waking up in an alternate universe

This always seems to happen when I go home... has Ohio changed or have I changed? I am guessing it is me.

I came down early for breakfast at our Hampton Inn in Cleveland, thinking I would get some work done. As I scanned the room, I realized that I was the only person who was not a white man... and the room was not even close to empty.

For real?

"God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them."
1 John 4:16

new mercies i see

Anyone who knows me knows that I lose things like it my job. I can never find my keys. Sometimes I spend more time looking for the dog’s leash than I spend walking her. This is a sheer fact I cannot deny about myself, so I have developed habits to deal with this problem. I double and triple check for my phone, wallet and keys every time I leave the house. My keys now have a hook near the door in the apartment, next to the hook for the dog’s leash. Doesn’t always work but it is a start.

This morning I woke in the dark to fly home for my grandfather’s funeral. Enough said, right? I have been singing “Great is Thy Faithfulness” lately to myself. It has started to become almost an instinct in times of stress. I was humming it in the hallway, wondering what new mercies I would see this morning, in the physical, mental, emotional and spiritual dark. On my way, rushing out the door, I double and triple checked for the essentials, putting my wallet in its place in my bag, accessible for security.

Didn’t take long to find my first new mercy of the day.

But it wasn’t the traffic. We under-estimated Monday morning rush hour and how early it started, so I arrived at the airport frazzled and late. I had forty five minutes to check-in, clear security and grab my flight. Thankfully the line is short, so I hurry to a self-service check-in kiosk, and reach into my bag for my wallet…

You can probably guess where the story goes from here.

So there I am, upending my bag—school books, papers for work, dvds, and snacks are spread all around me—dialing my phone with one hand, trying to catch my husband to see if it is in the car, while looking through the mess with the other.

The Delta person asked if I was having trouble finding my reservation on the kiosk. No, I couldn’t find my wallet. The look on her face was priceless. With my penchant for losing things, it is one I have seen before.

I shove all my stuff bag in my bag and my husband, on the phone, is pulling off the highway, onto the shoulder to search the car. I rush outside and look at the curb where I got out, asking the curbside check-in guy if he or anyone else found anything in the lat couple minutes. Of course he hadn’t, and he started to offer suggestions as to where my wallet might be.

This is another side effect of being that person who loses stuff. Everyone assumes you are a little dumb at least, cause who loses their wallet on the way to the airport? People also tend to think that because you lose things, you don’t know how to look for things, when in fact I am an expert looker because I do it all the freakin’ time.

My blood pressure is rising, tears are starting to fill my eyes, as I drag my unwieldy luggage back inside, pick the nearest patch of floor, for round two of dumping the bag and looking, while my husband, still on the phone is digging the our horrendously messy backseat.

In comes my angel.

It took me a minute to realize that this man was my new mercy this morning. At first, I brushed him off and yet another person trying in earnest to help me but actually making it harder. He was asking over and over if I lost something. In my head, I was thinking, of course I lost something!!! Why else would I be searching through all my stuff on the floor of the airport?!!? When I got passed my stubbornness, and answered “yes, my wallet,” he asked what size it was.

Here is where I must admit a bit of idiocy. You all can probably guess that he had found the wallet. I had no idea. It never occurred to me that this man might actually be able to solve my troubles. I was too wrapped up in my own drama to see past the end of my nose. When it dawned on me to just answer his questions, my wallet appeared.

I wish I had hugged and kissed the man.

In my stress and fragility, it was all I could do to get to the ticket counter, check in with my wallet and get to security. So I said a rushed thanks and went on my way.

He was my new mercy today. I thank God for his help, because I didn’t thank him properly and do not know how else to express my gratitude.

In Memorium: Dr. Richard Norman Matzen

When I was a wee chubby thing, my grandfather was a giant to me. Towering over six feet, stately in his stature, with shoulders as broad as I was tall, he amazed me. He was a doctor, retiring from Cleveland Clinic and writing a textbook on preventative medicine that mystified me as much as he did. The book was inches and inches thick. He has the brain of a scientist and the heart of an artist. He took unbelievable photographs, and could draw with the precision that a surgeon must use when bearing a scalpel. He had an eye for detail, passing on to me a love for the art of stamps from all over the world. We did puzzles together when we visited his house in Cleveland as children.

It is never that easy in families. These are the beautiful things I remember as my heart breaks having just lost him. My heart breaks for the pain not healed and the lives not reconciled and pray that reconciliation is stronger than death. But what I will remember is how he participated in forming me.

He gave me roots. His big Swedish face and strong Nordic spirit feels deeply rooted in my soul. And every time I draw, every time I am praised as having the eye or hand for art, I think of him. in many ways, my ability and love for visual expression came from him, through my mom to me. He is a bit of what makes me me, and so I will carry him with my everyday, step by step, one little bit at a time.

i heart the TSA

I am apparently practicing to be a gerbil.... running on wheels never getting anywhere. Well, that is what an encounter with the TSA always makes me feel like. Today, going through security in Denver, they had lines set up for two or three times the crowd that was there. That meant that all the passengers had to walk up and down rows and rows and rows of roped off waiting space to get to the screening area. It was just silly... and just like running on a gerbil wheel. And then, if you are a really fancy gerbil, you get to run around in litle tubes that shoot in a particular direction until you get on your flight.

At least Denver International has free wireless.

no country for old men

The movie closes with Sheriff Bell describing a dream, one morning of his retirement, of his death. He looks defeated, much sadder than I have ever seen Tommy Lee Jones. He bears witness to a changing world. He recalls a time when back country sheriffs were not even armed and yet finds himself following the trail of a pyschopath who kills on prinicple--over drugs and money. Powerless and impotent, he retires, it seems, because he just no longer knows what to do. He counted on God to come with old age and is disheartened to feel as if that never happened. No longer a man of courage, perhaps even no longer a man of principle, he drinks his coffee with his lifelong wife, unsure of how to spend his days.

To an idealist in her twenties, this may be a fate worse than death. To fade away, seeing the horror of the world and doing nothing--withdrawing, devoid of hope. How do you bear witness to the world, even seeing your efforts to save, to help, to fix, or to serve (no matter how you think of it...) fail, and keep on going? The simplest answer when looking at this character is to hang onto hope, and for many of us, this come from faith--whether in God or in something else. Sheriff Bell lost hope and faith. How, over the long term, when investigating the horror as the Sheriff does--staring it straight in the face--do we keep the faith?

BART is the home of the bizarre. At least when I ride, it is. All of the most strange, unique, weird, and sometimes even disturbing things I have witnessed since moving to the Bay Area, I have witnessed on the BART. I have a new incident to add to the list.

I sat behind a young man. The car was not very full. I settled into my book for a half hour ride. The young man in front of me started talking. He was sitting by himself, but his voice was deliberate, so I assumed, he was on a cell phone. He wasn't. But he wasn't really talking to himself either. Then I realized he was reading out loud... and not just anything, he was reading the Bible.

REALLY?!?... I wasn't sure what to think or do. It was the book of Esther, and by looking over his shoulder, I could tell he was on the fourth chapter. Random. Mordecai was mourning in a sackcloth. Huh? Just as abruptly as it began, it ended. And, just as abruptly he left. Not even at a stop.

I had no idea what to think. I wasn't even sure what had happened. This was no evangelical reading. Esther doesn't work for that, and his tone was not one of preaching the good news or bringing God's word to the masses. Did the text just grab him so intensely that he had to voice it? Is that just how encounters the text--it must be read out loud? As intentional as the reading sounded--his voice was formal, and pronounced--he was reading to no one in particular. What did I see? What did I hear? It was so inexplicable that I wondered if I imagined it.

It also made me wonder about our public voice. If I chose to just read something out loud on the BART to everyone or no one, what would I read? What would I say?

great is thy faithfulness

... morning by morning, new mercies I see.

Sitting in my first worship class, I am busy reflecting--I am in seminary, so I am always busy reflecting, but anyway--on the worshipping community I am now a part of. This year is the first year probably since I was in middle school that I have only missed a couple of Sundays. Going back to a "Lord's Day Worship" (I just learned that is what we call it in PCUSA) every week has been a bit of an adjustment. I do miss lazy Sunday mornings.

But, as I think on what I have gained, I am amazed.

I love to sing. I am not very good at it. I love to sing in a community, with the voices moving deep in my soul. I love hymns. It does not matter how bad I am, we are lifting it up, connecting with God and each other.

In January, life felt crazy. Still does bit, but I was in the midst of a particularly intense time of indecision, transition and growth. Among this, we sang "Great is Thy Faithfulness" and Bruce RC preached on taking risks in faith (well, that is what I heard). For a month, the song has been stuck in my soul. Morning by morning I am looking for mercies. In the insanity, I am trying to revel in even the smallest mercies... a good morning kiss on the way out the door, the sun on my face and the wind in my hair as I drive to school the blueness of the Bay, the company of friends, the wild mustard blooiming, the dog's smile... okay, I am getting overly cheesy and sentimental. But it is true, our worship that week transformed me, moved me, and is continuing to move me.

I will keep this is mind as I try to make it through the end of class at ten pm...

morning by morning, new mercies I see...

vaginas, vaginas, vaginas

This is the Chapel of the Great Commission transformed into the Chapel of the Great Vagina. Patricia Wood designed the banners.

At first, it seemed to me that it was no big deal that we were producing the Vagina Monologues at PSR. I mean, no bigger deal than doing it anywhere else. I have seen it before, at my undergrad, it was preformed every year. Yea, it is cool that it is a part of a global movement to stop violence against women, but nothing about our performance was special.

Was I ever wrong.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of enjoying the run through before our final dress rehearsal. It finally dawned on me, sitting in the chapel, with a giant stained glass portrait of Jesus over my head... where I first met the PSR community, where I practiced preaching, where I worship with my professors, where I have been transformed by worship... that in this place, in this house of God, it was significant to perform this piece. There were women screaming cunt from the pulpit, women who may preach and not be heard in some churches because of their vagina. There were women discovering a new artistic part of themselves that God created them to enjoy right up their on the altar. There were women standing under the cross, telling the story of women in flesh, just a Jesus told the story of God in the flesh.

If ever I am in ministry and I find myself feeling lonely, quiet, or small because I am a woman, I will stand taller remembering that moment in the PSR chapel when I witnessed more than two dozen women strongly being who God made them to be, telling the story of God's children in a new and exciting way.

Ash Wednesday

grad school angst

I am sitting in a class, with a professor who is reading his notes to us... notes he gave to us.

Really? This has never happened to me before in my education, and it is not effective for me. I could be doing a million other things and read this at my leisure. My presence here is inconsequential... at least as of now.

what is interesting thus far...

This story begins with the story of Portugal working its way down the west coast of Africa, trading slaves and gold. This was a violent story. Resistance meant violence and pillaging. Malacca was one of the great conquests in terms of trade. Reaching the straits of Malacca opened an entire new world of trade. But it did not stop there. The places can be listed like a reading of the war dead. Dates, place and names as “Christianity” spread with colonialism. Power made love to religion, bedded down with the new nation states. Just like an illicit affair, I want to avert my eyes, politely act as if nothing happened and move on.

This is not possible. Affairs seep into life, changing everything from large to small interactions from that moment forward. The way that Christianity spread, as unpleasant as it may seem, has forever altered the history of many people and places and continues, to this day, to impact individual lives. So I must look, longer and deeper than I would like, at the ugliness of my people.

but what if i do the violence?

Today I learned a hard lesson in a new way about my (maybe) chosen profession--being a pastor. We all know that you have to risk looking like an idiot to be successful, and I am beginning to wonder if we have to risk hurting people to do any real good in the world.

Do we?

In the pursuit of ending violence against women, in the production of a local V-Day campaign, painful things will be discussed, dramatized and potentially ripped open. But do we not talk about violence against women as a result?

The church ordains lots of people... and by "the church," I mean all the ordaining bodies of the many churches. Some of those people do minor harm--some do major. Jim Jones was ordained by the Disciples of Christ, and an ordained Presbyterian pastor in the Bay Area spent over two decades sexually abusing children... the list could go on and on. But, do I not get ordained, do I choose a "safer" profession than this--one where the most harm I would do is mess up a spreadsheet or something--rather than take that risk?

I know living is a risk. Everyday I can do damage. I know many, many other professions risk hurting people. Doctors can make mistakes, and lives are at stake. Architects can make mistakes and building fall and people die. But, if I make a mistake, cause pain, trauma in the name of the church (PCUSA, if I do indeed make it through this journey known as ordination). Some folks would accuse pastors who cause pain of doing so in the name of God... even worse.

Can I take this on?

I certainly can't let fear paralyze me....

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