My Wonderings

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!

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?

Many people have been wondering with me about the purpose of Twitter. The Rev. Chuck Culpepper, of MS, likened it to the CB Radio of the Millenium; just a platform that allows many people to broadcast to many people. And it is that; but so much more. Back in the “BreakerBreakerGoodBuddy” days of old, one had to find a channel that was both static-free and one that your friends or others of value to you were also utilizing. With Twitter, static distraction is eliminated. Because of the search function, the number of available Twitter “channels” is equivalent to the total possible permutations of keys on the keyboard (letter/number/symbol.) Plus, there is no limit imposed by physical distance to a signal tower. Take a moment to wrap your brain around the implications! From anywhere in the world, anybody with internet access and a computer or smart phone can come together and have a conversation in real time. The only thing missing in Twitter (and I’m sure that will soon be resolved) is translating languages to your preference.

Those of us following the Episcopal Church General Convention 2009 created a “channel” entitled #ecgc. The acronym was for Episcopal Church General Convention. The # symbol is called a hashtag in twitter and it is used to indicate that this particular permutation of keystrokes is a deliberate combination formed for a specific group to track a conversation. We immediately realized that there were a few other streams of conversation about the convention being made so we formed a hub to gather all these streams together. Thus, the “Twub” was created at www.twubs.com/ecgc. This was a godsend for me; I didn’t have to remember to use my hashtag when I sent a message because it automatically added it for me. I could see the thumbprints of the pictures, videos and webpages that were linked with people’s messages without having to open the link at all. This made it easy to filter what I wanted to explore further. I could see a cool visual of our developing internet community through a grid of the faces/image associated with each Twitter account.

You may be wondering about the tweeps (people) who were part of this gathering. There were clergy and lay, conservative and liberal, young (20s) and not-so-old (60s), gay and straight, lovers of TEC and haters of TEC, attendees of convention and at-home folk like me. It was (go-figure) a gathering made up of folk much like the church! On the first day, we had a slam of porn spam that would have turned a blue-haired white. But that was quickly resolved by the Twub company who were probably more horrified and shocked than us Episcopalians! And we did have a “troll” try to impersonate “815″ but he or she was quickly exposed and we all campaigned to have that account terminated. If anything, that troll only accomplished bonding our group of disparate Anglicans together during a very contentious week.

And I know (from the many tweets of others) that I am speaking for many people when I say that there have been a lot of transformative moments in our little byte of the Twitterverse. Personally, I had an extraordinary exchange with a fellow priest from the diocese of TX who is a conservative greatly fearing the direction this convention is taking. We shared our stories, albeit in little 140 character chapters at at time. And in our exchange, I was healed a little bit more from some old wounds.

I witnessed folk ask for forgiveness when emotions got the best of them. I witnessed the previously uncomforted assure the previously comfortable that there would always be a warm welcome offered. I witnessed our group self-regulate by calling someone out when their tone became snarky. The group self-corrected when inaccurate information was given. The group collaborated when someone requested information that was not accessible to them. Our group self-organized with some folk volunteering to give play-by-play commentary for those without access to the GC HUB live feed. We even had internet DJs tweet dedicated song links to us. Some of our group were wondering if we could continue an online network of Episcopalians when convention concluded. To that I say: “That’s What I’m Talking About!!” Sign up at Episcopalians.pbworks.com to stay informed of our growing network.

And Warren, thanks for believing! Kurt and Joyce, thanks for making it happen. And to all my new friends: gideony, WhatOneCanDo, Kvoets, ktkimble, CarlosRAlvarado, scottagunn, JosephPMatthews, Liturgy, swancommarachel, gaytheologian, AuntScilly, bgclick, franklogue, davidrpeet, putmeinabox, GRobit625, loribythesea, FredinAtlanta, chaplain_mdiv10, mooregardening, Floridagordon, ktkimble, rrchapman, johnleesandiego, JeffreyShy, vagabondfaith, and a bunch more … thanks for being Church for me this week.

“In the world the powerful lord it over the others. This must not happen among you” (Luke 22:25-26).

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