Showing Ourselves Grace

I wrote this reflection as a part of a weekly Lenten series that my field education supervisor and I are doing. I have been working as a pastoral intern at Broadway Presbyterian Church since September. One of my primary responsibilities is leading the college and young adult group, called Upper Room. Recently, this group has decided to begin an exciting project of creating a rooftop garden.

I never paid much attention to Lent growing up, but at some point in college I began to understand Lent as a time for reflection on what is most essential, and I began to try out adopting Lenten disciplines. One year I trained for a half marathon, using the hours spent running to take a break from work that often felt overwhelming and all-consuming to be present with my body and my own thoughts, wherever they might wander. Other years since I’ve also tried journaling each day (even if it’s only writing down one word), eating a vegan diet, cooking at least five nights a week, and calling a far-away friend once a week.

I always felt that these Lenten disciplines enriched my life and made me feel more grounded in myself and connected to the divine… when I actually did them. My intentions for Lent were good, and I usually kept trying to do the discipline throughout the Lenten season, but I never did any of these disciplines one hundred percent of the time. I did them imperfectly, sporadically, and sometimes even begrudgingly. As a self-described recovering perfectionist, I often felt like I had failed at Lent. What I began to realize, though, is that perhaps Lent is as much about learning to forgive myself when I don’t live up to my own impossible standard of perfection as it is about whatever spiritual practice I’ve chosen to do.

Lenten disciplines that help us remember and hold onto what’s important while letting go of some of the trivialities that distract us are good and important, but learning to show ourselves the kind of grace we profess to believe in when we aren’t the best Lenten practice-ers is also good and important. Practicing grace toward ourselves helps us let go of some of the distraction of achievement and perfection and reminds us of that essential teaching that we are not expected to be perfect in order to receive grace and love. 

Earth People

I wrote this reflection as a part of a weekly Lenten series that my field education supervisor and I are doing. I have been working as a pastoral intern at Broadway Presbyterian Church since September. One of my primary responsibilities is leading the college and young adult group, called Upper Room. Recently, this group has decided to begin an exciting project of creating a rooftop garden.

I spent most of Ash Wednesday in the sanctuary offering ashes to those who came in. About a hundred times I said the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” in English or Spanish. I felt an overwhelming sadness for first few people to whom I said this as I rubbed my ash-covered thumb on their forehead in the shape of a cross—aching as I reminded them of their own mortality and was also forced to remember my own. As the day went on, this feeling of sadness faded until it was just a dull ache, like sore muscles the day after carrying something too heavy, a constant-but-not-always-conscious reminder of the reality that we are limited—our bodies, our time, our energy.

As the day went on I also began to think more about the second half of the statement that we say on Ash Wednesday—“Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” This second part reminds us that even though we are limited and our time on this earth is finite, we are a part of the earth and will always be a part of creation, connected in life and in death to every other living thing.

We first see this idea in the creation story in Genesis 2-3. After the first humans have eaten from the tree of knowledge, the Creator says, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread until you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; you are dust, and to dust you shall return” (3:19). We often think of this as a punishment for the humans’ disobedience, but the text itself does not suggest divine retribution, but simply a divine description of what it means to be human—that surviving is hard work, and when it is over we return to the place from which we came, back to the earth that God created and called “good” in the Genesis 1 version of the creation story.  We are of the earth, we return to the earth, and we depend on the earth and the other creatures here with us.

Just a few days ago, on Monday evening, the BPC Session voiced their support of a rooftop garden project initiated by the Upper Room group. Upper Room has been talking a lot this year about food, faith, and the justice issues that surround our food and where it comes from. We hope that this project, now in its seedling phase, will be a way for the whole BPC community to connect to the earth from which we are made and to which we will return. Our vision is that a rooftop garden at BPC would be a way of living more sustainably in our own community, justice-making in our own neighborhood, and connecting with creation and, thus, with the Creator who breathes life into us and who reminds us that we are beloved, we are finite, and we are inextricably linked to the earth—indeed, we were taken out of the ground, we are dust, and to dust we shall return.

Invisible Knapsacks

Some key words for conversations at Union (and I would guess many progressive seminaries and other similar circles):

• unpack ("Let's unpack that idea a little more")
• deconstruct ("we need to deconstruct the false binary of gender")
• Godself/God's (gender-neutral language please!)
• context ("What's your context?")
• privilege (white, male, hetero, US, etc)

My classmates and I sometimes laugh at ourselves and the way we throw around these terms, but language is important, and it often expresses ways of thinking and being that we often assume are universal.  We spent a lot of the first semester "deconstructing" some of those ways of thinking--recognizing the ways in which people of privilege (whether by race, gender, economic status, education level, sexual orientation, citizenship, etc.) assume that their experience or way of thinking is universal or "normal."  

One of the clearest analyses of this kind of examination of privilege (and the powers that accompany it) is an essay call the White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.  The author, Peggy McIntosh, is a white woman who uses her understanding and experience of sexism to begin to "unpack" her own white privilege.  Much of my first semester of seminary has been exposing me to different invisible knapsacks, which ones I wear, and the experiences of those knapsacks by people who do not wear them.  

I came into seminary with a decent understanding of the way sexism functions in our society and my own life.  I also, as a result of my years as a Young Adult Volunteer in Guatemala and Nashville, had some experience in understanding myself as a person of privilege by my US citizenship and how that plays some part in all of my relationships with people who are from different countries.  I even understood that non-US citizen women faced different challenges than non-US citizen men and than US-citizen women.  What I didn't understand was specifically how others may experience oppression and that their goals and ideas of what is liberative are often different than mine, even when the ultimate goal is to challenge oppression in various forms.  

I've listed below (in no particular order) some of the books I read this semester that best helped me understand others' experiences and perspectives and, thus, opened me to new ways of seeing God and of creating my own theology.  

• Sisters in the Wilderness by Delores Williams 
• A student of James Cone and former professor at Union, Williams talks about womanist theology, and her examination of Hagar changed the way I understand the Abraham story as well as giving me a glimpse into the experiences of African American women who are concerned not with liberation but with survival according to Williams.  She also gives a convincing critique of atonement theory, saying that anything that is forced suffering cannot be liberative or redemptive. (Womanism is a black women's movement that looks at power within the intersection of gender and race--it is often a direct response to feminism, which many women of color rightly accuse of being largely a white middle-class women's movement)
• Radical Love: An Introduction to Queer Theology by Patrick Cheng  
• This is a very introductory-level book about queer theology but was possibly the book that most challenged my notions of God and Jesus.  It's a good starting point for queer theology.
• Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde
• Continuing on the queer theology vein, this book is a collection of essays by black lesbian feminist Audre Lorde that examines lots of the -isms in our society and how they are inter-related
• The Cross and the Lynching Tree by James Cone
• This is my theology professor's most recent book that is an easy-to-read (but not easy-to-stomach) that examines the ways in which the lynching tree where so many black (and a few white) Americans were killed is a modern-day cross.  Dr. Cone is the founder of black liberation theology in the US and describes his theology as being influenced by both Dr. King and Malcom X

If any of you do read some of these books I'd love to hear your thoughts about these books and/or what you might add to this list.  Happy Reading!

Finding Grace and Humanity in Total Depravity

I wrote this post in December of 2012, toward the end of my first semester at seminary, but never posted it. I might not write it the same way again, but it feels like most of the thoughts still hold true for me after a year and a half more of seminary, deeper friendships here, and an experience as a field education intern at Broadway Presbyterian church where I was shown more grace than I could have imagined. 

I have a confession to make.  I am a progressive who loves a lot of parts of liberal theology (that's not the confession; I think most of you all know that about me already).  My confession is that I kinda like Calvin's doctrine of total depravity.

This idea of total depravity comes from Augustine's doctrine of original sin, which I actually really really don't like, because it says that human beings are born sinful because our very existence is brought about by the "fall of humanity."  Many Christian thinkers through the centuries have also said original sin has a lot to do with sex--we're born sinful because we're the product of a less-than-holy act of sex.  I especially don't like the implications of this doctrine of original sin because Augustine and later thinkers have interpreted the Eden story in a way that sees women especially as lustful, sinful temptresses who are concerned mostly with the flesh and men with the spiritual (another wonderful view of humanity and the world we've inherited from our theological ancestors of the subordination of the body to the spirit as if the two could be separated).

But to get back to my original point, Calvin talks about humans as being totally depraved, an idea he bases on earlier doctrines of original sin.  While I think it's often harmful to see humans as basically sinful (and, more generally, to see humans in a way that ignores the complexity of each person and our relationships to each other and to our world), I like the way that understanding each person as imperfect makes us treat each other.

When we recognize that each person is limited and will "fall short" from time to time, it calls us to have grace with one another.  This was perhaps my biggest take-away from living in intentional community.  When I feel offended by what someone has said or even annoyed at someone for leaving their dishes in the sink, I have to stop and think a) about what their intent was (which is usually not to offend or annoy) and b) all the times that I have said something that came out differently than I intended or left hair in the shower drain or not wiped down the microwave after heating up lasagne.  I learned to have more grace with myself because others showed me how by having grace with me, which also helps me to have more grace with others.  It's not forgiveness, because forgiveness implies someone was wronged.  Having grace with one another, however, implies no wrong was intended and I don't expect others to be perfect, but I presume the best about them until I have a real reason not to.

I have been thinking about this a lot this week as many of my peers and I are feeling the pressure from all the work and studying still to do before finals week.  We have been perhaps a little more self-absorbed than normal, yet we still find time to spend together even if it's by quizzing each other on Hebrew vocabulary.  Although there is an air of tension around, so far people seem to manage to remember that we basically are grateful to be here in this place with these people at this moment, which helps us to have grace with one another when we might otherwise be annoyed.  Although I know this was not Calvin's intent when he wrote about total depravity, there is something freeing to me in its potential implications for how we are to treat one another as im-perfect beings who are yet still somehow made in the image of the Divine.

Little Theologians

I am really loving Trinity Presbyterian Church. I love the liturgy, and the pastor, and the people, and the size. I love the hiking group and the good food during fellowship hour. I loved working on a Habitat house a few weeks ago. I love being part of a new young adult group.

Many of the members, especially the most active ones, are very thoughtful Christians. By that I mean that they think a lot about their faith and about theology, something (as I've mentioned before) I really missed in Guatemala. The "adult discussion group" (aka Sunday school) discusses topics ranging from the current model for prisons in the US and how that relates to our Judeo-Christian tradition, to questions of ethics of medical insurance, to the relationship between Church and State in the third century. The classes are interesting, and the people have been very quick to include Vic and me in the class.

But for some reason, since coming back from Guatemala I just haven't had quite the energy for the theological discussions that I used to love. I still go to the class and am interested, but I usually just listen. Then a few weeks ago I was invited to go to the children's Sunday school class to meet the kids of the church. Since Trinity is a smaller congregation, all of the elementary school-aged kids are in one Sunday school class. The first Sunday I went there were about 7 kids, from age 6 to 11. I thought "Oh, this will be nice. I can hang out with the kids, eat a snack, maybe even color, and not have to deal with all of those big theological questions."

Wrong.

At the beginning of each class each child lights a candle and then they light candles for the friends who couldn't come to Sunday school that day. One of the girls, who is about ten (and is soon going to shave her head to help raise money for cancer research), asked if we could light a candle for her friend's dog who had been killed by a stray dog.

She looked thoughtful for a second, then said very deliberately, "If God is good..." (and I'm thinking "oh no") "...then why do bad things happen?"

The teacher responded with something that was not very re-assuring to me, and I doubt it was to this little theologian sitting cross-legged on the carpet in her white tights, either. She said something like she wasn't sure why, but that God is always with us, no matter what. Not quite the answer any of us is really looking for when we ask that question.

***

The next week at church I went back to the children's Sunday school class, and it was a little more what I was looking for. We talked about praying, but we didn't have any major theological snares this time.

And then, in the service, Heidi called up one of the younger girls right before the prayers of the people to share with the congregation the prayers she had made the Sunday before. The kids had gotten clay in Sunday school, but many of them hadn't been able to finish their projects so they carried the unformed clay to church with them. During the prayers of the people, six-year-old Miriam began sculpting the prayer requests she heard...

For the homeless, for the joy of a new healthy baby, for the dog who was killed by the stray dog, for food for the hungry, for people suffering from the pain and uncertainty of cancer.

Miriam sculpted a homeless person, a baby, two dogs (the one who was killed and the one who killed), bread, someone with cancer.

Then the following week, when Heidi invited her to share her prayers with the congregation, Miriam offered them to us by telling what each of them was, then placing them on the communion table and inviting people to take one home.

And I thought I would go to the children's Sunday school to just do some arts and crafts and avoid messy theology. Instead, they make simple and profound prayers from the craft supplies and ask the very questions I am trying to run away from.