Practical A/Theism

A piece for the Episcopal Diocese of Washington's blog, in which I contemplate the power of the alpha privative. (Just kidding. No one would read that.) Really, I'm asking the question,  "If someone cannot discern your beliefs out of your actions, do you really believe your beliefs?"

What have I been doing with my life?

On October 6th, I had a 9:00am meeting in Northern Virginia, and I offered to drop Husband off at work on my way by. We were passing a federal courthouse when all of a sudden I saw something that made me question what I had been doing with my life for the last seven years. 

In 2007-2008, I spent a year closely connected with a non-profit called Torture Abolition and Survivors' Support Coalition International -- TASSC, for short. And TASSC was closely aligned with both the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House, located in Petworth, and another small intentional Christian community called the Assisi House. The people who lived in these houses were teachers or activists, some in religious orders, some not, but all saw the world differently from most people, and for that matter, most Christians. It was here I was introduced to William Stringfellow, to Dorothy Day, to the Berrigan brothers, to Peter Maurin -- a strain of Christianity singing a countermelody to the sleepy protestant mainstream I grew up with. Those who lived in these houses were transformed by the witness of these authors, and they lived lives of witness. 

I loved those quirky folks, and those authors inspired me, too. But after a year of witnessing with them through TASSC, I felt compelled to effect, to plan, to change the world through my own sheer will. In other words, I felt called to do, while their mode of life is organic, to be. I went on to learn fundraising at top ten charity, the most planning-oriented and "effective" mode of helping that I could figure to do. You can't feed or shelter people without resources, or planning, or support staff. You can't make real change without worldly influence. In a nutshell, I was here to do what nearly everyone in Washington comes here to do -- to be smart and to change the world. So I better go about doing it. And I worked my small part. 

But on that Monday morning on October 6th at 8:45am, when I saw that group of Catholic Workers and TASSC people standing outside of the Federal Courthouse, all of that work seemed to be dross. Here they were, this ragtag crew of ten folks or so, holding anti-torture signs long after the national debate about "enhanced interrogation" has moved on. Seven years later, I recognized almost all of them. One wore a "Shut Down Guantanamo" t-shirt. I have that one, too. It's in my drawer, still bright orange. His was faded to the point it wasn't orange anymore, and kind of hard to read. By the way, if you were wondering, we still have prisoners in Guantanamo. 

Seven years of faithfulness. Seven years of steadfastness in the face of the world who at best doesn't care, and at worst despises them. And seven years was the only seven years that I saw -- the Catholic Workers of DC have been at it much, much longer than that. I've been thinking about them for weeks now, what it must take to do the same actions over and over again, never seeing substantial change. At the moment I drove by, I thought to myself, "That's what faithfulness looks like." And then I thought, "What have I been doing with my life?" 

Outbreak

I've got a friend who writes really good books about really interesting topics -- his name is Kerry Walters, he teaches at Gettysburg College, he pastors in Central Pennsylvania, and he writes prolifically. From time to time he also kindly puts up with my crazy in person or over Facebook (and to his eternal credit, he has been doing so patiently for over ten years now).

Anyway, Kerry just wrote a book about something local and pertinent: local, because Kerry writes about DC in the 1850's; pertinent, because it's about the National Hotel Epidemic and the panic that ensued. With the first patient to contract Ebola on US soil up the road at NIH,  epidemics and how we react to them are top of mind lately. 

But more than that, as this Post article by Clinton Yates points out, Kerry speaks thoughtfully about what really hasn't changed since 1857 in DC. Unfortunately, that includes gentrification, law enforcement issues, and racial injustice. If you're interested in thoughtful reflection about these topics, it will be a book worth delving into, especially if you live in DC. The book comes out October 21 -- I've just ordered a copy, and you should too. 

New Creation!

October 1, 2014 -- Episcopal Church of the Annunciation, Memphis
Photo by the Rev. John Burruss, who takes good pictures even if he's in a bee keeping suit.

Usually I try to avoid posts that are about church itself, but I'm going to break my own rule for just one post. But with all of the noise about "the end of theological education as we know it" because of the crisis at General Theological Seminary (if you haven't heard about this, good for you!) and the fact that I've been in contact with dozens of my classmates over the last two weeks, I feel like I need to say something a little more pointedly church-oriented. So, if you're brave, keep reading. If you're smart, tune in next week.

There's a narrative about mainstream Protestant churches which claims that the churches are slowly dying. Churches are merging, or being closed down, and selling their buildings. Millennials are suspicious of institutions, the median age of church goers is older than ever, and more people than ever before don't affiliate with any religion at all. I understand that.  But that's not what I'm actually hearing from my friends who are one or two years out of seminary.

A friend who graduated with me is starting an ecology initiative with the church's land that will eventually support ministry to sex-traffiked women in Memphis. This year, they had their first crop of honey, and are working on preparing the soil for planting a huge garden that will grow herbs for tea and herb rubs. The community took what had been a burden to them -- acres of land to keep -- and made it into an asset for good. Now they stand for something. The church had been shrinking, but it's growing now.

Another priest friend is starting a print shop with his church community in Kentucky that will teach printmaking skills to those in hallway houses and prison, and will be a place where those people can be employed until they can find other employment. This project is in its very beginning stages, but it's exciting to see it get put into motion.

Another friend moved to Texas, and is teaching American Civics classes in Spanish at his church, to help immigrants pass the citizenship test. That church is growing, too.

I heard story after story from friend after friend -- and even if people weren't working on entrepreneurial and self-sustaining projects, they told stories about neighborhoods coming back to life in Baltimore, of growing youth groups in South Carolina, of creating safe havens for the LGBT community in Arkansas, of dinner churches for young adults being established in Southern Maryland, of public and liturgical witness all over the country, of laundromat ministry in DC, and some really amazing outreach in bars and coffee shops.

We choose the stories we tell, and I choose these stories over the narrative of the decline and death of the church. When we allow these sort of creative ministries to happen, even if it means having priests who don't look or act like the parish priests of the past, or priests who are one foot in the secular world and one foot in the church world, we tell the story of our faith in a way that speaks to others. In the news the past few weeks, and from the older seminary alums I was working with in meetings this week, I heard the death and dying narrative repeatedly. But what others see as death and dying, I see as an opportunity to prune back the branches, and to allow new growth to flourish.  Besides, it's already happening.

God Doesn't Want You to be Happy

Two Saturdays ago, I was invited to plan and facilitate a retreat -- I love this sort of work, so I gladly accepted. The theme of the retreat was finding a way through the tension that is inherent in being both a young professional (perhaps especially in DC) and a Christian. Anyway, deep in one of our discussions, we were talking about hopes -- and what God hopes for us.  The first thing someone shouted out from the back of the room was that "God wants us to be happy."

And at that moment, I realized that I believe that God does not want us to be happy.

Now, I'm not saying that God wants us to be miserable, or to suffer, or to cause pain -- I believe God redeems misery, suffering, and pain, not causes them -- but I am saying that happiness, our cultural chimera, doesn't seem to be one of God's projects. First of all, there's not a lot of God making people "happy" in Scripture. Show me a prophet, and I'll show you someone who is fundamentally unhappy. God doesn't call Samuel to be the last judge to make him happy, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, certainly had some very bad days. More recently, I wouldn't claim that MLK Jr, Oscar Romero, or Dorothy Day were particularly happy folks, either.

Secularly, I see this played out as well. Doing meaningful work often means doing sacrificial and hard work, which automatically disbars what we think of as "happiness." For instance, when I worked at the Red Cross and disasters would hit, we were working twelve hour days and weekends, were exhausted and were so stressed we were either gaining or losing weight, but the meaningfulness of the work was somehow so much more than "happy." (This description of disaster work also seems to apply to parenting.)

Anyway, provoked by this thought, I did a little digging -- and "happiness" comes from the root word, "hap," which means "luck." So someone who is "hapless" is literally "luckless" and "happenstance" is a mashup of "lucky circumstance." So, happiness is nice, but it's something fleeting that happens randomly -- nothing you can control.

Joy, on the other hand, is a different beast entirely. And those folks I mentioned above? While they weren't necessarily happy, they were joyous. Joy is an inward disposition, rooted in knowing who you are and whose you are, and living in faith and trust. Joy grows if you cultivate it, if you can clear out enough of the gunk stuck to your soul so that joy can flourish. Joy is more than happiness, joy is more than luck. I can't help but think that God wants so much more for us than just "happy."

Happy Fall!

September 21, 2014

Snapped this pic on my way to church on Sunday. Happy first week of fall!

Wedding Time

I love weddings, which is good, because I'm up to my eyeballs in them. In the last few weeks, I've done premarital counseling for two couples, attended a bridal shower, navigated the protocol for a same-gendered blessing from a different diocese, and helped out as a liturgical deacon* during a high mass wedding; in the next few weeks I'm officiating at two weddings, and tonight I'm going wedding dress shopping with my future sister-in-law.

Like I said, it's a good thing I love weddings.

But what is it about them? Well, first of all, you've got the regular reasons -- weddings feel hopeful, and full of love. But more than that, weddings are a liminal time, and everything that happens around them feels meaningful. In the time between being single people and being married people, there's a feeling a movement, transition and living with deliberateness. Loved ones take time to say things that go usually go unsaid, and to tell family stories that haven't been told in years. Loved ones who are gone are remembered, and their impact on the lives of those gathered are marked in formal and informal ways. Overall, weddings are one of the few times that sincerity is welcomed in our irony-laden culture, and I find that refreshing.

Being a priest at wedding is a unique experience -- you get brought into the sphere of the family, and you have a specific task before you. Not only do you teach the couple the rituals to becoming married, and guide them through it, prompting vows and the taking of one another's hands, but you have the privilege and the terror of saying something meaningful about it all, how God is working in the lives of the couple, and the lives of the families gathered.

The other piece, though, is often navigating through a whole wedding full of people you've never met before. Some people really hate this part, but once I get my feet under me, I enjoy it. Even though at the last wedding I was at, I had an animated ten minute discussion with a six-term retired senator before he had to spell out that he was a senator, after I asked what projects he was working on, oh, running a hugely influential lobbying firm... even though he had told me who he name, and I really, truly, should have connected his name to the senate. (Seriously, as an avid NPR listener, I'm still appalled at myself, but I wasn't really looking for a senator to pop up, you know? I thought he was a great uncle or something. I had been talking to his wife all afternoon. She was lovely.) But despite that huge failure as a Washingtonian, I still managed to have some other really meaningful conversations with people, the down-in-the-trenches-I've-never-talked-to-a-professionally-religious-person-before sort of conversations.  I love the curiosity and the diversity of world views, and the willingness of people to step up and talk to a stranger. If you're one of those people who talks to the officiant at a wedding, thank you.

And today I'm gearing up for the next wedding, with a rehearsal tomorrow and the wedding itself on Saturday, getting ready to dive into a time of sincerity and love, with all the privilege (and, sometimes terror) that entails.

I love weddings.




*liturgical deacon: a priest that does what a deacon does during a specific service, which for a wedding means, read the Gospel lesson, pray the prayers, and help out during communion.