Squirming Uncomfortably...

A question to me from Fellow Traveler:

"Do you think you pray enough?"

Artwork: "Meditations" by Solomon Raj

Your Light Has Come...Thanks Be To God!

Here's the new stained-glass window, portraying the hands of God, just installed in the new addition of our church.

The Way It Is Here Now

This week our town lost another business.

It wasn’t that big of a business; nine employees. And it wasn’t just a local closing; the company closed stores in several other states.

But it was just another economic kick in the teeth to Outer Podunk – never an affluent community, but hurting now bigtime, like the rest of Michigan.

There’s a real, widespread sense of disheartenment here – everywhere from Ann Arbor, which just lost a large Pfizer research facility, to always-struggling northern Michigan, a region that has come to depend economically on downstate tourists and well-to-do retired autoworkers, two groups now in very short supply, and whose modest small-town industrial parks seem to bleed newly laid-off workers every week. A coworker of mine, returning from a road trip to visit recently relocated family in Atlanta, commented to me, with some bemusement, “You wouldn’t believe it – they have so many job openings down there that they advertise them on freeway billboards.”

One local newspaper pundit blames our state’s malaise on the misperception elsewhere that Michigan is too unionized and high-wage – something that has never been the case north of, say, Lansing – scaring new investment away. Others blame our state’s tax structure and bureaucratic bloat. Others blame the state educational system for failing to train young people in skills that are currently in demand, and for a kind of whistling-in-the-graveyard cultural blue-collar mindset here that refuses to take seriously the reality that manufacturing is no longer going to be the economic backbone of the state – that it’s time to get over it, to finally pull the plug on that Rustbelt wish-dream of restored assembly-line glory, so we can finally move on in a new direction.

I’m not an economist – I have a hard time balancing my checkbook – so I’m not in any position to opine upon causes of or solutions to Michigan’s woes. But it makes me very sad to live here right now. Because this is a good state to live in. And it could be a great state. We have areas of incredible natural beauty that I think are unknown to many if not most other Americans – sometimes even other Michiganians. We have a well-regarded university system, and well-respected private colleges. Our state has pockets of social progressivism and tolerance; of artistry and artisanship; of creative entrepreneurship. We have so much potential to be something other than what the general public thinks of when they think of Michigan, if they think of Michigan at all – something other than slums and boarded-up factories and empty storefronts.

Pray for us, in Outer Podunk and elsewhere. We need it.

Do You Have a Peculiar Aristocratic Title?

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is: Viscountess LutheranChik the Spurious of Goosnargh on the Carpet Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Hat tip to new RevGal Junia's Daughter .

Overheard

Overheard conversation here in Outer Podunk:

"I ain't votin' fer no one named Obama, 'cause that sounds too much like Osama."

Welcome to my world.

Hoosier Hot Dogs?

It seemed like a great, easy idea for a Superbowl party: Serve hot dogs, offering the favorite respective regional toppings of the Bears and the Colts.

Chicago dogs are are a no-brainer...but is there a favorite Indianapolis, or even favorite Indiana, type of hot dog? My Internet research is drawing a blank.

Since Dungy is a Michigan native, I'm leaning toward a Michigan-style coney-dog sauce and usual accoutrements. But does anyone out there have any reliable insight into the regional preferences of Indiana wiener eaters?

Cool Stuff For Pod People

Check out the podcasts here .

Loving a God Who Hates

Awhile back I told you about an online antagonist -- someone from a conservative, culturally aggressive Protestant denomination -- who hangs out on a newbies' "learn about Christianity" forum I sometimes post on, who feels compelled to "fix," in so many words, the mainline/mainstream responses to questions.

He struck again this weekend. The initial question was about the idea of a "jealous" God -- the questioner asked how a God who is perfect could be jealous, and if in fact that was an indication that jealousy is a good thing. The mainstream responses were along the lines of discussing the use of language in Scripture -- that by necessity we can only use metaphors grounded in our own experience to describe a God much bigger and "other" than we are, and that the "jealousy" of God spoken about in Scripture is not an endorsement of the self-serving, controlling human variety but rather an attempt to emphasize God's special relationship with and covanental claim on the people of Israel.

So along comes this fellow, who either doesn't understand or doesn't agree with what's been said, and then goes on to make the rather remarkable statement, more than once, "God hates those who hate him and loves those who love him."

This is a head-scratcher: A proudly self-professing"Bible-believer" who can read the Gospels -- read about a Jesus who tells us to bless those who curse us, be good to those who are bad to us; who asks God to forgive the people who've just betrayed him, convicted him in a religious-political kangaroo court, tortured him and are now slowly executing him; who, according to the author of John's Gospel, "so loved the world" -- and come away with the idea that God hates people; not in a kind of metaphorical, hyperbolic sense, but for real.

Sometimes I just don't get Christians. I don't get them at all.

Ugly Ministry

The other day, while talking about an upcoming workshop I'm going to themed around what those of us in our lay ministry training program can do with that training once we graduate, Fellow Traveler asked me, "Well, what sort of ministry would you like to do?"

(Just a sidebar that, while I joked the other day about my dog being my spiritual director, it's actually Fellow Traveler who acts in that capacity most of the time -- whether in the form of encouragement, gentle chastisement or simple excitement about the spiritual life...the kind of excitement that a jaded churchy type like me sometimes needs to be around. Fellow Traveler's love and support exemplifies -- what's that interesting term in the ELCA's "Visions and Expectations"? -- competency in interpersonal relationships. Tres' ironic, that.)

I know that when I enrolled in the program I did some brainstorming about what I might like to do once I finished. I seem to recall wanting to do something with ministry to older adults, and online ministry, and of course just helping out in my own parish. Since then, I will admit to not having fleshed out these ideas very much. I know graduates of my program who are now doing things like chaplaincies (FT thinks I'd make a good hospital chaplain...after my experience with my mother I'm not sure this is the case, but I won't rule it out), helping out churches that are between pastors, leading small groups...

I don't know. I just don't know what I want to do.

But I do know how I want to do ministry.

I want it ugly.

I love the ABC comedy Ugly Betty. I relate to Ugly Betty the way I've always related to Charlie Brown. If you're not acquainted with the program -- in the spirit of The Devil Wears Prada, Betty is a geeky Latino young woman -- braces, bangs, an unruly unibrow, disturbing taste in clothing -- who has, remarkably, found herself working for an upscale, Vogue-ish fashion magazine. She is surrounded by Beautiful People who tend to treat her like something they've found sticking to the sole of their designer shoe. Despite this, Betty has heart; Betty perserveres; and when life becomes un-beautiful for one of the Beautiful People, Betty has a talent for making things right in a way that earns her at least a grudging respect, and occasionally even affection, from her coworkers.

My denomination, sadly, as well as the dominant culture, often makes me feel ugly. (Note to any ecclesiastical bigshots reading this blog: "We love you and invite you into the life of the Church! Well, kind of...we guess...um...not really...but don't go away!...unless you really want to...not that we want you to, but...oh, and you need to ditch the partner if you actually want to do anything in our denomination other than warm a pew" is really not being "welcoming.") I can't do a lot about that. But I suspect that there are a lot of other people who feel ugly for a variety of reasons, who might be encouraged by having an ugly person doing Godstuff. And perhaps a Beautiful Person or two might someday find that it's good to have an "ugly" friend in ministry.

(Hat tip to Wikipedia for the photo)

Friday Poetry Blogging

Okay...maybe it's because I had a harrowing trip to work this morning through an unexpected, unpredicted snowstorm -- one that's supposed to turn into freezing rain, just when I have to be at the printer's office in a city 20 miles down the highway -- but this poem seemed particularly apropos, if not particularly cheery, this morning:

The Archangel Winter

In the dread circle hemmed by glaciers,
Pallid waste where no radiant fathomers,
Columbuses or Gamas, ever pass,
In realms of dingy gloom and deep crevasse
Seized from creation by nonentity,
Beyond ice floe and berg and ice-bound sea,
Deep in the fog that quenches every ray,
In stone waves and rock waters, far from day,
Amid the gloom, there, on the pole, stands black
Archangel Winter, darkness on his back
And trumpet at his lips; nor does he cast
One flash of eye, or blow one clarion-blast;
He never even dreams, being sheer snow;
The winged winds, captives of that age-old foe
Silence, are in his hand—birds in a snare;
His sightless eyes horribly watch the air;
Hoarfrost is in his bones and on his head,
And he is swathed in ever-petrified dread;
He terrifies the Vast, he seems so wild;
He is harsh, dismal, ice—that is, exiled;
The earth beneath his feet, in its dark cape,
Is dumb; he is the mute white stony shape
Set on that tomb in the eternal night;
Never does any motion, sound, or light
Brush the lone giant in that somber pall.
But when, on the timepieces that we call
Stars, the last day, endless and centerless,
Will sound, then the Lord's face will luminesce
And melt the spirit; his mouth will distend
Suddenly, in a savage, dreadful bend,
And the worlds—skiffs rudderless, rolling on—
Will hear the storm-blast of his clarion.
-- Victor Hugo

Friday Five, Self-Care Edition

Oh, this is a difficult Friday Five for me, because I am notorious for engaging in the "burnt toast syndrome" -- i.e., assigning myself sloppy seconds instead of taking care of myself in a mindful way. But, anyway -- the week's question is, what are our four favorite self-care activities, and what is a fifth one that we don't do, or do much, that we would maybe like to do, or do more?

1. Sleep. How I love sleep. When I was little, my parents never had to nag me into going to bed; from a tiny tot on, I learned how to take off my clothes, put on my jammies, and go to bed by myself. Now, for various reasons, I have lately been very bad at getting enough sleep; it took my recent bout with sickness to force me into an 8- or even 9-hour sleeping schedule, instead of 5 or 6 hours. But I am starting to notice a positive difference in how I feel and think. So goodbye Letterman, hello blankie.

2. Soap. If cleanliness is next to godliness, I should be glowing with holy light...because I love hot, soapy showers. I love soap -- especially artisanal, cottage-industry soaps infused with fragrant herbs and oils. Ah...I wish that was where I was right now.

3. Chocolate. Well, that one is pretty self-explanatory.

4. Beauty. No, not the beauty shop kind. I mean indulging myself with beautiful things -- a flower arrangement (even if the flowers come from the side of the road), looking at art that pleases me, listening to music I enjoy. This is actually one of those things that I probably under-ration in my life.

5. "I Wish I May, I Wish I Might." This is an interesting question. As much as I hate to admit this, I think the self-care activity that I would like to, and need to, do more of but don't is...praying for myself. Praying for other people comes easily to me, but praying for myself, not so much. My prayers for own behalf tend to be along the lines of a drive-by, "Oh, you know what I need" -- as if God has a lot of other people in the waiting room and is glancing impatiently at the clock on the wall -- instead of laying it all out on the table the way the Psalmists did.

I think, secondarily, another self-care action that I need to allow myself more of is chaos management. Because giving one's living and working spaces over to chaos -- clutter, disorganization -- can be a way to be mean to oneself, not just a right-brained personality quirk. I have been swishing and swiping and shining with the other beginner Flyladies, and am steeling myself for some of the other assigned weekly tasks, which I know, deep down, will help me feel better about my home and myself when I finally do them.

This is the Feast...

From the "My Dog is My Spiritual Director" file:

My dog, Cody, loves McDonald’s hamburgers. He loves them more than just about anything else in the whole world, including his special red blanket, his assorted friends, Fellow Traveler and me.

Cody knows where the local McDonald’s is in relation to the rest of Outer Podunk – don’t ask me how he knows, because the vet thinks he’s practically blind, but whenever we drive through downtown O.P. he perks up; starts looking out of the window, on the correct side of the street. As we near the city limits and the golden arches come into view, his body stiffens; then, as we pull into the entrance, it breaks into rippling quivers of anticipation. Nostrils a-twitch, he strains for a better view and better aroma as we give our order and pull up to the takeout window. His wide-eyed expression, and indeed his uninhibited, whole-body response as we make our transaction – as we hand the “burger lady” some pieces of paper and watch her briefly disappear only to come back with a bulging bag – is reminiscent of “St. Teresa in Ecstasy.” Sometimes Cody tries to take the bag right out of the burger lady’s hand (no easy trick with a minimum of teeth), so eager is he to taste his treasure.

It seems that, on whatever level dogs think, Cody finds this special meal a wonder – a miracle. Just the thought of it – even the sound of the word “burger” – fills him with anticipatory joy. And while he usually seems to take his other, everyday caregiving in stride, to me he almost seems to exhibit something akin to gratitude when he is finally able to indulge in the long-awaited feast.

Watching Cody in action the other evening in the drive-through lane made me think of the Eucharist; about how sometimes it’s so easy to commune in a distracted, going-through-the-motions way, or in a distant, intellectual way, instead of with a joyful, thankful heart.

As the liturgy reminds us: This is the feast!

They'd Better Be Really Good Pork Chops

I just figured it out, and if I factor in the cost of my tow and the cost of getting my tire fixed into the family pack of pork loin chops I bought down in South Elsewhere, it comes out to about $80 per pork chop.

Now, the tire was insured, so in reality I just had to pay 40 bucks; and I get my towing fee refunded by my insurer; so that's good news.

The bad news is that the problem I'd originally scheduled a diagnostic for with my mechanic is going to cost me about $250. And I have been told that I need two new front tires sooner rather than later.

Maybe I'll have some wine with my pork chops. While I can.

So You Had a Bad Day...

The planets seem to be in major misalignment in Outer Podunk.

First it was my officemate and the fish and the car.

Through an interesting series of events, my coworkers found themselves in possession of an orphaned fish -- an algae eater left behind in an abandoned aquarium. My officemate, who already owns a fish (named Lucky, since all of Lucky's tropically constituted finny friends died during a power outage awhile back), volunteered to adopt the fish. It's been very cold here, so my officemate decided to warm up her car before she began a long commute home with the fish, esconced in a Baggie. Well, in the process of doing this, my officemate somehow locked her keys in her running vehicle. When I left work, she and a coworker were standing outside the now warm but inaccessible car, trying to figure out how to jimmy open a door.

I had no expertise to lend. And, anyway, I was on a mission. Because the supermarket down the road from Fellow Traveler is having a great sale this week, and I wanted to buy some stuff; and I wanted to visit the drugstore next door too. So I drove home, picked up the dog, and headed back down the highway to South Elsewhere, Friendly Traveler's community a few miles down the road from Outer Podunk.

En route I noticed that the ol' Intrepid (for long-time readers -- I finally found the E) wasn't handling so well...but I chalked it up to the glaze of blown and compacted snow on the road. Then when I hit the South Elsewhere city limit and slowed down, I felt an ominous vibration and heard an ominous rumble. Uh-oh.

I made it to the supermarket parking lot; got out of the car; my right rear tire was pita-flat. Uh-oh.

So began the evening's vehicular adventure: Calling Fellow Traveler (who'd had a frustrating day of her own) to rescue a damsel in distress; calling one towing company that didn't want to come and help me; getting angry and flustered; the collected FT calling another, more amenable towing company; following the tow truck back up to Outer Podunk, to my mechanic's; going back home with FT; consoling myself with hot coffee, mindless television (Dog the Bounty Hunter, not the State of the Union address) and the cheerful presence of my heroine.

Ironically, I had an appointment with my mechanic for tomorrow morning anyway, to check out my wonky heater. Well, hey -- my car will be waiting there, bright and early. In retrospect, it's also almost spooky, in a good way, that I had this mishap literally less than a mile from FT's house -- I'll be on the road later this week, and I could have blown my tire on the freeway, far away. So life is good. That's what I'm telling myself.

Body Image

During our weekend retreat's worship and devotional moments, this Sunday's epistle lesson -- Paul's metaphorical Body of Christ and its unity expressed in diversity --was a frequently cited text.

For some reason, it's not a passage that is speaking to me in a positive way. Lately I've been feeling like a coccyx or a tonsil or a wisdom tooth. And I have again been informed, indirectly, by some supposed sisters and brothers in Christ, that I'm really more of a malignancy that needs to be excised, or a cleft palate that needs to be fixed, or at best an ugly birthmark that the rest of the Body can perhaps tolerate, out of charity, as long as I don't try to pass myself off as normal, 'cause the Bible tells them so.

As the actor asked the director, What's my motivation? What is my motivation to continue to choose to be treated badly, and moreover to drag someone I love into this drama as well?

A Journalistic Friday Five

Greetings! I come to you this evening from a motel room a few miles from my lay ministry retreat. I am luxuriating in free wi-fi, ripping a CD and blogging, all at once. Anyway, our questions of the week are:

Who? Dr. Walter Taylor of Trinity Lutheran Seminary -- our visiting professor this weekend. He's a great friend of our program, and a very engaging speaker. And he made me not hate Revelation today.

What? k.d. lang's "Hymns of the 49th Parallel" -- the album I'm loading into my Nano. And Diana Krall's "The Look of Love."

When? Around four o'clock tomorrow -- when I'll finally be home with my family, two- and four-legged.

Where? In bed -- where I am right now.

Why? Because I am too middle-aged and weary to go out partying with the gang tonight. There's a nice restaurant in town with classy weekend piano or guitar at the bar, but it's one of Fellow Traveler's and my favorite places -- one of those relational milestone landmarks -- it would be depressing to go somewhere like that without FT, in my guise as earnestly nerdy, sexless singleton.

Bonus: How? Not easily -- how I'll sleep with a noisy motel heater rattling away, and nattering others making merry in the hallway.

Motivation

There are rumors, through the grapevine, of mumblings and grumblings in our lay ministry program...participants frustrated by a lack of consistent communication from the powers that be, who don't perceive that they're being mentored, who feel they're being subjected to the mushroom treatment, i.e., kept in the dark and fed organic matter.

I think I've largely worked through those feelings. Fact of the matter is, I just don't care anymore. I feel so disconnected from Church, Inc., that I have become largely indifferent to the arcane workings of the body that approves and evaluates participants in our program. As long as they keep cashing my enrollment checks and as long as they don't meet me at the door of my next retreat with a frown and "We need to talk"...life is good. Teach me more stuff. Check's in the mail.

The Pornography of Violence

As I'm writing this, I'm watching a popular primetime television crime show. Tonight's episode is all about a serial killer whose m.o. is immobilizing his victims, then dismembering them while they're still alive. I've listened to talk of this process in excruciating detail; I've also seen a severed head, a mutilated female corpse, and clattering porch windchimes made with human rib bones.

It's horrible, sadistic, vomitrocious stuff. But the common wisdom seems to be that if you pair horrendous story lines and gory, nightmarish imagery with noble, good-looking crimefighters who always get the bad guys in the end, that somehow makes the rest of the show okay -- "must see TV"; pop some corn and sit the kiddos down to watch too.

Interesting, the silence from the direction of the nattering Christian guardians of virtue. Evidently the positive portrayal of gay folks and the occasional bare breast or naughty word are more objectionable to them than, say, women's limbs being buzz-sawed off their living bodies.

The Red Group and the Chartreuse Group

Back in the mid-Sixties, when I was in the first grade, for about an hour and a half each day all the first graders in my elementary school were separated into different reading groups. We had the Red Group; the Blue Group; the Yellow Group; and (I swear I am not making this up) the Chartreuse Group.

Of course, by about the end of the second week the kids had all figured out the pecking order of the system. The Red Group was for children who couldn’t read, or at least couldn’t read much more than three-letter words like red. The Chartreuse Group was for the kids who’d blown through their initial reading aptitude tests, were surreptitiously reading ahead (despite threats of punishment) in their other textbooks out of profound boredom and generally annoying their homeroom teachers by not staying on the expected developmental schedule. The other groups fell somewhere in between. And once you were tracked into a particular group, chances are that that’s where you stayed, all that year and beyond.

I was reminded of reading class the other day while thinking about my upcoming lay ministry retreat.

I've given myself a positive attitude adjustment about going – made easier by finally being fever- and headache-free, after three weeks, although I’m still physically exhausted – and am actually looking forward to attending. The Book of Revelation is a lot like Lewis Carroll’s Alice books; much more interesting when comprehensively annotated, especially by an engaging instructor. Our retreat in a community with which I’m familiar, so I won’t be driving around strange urban traffic configurations in terror and confusion; it’s also near a food cooperative where I can run in and grab some of my favored crunchy-granola foods and household products during our brief free time. So this retreat is a good thing.

But anyway, as I was thinking about it and about the whole lay ministry program, it started to bother me that the information we have access to in our classes is so undemocratically disseminated in the church. You have to be highly motivated to access it; you have to be part of a congregation that’s on board with the concepts of lay ministry and of extra-congregational continuing education for adults in general; you have to be recommended to enter and continue in the program; you have to have the time and money to attend retreats and weekend classes, and to obtain the reading materials.

It’s a little like the Red Group and the Chartreuse Group.

I’m not comfortable with the assumption that most people are in maybe Stage 2 of Fowler’s stages of faith so that’s where the default line, if you will, of adult Christian education should be drawn. I’m not comfortable with the idea that it’s too difficult or divisive to try and raise the biblical and theological literacy of church members above whatever pastiche of Sunday School stories, half-remembered confirmation-class lessons and pop-culture Christianity is the norm these days. I think that attitude is defeatist, and/or, in an ironic way, elitist.

Why can’t we raise the bar? Why are the only alternatives, in many congregations, the equivalents of the Red Group or the Chartreuse Group? (If there even is an alternative to the Red Group?)

I’m just asking.

What American Accent Do You Have?

I haven't done one of these things in awhile...I was most impressed by the result:

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North   You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."
Philadelphia
The Northeast
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz