Sunday, November 30, 2008

Advent Musings...

Experiencing "my" Christian identity is like admitting I have a dysfunctional family. I've spent a long time trying to figure out ways to hide that I'm Christian. I've spent a long time trying to deny that I feel moved by (read: love) my tradition in ways that defy language. I've even spent a long time focusing on other people's Christianities in order to escape my embarrassment of what we have in common. It's true: I belong to the same religion as Fred Phelps, Jim Jones, and those who operate Trinity Broadcasting Network. I also belong to the same religion as Anne Lammot and Jeremiah Wright--people who tell the truth with unparalleled wisdom and compassion. At some point I've got to accept the fact that what I have in common with other Christians doesn't really matter. Maya Angelou once said "becoming a Christian is a life-long endeavor." Touche. Life-long perhaps because it's so easy to think it's this versus that, or us versus them. High Christology. Low Christology. Textual literalism or liberalism. Life-long perhaps because love is so much softer, in its whisper, than these screaming lines drawn in the sand.

This morning while sitting in church I began to think about the fact that people were killed in Walmart this week b/c of the materialism frenzy that spreads like wild-fire (in America) during Christmas time. It's a damn shame, for real. But then we have these high and mighty types who pull out their "Jesus is the Reason for the Season" signs and shame all things non-Christian in response. I agree that Jesus would vomit if he saw how his memorialization process got manipulated into retail therapy for our (economically) depressed souls, but I also think he would detest his name being used as the "reason" too. Jesus was almost always pointing to something greater than himself, to the "kingdom of G-d." Why are folks so quick to throw Jesus' name out but so slow to look at the life he lead, the values he professed, the way his disciples ministered to their communities in honor of him after Calvary? Sometimes I think people pull on Christ just to judge their neighbors instead of getting curious about their neighbors or touching their neighbors' pain. He has become a war cry, a rallying "name" for the barricades of our faith. How sad. Well, not today. Not in G-d's name. As I endeavor to "become a Christian" today I will seek the whispering Word, the kind that comes to connect and heal, the kind that stirs in the belly of a womyn promising to infuse life with wonder and delicacy...

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Wade

In a white truck, weeks before Christmas,
rain pouring down on all sides,
setting the windshield wipers ablaze,
"Song for a Winter's Night" by Sara McLachlan
played over and over
as we chatted about our love lives,
still unborn in many ways,
and seasonally appropriate perhaps:
we were preparing "him" room
by playing into and eventually clearing away
false fantasies for family hooked on notions of grandeur,
played out in painstaking neglect.

Our hearts were motivated for something in the song;
neither one of us could help hitting the repeat button
again and again as we ventured toward
Cactus on College where mango salsa watered our mouths
and sexy dyke couples dazzled our eyes.

We would come to, over the years, at different times,
the same hospital hallways and didactic sessions,
same seminary professors and theology texts,
looking for and perhaps answering back to
the mid-western religions of our youth, so compounded by
fear and mistrust, so jam-packed with familiarity and comfort.
We would come to, over the years, at different times
each other, broken-open and other times broken-hearted,
looking for and perhaps providing something with longevity
that could sustain the highs and lows of living honestly.

So today you are walking with Pastor Wilkes my former
mentor and boss and I am sitting where you used to sit,
tending the men you used to tend, while listening to
Sarah McLachlan once more. This time as she sings
"I would be happy just to hold the hands I love
on this Winter's Night with you," I'm thinking of the family prayer
we will say together tomorrow night, finger-locked with the families
we've courageously built from the rubble
of our origins--and the title "Thanksgiving"
takes on new meaning.

Saturday, November 22, 2008

Hope: Beyond the Rhetoric

I'd like this post to be a conversation starter because I've been thinking, long and hard, about something particular and would appreciate your insights.

Hope is up. It's in the marketplace, the pulpit, the town hall meeting and the public square. Hope is on t-shirts and children's faces. It's being written and spoken with fervor and undeniable frequency. Hope is up. Those of us brave enough to call ourselves theologians take special interest when religiously coded words become common place rhetoric in the culture. I consider it my task, not because I'm a theologian, but because I am a theologically oriented ethicist, to bring this common place rhetoric into more detailed focus. So let us get into the nuts and bolts of what hope means...

A couple months ago I heard a person doing on-the-ground justice work in Darfur say "Hope is not a muscle you can pay someone else to exercise for you." He went on to say something like this: Hope is not something you feel, it's something you build--not an emotion, but something born of and through action.

Some of us are feeling hopeful these days, not just because America elected Obama, but because America seemed to care about something for the first time in a long time. America cared about something productive, something to be created, as opposed to the care we saw during and after 9/11 which was tragic attention turned into revenge-seeking violence. There's an aliveness today in America and it's grounded in hope for a different future. I am weary, however, when i think about the possibilities for hope. I know I've been guilty of feeling hope and sitting on it, considering it an affect, a result, not a initiator or sounding bell. Sometimes I'm so used to feeling bad, that when I feel something good, I want to cling to it and dwell in it as long as I possibly can. Perhaps others can relate to this. There is a possibility that we will watch Obama and think "he's going to take care of it all" while we sit back and relish in the fact that we, the people, elected him--as if our work is done. This kind of relishing won't be helpful if we, as a nation, are to ascend from the depths of hell we've created in the international psyche and domestic front. Our rigorous hope for a new kind of leadership elected Obama, but a detached American hope will not sustain him as a leader or sustain our efforts for justice that pre-date him and will outlive him (G-d willing). I am so grateful our president elect used the language of patriotic participation and personal sacrifice in his acceptance speech. I am wondering how we intend to respond to this call. I am wondering what hope requires of us as individuals, as communities, as a nation, as global citizens in these days ahead?

Are we to act? to preserve? to share? to keep the possibilities of/for despair in mind so as to avoid delusional happiness?
Are we to speak of it or should we let it speak to us?

What responsibility do we have to one another in the light and reality of hope? What kind of calling does hope make upon your life??

Thursday, November 13, 2008

After All: Vulnerability On The Flesh

For a creature
so battered
so backed into a corner
so skeptical of all occasions
to drop his shield
to remove his armor and disrobe completely
allowing his sores and soreness to be seen
by a one-time cage-closing visitor from the past
is nothing short of radical.

You always knew there was nothing that could keep me
and nothing that could ever keep me away.

Oh that I were a miracle worker,
one anointed with a healing touch,
or elixir breath,
powerful enough
to make them disappear.

But I am not
so I simply thank you for showing yourself
after all this time
in all your shame
after all the hurt between us.

I simply thank you for showing yourself
regardless of the impossibility of cure
by this love that once tried
over and again
to fix every untouchable wound

but couldn't, after all.

Supporting Our Troops: Gender Deconstruction & Mental Health Recovery

For years, the topic of masculinity triggered my academic and cultural curiosity. I wanted to understand the power, destructiveness and fascination surrounding and constructing male identity. More than anything though, I wanted to control the violence. I figured if I understood the issues, I had a better chance of solving them. Ha!

I saw men as the "problem." Well, not "men" per se, but males (or male identified people) seemed to be the ones shooting people in mass, raping people in mass, scaring people in mass. There had to be a link between maleness and violence, right? Of course there was evidence that womyn created these atrocities too, but in the case of female violence it seemed to be a "few bad apples" scenario whereas with men the numbers spoke for themselves. (I'm talking about the enterprise of violence, not genders in and of themselves--as if those things exist objectively anyway.) This interest in masculinity, which unfortunately co-constructed my feminism (think Edward Said's theory of constructing Otherness in order to construct oneself here), drove me to study the bodies, brains, cultural tides and organizing principles of "manhood." As a result I heard more and more about womyn as victims, womyn as consequential side-kicks in male dominated circles, womyn as agents of suffering etc. It's hard not to get angry when looking at the gender divide from this angle. It's easy to become jaded and bitter towards men with this single-focused lens.

Working in my current job has given me a completely different take on "masculinity". I'm not exactly sure why and how this context has shifted my thinking, but it has in a profound way. I am seeing "masculinity's" victimization of men here like never before. I cannot count how many times I've heard these brave vets talk about the "suck it up and be a man" ethos underlying their resistance to getting mental health help. They are suffering because of stupid ideas about femininity and masculinity too in ways many feminists are too busy fuming to actually hear about. (I have certainly been guilty of this.)

It is absolutely imperative that we stop stigmatizing therapy and self-help groups in this culture. We must stop "feminizing" psychological and emotional support. Getting help, reaching out, refusing to become a victim of one's own (terrorized) mind is not weak. To characterize it as such sets people up to deal with their struggles alone for fear of being emasculated. And no one, NO ONE, heals from trauma in isolation. If we do not put a stop to this stigma, we are going to see the suicide, homicide, domestic and social violence rates continue to climb. Trust me: the kind of PTSD coming back from The War on Terror is nothing to ignore.

So, if we really want to "Support The Troops" like some bumper stickers claim, then let's stand up against the stigmatization of mental health recovery. Whenever people associate getting help with gender, break through the bullshit. The fact that body parts get associated with character traits is, in itself, a problem in this culture but that's for another blog. Today: let's just try to get a nurturing environment together before our society implodes from another generation of soldiers coming home from one kind of torture to another.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

An Attempt

I walked down Hubbart Street the other day, not because that's the correct spelling of your name, and not because I knew where it would lead, but because I had to do something, anything, to feel you near. It was a sorry ass attempt and the best I could do. The trees were beautiful. I should have guessed.

Empty (Cyber) Spaces

There: No flopping against the wall like fish,
no thrashing about the borders and boundaries,
no nose against the concrete slab,
no "no" in this space.

There: Hours and hours,
zoning and zooming,
fuming and fazing,
ignoring and spacing,
anything: just take me out of here.

Here: the place where all the no's congregate:
no money
no more school
no g-d (to speak of)
no cure
no making it hurt less
no fancy furniture
no getting high
no salving his sores
no children in the tummy
no easy space

Here: the place where every limit never set before, bombs.

Saturday, November 8, 2008

An Open Letter Post Prop 8

(Still in draft form...workin on it....comments please!)

Dear children of GLBT parents at FCCR:

You were the first faces to cross my mind on Wednesday morning when I heard about the passing of Proposition 8. I thought about what it must have been like for you to go to school, to face what your peers were saying about your moms and dads, to face the consequences of what the California voting populace had to say about your moms and dads. I assume lots of people are talking about the things that affect you, but very few people are actually talking to you. So I pray, that just this once, you will allow me to reoccupy the position of "pastor" in your hearts because I think you are the first ones that need to hear from your church.

While being your youth minister 4 years ago I watched you struggle with loyalties to family and the need to have friends. You are, after all, living in a place where Calvary Chapels and LDS churches seem to make the loudest squawk about what's Christian and what's not. Your friends told you that your two mommies were going to hell. Adopted children of gay couples were teased and tormented for being part of non-"biblically" structured families. Back then, some of you even started to question whether or not your Christian friends were right. You admitted feeling confused about what you were hearing at school and what you were experiencing at home. I imagine after the passing of Prop 8, these questions are even more confusing, even more unsettling. How could you not feel confused? The truth is, my dear ones, the world is confused about this stuff. I want to offer you an apology today. Some of us adults have been too slow to defend you and your families. Some of our churches have kept silent while mean-spirited people attacked your moms and dads. I am so sorry. You deserve better from us. By G-d's grace, I pray we do better by you from here on out.

I am currently watching an HBO series entitled Carnival. It's about a group of traveling outcasts that creatively attempt to "survive in the tough economic times of the 1930s." The show pales in comparison to the Sopranos and my personal favorite, The Wire, but I was struck by something this morning while watching season 2 of Carnival. The show features a dominant theme of good versus evil. Ironically, the most evil character in the show is a pastor of a Christian church. He speaks deceit and lies, all in the name of "God." And he gets away with it, even prospers because of people's desperation during the Depression. One thing religion has been unfortunately good at doing is selling people false certainties during uncertain times. The evil pastor in Carnival teaches people to cling to their dogmas, to grasp their previously held beliefs about human sinfulness with new found energy. He thinks this clinging and grasping will deliver them from aimlessness and despair. Instead, it results in more misery, more misled groups of people, less love, less deliverance. Unfortunately this is exactly the same dynamic in many of today's Christian churches.

People are losing their homes in this country. Major banks have closed because of greed and bad ideas about money. More and more boys and girls just a few years older than you keep being shipped off to war. Less and less of them are coming home and very few of us see end of that in sight. Political campaigns seem to get more hateful and ugly over the years. Joblessness is at a record high, which causes families lots of hardship at home. These are uncertain times. We've hit our maximum capacity for aimlessness and despair. As a result people are selling and clinging to out-dated ideas about what makes a man, what makes a woman, what makes a marriage and how G-d feels about all of that. It's hard to see this repetition of history and not give-up in despair.

When Barack Obama got elected some of us experienced a lift in this despair. (I am not trying to disclose who I voted for in this letter because my politics aren't the point. I am simply lifting up the fact that the face of leadership actually changed in this country.) People who had been marginalized, brutalized and systematically oppressed for hundreds of years got to see one of their own take the presidential office of the United States of America. What a day for all of us to witness, but particularly the African American community. For a moment, hope entered in and a new-found optimism returned to hearts gone cold. People danced in the streets. Churches all over the country boomed with excitement. Cars honked their horns block after block. Change had finally come!

The next morning they were still counting Prop 8 ballots in CA. Some of us, still spinning from the night before, still believing in miracles, convinced ourselves that a story with an entirely happy ending was possible. We were wrong. I'm sure some of the adults around you have tried to explain, in rational terms, why this happened. I would love to give you a rational explanation, but I don't have one. That's right: this pastor doesn't have any certainty to sell. In fact, I will tell you what I really think: life is unfair. Same-gender loving couples were denied their rights by California voters in an unfair manner. Democracy failed for the GLBT community on November 5 2008. Some of you already know life is unfair because of the way you are teased, because you know there are little ones just like you in other countries who don't have food to eat or clean water to drink. Some of you already know life is unfair because you've watched some of the coolest and most caring members of our church community die way too young, like Claudia Byrd and Mari Ruiz Torres. So I am not telling you something you don't already know.

I'm writing today, not to take away your pain (because pastors of any integrity will admit they cannot do that), but to witness it. What has happened to you and to your families is nothing short of systemic violence. Your hurt and sadness belong to all of us. You are right to cry, to scream, to feel trapped and torn. You are right to feel confused and conflicted. You are right to question the fairness of life and even to question the whereabouts of G-d. The love between your parents is not wrong. Same-gender loving is right and good. It is a gift from and of G-d. Being raised by gay parents does not make you less of a human being, in fact, it might even make you stronger than the average kid because you've had to develop coping skills and alternative ways of looking at the world. That's a great thing! Family is not created by a man and a woman. Family is created by love, period. You have every right to see the stupidity of Prop 8 and to feel outraged.

You also have the right to take care of yourselves while your families are being targeted. In fact, as your pastor, I whole-heartedly encourage you to do just that.

I pray that you will talk about how you are feeling instead of bottling it up inside. I pray that you will explore, with your family and church, what it means to be a target at school, particularly how to defend yourself and how to defend your family when people say mean things. Perhaps my most intense prayer is that you will not become hardened, that in the pain caused by this current affair you will not reject your parents love or try to prove your own gender and sexuality in violent ways. In other words: I hope you do not take the tools of homophobia and use them to oppress yourself and others.

The Bible wasn't Jesus' weapon of hate. In fact Jesus wasn't married and he didn't read the New Testament! There are many ways to interpret that book, and the older you get the more serious I hope you become in studying the scriptures for yourself. Further, there is no one "Christian" opinion out there. Even though certain Christians claim to have the "Truth" with a capital T, we are all people of "faith" and faith is the exercise of risk. We risk believing something we don't have ultimate proof to confirm. So, you might ask, how do we know we have faith in the right things? I don't think we ever really know, but William Sloane Coffin said a brilliant thing once: "It's always a good decision to change your mind when to do so will widen your heart."

What if wide open heartedness became the litmus test for Christians? What a different world we'd be living in...

It's hard to keep a wide open heart when intolerance and discrimination appear to keep winning. So maybe in these days, if you can't keep it wide open, just keep it open a crack by loving each other, by sharing your experience with one another and bearing one an other's burdens. Historically, the kids of FCCR have been incredibly good at getting each other through challenging times. I hope you continue that trend right now.

Finally: what makes me so mad about Prop 8 is that the state of CA has legally shut down what G-d has beckoned us to do: to love one another. So be renegade Christians. Do what the Early Christian Church did: love in the face of hate, love in the face of corrupt government. Love one another until the rest of us start waking up and paying attention. When our societies finally catch on, they will thank you. It might take a while, as we've seen with President Obama, but something tells me there's more dancing in the streets to be done. On that day, believe me, this church will be the "cloud of witnesses" surrounding your joy.

Until then, may G-d keep you inspired and protected in the Spirit of our liberating Christ.
Peace,

Emily Joye McGaughy, M.Div
Chaplain, Oakland CA
Former Director of Youth Ministries, Riverside CA

Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Prophecy & Prayer

Last night while jumping, singing, dancing and crying on the corner of Broadway & Grand, James said "Every time I've been in the streets like this, it's been because I was against something. I've never joined in mass gatherings like this for something."

I give thanks for the election of Barack Obama by the American People. I give thanks for the opportunity to celebrate that victory surrounded by my friends and loved ones. I give thanks for the Oakland Police who blocked off the streets so we could celebrate. I give thanks for John McCain's speech because he was (mostly) respectful. I give thanks for a future where fewer children might come home with limbs blown off and brains forever altered. I give thanks for my citizenship in the United States of America. I give thanks for all the service men and women (past and present) who have dedicated their lives to making sure our ballots count. I give thanks to my Beloved showing face and fiery passion in the Ark that's bending toward justice. May it continue to lean towards those whose love gets mocked and denied. May their weariness and tears be used in the final resolution(s) of unnecessary pains. May the Ark continue to lean towards those who need their hate transformed. May it continue to correct our images of grandeur and omnipotence. May we fully live into the carved space of this moment that affirms us and yet lures us further. Amen.

Monday, November 3, 2008

The Center

"How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say...and the words
get it all wrong...
...I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can..."

--Jack Gilbert "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart"

Saturday, November 1, 2008

One Year Later: Different Time & Place but Still Interpreting Bodies

Just got off the phone with a friend named Anna who has moved back to the mid-west to pastor a small church after 3 years of seminary in Berkeley. We took "Hermeneutics: Interpreting Bodies" together, a class taught by Dr. Marion Grau. So it's no surprise that this blog posting would find its spark in Anna's comment that "this work requires reading people." Since leaving seminary, Anna has made a pretty big cultural swap and so have I. These cultural swaps, going from one specific environment to another, require intense reflection and integration. As both of us try to learn what's necessary in order to survive and serve in these newly assigned communities, I am taken back to our lessons in Hermeneutics. (Guess I should acknowledge that the $50,000 of debt I accumulated in student loans is worth something.)

You see hermeneutics is a fancy word, but at bottom, it's basically the art of interpretation. Hermeneutics involves seeing, hearing, reading, understanding, translation, application, discerning who, what, when, where and why as they apply to authors, readers, and the spaces and times between the two. Hermeneutics also pertains to the way we interpret people because, as the pastoral care field has been quick to point out, persons are just living human documents. Anna and I spent hours and hours reading chapters of books and articles in our class reader about hermeneutics and then we spent hours and hours discussing the relevance of those readings to the spins and science of living. We wrestled with the questions: why do we see what we see? how do we know the accuracy of our interpretations and conclusions about the content and context of texts, environments, people and communities? what is the point in even asking these questions if it's all mere speculation as post-modern and post-structural theories hypothesize? After speaking with Anna this afternoon about her new job and reflecting on my own experience at the VA these last 2 months, I'm struck that we are asking the same questions just in different times and different places.

I often ask myself questions like this one: "Would this 65 year old Vietnam veteran be as excited to see me as his Chaplain if I weren't a twenty seven year old blonde female?" Let's take this question as the starting place for a hermeneutical exercise. By looking at this curiosity from several angels, we might discern the hidden assumptions I am holding. First I assume a sexualized "reading" of the Chaplain. Second I assume that sexualized read pertains to solidified gender roles that play into heterosexual normativity--I assume the vet interprets me as and sexually prefers women, I assume the vet "is in fact" and considers himself to be male, I assume the Chaplain's blondness and age have something to do with the sexualizing of the encounter. Third I assume such "reading" actually impacts (if not dominates) the vet's affirmative response to the Chaplain's offer to provide pastoral care. So you see, the question itself is loaded with interpretations of its own. Another level of hermeneutical exploration might uncover why in fact my question gets asked in the first place. Perhaps the Chaplain's previous experience, stereotypes about 65 year old Vietnam vets, and/or CPE curriculum focused on 'asking questions about difference' are giving birth to this question in this moment. If we were to go even further down this hermeneutical spiral, we might ask "what different question might be asked if a different Chaplain and a different Vietnam vet were to meet in this space and time, or a different space and time? How might the conclusions be different? Why?"

This form of investigation can get nauseatingly detailed and seemingly never-ending. But I think the questions are important ones, especially for folks involved in the helping professions. And here's why...

Judgment is a big part of our trade. (I have a CPE colleague who has asked poignant questions about the role of judgment in spiritual care so I am especially in tune to the judgment aspects of diagnosis and treatment paradigms in Chaplaincy these days.) Whether or not it's "right", persons who provide care--of any kind--are required to make decisions. That's right: benevolent types make judgments, judgments about who/what needs care, how that care should be sought, applied and evaluated, and what kinds of ethical/moral frameworks should be in place as we reflect on the care process in its entirety. For instance, as a chaplain, I am constantly called upon to "spiritually assess" my patients. I am asked to interpret a patients language, hir history, current condition, behavior, hir attitude, and hir relations. From those interpretations which I make in dialogue with interdisciplinary teams, various resources, my faith tradition, etc, I must decide what treatment plan is best. Then I'm asked to reflect on that process and decide whether or not it was "effective" (a term worth deconstructing sometimes). I am--all the time--reading, discerning, concluding and responding. But here's the kicker: I'm never quite sure about any of it.

When talking about her current attempts to interpret the cultural codes in/around her new work environment, Anna wisely said (and I'm not quoting verbatim) "I must make these conclusions about who they are in order to do my job, but when it comes down to it, I'm not always clear on who I am so how can I be sure my conclusions about them are on-target?" Exactly. And it takes a pastor of immense humility to admit such a thing. (I don't know when or how religion started selling people easy answers because in all my days of ministering, studying theology and providing spiritual health care, I have never arrived at one.) When I'm honest with myself, I'm aware that every conclusion I arrive at and each move I make based on interpretations of who, what, when, where and why contain levels of bias, speculation, subjectivity, relativity, and risk. If I am being really really honest with myself then I'm aware it's hard to admit these vulnerabilities when institutions and the people I serve in those institutions grant me authority. But if I want to live with and work from integrity, I must admit them.

As a Chaplain with tattoos I'm constantly confronted with people's "reads" of me. Sometimes my body art inspires resistance, other times curiosity. Some folks don't give a shit. I get to see the expectations people have of a) chaplains' bodies & b) tattooed peoples' professions. I am always grateful when these patients and families allow their initial interpretations to be challenged, to hold out on judging me once and for all. The least I can do is reciprocate. Yes, I make initial judgments. We all do; we have to in order to get out of bed in the morning. But as a person trying to live with integrity I must allow those judgments to be challenged or proven wrong when new information comes along. Further, I need friends and communities of accountability to call me on those judgments. As with so many exercises in faith, this one of judging and reforming judgment should be done with a decent dose of humility (which means I've got a loooong way to go) and 'shant be done alone.