My Wonderings

In my last post I introduced my experience of feeling disconnected to the church. I have received many responses from others who have had similar struggles. Many of these comments came from lay persons. What I am hearing in these comments is that the feeling of alienation from Mother Church is not a condition unique to the ordained. I hope those of you, lay or ordained, church or unchurched, who have a story of disconnection or alienation will share it with me and others on this blog. I welcome you as a guest writer. Please send me an email letting me know of your interest. If you would like be published anonymously, that is fine with me. Sometimes, especially in the church, it is wise to be discreet. I only hope one would make anonymity an exception rather than the rule. After all, ‘we’re only as sick as our secrets.’ As for me, I am going to continue to share my personal experiences of alienation from my own perspective; one that I have found some understanding of it through the “setting apart” that occurs with ordination.

As I stated in “Houston, We Have A Problem,” I believe that the status quo of traditional communication does not enable deep or consistent connections. The irony, of course, is that the extraordinary way that the Episcopal Church, with her liturgies and sacraments, had sustained my connection to God, was one of the main reasons I accepted the call to ordained ministry. When my family and I left home for seminary, we became enveloped in a new but temporary community — that of the student body. But forces were in play that would inevitably alter my connectedness to a local community of faith.

Seminarians typically feel alienated from their home parishes and dioceses because they are geographically estranged for the three years they are attending divinity school. They often experience theological estrangement because they are being exposed to a level of critical thinking that shatters previously held worldviews. Most have had to sever the financial security of former careers. And as anyone who has left behind a former professional role to return to school as a student knows, all too well, one easily loses a sense of one’s own competence and “sense of adulthood.”

My diocese recognized parts of this pattern and attempted to alleviate the problem by developing programs and policies to stay connected and supportive to their “ordinands.” None of them worked. For example, we were assigned to one of the three bishops so we could have a point of contact with a “chief pastor” of the diocese. Even though I was lucky enough to be assigned to the warmest, friendliest bishop I have ever known, the late Leo Alard, I only saw him on an informal, personal basis a few times. At some point, the Commission on Ministry (a group of people who charged to evaluate and then recommend to the bishop whether a person should continue to the next stage of the ordination process) decided they needed to stay more closely connected to the candidates. So the commission assigned one of its members to be a “special buddy” to every student. There were lots of reasons this connection was ineffective. One, most didn’t take the time to develop authentic trusting relationships with their ‘protege.’ Second, the foundation of the relationship was based on evaluation and, ultimately, judgment. It was a power relationship that did not endear the seminarian to be forth-coming with much.

At another point, the Standing Committee (a totally separate group of people from the Commission on Ministry, but also charged with evaluating and making judgment on ordination) decided that they too needed to be more connected to each individual “in their care.” I was told of my new “friend” via a form letter. Needless to say, this didn’t alleviate any sense of disconnection from my standpoint as a seminarian. In fact, by this point, I started to wonder if it was better for me to feel disconnected to ‘Mother‘ and stay as far away from her dangerously clueless ways. So I became determined to stick out this time of free-falling alone, under the radar of base camp.

Finally, graduation arrived and soon to follow, the day of ordination. I was looking forward to reconnecting with my faith family of origin. I imagined a return to the hearth, reuniting to the mutuality of former relations, to the community where I could trust the connections to be strong, safe and supportive. Little did I know, that the evaluation process was not over by any stretch of the imagination. Thus the power differential with representatives of the diocese would continue to create uneasy connections. And my connections with my former faith family — well there’s no such thing as going home.

I’ve become a social media evangelist. Like any good evangelist, I’m passionate about the message. I testify every where I go — to everyone I meet — about the life changing power of new media. Many don’t take my message very seriously. They don’t understand that it will change the way we communicate. Some do ‘get it’ but are invested in keeping the status quo of old media methods. Some don’t understand why we need to change the way we communicate. They don’t see anything broken. They don’t see any problem that needs to be fixed.

So I’m going to explain my own problem with the status quo. “Old” media doesn’t enable easy, strong connections. Ever since I became “officially” connected to the diocese of Texas via my ordination (and prior to that, the process leading up to it,) I have experienced a profoundly alienated condition of being disconnected to “the Church.” In a way that is difficult for me to fully understand, much less to articulate, once I became a ‘professional religious’ person, the locus of “the Church” shifted from the parish level to the diocesan and national levels. As a clergy of the parish I had become an ‘other’ of my local faith community; it wasn’t a location where I could let my hair down, put my feet on the coffee table, share my most difficult struggles and receive support and encouragement from peers.

In this context  I am defining “peers” as those people who have no psychological need to project their faith struggles on me because I am not fulfilling the role of the priest for them (little transference). I am in no way implying different levels of faith development. This is strictly defined in relation to my ‘role’ as a priest. So, peers are those who connect to me primarily as “Sarah,” the person behind the collar. These are the people who don’t hesitate telling an irreverent story in my presence because they don’t “see” a priest. These are the people who don’t delight in telling an irreverent story in my presence just to see the reaction of a priest.

Peers in my faith community are able to listen to my doubts about prayer or the resurrection or the presence of God and hear the voice of a fellow believer and not lose confidence in a spiritual authority. Peers in my faith community are able to listen to my difficulty to like, much less love, certain people in my parish, and hear the voice of a fellow human and not feel betrayed by a pastoral authority. The compelling need for clergy to find a peer faith community has led to the popularity of clergy support groups.

Paradoxically, those who are sufficiently detached from one’s role as a priest that they are capable of providing this supportive connection, are often people with whom it is very difficult to connect. Most clergy don’t live or work in close proximity to one another. And working in the church breeds an institutionalism that becomes all-consuming and challenging for clergy to turn outward, outside the parish where one would have the greatest opportunity to find the connection of their peers. In other words, as important as clergy support is to the spiritual health of the minister, developing and maintaining those relationships is difficult. It takes a lot of effort — of a lot of communication.

Once-a-month clericus gatherings (clergy within a region of the diocese) are not enough. For many, these gatherings are so “forced” and “unnatural” that they feel dread, not comfort at attending. The establishment of mutual trust and bonding that is required for effectively supportive groupings are beyond the current system’s ability. Bi-annual clergy conferences are not enough. There are too many competing agendas during these meetings anyway to set aside time for quality fellowship.

I’ve experienced several powerful support groups where there was mutual trust and bonding. One of the first was as a pilgrim on Cursillo, a unique and intense spiritual 3-day retreat. Other experiences include staffing Cursillo, Happening and Kairos. These weekends are carefully designed to create these bonds. I’ve known this level of community in Clinical Pastoral Education groups as an intern and as a resident and through leading youth mission trips to the Appalachia with Mountain T.O.P. One of strongest experiences I had with support groups was during my 30-day stint at Hazeldon Treatment Center. The common denominator among all these experiences is an environment that deliberately (manipulatively?) forces such stress and pressure on the participants that they are forced to drop their natural defenses and cling to one another regardless of unnatural groupings. It’s a cheater’s method of group dynamics. This is NOT the kind of environment I am desiring. For one thing, I am advocating for connections that take the edge off stress, not add to it. Secondly, these easy-bake groups don’t live long outside the environment. Unless, there is a natural affinity that coincides in the group assignment.

To summarize so far:

• The problem with the status quo of the way we communicate is that it doesn’t enable easy, strong connections.
• I am one clergy person who feels disconnected from the Church.
• Church “work” makes it difficult to connect outside the parish life.
• Half-hearted attempts to enable support groups have been lame and ineffective.
• Manipulating stress environment produces quick but short-term bonds that do not last.

The advent of social media technology provides an opportunity to enable these connections. Groups are now able to form easily, along affinity lines. The Church at the diocesan and national level should facilitate these connections because that is part of the job. Just as the parish priest has a pastoral responsibility to create a community that supports a parishioner’s spiritual growth, so does the bishop and presiding bishop have a pastoral responsibility toward the clergy.

As easy as group-forming has become, I believe that the process should be initiated at the diocesan and national level because so many leaders in the church are unaware of the possibilities that now exist. These applications are so new that there is a learning curve  for non-techies that without a resource might thwart the motivation to adopt new methods.  And finally, the very institutional processes that make maintaining the status quo so sticky require strong leadership to become ‘unstuck.’

facebook icon that religious guy

Recently, a facebook friend sent me a funny blog post, Needing Some Closure, about a contest for the “holiest” email closing. Rather than ending with a secular “Sincerely,” they use In Him or Because of His Grace or one novel notation used In His Grip. The post cracked me up; in part because I get annoyed by these public service announcements. But another part of me laughed because,  back when I was pretty green-under-the-collar, I really used to worry about how I should sign my notes! I didn’t want to come across as overly pious but I also didn’t want to offend the overly pious by not being very pious. And then there was the whole plus sign problem. Sometimes I saw it in front of people’s names, sometimes, after. I wonder how many times I did it wrong before it was pointed out to me that Bishops put the + in front of their names and the rest of us clergy add our addition at the end. Anyway, to make a very short story long, all this is to lead up to my point (and I’m sure you’ve all followed my logical train of thought that led me here): there should be rules for the religious on Facebook.  I couldn’t find a list on Google, so I decided to create my own. Feel free to add, amend or delete as you see fit.

1. Script Your Scripture: Don’t post random, stand-alone scripture verses as status updates. If you have a personal response to a scripture verse, then by all means, share it. If its true what they say that “Content is King” in social media, then “Content in Context is King of Kings,” brothers and sisters!
2. Shade Your Sonshine: Gratitude is great; but too much of it, all the time,  just comes across as fake and disingenuous. Some of you might want to pepper your updates with a “Golly gee, I’m sure struggling to find an attitude of gratitude after I was mugged and abducted by aliens.”
3. Lay Off the Lament: Don’t go to the other extreme and be a Whiny Baby either. I love Eeyore, but I don’t want him as my facebook friend.
4. Police Your Piece: If you’re going to represent the Supreme Representer, you might want to consider being political correct. I know a lot of people think they are Truth-Telling when they bash the concept of p.c., but really, its a matter of being sensitive to others’ feelings, not ignoring reality.
5. Mute the Mic: Speaking of politics; there’s a lot of it on Facebook. Sometimes I’d like my very political friends to get off their soapboxes just long enough to tell me something else that’s going on in their life. The same can be said for my religious friends. Every once in a while, post something sordidly secular.
6. Fav Your Flock: If you’re clergy, don’t post that you don’t have time for Facebook. Because that’s the same as saying you don’t have time for the people in your church that are on Facebook. Besides, you sound like you’re way more important than we know you to be.
7. Halt the Haughty: You don’t have to spend a lot of time on Facebook and no one expects you to read everyone’s updates. But its nice, its polite, and it just may be the exercise in humility that you need, to comment every so often on someone else’s posts. Listening can be your friend.
8. Cheer Your Child: Do LOL. I’m not saying you have to LMAO (or LYAO) or other extreme bursts of humor. But many religious folk tend to take themselves way too seriously. Lighten up! Enjoy a bit of silly and playful and Will Ferrell.
9. Face Your Facts: Use a real picture of yourself. Fill out a full profile, favorite books, movies, and all. Share yourself! That’s the point.
10. Hug the Humanity: Just be yourself. Accept your human condition. And don’t worry so much what others will think of you. It’s not like there’s anyone’s passing judgment and creating a set of rules!

What have I missed? What annoys you about the really religious on Facebook? Have you got any good examples of over-the-top status updates? No names, please, let’s protect the innocent (those in their faith community!).

On the Wings of He Who Soars Above and Takes Me Along For the Ride,

Sarah(plus)

p.s. Please don’t assume that my general criticism of others is, in any way, shape, or form, an invitation to criticize my own, delightful and charming status updates.

An extraordinary thing is happening on the internet: real conversations are taking place where people are listening to other people’s ideas, learning about different perspectives, and sharing their unique knowledge. It seems to me that those of us in the Church could benefit greatly from being a part of this online conversation. But for many of us, especially those of us in our 40s and beyond, feel intimidated and stressed by all this new media stuff. It’s feels as if “cyberspace” has become the proverbial “outer space.” Where users adopt wacky personas and speak in otherwordly language. Recently I came across this beautiful graphic by Brian Solis and loved the way it helped me begin to make sense of the social media tools de jour and the ways in which they are enabling these important conversations to take place.

• Social Bookmarks: You know how you used to receive tons of newspaper and magazine clippings from your mother of interesting tidbits she stumbled across in her print media readings? You know how you get tons of “You gotta see this” type emails with stupid animal antics or sappy memories of the golden days? Well, these tools do something similar. Only much faster, more cheaply and reaching a much wider audience. Also, they are “permissive” connections, meaning you only read them if you choose to go see what online info Aunt Matilda has recently marked as an interesting tidbit. These aspects of  fast, cheap, large, and permissive are true among all these categories.
  • Delicious
  • Diigo
  • StumbleUpon
• Crowdsourced Content: You know how much of what people send you as “You Gotta See This” is stupid or offensive or not worth spending your time clicking and uploading? You know how you sometimes feel like you’ve got “information overload”? Well, people use these tools and filter through the junk, by voting on whether or not the content is worthy and you can choose to only look at those things that a LOT of people, and that people that like the things you like, deem valuable.
  • Digg
  • Yahoo Buzz
  • Mixx
  • Hubdub
  • Reddit
  • Newsvine
• Blogs/Conversations: You know how you see something cool on the internet and you wonder what other people think about it? You know how you think about leaving a comment but you know you’ll never go back to see if anyone else left a comment or if anyone responded to your comment? These tools will let you know when someone has joined your online conversation. You don’t have to keep going back to the site and checking it yourself.
  • Google Alerts
  • Blogpulse
  • Radian6 (paid)
  • BuzzLogic (paid)
  • Ask.com
  • Google Blog Search
  • Technorati
• Blog Communities: You know how you can get caught up on all the scoop just waiting in the carpool line? You know how you can find out what people are talking about just by dropping by the Sunday morning coffee hour? You know the water cooler? These tools enable you to stay in touch with the latest happenings.
  • Blogged.com
  • MyBlogLog
  • BlogCatalog
  • Bloglines
  • CoComment
  • Tangler
• Micromedia: You know how sometimes you want to say to your more long-winded friends, “Just give me the short version”? Well, that’s what these tools do.
  • FriendFeed
  • Tumblr
  • Seesmic
  • Jaiku
  • Plurk
  • Utterli
  • Pinger
  • Jott
  • Kwiry
  • Twitxr
• Specific to Twitter: You know how everybody’s talking about Twitter this and Twitter that and you just can’t see the point of all the twittertwatter (pronounce this to rhyme with chitterchatter, please, thank you!)? These tools help you make sense of all the noise.
  • Tweetscan
  • Hashtags.org
  • Twemes
  • TwitterLocal
• Social Networks: You know how hard it is to keep up with all your friends from high school, college, your home town, your previous jobs? These tools keep you in the social loop!
  • MySpace
  • Bebo
  • Facebook
• Niche Networks: You know how some people think everyone else is just as interested as they are in the TV series “Lost”? Well, tell them to take all their trivial nonsense over to another niche of the world, a group devoted to the secret connections of Lost, or the legal profession, or the birthers.
  • Ning
  • Plaxo
  • LinkedIn
  • CrowdVine
• Location: You know when you’re out-of-town and you want to know where the locals hang out or what is the best route around town? Yep.
  • TripIT
  • Dopplr
  • BrightKite
  • TwitterLocal
• Live Video and Audio: You know how you’d love to watch T.V. or listen to a radio program with comments from the ‘Peanut Gallery’? Apparently, there really is a Peanut Gallery, and they use these tools.
  • Ustream
  • Justin.tv
  • Veodia
  • BlogTV
  • Kyte
  • Qik
  • BlogTalkRadio
• Customer Service Networks: You know how sometimes you don’t trust the “official” reviews or recommendations because you think there might be some hidden agenda? And how you just want somebody real and normal like you (well, anyway) to give you the skinny? Meet fellow consumers through these tools, then.
  • YahooGroups
  • GoogleGroups
  • GetSatisfaction
  • Yelp
• Video: You know how you’ve always wanted to be on T.V. or the radio? No? Well, if you did, you could, for free!
  • YouTube
  • Metacafe
  • Blip
  • Viddler
• Video Aggregation: You know how you’re working on a report and you get totally stumped on one bullet point? Well, that’s where I am with this one.
  • Magnify.net
• Pictures: You know how you know you could find just one decent picture of you from the reunion weekend if only you could  look through the photographs of every picture taken at the event? Or you know how you always forget to bring your camera? Someone could always have your back with these tools.
  • Flickr
  • Zooomr
  • Smugmug
• Documents: You know how you think everyone should read your dissertation or how you need a copy, immediately, of the white paper you wrote for the conference but forgot to bring with you? There’s a heavenly library up there in the clouds just waiting to be resourced!
  • ThinkFree Docs
  • Scribd
  • Docstoc

Stay tuned, right here, for examples of how some faith communities (or other types) are using these tools to great benefit both within their communities and reaching out to others. And if you think you might forget to come back and check my updates, try using the RSS feed. And if you “dig” this article, DiggIT!

My seminary professor, Charlie Cook, always told us that the real Vestry Meeting took place afterward in the parking lot. It didn’t take me long to realize, once again, the truth and wisdom of another Charlie-ism. After the meeting is adjourned, people gather and say what they really think about the agenda. Thoughts are shared that were not expressed earlier because of any number of reasons. Maybe they didn’t want to be the only one to appear contrary. Or maybe they were confused and didn’t want to appear clueless. Sometimes, it might be because the person didn’t feel that their opinion would be heard in the meeting anyway or that they could influence the discussion with the previously gathered group.

Whatever the motivation or motivations behind this dynamic, the point is that many times the most critical conversations take place beyond the “official” setting of the conference room. What Charlie was not able to anticipate in his caution was that the parking lot would eventually extend into the virtual realm of the World Wide Web. But the power of social media and web 2.0 has proven to be a game changer. And it would be foolish and shortsighted for the Church to ignore this phenomena.

“Social media refers to activities, practices, and behaviors among communities of people who gather online to share information, knowledge and opinions using conversational media” (Safko & Brake). Web 2.0 refers to recent technologies developed on the web that enable average computer users to interact with one another easily and cheaply. One year ago, I only used my computer as a word processor and to occasionally research a topic to settle an argument with my husband . Today, I connect with long lost friends on Facebook, I meet fellow like-minded Anglicans all over the world on Twitter and I publish my thoughts and experiences, however un-extraordinary or un-clever they may be, on this blog to be read by anyone that has an internet connection. Today, I use my computer to engage others.

It is the ability to engage others, parishioners and seekers, that are meeting on the virtual church parking lot that makes learning about and participating in social media worth every Church leader’s time and energy. No one could argue that one of the primary purposes of the Church is to communicate; we are in the business of spreading the Word. Today, we can proclaim beyond the spheres of the pulpit, tracts, newsletters and even e-mail. From the first days of the Church’s existence, she organized in order to bear one another’s burdens, comfort and care for those in the community, and strive to solve social ills. Today, we can collaborate beyond geographical, financial, and organizational barriers of the past. We can exercise the ministry of teaching and counsel to more people and in more dynamic ways. And as anyone who has seen a LOLcats picture can testify, we can have fun doing it.

Businesses are scrambling to learn how to utilize these technologies to benefit their profit margins and there are a gazillion examples of successful social media campaigns. There are also a number of cases that demonstrate how social media can be harmful and destructive to the reputations of both products and people . Social media is the proverbial two-edged sword. But like fire, water, and the Holy Spirit, it is unwise to ignore it just because you don’t understand how to embrace it.

In The Social Media Bible, the authors provide a series of self-assessment questions for the business manager. I have adapted these questions for clergy:

Social Media Inside Your Parish:

• Would committees and guilds in your parish be more effective if they could communicate more quickly and precisely with one another?
• Would committees and guilds in your parish be more productive if they were able to work in a more collaborative environment?
• Could parish community life be improved by increasing the fun quotient?
• Could discipleship training and development be improved?
• Are your parishioners fully engaged in the mission of your Church?

Social Media Directed Outside Your Parish:

• Do you have a strong relationship with your neighborhood/town community?
• Do you know public names, preferences, and needs as they relate to your evangelistic and outreach goals?
• Do you know public feelings about your parish, the Episcopal Church or Christianity in general?
• Have you ever asked the public to tell you of opportunities through which you could provide hospitality or service to the town?
• Would the town welcome an opportunity to help you grow?
• Are there activities in your parish that would provide amusement or entertainment for the public?
• Do you currently do anything to educate the public about the programs offered in your parish?
• Would the public respond positively to an opportunity to learn more about the Episcopal Church?
• If asked, would the average parishioner strong recommend your parish to a friend?
• Do many of your parishioners strongly recommend your parish?

Angst of Ember Season

It’s that time again! Today, Holy Cross Day, begins another week of Ember Days. I’m aware of this because several of my networked friends are in the ordination process and posting laments (good liturgical word) about the need to write their Bishops this week. Just reading their posts made my stomach start overproducing acid and my Catholic-guilt and worry start to rear its ugly head. That last effect is particularly annoying to me because I have never been a Roman Catholic. But I am so good at this Catholic rite that I’m pretty sure Peter’s going to count me as one of his own when I meet him at the Pearly Gates.

For my non-liturgical or low-church or unchurched friends, let me explain the issue. According to ancient tradition, there are four times a year (Ember Days) during which an aspirant/postulant/candidate/ordinand (one who is in the ordination process) is to write a letter to their Bishop. Here’s a link to a pretty decent explanation of the tradition on Wikipedia. Even though I had been an Episcopalian all my life and worked in the Episcopal Church since I was in my early 20s, I had never heard of this tradition before I became an aspirant/postulant/etc.. So that gives you a little hint about just how important this tradition is to the average pew-sitter. They’re on the level of Rogation Days (I bet most readers have to google that too,) merely step-children of the Liturgical Calendar. But we’ve all met those phariseedual types (I just coined that word, so please give me all attribution rights) that are quite legalistic and rigid about, well, everything. My diocese leaned toward that Phariseedic side.

Some of my friends came from more libertarian diocese where the Bishop didn’t care about getting Ember Day letters. But as my luck tends to run, my diocese was one of those that saw this tradition as an opportunity for an ordination fitness litmus test. I was told that my ember letters better be on the desk of my bishop before the last day of the week or there would be dire, dire consequences. It was a thinly veiled threat that one could be booted out of the process for failure to comply and that any so-called ‘emergency’ such as accidental decapitation, house fire, alien abduction would not constitute sufficient cause for posting your letter late. It would only prove that you did not adequately prepare for the unexpected and therefore you obviously couldn’t be counted on to provide leadership in an institution (the Church) where preparedness is kind of a big deal (that whole 2nd coming, apocalypse part).

It wasn’t that I was a procrastinator or unaware of the liturgical calendar. I’m rarely late for anything. But I never knew “what” I was suppose to write. We were told to let the Bishop know how you were doing, how you were coming along, in the whole ” priestly formation” thing. But, really, you couldn’t do that, not honestly. I mean, we’re talking a serious Catch 22 here! If you said, “I am really coming along, feeling myself more and more formed into a priest every day” one might interpret you as too confident, arrogant, and not introspective. But if you said, “I am coming to realize just how unworthy and unprepared I am to ever step foot in a pulpit and proclaim the gospel” one might interpret you as too insecure, neurotic, and pitiful. You wouldn’t want to admit that the seminary experiencing is all-consuming and is proving to be quite a stressor on your family life. But it almost always is. The Bishop knows the Church will be even harder stress on your family. You wouldn’t want to admit that the higher-level of critical theological thinking is wrecking havoc with your faith and you aren’t sure what, if anything, you believe anymore. But it almost always does. The Bishop knows that the Church will be even more destructive to your idealism and child-like innocence.

So, I would fret over these stupid letters ad-nauseum. I would have paid good money if someone would just write the darn thing for me. That’s why, this morning, upon reading my friends’ ember posts, I had this brilliant, genius of an idea to ’sell’ automated, computer-generated Ember Day Letters that could be tailored to individuals through the client providing a few custom words (nouns, adjectives, and an adverb or two.) Like a Mad Lib. The fancy name is I would utilize a phrasal template word game program. I do have one small problem. That is, I never could figure out how to write an ember day letter so I have no idea what to put in my template. I need your help; consider it your christian duty. If you will provide a sentence or two in the comments below this post, I will share a percentage of my Mad LibEmbers royalties with you. Thank you for your participation!

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The healthcare debate is loud and earnest. As it should be. We are talking about very fundamental, elementary issues of living together in community. We are continuing the national discernment process begun in the 18^th century of establishing what it means to say that our Creator endowed all hu(man)s with certain unalienable rights. Among those, our declarators determined, were life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The framers assumed every reasonable person would agree with these given presuppositions. But the conclusion that followed as been anything but self-evident. We have a hard time reaching consensus with the practice of this reasonable theoretical assumption.  All that seems self-evident to me is the premise that there is some correlation between one’s religious beliefs and political values and that there are some level of human rights that ought to be non-negotiable.

Bringing theory to practice has been the stuff of American politics and it is the stuff of the current debate. But the debate has turned ugly and shrill and out of order. I’m wondering if we’re all on the same page of the hymn book. Maybe the set of assumptions that begin my logic is not where others are beginning.   Maybe we’re not talking about the same thing. Because some people seem to be incredulous and shocked that I could have reached the conclusion that our country should have a national health plan. It’s as though this conclusion was somehow, un-American or un-godly or un-reasonable. All I know to do at this point is be very clear with my thought process and hope that someone will tell me where my logic takes such a radically different path than conservatives.

Let me begin by explaining what my faith has to do with my desire for universal coverage. Regarding the relationship between religion and politics – folk have argued with me about this correlation for decades; usually after I preached a sermon that didn’t sit well with them.  But I think one’s politics is a byproduct of one’s worldview, one’s faith system. I am not talking about a specific creed or confession; just an individual’s conscious or unconscious belief system of who they are as an individual, who they are in relation to others, the relationship between humanity to the rest of the natural world and the relationship of a Higher Power, or lack thereof, to all these things.  At its most basic definition, politics is how we organize relationships with one another.  The values that determine that organizational structure stems from a worldview we have imagined to be rightly ordered.

For example, our founding fathers believed that a Higher Power created all ‘men’ (sic) as equal members of the human race; no inherent superiority or inferiority. Additionally, the very act of that divine creation ‘gave’ a certain level of dignity and worth to the human being. Because of that dignified worth, each individual has the right to be treated accordingly. An obvious example of how this is manifested in our social ordering (politics) is the idea of death fights. Dog fights and cock fights are offensive to many, but most people do not consider them on the same level of atrocity as gladiator fights. Gladiator fights are considered atrocious because most of us do not believe that the human being exists as ‘sport’ for the gods. Less obvious is how this has developed into the right to protect oneself, to make a living, to be educated, to own property. Today, we are asking what determines a human being’s access to healthcare. Is it by virtue of money? Employment? Health? Social standing? Intelligence? Merit? Marital Status? Or is it one of those inherited rights? I believe that the health of an individual is of grave importance to the Creator. In my tradition, a lot of biblical ink is devoted to the curing of the sick and teaching how to care for the sick. I get the impression that I’m suppose to love my neighbor by caring for her when she’s sick even if I don’t think she deserves it. Because God think she deserves it.  (to be continued …)

I am a cradle Episcopalian. This is a term some use in an elitist way, similar to FFV (First Families of Virginia).  It connotes a legitimacy, an authority, a  really real-nes. After serving on numerous Episcopal church staffs, there’s an additional connation to which I associate the label — a sense of stuckness, a rigidity, a conservative ecclesiology uninterested in new perspectives. And God forbid someone suggest to a cradle Episcopalian that the baptismal font be moved to another location in the church.

As a cradle Episcopalian, I was naively comfortable with my unquestioned, theological perspectives until I went away to college and met some evangelicals in Campus Crusade for Christ. They wanted to know if I was saved; if I knew Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior.  I was baffled that my membership in the Episcopal Church did not satisfy their soteriological criteria.   Apparently, I needed to recite a formulaic prayer and if I didn’t remember the exact day that I had uttered this prayer, then I could bet my bottom dollar (or worse, my eternal life) that my name was not written in The Book. It didn’t seem to be relevent that I regularly prayed to God or received the Eucharist as if I thought Jesus was my Lord and Savior. That didn’t count.

By this time, I had eighteen years of experience as a girl, playing with other girls, and I knew that the strong and mighty of the playground could be quite tyrannical and gnostic about the rules that granted admittance to the In Crowd or relegated one to the Out Crowd of the stupid and uncool. Basically, I was being taught a theology of God-As-A-Mean-Girl. But what did I know? I was afraid I had been delusional in my snobbish sense of status or stuck in stupidity and it was possible that we cradle Episcopalians weren’t as theologically with it as my evangelical, mostly non-denominational or Baptist friends. So I wrote that prayer down and recited it very carefully, word-for-word, every dot and tittle attended to deligently. [Don't even get me started with how I learned how many water molecules a valid baptism requires! and yes, I got that checked off my Things To Do list as quick as possible.]

Years later, after spending time getting as many people off the divine hook with my handy-dandy prayer and 4 spiritual laws, I found my way back to the Episcopal Church. Imagine my surprise when I heard, right there in the middle of the liturgy of Baptism, very BillBright-ish language. Apparently, the Episcopal Church had been ‘with it’ all along. Of course, that didn’t resolve the problem that it was mostly little, tiny episcopalians of cradle-age that were being saved by these words; words being said by someone else on the behalf of another. By this time, I was comfortable trusting the authority and traditions of the Episcopal Church. But I wanted to know exactly what we believed the divine rules to be. And not just about salvation. I wanted to know the rules about what we can or cannot say about God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit; about sin, satan, sacraments, truth, confession, forgiveness; about speaking in tongues, contemplative prayer, social morality and social justice.  I didn’t want to be caught short by the next inquiring evangelical, or fundamentalist, or pentecostal.

I wanted to represent the Episcopal church well. So I started asking … and I started hearing, over and over again, “read the Book of Common Prayer.” As a recently re-re-baptized, re-re-born, re-convert, I was more than a little uncomfortable with the fingers pointing me to the Book of Common Prayer rather than the King James. But that’s who we are! Literally. My advisors were telling me to go to the prayer book because of the ancient and abiding principle, lex orandi, lex credendi, what we believe is what we pray. At first, this was not very satisfying. I wanted something strongly confessional in nature. I wanted something very black and white, very simple and very straightforward. But the Church, in her wisdom, knew better.

What the Church knew and had prepared through her liturgy, traditions and sacraments was that eventually I would need the mature solid food that is the ambiguous, paradoxical,  yes – and nature of theological truths.  The Episcopal Church (Anglicanism) was born out of the tension caused by the extremes of catholicism and the extremes of protestanism. She knew that it was wiser to wax poetic when talking of things divine and mysterious and beyond comprehension. She knew that in every sentence uttered as Truth there is also a grain of  ’not so’.  So can we say nothing or anything about something as important as God and salvation and eternal life?  How do we speak of such slippery stuff? My seminary professor, Dr. Bill Green, said, with just a tip of his tongue in cheek, that we should always ’sing’ the creeds to keep us from ever forgetting their non-prosaic nature.  Otherwise, we find ourselves in cross-hairs of the heretic police.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, The Most Rev. Dr. Katharine Jefferts Schori, found herself in the cross-hairs recently when she said:

The overarching connection in all of these crises has to do with the great Western heresy – that we can be saved as individuals, that any of us alone can be in right relationship with God. It’s caricatured in some quarters by insisting that salvation depends on reciting a specific verbal formula about Jesus. That individualist focus is a form of idolatry, for it puts me and my words in the place that only God can occupy, at the center of existence, as the ground of being.

I was listening to her address live via the internet and when I heard this I thought, “Halleluiah! There is a God!”  Then I thought, “Praise the Lord, maybe there is some theology out there that I can hang my hat on.”  Then, I thought, “Hell yeah, mamma said it ‘cuz it needed to be said.” Then, I thought, “Oh shit! It is about to hit the fan.”  For this and a few other reasons, the Presiding Bishop is getting vilified by the religious right. It’s the fear of that vicious and vitrioloic attack that has kept me silent in the past. But I am so grateful for her courage to speak out and risk sharing her understanding of the truth that I feel compelled to hereby, metaphorically, stand beside her and proclaim “Amen.”

Let me assure —  real quick and right now — to anyone who is ready to quote verses from the Book of Romans at me, that I, too, appreciate the authority of the Bible.  But we have to quote the entire Bible because the entire Bible is the story of salvation, not just Paul’s Roman Road.  And that biblical story is a story about a people’s salvation, not an anthology of individual salvations strung together like a pearl necklace. It wasn’t Mr. Abraham’s salvation that mattered so much. It was the entire nation of Israel. It mattered so much that narratives about it were remembered and passed down. It mattered so much that Jesus is proclaimed savior of the world.  It mattered so much that learned people would devote a lifetime to studying it.

It is the theological doctrine of salvation is called soteriology. It is big. It is complex. It is a doctrine that has developed for centuries and continues to develop. St. Paul was not the first soteriological theologian. He inherited some good material from Isaiah. Athanasius, Augustine, and Anselm did some pretty impressive thinking on the subject before Luther nailed his salvific thesis. And with all due respect to my friends of the reformed tradition, the subject of salvation was not closed on the Wittenberg door. Barth, Bultmann, Gutierrez, Kung and Moltmann are just a few worthy examples of the exemplary thinkers on the matter. And not one of them ever concluded that the Answer was as simple and as easy as swearing an oath-like-prayer. Nor did any of them imply that this was an individual, personal or private matter. There certainly is an element of  individual choice and free will that is relevent but it isn’t the only thing that is part of this subject. The entire created order is part of the subject.  Faith certainly is a critical element, but so is grace. Works may not be the sole criteria, but they are certainly a part. And part of the work we are called to do is to think and to think as well as we can, so that at the end of our days, we might hear the One who created us thoughtful folk say, “Well done, my good and faithful servant.” In the meantime, go “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” And I mean that in the poetic, lyrical, sing-y way that also includes me, and others, those who have gone before us, and those who have yet to come, working, collaborating together, God’s earthly think tank.

One of the most heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching aspects of hospital chaplaincy is watching the panic-stricken face of an elderly person who suddenly and unexpectedly loses their spouse of, say, fifty some-odd years. There is a moment in that early stage of the grief process that the survivor realizes that they don’t know how to live without their companion or even if they want to live. I don’t mean in the sense that the pain is so great that life is unbearable. That is a horror shared by many different types of survivors in sudden death situations. I’m talking about a realization that dawn on widows who have lived so long and so richly at the side of a life-partner, that their entire world-view is dependent upon their mutual perspective. I’m not talking about when a survivor becomes aware that there are certain life functions that they now have to learn, such as balancing the checkbook or doing the laundry. Though, that is a real and difficult aspect of loss. I’m talking about a dawning realization that one no longer knows how to be without the other.  I’m talking about something on the level of breathing; of involuntary biological systems.

When I first became aware of this dynamic I was awe-struck by the power of a love that is so pervasive and long-lasting. I was awed by the psychological defenses that are necessarily built up to protect one from ever imagining life without their lover at their side. These widows were all smart, grounded, psychologically healthy people. They knew that no one lived for ever. They had watched their friends die and their friends survive. But they didn’t know what they didn’t know. It is an impossible knowing in a love this profound. When I first became aware of this dynamic I was afraid to look at it, afraid to be in its presence; because I, too, could not imagine for them a future. I was afraid I would fall to pieces and add to their pain. But I could no more leave them alone or pretend I didn’t notice what I saw. I just had to take a leap of faith and go over the edge.  And when I did step into that scary, frightening free-fall space with them, I stepped in to the Kingdom of God.

I stepped into that absolute future, the sphere of the impossible, terra incognita. This is the realm that God beckons us to join her; where you must leave all your known resources at the door. In this kingdom, there is only room for faith, hope and love. None of our past experiences or knowledge can help us here; for each time we enter, we must go empty handed. For we cannot truly know hope if we have not known hopelessness; we cannot recognize love if we have never known utter disregard; we cannot know faith if we’ve never known doubt. It is in this absolute future where the wild things are. It is in this land of unlikeness where Beauty falls in love with the Beast, where things that were cast down are being raised up, and things which had grown old are being made new. It is where the Impossible becomes possible. It is where the lion lays down with the lamb.

Have you ever had to walk into this Impossible Future? When? What happened? What did you find there?

What other images (songs, photos, art, literature, poetry) can you share that helps us to understand this Absolute Future from the foreseeable kind of future?