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.