On Reading EJoye's Ordination Paper

I just finished reading my friend EJoye's ordination paper, in which she writes about her faith and understanding of history of the United Church of Christ. I am grateful for the gift she had given in writing it, and all I can figure out in response is a meditation on words as boxes - gifts and containers. I cannot capture my emotional and physical and intellectual responses here. You had to be there.

On Reading EJoye’s Ordination Paper

 

If words are boxes,

they contain the uncontainable.

They capture a piece

of what’s all around us

within rigid walls

of inescapable meaning.

 

If words are boxes,

they can be opened

like gifts –

Releasing a piece

of what’s all around us

to breathe with us.

 

If words are boxes,

they can be passed around,

turned over and shaken,

squeezed and pinched,

delighted in

as gifts to and from each other.

 

If words are boxes,

they can cross the globe

like parcel post.

They can be rubbed

like Aladdin’s lamp.

They can be cracked

like eggshells or codes.

They can be sliced open

like surgery or hotdog packages

They can be opened

like Pandora’s box,

releasing wonder and horror,

cruelty and hope.

They can be the way

we can capture and enforce

the violence of existence.

or the way we capture and share

the magic of existence.

a note about God and marriage

I was having a conversation with a prospective student this morning, which sort of solidified my thinking about same-sex marriage being a non-issue in religion.

If God is a God of love, what would be the reason for establishing arbitrary rules about who can and cannot marry each other?
[By arbitrary, I mean, what's the basis for opposing same-sex marriage except that "it's in the Bible"? (by now I hope you know that the Bible has nothing to say about LGBT people, because homosexuality as we understand it - as well as marriage as we understand it - did not exist in Biblical times).
We have to approach sacred texts critically because that's the only way to show proper respect. Ask questions and seek answers, isn't that the point? For those things that literalists use as proof that God doesn't like gays, we need to ask why they are there. If we don't, we risk using the text for our own purpose, and doing violence to its meaning and intent.]

And..If God is not a God of love, what would be the reason for monotheism?

Well, you could ask that last question anyway, but for the purpose of this argument, I hope you get what I mean.

broken open again

Last night we watched Dangerous Living: Coming Out in the Developing World. It was particularly poignant to witness the impact of colonial rule. (The British imported laws against homosexual acts, along with their particular anti-gay language and approach to homosexuality, as well as to gender. Leave it to people more expert than me to describe the history of colonial rule and its impact on culture and society.) It was also very sad to hear about the violence and fear tactics used to silence gay and lesbian people in places like Namibia, Sudan, Honduras, Egypt, India, the Philippines, etc. Often to the point that leaders had to emigrate unwillingly to the US, Canada, and elsewhere. Watching these things, and listening to my partner share his thoughts, I was again reminded of my misguided desire to erase difference by trying to force hope, or by believing I understand more than I actually do. If you've seen Trembling Before G-d, there are similarities. In the first film, it was a forced choice between sexuality and nationality (both of which are intimately tied together). Choose sexuality, and face violence and exile. Choose nationality and face violence, deadly secrecy, and real paranoia. In the second film, the forced choice was sexuality and spirituality (which are also intimately tied together). Choose sexuality, and face exile and separation from the divine as you understand it in ritual and community. Choose spirituality, and face excruciating guilt and separation from the divine in human relationships and touch.

Oh, and while we're at it - if you choose nationality or religion, then you face scorn from the privileged gays and lesbians who have faith in an unquestioned culture of outness (not that I'm against outness, but the call to "come out wherever you are" must take into account the complexity of human relationships, community, and life choices). On the other side, if you choose sexuality, you're expected to be grateful that the US or that some other church or denomination has accepted you, under false assumptions that we in the US or liberal religion are somehow more advanced or enlightened.

Here is where I return to the context thing: Such profound separation and disconnect are not in my experience. Sure, I could point to similar experiences or pathways to empathy. But there is value in allowing the difference to stand - untrampled by my efforts to "fix" it.

This morning at Care Through Touch, one of my massage clients was telling me about his experience being homeless, and how it has created a separation in his spirituality - without a sense of home, he has difficulty finding a private space for worship and prayer. Rather than trying to close the gap, I tried to sit with his experience, in acceptance of the toll it has taken, and the depth of despair and height of hope he expressed for change.

It was a religious moment - not the kind where you see God, or you start crying or light comes down and impregnates you, but the kind that works like poetry, unfolding a glimpse of the mystery and magic that has always been there. It is marveling at the human spirit's ability to mold horrible experiences into stories of survival without hiding the anger, fear, and sadness.

If that makes any sense. It was one of those days.

postscript on context

Today I had a brief conversation with my professor, which helped shift my logjam. The question of articulating a context other than one's own is about why a person is looking at the 'other' context. In my example, I was complexifying my judgment about the bishops. The skill in seeing a context other than one's own is about standing back - not seeing difference as a problem. It's about, as she said, seeing the ancient Israelite culture as the alien culture that it is - and the Bible is forever mysterious because of it. We do not know what they were writing because we do not know their world. Which doesn't mean there is nothing sacred that can be gleaned, but it changes the patterns of light that we shed on the worlds of Bible - and what it sheds on our own world. It's about acknowledging the difficulties inherent in relationships bridging difference. It's about not trying to create a false closeness based in false similarity (her critique of CPE interactions where both chaplain and patient are placed in a common context that hides their unique social and home, etc situations).

And when she described this, I felt a welling up emotion - maybe the joy of recognition - because at heart it's about preserving the delicate mystery of diversity, letting the biosphere exist without smashing it with the heavy machinery of false intimacy and self-centeredness. It's about letting my (white liberal Christian) anxiety sit there and transform into something else eventually, when I cannot insert myself everywhere. It's about the hope for human community contained in Sampson's "Unconditional Kindness to Strangers" and [I've said this about 20 million times before] Judith Butler's "Precarious Existence." It's about escaping the need to be connected by more than shared vulnerability.

for an 11-year-old who committed suicide

One of my favorite bloggers, fem.men.ist, wrote this tribute for an 11-year-old kid who committed suicide. Within the tribute is a confession and a call to action - to change the ways we interact in the world. That's religion in a nutshell. Amen.

http://fem-men-ist.blogspot.com/2009/04/to-11-year-old-carl-joseph-walker.html

"a context other than one's own"

Today I got feedback from my Senior Synthesis Paper - an attempt to distill all of my 4 years of learning into a response to a case study about United Methodist pastors risking their ordination status to preside over same-sex marriages in California (in the UMC, it is not allowed to be "a self-avowed, practicing homosexual" clergyperson, nor is it allowed to preside over same-sex marriages).
My feedback was accurate, though a bit disheartening. It certainly reflects the areas where I have developed: my vision for a better world, my ability to articulate that vision in theological, Biblical, and traditional language that comes from my historical and current religious perspectives (Christian & Religious Science), and a stronger grounding in my perspective. But I also do not have a well-developed sense of spiritual practice, nor am I able to articulate an understanding of others' contexts without reference to my own. This last one is a particular conundrum for me.
On the one hand: I live in an individualistic society, and I understand myself with my experience at the center (which is not to say that I am the center of THE world, but I experience myself at the center of MY world). I have learned, in many ways, including CPE, to reflect on what others' experience touches upon in myself -- as a way of empathy. Further, I learned how my experience limits how I can see - so this practice was a way to enlarge my perspective, and at the same time maintain awareness of the limits of that perspective. As a result of my training (and I realized this as I wrote my paper), I cannot imagine a way of discussing someone else's experience without (explicit or implicit) reference to my own.
On the other hand: I am a formation of my communities. I learned from them how to categorize and place values in the world. I see myself as intimately interconnected with all other life in the universe (as in, we co-exist, and without each other, we could not be -- sometimes in ways that are mutually supportive, and sometimes in ways that are destructive . . . and thus mutually destructive, even if the short-term gains seem to be on one side). In this way, there is no context other than (our) own.

I worked hard in this paper to understand the contexts of Methodist bishops charged with enforcing their church's law, whether or not they personally agreed with it. And in doing so - complexifying my own judgment against them - I came to see how their contexts diverged and intersected with my own. I understood their context a little better, but not without reference to my own. In fact, how could I have anything to say if I didn't have reference to my own?
This touches on some of my own limits. I used to believe (because it worked for me) that social justice is about linking personal experiences of being oppressed with experiences of being the oppressor, and then uniting under a common goal to fight for a better world for all. This is profoundly upended by racist actions and organizing among white LGBT people.
It also exposes the fact that I don't have a systematic way of understanding my relationship to the world. I understand the dangers of the me-centered universe, but have yet to figure out how to shift that any more than I already have, in recognizing the threads that connect me (hamstring me, trap me in a web, and precisely place me like a marionette) in the sweep of existence. Spirituality is at the same time as vague (and gassy) as a nebulous and as precise as a GPS device. It can be elemental and atmospheric while also supremely helpful in showing me where I am and helping me navigate where I want to go.

PS - The larger theme of my paper was a plea to move from marriage morality to sexual ethics. My argument is that spiritual traditions open pathways to understanding values about ourselves and our existence. Marriage morality puts a cap on that by declaring what is and is not within the bounds of acceptance. Sexual ethics opens it up to questions about how we treat each other, and how we promote intimate and romantic habits & attitudes that tie into larger values of humanity and relationships. The focus is on values rather than rules - without losing the exactness of the spiritual & theological grounds we stand on. Try it out.

a scary truth...?

Yesterday I joined Care Through Touch for our annual Holy Thursday foot massage service - where a whole bunch of people (most of them priests, nuns, and monks in a sabbatical program at one of the GTU's Catholic schools) who fan out across a bunch of our service sites and provide foot massage and clean socks to homeless and low-income people. I was a supervisor, and I ended up sitting in the drop-in center waiting room and chatting with a couple folks who hang out there. One of the people - a white woman in her late 40s who is homeless due to leaving a long-term, heavily abusive marriage - was telling me about her difficult journey. She seemed to sum it up by saying, "You know, I never would have expected myself to be here, to lose everything. But I've found wonderful things: I'm reconnecting with my body through massage, I'm making friendships... Having everything stripped away like this, I'm rediscovering what's important to me. I'm realizing that I must rely on human relationships to survive. None of the rest of it matters." This reminds me of what Mama has told me: where she grew up, your "retirement account" is your family - you help them in their need, and they will help you in yours. As I talked with this woman, I reflected on this rather scary truth. In fact, it's a dangerous truth. One of the many ways to find meaning in suffering is to realize the survival of the human spirit in the face of unspeakable suffering. Another way is to realize the power of relationships and many tiny acts of caring for each other. The danger is in assuming it takes that kind of suffering to come to this realization. Or to assume that everyone will reach the same conclusion. Someone could also reach this stage in the woman's life and say "You can rely on no one but yourself." In fact that's probably a necessary survival story for at least a while, in dangerous situations. And frankly, I would say most homeless folks - while many do survive solely through their interdependence with each other -  would not reach this conclusion. More often, I have heard about how the system eats you up, and even with hard work it is difficult to keep permanent employment when you are also struggling with finding safe housing and affordable meals. And that's without struggling with shame/guilt/anger over past mistakes, mental illnesses and/or addictions.

But I return to the truth that this woman told me: In the end, for me too, it is the relationships and interdependence that keeps me alive. But I'm afraid to tell this story, because it can be easy to conclude that homeless people are somehow more noble for their suffering, or that the degradation of poverty is somehow "good for you."

standing on different assumptions

Most people already know this from my facebook, but I want to write more about what I was trying to do. A little over a week ago in my preaching class, I chose one of the troubling texts - the story about the creation of Eve out of Adam's rib. This text is used not only to tell me as a gay guy that I'm unnatural, but also to tell women that they're subordinate to men (and nature is subordinate to men), and that marriage is the only truly blessed relationship. I don't agree with any of those things, and I wanted to see what would come out of it for me - both in inspiration of the spirit and in wisdom of feminist preachers & teachers. I also wanted to give a sermon about same-sex marriage that wasn't about defending or reasoning, but that was grounded in different assumptions. I didn't want to apologize, or defend my decision to get married to my partner, but rather to stop assuming there might be a problem in the first place. People have said, "But you're gay, how could you be a Christian?" That's like saying, "But you're a woman, how could you be a Christian?"

So I can't say I overwhelmingly succeeded, but in the course of reading, studying, and conversing about the text, what emerged was a more fundamental notion about what it means to be human. I always read sacred texts for their revelation about what my ancestors believed were core truths about human existence, and that's what I discovered. The power of the Adam & Eve creation myth is not in its ordering of gender, or its supposed declaration about "natural" heterosexual marriage [in fact, nothing about the story says that God married them to each other in the first place]. Rather, it's a more fundamental declaration of how much we need each other. Adam and Eve (two very different people, sharing a bone of humanity, a small something similar amidst their differences) help each other enflesh their reality. The story starts with Adam naming and categorizing everything - owning and objectifying it all - and Eve comes around and helps him see the world through her eyes, too. I called it 'relational reality,' which is maybe not the best preaching word, but it works. The story is about helpers and partners in life - not just partners in marriage, but a whole host of relationships with friends, family, and strangers, whom we depend on to survive and make our world 3-dimensional. In the sermon, I chose to talk less about my partner and more about my mother-in-law, because she is also a partner in my life. She is part of our household, and she helps me see the world differently because of her different experiences.

In doing so, I wanted to sidestep apologies or reasons that same-sex marriage was okay, in favor of re-reading a text used against it to discover a deeper truth, and to use my upcoming marriage to illustrate it unapologetically.

I like this method, and I hope to do it more.

tired/normal

Last weekend, we went to the Asian Art Museum with some friends who just moved to the Bay Area from PA. I knew them when I was in New Hampshire, and it was wonderful to see them again and introduce them to my fiance.

At the same time, it was bittersweet, because being with them reminded me of my life in NH. Not that I want to go back, but I remembered the free time I had. Sitting on the balcony of the museum, sharing lunch, I felt suddenly tired. No, that's not it - I suddenly realized how tired I was. And how normal it felt. Not long ago, when I asked a professor how he was doing, he said that after a while "busy" feels normal, and it becomes the new "fine." It's just an artificially high bar. Another colleague told me that she complained to her partner one weekend, "I don't know what's going on. I feel slow, but not tired, and I don't want to take a nap, but I don't want to move very fast." Her partner congratulated her: "This is what is commonly known as relaxing."

Oh.

When did it stop being a problem that I am always plucking things to do from the multiple tasks and deadlines hanging over my head? When did it stop being a problem that I didn't sit down when I came home unless it was to do homework? It's not that I'm complaining, but it's been an odd week of realizations. Maybe my deadline-pushing habits and get-it-all-in-at-the-last-minute flurries (and the fact that I schedule time with friends at least a few weeks in advance) are not a sign of a new laziness and flakiness on my part, but a symptom of simply having too many deadlines.

Luckily, I'm pushing up to the end of my degree program, and once I have a job (instead of classes, homework, 20-or-so hours of work-study, and a weekly volunteer gig), things will settle down. I'll again be in a position to structure my time with a little more breathing room.

It's funny what passes for normal if you just get used to it.