a slow migration toward glory

Have you ever looked at the sky on a day when the clouds more than blanket the eart - when they seem to create a luminescent ceiling for the earth? Have you noticed their slow, methodic movement - like an ancient migration? As you speed down i-5 maybe you feel like you are moving faster than the clouds, but their slow movement is so great that, paced as it is, it moves as though you were standing still. You know, something much much bigger than what i see or what i am is moving.

times like these, i remember God moves in much bigger ways that i can ever speed to keep up with or even fathom - God is simply there and moving.

Yesterday, i saw such clouds in my life. they were dark, but comforting. though they hid the brilliance of the sun (of course there is the hideous pun here "son"), the told me that the kingdom of God is moving beyond my understanding.
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at 1pm, the first funeral guests arrived. they greeted me with love and community
"hey, where's your black hoodie? deacon always wore back hoodie. you should have too. oh well. do they really let you work here with facial piercings? a tattoo too? wow. have you ever been a camp counselor? i go to camp to ride the horses. my name is peaches, but my real name is felicia. we have to let people know our real names. we have to stick together."

"hi, i'm trinidad, but really my name is josh. i want people to know that now. i'm not wearing any candy because deacon never did. it's in his memory."

at 2, the funeral started. around 2:30, the mic was opened for anyone to share a story about "deacon"

raver after raver after raver came to the mic. their words were holy. the experience was as vivid an experience as i've ever had of the kingdom of God.

at 3:30 (ish) my pastor stepped in to end the endless line of articulate mourners. he informed us that "deacon" was the one who held the door shut. he died saving the lives of many.

he then talked about how Chris' rave name was "deacon." He was a deacon at the church. he pledged an oath to serve the church and community with energy, intelligence, creativity and love. through the stories we heard, we knew he took this vow seriously. and so he is remembered as "deacon."

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none of it makes sense yet - but i see the clouds moving. i know God is working, slowly, tenderly, mightily and presently.

here is to waiting and watching as the clouds give way to a glorious painting in t he sky.

thank you

i came home from the funeral - trudging through traffic.

i fell onto the couch and watched the news coverage of the event i'd just seen.

realizing i had an hour to get back to church and traffic was bad, i went to my room to change clothes.

while in my room, i decided to check my email. nothing. all day on a day i needed others and there was nothing. i thought to myself, "some day Becky, you'll realize no one's going to email you. no one's going to care what your day is like. no one is in your corner." melodramatic? yes. but i'd just returned from the funeral of a 21 year old killed in a massacre so, i'm allowed melodramaitc if it's what i feel.

a part of me still held some stupid hope that at least one friend would care. i hit refresh and was overwhelmed by what i saw - message after message of support and care - largely from people i've never even met - thank you annie!

i just burst into tears.

thank you all so much. there are no words. just thank you.

the funeral is today at my church at 2pm.

please pray for all who come - and those who decide not to.

Remember God is Using You

This post is for you my friend - you know I would never quote a Christian song on my blog except for you!

There is no pain. Jesus can't feel.
No hurt he can not heal.
All things work,
according to his perfect will.
No matter what,
your going through.
Remember God is using you.
For the battle is not yours.
It's the Lords.

There is no sadness.
Jesus can't heal
and there is no sorrow
Jesus can't feel.
All things work according to
the Masters Holy Will.
For the battle is not yours.
It's the Lords

(It's the Lords)

It's the Lords.
It is the Lords.
Hold your head up high.
Don't you cry [this part is total bullshit! cry! lots!]. It's the Lords.
No matter what. Your going through
remember God is using you.
For the battle is not yours. It's the Lords
-Yolanda Adams

no moment of transformation, of encounter, of redeeming love, of birthing hope amidst dispair comes without God orchestrating it.

i found this to be true tonight as my compassion for a treasured friend drove me to the grocery store to get her a boquet of flowers.

"hmmm....roses? spring flowers? how much money do i have? can i get her both? oh...i have more money than i thought.
hmmm...wouldn't it be awesome if it was overwhelming? i'll get tons of flowers.
oh and candles! lots of candles.
you know what i'll do, i set the candles up outside - oh and some rose petals! yeah! then she can come in and see the rest of the flowers!

by the time i left safeway, a simple flower arrangement had morphed into an elaborate set up. as my friend met this surprise, it was, to her, a prophetic and hope-giving experience that i could never have planned or known. only God could have given her that gift.

how great it is and was to playfully, whole-heartedly live into loving a friend only to find that God orchestrated my heart into God's exquisite painting for my friend.

we interrupt your regularly scheduled blog post for a piece of broken news

no quotes of context today. the context of this week leaves no space for it.


today I organized a youth event.
whirley ball?
movie night?
the spring retreat?
no. a youth group trip to a memorial service.
this should not be. this must not be.
someone told me recently, "no one is equipped to handle death. we were not designed to handle death."
this is true - but fuck, there it is. so, what now?
i become angry at God.


why couldn't the police officer happen by fifteen minutes earlier and stopped him before rather than after?
why the face?
why did he go to that rave to give people his phone number...i have his phone number in my phone - i have a dead man's phone number in my phone.
no - i'm not designed to handle this. and here it is, for me to handle.
so, i need God. where is and who is God?

i see myself like a little girl in her father's arms. she is angry and pounding his large, sturdy chest with her small, weak fists.

"I hate you! Don't hug me. Leave me alone. You did this. You did this. Why didn't you stop him!?!"
My fists slow and the intense embrace of my father grows tighter. I continue as the intensity of my voice dies.

"Why didn't you stop it? Why didn't you stop it in the fucking garden? Why didn't you protect him? Why didn't you protect me? You didn't protect me. I'm scared because you didn't protect me.

My fists come to a stop, nestled in his chest as his arms clamp even tighter around me. Yelling turns to sobbing as my tears pound him with the same smallness and weakness of my fists.

"I'm scared. I'm scared Daddy. It's so dark. It's so evil. They shot him in the face - the face Daddy. I'm scared. I'm alone and scared."

My fists release their grip and I gently push my father away enough to see his face. He is crying. His tears intertwine with the residue of mine. His large, powerful hands grip my small arms as he pulls me close again. My arms rap around him and his encircle me. Together we cry.

He says to me:
"It is dark out there. It is evil. They shot him in the face. They shot my baby in the face I made for him - the face I put myself in and my thumbprint on. You are scared. You are not alone. Hope is here. Redemption will come...but today, let's cry together.

He rests his weighty head gently on mine as his tears annoint my head like a calling, like a balm, like cleasinig water. I am baptized in his grief. He holds my hand - so small in his that I hold only his index finger, like a baby learning to walk. Together, we sob and walk into the lives of others, so desperate not to be alone in the darkness, the evil, the fear.

And so is my calling - to lead as a child - to grieve and wail and to invite all God's children to be bathed in God's tears and clothed in his embrace.

___________________________________________________________

This reminds me of a poem I wrote last August:
flying away
from the work you've given
into the rest you've invited
my eyes accidentally meet yours
majestically burning, washing, and watching above the world you redeem

my mind rushes to accusation and projection
my heart tosses in a sea of question and distrust
my soul is drawn in and repulsed in a nausiating instant
my strength is gone and so does nothing

our heads are hung and our eyes are weepy
as we stand in a moment of tense experience

you speak silently:
you stand in a shadow of disappointment
of things waited for
the dark, loveless, graceless shadow
in whose darkness you hide
it is not my shadow
it is not the shadow of who i wait for
it is the shadow of the you that you are tired of waiting for.

do not create me in your image

i look again,
you stand regally over the world
with open hands
your weepy eyes weep
not with exhaustion....as mine do
not with disappointment...as mine do
not with pity...as mine do

they weep with perfect and present love
i see you
i adress you
i am adressed by you

encounter

how long have you been there
waiting for me
to peer honestly into your fire and ocean eyes
to be in present love

de-humanization

today in church, the children's story was Judas' Kiss. It wasn't the betrayal or the swords and clubs - it wasn't the hord of enemies he brought in tow - it wasn't really even the kiss. it was the intimacy, the coming near, the lips touching skin and saliva annointing the face of another that brought me to tears this morning.

i thought to myself, this is not what a kiss is for.

today in church, the first story i heard was death. one of the youth (now 21 - who has not been in the youth group while i've been there - but who has come many times) from my church was killed in the zombie massacre saturday. his mom was at church saturday night when she found out. she didn't find out until late because it took the police all day to identify the victims. it took the police all day to identift the victims because they were shot in the face.

again, tears - sobbing.

i thought to myself, this is not what a face is for.

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after church, i heard one woman - who i always struggle with - laughing and saying, "you have to trust that God is soveriegn in this."

do you? today?
do you have to laugh? today?
does life have to go on? today?

the story of Jesus does go on. but today, i grieve the kiss.
life, will go on. today, i grieve the death - i grieve the de-facing - i grieve the de-humanization of those i love, who were created in God's image and deserve so much more than a betraying kiss and a violent death.

ladner out of context

Liz: last night Jesus was in my dream.
Annie: Oh (tilts head as she sighs like a little girl over a puppy dog or a pre-teen over a heart throb), was he as ugly as the Bible says he is?

Five months and counting...

I have four and a half months - or less - left at my current job.

It seems a good time to start imagining what Sinners and Saints Seattle will look like.

Questions swarming my mind as a procrastinate on an exegesis paper:

Where will we be located? Missionally, I'd love to live in White Center - practically, none of my friends do.

Will we be connected with a denomination? Mennonite?

What will our connection with Sinners and Saints look like?

Who will be a part of the community?

Will we have children?

Will we have a diversity of age?

What will we teach first? How will we teach? Will we teach?

What social service organization can we be attached to?

What high-needs community members will we be blessed with?

How will we care for eachother?

What kinds of art will be birthed from our engagement?


As I thnk of September, I find myself praying for the family members I'll find and for the beginning of our weaving as a family in Christ.

to honor the multitude with mourning

29,000 die of hunger every day. That’s 29,000 faces that reflected God’s face. That’s 29,000 portions of the image of God. That’s 29,000 stories God wrote that are lost to us this side of Heaven. That’s 29,000 of God’s children. 29,000 of God’s friends. 29,000 of Christ’s brothers and sisters. 29,000 of God’s paintings. 29,000 of God’s gifts to us.

Will we seek their stories? Will we do everything in our power to save their lives? Will we remember them? Will we mourn their souls, their eyes, their finger prints, their unique DNA, their laughter, their faces? Will we treasure them?

In the kingdom of God, does a sparrow fall so idly? Does a human being fall idly? Do 29,000? Daily?

I want to invite the community around me to a week of mourning – wearing black, not wearing makeup, not celebrating, only painful laughter – a week of holding the 20 lives lost every minute in our minds every minute that passes.

Anyone who would want to join me in mourning, I invite you to comment on suggestions of a week and what that might look like – meeting every night to watch films or hear voices of the ongoing tragedy? A community blog? Service?

where my tax return will go

quotes out of context, season two episode 8

My glasses are the problem.

Now listen idiot. Listen you little jackass recently graduated with an MA in what? from where? I will eat your flesh.

I will let people know what an idiot you are.

You shouldn’t be afraid of death. You should be afraid of me.

I can smell your breath.

Will you now go and get a cold glass of water?

I am the man.

Additional quotes out of context:
"I love shame."
Nick Sagnibene

"The Princess Bride is the Christian sub-culture's Star Wars."
-Emily Thomas

shit

i've said "shit" many times tonight.

shit i have a lot of work to do

shit my cousin's mad at me because i'm not helping with the wedding too much

shit there's nothing vegetarian on this menu

shit how do i write this tough paper about my family

but then came the painful one

shit

my parent's don't care about me

they don't love me

they use me

they, in fact, hate me

shit.

biers out of context

"washing people's feet in the dark? that's not good. that's like havin sex in the dark."

"suing is one of the greatest things we can do."

out of context -- and out of print.

the quotes tonight were irresistable...but....so irresistable that they are better not put on the internet...

so, here's a photo out of context (courtesy of eagle and child) in their stead.


okay - here's the g rated quotes:

“You are desperately young and that is not your fault.”

“You are old compared to a fourth grader.”

“If you could do four jumping jacks, it would be clear.”

“Don’t pirate CDs. That’s a public service announcement brought to you by Mars Hill.”
-Misty Anne

congrats to my roomie on her handsome nephew!

Requiem

Today could be your burial
Rain pounds the ground like too many unshed tears
Umbrella up, narrowly protecting me as I stand
Still drenched as heaven wails
My high heals sink into the deeply dampened ground
Now your home
And I never knew you
I never heard your story

Today could be your funeral
The pastor’s face sags as though he knew, loved, and lost you
Boredom like a wall barely protects my hardened heart
Still broken as heaven mourns
My hands artificially raise, pointing beyond vaulted ceilings to heaven
Now your home
And I never knew you
I never heard your story

And you were
And I wish I was
And we’re all supposed to be
More and more
Human

I heard of your death like everyone’s
On cheap newsprint
Their pictures
Their stories
Their grieving families
And charities in lieu of flowers

No picture
No story
No grieving family
Just a number: one in 29,000
And a charity anesthetic for the pain

And you are
And I wish I was
And we’re all supposed to be

Supposed to...

But you left
And I wish I could
And we all tend to be
Less and less
Human

to be (un)told

i'm looking for stories of the lives of african, southeast asian, and south american children.

i've been looking for three hours.

i've found 4.

what i've found hundreds of are children's stories from these areas.

apparently, a story written by J. Smith about a playful Monkey is a story "to be told," and a life lost to hunger - 29,000/day - is not to be told.

those stories that i have found are one paragraph of information on the child's life before x charity came and offered hope. this is beautiful, but seriously, what about the other 28,999 children? couldn't there something beautiful in telling stories of children - even if it doesn't end up helping them? sure, that's not enough. it is grossly not enough. but, still, simply to tell a person's story in honor of that person - this seems an upholding of the imago dei in children whose lives have not been celebrated.

mars hill students: what if we planned a trip to aftica either in january or next summer with the purpose of setting up a website that honors the stories of african children? would anyone be interested in that?

will the real Jesus please stand up?

every year for 30 years my church has gone to othello, wa to work with migrant farm workers' children. the children are mainly from mexico and guatamala.

every year for 30 years, my church has used flannelgraph to tell these children bible stories.

every year for 30 years, my church has used WHITE flannelgraph characters, with every angel being blonde with blue eyes to invite these latino children into the community of faith.

enter me.

i can't live with that. so....

yesterday i made the suggestion - ok, maybe sternly stated that we need change - that we use either jewish looking flannelgrpah characters or latino ones.

the response: an enraged glare and near-shouting proclamation "latino characters would be highly inappropriate because we are talking about jewish culture here!"

my response: "well, a white jesus is highly inappropriate too, but we've used that for years."

the leader who spoke up sat outraged, rolling his eyes and fuming in the corner for the rest of the meeting.

no amount of explatives can express how i feel. i want to give up, but it's not my church i'm fighting for here, it is young children who need to be able to see themselves in the biblical stories.

how do we make it clear: Jesus is not white!

Image, Community, Christ, and Gender

what is the weight of our understanding of humanity and of the image of God? how could re-visiting and highlighting this subject dramatically alter our lives?

given the Barthian understanding of the imago dei as the potential of i/thou relationship, and actually taking that a step further via the two great commandments, it seems obvious that the imago dei is in the potential for i/thou relationship with God and with humanity - and, actually, that the imago dei is untwisted from the fall in mutually loving relationhips between i/thou and i/divine thou - (wow this is getting to be a long and confusing intro to the question i want to ask - and sincerely hope you will comment on!) - we can conclude that to be imago dei - which is to be human - is to be communal.

we can, then, further conclude that no single human being can be "human". rather, a communal collection of beings become human as they are relating.

given this, as we look at the necessity of Jesus' humanity, the question becomes, can Jesus be human without the community of those around him? can we conclude that God, genuinely needed certian human beings in order to become fully human? did Jeus need the disciples (12 apostles and other - including women) in order to be a human and thereby redeem humanity?

ruminating further on the imago dei, genesis 1 makes it crystal clear that female and male are communally needed for the fullness of the imago dei, and therefore for humanness.

what does this mean for the humanity of Jesus? does his gestational community with Mary become key in his humanity? do the women who follow and love Jesus provide fuller humanity to Jesus? does their remaining at the cross play a role in Jesus' being human at the moment of crucifixion?

more applicably, does this, then, mean that when we make ministry an entirely male vocation, do we de-humanize leadership in the church? do we de-humanize our leaders? does becoming Christlike mean becoming human? and, if so, does this, then mean engaging more and more perichoretically with gender until our perichoresis mirror's God's and, in our humanness male and female and co-existing in loving community?

the obvious, though distateful from my unmarried point of view, is that we are most human in sexual encounters when the diversity of male and female work together to bring about mutual pleasure for the glory of God (or love).

what does that mean for ministry? male and female ministerial partenering? the importance, and even utter centrality of a theology of sex? what does this speak to the issue of homosexuality? modes of preaching? the theological texts we pick and choose to read from? who seminaries hire to instruct in ministry?

if male and femaleness are so utterly necessary to reflect - and thereby glorify - God, how does this change our theology? what life does it invite us to live? what becomes our catechesis?




so...there's some theological vomitting for you to sort through and begin to reflect on. please, please discuss this!

Naomh Pádraig setting the stage for saint patrick

Neither a lamb nor a lion, today is a bland though grey day in Seattle - but a Seattle spring is approaching. So begins the countdown to the biggest day of the year: Saint Patrick's Day.

Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be sharing Saint Patrick's Story with you in a five act play.

We begin with prologue – the already in motion story Patrick is born into.

Without mentioning anything else of the background, we must start where Patrick does: God. In his Confession, he writes, “God himself is the beginning of all things, the very one who holds all things together, as we have been taught.”

Stepping out of this universal yet intimate beginning, we encounter his family:
Patrick’s grandfather, Potitus, was a priest , basking in the recent ecclesiastical freedom and privilege initiated by Constantine and owning land both in the city and one the countryside.

His Father, Calpornius , was also clergy, a deacon, and a imperial tax collector.

Patrick’s family foreshadows greatness – but not the type which Patrick’s journey leads him to.

Taking yet a step further, we find the prologue making room for a small Roman town on the Western coast of Britain named Bannaventa Berniae. The town, like his family, likely prepare to provide Patrick luxury and safety. Walled, as most cities were in that place and time, and supported by slaves, also fitting the place and time, the city offered Patrick the start he achieved: “An atheist from childhood.”

With one last step, we conclude the prologue: Patrick was born into a Roman Britain at time when the British proudly referred to themselves as Romanus and when Christianity freely existed and had been made the only legal religion by Theodocius.