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.

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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.