confession

at best, i am not very organized.

at worse, i am a mess.

i have been made fun of for the state of my gmail inbox. at the beginning of the day i had about 2500 unread emails (ok... give me a little break. i don't read junk. but... i also don't trash it).

so today, i deleted all the emails from more than a year ago. i am left with around 4000 emails i have gotten in the last year.

cleaning up begins.

there are things to visit in cincinnati

so for a day while i was home, i played tourist with my mom. we went to three museums in one day--the Cincinnati Museum Center to see and exhibit called Freedom Sisters, to the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and the Cincinati Art Museum.

Freedom Sisters is a traveling exhibit through the Smithsonian. if it comes to a city near you... SEE IT! it was truly incredible and moving. the energy and passion in these twenty women lives, from birth til death (@ age 87, Mary Church Terrell was organizing a picket line b/c she was refused service in 1953 at a restaurant b/c of her race... in DC, the same city where she was elected as the first African American woman to be elected to the school board almost fifty years earlier). they lit my fire.

the freedom center has been in cincinnati for years, and it is embarrassing that i had not been there yet. it transformed our riverbank into holy ground. it memorializes the past, contextualizes the present and inspires growth for the future. if you want to read more about my visit there... below is the contextual education reflection i wrote about it. as reflections for seminary can be, it is a little lengthy. here goes:

“I began to understand that unless you understand what happened in the past, it is hard to understand what is happening now… that’s why I started dealing with painful things. If you hear this from somebody who cares for you, you are more likely to take it in than to turn it off.” –Artist Tom Feelings

I was dwarfed by the structure within the structure. A slave pen had been brought across the river, from it’s original ground in Kentucky to make this ground holy. Standing inside the museum, it is monument to the pain and the suffering cause by centuries of selling people. On the farm of John Anderson, a domestic slave trader, the building housed people who were waiting to be sold. There was no room to move and little air to breathe. The more people who fit in the space, the more efficient the system. There was a second floor where the men would be chained to the ground. The proximity to the Ohio River, made the slave traders especially fearful of escape, because it would likely mean freedom. On the first floor, women and children who were less likely to run were held without chains, but in equal bondage. A monument stood with the names of the people on John Anderson’s inventory. A letter in his hand, describing the cost of the slaves and his order for more stood outside the pen. It made real the inhumanity of the system.

As I stood outside the pen, mourning my country’s history, but encouraged by Tom Feelings to engage in the ugliness, a classroom full of elementary schools students were inside the pen, listening to a docent. She asked them questions and they eagerly replied. History came alive for them. There were two things that amazed me by their exchange. First, the docent always referred to slaves as people, never as slaves. This was not the language that was used when I learned history as a small child. By calling people slaves, we lose sight of their humanity. It is too easy to think of them as property unconsciously. Naming them as people reveal the true tragedy of slavery. Second, the children so easily identified with people from another time and place who came before them. The children imagined themselves as the people imprisoned in the pen. One child answered a question about those people more than one hundred years ago in the first person: “So they could break in and get us out!” How easily children identify with the shared humanity of someone they can never meet. How can we encourage adults to regain that ability?

By making this ground holy, this museum stands as monument the to suffering and pain in our shared history. It brings the land alive. It reminds us of the blood and the tears that flowed into the ground, and down the river. It illustrates what the river meant to those walking to freedom. It gives me a new sense of place, a new grounding, a new understanding of a location that I feel so personally tied to.

It is not all about the ugliness or about history. There is just as much hope in this place as there is pain. There is just as much discussion of the legacy of slavery now—racism—as there is of historical slavery. Everywhere I looked, God was in the picture. This is a story that cannot be told without theology, and I am sure that it is a wound that cannot be healed without God.

the original hi-def

rembrandt.

ok. maybe not original, but certainly early hi-def.

the cincinnati art museum had a show of three self-portraits of rembrandt's, spanning his life. you can see some of his chin hair. wrinkles in his skin. every glimmer on his jewelry. every last detail.

but as i stood there, examining, getting as close as i could to the glass without touching it... and then moving to a bench in the corner, i noticed something odd about the small gallery. it was long and skinny, and on one side hung the paintings. on the other, opposite to each painting, was a long paragraph about each piece. there were more people studying the paragraphs than the paintings themselves. they would turn to the paintings, but only spend a fraction of the time with the painting that they did with the information.

i read that museums are experiencing higher attendance. blockbuster art exhibitions have made more and more people interested in going to museums. but for what? have do more people to love art? are more people challenged by art? moved by art? or do we just consume art?

james elkins addressed this some in pictures and tears. i may have to go back to that book... or something else he has written.

Happy Easter 2008

These are my interpretations of the Easter story, as told in Matthew. What do you think?



Is it possible for artwork like this to serve as proclamation in the church? Does art in church only draw attention to itself and not to God?

These are some of the issues that I am struggling with as I try to integrate my understanding of what it means to be an artist with what it means to be a pastor...

mii, mii, mii...

I am still going to claim to be fairly new to the way that blogs work.

So this is MBCC's Easter postcard. I do not even know that much about Wii and thought it was HILARIOUS! and I have much admiration for our graphic designer.

Within the congregation, there seemed to be some differences in who understood it how...

But some websites (gamers blogs?) have picked it and up and it has created quite the conversation.

If we do nothing else, MBCC is really good at creating conversation.


I am somewhat fascinated by the whole thing. First, I don't understand in a practical way how anyone on these websites got a hold of this? How did they find our postcard? Second, I am surprised by the passion behind some of the comments. Perhaps surprised is not the best word, maybe impressed is. These comments, even having read not even half of them, made a big impression on me. It is no surprise that in conversation that comments often reveal more about the speaker (or blogger) than they do the topic at hand. Clearly, most of these folks no nothing about us. But, they have all kinds of stuff to say about the church. They have big opinions and deep, deep feelings. So if nothing else, if not one more person comes on Easter than usual, I think MBCC has done it's job as a church... stirring the pot, making people consider God in a different way, and engaging.

Read the discussion for yourself. See what you think. My first reaction to some of the ranters, the negativity, was to want to rant back. The pastoral part of me pulled back and said that wasn't constructive...

come one, come all

Altared Bodies

Friday April 4 • 7-9 pm
Begins April 4

Four Interplay artists: Reena Burton, Kelly Williams, Abby King-Kaiser and Amy Shoemaker, celebrate the beauty of the body as they create altars out of real, live, breathing, dancing bodies as a part of the Oakland Art Murmur. For one night Interplayce will become a temple for worshiping the sacredness of all bodies. Join us as we play with themes of honor and homage, sacred and secular, redefining the purpose of the body and the image of the altar.

Venue:
InterPlayce
2273 Telegraph Avenue (at 23rd St.)
Oakland, CA 94612

www.interplay.org

InterPlayce is the center of the InterPlay universe. The offices for Body Wisdom, Inc. are also located here. The building is at the corner of 23rd and Telegraph, one block north of West Grand. It is just a few blocks from the 19th Street Downtown Oakland BART station, and on several convenient bus lines. On-street parking is always available at night and metered during the day. It is also easily accessible by several of the major freeways.

doodles

memory is fleeting.

i used to doodle during sermons as a child. i started doing it on the bulletin until my mom bought me a special sketchbook for church. each week got a new page.

these drawings came from the words that i was hearing. it was the way that i interpreted the messages that i was hearing in church.

i grew out of this habit. in fact, i had even forgotten that i ever did it. this makes me sad. my natural inclination as a child was perhaps my most true attempt at understanding God. it came from the heart, it came from the spirit, and i moved into my head in my adolescence.

i have spent a lot of time trying to move back into my spirit since.