Congregationalist Article 2012

Hey Know Noise Readers,

Peace be with you. 

I know that last post was Scrooge-ish. Here's a follow up. Just the peaks and valleys of (a pastor's) life being played out on a blog...

Blessings in 2012 to all of you.

------------------------------------------------

First Congregational Church of Battle Creek 

Congregationalist Article 

January 2012

I am thirsty for Wayne Muller. Thirsty for what he thinks, writes, and encourages in those brave enough to behold his spiritual guidance. He is exactly the person for us to journey with as we walk together in religious community this New Year. And here's a bit of a confession that leads to my assurance that Wayne is right for us right now. 

From the 18th to the 25th of December we hosted 8 worship services, including the Longest Night Service and a funeral for a beloved young man who died of a heroine overdose at the age of 27. We did Reel Theology for young families, Christmas baskets for the community, and our youth visited home-bound members to sing Christmas Carols. The heights and depths of Advent and Christmas joy, sadness, bewilderment, and profound reverence were touched this holiday season, of that I am sure. I am constantly in awe of how we show up, as a people committed to the Gospel, committed to the truth and love of God. We show up in the spirit of justice, with the hunger of hope, witnessing in action our belief that God's incarnation doesn't beckon us to sit it out but rather to go more and more intimately into this life's despairing and abundant realities. 

And Christmas about maxed me out this year. All I could do was curl up in a ball and watch back-to-back basketball games on Christmas day once our two worship services came to an end. The exhaustion was palpable. I'd shown up in all the ways I could and given every ounce of energy I had during the Christmas season. Yet, all I could do for most of the evening, as I sat on the couch, was think about the cards I didn't send, the parties or dinners I didn't attend (because I was double booked or too tired), the people I didn't see, the gifts I didn't give and why I didn't do more. 

Crazy. Do any of you ever experience this thing? This not enough thing? 

Please don't hear this as a laundry list of complaints. I love what I do for a living and wouldn't trade it for the world. In fact, it is because I love what I do that I'd like to get into the deeper significance of this not enough thing. I also suspect that I am not alone in this struggle. I see many of you, particularly those of you who show up consistently in the ministry of this church, wrestling with similar push and pull.  

In our culture, we are constantly asked to do more and to do more quickly. Technology has increased our capacity to 'get things done' with the click of a button. The market place and media have become around-the-clock enterprises that never shut down, shut off or shut up. Some call this progress. I'm not sure. What I do know is that more and more and more--whether the demand is coming externally or internally—often becomes the catalyst for burn-out, depression and feelings of guilt. We pair this culture of excess with our inherited Protestant work ethic, the idea that we achieve salvation through works of righteousness, and there's a recipe for spiritual malaise.

Tom Ott and I recognized this cultural and Protestant recipe being cooked up in our midst over a year ago and began working with Wayne. We wanted coaching from someone who could help us discover another way, a rhythmic, sustainable way of embodying faith. I remember the first time I heard Wayne’s voice on the phone. There was blessed reassurance in his deep, thunderous tone. I felt an abiding calm the minute he opened his mouth and in most of our encounters I find myself in tears because the beauty of his presence overwhelms me and brings me home to the truth of who I am and who God is. Over the course of our sessions with him, I have discovered the true spirit of Sabbath (not as practice, but as embodiment) with/in Wayne Muller. His writing, his speaking, his praying, his suggestions, all of it brings me into a greater awareness of and faithfulness to the divine giftedness of this life which is enough.

And so, if you are burned out after Christmas, are disillusioned with this culture that’s compulsively calling you to busy-ness while simultaneously flushing your self-esteem down the toilet, or if you just want to take your shoes off and feel the holy ground unfolding as you walk upon the Earth—I want to invite you to journey with us, with Wayne Muller, for the next 10 weeks as we explore “A Life of Being, Having and Doing Enough.”       

Pastoral Confessions on Christmas Eve's Eve

I did the funeral of a 27 year old yesterday. He was an incredible soul: creative, compassionate, empathic to a fault. And he was a heroine addict who died of an overdose. 

Today I opened my browser to find out that Gov. Rick Snyder wrote LGBT discrimination into law in my (now) home state of Michigan. 

For the last month, it's become increasingly painful for me to witness the rampant materialism and hypocritical hype of "charity" that characterize (most) North American celebrations of Christmas. Mass consumption of things and food are the markers of this cultural tradition matched with seasonal acts of sappy "service" that serve only as band-aids to social systems that need disinfectant and surgery. 

...

Weary

Skeptical

Angry

Disillusioned

...

I am militant about honoring the life of Jesus. I am militant about justice. I am militant about our world being a place where sacred flesh (all flesh) can thrive. This world is NOT reflecting what Christmas is about, what Jesus enfleshed or what the beloved community can be. And so I'm having a hard time celebrating/ritualizing this "holiday." Please forgive me...

Maybe when the candle light goes up in the air

maybe when people I haven't seen for a while, people I love hug me 

maybe when lyrics familiar, laced with grace come out through my throat without any effort

maybe when people see the stable as ultimate indictment of privilege--maybe then I'll feel it.

But until then, please forgive me.  

A Portal

So the following link serves as a portal for me. An entry and lens into some of the embodiments that most speak to, remind, and invigorate me. Yet I cannot post this in more public venues because of the language. Balancing personal and professional ethics never ceases to befuddle me. How can something this beautiful be censored? And out of respect to what, exactly? My questions to wrestle with, I suppose. In the meantime, I share...here.

http://fuckyeahdykes.tumblr.com/

Rant

I don't want to have any more conversations about individuals or specific acts when it comes to the following: violence, mental health, addiction, sex, race, ability, religion, over-privilege, under-privilege, employment or education. If there's no systems analysis, I don't want to hear it or talk about it. Period. End of story.  

To The Women/s: A Poetic Letter/Plea at the Horizons of Feminist & Continental Philosophy

Some of you have more to say now. 

Others look away with greater judgement and speed than before.

Still others drop off gifts, quietly, sometimes anonymously--

gifts color-coded, gifts cloaked in generational grind. 

Yet another group of you can't look at me without crying

because images of your abortions, miscarriages, 

your torturous waiting that turned into a never,
that he left you for some vagina-that-could,

come flooding every time my engorged belly passes by.

Little girl creatures stare and stare and stare:

as if I'm some new constellation in the sky, 

begging for a name and mythology all my own.

The oldest, those closest to death

say things so unfiltered, it's almost refreshing. Almost.

New tongues and traditions between us 
and though I am delighted, I have something to say:

I see you. 

I see it all. 

But I saw you before, too. 

Do you know that? 

Before you began applying the universal woman/mother hermeneutic upon my flesh,

before you tiptoed through the entrance of a 'tolerable' discourse 

in this culture that tries to annihilate anything authentic and creative between-women
outside of its Cosmopolitan, Better-Homes-and-Gardens, Madonna/Whore jurisdictions-- 

I yearned for you.
Yearned for your speech, 
your glances and judgements, 
your quiet and anonymous gifts, 
your tears. 

I've wanted to see/hear/touch/love all of you all along. Not just about this. 

Not just about the labor of our love externalized, as Irigaray would say. 

But about the labor of y/our interiority too.

Your questions, desires, and mad-ass plans to do it different,

the burning shame you hold because of too many nevers,

the way you touch yourself when the loneliness has become too stifling,

the way you make sense, the way you become incensed.

The books that burst you into belly laughter.

Why you cry in church like that.

Your stories and songs outside the obligatory and caved-in.

I've wanted all of you, all along. 

I do not confess my longing,
as the framers of autocratic/phallic/fuckery would propose,
from a location of hyper-feminine, dyked-out insatiability.
This is not a petition of one who wears black leather, fish nets and red lipstick.
Does anyone else yawn in the face of such simplicity? 
These are the yearnings of one who occasionally
glimpses the "one" we are not because of the dynamic, difference we are.
And it sets me free. Not to be you. But to be me, and in being totally me,
the possibility to love you, to love the ineffable us, which is 
after all the greatest gift I can give this unborn daughter
coming into our fold, a line of flight her very own.

 

Aurora the Aporia: Learning Apophasis (again) from the Inside for Once

Another thing you should know about your mother:
I spend a lot of time watching movement. Movement of the earth in seasons.
Movement of the Multitude in pursuit of justice. Movement of liturgy.
Movement from trauma to healing.  But there's nothing, absolutely nothing,
that captivates my attention like the movement of the human body.
I spend hours, days in fact, watching flesh do its thing.
And I make countless guesses about what motivates human movement.

My seminary professor Dr. Marion Grau says this is hermeneutical,
that we are interpretive bodies interpreting bodies. She's right. About many things.
But back to the matter at hand, at foot, at head and heart and bone and all things body.
These guesses I make, that we all make, about how/when&why movement erupts
in ourselves, or in others--these guesses and interpretations reveal much about
the guesser, the interpreter herself. And in that regard, dearest Aurora,
morning's dawn, light of day, you are already reminding me of what I don't know.

Sometimes you are still for long long periods of time.
And then there are times, like last night, when you move rapidly, with fierce intensity
and repetition for hours. Undeniable, attention-grabbing force in what you are doing.
I wonder, in motionless moments and silence, if you are tired.
In moments when you are physically erupting inside of me I wonder
if you are hungry, excited, uncomfortable, seeking release, happy. What? I don't know.

And that's the gift of it all. I am brought back to the truth of not-knowing.
Best guesses and interpretations aside: I don't know what moved you to come alive,
to come into first, second and third trimesters.
I don't know what causes your dormancy or excitability.
I will never, completely, fully know you or understand your movement.
Not when you're born.
Not when you try to explain it to me with the
language this world extends to you. Never.
Unless I slip into sinful amnesia, you will always remain a mystery to me. 

Which makes this life with you all the more inviting, which makes seeking
the who/what/why of you all the more enlivening.
The body: mystery. Motivation: mystery. Movement: aporia par excellance.
What a treasure to be taught this timeless truth from the inside for once.

Advent Congregationalist Article

For the longest time I had visceral, negative reactions to the phrase “wait on the Lord.” I know it’s biblical. I know it’s been in our tradition for a long time. I know it brings (some) people comfort. But it often comes across to me like a sound-byte, cliche that people utter when they have nothing else to say. Further, far too many people “wait on the Lord” when they could be taking concrete steps in their lives to make their situations more hopeful. It always rubs me the wrong way when God’s name gets invoked in order to absolve humans of their responsibility. And on top of all this, waiting often seems like the exact opposite of what God calls us to be about in the world. I’ve understood faith to be about acting from a place of assured risk, acting from the place of hope secured in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. I mean, you didn’t see Jesus waiting on Rome or legalistic, corrupt religion to change their behavior. He actively turned his face/life/ministry toward Jerusalem and actively changed the world forever with his active challenge of love and justice. So what’s with this passive, waiting business evoked in his name at this time of year?  

In the Advent season we are told, again, yet again, “wait on the Lord.” And again, yet again, the promise of God’s incarnation is what we are instructed to wait for. God is going to show up, they say. A star will rise in the East, they say. Unto us a savior will be born, they say. So we get out our calendars and count the days. We invoke and plea with the spirit of God through song: “oh come oh come Emmanuel.” We watch a different family light a new candle in worship each week. It’s delightful, isn’t it? The purple and blue. The fire light. The familiar hymns. The way children get excited and remind us, literally, that miracles come in small packages. It’s new every time, this Advent thing, even though we do it again, yet again. It's new every time because we are different every year. That's the glory of religion: it connects us to timeless truths as we change week after week, month after month, year after year.

This year, it’s particularly new to me and it’s carving out a new appreciation and respect for a phrase I used to hold in high contempt. Something big is going to show up in my life this year. Something I can’t control. Something inside me, yet independent of me too. Something that will change my life forever. Every day I wait. Wait for the moment when she’ll show up. Wait for the moment when I’ll see her face. Wait for the moment of birth. I can’t control how it happens or when it happens. But I can get prepared, emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually.

Pregnancy is teaching me about what I do have control over, what I don’t, and that the greatest spiritual gift I can give myself and this little one is to wait with awe-filled anticipation. There’s also some fearful dread, some uncomfortable moments of not-knowing. That’s also a part of Advent (which we’ll be hearing about as we journey with the Prophet Isaiah in church over the next weeks). But mostly, this waiting is filled with joy-filled curiosity and splendor. There’s nothing passive about it. It’s a choice, a choice born of love and surrender to the miraculous processes that transcend and live inside me simultaneously. Advent waiting is the same: it’s not passive; it’s a choice born of our love and surrender to God who transcends and lives inside us all simultaneously. We wait on the promise that God will be born, will show up, again, yet again. And that we will be made new, because of that birth & showing up again, yet again.  

Pregnancy is teaching me the unmatched spiritual power of waiting this winter, the Advent, this sacred season. What wondrous love is this...

Amen.

From Wilderness to Promised Land: Remember, Don’t Forget

By: Rev. Emily Joye Mcgaughy

FCCBC, Koinonia

November 20, 2011

Deuteronomy 8:1-20

I’m not going home this year for Thanksgiving or Christmas, but lots of my loved ones around here (and those I keep in contact with via phone) are preparing to head out, head home, go back, to return to the land of their ancestors. I’ve been listening to them about it all week. Many of them are experiencing a combination of excitement and anxiety, joy and dread, hope for peace & reconnection and ceaseless projections of potential drama. How many of you are or will go somewhere other than where you currently live during this holiday season at some point?

It’s amazing how before we even get on the plane, train or automobile to the place of our return, to the “home” that may or may not still feel like “home,” that place starts living in our psyche and talking to us about what’s to come. Before we even leave, that place has arrived within us. Perhaps American Novelist William Faulkner was right: the past is not the past. And our biblical text of this morning would have us believe that’s a good thing. But I’ve got to be honest…sometimes I don’t buy it.

Am I the only one who returns to the land of my ancestors and experiences instant psychological and spiritual regression? As soon as I cross the threshold of here/there, I turn into a teen-age ball of angsty yuck. When I “go back” somehow I am no longer a self-sufficient adult woman with a house, career and love life of my own. Instead all these insecurities rise up in me that I remember having when I was still dependent on my parents. And every time I forget that these feelings happen every time, and so: I eat too much; I’m offended too easily; I cry at the slightest provocation. It’s crazy. Further: it seems that every fight or awkward silence or total avoidance or dysfunctional dance my family has ever engaged in seems to get re-ignited at the very times of year when Hallmark tells us we should be delighting and devoting and merry merry dancing with one another. I just have to talk about the neo-colonial ideology of Thanksgiving and the Holocaust of First Nations people in America which spoils everyone’s appetite. And my mom’s husband just has to talk about how essential gender roles are for the proper functioning of society which makes the lone queer in the room go suddenly silent and sulky. And my mom just has to make peace between all of us which makes her feel hopelessly anxious and all of us hopelessly annoyed by her anxiety. It’s like clock-work.  

And yet…

And yet…

I also return, or go back to these slices of life, these ghosts of times gone by that connect me to the very things that have formed my body, formed my psyche, formed my world-view and passions and politics and positions for the good. Things that knock me over with thanksgiving, like my mother’s ability to turn a dining room table into an altar with her eye for harmonious color and candle light and the way she opens her arms when people arrive at the door, exhibiting the kind of hospitality joy that only God could inspire. Things that propel me into Thanksgiving wonder, like returning to the place where we spread my father’s ashes 17 years ago and being reminded of the ways he burned a love of political dissent, progressive theology and critical thinking into me as a young child. Things that soothe my heart into the Spirit of Thanksgiving, like hearing familiar music coming from the family speakers or seeing familiar works of art on the walls and realizing how shaped my aesthetics have been by these artifacts of beauty from the past. When I encounter these good things, sometimes I lose my breath because of how much I miss it all, how much I love it all. And then when it’s time to leave, I get lodged with overwhelming nostalgia, wondering if I can live away from these people, these memories, this landscape, these loves of my life.

Returning. Going back. No small endeavor. Ever. Brings out the good, the bad, the ugly and the unrelenting beauty of who we are as people, families, and community.

To return is to unravel the string of memory. And so our biblical text from Deuteronomy has something to share with all of us this holiday season, whether we are the ones returning or whether we are the ones hosting the returned. Deuteronomy 8 is a sermon in itself. It’s a sermon about the sin of forgetfulness and the salvation of memory. The timing of this passage is significant. The Hebrews have escaped slavery under pharaoh, have been led out of the wilderness and driven out all those who previously inhabited the promised land. They have settled in Canaan and are living in a time of security, wealth and peace. The authors of this passage, a crew of priests that have the nation of Israel’s future welfare in mind, warn the peaceful Hebrews: you may have it good now, but don’t forget where you came from. Verse 2: “Remember the long way that the Lord your God has led you…” Verse 11: “Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God…”

Remember. Don’t forget.   

Biblical mandate.

Remember. Don’t forget.

This particular warning about forgetfulness is targeted at a prosperous people. These priests seemed to understand, like many wise spiritual writers from all the world religions throughout the ages, that humans are capable, most particularly when they are flourishing, of forgetting who and what they are. But most importantly, people in prosperity are most likely to forget God, to operate under the illusion that they are self-made, self-sustained and in no need of divine life or love. It’s not a sin that’s hard to understand. If you are capable of securing work, food, shelter, security and lots of material toys, when you’ve got it made, got it good and plenty—what is there to remind you of your utter dependency on things outside of yourself? The greatest danger of material wealth is the idolatrous notion of self-sufficiency that often accompanies it.

So here are the Hebrews, in a land of flowing streams, a land of wheat and barley, of vines and fig trees and pomegranates, of olive trees and honey, a land were they may eat bread without scarcity, where they lack nothing. But instead of glorifying the Hebrews for this prosperity, the priests warn them: remember slavery in Egypt, remember starvation and drought in the desert, remember wandering in the wilderness. And when you remember those things and compare them to the glory you’re currently living in, do not say “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

You know what happens when we return? When we go back? When we allow the string of memory to unravel us? We rid ourselves of the dangers of forgetfulness.  

Entering the spaces of the past, whether through cognitive memory or geographic travel, affords us the opportunity to remember just how much power outside of us and how many hands not our own have shaped us. Such experiences annihilate this idea that we have created anything by our own power or by the might of our own hand. And that’s exactly what the biblical authors want.

Going back: we remember what gave us life, that we did not give birth to or raise ourselves. Returning: we remember what influenced us in the early part of our lives, that we did not shape our own world-views, spiritualities, behaviors and habits. Going back: we remember the landscape of our triumphs and terrible mess ups, the external contexts and social feed-back loops that either fostered self-esteem or stripped us of confidence. Returning: we recognize that much of who & what we are today comes from what we learned about ourselves back then. For better and worse. All that stuff we loathe, that drama, those regressive, coping behaviors we learned in the wilderness: that’s in us. All that stuff we love, that beauty and spirit of connection to our relatives that sustains us: that’s in us. Both are right here and memory unravels it all. And that’s exactly what the biblical authors want.

But here’s the kicker: it’s not memory for the sake of getting stuck in what was. It’s memory for the sake of being present—spiritually—to what is. What is now. What is present today. What occupies this moment. And the spiritual lesson in all of this is that God is. God is here. God is now. God is present today and occupies this moment with us. When we go back and return, it’s easy to see how God was with us and brought us through in the past. The gift of those memories is that they can, if we allow them to, illuminate the Divine life in the present. And this illumination can, if we allow it to, change the way we see and handle our current circumstances.

God brought the Israelites through exploitation, made water burst forth from a rock and made bread rain down from heaven, provided sustenance and mercy even in the worst of times; so surely it is that same benevolent spirit that provided in Canaan. Problem is, the Israelites considered the prosperity their own, like it belonged to them just because they were special/good/deserving/hard-working/chosen, whatever. No, no, the priestly authors warn: anything giving you life, anything sustaining your spirit, anything feeding/satiating your needs is from God and God alone. So treat it as gift. Let the memory of God’s goodness in the past inspire you to recognize God’s goodness in the present.   

So beloved faithful: as you return, as you go back in these next weeks, in this holiday season: seize the opportunity to unravel, seize the opportunity to remember and to recognize. Seize the opportunity to treat everything that gives you life, everything that has sustained your spirit, everything that has fed/satiated your needs, seize the opportunity to enact your thanksgiving by treating these things like the gifts from God that they are. Listen to them deeply. Love them fiercely. Touch them tenderly. Gifts from God: remember, don’t forget. Amen.  

Hinged

The door across the street
keeps opening and closing
as the wind commands an effect
to her causal call.
On a hinge, helpless,
blown about, back and forth,
again and again.
Slightly open, suddenly a slam shut,
then flung so wide open that, in a five second flash,
the whole internal house--furniture, floors, hallways, all that--.
can be seen from the outside.

Entrance, exit. Which? Just wait a second.
Everything changes with a new arousal of the air.

Dare you stand in the way?
Dare you approach and try to touch the handle?
Dare you desire to come inside?

Just a quick glimpse. A simple foreshadowing season.
No grip.

Aurora in the Song

In the way of knowing things before you know them,
music predicts, prophesies, pulls apart and imparts what's to come.

First time you opened your mouth and let it fly
I sat in the pews and convulsed with a crying fit
so mysterious and unexpected, it haunted me for over a month.

Always the song to my soul, your voice,
your cadence, especially the high notes
pitched in the androgynous zones (a familiar space to us
but foreign to the rest).
That morning, that worship time,
a monumental thing: breaking forth from the rest of what's routine
in the realest sense of religion. Incarnation to come.
My body must have known; yours too:
even then before contracts or swaps in the hallway,
she was making her way.

"You breathed your fragrance on me. Late have I loved you."

Now, every morning I play it so she enters to the soundtrack
of a love that knows no distinction between human/divine, as I've never
known such distinction with us. Certainly that's what we've created and
certainly that's the melody she deserves.

To My Father

For years the only comparison named
was the pinky finger.
Until blood tests could confirm,
it was the pinky finger,
mine exactly like yours even as a newborn,
that stood as paternity marker.
When the more scientific proof came,
no one was shocked, though everywhere scandal traced
what the two of you had done, and not done.
My skin and bones just the beginning.


Seven weeks ago I met your (other) children,
my siblings, for the first time. And I met nieces and nephews,
two face to face, others through pictures or memories shared.
We all have the same nose and wide smile. And there's something
reminiscent of fire in all of us, even your only son
who is patient, quiet and gentle but neverthless a power in his own rite.


Sometimes I want the dead to be alive,
but only in the way we, the living, can envision you, the departed, among us.
Present and watchful, subject to feeling but unable to fuck anything else up.


I wanted you to be dead but watching in the moment
he, your only son, my long lost brother
said my name outloud, looked me in the eyes, took me into his arms
and held me which you...you...
were unable to do before taking leave of me,
taking leave of us who now gather around your choices
like pilgrims and conscientious objectors
with only chards of glass and petals of devotion
to make sense of at our feet.


I want you to be dead but watching
in the moment my child is born. Grandchild number five,
bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, will come this Spring
in addition to Heidi, Bret, Luke and Elise.
And then, father-of-mine, when I arrive where you are
a long time from now, I want you to tell me what it was like to watch me,
the daughter you never knew, the daughter you deserted,
have faith enough in this life, despite everything that could have stripped me of it,
breathe and breathe and breathe and push and push and push
y/our blood line through another generation.


If, even there and then, you cannot love me
with embodied things like language, gesture, embrace
please know that this baby is already forgiving you
from the inside in ways I could not have foreseen.
So if even there and then you cannot love me,
I will throw my arms around you and thank you anyways
because there's no baby without me and no me without you.

Diagnostics: A Chaplain Reflects 2 Years Later

I've been concerned about diagnostics for a long time. You know: the observation of symptoms, the evaluation of those symptoms vis-a-vis some long standing collection of knowledges, and then the naming of whatever those symptoms appear to be in their totality. My problem is that 'totality' is rarely taken into account, not in a social way that is. The criteria and framework for diagnostics and the practices of diagnosing feel dangerously isolated and individualistic to me.

This morning, while walking with my mom around the marshes on the island of Sandwich in Cape Cod, the veterans of Palo Alto flooded my memory, infusing my thoughts with their faces, stories, and languages. PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder), Kidney Failure, TBI (traumatic brain injury), Bi-Polar, Drug-Addicted--whatever. These are hardly the things I remember. I remember the stories about war time, about why they signed up in the first place, what they saw and did on the battlefield, who they saved, who they let down, the poignant events & moments that carved a never-ending narrative into their minds be it about shoulda-coulda-woulda or I'd-do-it-all-over-again. I remember the stories about becoming a civilian again, about the struggles, pain, and relief of reentry: the stories about cheating wives, jealous siblings, weeping mothers and proud fathers, stories about how hard it was to look your kid in the eye knowing you'd shot someone else's kid somewhere else, stories about feeling like a foreigner in your own bed and like a zombie at work, stories about feeling your spouses' skin for the first time and feeling like everything was gonna be alright. And I remember the stories of their today's, stories not so racked with soldier-drama: stories of men grown old, now just trying to be good husbands and fathers and grandfathers, stories of mortages and financial woes, stories of disgust with government and a lazy society, stories of how they felt so emasculated by the health-care-system, stories of how they couldn't wait to go home and see their dog and drink a beer and watch football. I remember all that, but if you asked me their diagnosis I'd probably struggle to recall. Why? Because that's not the totality of a person.

What I learned (because of the privileged positionality of being chaplain) is that whatever diagnostic accompanied their hospital stay, it usually had  a lot to do with their social experience, be it in the family, on the battle field, with religion, whatever. The mind-body connection is never isolated from the social ties that bind. And so I grew increasingly frustrated with what I saw as a devaluing (or perhaps denial/minimization) of the role social relations play both in creating phenomena and in healing that phenomena.

For instance, war is social. Wars usually happen in response to some kind of social conflict in the first place: there's social violence/threat that predates war-based conflict 9 times out of 10. Wars happen because people in relationships make decisions. Leaders decide together. Military personnel suit up and begin working with another in a coordinated effort to carry out incredibly complex operations. Society (to varying degrees, of course) participates in the feed-back loops of the ethics of war by voting for/against the candidates that promise to do something about them. What happens to an individual soldier on the battle field hardly belongs to that soldier alone. So why on earth, when soldiers get back, are they observed, evaluated and diagnosed as if the symptoms of their injury belong to them and them alone? PTSD doesn't arise in someone just because. It arises because one's experience of a relational environment has been traumatic. Yet diagnostics rarely take environment and relations into account when labeling the "problem." The problem gets attached to the (already fucking traumatized!) individual, as if he/she is the only one exhibiting symptoms. Do I need to emphasize how unbelievably unethical this is? Someone is hurt and then we add insult to injury by labeling them in such a way that they become the sole geography of that hurt? Please...

My guess is that if we started observing, evaluating and diagnosing environments and relationships as much as we do this unto individuals, the symptoms under analysis would be much more difficult to treat. A recommended exercise routine alongside some medicinal suggestion would barely cut it because said practice does nothing to cut off the injury-causing system itself and it certainly requires nothing of those who could potentially heal this soldiers's mistrust of his/her current social environment. If social environments are the location of injury, then the only hope for healing comes with repeated exposure to non-injurious and healing social environments. How many of us, leaders, civilians, family members, fellow church goers, feel compelled to create a non-injurious social environment for returning military personnel? Not many of us. Not many at all. Because we are never considered part of the problem and therefore never required to be part of the solution. For shame.

Now that I no longer work in the VA hospital I have zero contact with returning soldiers. Part of that is because they're being redeployed at such a high rate that few of them are actually in country. Part of this is because they are stuck up in hospital rooms by themselves, much like our senior citizens and mentally ill, being asked to shoulder the weight of war and diagnosis by themselves. If you don't circulate in and through the hospitals, or more militarized environments--which i don't--it's hard to see/hear/interact with them. Given the gratitude I have for the memories of faces, stories and languages that came flooding into my mind this morning, I can't help but grieve this disconnect between soldiers/vets and civilians. I might think tomorrow or next week about solutions/bridges, but today I'm just grieving.

        

Marjorie

...a time to tear and a time to mend...(Ecc 3:7a)

Before I knew her well
I used to watch from the back pew
mesmerized by the long hair packed tightly into a bun
on the top of her crowned head (i wouldn't know about that crown till later).
She would sway and sing and cry. Cry a lot.
Always with a tissue tightly wiped around her index finger,
a practice she learned from her mommy Mae Rose
who, though shorter and less religious, wipes her tears exactly the same way.

From the back pew I wondered how anyone
so astoundingly beautiful (like all eyes in the room captured kind of beautiful)
but even more beautiful than what can be described in observing social response,
how anyone so poised, wise, esteemed and successful
could cry like that. I knew those tears were real,
I just couldn't imagine where they came from
or how she got lucky enough to learn the art of expressive grief.
I'd just stare in my curiosity, in church, in my own perplexed and frustrated pain,
probably watching with a hope of learning something from her
though my heart was still too hard to admit such need.

I'm no longer in the pews with her, much to my regret
and though we live a country's distance apart, I know now
about those tears. Don't totally know, but know enough.
She is everything I've ever wanted to embody
and learning her stories after years of witnessing her tears
has given me full confidence that only the broken and healed
can wear a spirit-something that beautiful.  

Dear Self,

There are things you love and you drop them in the day-to-day of living/working/routine-ing. Right now you are on vacation with the space to connect (back) with those things. They are not things; that's a misappropriated term. They are life-lines, bring-you-back-to-the-truth-of-it-all type stuff. Stuff feels wrong too. Anyway, language aside, I want to remind you of them because this space away/apart can serve as on-going memory kicker. So, my dear, remember these...

The New Yorker (the writing, dear God, makes you better by proxy)
Joni Mitchell (lyrics of love unmatched and timeless)
Ecclesiastes (dust in the wind: now that's good theology)
Reading all day long (makes you more human)
Memorizing texts/poems because you/they deserve it (discipline is dope)
Walking to places you've never been (it's like trepidation and discovery all in one)
Going to the movies (it's just story, silly, and there's some kind of retreat involved)
Being alone (don't be an ass; you're totally an introvert no matter how much demand there might be for an alternative reality)
Writing love letters (because you discover love in the writing, duh)
Being outside (like literally changes the composition of your face. trip out)

There might be more to come as there are still 4 days left. What a hallelujah. Oh yeah: another thing. The book you're reading right now "The History of Love" by Nicole Krauss is amazing and you should tell everyone about it. Oh yeah: p.p.s. The article you just read in the New Yorker by Atul Gawande about coaching is something you should share with everyone you work with, particularly folk in social service. Don't forget.

Between an Aged River and a Newly Flowing Stream

Dear Turtle Bean,

Yesterday was your grandmother's birthday. She is 62 years old.

There are things about her that I know you will discover in time
like how she can create harmony out of thin air
like how grace is at the center of her heart
                even though she fails to grasp it for herself
like how when you're struggling she's the most compassionate ear and tongue on the block
                because she doesn't fail to grasp it for others
like how to love her is to hold her pain which is hard but worth it
like how being loved by her is supreme (yes, similar to the John Coltrane jam).

I want you to know, child of my womb, that her life has been big life,
in every sense of the word. And that you come from her.
This is important. You must understand this.
I know it won't happen immediately, as even I, at the age of 30
am still discovering what it means to come from her.

But this I know--
to descend from her blood line
is to be enthroned with a legacy,
one filled with promise and struggle (as it with every maternal lineage, I suppose),
where spiritual giftedness is supplemented by
histories of persecution, migration, survival-based fundamentalism and liberation
where leadership brilliance and precision come with
the seductions of ego-enhancement and possibilities to unethically dissolve
where passions of the senses bring portals for ecstasy and
cliff side walks with addiction.

These are bloodline legacies
that you will inherit (and this is only 1/4 of the bloodline!).
Though you are not restricted by them,
you are ultimately responsible to the spirit of them.
They will show up in your life differently
than they have shown up in grandma's life
or in your mother's life
but they will show up
because you, you you you
though singular and all-your-incarnated-own
are not separate from the flesh that has formed you.

Like any mother
standing between  an aged river and a newly flowing stream
I am struck with the power and mystery of it all,
struck with the privilege that I inherited being had by her,
struck with the privilege that I inherit by having you,
privilege of knowing I will get to witness and tend to
the next phase of it all through your precious life unfolding.

When mystery and power of this magnitude strike me
I am full of fear and trembling. Wanting to be perfect
to and for you. Wanting to absolve you of the stuff that inevitably
comes and racks the human heart with suffering. But such is not the case with big life.

If there's anything I've learned
from the 30 years inside the 62 years,
it's that perfection and absolution
are nowhere to be found.
But harmony, grace and love supreme abound.
This is your legacy, child of my womb--
big life. And we cannot wait to receive you.

Side by Side: Prophetic & Maternal

I am a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Religion is a vocation deeply embedded in the history of my ancestors and I come from clergy blood on both sides of my family. Years ago I, like many of my forefathers, took an oath to conserve and uphold the traditions of the Church in all of my affairs. Part of the ministerial office requires truth telling about issues of morality and justice, what many of us refer to as the prophetic aspect of ministry. Like the prophets of old (Amos, Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jesus), ministers of today are called to speak the truth in love, particularly if society is falling into corruption. We are called to be verbal red flags in the communities where we find ourselves, voicing alarm where the streets have been bruised and breeched, and voicing invitation for all those who are lost in sin to return to the loving presence of a grace that can always forgive and set free. This is only one aspect of our work but it is an important one. In all honesty, I believe many pastors go into this work because we have an extra sensitive ingrained sense of right and wrong and the Church is one of few public institutions that conserves and places a rite upon truth telling even at the cost of one’s life. This is certainly true in my case and the prophetic aspect of ministry has always felt most natural to me.

I am also in the second trimester of pregnancy, expecting my first child in the Spring of 2012. For the first time in my life I am looking at issues of right and wrong, morality and justice as one who will bring a child into the world. All of sudden the prophetic is sitting alongside the maternal. Whereas before the prophetic alarm would sound in the direction of particular issues or events in society, I now think much more about how these issues and events shape the thinking of children. For instance, as all of my friends and colleagues were scurrying to write letters on behalf of Troy Davis this week (a very important act in itself, make no mistake), I kept pondering how to explain to my child that the government feels justified in taking life. And when I heard the news about racist vandalism being smeared all over Orchard Park in Battle Creek this week, I thought about the children witnessing hateful language about their own skin-color in their own neighborhood. Such things certainly qualify as domestic, psychological terrorism. What does this do to the worldview of a seven year old? Further, a report from the U.S. census came out this week reporting that 23.5% of children under the age of 18 in the state of Michigan are in poverty. When my child is in school and hears in history class the recurring rhetoric of this nation being a place where anyone can make it, how do I explain almost one of four kids crying of hunger pains at night?

Capital punishment has always mattered to me. As have racism and poverty. But what matters to me more than ever is that the single thread woven throughout all of these issues & events become more and more clear to all of us: life. The dignity of human life. When we think about the politicians we vote for, the churches we attend, the news stations we watch, the people we hang out with, the professional fields we go into, the words we use, the actions we take—perhaps the greatest litmus test of all is whether or not these things will shape the worldview of children to regard the dignity of human life.

A Psalm of Maternal Gratitude

Making your way.

So miracle. 

I am joined, because of you,

to countless generations of women

who have surrendered

their bodies to the great unknown:

new sensations everyday,

hopes and fears and prayers everyday,

unraveling mysteries everyday

connective

disruptive

magical.

We women, oh my God: 

what we do to continue.

You, joining me to that continuation

because you chose to be alive

and I don’t understand how that happens

but I cry envisioning the resolve in you,

you once a little swimming thing 

in a group of other swimming things.

You of all them that made it,

made it into me like hallelujah, yes, here I go.

You precious, strong growing everyday. 

And you are inside, but the external is different now.

So much softer now, less willing to sharpen or harden now,

or fasten tight to futile protectiveness. 

Now.
Yes, you are teaching me these things:

let it change you, reform you, stretch you, remake you even if

it means being ripped apart in the process—

the world, this you-world-inside-me,

teaching me what it means to give absolutely everything,

which is loss and blossom at the same time.

How can I thank you?

Still inside, and

already 

changing the whole wide world...

A Love Story

A Love Story

By: Emily Joye McGaughy

August 30th 2011

"I cannot live with a single body cut off from the rest. I want ways of holding on to what surpasses me, of adding to myself a mother or other. (...) I am the finite that wants its infinite. Love infinites me. Without you I am a pebble, and my skin closes narrowly over me. Without you, stub, stump. All I need is you in order to pass over into infinity."

"...I pass through an incomprehension of you towards you, one that doesn't abandon you. (...) O you of whom I'm thinking...contemplated belly to your earth like contemplated from the ground up, you pure manifestation of you, you moon, you other, my togetherness with you I will never know, but it exists. (...) I tell you yes. I begin us with a Yes. Yes begins us."

--Excerpts from Helene Cixous’ Stigmata “What is it o’clock? or The door (we never enter)”

                Every birth is a story. They are stories of flesh, flesh that gives of itself in love and risks rupturing the very foundation of the human body for the continuation of life itself. They are stories of seeds and beans. Stories of struggle, miracle and uncertainty. Stories of God. Stories that implicate history and herstory and every little crevice of incarnation that came before both of their stories. Stories of the body. Stories of the earth and her incessant need to return to herself, her constant craving to continue. Stories of love.

                I’ve got a love story to tell. I have loved the baby that is now growing in my belly before I ever conceived incarnationally. Loved the promise of planting a seed and nurturing it into growth. Loved the promise of giving my body over to the threshold of life that is also the threshold of death and therefore meeting God in the process of birthing. Loved the idea of something coming out of me that is not me, something that will become outside of me and in the process enable me to be even more me than I’d ever be without it. Loved the idea of seeing this child become something entirely mysterious unto itself, someone that will change the very nature of nature just because she/he is here. Loved the idea of my mom becoming grandma. Loved the idea of continuing the bloodline. And now, now that the baby is growing within, I love the small changes happening in rhythms I do not understand. I love the heartbeat I heard at 7 weeks. I love the people who have promised to surround this baby with their love and support. I love that this baby is surviving and making its way daily. I love the welcoming “yes” that awakens me every morning.  And then there is the love story I cannot tell because I am an apophatic theologian at heart and know the limits of human discourse when it comes to love, divine love, divine life, etc. I cannot, in the fullness of truth, describe the body yearning/knowing/truth of motherhood that has been with me all along, truth that only I can discern because it lives inside with incredible force and precision but does not employ language. I cannot explain that love to you because it is of/from God who is always beyond words, ever glimpsing and reaching into our capacity for knowledge beyond the alphabet, knowledge in the depth of our skin, bones, breath, heart, brain and willing wombs. 

There is the love story of my love for this coming child. There is the love story of God’s movement within me, making way for this coming child. They are the ground of this birth story.

                And while this story is one of mothering and divine love, there will be some who question its truth because the family structure and conditions of life for this child do not match our culture’s sanction on what’s normal. I have heard the critiques already, read them in bold print. I could spend hours writing responses to the fears people have for/about me/us. But instead, I just want to say this. At the heart of all things violent, arrogant, judgmental, erasing and distancing is the belief that we know the truth of someone else’s body/life better than they do. At the heart of all things loving, compassionate and supportive is the belief that God’s revelation is in the body of everything that lives, moves and has its being. Our work on this planet is to together discern and live out that revelation. That is what I am doing in the process of procreation: discerning and living out a revelation that has been in my flesh for a long time.

This pregnancy comes out of a two year discernment process that was originally kicked off by a  diagnosis of potential long-term fertility impairments due to polycystic ovarian syndrome. That doctor told me that if I ever wanted to have kids, I needed to get busy. I took her words seriously. She also told me it might not be easy and that I shouldn’t have high expectations. The fact that I got pregnant after two attempts at insemination is, in the words of my Ob-Gyn nurse practioner, a miracle.  The two year process of discernment has included accountability and support from the people closest and most important to me including my own family, ministry colleagues, mentors and friends. I gathered medical and spiritual information. I prayed hard. A donor came into my life in ways that still leave me breathless with gratitude. I have family-by-choice in place that will be present in the raising of this baby. I have a community of friends and extended family-by-choice that will support me. Every step of the way has been accompanied by mercies and miracles. I am the happiest I have ever been. I’ve never felt more gifted from the outside, careful, tender and attentive with the inside, never felt so humbled and empowered simultaneously.

I am due in late March. I delight in the promise of a spring baby that will enter the world right alongside the Iris’ and Marigolds of Michigan. Between now and then I pray you will join me in prayers for this little one: safe passage, welcome and sustaining support, love without beginning and without end. A life of infinite love. A life of yes. Amen.           

Violence & Memory: Thank you Choir Camp 2011

Today concludes Choir Camp. One of our music directors, Lucy Lower, gets kids from all over Battle Creek to come play, practice and perform various biblical stories each summer. Choir Camp lasts a week. I've done morning devotions for the kids the last two years. Last year the kids performed the story of Jonah. This year they are doing "Are We There Yet?" which is a production of the Exodus story. 

Anyone who knows me well knows that doing "children's moments" in worship is about my least favorite thing on Earth. But Choir Camp devotionals are nearly my favorite thing on Earth. The difference being the presence of adults. In worship there are 100 adults surrounding the 5 or 6 kids drawn to the center of the sanctuary to be seen (rarely heard, though) for a total of 4 minutes. In choir camp, it's just me and the kids. No pressure from the on-looking grown ups. No real time constraints. Space and time for interactivity where the kids are seen and heard, and the text for each morning is consistent with the text that consumes their lives for the entire week. It's relevant to their day-to-day lives, it's meaning-making in a consistent way and I actually think the kids experience some critical faith formation as a result. 

This year I've run into some core commitments of my own in the devotional preparation process. If you ever want to know how you *really* feel about something, consider whether or not you'd be willing to teach it to children. Great litmus test. 

The biblical narrative of Exodus exhibits the best and worst theology connected to the historical and imaginative G*d YHWH. This is the G*d that so believes in freedom that He is willing to rise up as liberator a former criminal and power-hoarder: a man who is lied to about who he really is; a man who commits murder and then flees the scene. This is the G*d that so despises enslavement of any kind that He is willing to part the ocean into high-flying walls and create a dry path of deliverance for the aching feet of formerly enslaved captives now walking/running/dancing into the possibilities for new life. But/And.

This is the god who takes issue with Pharaoh for killing Israelite first-born sons and then does the exact thing in the final plague upon Egypt. Let me be specific: this is a god who kills children, lots of them. Let me be more personally specific: if I were to teach this story to the kids at Choir Camp in its fullness, I would be saying that God participated in a sort of ethnic cleansing and that the target of his wrath was the most vulnerable in society. Would you be willing to pass this theology onto 4 & 5 year-olds? I simply could not. So I skipped the plagues. And when we got to the ocean crashing down upon all the Egyptian soldiers, I cringed and wished there was a way to tell the story without including that part. But there wasn't. So even in the most deliberate attempt to keep violent theology out of the room, I faltered. 

Not that I am afraid of deconstructing biblical violence. I preach against the Bible regularly. But I'm not sure there's cognitive capacity for this kind of sophisticated theological thinking among preschoolers, first graders or even seventh graders for that matter. I am reminded of Rev. Dr. Robert McAfee Brown (Emeritus Professor of Theology and Ethics at my alma mater Pacific School of Religion) who once said: "Any philosophy or theology I do must put the welfare of children above the niceties of metaphysics." We may not be able to guard against all theologies of violence making their way into the imaginations of children, but it's one of the deepest prayers of my life to do all I can in that vein. 

The other theme of the Exodus story that’s causing sustained reflection for me this week has to do with memory. I’ve been using clips from “The Prince of Egypt” with the kids because the movie makes alive what comes across so bland and boring in the book. In the film, Moses’ sister Miriam plays a significant role of reminding the former-prince-turned-prophet-and-liberator who he really is. He is a Hebrew, not an Egyptian. He was born to a particular people and it is those people who need him to be reminded of his place among them. Moses has three sibling figures in this story, but as my colleague Rev. Thomas Ryberg reminded me this morning, there’s a direct parallelism between Miriam & Pharaoh. Pharaoh wants Moses to claim who he is in terms of power and empire building, an identity claim that could possibly bring Moses “personal comfort” and social esteem. Were Moses to acquiesce to this seductive invitation, he would have to continue denying his ethnicity, his blood-relation to those he is oppressing. Miriam, on the other hand, invites him to reject imperial power and to choose a life of truth, one where his ethnic and kin connections take precedence over personal comfort and social esteem.

How often are we confronted with these kinds of invitations?

The stripping of one’s ethnic and domestic identity is nothing short of psychological terrorism. Often this kind of stripping happens under the guise of ‘building something better’ for future generations. But which generations, exactly? Who stands to benefit, in the long run, from being lied to about their identity? No one. Not victims. Not oppressors. No one. When we lose who we are and where we come from, whether that happens to us or through our own decisions, there is tremendous loss. That’s why memory can play such an incredibly spiritual role in the redemption of individuals and communities. When we remember where we come from, remember who we come from, remember who we are—literally (not according to some new age “we are all children of light worthy of healthy snacks and hybrid cars” bullshit)—we cannot help but feel an obligation to the whole, which is healing and restorative and inspiring.

There’s a line in one of my favorite passages in Trito Isaiah, where the prophet is talking to  once-exiled-now-returned Israel about what actually pleases God. It goes like this:

          Is this not the fast that I choose (…) Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?      

As a fourth generation European American whose lost most of my ethnic heritage because of the ideologies of assimilation (yes, some “white” people get screwed by this too) and as a person living in Michigan who is the daughter of a mother once exiled from the Mid West—not hiding myself from my own kin has become salvation for me. It’s remembering that I was born to a particular people and it is those people who need me to be reminded of my place among them.

So yes, the bible contains horrific theologies. But/And. It also invites me into the lasting truths of my life and the truths of lives around me. How could I ever let it go? I can't. At least not today. 


I want to thank Choir Camp 2011 for giving me the opportunity to teach. So I could learn. Amen.   

I used to think
in all my liberal, well-learned haughtiness
that internal stillness came from the clearing of distraction
which inevitably meant detachment from stuff.
In fact, I often scoffed at bells and fancy rugs
as the supplements to achieving peace.
Even texts I though superfluous. 
But tonight I baked Amish friendship bread
which smells like cinnamon
while listening to Norah Jones
whose voice sounds like satin
and those two things
brought me closer to bliss than I’ve been in a long long time.
Takes a lot
or perhaps just the right little
to unlearn the absurdity of being well-learned.

The Threshold & Generations

...approaching 30. my mom's arrival...

you (both) are here. flesh of my flesh.
i am here.
we are here.
together.

bears, believes, hopes, endures.

love.

this miracle, here--
testimony in your bearing
in my believing and hoping
in our enduring almost always the things that were too much
and yet surviving again and again
and there's more
to come; it's here already.

i'm stunned in love. here. today. now.

Father's Day Round Two

This is dedicated to Rev. Gene Boutilier, Rev. Dr. Barry Sang, Rev. Dr. Bill McKinney, Pete Bellis and Rev. Dr. Jeffrey Kuan--fathers of my Spirit, fathers for the Earth. This is dedicated to Rev. William McGaughy & Rev. J.B. Schwartz--fathers of my body, may they both rest in peace. This is dedicated to Jaime Montenegro, Tom Ryberg & Corbin Tobey Davis--three friends and new fathers who give me hope for the generations to come. God is merciful.   

Father’s Day Litany

We thank God for fathers, in body and spirit

inside this building and all over the earth

fathers who love and nurture their own biological children

and love and nurture children not of their blood line.

We thank God for fathers, in body and spirit

Who take time to see, hear, touch, nurture and provide.

Who take time to teach, discipline, support and strengthen.

Who take time to play, sing, dance, and walk alongside.

Who take time to be quiet, attentive, inquisitive and invested over the long haul.

We thank God for fathers who in body and spirit

show up faithfully,

put up with what’s hard, patiently,

who are willing to be changed themselves and

willing to make the world over through concrete acts of love.

We ask God’s forgiveness

for the conditions of evil and sin upon this Earth

that make fathering difficult and impossible for some:

conditions like poverty, unemployment, mass incarceration and war. 

We ask God’s mercy and justice

confront and transform those fathers who

have hurt their families and children

because of dishonesty or selfishness or greed or fear.

We ask God’s peace and healing

be upon all those this day who are broken and pained

because they grew up fatherless without a choice.

God’s peace and healing

be upon men who wanted to but could not father children

with their bodies or spirits.

God’s Peace and healing be upon  

fathers who lost children too soon to tragic death, miscarriage or abortion,

fathers who have living children lost to long-standing resentment or

addiction or untreated mental health disorders or

anything else that separates them.

We pray for all people living today and those unborn

for fathers everywhere to recognize the image of God

incarnated in their lives and we pray for their faithful response

in body, mind and spirit,

faithful responses of integrity and love whenever they are called

to be good stewards of the lives entrusted to their care.

Amen