Lessons and parallelisms: Weight Lifting and White Anti-Racist Activism

--It'll hurt at first. Keep doing it.
--The more you do it, the stronger you'll get. You can get stronger than you ever imagine. At some point, you'll question how you ever lived without it because it brings such satisfaction. Discipline and repetition are key. Don't EVER give up.
--You'll sweat and get messy. Sometimes it'll smell bad and look hideous. Soon, that won't matter because it feels so right and the results are undeniable.
--There's an important place you must find: it's the place between over-exertion (that leads to injury) and laziness (letting yourself off the hook). Once you find that place, stay there. But only stay there until your ability to exert increases. Then step it up.
--You'll get sore. That's right when you're about to make a leap into new dimensions of strength. Pay attention to the pain, but don't let it stop you. When experiencing soreness, call upon your own strength or the strength of God. It helps, seriously.

--If you constantly try to mimic other people's muscle-building regimens and routines, you'll never figure out the approach that works for you. Listen to your body and take some risks! You'll stumble into a specific way of doing things eventually. This process of listening, risking and stumbling is the only way you'll discover a sustainable routine. You and those you love deserve sustainability.

--Your muscles get stronger because tissue/fibers break-down and build back up. Allow both.

--As your muscles get stronger: cardio endurance capacity increases. It takes a while, but when it happens, it's AWESOME. You'll run harder and faster than ever.

--Work out partners will save your life, particularly those who don't have huge muscles yet and keep it real about how hard it is.

--Work out partners who know how to crack the right joke when you're muscling through that last *almost impossible* set are priceless. Have at least three of those on-call.

--When in doubt, consult the professionals who have years of experience working with the equipment and know all those special "insider" tricks.

--Distraction helps sometimes. Other times it gets in the way. Figure out the difference and cultivate healthy distractions.

--You will fall off the routine and feel like shit. Forgive yourself and start again without making a big deal about it. The only good thing about "off-time" is that you realize how necessary and good it is when sticking with the program. 

--Those who are choosing not to engage will despise your strength and look at your effort with suspicion. Invite them to walk with you. They'll see how good it feels to move.

--If you really push yourself in public, people will stare at you, especially if you're working hard enough to make noise. You will feel silly and awkward. Get over it.   

--Music makes everything a little bit easier.
--Literature helps too.
--Drink lots of water. Get as much rest as you need. No one can sustain a good routine without the proper nutrients.
--Core strength (stomach muscles) is/are the hardest to develop. They are the key.

Mel Speaks: Invisibility/Hypervisibility

A brave soul telling truth in an often times cruel world.
All love to my courageous companion Melvin Antoine.

Systems and Suicides

An article for the Battle Creek Enquirer

By: Rev. Emily Joye McGaughy

Flipping through these pages, you’ve probably figured out by now that the topic of this month’s Body, Mind and Spirit section of the Enquirer is depression. Suicide is the ultimate (and final) act of depression. Therefore, when exploring this topic it would be avoidant and down-right unethical not to focus attention on the recent suicides of Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, Justin Aaberg and Tyler Clementi.

Anyone paying attention to the media in the last month has heard these names. Anyone paying attention has also heard these suicides talked about in terms of gay identity and bullying (which in these cases seems like a dangerously watered-down term; how about “hate-criming”?). Gay kids have been killing themselves for a long time. This is nothing new. I do not know exactly what shifted in our culture to make the national attention of gay suicides possible, but the visibility of these heart-breaking episodes affords us a critical opportunity—as a culture—to rethink and rework ourselves.

Before going any further, I want to answer an important question I assume some readers might be asking: why is an ordained Christian minister using her space in the spirituality section of the B.C. Enquirer to address these issues? Depression is a spiritual issue. Suicide is a spiritual issue. Premature and unnecessary death of children anywhere is a spiritual issue. Further, there is no institution guiltier of propagating homophobic and gender-based violence in this society than Christianity. Columnist Dan Savage recently said of the gay teen suicides: “The Church has blood on its hands.” He’s right. This is one Christian minister’s attempt to acknowledge, repent from and subvert spiritual abuse being carried out in the name of Jesus. There is nothing, not one single thing, about these suicides that isn’t spiritual.

Continued focus on supposed “isolated incidents” of aggressive teen-age behavior in response to homosexuality might be preventing our society from having a harder conversation, a conversation that implicates all of us. I believe social outrage and horror over issues of non-heterosexuality have little to do with who is having sex with who and everything to do with the fear of having gender roles thrown into question. 

Most human beings have, at least once or twice (if not thousands of times) experienced the limits of gender in ways that have profoundly impacted them. Perhaps you were the girl who could throw a football and immediately got labeled a “tom boy.” Perhaps you were the boy who experienced feelings of sadness about cruelty as a kid and got called a “sissy” as a result. Perhaps you are the person whose daily life, whose very body is neglected every single day because it somehow does not conform to this simplistic boy-girl system. Or on the flip side: maybe you are the high feminine woman, recognizable and envied, yet only acknowledged when you’re playing the part of a beauty queen. Maybe you are the football-playing young man, familiar and popular, yet dismissed time and time again because people assume you lack intelligence or compassion. Even those whose gender presentation matches social norms on the surface can experience deeply harmful expectations internally and externally.

Given that many of us have experienced gender-based oppression at some point, it is surprising that we as a society are so slow to question why things are the way they are. And yet, for many of us questioning gender-based reality is like questioning the air we breathe. We human beings are gender-branded from the get go: “it’s a boy” or “it’s a girl” accompany almost every infant into the world. This branding is of course done in conjunction with the observation of an infant’s genitalia. What’s striking is not that we identify babies based on body parts—although why certain body parts have been recognized as the markers of identity still boggles the mind. What’s striking is the meaning we ascribe to body parts, meaning that is arbitrarily assigned and yet upheld as factual and beyond question.

You know about these meanings, right? They are not just about male/female, but about how we dress, what jobs we ‘should’ do and who we are allowed to love. You know, meanings like women are supposed to be feminine and sexually orient towards men while men are supposed to be masculine and sexually orient towards women. That is what Asher Brown, Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, Justin Aaberg and Tyler Clementi did not do. They did not uphold the traditional notions of what it means to be a man. And when they did not abide by those unwritten, yet daily enforced rules, they paid the ultimate and final price. (One wonders what is so deeply threatening about men loving each other) They did not pay that price because they were different, but because our framework of what’s natural makes this world unsafe for those who do not conform to or confirm the accuracy of that framework. Therefore, their deaths belong to all of us.

A world without them must confront the facts: either what’s “natural” isn’t or we must go on accepting conditions that drive young people to kill themselves. I for one pray to God that we will forsake the latter. 

Rage Today

No one is born inherently inferior to anyone else.

God is doper than that.  

No one chooses what they are born into:

not poverty not privilege.

Social conditions create
vastly different vulnerabilities

for communities and individuals.

Therefore...

Until justice is actualized

and no one comes into this world

more vulnerable than anyone else

for reasons they did not choose,

I don't want to hear anything

about safety, comfort or security

from those who already have it.

The end.

Cancer's Spiritual Classroom

Cancer’s Spiritual Classroom
*For the Battle Creek Enquirer*
By: Rev. Emily Joye McGaughy


Many of us have heard the popular aphorism “there are no atheists in fox holes.” Driving this catchy phrase is the proposition that facing death will cause anyone to seek God.

It’s not true.

People deal with impending death in diverse ways. Some people do, in fact, become religious, finding comfort in the ability to call upon a benevolent higher power in times of uncertainty. Other people become adamantly opposed to the notion of God, finding their life circumstance unfair and inconsistent with what they have been taught about God’s goodness. Some people assume they’ll figure it out when they cross over and don’t spend much time dwelling on the God-question while they’re still alive on earth. This diversity of experience troubles the water of simplistic spirituality, making it difficult for popular aphorisms or sound-byte answers to be ethically offered unto those who are dying.

Faith can be an incredible sustaining force for those who are facing the finality of their bodies (which is all of us in different time frames!). But not all faiths are created equal. Contemporary research shows that if people think God is the source of their pain and that God intentionally wills their suffering, they are more likely to exhibit symptoms of depression and anxiety. During my clinical training as a hospital chaplain my supervisor always reminded me: “it’s not about religion or no religion, faith or doubt; it’s about how those things impact the person’s life.”

Seven months ago when I moved to Battle Creek to join the pastoral staff at First Congregational Church I met Sue. She was helping me move some furniture into my new place and mentioned that she’d lost her mom to breast cancer twenty years prior and just three years ago she’d gotten her own diagnosis of gall-bladder cancer (at the age of 50). She also informed me she’d be starting another round of chemo therapy soon. “I’m doing really well but I know there will come a time when the other shoe drops.” It was quiet for a long time. Before she left that evening I offered to meet with her regularly for spiritual care. She agreed and we’ve been getting together every other Wednesday for 7 months now to do crafts. Most of the time we sit in silence working on our individual pieces of art. Sometimes we talk about what’s going on at church and at home; other times we talk about politics and current events. You’d be surprised how often we talk about Lady GaGa!

Sue Nielson & Ejoye (July 21st 2010)

My favorite Wednesdays are the ones when Sue talks about what she’s learning in her walk with cancer, how this time in her life has deepened her spirituality. She recently shared a piece of writing with me that says “A lot of people ask me how I can be so strong. The absolute biggest part of it is my faith in God.” Contrary to popular quips, faith in God is not always a crutch. In Sue’s case, it is an incredible motivating force, a force that enables her to face the grueling regimens of chemo therapy with courage, a force that enables her to keep finding joy with her husband and friends, a force that keeps her seeking the most of what each day has to offer. I would do anything to relieve Sue’s suffering. I would. But as a pastor I would also do anything to help cancer-free people learn the lessons that Sue is teaching me every Wednesday. For instance the other day she came into my office and said “There’s something this disease does to you; it makes you live in the moment. You don’t know what your future is going to be so you take advantage of every moment you have.”

Fox holes do different things to different people. Perhaps our focus should be less on belief or religious identity in such times, and more on whether or not people are taking advantage of every precious moment they’ve got left. In fact, that’s something we could all give some more focus. Thanks, Sue.

Frost & Ryberg

Okay, so you know how that Frost poem talks about the road less traveled by making all the difference? With all due respect to one of the finest American poets of all time, I think that poem reflects the 'values' of rugged individualism at the heart of white-male escapist psuedo-spirituality. So I'd like to propose something Other (hee hee, pun). For me, colleagues make all the difference. And I have a new one. His name is Thomas Ryberg. This is his precious mug by the candle light next to yours truly. He makes music and makes sacred the materiality around him, no matter the form. He's been lighting up my life and the folks at Battle Creek this summer. I'm grateful. I'm hopeful for continued collaboration on these winding roads, those we choose and those we don't. May it be so.

Side Light

I have learned to wait

patiently

for the side light,

the one close to the ground,

the one you might miss if you

don't watch your step.

The side light,

not the beam thrust down-from-heaven

--i have yet to experience one of those--

no,

the unassuming gesture of illumination

that pierces on the slant

and originates unexpectedly

from a source that's been there all along,

a source you cannot see, but know, yes know

somehow.

The side light,

on an axis that neither shocks nor mistakes you,

but in a horizontal kind of way

makes a leveling miracle of proportion.

7 months in...my pastoral reflections

Greetings, my people.

I try hard not to make my blog about the stuff of ministry, because Lord knows I have to do enough religious/spiritual writing in my professional capacity. I've wanted to keep my blog a place for personal reflection, a place where it isn't necessary to connect all experiences "back" to the symbols and traditions and narratives and liturgical frames of Christianity. The line between personal and professional reflection isn't drawn hard and fast, but i do think the integrity of content and context is important for every writer to consider, particularly one who plays a public leadership role. I may not always appear to "honor" the line--in fact, I think it's often a prophetic act to blur that line--but you can be sure I'm always keeping an eye on it. Having said all that, I'd like to take this blogging moment as an opportunity to reflect on my 7 months in parish ministry thus far. A couple statements that feel a bit random but altogether true.

--it's all people and relationships. make and break.
--funerals manufacture a tenderness in me that I always find surprising.
--i take this work seriously, more seriously than anything else i've ever done.
--it breaks my heart way too often.
--it stuns me into reverent joy equally as often.
--the mainline church has absolutely no idea what it wants to be about these days, and quite frankly, that makes working inside of it quite frustrating.
--i've never been more convinced that the concept of "scripture" needs deconstruction. people are in psychological and spiritual prisons behind that concept and there's no one to blame more vehemently than spineless clergy who refuse to keep it real about systems of power.
--i love the sanctuary of my church. space and beauty matter, seriously.
--i love building my life around liturgy.
--i love working with Tom Ott.
--flowing from the prior affirmation: i cannot imagine being able to minister outside of a collaborative colleague relationship.
--music is more important than preaching.
--lots of people are terrified of the Holy Spirit, a fear that--in my humble opinion--has its root in body hatred, white supremacy and patriarchy.
--the edge between fakery and sincerity in worship is razor sharp, and the smell of the former makes me want to run from the room.
--my appreciation for self-reflective, flexible persons grows with each passing day, particularly when planning worship.
--gossip is ugly and those who are most corrupt in their personal lives seem to be the ones most prone to talk smack about others. there's a difference between evaluation and destruction; most folks seem to get the difference and I am most afraid of those few who do not.
--the pastor role is increasing my awareness of the value of patience.
--i wish the older generation of womyn in my congregation knew how to connect with me in ways other than commenting on my hair, shoes and outfits.
--paying attention and present moment awareness are the keys to the kingdom.
--sermon writing is like being a mad scientist and experimenting on yourself first.
--the pulpit is the most vulnerable place i've ever stood.
--sometimes i think the work of ministry is about the work of managing anxiety--my own and the anxiety belonging to those around me.
--the church'd be better off with more Jesus and less God, more incarnation, less abstraction. (that's nothing new for me, but this work has confirmed it...theologians you'll know what i mean by this)

Okay, that's enough for now. I'm sure more will come to me and i'll update. Peace!

Healing & Prayer

The Phallacy of misplaced concreteness according to Alfred North Whitehead: "mistaking the abstract for the real."

People ask me for healing prayers.
"I want God to heal me"
"I want God to heal my mother"
"Please, Pastor, pray for healing."

Healing, of course, meaning different things to different people, I seek understanding first, but mostly want to tell them a story of a time when...

Week after week
in the midst of my most troubled circumstance
and greatest physical paralysis
you traveled over the bridge
took off your sweatshirt
crawled into bed with me
put your elbows around my ears
looked me deeply in the eyes
and began
...
touched me so swift, so sovereign
that i forgot my pain
reached inside so beautifully
that i remembered why giving up on life
was not an option
made love to me so mercifully
that hope rebirthed again and again.

That's the story I long to tell when they request prayers for healing. I want them to know about you and that thing you did to keep me alive. I want them to know they can do it too, "it" being the stuff of healing that happens when we offer ourselves fully into the receptive places of concrete need. Less prayer. More offering. You taught me that.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Battle Creek Enquirer

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year
By: Rev. Emily Joye McGaughy


Years ago the mega office supply store Staples put out a commercial that has continued to loop on major network television each fall. Some of you might remember this comedic attempt to lure in back-to-school shoppers. An anonymous dad frolicks down the aisle, pushing a shopping cart packed with folders, paper, pencils, rulers and glue. He hops around with jubilee, pulling items off the shelf while the pop-culture Christmas tune “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” plays in the background. Behind the gleeful father follows a pair of siblings shuffling their feet and shoulders slumped, the sadness of summer’s end written all over their bodies.

Good advertising always includes elements that will hook the viewing audience. One way to hook the viewing audience is to include media content that sparks widespread cultural recognition. Staples did a brilliant job of hooking the culture with their back-to-school advertisement because they managed to capture two things almost any family can recognize at summer’s end: 1) parent relief & 2) kid woe. Most parents welcome the routine that a return to school enforces upon the family calendar. Most kids lament the freedom of summer that a return to school inevitably shuts down. Staples got it on both fronts.


Contrary to Western notions of time, human beings live cyclic lives. Even though the U.S. calendar year begins on January 1st, for many people the year begins in late August or early September with the school cycle. The return to school marks a major transition in our culture. It is a transition from cycles of rest to a period of intense productivity. It is a transition from cycles of free play to a period of expectation-filled comings and goings. We go from slowing down, letting loose and chilling out to beginning again, setting in, and getting down to business. When our kids go back to school, they embody a cycle that’s been happening for a long time: cultural investment in education. There is no investment more important to our future.


While this investment cannot be undervalued or underplayed, the return to school can also stress people out. Hustle sets in. Getting kids out of beds and properly bathed, getting breakfast on the table and lunches packed, getting backpacks ready and navigating the school morning traffic build-up—well, let’s just say it’s a miracle that we continue to participate in this cycle year after year given the amount of energy it requires. Yes, it’s a miracle. Investing in education takes a million efforts, big and small, year after year. And it isn’t easy!

As a pastor, I know that the biggest spiritual challenges often come up in times of crisis, but also in the stuff of everyday life. As the school year picks up, with all the miracles and challenges it brings, a cycle gets concretized through those million little efforts, big and small, that we often go about doing without a second thought. But perhaps some ritualized mindfulness might help us hang on to some of summer’s peace throughout the school year. Ritualized mindfulness need not be anything spiritually gargantuan. Ritualized mindfulness can be simple. You could light a candle in acknowledgment of the sacred before waking the kids. Your family could observe a moment of silence together before eating breakfast. You could count blessings in the shower. When stuck in a traffic jam, you could practice deep breathing. The possibilities are endless! The point is that even during the most wonderful time of the year—the time when we as a society reaffirm our investment in education—there can be incredible stress. Introducing a ritual of mindfulness into your routine could produce lasting peace.

So why not try a New Years Resolution in September?

Temple Bodies

Intro
I decided to create a survey on Facebook in order to help my sermon along. I asked people to say in a word, sentence or paragraph what it means to glorify God in the body. Here are some answers I got.

LeAnn: yoga, eating healthy, listening to music and moving...
Elizabeth: Loving other bodies.
Haley Macon: Loving and appreciating your own body and all of the wonderful things it can do. Speaking in a loving fashion about it and encouraging others to do the same. It's kind of a "screw you!" to God to be complaining about the size of one's hips when God has given you so many other physical blessing. Joyful movement.
Jeffrey: when we pray, opening our eyes instead of closing them. we start with seeing each others bodies and saying the words of the sacred and seeing the sacred on each others bodies.
Audrey: feed the hungry, heal the sick, sight for the blind, liberty for captives.... needs of real bodies being at the core of spirituality, not just as metaphors or abstractions or ideals for a kingdom down the road some day
Dominique: Dance!
Benita: Connection!
Erin: It means respecting and loving your body (and others) as part of creation, expressing oneself (or one's community's self) with the gifts one is blessed with, and finally, trying to recognize God in every thing.
Wade: to exult our need for loving touch, and to offer it as a gift to others to receive on their terms, to love and respect the limits we set for ourselves, to use our bodies to heal pain (inflicted by other peoples' bodies, by their words, by their religion, by our own shame, etc)
Mike: to appreciate—rather than run away from—the instability of my body.
Jes: -Knowing where our food comes from and responsibly, joyfully, and thankfully indulging in our share while making sure we share. Redeeming appropriate touches in society. on the shoulder, a hand held, a cheek kissed in ways that are mutually honoring.

Who knew facebook could be so enlightening? Let us pray.

Temple Bodies
By Rev. Emily Joye McGaughy
August 1st 2010


I took a class in seminary entitled “Theologies of the Body.” It was taught by Professor Mayra Rivera Rivera, a brilliant and beautiful Puerto Rican theologian who often taught as much through her presence as she did in lecture. Professor Rivera had celebrity status with me. When she called on me in class, my heart would race and all of sudden I’d get tongue twisted, incapable of formulating those brainy answers she so obviously deserved. I wanted to be her prize pupil, her one and only! So you can imagine what horror I felt when I sat down to write my final paper for this class, Theologies of the Body, and experienced the worse case of writer’s block I’ve ever experienced in my God-blessed life. I was going to write a treatise on incarnational theology. I was going to define what it meant to experience one’s body as source and signification of God. I was going to make Mayra, the infamous and fabulous, Mayra Rivera Rivera proud and I was going to leave seminary on a cloud because my magnum opus on the body was going to rock her professorial world!

AND I GOT NOTHIN.

I sat down to write 2 weeks in advance, having already consolidated all my book chapters and articles for reference. And every single day I would write a couple words and erase. A couple sentences and erase. A page, erase. It got down to the wire. I had one day to write 12 pages and I had two paragraphs at best. With my tail firmly tucked between my legs and all of my ego succinctly sucked from my soul, I called and asked for an extension, which Professor Rivera easily granted. To make a long story even longer, I’ll tell you that I struggled through the extension and eventually turned in the worst piece of garbage in my entire graduate school career. I got a B in the class and I’ve never quite gotten over it. I couldn’t understand what was wrong with me; I never had issues coming up with content and particularly not about a subject that I cared so much about.


I ran into Professor Rivera in a coffee shop that following summer. After expressing my sincere apologies for my failed final paper, she suggested that I go read the opening remarks of a book called “Bodies that Matter” by Judith Butler. She said reading that passage might put some of my writer’s block into a broader perspective. So I immediately went home, desparately craving anything that would diminish my feelings of dim-witedness. I found the book on my shelf and found out that one of the world’s leading scholars in rhetoric also had problems trying to write about the body. Here’s what Judith Butler says:

“I began writing this book by trying to consider the materiality of the body only to find that the thought of materiality invariably moved me into other domains. I tried to discipline myself to stay on the subject, but found that I could not fix bodies as simple objects of thought. Not only did bodies tend to indicate a world beyond themselves but this movement beyond their own boundaries (…) appeared to be quite central to what bodies are. I kept losing track of the subject. I proved resistant to discipline. Inevitably, I began to consider that perhaps this resistance to fixing the subject was essential to the matter at hand."

Judith Butler is right. And my writer’s block, though it was so so wrong, was right. The body is not an easy thing to write about or to talk about (or to preach about, so be gentle with me, ok?) because bodies are always changing, both in physical ways and in the ways we conceive of and understand them.
I’ve done a lot of thinking about this, Church. I’m convinced that there is no one definition of the body. I think, ultimately, we get to decide how we define our bodies. Many brave and faithful folks have fought and died for people’s inherent right to define their bodies for themselves. The freedom to self-define and self-determine are critical for any humane enterprise: be it government, religion, the family or the individual. AND this freedom ushers in a plethora of definitions and determinations. So it is with the body. For some the body is a vehicle: it takes us from place to place. For others the body is a stage: it’s blank space for expression and the drama of life to unfold. For some the body is tool: we labor and toil and work with it. Others, the body is a canvas: we curate, decorate and adorn it.

Do any of these definitions work for you? If not, what definition does?

If we don’t come to a working-definition of the body then we allow forces outside of us to define what our bodies will be and do, and what value our bodies have and for whom. Ask any woman, person of color, differently abled person or lgbt person the dangers of allowing outside forces to define one’s bodily worth. This is life and death stuff—both in terms of skin and breath and heart-beat, but also life and death when it comes to the human spirit’s connection to God.

As Christians, we inherit biblical definitions of the body. Note I say definitions, plural. Our text isn’t even consistent about the meaning and function of the flesh. So, as Christians it’s part of our obligation to our ancestors and future children of our faith to decide which of these biblical definitions remains faithful to our people and God throughout the ages. I think Paul gives us some helpful tools for definitions and determinations today.

He says right here in First Corinthians: 1) the body is for God; 2) The individual body is one member of the corporate Body of Christ. 3) The body is…here’s the kicker…the temple of the Holy Spirit. The temple of the Holy Spirit. The temple.

When Paul talks Temple, Paul is talking the language of first century Jews and Gentiles. The church in Corinth was comprised of both, and both groups Jews and Gentiles—knew religious life as temple life. Greek Gods and the Roman Imperial Court had temples constructed in their honor where pagans and citizens went to pay homage. Pagans build altars in these temples and festivals happened around them to commemorate important days in Greco-Roman life. The role of the temple in Israel’s life is no short story, but one filled with hope and heart-ache, a story that continues in Jerusalem today. The temple served as the centralized place for worship, the place where Torah was read aloud and sacrifices were made to YHWH by the high priest.

As a person trying to convert Jews and Gentiles to this new sect of Jesus-followers, Paul uses brilliant rhetoric by picking up on the dominant religious imagery of both parties. One of the things I’m learning as a pastor still wet-behind-the-ears (to directly quote Tom Ott) is that people listen a whole lot better when you use their language and their dominant symbol systems. So here’s Paul using the language and symbols of both Gentiles and Jews, essentially saying: you know that place you go to see God and hear God and feel God and taste God and smell God and pray to God and sacrifice for God and sing for God and dance for God…and you know how that place is special because your people have been going there for years and years…well that place isn’t the ONLY place. God needs no walls, needs no incense or childcare or hymnals or bulletins or cantors or instruments. God is in this place. And most importantly between this place and this place.

You are temple bodies, brethren. You are temple bodies, sisters. You are temple bodies, mothers and fathers and children and grandparents. You are temple bodies, says Paul. And because you are temple bodies, God goes with you all/ways, everywhere, all the time. And God’s presence is particularly strong when two or three gather together because there’s more square footage for God’s presence when you’ve got two and three temples together, right?

Temple bodies, meant to glorify God.

I must confess this is one of those theological paradigms that sounds great in theory. I love this passage from Corinthians, and you know what Church: I believe it. I believe the Holy Spirit is right here and between my body and your body. And I believe it is my duty as a follower of Christ and pastor of a people to glorify God with my body. But I don’t always live like I believe.

You know what a temple is? A temple is a place where we show up to receive the living Word of God. That’s what we do here. We show up and listen for God. So if I take my body for a temple, then I do what I would do in any sanctuary except I do it in my skin. I show up everyday and pay attention. It means that I wait and listen for God’s revelation. And if I’m really being faithful, it means that when God reveals God’s Word in my body, I act on it.

Defining the body as a temple means something about how I live. It means that I eat when my body is hungry. It means that I drink when I am thirsty and sleep when I am tired and dance when I am moved and caress when I am in love and exercise when I am energized.

And if we, as a community, define all bodies as temples that also means something about how we live. It means that we listen and respond to bodies that are hungry, bodies that are raped, bodies that are discriminated against, bodies that are incarcerated or tortured, bodies in chronic pain from inhumane working conditions and poor health care. On a less drastic scale, it means that we hold our brethren’s hand in worship if we know he lost his wife this year. It means that we hug the children of this community at every stage of development, helping them feel a sense of safety as they grow. It means we feed each other healthy food and encourage each other to push it through that last 10 minutes on the treadmill. It means that we speak truth to each other about not desecrating the temple with toxic substances or toxic attitudes. It means admiring our glamorous architecture--God’s good handy work at work in our flesh--from the outside and entering the depths of the internal sanctuary with one’s whole mind, heart, soul and strength. It means constantly keeping each other in check about the fine line between worship and idolatry, between being beautiful for God’s sake and glorifying one’s self in vanity. It means remembering that our bodies are not in and of themselves God, but members of the corporate body of Christ that lives and moves and has being for God. It means reveling in the unfolding mystery of every living being on earth, and searching every face for the glory of God, including your own.

Let the people say amen.

Prejudice Makes You Crazy, Study Finds - COLORLINES

Prejudice Makes You Crazy, Study Finds - COLORLINES

Update

I've thought about writing an "I moved to Michigan" entry for the last 6 months. You know: the blog post where I tell you why I moved here and what it's like. But I cannot. Not yet, anyways. Some things are only revealed in hindsight. Truth is, most days I have no idea what I'm doing here.

So here's what I want to say, instead: I miss California like a person misses air while flailing underwater. Yeah, it's like that. Sure, I miss the water and the land. But what I really miss--miss so hard that sometimes I have to distract myself for fear of heart-collapse--are the rituals of relationship that made California my home. Like trotting around Lake Merritt with Mike. Drinking coffee and farmers marketing on Lake Shore with Joy. Collaging with Alicia. Alameda sidewalk anywhere with Mama Marjorie. Laughing over yummy food--particularly at the Mixing Bowl on Telegraph--with Wade. I could go on and on.

Has me thinking.

This week we begin a series in our congregation about (infa)structural shifting. We are going to be focusing our worship and study on what happens when mass transition sets in, both for communities and instutions. Remember how I said "most days I have no idea what I'm doing here"? Well, it seems that a few our my religious ancestors felt similar stuff when in captivity or exile or bondage. (Not that I'm in any of those things, but I certainly feel like a stranger in a strange land which has biblical precedent). Last week Tom Ott (my colleague and homey) said "every time the Israelites found themselves in transition or crisis they would recite their history." So this emphasis on recalling history feels both professionally and personally profound to me, at the moment.

When I recall history, I know nothing of home or consistent revelation. I know love in and through people. I know the words and deeds of those who have kept me alive (more than once or twice). They are my home. They are my life. And that's what I miss.

Formal Introduction

Dear Know Noise Peeps:
This is my babe, Melvin Antoine Whitehead.
Special delivery, straight from the Most High.
Just wanted to introduce you to the best thing that's happened in my life in a long long long time.

Here's to JOY(e)!

Why I Can't Sabbath These Days

When I slow down

these surges of memory bolt through me like lightning.

Images of your face, frozen for less than a second

touch down, causing cracks in this seemingly solid surface

reminding me of your power

which never ceased to arrive unexpectedly out of thin air

and never failed in shock value.

Ironic given the softness of your comings and goings.  

Throwing myself back into hustle

seems the only viable option 

in the field of this impossible electricity.

Hoops for Hope

Hey Everyone,
Good stuff going on at my church. Check it.



Peace!

What Might Have Been Lost

after years of casual on and off again rotations
both on the dancefloor and in the bedroom
we decided to commit

for a while

it was a critical juncture:
your financial meltdowns necessitated my compassion
my back injury necessitated your touch

one morning you cried under my covers
and then we stood kissing for twenty six bars of a song by bon iver
while the sounds of rotating wheels foreshadowed everything to come

I tried to suck every single sadness out from your stomach
and everything kept going
hard and deep, deep and hard
as it always was with us
to no end, on either end

now: I live far away and you aren't speaking to me
twenty six bars of a bon iver song echo from my speakers
and I'm stuck wondering how it is
you believe that I could ever stop loving you

The Installing Preacher

 

So here's what his bio can tell you: Zachary Moon is originally from Berkeley California. He was raised in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and recently completed a Master of Divinity at Chicago Theological Seminary. Next week he will move to Atlanta to begin a year long residency in spiritual care at the VA. Zac is a chaplain, itinerant preacher and teacher. He has led workshops around the country on topics of the Bible, transformative theology, and community organizing.Here's what i can tell you: Zachary Moon moves mountains and casts out demons. He is full of spirit and truth. He is my friend. He walks in the footsteps of Jesus, the Nazarene. Jesus, the rebelious and righteous. Jesus, the beloved. So, church, it is with the highest amount of gratitude that I bring to you my beloved, Zac Moon, with whom my soul is always well pleased.

Alicia

Footsteps accumulate around sacred waters
when nearness enables communion.
Our conversations are never the same and always the same
sex, death, body, G-d/s, moms, fear, faith, falling, planet, person/s, pregnancy, power, classrooms.

Gentle soul: i never get enough of you.

Especially now when time zones and zip codes place barracades.
Especially now. To bridge the gap: you send me gifts,
mostly poems, always mind-blowing
in their secret knowing of : who you are, who i am and the holy intersectionals.
Your gifts delight me
but in the gifts i keep feeling this invitation to imagine

what life might have been like
if i hadn't been drinking myself into oblivion
and you hadn't met your future husband
while we were occupying the same (ridiculous) territory
completely unaware of one another
many many years ago.

Ordination Sermon

Sermon: “Righteous Transgressors”

The Ordination of Emily Joye McGaughy

First Congregational Church of Riverside

March 27, 2010 – 2:00 p.m.

Psalm 42:7-8 and Ephesians 4:1-16

I’d like to begin by thanking Pastor Jane Quandt and the good people of First Riverside for welcoming all of us – Emily Joye’s extended community – with such warmth and hospitality. What a blessing it is for all of us to share in this blessed day with all of you!

I also want to thank and acknowledge Pastor Tom Ott. Tom, it means so much that you came all this way to be with Emily and her California folks on her ordination day. And while I’m at it, may I also say… “You lucky so-and-so’s in Battle Creek…! I’m sure you already know this, but you all have gotten one of California’s finest – and I know that she’s gotten one of Michigan’s finest, as well.”

And finally, I just want to say to Marty Tamburrano…: Marty, you have raised one heck of a daughter, and on this day, not only are we celebrating Emily Joye and her ministry – what God is doing through her – but we are also lifting thanks and praise for you, for the superlative mothering that produces a superlative person and pastor like Emily Joye.

Emily Joye, honey, I’m gonna get to you in just a little while…, but before we go any further… let’s pray.

Holy One,

Great Beloved,

God of the Deepest Places and the Highest Places ~


We are gathered this day with joy in our hearts,

With praise and thanksgiving on our lips,

For the mighty, mighty good thing You have done

in calling Emily Joye McGaughy to ministry in Your church.

We thank You for the countless ways

Your grace is revealed,

Your compassion is revealed,

Your justice is revealed,

Through her life and her ministry.


We ask Your continued blessings on her,

on all those with whom she ministers,

and on all those for whom she cares in Your name.


We ask Your continued light on her path, Gracious God –

Guiding her, leading her, showing her the way.


We offer these thanks and ask these blessings in the name of Jesus,

our brother and our Christ.

Amen and Aché.

At some point early in our friendship – I can’t tell you exactly when because I’m at the age when women get … forgetful – but at some point early in our friendship, I learned two important things about Emily Joye McGaughy. First, I learned that she is a poet, that she is a lover and crafter of the profound and rhythmic word, both written and spoken. Second, I learned that she is an artist, a maker of collages to be specific – and there are probably quite a few of us gathered here today to whom she has gifted one or more of her beautiful collages. I also learned a third thing about Emily Joye, which is that she’s a smack-talkin’ Lakers fan, but I have graciously overlooked that one and only flaw in her character….

Now, poets are not respecters of punctuation and other boundaries of syntax and grammar. And collage artists (collagists… is that a word?) are, likewise, people who tend to blur the boundaries and color outside the lines. “Line?” they ask. “What’s a line?”

The feminist writer and intellectual, bell hooks, once wrote a book called Teaching to Transgress in praise of pedagogies that encourage young people to question authority and challenge convention and “transgress” against racial, sexual and class boundaries.

Within five minutes of meeting Emily Joye, I knew I was in the presence of a serious transgressor, and my heart…just … sang.

My heart sang because my leader, my Jesus, my hero – probably not the same one that George Bush once called his hero, but that’s a detour we are NOT going to take today – my Jesus was a transgressor. In violation of the religious rules and protocol of his time, he shared meals with so-called sinners, he touched people who were sick and lame and ritually “impure,” he engaged in face-to-face conversation with women who were not his wife or his mother – including a few women accused of prostitution or adultery. And he did all this, he did all this, in the name of Love. He did all this in the name of the One Whose mercy endureth forever, the One Whose grace and compassion never fail. He did all this in the name of God.

Emily Joye, I believe that God has called you to this day, to this ordination, because what the church needs, what the body of Christ desperately needs, are righteous transgressors – and you, my dear, dear friend and sister and daughter of my heart, are one righteous transgressor. Now, lest people think I’m calling you out of your name, or accusing you of something bad, let me clarify! In our time, a “transgression” has come to be regarded as a “sin” or a “violation,” but the Latin root of the word “transgress” simply means “to cross over.” To cross over.
Now, am I saying that you’re a rule-breaker? Well, yes, you are – praise God! – but that’s not all you are.

Am I saying that you’re a boundary-crosser? Yes, indeed, you are – praise God! – and I’ve watched you... with White folks and Black folks and Latino folks and Asian and Pacific Islander folks, and straight folks and gay folks and transgendered folks, and super-privileged folks and under-privileged folks, and on and on. A boundary crosser, most assuredly…, but that’s not all you are.

Psalm 42, the psalm from which Bill read to us just a little while ago, says: “Deep calls to deep…,” and to be a righteous transgressor, to be the kind of righteous transgressor that Jesus was, is to live from the deepest place in your soul. And that, Emily Joye, is who you are. That is what you do. Living from the deepest place in your soul, you passed up an internship with one of the Bay Area’s wealthiest churches and chose, instead, to serve at a safe house for women leaving prostitution – poor women, abused women, drug-addicted women. Living from the deepest place in your soul, you took your anti-war, peace-loving self to the V.A. Hospital in Palo Alto to serve injured veterans – severely injured veterans, brain-injured veterans, traumatized veterans. And we watched – all of us who love you – we watched you enter fully into the lives of those women and those veterans, walk with them and pray with them, suffer with them as they relapsed and rejoice with them as they recovered, become family with them. Some people’s ministries have a preposition problem, you know – they think that ministry is something you do to folks or for folks. Not your ministry, Emily Joye – your ministry is what you do with folks.

Your ministry is a daily re-affirmation of those words LeAnn read to us just a little while ago: “There is one body and one Spirit, and we are called to one hope by one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, who is above all and through all and in all.” A ministry of righteous transgression isn’t grounded in sympathy. It doesn’t say, “There but for the grace of God go I.” It doesn’t even say, “I’m going to love my neighbor as if s/he were myself.” No, it does something even more radical than that. It says, “My neighbor is myself. That former prostitute is me. That returning veteran is me. That Iraqi woman, that Afghani child, that Haitian man, is me.” One hope, one faith, one body, one Spirit – that’s a ministry of righteous transgression. That’s what God is calling for, and that’s why God is calling you.

In just a little while, Jane and our dear sisters and brothers from the Southern California-Nevada Conference and all the rest of us will gather around and lay hands on you, and we will pray, and you will cross the threshold into the life of ordained ministry. You will cross yet another boundary. You will transgress, righteously.

We will not ordain you, because we don’t do that. The Holy Spirit does that. Deep has called to deep – God has called to the deepest place in you, and you have said yes, and what we do this day is affirm. What we do is add our yes.

And we affirm loudly and joyfully. We affirm, holding in our hearts those words that Joy Lynn read at the beginning of this service: “In the midst of a world marked by tragedy and beauty, there must be those who bear witness, who stand and lead, who speak honestly, who gather with the congregation, do justice, love kindness, walk humbly, heal and transform and bless.”

There must be religious witnesses, and there must be righteous transgressors, and you, Emily Joye McGaughy, are both.

Praise God. Hallelujah. Amen.

Conditions of Impossibility and Cultivating the Awake Life

There are conditions
conditions of impossibility

that make people die before they die.

These conditions occur mostly on the margins

places where comfort has been forsaken for some by those with a lot.

Conditions of impossibility eclipse the awake life.
No one willingly opts for death before death.
People who originate in conditions of impossibility
must die a little in order to not die overall.
It's a coping strategy, in other words. And it's about survival.

But when people develop the habit of going away in order to stay alive,

they often cannot stop the habit once removed from the conditions of impossibility.

So they go away and die when they don't have to anymore.

Their loved ones cannot help but feel this leave taking happen

and if the conditions of impossibility no longer appear obvious,

the leave-taking makes little sense, forcing the loved one to make best guesses

about why death before death occurs in the bodies they love so much.

If you're a child and do not understand survival yet,

because your survival is being taken care of from the outside--which it should be when you're a child--all you feel in the leave-taking moment

is an internal cue that someone you love has gone far far away.

You can be clutching that person's body, screaming "Where'd you go?!" but physical presence is often a terrible indicator of one's whereabouts, and besides, you don't understand survival yet.

And because you're a child, naturally unindividuated and completely attached to the source of your own survival, when that person goes away, your source of life dies therefore causing death in you.

That becomes part of the early childhood experience that forms

one's sense of identity. Those you love die and you die, over and over.

So even when the conditions of impossibility no longer surround
the leave-taking person, their habituated leave-taking pattern
causes premature deaths in the one's they bring into the world.
Now once you're in the world,
if you're a good student and develop according to the laws
of your early relationships, you probably go around seeking the relationships

that die and die and die again, so that you can continue screaming "Where'd you go?!"

for the rest of your life--because good students figure out they're role in life
and take up their responsibilities accordingly.
So you see: it sets up this incredibly sad dynamic
where everyone is dying all the time in order to survive.

I want to tell you something:
for all the times you had to die and I was there, clutching your body screaming
"Where'd you go?!"...
I was not mad. I missed you. I never wanted you to go away.

I just wanted you to come back. I thought my rage would wake you up and cause you to return.

And I hated the world for how cruel it had been to you. So I raged on and on.

I want to tell you something else:

my education helped me discover the truth about conditions of impossibility

and once I learned about that, I started to rage against those conditions

with every breath and every opportunity.

People called me militant and angry and selfish,

but I just wanted my loved ones to come back to life.

I've been fighting against your death/s for a long time.

I've been embodying your rage and your desire and your grief for a long time.

In some ways, this has been my own way of dying before I die.

I vacate me in order to fight for you.

And I do it because I am loyal and I am protective, both characteristics that flow from love.

But I have not stopped the leave-taking cycle. And this morning I want to be free.

I don't want to fight. I don't want to take leave anymore. I don't want to keep dying.

I want to live the awake life.

Maundy Thursday

(Dedicated to Wade Meyer & Zachary Moon)

I cannot be a body

if you pretend like you don't have a body.

So for the life in us both,

please honor

our intentionally fashioned togetherness

by letting me kneel down

to touch and wash your flesh

which also happens to be mine

something i can only discover

if you allow me to kneel and touch and wash you

This is our birth

right before my death 

Just let me

That is my prayer tonight. Maundy Thursday 2010.

Los Angeles, San Francisco/Oakland, Chicago

big city, big city
an ode to you

breath to my lungs
juice to my blood flow

makin my skin crawl
and my eyelids bow before you

an ode.

you make me believe, you pulsing poet,
oh
such absurd things...

i see in you
such delightful dismissals of the proscriptive,
embrace of that musical stuff, that move or be blown back stuff

an ode to you.

because
my unapologetically bold baby
you display my deepest yearnings for Us

you lick the fork of the multitude, savoring every flavor
staring back with your tongue out, like: i dare you to shame me

i never will. i just look upon you with stretched desire that threatens to eclipse me.

you are so alive with the beat of this internally motivated swarm,
this swarm that hustles double time
and looks deeply once

i see you. i'm lookin back, deeply, this once

and so an ode

to you, to you
big bad bold city

oh you hurt me so wonderful
i love you. i do.

Addiction & Recovery in the Media

   Something in me needs to "talk back" to all this media mess around Tiger Woods that continues to unfold. I read an article by a white straight man this morning who is promoting 12-step buddhist recovery for Tiger. You can read it here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/darren-littlejohn/year-of-the-iron-tiger-se_b_477627.html
   Now: I'm all about recovery, but sex and drug and alcohol addiction don't just crop up b/c people feel like ruining their lives. Addiction is a symptom of our economic/social system that is based on material greed. The metanarrative about big bad black masculinity/sexuality and weakling white women conditions people into consumer (material and sexual) roles. When you're in a role, you're easier to control. And when you're in a role, it's easier to locate where you are and who you're with and why you're with them and what you might purchase or get addicted to. If you think addiction doesn't have systemic threads to it, just check out the location of liquor stores in neighborhoods all over the country. Check the concentration of fast food marketing to particular ethnic groups, or the proliferation of cosmetic surgery ads in places where women go looking for something, anything other than themselves for salvation. If you want to know how ridiculously "caught up" our media is with selling these stereo-types, just check out this cover of vanity fair:http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/01/annie-leibovitz-comments-on-tiger-woods-cover-photo.html
   Photographer Annie Leibovitz is quoted as saying: “Tiger is an intensely competitive athlete—and quite serious about his sport. I wanted to reveal that in these photos. And to show his incredible focus and dedication.” What a crock. We had never seen images of Tiger like this until the "scandal" broke. While he was playing a predominantly white sport, we were seeing him in polo shirts and khaki pants. Then when he steps outside of his marriage with a bunch of Paris Hilton look alikes (oh yes: white feminity is being framed through this story too), we see him lifting weights, shirt-less, with vertical bars in the background?? Leibovitz is obviously owned.
   So what i'm personally struggling with is the absolutely obvious need we have for recovery in this economic climate--ecologically, socially and spiritually--being talked about in terms of symptom alleviation. If we don't take the greed-based, material-focused, dog-eat-dog spirit out of our currency with one another, those symptoms will continue to pop up no matter how many individuals are admitting their powerlessness. So yeah, meetings and steps and service are important, but where's the discussion on and commitment to systemic, structural shifting??

Loving What Is: Family

I want to write about the people I've been living with for the last month. When I worked at First Congregational Church of Riverside I got to know the Soares family because I taught Hannah's sunday school class and led the youth group Taylor participated in weekly. Sandra, their mom, often helped with youth events and so I got to know her (slightly) during my eight month interim ministry. That was in 2005, before seminary. They've gone through some monumental shifts and challenges as a family in the last five years but they've always kept in touch. During this winter, when I was going through monumental shifts and challenges of my own, Sandra offered me space in her home. So I've been living here, with them, with Hannah, Taylor and Sandra, in Riverside for the last month.

This is the first big chunk of time I've spent with teen-agers in a while. I spent much of my early 20's invovled in youth work, so when I went to Berkeley for graduate school, I intentionally put myself in adult-ministry situations in order to develop those skills. That choice has served me well. I wouldn't trade my time at SafeHouse or the Palo Alto VA for anything. But I must be real: my heart for ministry, my first love in the church were the youth and families at FCCR. And it's been a straight up, big fat blessing to reunite with them before moving to Michigan.

Living with the Soares family came about unexpectedly, graciously. I am grateful. I am also re-evaluating my thoughts/feelings on the trappings of the nuclear family. My relations with Hannah & Taylor in the last month gave a glimpse into the gifts of siblingity. We've had penetrative conversation, conversation about the meaning/s of life, the responsibilities that come with privilege, the struggles of being young in psycho-obsessed-drugged-up So Cal. But we've also just chilled out, chilled out to music, to books or net-surfing in the same room. I find myself desparately sad about leaving this accompaniment on Friday. I never had siblings growing up; it's pretty f-in rad. I'm sumthin crazy about Taylor & Hannah.

On Saturday, Sandra and I sat by the pool watching the sun go down together. I'd just seen the movie "Up in the Air." For some reason I came back home from the movie theater weepy, floundering in my skepticism about relationships and family in my future. I admitted to feeling "hard hearted" about romance and intimacy after the loss of James this year. We continued on in conversation about the risks of pain that come with loving. Sandra is an expert on the topic. I trust her. At one point she looked me dead in the eye and said: I wouldn't trade Taylor and Hannah for a hard heart.

Touche.

Missing Joy(e)x2

All those times
we walked the lake
or the marina
or the city streets at night
and laughed about stupid stuff
going on at work
or cried about painful stuff
making mess in our relationships,

all those times

we grabbed coffee

and grabbed more coffee

or ran for dessert

when we'd hit the perfect coffee quotient,
all those times
we made fun of Berkeley hippies and
made fun of those people who made ridiculous announcements in church and
made fun of people who took their facebook seasonal art projects way too seriously and
made fun of each other for various things
like intensity or clumsiness,
all those times
we exchanged music mixes
or driving responsibilities
or sent each other little pick-me-ups in the mail

we were doing the things that i never thought twice about then
but think about all the time now.