A new canon for our hearts.

In my sermon last week for Biblical Preaching, I tried to say (I'm not sure if it was clear, but I tried) that the words we use in Scripture and in singing write a particular kind of canon on our hearts.  So we should take our words -- and particularly our songs -- very seriously.

To close, I had the members of my preaching lab sing "O Come O Come Emmanuel," but with words from Isaiah 40:1-11 as I'd rewritten them.

O comforter, speak tenderly of peace;

Cry words of promise and release.

You level hills and make valleys plain:

Reveal your glory, end our pain.

Rejoice! rejoice! Emmanuel

has come to you, O Israel.

Our broken faith we doubly bear as shame.

Come be our Word, a saving Name.

All words that wound will cease to stand

When you lift your almighty hand.

Rejoice! rejoice! Emmanuel

has come to you, O Israel.

Our troubled hearts can wander far,

Forgetting how you make us who we are.

Now lift us up and hold us fast--

Our future liberated from our past.

Rejoice! rejoice! Emmanuel

has come to you, O Israel.


(O Come O Come Emmanuel)

"Of History and Religion: Raise Your Voice"

article published in Lavender Magazine, October 20 2011

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As we approach on the ballot measure in November 2012, we will begin to hear “Christian” voices in support of a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage.  These voices seem inescapable and indefatigable.  Yet, as an openly partnered queer woman and a student at Luther Seminary pursuing ordination, I know that these are not the only voices rising up in the church today.

As a result of many brave men and women who have gone before me, I am able to be a candidate for ordination in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.  After nearly twenty years of discussion, the ELCA voted in the summer of 2009 to allow individual churches and regions, as they felt moved, to call pastors in “publicly accountable lifelong monogamous same-gender relationships.”  Other “mainline Protestant” denominations — specifically Episcopal, United Church of Christ, and Presbyterian — have been through similar processes to remove barriers to the ordination of gay and lesbian people.  (The largest mainline Protestant denomination, the United Methodist Church, does not allow the ordination of openly gay and lesbian pastors, and has also been discussing the issue for some time.)

There is still a great deal of struggle in the church, even after the policy transformations that have taken place.  Many people and pastors cannot (or will not) understand what has happened and have elected to leave their particular churches or denominations.  Debate continues — and not always civilly.  Yet there is also a great deal of celebration.  Many people and pastors are coming forward to rejoice in the long-awaited recognition of partnered gay and lesbian people as children of God, loved and accepted unconditionally.  My partner and I, the congregation where we worship, and many of my fellow students at the seminary are among those who daily celebrate how far the church has come.

We have not come this far by votes and debates alone.  We are where we are today because of the courage of people throughout the church who raised voices and questions that challenged and strengthened us.

Some of those voices raised the question of biblical authority.  For much of the church’s history, we treated the Bible as a book with a single author (usually God), which spoke to us plainly no matter where we were in space or time.  It is in recent centuries that academics and scholars in the church have awoken us to how far we are from the original setting of the Bible — culturally, geographically, racially, historically, even religiously.  What came to be called “historical criticism” attempted to reconstruct the context in which the books — plural — of the Bible came to be.  For many, understanding the teaching of the books — plural — of the Bible in their first context brought the lessons in those books into greater clarity.  The creation stories became not a scientific and historical record but songs of praise to the beautiful work of God’s hand.  The laws and commandments given in Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy became not a way to cast out the “unclean” but a collection of guidelines for keeping a community “clean”, set apart from other religions who worship other gods.  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John became not four voices to the same story, but four authors of four distinct stories offering different windows on the person of Jesus Christ.  For many, historical criticism brought the Bible from an untouchable and condemning pedestal into our own hands where the stories of struggling to know what it means to be “God’s people” became a living and nourishing witness to our own story.

Some of those questions came from the perspective of the oppressed.  In the twentieth century, national and global voices raised questions about institutional oppression within the hierarchy of the church.  Social injustice and the inequality, poverty, and cruelty it sowed was challenged.  No, said voices from colonized countries in South America, Africa, and Asia; No, said voices of African-American and Latino-American church leaders; No, said voices of women across the church.  A Savior born to a working-class family, who ministered to fishermen and spoke about farms, who died at the hands of religious authorities and political regimes — this Savior did not come to establish a church of injustice.  From these perspectives grew liberation theologies and feminist theologies, speaking from and for the perspective of the oppressed, looking to Christ not only to save us from our individual sin but from the institutional sin that bound us to hurt and oppress one another.

But the most important questions came from the witness of ordinary people.  This has been the biggest challenge to the church:  when its children, baptized and raised and loved by many, step forward and speak their truth.  The bold witness of the queer children of God has been the transformation of the church.  Each church, both individual congregations and gathered denominations, has wrestled with these beloved children, the Sunday School teachers and secretaries and musicians and potluck coordinators who stepped forward and said:  “This is who I am.”  Each church has asked:  “How do we hear this witness, the voices of the people we love speaking out against hate?  How do we understand the experience of our queer brothers and sisters in the face of years of tradition?”

We still have a long way to go, and there are days and weeks when we are weary of the journey.  When our voices of celebration are mixed with voices of condemnation, when two sets of hands open the same holy Book and see two very different images of God, it may seem that we have not come very far at all.  The constitutional amendment looms before us, and varied voices from the church rise up.  Our own voices are strained after years and decades of calling for justice, for equality, for the right to the pursuit of happiness.  And it has been those voices, weary and worn, that have changed the church.  It is the bold witness of the queer children of God, their proclamation of the truth of God’s love for them, that has brought us here, to this place, where we might be able to dream of a world where despair can be conquered by hope, where lies can be consumed by truth, where hate can be overcome by love.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
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a retelling of the story of the woman called a dog

(an assignment for my preaching class)

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all.

Why do you ignore me?

Why do you not heed my cry?

I know you have an answer.

I know you hear me; I can see you flinch when I speak.

Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David!

Do you know how long I have watched her suffer?

How many animals we have slaughtered to our own gods, begging them for mercy?

Do you see how this demon has beggared us?

I know you know.

I have heard of you.

Oh, I know who you are, Lord, Son of David.

You have cast out demons,

not by the power of demons but by the spirit of your god.

I have heard of you.

Why then will you not hear me?

And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us."

He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."

Do you think I do not know who you are sent to?

Do you think I do not know who you are, Son of David?

You are a son of Israel.

You are a child of the people who slaughtered my people and took the land of Canaan for themselves.

Your people hate my people.

Your god hates my gods.

But were not your people blessed to be a blessing,

to be set apart as a city on a hill and a light to the nations?

Yes, I know your stories, Lord, Son of David.

I know who you are.

Do you know me?

But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me."

He answered, "It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs."

What then shall I say to these things?

Are you blind, you who gives sight?

Are you deaf, you who opens ears?

Are you as worthless and lifeless as the idols of my household, unable to think, to move, to save?

No, I am not a daughter of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob -- no, she is not a child of the Covenant --

but neither are we dogs.

Look back further in your family,

back beyond Moses and Joshua,

beyond Abram and Sarai gazing at the stars.

Go back to the root of the family tree from which no one can be divided.

Yes, I know your stories, Lord, Son of David.

There is one ancestor from which we were all descended.

A mother knows her family.

A mother knows her daughter.

She is not a child of dogs.

She is a child of God.

Are you testing me, Lord, Son of David?

Do you question the strength of my convictions that you might be able to do what I ask?

If you were who you claimed to be, you would not do so.

If you are who you claim to be, you can see my heart.

I come to you out of the strangeness of a mother's love,

worthless in the measure of riches,

beyond measure in power and strength.

I did not come to be tested -- I did not come to be cast aside --

I will not let you go until you bless me.

She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table."

Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish."

And her daughter was healed instantly.

(Matthew 15:21-28)

Giving the right answer

Today, I got caught off-guard by a patient's question.

I should be used to the fact that patients want to know about this smiling short-haired brunette who shows up in the midst of their pain (physical and emotional) and says "Hi, I'm from Spiritual Care..."

But every time the patient suddenly turns to me and says, "So, where do you live?"  "Do you have brothers and sisters?"  "Are you in school?"  "Did you grow up here?"  I go... Durrrrr...what do I do again?  Because I just get into the moment and sort of forget myself.

Today a patient said:

"So are you married or what?"  (He was very direct.  It was a stitch.)

I answered:  "Yes, I'm married."

(I guess technically the state of Minnesota would like me to say "I am 'or what'.")

He asked:  "What's he like?"

...

You all may not know that there are several ways I've handled this question over the years, from direct truth to direct lie and quite a few stops in between.

The safe bet is always, "Lovely."  English is nice in that it doesn't gender its adjectives, so as long as I skip the pronouns, I can get pretty close to describing my actual life.

But, there is, of course, the honest answer:  "She's lovely."

And there is, of course, the really safe answer:  "He's lovely."

One is a truth and can get me thrown out of a room.

One is a lie and can make me want to throw up.

I have been self-aware for ten years.  Out and proud for most of those.  With my lovely partner for five and a half, and out and proud about us for most of those as well.  I have fought with administrations about open acceptance of LGBT students.  I have worked Pride festivals.  I have spoken truth to power.  Yes, I have been quiet when I was still gauging the room (just as recently as yesterday, actually), but I have also been honest when it was dangerous.

So I said:

"...He's lovely."

Yeah.

I took the safe road.  The really safe road.

I will very rarely take the honest answer, especially early on in a conversation with a patient.  I think that's good pastoral care, sometimes - keeps the focus on the patient, and not on me.

But that doesn't mean I have to lie.

...But I did lie.

Normally I'd come home annoyed with myself but sure that I'd taken the right path.  This is a patient that referred to something stupid as "gay."  This is a patient who was watching Fox News when I entered the room.  And other justifications.  (Both of these are true, by the way.)

But this is also a patient who, twenty minutes later, suddenly said:

"So you're a minister.  What do you think about this same-sex marriage stuff?"

...

Great CPE lesson:  Ask the patient, "Well, what do you think?"

So I did.

He laughed.  "Well, I gotta be honest with you."

(Here is where I pat myself on the back for making the really safe choice.)

And here is where he says:  "If they want to be as miserable as the rest of us, I say let 'em at it."

(Oh.)

"You know, I think the gays are weird.  They're just weird."

(Hooray, resume back patting!)

"But I guess it's 'cause I don't know any of them.  I think they're weird, but maybe they think I'm weird.  I don't know, because I don't know any."

Here is where the girl who earlier took the safe route of "Lovely" could now say:  "Well, now you do.  Your chaplain is gay."

Here is where the girl who took the really safe route of "He's lovely" can't even manage "Well, I know gay people, and they're not so weird" or "Maybe you do know gay people and you just don't know it" because she's choking on the fact that she totally, totally botched this one.

I'm letting myself not feel guilty about this.  I made a call that I thought was right, and it's clear now to me that I could have made a different one, and then had a different conversation.

But it's okay that I "botched it."  I'm honestly OK with it.  We've been working hard in CPE to not do value judgments on our pastoral care, to accept that what we do isn't "right" or "wrong" but far more grey and nuanced.

In some cases, to give the safe answer of "Lovely" and never to come back and qualify it with the correct pronoun is the "right" answer.  It's the answer that the patient needs - to make a connection with me, to see that I'm human, to start talking about their own spouse or loves lost or kids or whatever.

But that doesn't change the fact that I lied.  Openly.

Which is kind of a botch.

So I'm sharing this with you all not because I botched it, but because I want to remind myself not to botch it next time.

To offer, if I can, the safe (but open) answer.

To offer, when I can, the honest answer.

To listen to the Spirit and not to my fear.

So I'm writing it down and baring my fears and my stumblings so that you all can keep me accountable to the girl who wants to give the honest answer.

And so I can be, too.

The moment I accepted my call

I went to Saint Olaf planning to become a choir teacher.  I declared my major in Music Education well before I bought extra-long twin bed sheets.  I took the requisite exams, signed up for the correct first semester classes - keyboarding for three hours a week, theory for the same, individual piano and voice lessons.  I slaved over theory homework, once spending three hours diagramming chords before going next door and having Sarah look over it only to say:  "You did this all wrong."

But I was also taking other classes, including the first section of "The Great Conversation," a two-year humanities concentration.  The first section is "The Greeks and the Hebrews."  I did not slave over this homework -- I devoured the texts on ancient life, particularly the study of the Hebrew scriptures.

Six weeks into the semester, I knew that I was not ever going to be a choir teacher.  I was a good singer, and an OK pianist, but I lacked any natural skill at theory, and I was bad enough at it that I was beginning to hate music in general.  But I plunged forward, ashamed to admit defeat.  I simply added Religion as a second major, because I am not a quitter and I can totally handle this ... right?

It came time to register for second semester.  The next Great Con class was at a specific time, and when I got to registration, all the Keyboarding II classes were filled except one that was right after Great Con.

It wasn't unusual for keyboarding classes to go over the "Open Seats" limit; all of them had by two or three students in first semester.  They planned for this kind of thing.  It would not be a big deal for me to join a "Full" class so that I would not have to sprint across campus in order to make it on time.  I wasn't even the last section to register - there would be plenty of Keyboarding II students after me who would have to ask for the department chair's signature to allow them to join the class after it had exceeded its limits.

So I had no apprehension about asking him to allow me to join a Keyboarding class that did not require a backpack-laden 600m dash three times a week.

He gave me a disdainful and disinterested look and said:

"This is what happens when you double major.  You have to make choices."

Now, it is true that I was a double major, but the conflicting class was not a religion course - it was part of the Great Conversation and it fulfilled severalgeneral education requirements.

So that annoyed me.

I believe he may also have called me Emily when he said it.

That annoyed me too.

But what really annoyed me was that I was trying to make this work - trying to keep up the facade that I could be a music major - and I had come to a point where I had to accept that I couldn't.

I wasn't cut out for it.

I was cut out for something very different.

I knew that when I was twelve and wanted to be confirmed - wanted to accept the vows made for me by my parents at baptism and become an adult in the church.

I knew it at fourteen when my priest sat on my parents' floral green couch and explained how he would send people who wanted to become priests around the mall in a collar - so that they could experience people's reactions, see and hear and sense the feeling of being set apart.  I remember the mixture of terror and excitement that arose in me at that moment.

I knew it at sixteen when I started attending an AoG youth group, searching for something deeper.

I knew it at seventeen when I read The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell:

He did not flinch from the knife.  He cut the thread cleanly, a priest in perpetuity.  God had been generous with him.  He could not stint in return.

And at eighteen, standing there with my unfulfilling registration card in my hand, I finally accepted what my mother had known since I was three:


I was called to be a pastor.

I could pretend all I wanted that I was going to be something else - an author, a librarian, a computer technician, an English teacher, a music teacher, a stage manager - but I'd known for years what my call was.  Trying to do anything else was just too exhausting, because I knew what was going to truly fulfill me, what was going to be me at my most me, and it wasn't music theory and it wasn't C++ and it wasn't the stage and it wasn't the classroom.


I was called to be a pastor.

I went to the library then and looked up all the available religion classes in second semester.  I went to the registrar the next day and dropped Keyboarding II and Theory and my piano lessons.  I added Religion 202:  "Classics and Moderns."  One of my Great Con professors was teaching it, so I thought it would be a good place to start.

On the syllabus for Classics and Moderns was a text I'd never heard of:

Martin Luther, Three Treatises, "On The Freedom of a Christian"

And I would open that red-covered book and read:

A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none.
A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all.

A good place to start, indeed.

When my mother knew

Her story is that I was three.

She was driving me home from a birthday party.  I was sitting in the backseat, strapped into whatever contraption was used for toddlers in 1988.  I’d received a balloon animal at the party - some sort of blob with wings - and was playing with it.

Mom was struggling; she’d been raised Catholic but had left the church in ‘69, and we didn’t worship anywhere at the time.  I’d been baptized (Roman Catholic, by my uncle Father Maynard) and she was trying to figure out how to raise me with a sense of Christian faith without a lot of dogma and doctrine.

Somehow the topic of G-d came up; she doesn’t remember how.  

I responded and referred to G-d as He.

Mom looked in the rearview mirror and said:

“Emmy, do you think [G-d] is a boy?”

I looked at her and replied:

“Mom, [G-d] is like my balloon animal.  If you look at it this way, it’s a butterfly.  But if you turn it this way, it’s a bee.”

Mom apparently pulled over, looked at me, then looked up at the sky and wondered Who is this child and where did she come from?

She decided she was going to have to read a lot more books.

And that, according to my mother, is when she knew that I was going to end up in the service of G-d.

Sermon for May 15 2011 (Good Shepherd Sunday / Youth Sunday)

Texts here.

In reading over the texts and working with our youth as they prepared today's service, I couldn't stop thinking about the December Christmas pageant. I guess it's because today is Good Shepherd Sunday - I don't have a lot of sheep in my life, but at the Christmas pageant - well, then we have sheep! We have sheep and a donkey and, if we have enough kids, maybe a camel.

The sheep in our pageant are usually the littlest ones - the ones that, in some ways, need the most shepherding.  They haven't been in the pageant before. They're not sure when to walk in.  They aren't sure of the story, or what their part is in it.  But we bring them - again and again - and after a few years as sheep, they graduate to donkey, to shepherd, to angel.

Many of our children and youth leading today were raised in the church. Many of our adults were too.
Parents, grandparents, godparents, guardians, family - by them our children are brought to church like the first shepherds carried the first lambs to the first Christmas manger.  And these little lambs we call the children and youth of LCCR bleat through the hymns, and trot up and down the aisles, and fight with their siblings and friends like baby goats butting heads.  But we bring them, and we welcome them - even squirming, fussing, kicking, bleating.

Some of you know that, as the Children's Education Associate, one of my less official tasks is to help children and youth transition from classrooms for education to the sanctuary for worship. This is always a time fraught with excuses, and a little bit of whining. "I'm tired. My sister woke me up early. I was up late last night. I'm not going to church. I'm waiting for my parents to come get me." (That last one works when you're six, but I send sixteen year olds to worship on their own.)

And every now and then, one of these precious lambs and sheep of the church of Christ will ask me outright:
"Why do I have to go to church?"
One of my less official tasks is to answer that question.

So: Molly, Jake, Grace, Kayla, Abby, Alex, Audrey:
what I am trying to tell you when I teach, and what I tell you all this morning, is that no one can answer that question but you. I hope all of us have the start of an answer to this question - to why do I have to go to church. I know that I am still working out my answers now. So today I will tell you why I am here, in the hope that my answer to the question helps spark answers for yourself.

I am here because coming to church is an act of rebellion.

Coming to church is a rebellion against culture - culture that says:
The most important relationship is the one that gets you noticed.
The way to find your value is to count how much money you have.
You are beautiful if others admire you.
You are powerful if others fear you.
The most important person in your life is you.

The church - at its core, and at its best, says :
The most important relationship is the one we have with our neighbor.
The way to find your value is to understand your life as a baptized child of God.
You are beautiful because you are made in the image of a beautiful God.
You are powerful when you are weak.
And the most important person in your life is who we are, as a community,
gathered in the presence of God, in the hope of Jesus' resurrection, and in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Today we read about the early church of Acts - the church of signs and wonders, of all things held in common, of glad and generous hearts, of daily new members added. A church that centered itself in the Spirit. I'm just finishing my finals after my first year of seminary. After a year of studying Scripture and church history, I will tell you something: this is not the whole history of the church. The history of the Christian church and the narrative of the Bible is this: God is with us, always loving us, continually calling us to love each other - but in our Scripture and our history we also see the many ways we have fallen from that love.

A lot of Scripture and church history is theological battles - believers against other believers, drawing lines about who was out and who was in. Much of Christian history is a history that said there were people who were unimportant or unacceptable,  who were not worthy or welcome, who were not called or welcomed to lead the people of God.
The poor. The very young and the very old. The weak and powerless.
The oppressed and the ones without influence. Women. Widows and orphans.
Non-white. Non-English speaking. Disabled and handicapped. Deaf and blind.
Quiet and shy. A little too loud.
The uneducated. The sick. The tired. The suffering. The abused.
Gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender and intersex and and queer and questioning.
The stranger. The doubter. The agnostic and atheist.
The broken.
The sinner.
The people who, for whatever reason, were kept out of the body of Christ.

But over and over again, in Scripture, in our history, and in our present day lives, God breaks through our boundaries to bring all into the family of God. God rebells against the lines we draw, against the lie that something can separate us from the love of Christ. God insists that when the shepherd calls our name, nothing can prevent us passing through the gate. God insists, against all realities and against all odds, that we have the opportunity to have life, and have it abundantly.

And I see that insistence in our life here at LCCR. For me, coming to LCCR is another act of rebellion - rebellion against our sometimes painful Christian history. So I come for the wildness of our our passing of the peace - crossing borders, getting out of our comfort zone. I come here for the unity in our communion - for the moments when we are fed together. I come for the stories of our past - for Scripture and history that testifies to God's presence and love for us.  I come for those moments when I so clearly hear the gospel and see the movement of the Spirit, for those moments when we rebel against the thieves of life, for those moments that spark my imagination and vision for what the church has been and can be.

We are all brought here,
carried like sheep on the shepherd's shoulder.
We all butt our goat heads against the lies of culture and history,
and we wonder like wide eyed baby lambs at the beauty of our past and the hope of our future in God.
Because coming to church is an act of rebellion.
And we come through the Gate that was opened for us -
the Gate that is the One who knows our name,
the Gate through which we come in and go out,
the Gate where we find green pastures, still waters, a welcoming table in the midst of hate -
the Gate which does signs and wonders among us -
the Gate where we find life, and find it abundantly.

Texts for May 15th 2011

Acts 2:42-47
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.  All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.  Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people.  And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

Psalm 23
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;
he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths
for his name’s sake.

Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff—
they comfort me.

You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
my whole life long.

John 10:1-10
"Very truly, I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheepfold by the gate
but climbs in by another way is a thief and a bandit.
The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice.
He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
When he has brought out all his own, he goes ahead of them,
and the sheep follow him because they know his voice.
They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers." Jesus used this figure of speech with them, but they did not understand what he was saying to them.

So again Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
All who came before me are thieves and bandits; but the sheep did not listen to them.
I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture.
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly."

Glossolalia

This month's edition of the Concord (the seminary student-run newspaper) is Big Words.  One of my dear friends was brave enough to write about her experience in the Assembly of G-d and the meaning of the word "glossolalia" - the act of speaking in tongues.

When I was seventeen, I attended an Assembly of G-d church, as I've mentioned before.
There I spoke in tongues.

I could say "I learned to speak in tongues" as I had not known how before, but that makes it seem that such behavior was required, or taught, and it was neither.  I can say "I received the gift of speaking in tongues" but I am wary of claiming this gift of the Spirit, as if to exalt myself over others.  The best way is to say "I spoke in tongues" - I observed others speaking in tongues, and over time I felt moved to do so as well.

This is very odd to think about, and to explain to people; who am I to have done such a charismatic, pentecostal thing?  But I did.  I did not speak in a babble that all understood in their own language (as in Acts 2) - I did not speak in a babble that others interpreted, as mentioned in Paul's letters (1 Corinthians 12, for example).

Rather I spoke in a babble that I sensed inwardly as an experience of praise - a prayer that was so exhilarated and overwhelmed that words could not come fast enough, what I interpreted and named as "a sigh too deep for words" (Romans 8:28).  I do not know what others' experience was, but this was mine - that my mouth could not keep up with my heart.

This I have not done openly since leaving the AoG congregation - yet to this day I can feel the overwhelming movement inside me, threatening to burst out my sternum, in these odd moments of joy and connection.

At these times I clamp my mouth closed, terrified in the midst of our Lutheran chants of of Agnus Dei, Qui Tollis Peccata Mundi I might start babbling again.  I have learned that, when absolutely necessary, I can breathe out the words without vocalizing them - my lips forming the words with no sound to accompany them, like Hannah praying at the doorpost of the temple of the Lord (1 Samuel 1).  I do and do not like doing this.  It terrifies me that I am moved to do this, and it troubles me.

There are others at Luther Sem who have spoken in tongues in past congregation.  A few of us have found each other and had long talks about what it meant to us then and what it means now and how to interpret it within a Lutheran framework.  I call us the Evangelicals in Exile (with the irony of most of us now being members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America).

We have all agreed that we wouldn't feel safe speaking if the Spirit rested upon us during worship - but that we still, from time to time and place to place, feel moved to speak.

We have all agreed that it is very, very odd to confess such a thing in such a place as Luther Sem.  It was odd to confess it at Olaf, as well - I remember defending it then, trying to put words to a wordless experience.  Mainline Protestants do not have a framework for understanding glossolalia - to them, it is babble.

But what is it to me?

Is it a gift of the Spirit?

Is it the remnants of a scared seventeen-year-old girl imitating what others are doing?

Is it selfish, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14: "For those who speak in a tongue [without interpretation] do not speak to other people but to God; for nobody understands them, since they are speaking mysteries in the Spirit. On the other hand, those who prophesy speak to other people for their building up and encouragement and consolation. Those who speak in a tongue build up themselves, but those who prophesy build up the church" ?

I do not know.

I share this in trepidation, but moreso in support of my friend's bravery; she is quite an amazing woman to be so open in so public a way, in a community such as Luther Sem.

the Sojourners situation

I love Sojourners magazine and blog and frequently read, quote, link, retweet whatever's going on there.

But this... I don't get this.

Believe Out Loud, an organization advocating for open welcome and inclusion to LGBT people in mainline Protestant congregations, wanted to run the following ad on Sojo's webpage on Mother's Day:



Sojourners said:  No, thank you.  Our position is not to take sides on this issue.

Then they said it again, and again.

...

Note that the video is not about officiating marriage ceremonies for gay and lesbian people.  Nor about the ordination of partnered gay and lesbian people.  Nor about transgender or intersex or other non-cisgendered individuals, at all.  The ad said:  A lesbian couple with a son should be welcomed at church.


To me, the acceptance of gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgender and intersex and queer and questioning is as much a "wedge issue" for Sojourners as calling for an end to the war in Afghanistan or advocating for health care reform or advocating for immigration reform are.

They've already been called out to this effect in their comments section, by wiser people than I, so I am thankful for that.

I understand their position, and Kristi supports their decision, so I recognize that there is a diversity of opinion about this subject.

But for me, I say:  I am not a wedge issue.


Welcoming me and my partner to church is not a wedge issue.

I believe that Jesus would have welcomed me, as I am.  Not with a command to "go and sin no more" but as I am.  That is absolutely the only way I can be in the situation I'm in - to be in relationship with Kristi, to be out about that relationship, and be pursuing ordination.  The only way I can do that is if I honestly, truly believe that our life together is acceptable to G-d.

I can understand the "We do not take a position on this issue" cognitively, but if that's the position taken, I have to stay back from any resulting discussions.  Once you say, "We do not take a position," you have said "We do not see that one side has more theological merit or Scriptural accuracy or movement of the Holy Spirit than the other."  This is scary, for me.  This means I am no longer safe.

I recognize that there are times and places when I have to defend myself, and I accept that as part of the life I have chosen.  I could have chosen to leave the church, and crippled myself spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally.  I could have chosen to be celibate, and crippled myself spiritually, emotionally, physically, mentally.  I chose instead what I earnestly believe to be a path righteous before G-d, and that is my life with Kristi as a servant of the church.

I did not choose to be gay, but I do choose to live my life to the fullest regardless of how difficult that can be.  To do otherwise, honestly, would be death - not a metaphorical death, but literal.  I do believe that if I attempted to live a life of celibacy or of atheism that I would physically die.

I still get very beat up about all this.  I have been defending my right to love, to happiness, to marriage, to children, to ordination, to a "normal life" for ten years, and I do not care for it.  I recognize that defense has to happen, but I do not consider it my calling to constantly engage in situations where it is required.  Sometimes, oddly enough, I like to spend time with people who agree with me. Sometimes, against all human instincts, I like the dominant position to be one I agree with. 

For me, then, it is very hard to consider praising Sojourners for being so thoughtful and non-divisive.  What I see is another organization that was not willing to stand up for me and my queer brothers and sisters.

"Where are you from?"

Jami and I ushered at Wednesday chapel last week.  Last week was Alumni Week at Luther Sem, when the school hosts a reunion, and welcomes the almost-graduated seniors into the alumni circle, and has a donor dinner to recognize alums and others who donate and make it possible for a lot of us to afford school (myself included).

So there were a lot of older people at chapel on Wednesday - a lot more people than usual, and a lot older than usual.

One gentleman asked me, as I welcomed him to worship and handed him a bulletin:

"Where are you from?"

And I said:  "Here?" because I didn't understand the question.

He said:  "You live here?"

I said:  "I go to school here."

I found this puzzling, but thought he was just being chatty.  But a minute later, another older gentleman asked me:

"Where are you from?"

And so I said, now prepared:  "I go to school here."

And he said:  "Where are you from originally?"

So I said:  "Saint Olaf College."  And he was an Ole too, and we chatted a bit, and so on.

I was asked by five different gentlemen, "Where are you from?"  By the fifth I decided that it was because they were older, and not expecting to see female students at the seminary, and therefore expected I was married to a seminarian or perhaps I lived in the neighborhood and liked to help hand out bulletins.

But I compared notes with Jami... who'd greeted just as many people but only been asked "Where are you from?" once.

And some other friends weighed in on the situation, and we determined that it was not my gender that puzzled the gentlemen but ...

Well, here's a picture of me and Jami.


Pretend you're an older gentleman.  Lutheran.  A pastor.

And you're white.

And Midwestern.

Now ask the girl on the right:

"Where are you from?"

...

When I was growing up, Mom used to tell me that we were Italian, that we were Unusual, that we Looked Different From Everyone Else.  I was raised on stories of My Italian Family Overcoming Trials - my grandfather's naturalization papers said "Italian-South" for race, his name was changed from Emiddio to Walter when enrolled at school because no one could spell his Italian name in English, etc.  I think this came out of Mom's own experience - being a dark-haired, very Italian-looking, Eastern-accent-having woman working in higher education in the Midwest in the 1970s and 80s.  There were probably a lot of older, male, Lutheran, white, Midwestern people saying:  "Where are you from?"

But I went to an elementary school that had a visible Hmong population, and then middle and high schools with African-American and Latino/a-American and Korean-American and Thai-American and Everything Else-American students.  My best friend Mandy and I got mistaken for sisters, and she was Irish.  I didn't experience what my mom did - I was just another White Girl.  I got the invisible knapsack full of privilege.  I couldn't borrow anyone's makeup because I had olive skin, and I tanned more quickly than all of my friends - that was it.

I remember sensing that dichotomy between what my mom said and what I experienced.  I remember being told I was Italian, Descendant of Mistreated Immigrants, Dark-haired Mediterranean Amongst Blondes - but by my peers, I was always treated like I was White.

The same thing happened at college.  I was aware of being Italian only because I was aware of being not Norwegian - of being unfamiliar with lutefisk and snowflake sweaters and the tune to "Jeg er so glad".  But I didn't feel like I Looked Different.

Yet "grown-ups" - Boomers and Gen Xers - want to know:

"Where are you from?"

I know that my same-generation friends notice that I have darker hair and skin than them, but only because they say "Oh, okay" when I say I'm half-Italian.  They notice that I'm darker, but they don't say that I Look Different, because to them, I really don't.

But older generations want to know:

"Where are you from?"

And my answer is:

I'm from Here.

I'm Minnesotan.  I'm upper middle class.  White.  Privileged.  Raised in a suburb. I speak with a Midwestern Standard dialect.  I eat lefse at Christmas and I own a Norwegian sweater.  I went to Saint Olaf, college in middle of a cornfield.  And I'm Lutheran.

I am about as White as a dark-haired dark-eyed girl can get.


I'm from Here.

Why I have six Bibles and no notes

I own a lot of Bibles.  These are just the ones I could grab immediately - there are more packed away in the basement:

But I don't read them.

And most of them are unmarked - even the study Bibles -



Even my high-school Bible, which I received and decorated at Teens Encounter Christ -

- is mostly empty.  A passage underlined here, a note there.


I know why I don't write in my Bibles -

First of all, to write in them I have to read them, and I don't, except for class assignments.

And second, very few of them have good margins, and most of them are so terribly thin that the ink bleeds through easily.

But the real reason I don't write in my Bibles is that I'm sure that I'll regret it.

I'll choose the wrong Bible - e.g. it was Oxford in college but now at seminary I have profs who prefer HarperCollins.

I'll put all my notes in one Bible and then a new, "better" translation will be released.

I'll be seventeen and do this:

and then be ashamed of that Bible for the next ten years - sure that someone will look at it and see not how I struggled with my sexuality but rather how haughty and self-centered I was.

Or I'll never get through the whole Bible, and someday someone will see that my gospel of Luke is full of highlighting and my Leviticus is crammed with notes but Proverbs has nothing, and they'll know I'm a sham and I should never be a pastor.

Or I'll lead a Bible study and crack open my well-worn, colorful, crammed-with-notes text :

and accidentally shame someone there into thinking she's not a good enough Christian because she don't love Scripture like Pastor Kegler does.

Love for Scripture, and attendance to it, can be Gospel - the force that liberates us, that promises us justification through Christ.

But it can also be Law - that which condemns us, bringing to light our failings and brokenness.

Martin Luther, a lover of Scripture, taught that the Bible was both Law and Gospel - both condemnation and justification - and that neither could ever be taught without the other.  Law without Gospel - condemnation without justification - is death to the hearer.  Gospel without Law - justification without condemnation - is "cheap grace," salvation without cost, a blank check to live however the listener cares to.

To see the well-worn, triple-highlighted Bibles of others is Law to me - a revelation of my own failings and a force of guilt.  So the challenge now is to find the Gospel ...

Do I love Scripture?

Pastor Nadia was here for the Book of Faith Jubilee last week, and she did a plenary on experiencing the text (i.e. all the awesome stuff they do at HFASS to make Scripture come alive) and presided over a HFASS Eucharist.

And it was fantastic, in an anti-excellence pro-participation way, and I loved it.

But something she said during the plenary has stayed with me, and troubled me.

She said:
“I love Scripture.”

And it troubled me because I don't.

I knew when I was young that I was supposed to love the Bible.  Especially when I was going to an AoG church, I would have said "Yes, I love the Bible."  But I learned to carry it and quote from it like a teenager - to impress others.  Not to be impressed with the story.

And after leaving the AoG congregation, I spent time fearing the Bible.  Whenever I opened it I had to protect myself from the passage, contextualize it, say "Well, that's meant for a different place and time" - because how else does a seventeen-year-old girl theologizing on her own learn to explain Romans 1:26?

(This is how a seventeen year old Emmy handles it.)

When I became a religion major, I learned historical criticism.  I learned to turn my Bible upside down and shake it till the "real truth" of the story fell out - and I shook hard, because that seventeen-year-old was still pretty sure that if she didn't shake hard enough, she'd get hit.  I think I was taught well, but I applied it wrong.

And when I became a Sunday School teacher, I learned to find the pertinent passage for the day, and puzzle over how to explain it to small children in a way that didn't dumb down or over-sweeten the message.

And all the while I was so afraid to love the Bible - because people who talk about loving the Bible, about the beauty of the Word, about the inspiration of Scripture, about the saving Word, are not the kind of people who ask me to pastor them.  No, Bible-loving is for Bible-thumpers.  I stay away from that kind of language because I am not that kind of girl.

So when Nadia said, "I love Scripture," I realized how much I don't - how much, when I come to the text, I'm still turning it upside down, shaking it, saying "What's it really mean - and how am I supposed to teach that?"

This isn't a bad question.  But it can't be my starting point.

I know that I love the Bible - that I love the stories, and the Story, and even the messiness of it.  I don't love all of it - some of it is Law to me, revealing my failures and shortcomings; some of it is Straw, Martin Luther's metaphor for how the Bible holds Jesus just as the manger held the baby.  But this book holds the story of my people - of God liberating us at the Red Sea, of the prophets calling us back to righteousness and justice and mercy, of the pain of Job and the psalm writers and the Lamenter, of Paul trying to explain this crazy idea of Christianity to both Jews and Greeks -

of God who was so sick of us making stuff up about how to worship properly that he showed up in human form and walked among Jews and Samaritans and Gentiles and revealed the radicalness of God's love.

I want to learn to love Scripture, to not be afraid of it, to dwell in its images and stories, not because it is Truth but because it is the closest thing I have to it.

Casual theology.

I lost my temper in Pentateuch class last Tuesday.

I really, really like Professor Fretheim, and I really, really like the course material, and I really, really like having a class with six of my very best friends here at the seminary and sitting in our little heretics corner / Pentateuch Party / babe seminarians section.  I do.  I really do.

But I've come to hate the class.

For a while I thought it was because there were some members of the class who got out of undergrad with a very, very limited understanding of the meaning of G-d's grace (i.e.:  people who devour bacon cheeseburgers while insisting that Leviticus 18:22 should be established as an American constitutional law).

And during Tuesday's class I thought it was because I am literally sick of hearing people refer to G-d as He.  He, He, He, He, He, He, He.  Sick of it.  I understand that everyone is in a different place in the process of understanding who G-d is and how to speak of G-d but really.  Are we, the next generation of public Christian leaders, this shortsighted about G-d?

On Tuesday we had a lot of He He He He He.  (Not from Professor Fretheim, who is as mentioned phenomenal, but from various classmates.)  I sort of gave up on the discussion midway through and just tuned out, coming back when Fretheim spoke.

After class I realized my problem isn't so much with He He He as with how everyone who uses it seems to be talking about G-d - how casually we speak of G-d.

I mean this is G-d.  Adonai Eloheinu, melek ha'olam.  Ruler of the universe.  Creator of everything.  Spirit that gives life.  Redeemer of humanity.  And we talk about HIM like HE is something we can grasp, like HE is something we not only understand but can make assertions about.

Other students spent so much time in Pentateuch on Tuesday arguing about how to understand the Biblical stories of G-d changing G-d's mind (Exodus 32:14) because "G-d has perfect foreknowledge and immutability."  And we spent so much time arguing last semester in Systematic Theology about similar things.

We have these preconceived notions of G-d, completely unexamined and only vaguely established in philosophy or scripture or neither, and we absolutely insist on them because we perceive that everything rides on it and we're not prepared to accept that maybe it's just not true that everything rides on it and maybe it's just not true that our preconceived, subconscious, and vaguely founded notions are actual truth.

We need to be honest about our own assumptions about G-d and we need to stop making such blind assertions about G-d without knowing why we came to them and what truly rides on them.  And we need to stop being so casual about the Holy Name of the Creator of All Things and the Savior of the World.

And that's why I don't say He,

and that's why I don't write the full word.

Because, when I force myself to skip easy pronouns and use alternate names, it makes me think about what I actually believe about G-d.  

Lenten Reflections, part 3.

In Part 1, number 5, I wrote:

"I’ve learned I don’t feel the anxiety when I feel the presence of G-d or when I’m leading worship.  They’re just not compatible."

I felt this even when leading Easter Vigil worship on Saturday, when I was two pages into a four-page a cappella Gregorian-style Easter Proclamation.  I completely lost the tune and then stumbled over the words.

I felt a flutter of panic in my chest, took a breath, and started the line again.  I had no trouble from there on.  I should have panicked, but I just stepped right back into it and kept going.

What is it about worship that makes me feel safe?

Is it the long stretch of experience - since my first time preaching at fourteen, to music team leader at Teens Encounter Christ, to state championships in extemporaneous reading, to distributing communion bread at Homecoming worship my first year at Olaf, to co-leading the Progressive Christian Fellowship in the footsteps of wise and amazing women, to preaching a holy and uncommon welcome on the first day of my senior year, to leading devos in front of the Saint Olaf Choir, to now spending Sunday after Sunday trying to explain the stories of our faith to squirming children?

Is it the presence of loving faces around the sanctuary - parents who watch me work with and love up their kids every week, adults who've watched my leadership style change and grow, kids and youth who like me in spite of my dislike for destructive fun and my insistence on Bible study during Sunday School, friends who burst with pride and excitement to see me leading?

No question, both of these are key elements to raising my comfort level.

But I've been shopping for years - I'm no pro at it, but I've certainly got as many years experience trying on clothes as I have in public speaking and music leadership.  Yet clothes shopping is one of my primary panic attack triggers.

And as much as my worship spaces are filled with people whose love for me is evident - there are also faces of disdain or disinterest.  In most other social situations, those faces are the ones I focus on.

I can actually perceive the panic beginning - I've noticed my brain start to think "She looks bored," "He looks annoyed," "I did that wrong," and before I can even start my disable mechanisms, the circuit of repetitive thoughts shuts off.

So what makes worship different?  Why, no matter how many triggers are flipped, can I keep going with whatever I'm doing - and enjoy it - when in all other cases I'd be two seconds from a meltdown?

Lenten Reflections, part 2.

After forty-seven days spent worrying about how much I worry (this is slightly ironic and slightly true) I'm honestly feeling better.

The obsessive thoughts have been cut back.  I don't think I'm in a cycle as often as I used to be; I think I spend less time over-analyzing past events and over-preparing for future ones.
I still get very shaken by and obsessive over confrontation, so that's something I'll still be working on for the coming months.

I had an anxious moment shopping at Cub this week.  Kristi and I were trying to find a particular spice and not finding it, and some other shopper decided she should help us.  I did not want help.  I was kind of rude, to be honest.  Then I felt my skin flush and my temperature rise, and recognized the onset of a panic attack.  And I said:  "No.  I have shopping to do.  I will do the shopping."  And it took a few moments but I calmed down and didn't have a meltdown in the store, which seems like a silly thing to be proud of but I know it was a step forward and I'm proud of myself for that.

One thing I'd like to add to my work is morning yoga & strength training.  I think if I was better in tune with my body, I'd be more aware of it as a house for my soul and less as a burden to bear.  I've done morning yoga off and on, and I'd really like to be always "on."

I do recognize, though, that even in my best shape (high school, sophomore year, 140 lbs, able to run a 7-minute mile) I wasn't happy with how I looked.  Getting more in shape isn't going to fix my body image issues.  The issues persist, although they're to a lesser degree than they were before the Lenten project.  The key thing is not for me to become more beautiful, but to recognize the beauty already present in me and celebrate it as is.

One really helpful thing is how supportive everyone's been.  Kristi, of course, has been amazing.  Second to her, my school friends (particularly the "babe seminarians") have been the closest witnesses to this process, and they have been likewise amazing.  It's anxiety-inducing to talk about anxiety, but I haven't had a single experience this Lent where anyone was less than supportive, loving, and encouraging.  Everyone has been (and is) a huge blessing to me and I'm just deeply grateful for where I am right now and who I'm surrounded by.

Reflections at the end of Lent, part 1.

This Lenten discipline of trying to address my social anxiety has been hard.  I’ve had “unsuccessful” disciplines before, and I know that forgiveness, absolution, reconciliation with G-d and humanity is not dependent upon me perfectly performing my Lenten practices (if it is … we’re all screwed).  I acknowledged going into this that I might not beat it - that I might wake Easter morning with all the obsessive thoughts still churning through my brain.  And, at this point, I haven’t beat it.  But I have learned a lot - and grown a little, I believe - and that’s a huge start.

1.  I’ve learned just how much my social anxiety takes from me.

• It takes my ability to finish homework ahead of time.  If I have time to review my work before turning it in, I become sure that I’ve done it wrong and I will fail.  So I put off work till the last minute and stress out majorly over a period of a few hours instead of days.

• It took my ability to judge what I look like.  You know what I just realized this week?  A 36C bra is a normal size.  I am not disgustingly huge.  I might be overweight according to BMI standards for my height, but I’m not huge.  Yet the anxiety tells me that I’m shameful, disgusting, etc.  I’ve been living that message for more than a decade.  Even when I was in kick-ass shape, able to run a 7 min mile and fifteen pounds lighter than I am now, I thought I was disgusting and huge. 

• It puts up walls in my friendships.  Because I’m constantly worried about what people are thinking about me, I can’t be myself.  And because I’m constantly worried about being judged, I’m constantly judging others according to the extremely weird and totally irrational rules the anxious part of my brain has pretty much made up about dress and behavior.  

• It hurts my relationship with Kristi.  No one wants to have to constantly reassure her partner that she’s beautiful.  Kristi has to do that every day, and I know she’s tired of it, and I know I’m tired of needing to hear it.

2.  I’ve learned how much time goes into my social anxiety.  One of the hardest things when I was first learning to break the repetitive-obsessive thoughts was figuring out what to think about instead.  I would get up and get in the shower and before I was finished brushing my teeth I’d be fussing about something that had happened the day before.  There was just a lot of time going into this crap!

3.  I’ve learned that the sick girl is not my past - she’s my present too.  Going deeply into my experiences of anxiety meant dealing with the fact that I am, presently, anxious.  Until recently I’ve wanted to believe that the “sick girl” is in my past - that I’ve overcome my mental illness and it’s gone, forever.  There’s no doubt that I’m much, much healthier now than I was in high school, and I’m proud to own that, but it doesn’t mean that everything is perfectly fine.  I still have a lot of brain re-wiring to do, and that’s OK.  I have to be OK with not being OK.

4.  I’ve learned to reward myself for “ordinary” things.  I came home tonight and proudly told Kristi that I’d gone to the grocery store and used the regular checkout.  This is a big deal.  I don’t remember the last time I used the regular checkout.  I use self check-out because then I don’t have to talk to anyone.  If I use regular checkout, the cashier will judge me!  my purchases!  my jacket!  my credit card design!  So I was really proud of myself for doing somethingridiculously normal - and that’s OK.  I have to counter all the shame, the guilt, the embarrassment of my panic attacks with the small accomplishments of everyday social exchanges with cashiers and sales associates and the UPS guy and whoever else.

5.  I’ve learned I don’t feel the anxiety when I feel the presence of G-d or when I’m leading worship.  They’re just not compatible.  So that’s nice.

Later I’ll reflect on some places that I feel I’ve grown, some ways my brain has started to function more on the normal wavelengths than on the anxious ones.  But for now, bed, because one of the important things in all this is getting a good amount of sleep!

Today’s mantra.

(I used the full word for G-d, which I don’t do often because I am wary of ascribing things to G-d that are not G-d. But I am a child of God, and if I can say nothing else for certain, I can say that.

Wait.

“I am thinking of starting a campaign to bring back Palm Sunday, without the additional observance of Passion Sunday. Palm Sunday was always one of my favorites growing up as a preacher’s kid, and it was all about the palms—and a lot of them. It was celebratory, festive, when as child I got a chance for a hands-on worship experience and a glimpse of what royalty could look like.

I understand the practical reasons for the more recent liturgical emphasis on the day’s dual themes: most people won’t be coming back during the week, so they need to hear the crucifixion story now. The church needs to make sure that the story of Jesus’ death is given its due before acknowledging any reports of resurrection appearances.

But are such practical concerns rationale enough for downplaying the Palm Sunday experience of faith?”

- Karoline Lewis, The Christian Century

I am, admittedly, quite old-school in my lectionary and liturgical practices, and my personal inclination is to keep Palm Sunday and the Passion of the Cross separate.

It seems to me that the only reason for combining the two is practicality - that no one’s coming to church on Good Friday so we’d better shoehorn in the Passion story on the Sunday before so that they get the death before the resurrection on Easter.

I guess this gets at the question that the postmodern mainline churches have to answer:  how convenient can we make an inconvenient faith?

I like feeling that the rhythm of my life, for these few days, is following an ancient rhythm, that the heaviness of my heart on Friday hangs in solidarity with the women who hurried to cook through their tears so that everything would be prepared before the sabbath started at sundown.  

Recognizing Palm Sunday the week before Easter is meant to follow the pattern of the story itself - that Jesus entered Jerusalem on a Sunday, got into trouble with the authorities, washed his disciples’ feet on Thursday, and died on a Friday.  And - like a good Jewish boy - he waited until the sabbath was over, and rose on a Sunday morning.

My present church observes an Easter Vigil service on Holy Saturday, which is a time for recounting the great stories of creation, redemption, and salvation of the Christian faith.  I like the service itself but dislike the early onset of joy.  Perhaps I’m just a little more morbid than the average, but I like the waiting - living in the stillness and pain, for forty-some hours, until the moment when Mary comes upon the empty tomb.  Our lives are like this - there are hours and days and weeks and years of pain, of waiting, of grieving, until the resurrection finally breaks in.

So I say - wait.  Wait for it.  Wait for Good Friday, wait for Easter.  Exalt in the triumphal procession, and wait for the scandal of the cross.  Grieve at the injustice and horror of Love crucified, and wait for the whisper of the resurrection dawn.

Mom always said: "As the seedling is bent, the tree is inclined"

It's funny to think about your roots.

During Feminist Theologies this week, we talked about how gay / lesbian theology has its roots in liberation theology.  Naturally, I did it backwards - my gay / lesbian theology led me to becoming a liberation theologian.  It got me wondering about my roots, about how who I am and how I was raised made what I believe today.

I think that the bulk of my theological commitments can be traced back to the odd dialectic of growing up a Christian and a lesbian.

Growing up lesbian meant that my childhood was marked by a sense of being alienatingly "different", and my teenage years filled with deep senses of despair, dread, and exclusion.  It was not an enjoyable process to come to an understanding of myself in the midst of national and global debates about whether "homosexuals" were legitimate human beings with rights and privileges and whatnot.  At sixteen, I came out of the closet and into a minefield.

Growing up Christian meant that the timeline of my childhood was marked by the liturgical calendar and my imagination was filled with Bible stories.  I enjoyed being part of the church and was invited to share my gifts in accordance with the needs and desires of my home congregation.  Being Christian, for me, is a two-part experience - first, that I was brought to church by an intentional and hopeful mother and taught by good and loving Christians, and second, that I had a personal understanding of the meaning of Jesus Christ's life and death and a personal experience of G-d's merciful love for me and of the movement of the Spirit.

That personal experience of G-d is what kept me a Christian when other things (including my life as a lesbian) made me want to walk away.  There have been many, many thin moments in my life, when the presence of G-d has shown clearly through, when the Spirit has blown in my ear and my heart.  Some of those moments were beautifully nurtured by faith communities - Teens Encounter Christ comes to mind - and some of those moments were entirely random and spontaneous.  All of these moments added up to a sum total of an understanding of the realness and nearness of G-d.  So growing up Christian and having these experiences made my core a Christian - meant that no matter how much other Christians spat on me (metaphorically), no matter how much the church had ruined the world, I could not stop being a Christian.

And growing up Christian and lesbian meant that I required a good biblical hermeneutic.  When I walked out of an anti-gay sermon when I was seventeen, it wasn't because the lesbian in me was turning her back on the word of G-d, but because Jesus had sat down inside me, right next to my heart, and said, "Girlfriend, this shit is bananas."  I required a model of interpretation that allowed for that.  This was one of the first things that attracted me to Martin Luther - that he had laid out broadly-applicable principles for the reading and interpretation of Scripture.  I had been searching for an explicit definition of the meaning and purpose of the Bible, and found it in Lutheran theology - in law and gospel, and in the proclamation of Jesus Christ as the Word of G-d and the Bible as testimony to and cradle for that revelation.

Growing up Christian and lesbian also meant that I was acutely aware of being an outsider - which awakened my attention to other "outsiders".  I don't like to talk about being "marginalized," because I was raised white, well-off, well-parented and well-educated in the suburbs of the Midwest - that's a pretty privileged knapsack - but I have to be honest that I was also born female and lesbian and therefore there are certain decks that are stacked against me, especially in the church.

So a liberating G-d, a LORD who saves the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, a messiah who walks among us and shattered social mores and religious rules to bring the message of the kingdom, a Spirit who descends without distinction on Jews and Gentiles alike... those stories are saving for me.  They liberate my heart from all the pain and burdens laid upon me by my brothers and sisters in Christ who have failed to comprehend and demonstrate the meaning of G-d's love.  Hearing these stories as salvific not only for my mortal soul but for my life here, on earth, now.  So when I learned about liberation theology, about G-d's "preferential option for the poor" ... it fit perfectly with my life as a Christian and a lesbian.

So now I'm the total embodiment of a bleeding-heart liberal Christian, whose heart aches and stomach churns with every manifest injustice and pain in the world (and boy, are there many), because as a hurt little girl who felt alone in the world, I learned that there was a G-d who had a deep and abiding interest in the growth of beauty and love on the earth.  I bought into that wholeheartedly, and I still do.  These two things - being a lesbian, and being a Christian - are my core.  Everything gets read through this.  I will walk out on bad sermons, but I don't know that I could ever walk out on the church.