion and exclusion the virtuous choice is deceptively easy. Of course we must be inclusive. But into what are we including these hypothetical outsiders?
We boys would have been much more inclusive if we forwent our affection for Wiffleball. We played long into the summer nights. Lewis kept statistics for us each season on his Commodore 64 computer (that's an instrument just this side of the quill pen for those who don't know). And loving that game as we did was a form of exclusion. If you couldn't hit or throw a curve or at least dive boldly into the skin-tearing holly bushes against the center field wall, you'd probably never feel chosen by this group.
We organize our lives in much the same way as adults even if the particulars change. You may not have joined a Wiffleball game lately (my brother, Kirk, who now works for a large research firm in Georgetown, still does fairly regularly). But I'm willing to bet that when you decide to invite someone to dinner or find a companion for a movie you don't open the phone book and call the first name your finger drops onto.
We don't get out of the inclusive/exclusive dilemma by choosing to be one or the other. The wonder of human personality might be described as a unique collection of loves. And nobody wants to live in a world free of preference, because that world would be free of us. Without our loves, we simply are not.
Believe it or not, I think the Christian tradition has something to offer (imagine that). One of the ways that the Episcopal Church excludes people is through our worship, and I'm not talking about churches that exclude the unbaptised from Communion. A vast, vast majority of the people in Arkansas have no interest in going to a church service where a priest who, based on his or her outfit, seems to have been upholstered to match the other furniture in the chancel (the what?), and then reads prayers in ancient forms that ask God to show up in some mysterious way in the bread and wine we consume together. Our identity excludes everybody who is disinterested or disdainful of the forms of our worship.
But I talk to people all the time who say, "I didn't know a church like this existed. I didn't think I'd ever find a way to be a Christian again." Being a faithful church demands that we hold on to something of our unique identity and welcome people graciously if they might be nourished here too. Otherwise we have no self to offer. If the Episcopal Church stopped being itself some people would have no religious home. Nowhere that they feel chosen.
A liturgical scholar named Gordan Lathrop puts it this way: "The task of the assembly is a task of polarity: make the center strong, the symbols large, the words of Christ clear, and make that center accessible, the circle large, the periphery permeable" (from his book, Holy Things). It's possible to make the periphery so permeable that there is no center. No place to welcome another person into. No way to chose. And it's also possible to make the center so strong that it becomes sealed off. This isn't only exclusive and uncharitable. It's a good way to suffocate.
On Sunday we read of Jesus' call to the first disciples. He told them to drop their fishing nets and follow him. He didn't ask everyone he met the same thing in the same way. We think would like God to be perfectly inclusive. But Incarnation meant living in the same world we do. So even Jesus chose twelve friends to spread the good news of grace to all kinds of excluded people. And that good news is still reaching people in unlikely places and unlikely times today. He showed us not how to live without preference. But rather, how to make our preferences a source of grace for others.
We boys on the block got the strong center part, but it took some growing up to allow for those much needed punctures in the periphery. I'm not sure anything less than a merciless surge of hormonal activity could have changed us. But it, and other people, and new experiences did. Those relationships became a source of strength. They gave us something we could then give away. They made us feel chosen. So that eventually we could learn to return that gift to our world. Even girls.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Tuesday, January 22, 2008
Conversion: The Feminist Impasse
Gospel reading: John 1.29-42
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Some of us milquetoast sorts never actually heard any yelling in chapel. Maybe an increase in aural sensitivity accompanies increases in other sensitivities.
The debate was over 'inclusive' language. If it weren't among a bunch of seminarians - a group that takes itself far too seriously to begin with - conversation about how we talk about God could have been really fruitful.
The interesting and important notion at the bottom of the debate is that words both stand for things and do things. If I say, "Gingie" the word may mean nothing to you, but conjures the image of an aquaintance for me. That's how words stand for things, or better, how words stand between us and the things we're trying to identify or describe or address.
But words also do things. If someone named Gingie punctured your tires, another Gingie passed you a hot check, and your mother, Gingie, forced you to eat liver weekly, well, the next Gingie you meet has a little psychic baggage to deal with before she wins your favor.
When we're talking about God we should remember that words work in both of these ways. And that seminary tiff over language was about something important. The first thing we have to acknowledge is that our language isn't up to the task. The words, God, or Father, or Holy Spirit don't capture God. They just stand for God or point us in God's direction.
But it's just as true that the words we choose shape us. There was an experiment with elementary school children in which groups were asked to draw pictures. Girls in groups that were instructed to draw "firefighters" and "police officers" were much more likely to draw a female in these rolls than were girls who were told to draw "firemen" and "policemen." The words we use affect the images we carry. And if the words we associate with God are all masculine it affects the image of God we carry, no matter what we say we believe about God and gender.
The trouble is, that we can't flippantly change every name that we stumble over. If Gingie changed her name every time it offended someone because of an unfortunate encounter with one of her namesake we would soon lose all track of who it was we were talking about. People would have to just grunt and point in her direction. Which, come to think of it, might not be helpful to Gingie in the end.
These are the tensions that we need to explore in our language about God. Unfortunately, too often in seminary we let our language simply place us in a particular camp. We forgot that language is a tool we share with one another for exploring the mystery of God.
Kathleen Norris's phrase "false purity of ideology" is helpful. When we talk about language in the abstract we forget that it's meant for the "give-and-take of community". We get closer to the mystery of God when we struggle with our language together. If addressing God as 'she' gives me the willies, why is that? There's nothing in the Bible or the creed about using only pronouns of a particular gender. If addressing God as "Father" offends me, why is that? Is vaguer language always better?
The false purity of ideology is the notion that I can think of the best term for God all by myself. Which is not language. It's babble. The power of language is in its shared meaning. The power of language is in the way other people can join us in our musings. Language is about give-and-take. And the surely the most powerful changes feminism has worked in our world have had to do with placing women, too slowly and too seldom perhaps, but placing women persistently in roles where they have long been excluded. Placing women more fully in life's give and take where we are all changed at a deeper level.
Mercifully, I didn't stay in the ivory tower that is seminary forever. I don't find as many "ists" and "isms" among worshiping people out here. I find people just as passionate about the rights and roles of women. And people just as passionate about using our language faithfully in our search for God. But maybe there's a little less staking out of ideological territory. More room for give and take. Maybe even more room to be changed.
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
"It was the false purity of ideology that I had to reject, in order to move toward the realistic give-and-take of community."In seminary we fought over pronouns. I imagine that every group of specialists has its own arcane fields of battle. At Morning Prayer there was an ongoing battle between those who edited out the masculine pronouns for God in their responses, and those who took great offense at the practice. Interestingly, people from both camps were convinced that those from the others were shouting their theological preferences during worship.
- Kathleen Norris
Some of us milquetoast sorts never actually heard any yelling in chapel. Maybe an increase in aural sensitivity accompanies increases in other sensitivities.
The debate was over 'inclusive' language. If it weren't among a bunch of seminarians - a group that takes itself far too seriously to begin with - conversation about how we talk about God could have been really fruitful.
The interesting and important notion at the bottom of the debate is that words both stand for things and do things. If I say, "Gingie" the word may mean nothing to you, but conjures the image of an aquaintance for me. That's how words stand for things, or better, how words stand between us and the things we're trying to identify or describe or address.
But words also do things. If someone named Gingie punctured your tires, another Gingie passed you a hot check, and your mother, Gingie, forced you to eat liver weekly, well, the next Gingie you meet has a little psychic baggage to deal with before she wins your favor.
When we're talking about God we should remember that words work in both of these ways. And that seminary tiff over language was about something important. The first thing we have to acknowledge is that our language isn't up to the task. The words, God, or Father, or Holy Spirit don't capture God. They just stand for God or point us in God's direction.
But it's just as true that the words we choose shape us. There was an experiment with elementary school children in which groups were asked to draw pictures. Girls in groups that were instructed to draw "firefighters" and "police officers" were much more likely to draw a female in these rolls than were girls who were told to draw "firemen" and "policemen." The words we use affect the images we carry. And if the words we associate with God are all masculine it affects the image of God we carry, no matter what we say we believe about God and gender.
The trouble is, that we can't flippantly change every name that we stumble over. If Gingie changed her name every time it offended someone because of an unfortunate encounter with one of her namesake we would soon lose all track of who it was we were talking about. People would have to just grunt and point in her direction. Which, come to think of it, might not be helpful to Gingie in the end.
These are the tensions that we need to explore in our language about God. Unfortunately, too often in seminary we let our language simply place us in a particular camp. We forgot that language is a tool we share with one another for exploring the mystery of God.
Kathleen Norris's phrase "false purity of ideology" is helpful. When we talk about language in the abstract we forget that it's meant for the "give-and-take of community". We get closer to the mystery of God when we struggle with our language together. If addressing God as 'she' gives me the willies, why is that? There's nothing in the Bible or the creed about using only pronouns of a particular gender. If addressing God as "Father" offends me, why is that? Is vaguer language always better?
The false purity of ideology is the notion that I can think of the best term for God all by myself. Which is not language. It's babble. The power of language is in its shared meaning. The power of language is in the way other people can join us in our musings. Language is about give-and-take. And the surely the most powerful changes feminism has worked in our world have had to do with placing women, too slowly and too seldom perhaps, but placing women persistently in roles where they have long been excluded. Placing women more fully in life's give and take where we are all changed at a deeper level.
Mercifully, I didn't stay in the ivory tower that is seminary forever. I don't find as many "ists" and "isms" among worshiping people out here. I find people just as passionate about the rights and roles of women. And people just as passionate about using our language faithfully in our search for God. But maybe there's a little less staking out of ideological territory. More room for give and take. Maybe even more room to be changed.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Anger
Gospel reading: Matthew 3.13-17
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Anger is an exotic emotion to me. I think I've long harbored some envy of boisterous, passionate Italian families. What would it have been like to grow up yelling across great bowls of pasta and bottles of wine at my siblings? What if I had learned to comprehend immediately the depth of every sleight or insult so that I could take my rightful offense and have the nerve to slap the offender as duty requires? The tearful reconciling embrace seems worth the trouble. (I can't wait to hear Clem's response to these blatant stereotypes.)
Maybe part of the reason that a more colorful emotional life seems appealing at times is that James was right. We do carry around energy that isn't meant to be inhibited. Not entirely at least.
On the other hand, I've had a few encounters recently with people exhibiting symptoms that suggest an autistic disorder like Asperger syndrome. One of the characteristics is a lack of empathy. And anger seems close to the surface, ready to spring forth at any time. The intensity of their reactions and their lack of inhibition wasn't just a glimpse of a mental disorder. I was reminded of the energy that all of us carry and the struggle we all share to express that energy in healthy and life giving ways.
Somewhere between my too-strong inhibition and an almost total lack of it exists a healthy spectrum of expression. And it may be that part of developing a healthy spiritual life or emotional life is learning how to be angry. Learning how to "live with energy, though energy bring pain."
There weren't any angry people mentioned in Sunday's gospel. We heard about Jesus' baptism by John. And we heard of a voice from heaven and the Spirit of God descending like a dove. God's energy seemed to be in the air, and mysteriously in Jesus as well. His struggle too would be how to live with that energy, though energy bring pain.
Fortunately for us Jesus learned to live faithfully with the energy he carried. He wasn't so inhibited and fearful of anger that we never got access to his gifts. Nor was he so uninhibited that his anger consumed him, and the people around him.
I think I'll try to start seeing anger not as a gift, but as evidence of a gift. Evidence that I have an urge toward goodness and justice that this world needs, but an urge that I can do damage with if I don't learn to express it faithfully. Maybe I can be careful but not fearful when the "strenuous mood" is upon me. And maybe only what needs to be will get broken in the process.
(Click HERE for last Sunday's readings)
Earnestness means willingness to live with energy, though energy bring pain. The pain may be pain to other people or pain to one's self - it makes little difference; for when the strenuous mood is upon one, the aim is to break something, no matter whose or what. Nothing annihilates an inhibition as irresistably as anger does it...It's hard to imagine William James losing his inhibition. Or breaking anything. In his elegantly detached way, James suggests that our experiences accumulate in our selves as 'energy', and that if we're willing to live with that energy things may get broken.
- William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience
Anger is an exotic emotion to me. I think I've long harbored some envy of boisterous, passionate Italian families. What would it have been like to grow up yelling across great bowls of pasta and bottles of wine at my siblings? What if I had learned to comprehend immediately the depth of every sleight or insult so that I could take my rightful offense and have the nerve to slap the offender as duty requires? The tearful reconciling embrace seems worth the trouble. (I can't wait to hear Clem's response to these blatant stereotypes.)
Maybe part of the reason that a more colorful emotional life seems appealing at times is that James was right. We do carry around energy that isn't meant to be inhibited. Not entirely at least.
On the other hand, I've had a few encounters recently with people exhibiting symptoms that suggest an autistic disorder like Asperger syndrome. One of the characteristics is a lack of empathy. And anger seems close to the surface, ready to spring forth at any time. The intensity of their reactions and their lack of inhibition wasn't just a glimpse of a mental disorder. I was reminded of the energy that all of us carry and the struggle we all share to express that energy in healthy and life giving ways.
Somewhere between my too-strong inhibition and an almost total lack of it exists a healthy spectrum of expression. And it may be that part of developing a healthy spiritual life or emotional life is learning how to be angry. Learning how to "live with energy, though energy bring pain."
There weren't any angry people mentioned in Sunday's gospel. We heard about Jesus' baptism by John. And we heard of a voice from heaven and the Spirit of God descending like a dove. God's energy seemed to be in the air, and mysteriously in Jesus as well. His struggle too would be how to live with that energy, though energy bring pain.
Fortunately for us Jesus learned to live faithfully with the energy he carried. He wasn't so inhibited and fearful of anger that we never got access to his gifts. Nor was he so uninhibited that his anger consumed him, and the people around him.
I think I'll try to start seeing anger not as a gift, but as evidence of a gift. Evidence that I have an urge toward goodness and justice that this world needs, but an urge that I can do damage with if I don't learn to express it faithfully. Maybe I can be careful but not fearful when the "strenuous mood" is upon me. And maybe only what needs to be will get broken in the process.
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