summer reads

i finished my first book for fun of reading season (the last day of exams to the first day of classes) yesterday. i soul sang.

this year's inauguration into joyful reading: persepolis by marjane satrapi.

read it.

now.

i am not kidding.

i am not usually a fan of comics and/or graphic novels (what is the difference?... see? i plead ignorance) but i have a friend how is a HUGE fan. he occasionally passes me some fantastic reads. this was one of them.

satrapi shows me why i should be a huge fan of this genre. her story is compelling, but it is heightened and deepened by her images. some of the power of the narrative cannot be felt with out her often haunting images. she is a true artist of both word and image. the immense suffering she describes, the moral struggles her characters undertake, often need the pictures, their expression and their ambiguity to bring her audience into the story.

i have spent the year theorizing suffering, theorizing God, theorizing art, and here, in this beautiful book, she weaves a story that more authentically speaks about all three then most of the scholarship i have read in the last few months.

refreshing.

read maus, vol. 1 & 2. also brilliant.

making transitions, not saying good-bye

sunday evening, with Rev. Dr. D. Mark Wilson's benediction, the PSR academic year came to a close. with this, my life is in transition. i am no longer girl intern at mission bay community church. i am no longer in class, a state of being which always makes me feel like i am floating through life with no direction (when not employed full time as an alternative to class). many of my friends are moving, either for the summer or for life.

this makes me sad. to say otherwise would be to lie. i thrive on change and growth but dread and fear it all the same. i have been surprised to find "family" in california, but that family will not look the same next week. i have been surprised to find deep community in california, but my part in that has to change. it is hard to admit what all this has meant to me and i am not sure why. when i preached for the last time on sunday, it was difficult... not for all the reasons that it usually is, but because of the way i felt invested in this community and the sense of saying good-bye.

and yet new exciting things await. i am traveling some this summer... i am making art this summer. i will be learning, but in different ways. i will begin a new journey.

so i am not saying good-byes. i refuse. i am making transitions.

grey's authority

so i am stuck on this "authority" issue. it keep cropping up. how do i take my authority as a person, yada yada yada.

well, grey's anatomy tonight was all about learning to take authority. izzy knew what she needed to do with a patient but wanted bailey to do it for her. finally bailey laid it out--you don't need me to do this, you have what you need, just do it. she did. george couldn't find his authority since he failed his intern exam. he lost all confidence in his work. tonight, he asked for the second chance he felt he deserved--and got it. meredith is all over the professional authority, doing surgeries she is not authorized to do and lying about it (yes, i know this is just a show), but struggled with personal authority. she finally tells derrick that she wants him. she has worked and is working on herself and wants him.

i think this is a fairly common transition in figuring out how to be an adult. as we get skills, find identity, move in new ways, we have to figure out how to be that ourselves in a new way. we are trying to figure out how to wear our new skin. taking our authority is figuring out how to be our best selves and giving that to the world. sometimes this means stepping up. sometimes it means asking for help--cause we don't know it all, and are often deeply aware of our ignorance.

today, i emailed some of the staff at church to get opinions about preaching this weekend. i believe more heads are better than one. and yet, i think i was really just looking for affirmation, and as soon as i sent the email, i realized that. i was taking baby steps i needed to just stand up. their response was the response i expected, the conclusion i came to myself.

if anyone needs to learn to respect my authority, it is me.

you know you are an artist when...

you see your work permanently tatooed on someone's foot.

i get a lot of flack for not accepting my "authority" as an artist and a minister. well, folks, today i accepted authority. i woke up, made a drawing, took it to a shop, and said, "here, put this on her foot. forever." if that is not exercising artistic authority, i don't know what is.

my dear friend kelly, whose foot is in the picture, seemed happy to have a committee to give her opinions. she has no idea how in awe i was as i watch this drawing permanently added to her figure... and my awe at her trust to surrender her body tot he art of another. it was and is daunting. and yet thrilling. my work is in the world. my work is meaningful. this is what i will carry with me this summer as i continue to explore how to exist as artist and minister at the same time.

happy graduation kelly. you will be dearly missed by your family in oakland.

in the words of cartman... respect my authori-ta!

critics

there is a sex and the city episode where carrie gets her book review in the new york times, and it is fantastic. the same week, she receives criticism from a stranger regarding a relationship. what feedback does she take to heart? the negative feedback. the question of the episode...why do we only listen to our worst reviews.

i am in the process of gathering feedback about my internship experience at mission bay. i am asking people those questions that feel so scripted... what are my strengths? what are my weaknesses? how have you seen me change? etc. etc. etc... and am busy sorting through the answers. we have talked quite a bit in field education about constructive criticism and using feedback. this week, i feel like carrie, only listening to my worst reviews.

what is with that? i wallow in an exam that i could have done better on and quickly forget the exam where i did my best and my work was reflected in the grade.

i think this may be a legacy of calvin and total depravity that i am not to happy to have received from my ancestors. i think the humility that jesus called us to and that paul constantly reminded us about is about being honest with yourself about yourself, both the good and the bad.

i will work on that this week, as i wrap up all of these tasks (interning, preaching, papers, etc.) that are sure to be evaluated...

hallelujah! i have some reading to do

despite the heat, it is a day to party in san francisco.

the california supreme court just overturned a state law that banned same-sex marriage, saying that constitutionally, all couples have the right to marry.

within thirty days, gay and lesbian couples will be able to MARRY in california.

thank God.

within minutes, the entire decision was available online (it is over one hundred pages... gotta love technology) and i want to read it. i have made it through three pages.

this puts the church in california in an interesting position, and puts clergy in an even more interesting position. PCUSA says you can't marry a same-sex couple. you could do another ceremony not approximating marriage, but no marriage. this was less of an issue when all that was available was domestic partnership. will the clergy who believe in same sex marriage step up? can they really bring charges against everyone if hundreds of marriages happen?

and then there is the question of ordination. if it is now possible to live in fidelity in marriage, can the church hold its ground in excluding the GLBTQ community from ministry?

i hope and i pray that this is only the beginning and that we see changes in other states and within in the church.

free to practice?

ann curry interviewed members of the FLDS church in Texas where the huge raid was carried out last month. one mother interviewed has not seen her sons in 37 days and has only seen her daughters once in that time.

this interview used questions from the public that were emailed to the today show. so, after asking the members of the community for a definition of abuse, ann asked, "if you knew there was abuse happening on the ranch, would you do something to stop it?"

that question is demeaning and condescending. a basic human assumption we make about each other is that we will stop suffering if we can. we tend to think of people who are equal to us as good people who would never stand for something like abuse. so why then is it an appropriate question to ask these FLDS parents if they would stop abuse?

i do not agree with much, if any, of the theology of the FLDS church (what I know of it) and certainly a lot of their practices. i do not know how to feel about the raid. but, i hate to see people demeaned for their faith. there is this cultural assumption that people who believe anything outside the religious norm (this is different depending on where you are) are stupid. i felt like ann talked to these parents like they were stupid. of course they would stop abuse. if you push them, they are not going to change their minds and admit it. and even if they wouldn't stop abuse, they would not admit that on national television.

in this country, in public, it is still okay to treat people differently based on their religious beliefs. why?

still an intern

"i will pour my spirit out on all people."

happy pentecost.

big fan of the holy spirit that i am, i love pentecost. so, of course, i volunteered to do something to pentecostalize that mission bay worship space.

i set off with the best of intentions. i gathered translations of the phrase above (from acts and joel) into as many as man languages as i could find. i purchased yards of orange, red and maroon fabric, and lettered the phrase onto the fabric. i had visions of draping, translucent fabric fluttering above our heads as we sang and prayed.

the road to hell is paved with good intentions. thank god poorly hung fabric is not an offense that gets you sent there (is it?). kidding.

i get to church early, to find that i can't quite reach as high as i had hoped from our tallest ladder, so where i can hang fabric from is limited. then i discovered that much of the lettering wasn't readable. so i fussed with it for more than an hour, mostly stopping because the band was ready to practice. not particularly happy with it, but deciding to live with it i moved on.

as worship began i discovered that i made a bit of a mistake. the way i had hung the fabric, if you were sitting on the sides of our semi-circle, the screen (where we project corporate prayers and song lyrics) was not entirely visible. doh.

today's intern lesson was in humility.

i hope the holy spirit didn't notice and used my fabric mess to move through worship somehow.

adventures at btech

have chairs will travel.

if i never pick up another chair i will be happy. i feel like i spent the whole morning moving chairs.

but, when all was said and done, the spirit moved.

from teh beginning... s,o we have spent one morning a week over the last month hanging out with students at berkeley technical academy in the youth spirit artworks program. they paint chairs as an entrepreneurial project. it is an art class during the day, an after school program, and a summer program.

in solidarity, after a couple of conversations with this group, our small art and liberation class decided to paint chairs, too. we all picked five modern saints and prophets to memorialize on chairs.

today, we went with the intention of displaying the chairs that the students painted, honoring their hard work all year, and doing a small "ritual" to memorialize friends and family who have been lost to violence in the btech community... with food.

the best part of the whole process has been the people. the two women who are on staff with this program are incredible. they are tireless, flexible, compassionate and engaged. the students have accomplished something by getting to school. the janitor mentioned that some of the students would not have eaten today if it wasn't for our free community meal. there are some incredible artists who have developed serious skills in less than a year of art classes. there are relationships of support between the students and faculty, and among the students.

i had a long chat with my new friend ciana. she was hilarious and knows it. she made an excellent metaphor between her life and cereal. unsweetened cereal needs a little bit of sugar to balance it. order in her life needs a little bit of chaos (and vice verse) to be balanced. theology at work.

as music played, much to my delight, students participated in our ritual. they went up and wrote names of people who had died, or their heroes, on leaves and put them on a tree. students sitting around, even if they did not participate in that way, spoke about the issues and shared their stories. i felt privileged to be a part of this community in this moment in this small way.

the challenge now is deeper theological reflection on the meaning of this process, both for us and for the community. i need to do serious thinking about how art is a tool of theology and how i can use it well. this was the practical application, but to complete the circle i need to keep thinking on it. it was not all rainbows and roses, but the spirit was there.

roots and wings

Morning has broken, like the first morning.

My mom used to sing this to me sometimes when I was falling asleep. My mom is singer by enthusiasm. She instilled that in me. That music is in my bones, in my spine, breathed into me as she subbed my back to get me to sleep.

Now, in seminary, we talk about the hymnal. “Morning Has Broken” is hymn number 469 in the Presbyterian Hymnal. Like it or not, this is where I come from. My culture (or at least a decent chunk of it) is the big blue leather bound hymnal with practically ancient songs in words that are no longer vernacular (although kudos to the latest tradition that changed His to God’s in “Morning Has Broken”). I am reformed.

But that is not all that I am. I am those moments in the night, comforted by the picture that songs paints for me of God’s feet treading in the morning dew, tickled by the feathery grass, delighting in every bit that was made. I am more, and I grow from my tradition.

what i did all weekend

chauncey bailey is not someone i ever met. i did not read anything he wrote until after he died. i did not even become a resident of the place he was born and the place he died until after his murder. but, i found myself compelled by his work, his story, his life, and his death.


he died on the sidewalk around the corner from my new apartment. he went the the mcdonald's every morning that is at the end of my block. everyday, he walked down 14th st. to work. he poured his heart and soul into this city, believing he could make a difference by sharing information, telling the truth. his work gave hope. he died for it, because of it. he is a saint in my book. i would have not known this, would not have engaged his legacy if i did not paint a chair in honor of him. i probably did not do his legacy justice, but his legacy has changed me.



for my liberation art class, i painted five chairs, the last of which as finished last night, in honor of five (well, eight) modern saints and prophets. these chairs will be used as a part of a ritual at berkeley technical academy tomorrow in conjunction with Youth Spirit Artworks.


in this process i have engaged with history. personal history, community history, even the history of the objects i painted. we chose the saints and prophets we painted, from a list that the our class that the YSA group came up with. i chose people i was drawn too, but also people i wanted to learn about. i wanted to wrestle with the legacy these folks left behind, looking at ways that i live into or against that legacy. memory and history is important to be conscious of. everything embodies it. we embody it in even interaction we have. our space bleeds it stories, or objects accumulate them on their surface. the history of the chairs i painted impact my design by limiting it or encouraging it based on the chairs physical characteristics.

From the to down, my chairs are dedicated to:
chair #1...
chauncey bailey
chair #2...
addie mae collins
carole robertson
cynthia wesley
denise mcnair
the four girls who died in the
16th St. Baptist Church bombing
in birmingham in 1963
chair #3...
malcolm x
chair #4...
jimi hendrix
chair #5...
pablo picasso

communing with saints

as an artist, visiting art always feels like communing with the saints, particularly in museums. you see, i feel the presence of van gogh in his brush strokes. it gives my heart a thrill when my nose is inches from the paint that he breathed life into. this evening's art murmur was no exception. i was surrounded, over and over, by souls poured out over canvas, bronze, clay, found objects, everything. but it was not my usual communion.

at a gallery, i have no idea what to do. i am great in museums. i can quietly contemplate art, allow it to bring me to the heights of joy and the depths of sorrow... politely, on my own, at my own pace and in my own space.

galleries are different. viewing art is suddenly social. people chatting with their friends about the pieces, each trying to sound smarter, more cultured than the other (yes, i realize i am a cynic about this whole art world thing). people dress for the occasion, and i generally don't dress for any occasion unless a dress code (or the my-mother-would-die-if-i-didn't-dress-up-for-this code) warrants it. i feel like an outsider. the kid who didn't' get picked for kick ball. the one standing by themselves in the gym waiting to be asked to dance. i am the wallflower in the gallery, afraid to talk, afraid to engage.

what is with that?

this time my art was even on the wall in one of the galleries (just one small piece). which was a first. but seeing it there brought me no thrill... just made me more uncomfortable.

so i have to work on claiming this gift of art that i have been given. i have to get to work. i have to be on the scene more. i have to see what this artist thing is about. i have to define for myself what that means. this is my goal for the summer.