Not exactly the "light of the world"

Yesterday my guy and I were driving in a suburb that shall remain nameless and saw a church that shall also remain nameless.It had an LED sign out front, attached to the sign that carried the church's name. Something like this, only more monument-style, on the ground in stone, with orangey letters on black:


I had seen quite a few ugly corners of Chicagoland on the drive, and even though (or perhaps, because) the sign sat on a nicely manicured church lawn on a nice enough corner, it struck me as the ugliest thing I saw on the drive. A major violation of my standards for churchly beauty.

It bothered me so much so that I found my mind drifting to it in church this morning, as I contemplated the standard-issue black-and-silver hotel-conference-room-type table that doubles as the communion table at the new church I'm part of. Adorned as is with a dozen or more large pillar candles, a few goblets of juice, and some perfectly proportioned loaves of bread, I find it lacking.

I'm not asking for stained glass, aging fresco, or expensive altar vestments.

There are two moments in my life during which I remember being struck by something's beauty. Both were in church, and both were fairly simple scenes: a jauntily draped fabric and two simple flowers on an altar in Geneva (Switzerland, not a Wisconsin lake town), and a potted pink flower bringing some Easter vigil brightness to the chancel of my favorite Wrigleyville church.

I think of them often as I'm trying to brighten up my space at home or work.

Beauty is easy to create and easy to destroy. What are the bright spots and big offenders you've seen lately?

Every time a bell rings...

Today I visited my little piece of heaven in Lakeview, Chicago -- a Lutheran church that is as Zen as any I've encountered, but still uses the familiar language and music of the church I grew up in.

This morning I went with a certain amount of dread. The season of Lent is upon us, and I was in no mood to be penitent.

Lutherans aren't big on "giving up" for Lent, so I'm not too far behind the curve by not having thought about it, but I also hadn't thought about adding any spiritual discipline to the season. As the service began, I was sure it would take HOURS, maybe even DAYS to come up with just the right practice to give my spiritual life a tune-up. I should probably spend the time in a cell, maybe even fasting.

I kept thinking about how lost I was for inspiration until the meditation bell rang after the sermon.

The little girl behind me echoed its clang: "Ding-dong."

Her dad joined in quietly: "Ding-dong."

Thoroughly annoyed, I clenched my jaw, determined to have some serious prayer. "Why doesn't he tell her that in church, the bell means it's time to be quiet and pray?" I self-righteously fumed.

And then I started thinking about all the bells I hear in the course of a day:

First is the obnoxious alarm clock with its printed warning--"This alarm clock will wake you up"--meant more for my roommate two rooms away than for me, sleeping soundly.

Then there's the backup alarm, which usually goes off every 5 minutes for 30-60 minutes of my fight with wakefulness.

Then there's the "I just want to take 2 minutes to mentally create my day" timer.

Throughout the day, I use a timer to chunk my work. When it goes off, inevitably there's an expletive reflecting the amount of work I didn't get done in that 20 or 30 minutes, and an accompanying sense of dread about who will be calling to check in on this or that project.

It hit me -- why doesn't somebody tell me that the bell means it's time to be quiet and pray???

In that split second, my Lenten discipline was born.

Every time a bell rings - from here to Easter Vigil - I'll offer a prayer. More often than not, I think it will be something as simple as "Thank you," or more to the point, "Help!"

I hope that in just under 40 days, I can begin to think of the many bells I hear in a day not as an indictment for things left undone or a taunt to get up and do them, but as a connecting point with spirit and a chance to draw upon resources that are both within and beyond me.

Another year

How can I explain where I've been since my last post?

4 courses completed
400 hours of clinical pastoral education
15 doctor's visits and 1 ER trip
3 retreats
1 round of golf
100 miles of biking
51 great dates, and 3 bad ones
2 road trips (LA and SD)
1 wedding

I've been excited for the new year to begin, and my excitement grew tonight as I facilitated a group of new students sharing their call stories. I remember well the anxiety I felt last year at this time, not knowing where I could safely walk, where to get groceries, which classes I would take. They seem remarkably calm in their transplanted states and admirably articulate about the sense of call that has gotten them to this point.

Earlier today I heard Chicago Sun-Times religion editor Kathleen Falsani read from her new book, The God Factor, at the Spertus Institute for Jewish Studies. She interviewed 32 public figures about their faith, including Sandra Bernhard, who said this about the rituals of her Jewish upbringing: "It grounded me and made me feel a certain emotion at a certain time of year."

It's true of Christian liturgy, and it's true of academia.

The beginning of the school year will always be full of anxiety, hope, and expectation. This year I'm a little more grounded, a little more prepared. I'll take one less class per semester than I did last year, add a 20 hour a week job in an after-school program, 7 hours a week in a congregation, and an intense personal growth program of retreats and weekly meetings.

So I worry about balancing it all, meeting the expectations of these four communities. I worry that the goal I was so sure of last year at this time -- serving a congregation as their minister of word and sacrament -- may be nuanced beyond recognition in the course of this year. I've been saying that about four days of the week it feels like my call, and I have a different idea for every other day of the week. I envy my new classmates' clarity, but they're about to have their assumptions shaken up a bit, and I hope they enjoy living in the realm of possibility rather than certainty, of questions rather than answers, as much as I do!

If protestants had a Vatican City...

...this might be it!

I've thoroughly enjoyed my first few days of the course I'm taking in Geneva, Switzerland, with students from four other ELCA seminaries.

Sunday we were warmly welcomed to worship by the English-speaking Lutheran congregation in Geneva, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Geneva. The city still has laws on its books from its reformation days, when the Calvinist city fathers allowed Lutheran refugees to establish a church, so long as it didn't look like a church and didn't put its name on the building. It took months for the church council to get the city to agree to put banners outside of their mansion-like structure.

Pastor Lusmarina gave a fantastic sermon, the music moved us, the Lord's Prayer was said in perhaps 20 languages at once, and we enjoyed a meal in the cave discovered below the church during a recent renovation.

Today (Monday) was our first full day of class at the Ecumenical Center, headquarters of the Lutheran World Federation, World Council of Churches, the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, and about 12 other organizations. It's intoxicating. The vision of these organizations is like that of Christ in John 17: that all may be one. That's right -- nothing short of total solidarity of humanity, global justice. They have prayer in the morning and tea in the afternoon. I think that's a pretty good start, to say nothing of the work they do with the rest of the day.

Lynching revisited

Tonight the Rev. Dr. James H. Cone, a Union Seminary professor who was among the first to articulate a black theology, challenged a notion I wrote about earlier.

"While the era of lynching may be over, that of marginalization is not," I said.

Dr. Cone said, "One can lynch a person without a rope or a tree." He cited the handling of hurricane Katrina as one example. Or the fact that one of every two black men aged 18 to 28 in America is involved with the criminal justice system (a.k.a. "for-profit industrial prison system"). "Any time people are treated as having no dignity or worth, they are being lynched."

His argument is that the lynching tree and the cross interpret one another: "no American Christian, white or black or otherwise, can understand the American church without connecting the cross with the black body hanging from a lynching tree." He declared the need for a theological war on white supremacy using the Bible's liberating message for an unredeemed and tortured world.

When I lived in South Dakota, I think even a speaker as compelling as James Cone would have had trouble convincing me that I had bought in to a white supremacist attitude. How could there be white supremacy when there are almost no black people living nearby, I would have asked?

Now I am tempted to say that what my home state suffers from is worse than white supremacy, something like "white protectionism." Native Americans are predominantly clustered together in reservations, two of which make up two of the five poorest counties in the United States. When I spent time on Pine Ridge last spring, I realized that there was an aspect of my state's geography and sociology that my social studies teachers, dear people that they are, didn't and probably couldn't teach me about.

Until you've come into contact with another culture with an economic reality that is totally foreign to your own, you can go on believing that white supremacy is something practiced by extremist wackos in the forests of Montana. You can think that the brokenness of inner cities such as Chicago's south side is a consequence of unfortunate housing and economic development decisions and lack of personal ambition. You can claim not to be a racist if the only people you encounter on your walk home from the grocery store are ones who look, talk, and dress just like you.

At times like this, the only helpful thought that comes to mind is one we Lutherans hold to:

"We confess that we are in bondage to sin and cannot free ourselves.
We have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed,
by what we have done, and by what we have left undone.
We have not loved you with our whole hearts.
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves.
For the sake of your son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us.
Forgive us, renew us, and lead us,
so that we may delight in your will and walk in your ways,
to the glory of your holy name."

Around the religious world in 14 days

Thanks to a church history assignment, I was encouraged to attend a sabbath service at my neighborhood synagogue at the beginning of October. The community was small and the service was casual but mostly in Hebrew. The cantor had a voice that would be the envy of any church musican, and the whole congregation was involved in the reading of the Torah. Afterwards they welcomed us (four Lutherans and one Muslim) to their Shabbat Shuvah meal in their fellowship hall. As the challah and wine were passed around and festive sung prayers for a good new year, it made me wish we Lutherans would celebrate our feast of bread and wine with this much gusto.

The following day it was all incense and icons at a local Russian orthodox church. The most interesting aspect of the morning was, again, communion. The preparations are done by priests behind closed doors. A small amount of consecrated bread is immersed in the gold cup of wine. Only the orthodox can come forward for communion, during which the head priest places a spoonful of wine-soaked bread in their mouths. The rest of the bread bits (blessed but not consecrated) are placed in a large bowl at the back of the sanctuary, and people eat it as they mill around after receiving their communion. They also bring some handfuls to us guests in the balcony.

Then several days later, I and 200 others were guests of our campus Abrahamic Dialogue Association for an Iftar dinner to break the Ramadan fast at dinner. I am still mesmerized every time I hear the call to prayer, and at this meal I enjoyed the company of four U of Chicago phD students who are Muslims. One was particularly interested in how the Lutheran denomination differed from its close cousins. My answers were quite inadequate, I think, because I've never been interested in how my denomination is distinctive; I've been more concerned with what about our Lutheran heratige justifies the work we do, whether or not it is unique to us.

Finally, the following weekend, there was mass at an Episcopal church in my neighborhood. What choreography! Two presiding ministers and a deacon held up their portion of the feast at perfectly timed increments around a centralized altar. What fantastic Lutheran hymnody! We felt right at home. What interesting community! One rector invited the young adults present to an event at the home he shares with another man ... for whatever that's worth ... and the other rector led the young children out of the sanctuary, dancing toward Sunday School during the last hymn. Oh, oh, oh! How could I almost have forgotten? They commune children there (as we ELCA-ers don't, except when parents and local custom agree to it). A girl of about three years warmed all the Lutheran hearts in the second row (heaven forbid the first be filled) by grimacing at the taste of strong wine, but then quickly saying, "Amen."

Indeed, I have been fed by Chicago's faith community.

How far would you go for pastoral care? for liberation theology?

When I lived 90 minutes away from my parents' home in South Dakota, I made the trip about a half-dozen times per year. I remember thinking of people who commuted 45 minutes from SDSU or USD to Sioux Falls, "That's crazy! I would hate spending so much time on the road.

Now I travel 90 minutes or more twice a week just to get to class. Because the idea of hospital visits and one-on-one pastoral care frightens the be-jeebers out of me, I wanted to take a pastoral care class right away my first semester. None offered in the south side schools in our consortium fit my schedule, so I decided to take it from Garrett Evangelical, a United Methodist Seminary on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston. Each Tuesday and Thursday, I head out to the curb to catch a bus a full two hours before class is scheduled to begin. I make a trip that's the equivalent in time, if not in distance, to a ride from Sioux Falls to Watertown (SD), but this ride is chauffered by the drivers of the Chicago Transit Authority.

A trip to the Flat Top Grill is worth about an hour in the car.

Hearing the founder of liberation theology speak? That's worth about 90 minutes on the bus/train (one way).

I don't have a car here, and it has simplified my life. It's much easier to say no to shopping and other low priorities when getting there would be a hassle. I can get almost everything I need in my little neighborhood, something I think more neighborhoods should strive for, and some (like this one in Atlanta) do. Sometimes I look up from my reading on the el, see how fast we're zipping by the cars stalled on I-90/94 (a.k.a. the Dan Ryan expressway) and think, "you're wasting your life away." Life here is not faster-paced than life in my old South Dakota suburb-of-nowhere.

Crash

You have to see this movie.

I took it personally. I have had some Crash-type moments in Chicago...this week, in fact. Certainly not the same level of drama this movie musters, but some definite examples of my perception not being reality in this city.

A group of high school boys in do-rags and jerseys seemed a little out of place on my street in the middle of the school day, and when I crossed over the street to avoid breaking up their crew, they crossed over too. I panicked, stopped, and raised my voice on the cell phone conversation I was having until they got in a suburban and drove away. They were probably going to McDonald's on a lunch break, and I'd made them out to be gangsters.

The other day on the CTA red line, I found myself alone in the train car with a man staggering in my direction. He stopped just ahead of me and saw what I was eating.

"Snickers, eh?" he said.

"Yeah. Would you like one?" I asked. I had one more in my backpack.

"You're kidding," he said. "Sure."

As he ripped into it, he asked what I was studying and seemed genuinely interested in my being a theology student. Turns out he's a Transportation Safety Administration official and a basketball referee; if I hadn't been so busy labeling him black and drunk and the only person in my big scary train car, I would have seen his badges.


Note: For spelling's sake, I googled do-rag before finalizing this post today (10/24) and learned that a do-rag business in my home could be my ticket to financial freedom!

Token Lutheran takes on theodicy

In my pastoral care class, I'm the only Lutheran.

Today's assignment was to write a difficult funeral sermon for a middle school aged boy killed by an exploding fire extinguisher his dad was working on.

My African Methodist Episcopal classmate spoke like one of the folks to the hypothetical kids in the congregation, saying, "If you're upset because you can't throw the football around with Frank Jr. anymore, I say, throw it anyway."

My Congolese classmate saw an opportunity to encourage the gathered people to accept Christ and receive salvation if they hadn't already, because the sudden nature of Frank Jr.'s passing makes everyone realize their mortality, and a funeral may be one of the few times they visit a church.

I felt the need to solve the theodicy problem -- that is, how is deadly shrapnel from a supposedly protective device compatible with a view of God as both loving and all-powerful?

My classmates thought my answer -- that Frank was only in the shop because he loved his dad, that love is stronger than physics, that love is worth the risk of living, and that God promises life abundant but not life without loss -- was very Lutheran.

Boundaries

You can't have lived in America during this millennium and not realized that church leaders are quite capable of sin. Because clergy, youth workers, counselors etc. get invited into people's lives in ways that people in other professions do not, they have to be extra careful not to abuse that access. Sexual abuse might be the version of "boundary violations" the media picks up on, but it's not the only one that exists. Hence the day-long workshop we had yesterday.

If you're thinking of going into ministry, you need to be familiar with the document that candidates for ministry (i.e. seminarians) and leaders in the church alike live by: Vision and Expectations. Among other things, it says clergy should lead "chaste lives" that are "beyond reproach."

After yesterday, I'm beginning to understand why my old testament professor says commandments phrased in the negative (like our ten "thou shalt nots") are much easier to abide by than commandments phrased in the positive. Because there's some disagreement about what chaste living means, people have had their candidacy processes (and their careers, therefore) end for such things as vacationing with a fiancee and only renting one hotel room.

So here's a negative commandment for you to try on:

If you're a member of a church, for God's sake (and I do mean that), DON'T ask your pastor out on a date! She can't be your pastor and your boyfriend and maintain professional relationships with everyone else in the congregation.


Humorous post-script:
My nomination for best boundaries workshop song ... "Dangerous" by David Wilcox

Of course we began at the beginning

In Pentateuch and Wisdom Literature, the first order of business was an introduction to the "documentary hypothesis" -- the scholarly view that four or more distinct authors/editors, each with a particular theological perspective, were involved in the creation of Genesis across a period of some four hundred years. In about thirty places throughout the story of creation, the flood, and the establishment of God's covenant with the matriarchs and patriarchs of the faith, substantial chunks are repeated, often with contradictions. Yet we view this book as authoritative, as containing truth about the human condition and out relationship to the creator.

To begin our Jesus and the Gospels course, we read a passage from the DaVinci code claiming that the powerful men of the early church systematically prevented any gospel that would hint at women's roles in the church or Jesus' humanity from becoming part of the Biblical canon. We were given a case study about a contemporary church debating whether to include noncanonical scripture like the Gospel of Mary or the Gospel of Thomas in its worship -- and one week in which to prepare a pastoral answer for this church's council. I found myself wishing it had been as systematic as Dan Brown claimed; rather, it seems that a haphazard (and, we have to hope, spirit-led) process of recognizing the authority of the gospels that were getting the most use has given us the Bible we know today.

I'm lucky to have been given a way of looking at Biblical authority that doesn't depend on its historicity. If you've taken an introductory religion course at Augustana, you might be familiar with the phrase, "Some things that never happened are nevertheless very true."

If one came to seminary with the idea that the Bible dropped down from the sky as an eyewitness account of history from the birth of stars to the death of Christ and the birth of Christian community, this first week would be faith shaking. But if you begin by assuming that the Bible came together and remained in use because in it is the authoritative, true word of God, learning about the politics and processes involved is fascinating.

Without Sanctuary

Classes still haven't begun, but the education certainly has.

Today I participated in an exploration of Chicago's diverse and segregated neighborhoods, guided by the international students who have been on campus for the last two months studying English.

The three Korean students leading the group I was assigned to had been visiting African American neighborhoods, talking with officials and people on the streets, eating soul food, and taking lots of pictures, if today was any indication.

Rather than taking us to these neighborhoods, they said they wanted us to see the most powerful thing they saw in their two months, so we found our way to the Chicago Historical Society's exhibit on the history of lynching in America, called "Without Sanctuary."

I'm sure I've seen documentaries on the Ku Klux Klan, but nothing before today has made me realize the horror of extralegal "justice" carried out by mobs as late as the 1960s. Torturing, hanging, beating, and often mutilating or burning people for such slights as whistling at a woman took place in every region of this country. It affected blacks as well as Jews, the old and the young -- like Chicago's own 14-year-old Emmett Till.

Several of the most gruesome photos were from Omaha, Nebraska, which for me is close to home. While it wasn't touched upon in this exhibit, I was reminded of another dark piece of history close to home: the site of the largest mass hanging in U.S. history, at Alexandria, MN, in 1862.

The most disturbing photos were the ones in which little white girls in white dresses had front row seats for the spectacle, and where whole crowds stood smiling proudly at the camera beyond the dangling bodies. One mob included two former Supreme Court justices, one ex-sherrif, and at least one clergyman.

A small group of African American women were shufflling through the exhibit ahead of us. I can't describe the pit in my stomach that developed when I saw one woman wave her hands in despair at the graphic images and turn away quickly. I later heard her tell a security guard that when she was growing up in the south, her dad would detour the family vacations around Mississippi because of its infamous tendency toward mob justice.

This week perhaps a million residents of the Gulf coast are famously "without sanctuary" following Hurricane Katrina. While the era of lynching may be over, that of marginalization is not.

Strange Fruit
by Abel Menopal (later sung by Billie Holiday)

Southern trees bear a strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root.
Black bodies swinging in the Southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant South,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh,
And the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is the fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop.
Here is a strange and bitter crop.

Feels like home

"You guys, we LIVE here."

We have to remind ourselves of this fact when confronted with the beauty of boats, birds, and beaches on Lake Michigan, less than a mile from home and school.

It's been our refrain since Thursday, when our orientation program sent us out into the neighborhoods surrounding the seminary to observe the homes, apartments, brownfields, train depots, grocery stores, currency exchanges, bus stops, factoryesque high schools, cardboard shelters, and high gas prices.

We are nearly all white, nearly all in our mid-twenties, nearly all "not from around here," fanning out on Chicago's south side as if we have business there. How silly we must have looked clustering up at every corner to decide which way to walk next.

Most of us appreciate the chance to explore and reflect on what we see, but mostly we're anxious to get started with our main task here, which is to study theology in preparation for ministry. Of course we've all chosen to be in this context because we want to experience a real urban neighborhood, but other things are on our minds. We need our class schedules so we can go out and get jobs so we can go out and get groceries. However, it is also good to have this time of forced togetherness...or more positively, "intentional community."

Today we had impromptu community on the 57th street beach, throwing a frisbee around and eating cookies in honor of a classmate's birthday. It feels like the most natural thing in the world to say I live here, and knowing I get to stay here for two years puts me at ease although the details of that time remain hazy.

Goodbye. Hello. Goodbye. Hello

Berkeley, summer Greek, and I parted ways to the tune of Jack Johnson, G-Love, and the Animal Liberation Orchestra at the Cal's Greek Theater. Following a sleepless night of packing suitcases, I boarded a standby flight to Sioux Falls.

South Dakota teased me with sunshine and open spaces, much needed after the bay area's fog and crammed construction patterns. In addition to quality time with family and friends, I had several of those moments that remind me how remarkable my home state is.

As my dad and I pulled up to the departure end of our regional airport, we realized that the two men unloading the car ahead of us were his golf buddies from the weekend: two of his former students who I hadn't seen in a long while. Inside the terminal, I ran in to a middle school classmate and fellow member of the Happy Hearts 4-H club, on her way back to the southwest after visiting family. In line I met up with a pastor I've gotten to know a bit in my previous work, on his way to start a new adventure as was I. We discovered we were on the same flight to Chicago and I switched seats to chat with him.

Funny it should be him. Six years ago when I had my first really challenging weeks of counseling at camp, he was pastor to several of the girls in my cabin an helped us navigate the tricky issues that had come up. I recall it as the first time I looked at my campers crying because they had to leave on Friday, remembered the chaos of Tuesday, and thought how miraculous it was that God could make something out of this week.

He was also one of the pastors and development types with whom I had one of my first "pastors are people, too" moments. Think blues bar. Think St. Louis, MO. Think oyster shots.

Today we talked about beginning seminary, about some possibilities for summer ministries, about both of our new adventures. Some of his former parishoners were on the plane, too, apparently coming to Chicago for cancer treatment. Before we all parted ways, the patient in the group asked him to pray for them, and he did, right there in O'Hare, hand on her shoulder. So this is what it looks like.

What a send-off it was for me from my life in South Dakota, from the people who have formed me thus far. A good friend was on her way to pick me up and welcome me to my new home in Hyde Park.