Thoughts of a Progressive Anachronism

Like most people, I’m a work in progress. At various times, I see myself through different lenses and use different descriptions to say to myself and to others who I believe myself to be. Some days I wear political face (Democrat, liberal, believer in social justice, etc.) while on other days I where a more general mask (female, Senior, pudgy, widow). I can define myself as a cat person by virtue of the fact that I live with four-legged kids but also a cat person by virtue of the fact that I don’t particularly care for change – most of the time. I like furniture to stay where I put it the first time, unless I find I need to change it around for some particular practical reason. I tend to eat the same things over and over and am reluctant to try new stuff. I like my creature comforts and would love to have someone prepare and serve my meals (on MY schedule), cleaned my litter box, give me periodic treats and pay attention to me when I ask for it. I’d make a great cat.

I find, though, that I’m becoming an oxymoron (some would say the oxy– part is optional, the rest is accurate). I see myself becoming a progressive anachronism: someone who believes in progress but wants her comfort zone and traditional practice to stay intact because that’s the way it’s always been, or at least feels like it’s always been. I am progressive enough to enjoy the benefits of technology – computers, Kindles, iPods, cell phones, high-speed Internet access, satellite TV, etc. – but I like them where I want them to be and not in unexpected places.

When it comes to church, my catness really shows up. I like things the way they used to be, or at least how I thought they used to be. I have great difficulty sometimes with the way things really are. I love the hymns we have sung for years, hymns I grew up with and to which I know all the words and harmonies. I’m glad to have both the CDs and access to iTunes that let me hear them whenever I want. However, praise bands and PowerPoint presentations of simple lyrics to songs with simple tunes and not much harmony don’t satisfy something in me that is integral to the way I worship. I love my iPod but I use it to listen to church music of the 14th – 19th century. I love the liturgy with polysyllabic words that resonate in my mouth as well as my heart and brain and I know the Psalms and the Christmas story sound better in the King James version than in anything contemporary although I’ll accept most of the rest of the Bible in modern language. In short, I like things the way they always were.

But while reading a book recently I realized I am becoming an anachronism, a nice Greek word, anachroniziesthai, as near as I can figure. I like things permanent in a world that is in constant flux and change. I pride myself on being progressive, but my progress seems to stop at the church door. When I look back over the years that I have been involved with church, there have been changes, some more jarring than others, but nonetheless changes that occurred as a response to a need or a perception. The church has not always been as I know it to be now. I remember the fuss when the beloved 1940 hymnal was changed, some dearly beloved hymns were eliminated and new songs were added that really took getting used to. I remember when the 1928 prayer book was revised and some parishioners left because “It isn’t church anymore.” The words had been changed and, it appeared, the meaning and worshipfulness of the church experience got shifted a bit. I remember seeing a woman priest behind the altar, celebrating the Eucharist and not just setting the table and/or cleaning up afterwards. That was another change that a lot of people could not handle.

I managed to deal with those changes, some more easily than others, so I know I am able to change even things that are important to me when it comes to church. So why am I having such a hard time and so much angst about more changes? The church has been changing since the time of the apostles. It might go along with the same garb, words, postures and gestures for a couple of centuries but sooner or later, things would change. The church went into new places, to new people and cultures, and the old ways didn’t totally fit. So the church changed. My church, among others, is in a state of change because the world outside the church is changing, a natural and predictable series of events.

The church people of my generation think of as “theirs” really isn’t. It belongs to no one group or one set of individuals or even one country. The church is God’s and we’re just the people who have the responsibility of making it work. Part of making it work means making it relevant to the place, time, and people who serve within it and who it serves both inside and outside its walls. The question is how to keep young people in the church and active in the church once they get past confirmation, go off to college, or just get too busy to be part of the church as they used to be when they were younger. It is frequently heard at church meetings and discussions that the young people are the church of tomorrow. That’s not really true; they are the church of today, the church they share with the older people and children who also work and worship together in that church.

The disconnect comes because the younger people live in a world totally different from the one in which their elders grew up in. Our generation read newspapers, we remember when there were no TVs to watch, a phone call was about something important and not necessarily just a “hi, how are you?” The young people today don’t remember a time before a man walked on the moon, or before computers existed. Their vocabulary is shorter and, in some ways, more terse than ours was. We crafted letters and worked hard to convey in proper English and proper spelling precisely what we wanted to say, and then wrote with good penmanship on a physical piece of paper and envelope that got dropped in a mailbox and eventually arrived at its destination. It was opened, read, and sometimes saved for years. That’s harder to do with e-mails, and most people don’t do those things with e-mails. Their world consists of tweets, short messages of 140 characters that speak volumes in a few syllables. It’s a more individual world, even in crowds – and churches. Programs that used to work, like choirs, no longer work because people don’t have time for them much less interest in singing in harmony. They want fast, simple, emotive experiences that can be made relevant to how they live their lives now. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that “We’ve never done it that way before,” as one of the unofficial mottoes of the Episcopal Church states.

Well, guess what. Calvinists of the 18th century probably nearly had apoplexy when someone suggested they sing hymns rather than metrically chant the Psalms as they were accustomed to doing. But look where we are now; hymns are common things in churches and psalmody is almost a forgotten art. In the Jerusalem church, circumcision was the norm until Paul argued that circumcision was a Jewish custom that should not necessarily be forced on non-Jews. He won that one, but it certainly made a big change in the church. For centuries the liturgy was done in a language common people didn’t read or understand. They didn’t sit in pews; they stood through the whole service. After the Reformation ministers wore simple clothing or black robes with preaching bands instead of the garb of chausible, alb and stole that had become standard at an earlier time. Those things didn’t come back to the Church of England (and many of its daughter churches) until the Oxford movement in the late 19th century. Change happens. Change is part of life, even the life of faith and religion. I just wonder sometimes though, why can’t it wait ‘til it doesn’t matter to me
anymore?

Whether I like it or not, change in the church is inevitable. There are new ways of doing church that speak to the people who will be in this church a lot longer than I will be in the future. Without change, churches, institutions, even life itself cannot continue. Nothing is static; it can’t be and continue to grow. So, I have a choice. Except the new way of doing church or go find old fogeys like myself who resist change and insist on their comfort level being respected.

I wonder what the new prayer book and hymnal will look like? How soon can I expect them not just in the pews of my church but on my Kindle? It may not be comfortable, but somehow it’s going to have to be. May I have the strength to bear it with grace and accept it with more patience than I have to date. It’s God’s church; I just have to get out of God’s way and let God set the agenda for the church of the future.

A Dark Night in the Daylight

I've been combing the news for reports of damage in the area I used to and still call "home." A school collapsed, trees down, roads blocked, power out --- these are significant but except for the school, the same things happen every time a hurricane or severe thunderstorm go through the area. But a tornado? I never remember a tornado going anywhere near us in the years I spent there.

As more news is available, I have more cause for worry. Oh, I'm sure my family members on the south side of my river are safe. There aren't any reports of major stuff coming from there, but the once sleepy and rural areas north of the river where Daddy's family came from and some of their descendants still live have been hit, including my nephew. Oh, the area has developed almost by explosion; where there used to be fields and truck farms and meadows and virgin forest are now blocks of houses, strip malls and fast fooderies. The narrow roads and lanes we used to drive down to visit the relatives or go to the cemetery where so many of the relations now rest are now splayed across the news as areas hard-hit by the storms. I read -- and I worry.

I'm sure my family is all right. It's Palm Sunday. I'm sure most, if not all, are in church, celebrating the ride into Jerusalem and preparing for Easter. Another nephew, this one a preacher, will be preaching on that gospel, I'm sure, and my brother and sister-in-law will be sitting in their usual pews. I pray as I wonder, though, about those who should be sitting in the little church that stands watch over the graveyard across the river where so many lie -- aunts, uncles, a niece, cousins by the score, and my adoptive mother and father among them -- and which are surrounded by deep woods.

I took a google-tour of the area not a month ago, seeing the changes but also seeing the unchanged. I wonder now, how much of what I saw then is no longer there.

It hasn't been hard to pray for the people of Haiti, China, Japan and all the people of the world shaken by disaster of a magnitude that is almost unimaginable to us. It has been easy to pray for them; I don't know them by name or the streets on which they live. It's harder to get my jumbled thoughts together so as to pray coherently for those whose names I do know and who live on roads and streets that I've known from my childhood. There have been deaths in that area; I pray none of them have a familiar name just as I pray for comfort and strength for those who have been affected by this storm, wherever and whoever they are.

*****

I paused while writing this and called home. No answer until a few minutes ago when I reached my sister-in-law. They still don't know the names of the dead but my nephew is safe and helping those neighbors who were harder hit. There was other news, not so good, but that was something else entirely.

Thank you, God, for the family, as far-distant in many ways as the people in Japan or Haiti but still close enough so that phone lines can carry news both ways. thank you for the technology that can cause me to worry or cause me to cease worrying.

God, be with those across this country who've suffered injury or death or damage from this storm. May next Sunday, Easter Sunday, be a day of resurrection -- hopes, dreams, restoration, renewal and replenishment. My anxiety has abated, on that situation anyway. The family is safe. That dark night is over even though the sun has been up for hours.

Praise for Things Impermanent

Spring is obviously here. Even though the thermometer shifts between 97° one day and 61° a few days later, the mulberry trees have lost their fuzzies and the leaves are now full sized. The roses are starting to bloom, the jasmine is a day or two away from open blossoms, and the kleenexes are filling the trash baskets because of the pollen that marks spring's exuberance after a winter of hibernation. Another signal of spring is the lengthening of days. That can be a good or a bad thing, depending.

It's easier to get moving in the morning when there's light outside. Somehow when it's still dark when I get up and even when I get ready to go to work, it's harder to leave the house (sometimes even to get out of bed.). Like the plants, I've got more energy and urge to get moving even if I don't bloom (except maybe as a bloomin' idiot sometimes).

I have prisms and things hanging in all my living room windows. the small-bay windows are oriented toward the north and mostly shaded by one of the mulberry trees. Still, this morning, There were flashes of color coming from a round prism I have hanging in the north-west one, light striking it from the window on the east wall at just precisely the right angle. Phoebe was confused by all the little flashes that suddenly appeared on the ceiling and I was mesmerized by the flashes of color in the heart of the prism, but by the time I grabbed my camera and got back, the sun had risen higher in the sky and the prism was asleep again. But wait --- a prism in the east window as just getting its moment in the sun and there were some bold splashes of color dancing around the room, including the ceiling. it only lasted a very few minutes, but oh, what glory in those few brief moments in time.

It made me think about transient things, how briefly things and people come into my life, seemingly out of nowhere, create a splash and then fade away again as if they'd never been there. But they were -- that brief time is engraved on the memory, for good or for ill, and becomes part of me, part of what makes me me -- my thoughts, my experiences, my memories.

The Bible uses flashes usually in terms of lightning flashing across the sky, the sound of YHWH's voice, the swiftness of arrows and the flickering of flame. There are moments, though, when a momentary something happens that changes everything. Just in the gospels, stories of Jesus touching people who seemingly come from nowhere, encounter Jesus, are healed or changed and then sink back into oblivion are everywhere. The blind man from last week's reading, the Syrophoenician woman, the woman with the hemorrhage, the leper, the Gerasene demonic -- like meteors their stories flash across the horizon of our consciousness and then vanish, leaving only the memory of themselves, their story and their encounter with Jesus for us to contemplate. It only takes a minute to change a life, really; the gospels are full of them, as is the rest of the Bible. One simply has to be in the right place at the right time for something that was just words to become a flash of rainbow that changes how we see, think and act.

The rainbow on the ceiling has faded but I caught it with my camera. I know that tomorrow another will take its place, if the sun is rising and it isn't cloudy, and whether or not I am here to observe its coming and going. But that is tomorrow. Today I have the memory of something bright, beautiful and fleeting that made me think of the value of not durable goods but rather the importance of transient things. It reminds me to look for the flashes of -- beauty? importance? intuition? joy? -- that happen in everyday life and suddenly change how I see or feel things. It reminds me that there is value in impermanent things because they can give permanent blessings and insights.

Kinda like Jesus passing through a town and in a flash, healing what had been un-healable.

Today I give thanks for the little flashes that bring me insights into greater things. May I not forget to look for them tomorrow.

Hummingbird Confusion

Last night I noticed (too late to do anything about it) that one hummingbird feeder was empty -- or empty enough that no nectar was visible in the bottle. CATASTROPHE! I thought about it early this morning but wasn't about to go out on the patio in my pajamas to retrieve the empty so it waited.

Meanwhile the hummers visited both feeders regularly, evidently finding some nourishment in the bit that was left.

Something interesting was going on up the street so I finally got some threads on and went outside to rubberneck --- er-- retrieve the empty feeder and incidentally keep an eye on what was going on when I noticed the other feeder had an empty bottle. Ok, no problem there. I filled up the first feeder and hung it out and got the empty one while the second batch of water was heating in the microwave. The hummers didn't waste time making use of the full one so I figured I had a little time.

Standing at the kitchen sink and watching the "interesting" happening up the street I noticed that a hummer kept returning to where the empty feeder had been just a few minutes ago and flitted about as if to say, "Hang on 'ere. There was something 'ere just a bit ago, now where did it go? Dangit, I'm 'ungry and that bunch at the other feeder isn't gonna share and I want MINE back!" The tiny bird came back three or four times while I got the dishes finished as if to check to see that the thing that was there and suddenly wasn't was back again. No joy, just confusion. How could something that big just vanish all of a sudden?  The hummingbird world was all discombobulated.

I empathize with the little bird; I know what it's like to suddenly have the world suddenly gone all goofy and strange. Things that seemed permanent are revealed as impermanent and possibly rubble  in a matter of moments. Things I counted on are all of a sudden not there, not available and not able to be relied upon like before. Sometimes I go back several times to where I thought I left something, searching for it,  or come home from work to find something that was there in the morning when I left is not there now. Where did it go?  What do I do now? What can I do?  And yes, I know I sound vaguely like Scarlett O'Hara but the world pretty much gives back the answer Rhett Butler gave, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." 

For me, there are friends I can count on to help make sense of most things. They've been through it and they know what I'm feeling and thinking and what the next step ought to be, even if they don't say it quite that way. I've got strength  I didn't know I had until it was tested and I came through whatever it was that I wasn't sure I could handle. And I've got faith that somehow, some way, God will be there.

The nectar finally reached the right temperature to be put in the empty bottle and outside it went.  I hadn't even gotten it hung when I heard the unmistakable sound of hummer wings humming in my ear and saw the flash of iridescence not four inches from my nose. " 'Allo, wotcher got there?" Before I even got back to the door, the hummer tavern was open for business and customers were rotating in and out. Once again, all was well in the hummer world.

The "interesting" event up the street is over and now there's a big raw spot where a trailer stood for years. It's going to take a while before I get used to not seeing it there on the corner but I got to see it leave and that gives me some sense of closure. Still, things will be different now, even if not by much.

And God's still here. That's comforting beyond all words.

Indeed feminism changes the way we see everything, not just the way we relate to men. It changes what we value and what we seek. It changes the way we see ourselves as women. And it turns a critical--and calloused-- eye on both state and church. After that there is no going back to "ladylike" docility or clerical worship. After that there is only me. -- Joan Chittister*

I look at chapter 27 of year 4 in the EfM textbook --- one chapter out of four years of 34 lessons per year -- that talks about feminism and the women whose voices have played their part in theological thought. Even then it feels more like a sop thrown to make women happy that they're mentioned but without real appreciation for their value as theologians, as contributing and participating members of hte Body of Christ and as human beings also created by God with thoughts and experiences to be spoken and voices to be heard. Oh, yes, a few, very few, women are mentioned in the history of the church but more as cheerleaders and bench warmers than actual contributors to the work. Usually they are the dutiful saints although some of'em had fire in their bones for change and some, like Julian, dared speak of God as someone other than "He." Needless to say, I found the chapter quite frustrating.


One thing that needs to be pointed out is that feminist theology may include but does not generally meander into male-bashing. Feminists are not always about how rotten men are and what boogers they can be. Feminism, of which there are men subscribers, believe it or not, is about the acceptance of women in their full personhood, "endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights" of which life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the equality of treatment is part and parcel. If feminists sometimes speak in less than dulcet tones and appear to have barely-concealed anger, it's because they've been given cause to be so; being ignored, being patted on the head and sent off to sit quietly in the corner, being told to be quiet, that they can't do thus-and-so because they don't have the right plumbing apparatuses, etc., is enough to make even a doormouse roar.


One of the eye-openers for me as Phyllis Trible's book, Texts of Terror. It featured some stories I NEVER heard in church (even in the So. Babdist church of my youth) and, if they were discovered, were sort of glossed-over in bible study class. They were stories like Jephtha's daughter, the one to be sacrificed in order to fulfill her father's promise that if something particular happened he would sacrifice the first thing - person or animal - he saw on his return home. Which just happened to be his beloved daughter. Oh, he gave her a month to go out with her friends to take a retreat in the mountains to mourn her upcoming death and what price virginity, but in the end it is implied that he, unlike Abraham with Isaac, actually completed the deal he'd made. Now if that ain't enough to curl someone's toenails...


Feminism looks at the bits that have been overlooked, primarily those that feature or refer to women, and sincerely and deeply questions what it all means, why it was as it was, why it isn't used now as a learning experience for men as well as women. Caucasian women have Feminist theology, African-American women have Womanist theology, Latinas have Mujerista theology, all basically similar but with the focus on their particular religious, social and cultural lives and understandings. The chapter in the book only refered to Feminist, as if the others did not exist and, admitting that it focused on the US, sort of dismissed the rest of the world. Granted it's hard to put so much into one chapter but considering that some topics got two or three, this particular one might be worth more than three-quarters of one.


Don't even get me started on the last quarter of the chapter, the bare mention of GLBTI theology. Granted, the chapter was written in 2003 and had a postcript added about the election of Gene Robinson, but dang --- haven't we had discussions on this in the church for at least the last decade if not the last 30-35 years? And it's condensed into how many pages? Two and about 8 lines of another?


I love EfM. I've learned so much and continue to learn each time I go through a year but honestly, sometimes it just makes me want to go out and burn a bra or something. Oh, wait; that period passed some time ago and I missed it. Well, better late than never, I guess. Please, Sewanee, PLEASE update the texts! Thanks.

* Chittister, Joan, Called to Question: A Spiritual Memoir. (2004) Landham, MD: Sheed& Ward. (Kindle ed.)

Where's the Good News?

I've given up watching local news and I'm about ready to give up on reading local news online. It doesn't take more than a perusal of a paragraph or two of a news story or sometimes just a headline or two to turn me off. Ok, call me an isolationist but I just can't handle what I hear and read. It frightens me -- and makes me worry about not just myself but others.

I live in Arizona. 'nuff said. Cut education but not law enforcement. Cut Medicaid and the medical safety net for the poor but not raise taxes for the rich and big business. Cut support for Planned Parenthood but don't support things that benefit the already-born (like education, health care, food subsidies for poor families, etc). Support carrying concealed guns (in bars, on the street, and now even talk of allowing them on campus) even though that got 6 people killed and 13, including a member of the legislture, injured. Have I given you a picture of how I see our legislature? It's no different nationally. I hear about lots of cuts to programs I might need or use and certainly many of my neighbors could as well, but I don't hear a d***** thing about legislators cutting their own salaries or benefits. I'm betting they'll find a way to increase them, if given half a chance. It'll just be buried so deep it will take dynamite to dig it out of the verbiage of the multitudinous bills passing through the various houses. Oh, and I can bet certain pet projects that will benefit the rich and the powerful will never be touched. Talk about sacred cows....

This morning I consider Jesus's words, "Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. " (Luke 12:22b-23) Dang. He sure doesn't make things easy, does he?

There are so many in-your-face problems these days to worry about: foreclosures, cuts in programs I and others depend on, rising prices for necessities with more and more chance of cutbacks or layoffs in the work environment, more and more fear that something's going to go catastrophically wrong (which, as I age, is becoming more and more probable) and there will be no safety net to catch me or even break the fall. Then I read where Jesus tells me not to worry about things. Oy vey.

Sr. Joan Chittister remarked, "It's not the grappling with a thing that defeats us; it is the unknown answers to the hidden questions that wear us down."* I know what it feels like to be paralyzed by fear, unable to think even past the next breath. I've learned the hard way to concentrate on the next thing, not ten things down the road. In short, don't worry about more than the immediate until I am able to breathe freely and focus on the bigger picture. But when I can focus, I need to look beyond the just me and how stuff like the shennanigans in the legislature affect me to how they will affect people around me, people who don't have the resources I do or even the experiences I do. I need to be their advocate instead of just sitting like a lump and trying to keep myself out of trouble.

____
* Chittister, Joan D., Scarred By Struggle, Transformed By Hope. (paperback ed. 2005) Grand Rapids MI: William B Eeerdmans Publishing Co. (46).

Incongruities (the Samaritan woman at the well)

I was reading Ann Fontaine's Lent 3 sermon notes and got to thinking about the Samaritan woman at the well in the gospel lesson for tomorrow (John 4:5-42). It's one of those stories where a woman appears, a nameless woman, but upon whom the whole story turns as much for her words and actions as much as Jesus' own. It is just full of incongruities which makes it an interesting story in itself.

She meets Jesus at a well in or just outside a city called Sychar. It was high noon, an odd time for a lone woman to be going to the well; most went first thing in the morning when it was cooler and when they could gather together to hear and pass on news, gossip, troubles or thanksgivings with each other. Gathering water was womens' work, but being women, they could turn a chore into a pleasurable activity of visiting with the neighbors without being accused of slacking or wasting time that they should be using to cook, clean, sew, watch the children, or tend to their part of the family business. This woman, though, came at noon, a time when nobody would be there, perhaps just so that she would not meet any of the other women and not have to hear the whispers and slurs and have to ignore the back-turning and giggling behind hers. She came at an unusual time so she could avoid other people -- except this time there was a man sitting there.

Jesus the Jew was sitting by the well when she got there. He even spoke to her, asking for water since he had nothing from which to drink it. Incongruity number 2 in this story. First the hour and now a Jewish man speaking to a Samaritan woman. Jews avoided Samaritans like they would have done with pork chops; Samaritans and pork chops were on about par in their eyes. Samaritans worshipped God in a different place, on Mount Gerazim, rather than Jerusalem, and their worship was supposedly a dilution of Judaism with pagan practices.

The third incongruity was that Jesus the male was speaking to a woman, not only a "foreign" woman but one to whom he was not related and with whom he was not acquainted. "Good" women did not permit themselves to be put in this situation and "good" men didn't approach such a woman unless she were a prostitute and they were looking for action. So did Jesus consider this Samaritan woman a prostitute? It's possible, given the statement he made to her regarding the number of her husbands.

So a lone woman goes to the well at an odd time and meets a man who normally would have stayed a country mile away from her, much less ask her for a drink of water. He gives her a shock when he details for her the shameful situation that kept her isolated and scorned. Evidently this man was a powerful prophet to have seen and understood such a thing without her having had to explain it. This was something the rest of the city needed to hear, so taking her tattered pride and fear in hand, she rushes off to tell anyone who would listen to her that someone special, someone prophetic, had come to their well and they needed to come quickly to hear what he had to say.

Jesus's disciples finally amble in with the food they'd gone off to buy and were surprised to find him in conversation with a woman who quickly ran off, leaving her water jar behind. They encourage him to eat, but he turns down the food and instead tells the disciples that what he feeds on is doing God's work that was given to him to do, even among outcast people. As the Sycharian townsfolk arrived, he teaches and preaches, staying there for two days. We are told that many came to believe in him and his message despite the differences in their religious upbringing and practice.

Two things come to mind in considering this story. One is the outcome for the Samaritan woman. She appears to have regained some credibility with the townspeople by her identification of and invitation to go and hear this wonderful prophet who told her about herself without any input from her other than "Sir, I have no husband." The argument could be made that she was the first evangelist outside of the disciples, the first to bring the good news to people who turned out to be receptive to that good news.

The second thing that I think about as I read and ponder this story is that I wonder if Jesus remembered this encounter when he had his debate with the Syrophoenician woman about healing her daughter? He had already brought his message to people "not of this fold" of Judaism and who had brought healing to a foreign woman although she did not really ask for any such healing. Did Jesus change his mind about the Syrophoenician woman because of the encounter he had with the Samaritan one? Who knows?

A "bad" woman turned evangelist, a foreign woman of probably very loose morals who was one of the first to pass on the good news that Jesus was there and preaching marvelous things. Now there's a story that I can sit and contemplate -- and find good news for myself as well.

On Translation and Reality

The news lately has been of one disaster after another. It seems Mother Nature isn't letting Lent get in the way of boogyin' down and havin' a whole lotta shakin' goin' on. Lying in my nice warm bed at night after a nice hot supper and a bit of TV and computer stuff to keep me occupied, it's very easy to feel relief that the disasters haven't hit us here. It's also very easy to say a prayer or two that those who have been hurt, harmed and made homeless, jobless, power-less and hungry may soon find rest, respite and reconstruction. It makes it easier to put things in a bit more of a perspective, realizing that no matter what my struggles are (and even though they are the worst in the world becuase they're all mine) there are probably a billion or two who are immensely worse off than I am.


Sandwiched in with the disasters was a news piece on the reaction of some Christians to the new 2011 version of the New International Version of the Bible. In the course of retranslation it seems to have gone too far in the direction of inclusive language for some, not far enough for others. One point of argument is that it goes too far theologically simply by changing "brothers" to "brothers and sisters" if the word in the original language is one that indicates an inclusive reading. Compared to the death, destruction and dis-ease around the world right now, for me it isn't really a blip on the radar, but it seems to be for some.


The book I've been reading this week made the article about the squabble over "brothers" vs. "brothers and sisters" particularly irritating. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunty for Women Worldwide by Kristof and Wudunn is about women -- women who face real discrimination and often death from those to whom the words "brothers and sisters" simply don't apply; only "brothers" count. These women live in worlds where their beatings are common, rapes a fact of life, sexual slaveries rampant and deaths from preventative causes almost normal . It is normal -- for them; they have almost no way to escape and no place to go if they did. Men rule and women are only pawns to be used, abused and tossed aside on a whim. It was a tough book to read, even if I had heard some of these stories before. It battered me with its presentation of lives of women and sometimes mere girls who face what to me is almost unimaginable.

Now I grant you that I read the Bible in translation; I'm not nearly clever enough to learn to read Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. The translation I use is probably flawed in some ways, 100% faithful in others. I don't think there's one out there that isn't. I notice Jesus healed women, though, and I don't think that is something that could be changed to make it more PC (pardon the term). I don't remember Jesus saying anything about "I can't do anything for you because you're a woman or even a member of the right club or tribe." I don't remember him saying he came for the men of Israel, not women of Israel, even though he did tell one woman he came for Israel only. She put up a persuasive argument and, like God the Father in the Old Testament, Jesus changed his mind and did something he hadn't really planned to do.

Some of the problems of the Majority World (the world outside the West) are the same as some women face here today. Some men will take most or all of the paycheck the family depends on for food and shelter and head for the nearest bar, casino, drug dealer or prostitute. Some women are beaten almost daily and almost to death. Some women can't afford prenatal care and so have complications that could easily have been dealt with with earlier intervention or have babies that are smaller, sicker and with problems that could cripple them for life. Some women here work menial jobs (or several of them) to try to feed and house their children, and for whom dreams just aren't on the program. There are women who yearn for educations that could mean better lives for them and their families but there's no money, no one to help with the children and they know of no network to help them achieve it.

For most of the world, education of women is a major contributor to the problems they face. Imagine not having $7 - 21 A YEAR to send a child to school with proper clothes much less money for books, slates, paper, pencils and the basics. Imagine being a woman who burns to learn but who cannot attend school because (a) she's a woman and (b) brothers are more valuable and so are sent to school, whether or not they want to go. Imagine being a girl in her very early teens, married to a much older man, made pregnant and then left alone in a dirt-floored shack to deliver a baby from a body not mature enough to handle the delivery and with no doctor, no nurse, not even an older woman to help her. The damage is often a fistula which leaks urine and feces constantly and the girl, maimed for life and often with a dead baby, is sentenced to living alone in a shack far from the main house where her stench can't reach or upset anyone. These are women, women who are children of God regardless of where they live, their ages or what (if any) faith they practice.

For too long, reading "brothers" instead of "brothers and sisters" has been a way of tossing a small bone to a hungry dog, intimating that yes, the dog matters but not very much. It's being given a bone to sop the conscience of the one who eats the whole meal.

I think if God had wanted a one-gender world, he'd have fixed it so that reproduction would rely on beings that were capable of self-fertilization. If God wrote the Bible (or did a divine dictation to scribes) in and for a brothers-only world, tales like that of Sarah, Hannah, Miriam, Tamar (both of them), Rahab (think there were two of them too), Mary (lots of them), Martha, the woman with the hemorrhage, the Syrophonecian woman, etc., would be unnecessary. There would be no need for images of God as hen with chicks or any of a dozen feminine-related word pictures.

This Lent I must think more of my sisters around the world who face unimaginable hardship every single day. I must do more than just pray for them and their release from the situations that imprison them, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I must do more than just intend to do something constructive to help. I must, for they are my sisters and, inclusive translation of "brothers and sisters" or not.

I keep getting stuff in my email or reading it in various places, "Join us on Facebook and...." I'll get anything from an unlock code for a game I don't play to a coupon for something I don't buy to inclusion in a group I believe in but not to the point of wanting to rejoin Facebook.

I was "on" Facebook for over a year. I had a number of friends who really were friends but a lot who were "game" friends -- folks I'd never heard of but who needed another body to increase their game power just as I did. It was fun for a while but then it just got realy old really fast. I wasn't really enjoying the social network all that much either. Yes, I was able to keep up with some people I really wanted to hear from but I heard a lot more from folks who populated my wall with their daily "I went to the store and got...", the daily weather report where they were, the latest cute cat (or kid) trick, or superficial stuff that really didn't matter all that much to me. Granted, I posted some very superficial stuff too, and it received about the same amount of commentary that I provided to other people.

I did learn some things from Facebook, though, some of them pretty important lessons.

1. I learned that most people really don't care as much as Facebook (and they) would like a person to think.
2. There can be real support given by people from far away when there's an illness, death or tragedy, but it's no substitute for a real person who can hug, listen or just sit in silence.
3. A social network can be a very isolating place to be.
4. How important is it for me to notify the world that (a) I have a bad cold, (b) my boyfriend cheated on me and what do I do (No, I don't have a boyfriend but this is an example), my job sucks rocks and boulders and I should look for something else (Not something I'd like my employer to read, and again, for example only).
5. How much feedback should I expect on whatever I put on my wall? Does anybody really read this stuff or do they push "like" or "dislike" by whim?
6. Why should I put personal information at the fingertips of people who don't know me and who are up to no good with that information? Why should I do it even if there is a group I'd like to be part of but can't because I'm not on Facebook?
7. It wastes a lot of time every day just reading all the notes and comments. I'm amazed how much more time I have to read these days, now that I don't have to check my Facebook page to see who's doing what, to whom or with whom, and why or why not.
8. It can be a great thing for people to keep in touch either visually or verbally, especially people who are family or old friends from back in the 'hood where I grew up, etc.
9. If I ask someone I know to friend me and then I wait and wait and wait for a response and never get it, I wonder what I did wrong, why no answer, do they even remember me or whatever. It can be hard on the ego and tends to become more important than the positive response from another friend request can be.
10. I don't need to do it simply because more and more people are and I should be part of it. Church groups, educational groups, political groups, game groups, neighborhood, relational or affinity groups -- some can provide interesting conversations and valuable networking contacts, but on the whole, the risk for me is greater than the payoff.

I'm not opposed to Facebook (or any other social networking). It serves a purpose and if someone finds value in it, great. I'm really glad for them. Me, I'll curl up with a good book, go out and be aruond people, or simply shut the computer down and take a nice nap. If you want to get in touch with me, leave a comment, send me an email or give me a call (if I trust you enough to give you my phone number). Otherwise, you can say what you like about this or anything else on your Facebook page. I won't see it and won't care. Nothing personal, you understand, just personal preference.

There. I feel better now.

Bent Tracks

What is wrong with this picture? Train tracks are supposed to be flat and straight with an occasional wide curve or reasonable grade but not bent in such a way as this. What is wrong with the world of this picture? Something has happened that has sent the normal away and substituted something that shouldn't happen – yet it did; the picture is proof. The normal laws of physics and railroad construction have seemingly been abrogated by something we can't or didn't see but which left very telltale marks behind.

What has caused this stress in the world? Mother Nature stirred and stretched, causing the earth to move in ways that can be understood (sort of) but not controlled. Tectonic plates rubbed along, building up stresses and strains until, like a rubber band stretched to its maximum, it broke loose and things moved around. That was un-normal enough to disrupt life for miles around and sent complacence flying out the window, so to speak.

What would set this world right? For those in the area of these tracks (near Christchurch, New Zealand), probably some reassurance that the earth isn't going to move any more, won't shake down any more buildings or kill, maim or render homeless and jobless any more people. A small victory would be to replace the warped tracks with more smooth, straight ones and the tracks once more put into useful service carrying people and goods from place to place as was intended.

Looking at the picture, I think about what tradition says about sudden changes in the normal routine and the sidetracking of the expected. Jesus certainly was a disruption in the normal life and teachings of his world. His parables certainly had an unexpected kink in them that pointed to a different conclusion than would normally be expected. His healings and teachings spanned the normal range of people he might have been expected to reach, women, lepers, people crippled in various ways, social and cultural outcasts, non-Jews and even the dead. His death on the cross was certainly a kink in the tracks to his disciple just as surely as Rome and the Sanhedrin thought they were straightening out some tracks bent in ways which they could not and did not approve. His resurrection certainly put an unexpected jolt in the community of followers and just as surely creates those same waves today.

Where this impacts my life is that even if things are going along quite nicely and normally, something will happen sooner or later to shift the tracks and cause a major slowdown or even a dead stop if not a derailment that will have to be cleared before I can proceed. There are times something seemingly as small as a grain of sand will do it while other times a mammoth earthquake feels like it has disrupted the whole of my life. Like the people of New Zealand and any place that has had a major shakeup, I have to rebuild and hopefully modify and strengthen what I rebuild so I can continue on with my journey. Sitting on a dungheap and covering myself with ashes won't work; I have to get up and do something about the situation, even if I am not precisely sure how to proceed. Still, one small step can begin the rebuilding and every step makes me stronger when I face the next stressor. I can then pass the lessons I've learned along to someone else who may have hit a bump in the roadbed that they weren't expecting.

The bent tracks for me are a metaphor for both life and faith; they represent things that can and do need to be repaired, replaced or even just have attention paid to it for whatever reason. I can't stop the earth from moving but I can re-lay new track to replace the displaced ones. Now if I just have the courage and strength to do it – and let God the surveyor set the line and the grade for the construction.

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Picture from Sean OShea at http://www.alexbealer.org/page.php?id=105, accessed 3/7/11