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.

Singing the Resistance

I was struck this year during the School of the Americas protest at the power of music in a movement that calls for justice and peace like the one to close down the School of the Americas (SOA).  In the commissioning chapel service at Union on the Thursday before we left for the SOA, we shared stories and we broke bread together and we sang.  We sang "This is My Song" we walked into the space together calling for "peace for lands afar and mine," and to close the service and send all of us out into the world we clapped and danced and sang "I'm gonna lay down my sword and shield down by the riverside; ain't gonna study war no more."

With these songs in my heart and still on my lips we gathered with 2,000 others at the gates Ft. Benning, where we sang more songs together--songs of resistance and of sadness and of hope.  In minor and major keys we cried out for justice, we remembered those who have died, and we envisioned peace.

¡No más! No more! We must stop the dirty war
Compañeros, compañeras we cry out 'No más, no more'

Almost two weeks after the School of the Americas demonstration, I am still humming some of the songs we sang outside the gates of Ft. Benning, and the echoes of the chanted names of hundreds of victims still ring in my ears.  Neither the words nor the tunes are happy or light ones that I especially want to go around singing as I walk to class and go to the grocery store and share meals in my community.  But the somber tones of the songs and chants stay with me and remind me to remember the feeling of hope I felt at the protest and to resist violence and imperialism in small and big ways, and to hold in my heart those who are victims of the violence of the SOA and those who are jailed for standing against it.

Backseat MDiv

As I'm finishing my first month of my first year of seminary, I find myself sleeping a LOT.  I'm normally an 8-hours-and-wake-up kind of person, but lately I find myself sleeping until 10:00 or later on the weekends if I let myself.  This happened to me in Guatemala as well, and someone helped me realize that it was because the combination of new place, new language, new everything was wearing my brain out which actually made me sleepy.  I was like a kindergartener who needs to sleep extra so her brain can have time to process all the new information.  It's hard to sleep now, though, because I have that feeling of "there's always something else I should be doing."

All this new information that's filling up my brain and making me sleepy, though, is so interesting and makes me want to keep reading (well, sometimes).  In sharing some pieces of what I've been learning thus far, my mom suggested that I share some of the things that are especially exciting or make me look at the world in a new way so that others who aren't in seminary but are still interested can come along for the ride, hence the name "backseat MDiv" (although really it's a side seat or something because I'm certainly not the driver here, but you get the idea).

I decided to fold some of this into my existing blog because it is all a part of the journey that I (and we all are) on to find home.  We find new homes and we re-define existing homes, and much of what I am learning is helping me to look at my home--at where I come from--with new eyes and envision what I want home to look like.  So I will label blog posts that are specifically "seminary-related" as Backseat MDiv so that if you want to you can just click on that label (over on the right) and see blogs I've written specifically to share some of what I'm learning in seminary--in the classroom, in worship, in conversations with others, and in New York City.

If you're on twitter, I've also just created a twitter account, @backseatmdiv, where I'll post quotes and other short thoughts throughout the week about what we're learning.

Finally, just so we're on the same page to start, you'll find below a list of the courses I'm taking this semester and a link to the Union course catalogue in case you're interested in reading a blurb about any of the classes

• Introduction to the Old Testament (taught by David Carr)
• Biblical Hebrew 1 (taught by Dan Pioske)
• Systematic Theology (taught by James Cone)
• Christianities in the City (taught by Samuel Cruz)
• Early Church History (taught by John McGuckin)

Finding and creating a new home in New York

When I chose the title for and began this blog over three years ago, I had just graduated from Maryville College and was preparing to go to Guatemala with the Young Adult Volunteer (YAV) program of the Presbyterian Church (USA). I was excited and nervous and had no idea how much that year and the subsequent two years I spent in Nashville would change the course of my life.  I also had no idea how much the concept and practice of "finding home" would consume me. 

Home for me has appeared in many forms and with many different people over the past several years.  I have found home in Guatemala, Nashville, in various churches and organizations, with new authors, roommates, with other YAV alums, and am now beginning to find home in New York City at Union Theological Seminary.  

I arrived at Union eleven days ago, excited to begin my new life and studies here, but also sad to leave behind the home in Nashville that I both found and helped create for myself there.  I have been reminded often during this week and a half of orientation of a line from a song by The Head and the Heart (who I've mentioned in an earlier post) that says "Mama once told me you're already home where you feel loved."  I have met many interesting and dynamic people here so far who I am sure will become life-long friends and colleagues, but I have realized how much I crave and need those intimate friendships with people who know me well (and like me anyway) and with whom I can simply be without need for explaining or introducing myself and how much that is the feeling of being "home" to me.

I think that one of the greatest benefits of the YAV program for me has been learning how to create, nurture, and sustain those friendships that help create community and home.  I have learned that creating home for myself and others takes work, conflict, and grace.  Work to put in the time and energy of creating meaningful relationships, conflict when we have different needs or ideas about how to be in community with each other, and grace with ourselves and each other when we mess up.

So I am sure that even though this new place does not yet feel like home to me that it will come and that it will shape me and I it in ways I cannot yet imagine.  

Notes on Colombia Free Trade Agreement

Before leaving for Colombia, we heard and read a lot about the Colombia Free Trade Agreement (CFTA).  As you may know, the Presbyterian Church (USA) and the Presbyterian Church of Colombia both publicly and actively oppose the Colombia FTA.  President Obama signed the CFTA into law this past October, and it went into effect on May 15, about half-way through Craig’s and my time as accompaniers in Colombia.  

Not many people in the US talked about or even knew about the CFTA, so I was somewhat surprised at how many people knew and talked about it in Colombia.  We went to eat lunch at the house of one hermano who works at a banana finca and also harvests rice on the side who was very excited about the CFTA because he said it would make kitchen appliances much more affordable.  Others we talked to were excited about it because they said it will be easier to get a visa to go to the United States (which is somewhat true in that Colombian business investors and traders will be eligible for a special type of visa available to citizens of countries with trade agreements with the US, but most of the people we talked to would not be eligible for that type of visa).

The Presbyterian Churches of the USA and Colombia oppose it for several reasons, one being that small-scale farmers will no longer be able to earn a living from their crops because prices of crops, especially staple crops like rice and corn, will be driven down by the FTA.  I saw this while I lived in Guatemala (part of the Central America Free Trade Agreement)--US corn sold in Guatemala was cheaper than local corn grown in Guatemala because subsidies in the US make corn grown in the US so cheap.  Basically, as has happened in other countries, the Presbyterian Churches of the USA and Colombia predict and fear that the CFTA will serve to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.  Several individual pastors, church members, and community leaders we spoke with also expressed the same concerns.

We will have to wait and see exactly what the effects will be in Colombia, but I might predict that if we visited that same hermano in a year or two that, while he will probably still have his job at the banana finca (since it is a larger operation and already exporting almost all of its product to the US) that it will no longer be profitable for him to harvest, dry, and sell the rice that helps supplement his income and support his family of six.  For others who do not have jobs at the larger banana or pineapple fincas and depend almost entirely on their earnings from the crops they are able to harvest from a few acres of land the situation will probably be even more difficult so that even if some products are cheaper, they will not be able to afford them.

Roles and Expectations

This was the report my accompaniment partner, Craig, wrote about our first week in Urabà (The prayer is a Nicaraguan prayer):

Before lunch we prayed these words together: "May those who hunger have food, and may those who have food hunger for justice".

After lunch we were taken on a tour around town to see the neighborhood and its inhabitants.  It was not striking to me that some of the houses had dirt floors and were hand built out of scrap wood.  It was not striking that most of the plumbing was "outdoors."  It was not striking that many of the inhabitants were displaced and had lost family members in the violence.  My training had taught me to expect many of these things.  What was striking was how normal it all seemed.

Coming from a middle class U.S neighborhood with every convenience and security imaginable, I had somehow believed that this would be a sad, shattered place.  How could people go through so much and be any other way?  And yet this was not the case.  Children were playing or going to school, adults went to church and work, and life more or less went on.  I listened to stories of horrible tragedy and loss, while in the background unsuspecting neighbors laughed and played music.  The experience contradicted my every conception of the situation.  Having watched many of my peers and role models in the United States fly into a rage over congested traffic, I couldn't understand how a community could take such hardship in stride.  Perhaps, I began to believe, that things were not really so bad.  Maybe all the stuff I had read about displacement was exaggerated or just spoke of isolated incidents…

But then I looked around myself.  I listened to the stories of displacement and witnessed with my own eyes and ears what was going on.  Things were not exaggerated, we had not heard only of isolated incidents; the displacement was bad and it was all around us.  And yet everyone and everything still seemed so normal in context.  How could this be?  

Suddenly the lunchtime prayer came back to me, but reformulated to fit the reality of this community: "May those who have been displaced from their comforts find peace, and may those who have peace be displaced from their comforts".  It was all so clear to me.  The Colombian people had overcome incredible adversity in order to carry on with life.  Each day they grapple with the trauma they had experienced, but, true to our prayer, they were finding peace in their hearts amidst the violence around them.  Now the onus fell on me.  As a person who had always taken peace as a given, I wondered if my words at lunch were a real prayer for change, or mere flippancy?  At the end of my trip here I will have to decide whether to go back and sit on my comfortable couch, or to displace myself into action.  Now the only question that remains is 'Have I, as a U.S. citizen, finally found a problem greater than my own apathy?'

Craig and me with the youth group on our last night in the first town we stayed in.

Our Soul is Divided

This is the report I wrote for our second week here. If you receive the Accompanier reports this will be a repeat.

Craig and I spent the second week of our month in Urabà as accompaniers in the least urban place we’ve been so far with the pastor and his family in their house behind the church.  It was a hot week.  Often, as we were lying in the hammocks in the heat of the day, digesting the huge lunch we had just eaten and trying to stay cool, an hermano from the iglesia would come to the house to bring some fruit or a chicken to the family and would stay and talk a while with us.  

One afternoon, a man rode up on his bike bringing some mangoes for the family and sat down beside me in a plastic chair in front of the fan on the porch.  We exchanged the usual “Hello, how did you wake up this morning?” “Very well, and you?” “Very well, thanks to God.”  I asked him if he had been born there in that town, and he began to tell me part of his story of how he came to live in that town.  

He used to have some land and some cattle in the mountains until one Friday at lunch the guerilla came and stayed in his house for several days.  On Sunday morning, before he went to church, he got up the courage to ask them how long they would be there, because iif it was much longer he would leave and they could have the house since he was afraid what would happen if the paramilitaries found out the guerilla were there.  When he got back from church they had gone.  

He stayed there with his family for a few more months, hardly sleeping at night, worrying every minute of the day, praying to God to protect his family.  Finally, he and his wife felt that the violence was all around them and they left one night, carrying the two youngest children through the forest.  He has never been back.  

Now, his daughters are around my age, in their 20’s and 30’s, and he has several grandchildren, thanks to God.  Even after leaving their home to escape la violencia, though, one of his sons-in-law was killed about two years ago, leaving his grandchildren without a father and his youngest daughter a widow.  

When we arrived in Colombia, our hosts told us that there is hardly anyone who hasn’t been affected by the violence, even if they haven’t been displaced.  I sometimes forget, though, because when we go to church, the services are much more joyful than an average Sunday morning in a Presbyterian Church in the States, and the hospitality and welcoming with which Craig and I have been received is overwhelming.

During Communion that Sunday, several of the women led a hymn with a line that has stuck with me: “Està divida, nuestra alma, entre gozo y dolor”--It is divided, our soul, between joy and pain.  It seemed to speak not only to the sentiment surrounding the sacrament of Communion around the world, but also and especially of the small piece we have seen of the lives of a few Presbyterian herman@s here in Urabà.  Whether it was recently or many years ago, no one has been left untouched by la violencia.  Yet everyone who has shared stories of pain and loss with us has ended by saying they are grateful to God for the church or their family or their home.  The pain is deep and tangible, but so is the joy and the hope.