Let's Argue it Out

Caveat: The approaching election is obviously getting to me, so don't take this one too seriously, and definitely not too literally...

The Lectionary Page that I use to review the upcoming Lessons for each Sunday uses the New Revised Standard Version. I notice that for Oct 31 the Isaiah chapter 1 passage is translated not "Come, let us reason together," like I grew up hearing, but "Come, let us argue it out, says the Lord." I feel a lot more like arguing it out with God today than I feel like reasoning, and so am very glad to see this invitation.

I've had a bone (or a whole spinal column of bones, actually) to pick with God for a long time. I have a severe case of juvenile idiopathic scoliosis, the kind that would have killed me given half a chance, and the kind that, no matter how well they corrected it when I was a kid, still leaves me as a "hunchback," a "cripple," or, as Leviticus 21 calls it in good Elizabethan English, "crookbackt" -- someone who might "profane the sanctuary."

Why would God create someone who was inherently, through no volition of their own, just by their very nature, fated to "profane the sanctuary" if they were to be accorded the privileges granted to others? Is God perverse? And more to the point for me, can't the God answer for Itself? My grandmother prayed for my healing every day -- made me pray with her -- agonized over her little faith or my little faith being the thing that prevented me from being healed. With all that she put into believing, and as much as I tried to believe for her, you'd think that if God was in the business of healing at all, it would surely have happened. Instead of the joy she anticipated each time she decided I was going to be healed this time, my being me caused her nothing but anguish and brought great doubts about her faith. That's another thing to argue about, God! I really loved her, but it didn't turn out so well, did it?

That bit about God answering for Itself is the rub for me, most of the time. I've actually given up asking this question of other people -- except now I will throw it out into the aether, where I fear my blog electrons perpetually swim in a sea of indifference. At least here I don't expect an answer. But, whenever I ask it of a friend, however close, I have come to expect yet another defense of God. Is God so weak that It must have men (and women) to defend It at every turn?

I asked myself the other day what kind of an answer I have been looking for, what is it that I continue to seek, and continue to set myself up to be denied yet again every time I broach this subject? I guess just a hug; an "I understand"; maybe someone to add a voice to mine and also question, "Hey God, what IS up with that?" This disagreement seems pretty lopsided -- would it be too much to ask to have a few on my side? I don't think God really needs all those defenders.

So OK God, step up to the plate -- without your cast of thousands. Just you and me, let's argue it out!

--AnnBarbie

Finding a Place of Springs

One line from the Psalm in today’s lections (Psalm 84:5) actively leapt off the page and grabbed me as I read it: “Those who go through the desolate valley will find it a place of springs.” I had thought of this as God’s presence replacing/overwriting desolate valleys with springs of water, but things I’ve been reading lately make me wonder whether it, instead, means that the springs actually require the desolate valleys as raw material from which they may eventually well up in us.

I guess this needs some explaining. I’ve been reading the just released book Discovering the Spirit in the City (Continuum International Publishing Group, 2010), for which my dear friend Raficq Abdulla has contributed a chapter. In addition to Raficq’s delightful essay [that goes without saying!], I found the contributions of Pádraig Ó Tuama and Mark Oakley to be profoundly moving. These two write with such compassion and grace, and seem particularly able to illuminate both the best and the worst of the human experience as we wrestle with the God we perceive as involved in and, perhaps, central to our being. I thought how wonderful and how valuable for the rest of us that there are such people who can enter so deeply into the experience of being human, and help us to see it in it’s fullness; from tragic to glorious, mundane to transcendent, and all things in between.

At the same time, I found myself reacting in frustration because they are both gay, and much of the compassion and vulnerability I sensed in them seemed to be bound together with the bitter pain of rejection and alienation they had both experienced in trying to serve God as a gay man in the Christian church. I’m not mad at them for being gay; I’m mad at the rest of us for not being more like them – so that not every damn time I discover someone who seems to fully embody the spirit of love that I believe to be God, they turn out, invariably, to be gay! I worry that then when I write, as in this blog, “Oh, these writers are great, you must read them!” people will just dismiss the recommendation with the thought that “They’re probably nothing special; those queers just stick together.”*

So, I had these frustrations in mind when I read the lections, and for the first time I thought, “Whoa! Maybe you can’t get to the point of being a ‘place of springs’ unless you actually go through the 'desolate valleys.'” Perhaps the thought is not so much replacing the desolation but transforming its essence into something beautiful and life giving.

Lately, in response to a recent spate of disturbing suicides, there has been a media campaign with the message “It gets better” (sponsored by the It Gets Better Project) and aimed at vulnerable gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender teens. The messages have been mostly oriented towards convincing desperate teens that their lives will be happier and much easier to navigate in the future – if they will only consent to stay alive long enough to find that out. Additionally, it may very well be these teens, who go through so much desolation in their bullied, taunted, dehumanizing valleys of despair, that will transform themselves into pools of living water for all of us in the future; our healers, priests, counselors, prophets and spiritual teachers – if they remain alive long enough to find their own unique "place of springs." For our own sakes as well as theirs, lets hope (and work towards making sure that) they do.

In the meantime, where are the desolate places in my own life that perhaps I can begin to transform into my own “place of springs”?

--AnnBarbie

*Whatever term one might ultimately create to define an appropriate demographic for me, because I am married to another woman people perceive me as lesbian. However, in this case I can’t claim the same early trauma that g/l/b/t youth generally experience, so I don’t feel that I writing about myself here.

Are We All In This Together?

Kathleen Norris, in her book Dakota: A Spiritual Geography (Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2001), says something so profoundly true for me that I've quoted it over and over in the decade since she wrote and I read that book: "We go to church in order to sing, and theology is secondary." I thought of her again this week as I drove alone the 10 hours from home to DC. Per usual, I sang and carried on imaginary conversations in my head with people I've been reading or thinking about. Since I've been doing so much thinking lately about other religions, religion and politics, and interfaith dialog, I found myself wondering how I would explain being a Christian to someone from another faith. I realized that the best explanation I could give would be to just sing for them, all the songs I learned as a child as well as the ones I sing now. In my mind I thought of how my favorites have changed over the years as I have changed, and how I still relate to all the music on so many different levels. Theology is truly secondary -- that part of Christianity is all in my head. Music, and singing most of all, is the realm of my whole being.

And so, I sang. My voice only lasted for about 5 hours, but my repertoire of Christian hymns and songs could easily have carried me through the 10 hour trip without delving too far into the territory of "um's" and "la, la, la's" when I forgot the words. This heritage is that much a part of me. Nevertheless, what the songs say to me changes over the years as I change and, particularly, as I have become more aware of the perspectives of others. One of the first times I became particularly disconcerted about the words to a familiar hymn was when the Methodists decided that maybe Rise Up, Oh Men of God should be retired from regular Sunday worship. I was still young and it was new to me to question what it means to have the whole church singing as though only the MEN of God matter. But even though I never consciously felt excluded, the discussion made me realize that when I, like all the other kids of my acquaintance, played Knights of the Round Table or dreamed of going on the Crusades, I always wanted to be a Knight or even the King. I had no use for the women's roles and refused to play one in my mind or in our games. I had internalized our society's message that only men could grow up to do great and wonderful things. Of course, these days I am also squeamish about those Crusades that I so wanted to go on as a child. Though I still love the "DUM, dum, DUM, dum" rhythm of Onward Christian Soldiers, I cringe when I sing it not only for the lasting damage those historical episodes wreaked on Christian/Muslim/Jewish relations, but also for my comfort in adopting a decidedly militaristic outlook. Did I love the music I sang as a child because it reflected my very narrow world view? Or did the music I loved unconsciously write these attitudes so deeply on my soul that is has taken a lifetime to pry them up from under that bedrock and examine them in the light of day?

Whatever the cause and effect, my attitudes continue to require a lot of soul-searching and frequently go through sea changes that leave me reeling. It is still the music I sing that serves as my touchstone for interpreting these changes. During my trip, one of the songs that came to mind was John Prindle Scott's setting of Come Ye Blessed Of My Father. For a trained-but-not-spectacular singer like me it's a great solo piece. It's not vocally challenging and is both emotional and accessible -- the kind of music people like to hear. It's always been one of my favorites to perform, but I suddenly realized that I am not going to be able to sing it anymore, at least not until I can sort out my new antipathy towards the words. The song, if you don't know it, is a setting of Matthew 25: 34-36 ("I was hungry and you gave me meat ... naked and you clothed me ... sick and you visited me ... I was in prison and you came unto me.") The prison part, in particular, feels all wrong.

I've been teaching in the local men's medium security prison for several months, and am having the time of my life with "my guys." It's a great job, but it is also just that -- a job. I react viscerally when I tell people about my new job and they respond with, "What a ministry!" It happened again this morning. I mentioned my job and someone at church remarked, "Oh, I know a pastor who does prison ministry. It must be so rewarding." But it's not just that I don't "do prison ministry," on some fundamental level it seems just plain wrong to think of "ministering to" anyone. There's such an implied power dynamic, a "higher" and "lower" that I think has no basis in reality and no place in a healthy world view.

The truth, to me at least, is that I am a teacher. I can't be a teacher without students, and I need them at least as much as they need me. The fact of their incarceration is incidental, and I would also say, quite arbitrary. "My guys" are not much different than any other group I have known or taught. Some of them I would trust with my life, others no further than the edge of my field of view. Some I like, some not so much. Some work hard, some hardly work. Nevertheless we are all in it together, we are all part of each other. We would not be the same class -- we would not be whole -- with any one of us missing. That's just the way it works.

I guess what bugs me about the Prindle Scott song setting is that it seems to interpret the passage as God promising us a reward for doing good; God saying, "Come inherit the kingdom because you did all these good things!" I don't see it that way. Definitely not now. Especially not the prison part. I think the meaning of the passage resides in vs. 40 where Jesus says "as much as you have done this to the least of these, my brothers, you have done it to me." In other words -- or at least in my words -- whatever I do for anyone, anywhere, is both to and for myself and, in a wider sense, to and for God because we are all a part of each other and the image of God resides in us all. It's about "if you don't love your brother, whom you have seen, then how can you love God, whom you have not seen?" (1 John 4:20) And it's about looking for that sister or brother not only among those we admire, emulate, and wish to know, but also among all those that society tells us are underprivileged, outcast, and even beneath our notice.

In the song, the emotional center -- the high point -- is where the line crests at the word "came" in the line "I was in prison, and you came unto me" and then in its quiet echo "you came unto me." I'm going to be uncomfortable singing that until I can figure out some way to effectively convey to the people who accuse me of "ministry" that it would be just as profound a spiritual message to sing, "I was a teacher and you listened to me, you learned something from me!"