This is wonderful.  As a parent, I hope that my kids have half as much intergrity as these kids when they are in high school. Watch all the way to the end.

Walking in the middle, yet again

This morning's Gospel reading from Matthew took me in the opposite direction from where it was supposed to.

Jesus is warning the disciples against being like the scribes and Pharisees who spend a lot of time being "greater than".  They expect praise and recognition for their piety.  they don't practice what they preach.  What we are supposed to learn from this is pretty clear:  Don't be a puffed-up jerk.  Be humble, be faithful.  Do without expecting praise.  Lead without expecting recognition.

I get that.

But after reading this passage this morning, I realized that the other end of that spectrum gets on my nerves just as much.  I can't stand the overly pious, self-effacing behavior of those who take this Gospel too seriously.  In fact, this probably bothers me more than the puffed-up jerks of the world.  I wonder if drawing attention to oneself by purposefully taking the lowest seat or waiting to only gather up the scraps doesn't have a similar effect to self-aggrandizement: it is alienating and counter to good community-building.  Just as no one wants to be bossed around by a big shot, no one wants to be made to feel inferior for NOT wanting to be a doormat.

Anglicans have been talking about "The Middle Way" forever.  It is, if I am honest, my fallback response to most dividing forces in the religious world is some version of this via media.  When we are at our worst, this makes us Anglicans look floppy and uncommitted, as if we can't quite make up our minds on where we stand (see previous post).  At our best, however, it means that we are making room for both ends of the spectrum (pick a spectrum, any spectrum!) and everyone in between.  I love the middle way because it means that I have some thinking to do. 

And this issue of grandiosity vs. humility gets solved for me in the middle way:  Don't be a jerk, but don't be a doormat either.  We were created for goodness, goodness we should be.  I'm not really sure what that might look like, but I'm open to your suggestions.  I think it has a lot to do with intentionality and motivation, about keeping God in clear sight at all times, and when our sight gets clouded, wiping the windshield and starting again.  This middle way-- in this respect and in so many others-- is, for me, the Christian walk: purposeful and strong, but with a light respectful tread.  

Who we are, who we are not.

At the rector's request, our program staff have been reading Deep and Wide by Andy Stanley.  Stanley is famous around these parts for being the creator of an enormous Christian ministry conglomerate known as North Point Ministries.  Like many folks who are extremely successful at what they do, Stanley gets a lot of flak for his methodology, pedagogy and theology, primarily from those of us in mainline traditions.  We've been not-so-secretly sneering at the North Point way for years.  But the truth is, in one very basic respect, Stanley is massively successful:  there are butts in the seats.  In an age where Christianity is purported to be dying on the vine, the several Atlanta-area North Point mega churches are bringing in newcomers by the hundreds each Sunday and playing to a cast of thousands each week.    

To be frank, I'm not really enjoying the book.  His writing style is irritatingly informal and chipper, while at the same time treading obnoxiously close to "daddy knows best".

BUT...

It is making me think, and I appreciate that.  And I appreciate Stanley's willingness to unlock his secret formula and lay it out for the world (including his detractors) to read, pick apart and learn from.  He is bold and he's got some exciting, out-of-the-box ideas about church.  There are ways in which I wish I could ingest some of that boldness and translate it into Episcopalese.

Because in the end, there's the rub.  One of the wonderful things about being a Christian is that there are so many ways to be engaged in Christianity, so many denominations that answer big questions in so many ways.  That same gift is also a challenge, though.  So often, we don't quite speak the same language, we don't see eye-to-eye or we think that OUR way has a corner on the Jesus market.  That, obviously, is when we get divided, pissy and decidedly un-Christian with each other.

For generations, Anglicans have been defining ourselves as NOT something else.  We're NOT Roman Catholics, we're NOT Protestants, we're NOT Evangelicals or any of the rest.  But we get stumped when asked to define who we ARE.  We're the "middle way", don't you know?  I think we can get so afraid of offending or alienating or disrespecting by proclaiming a positive identity that we avoid the issue altogether.

Stanley's book is reminding me to step up to the challenge of defining who we ARE then claiming and owning it.  I keep thinking while I'm reading, "That's nice but it wouldn't work for us.  It isn't who we are."  And I'm forcing myself when I have that observation to answer "well, why?"  It is a hard question because i'm having to make choices about who I think we are.  Why don't we have giant screens in our worship space?  Why do we have pews?  Why is most of our music classical?  Why are our sermons 12 minutes instead of 45?  Why don't I preach a feel-good message every week?  Why are we confessing all the time?

There are non-snarky reasons for all fo these things (snarky ones, too, but that's not the point).  Reading a "how-to" from a tradition so different than my own is helping me ask these questions again and frame them in light of community definition.

Finally, I want to be clear that I don't think that defining who we are, what we believe and how we worship is creating an "us" and "them".  The bare truth is that we are not going to change who we are to fit the needs of every person who walks into our narthex (See that insider language right there?  See that?).  We will strive always to be open, welcoming, hospitable and TOTALLY HONEST about who we are.  We will be the community God created us to be.  And the sooner we claim it, can talk about it and be proud of it in positive terms, rather than over-and-against terms, the more people appreciating our vision of Christianity will want to be a part of it.

Sharing this space

I'm really excited that Saintly Mama Beth Frilingos is going to blog with me over here.  I had originally intended this to be a group project, but that didn't quite come to fruition.  But Beth is joining in!  I'll let her introduce herself, but watch this space in the next few days for her contributions to the melee.

Sin, repentence, humility

How's that for a Lenten blog title?

We've put another Ash Wednesday to bed alongside with our Alleluias.  I was talking with someone today who said, "I love Sunday church, but I really love it whenever we do something just a little bit different." I agree, and Ash Wednesday fits the bill nicely.  In the Episcopal tradition, the language of Ash Wednesday is a lot about sin and fallenness, but it is also about repentance and forgiveness.  The Litany of Penitence is full and cathartic, confessing self-indulgence, anger, intemperance, and negligence.  We remind ourselves above all that we are NOT GOD.

I was a great discussion earlier today about whether Ash Wednesday is more about sin and repentance or about our mortality.  In the course of the worship, we smear our heads with a cross of ashes and hear the words "Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return."  Like any good Episcopalian, I think it is both-and.  I see this opening day of Lent as being about humility:  we are made of the stuff if dust, not of the stuff of God.  It takes the hand of God, the breath of God, the will of God to re-member us into being.  And then-- only then-- can we become. 

I do not think Ash Wednesday is a great service for newcomers or a great introduction to this system of beliefs.  We do talk about forgiveness and grace but on this one day we talk primarily about being dust, about how far we've fallen from that grace and how undeserving we are of that forgiveness. We talk about giving up and letting go, about dying.  I am afraid that without a foundation of understanding God's deep, unshakable love for us, this could be a really disturbing introduction to how we believe. 

I also believe that we deeply need to be reminded of these things.  Many of us need the reminder that "beloved" is not the same as "entitled" and that "saved by grace" does not mean "self-righteous".  We need reminding that, while free will is a precious gift, it does not make us God or godly. 

Ash Wednesday does these things for me.  It knocks me down a peg, into that dust from which I have been made.  It reminds me that I was indeed made from muck, but made for goodness, kindness, charity, justice. 

Here we go again

Things got hairy.

Not really, life-threateningly-hairy, just can't-get-to-the-bottom-of-my-to-do-list hairy.  So there was a rather extended blogging break.  But I'm back, and happy to be so.     

It is no coincidence that I'm re-upping on Ash Wednesday.  I am using Lent to try to intentionally bring back two of my great loves: reading and writing.  I can't pinpoint when exactly they fell off my List of Important Things, but they did and I miss them.  I am (was) an avid and voracious reader.  Long working hours at the church and at home have lead to evenings collapsed in a useless heap in front of CSI or Glee.  It is a wicked cycle and I know I'm not the only one who falls prey to it.

So I'm letting Lent be my springboard back to spiritual and intellectual wellness.  Right now, I've got three books in the hopper: Deep and Wide by Andy Stanley, Bring Up the Bodies by Hilary Mantel, and Building Emotional Intelligence: Techniques to Build Inner Strength in Children by Linda Lantieri. I'm enjoying all three to varying degrees and hope to use them for writing fodder in the future. 

The writing I'm going to do here.  Not every day, but several times a week. And I might add some photography, too, though that might be pushing it.  I plan on going back to some of the original themes of this blog, kids, politics, religion, parenting, and see what is stirring.  My hope is that you will join in these conversations and that I will inspired to keep writing.  We shall see.  Just this first, semi-useless entry feels good.  Let's hope I continue to stay inspired, even as the hairiness continues.

Goodbye rots

Some dear friends of mine are moving away.  They aren't going too far, like to Australia or California, but they are going far enough that I won't get so see them every week or even every month and already I miss them.  Trying to explain to my kids that they are going to live in a different state has been confusing for them.  It is really the first time our family has gone through this kind of loss, friends moving away.  My kids aren't sad in the same way I'm sad.  The time-space continuum is to confusing to worry about and whether they see their buddies again next week or next year doesn't really matter and can we have ice cream for snack?  But I know they will notice in those traditional times, birthday parties and church picnics and choir when the absence will be noted.  My son has already asked for a playdate before catching himself and remembering that his friend is in NORTH CAROLINA, a state he now pronounces with the same sparkly eyes an ingenue saves for BROADWAY.

It is tricky, this friendship thing, in this culture where we don't stay in one place very long.  My parents still live in the same house we moved to when I was four but I do not expect that to be the pattern for my family and nor do most of my peers.  Things like the internet and airplanes and the shrinking of the world make moving from job to job and state to state regular occurrences for folks in my demographic.  We each handle it differently, kids from adults, men from women, but we are required, by the sheer fact of community, to deal with saying goodbye.  I hate it.  I'm terrible at it.  I'm more of a nonchalant "See you later" then go cry in the closet kind of girl.  Easier on everyone that way, right?

This is, of course, not the first time I have said goodbye to a friend because someone was moving.  All through college and graduate school I said goodbye on a regular basis to people I had come to love.  I moved, they moved, we all moved.  It seemed par for the course, part of growing up.  And since everything is more dramatic when you're 22, the goodbyes were more dramatic, too, fraught with tears and with promises of eternal devotion, never-ending communication and shared vacations for time eternal.

It is different this time.  This is a grown-up goodbye, not so wrenching and dramatic, just sad.  I am genuinely thrilled for my sweet friends and the new stage of the journey they are beginning,one hard-won after a long bout of uncertainty.  I can't wait to hear about their new adventures, their new house, their new town and new jobs, the new school and the new church (okay, I don't really want to hear about the new church). I am grateful that God brought them into my life because I've learned a lot from and shared a lot with them. But I am sad.  For myself, really, because of the very specific gifts they have brought into my life that I'll no longer be around with any regularity. 

I know of course, that like so many of the other gifts that God drops unbidden and undeserved in our laps, friendship is worth every ounce of energy we put into it and every ounce of heartache we get out of it.  I will, of course, continue to make friends, good friends, friends that I love to be with and share my life with.  And I will have to say goodbye, over and over, as jobs and lives change.  The cycle will continue, over and over, each new person adding richness and loveliness, even as they leave little holes in my heart. 

Loving is worth it, even though today I'm sad.