Rachel's Blog

A slightly late post this week, as I'm still catching up from being away for a few days at the Diocese of Toronto clergy conference.  I don't consider myself a particularly extraverted person, but one of the things I always enjoy about these clergy gatherings is the chance to engage in fairly deep conversations with colleagues who aren't part of my normal, every day social sphere.  And, I can't help but come away from these gatherings with an impressive sense of the breadth of perspectives and theological positions in the church.  I'm not interested it whether that's a good or a bad thing (probably a bit of both).  I merely note that fact as a reality of the church and the world that we live in today.

Last night, upon returning to the parish, I also joined a small group for the final instalment of our spring "Reel Religion" series.  Before we got started, a few of us got chatting about the "Game of Thrones" series which is one of the trendy bestsellers at the moment (according to my bookstore-employed husband).  It's also a major TV series on HBO.  As we chatted, one of the things that came up was the complexity of characters the story presents. Specifically how the story is not told merely from one person's perspective, but from a number of different character perspectives, most of them shown in this teaser for season 2 of the TV show:

This style of storytelling undermines the whole notion of "good guys" vs "bad guys."  By the middle of the series there are 5 or 6 different factions vying for control of the same kingdom.  However, as a reader, you are able to get inside the head of at least one person in each major camp.  Some are more or less sympathetic than others, obviously.  But at least you have a real sense of WHY each character does the things he or she does.

To this point, my favorite character in the series is Jamie Lannister, someone who comes across as the scum of humanity in the first two books--lacking honor, involved in an incestuous relationship, guilty of the attempted murder of an 8-year-old child. You feel pretty comfortable thinking: "Yup, if there's someone I'm allowed to hate, it's going to be Jamie."  If anyone reading this is following along with the TV show, not having read the books, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about.  But then, in book 3, you get inside Jamie's head!  You begin to see those events from his perspective.  Suddenly, cracks begin appearing in those moral absolutes.  I remember once getting an outraged email from a friend who was reading the books on my recommendation: "I like Jamie Lannister now!  I'm not supposed to like Jamie Lannister!"

As we were chatting about this, I couldn't help thinking how it applies to where we are in the church today!  There are so many "factions" on so many issues: from the obvious ones like sexuality to the more abstract ones like the nature of the Eucharist.  My point is this with respect to the church--we don't do ourselves, or even our convictions any favour by staying in our own camps.  It's only by challenging ourselves to try to really understand someone else's point of view that we can move past the divisions that threaten our shared witness as the body of Christ in the world. As an introvert, this is not something that comes naturally to me.  I would much rather hang out with my three close friends than branch out.  But I never regret those times when I have really engaged with those who are coming from a different perspective.  And I've actually made some good friends by doing just that.

Every day we see our world--both within the church and in the realm of secular politics--continually becoming more polarized.  As that happens, it becomes more important for us not to fall victim to a mentality of factions and party lines.  It is essential that we continue to seek out those with whom we may have serious disagreements and ask them to challenge us, and that we challenge them in return.  And as we live in a world where we can control our input with the choice of what media outlets we use--the onus is more and more on us not to limit the perspectives to which we are exposed.

At our clergy conference, the Archbishop spoke repeatedly about hope for the future.  It is hope and faith that allows us to embrace difference and to be challenged.  It is fear that drives us deeper within ourselves.

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It all began with Smurfette.

Notice anything about that picture?  That's right...there's only one representative of the female persuasion in it.  I've often felt like somehow Smurfette is the first example of sticking in a "token girl" in the boy's club.  But, if we take a look at pop culture, this sort of thing happens all the time.  It's the Princess Leia in Star Wars phenomenon:

And, not to forget the latest example--the Avengers movie which came out just last weekend:

Yet again, there is Scarlette Johansen as token girl presence "Black Widow" (and lets not forget the undeniable fact that of the Superheroes pictured, Black Widow is the only one who hasn't had her own movie).  Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely obsessed with the work of Avengers director Joss Whedon (if pressed, I could probably list every episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in order by title), and his TV shows have always presented a rich and interesting cross-section of women.  So I don't mean to criticize this movie specifically, so much as to say it falls victim to what I see as a more general problem in the media--that idea of one woman alone in the group of men.

There are a couple of things that bother me about this convention.  For one thing, the token girl in these movies is somehow meant to be representing the entirely of 50% of the human population.  Men come in all forms (from wistful hero Luke Skywalker to swaggering scoundrel Han Solo, to crotchety muppet Yoda).  But all women are represented by one single individual.  Because, you know, women are one uniform category of humanity, right?

But, the deeper issue for me is that having just one token woman in a movie/comic book/TV show does not constitute a genuine "female presence" in your film.  Including just one woman in your boys club doesn't constitute openness towards "women."  Instead, it just suggests that somehow *that* woman is unique, exceptional and merits coming in and being included among the men (on their terms of course).  Check out this link about the "Bechdel Test" if you want to know more about this line of thought....  The point is, everyone knows women have a tendency to be uber-competitive with one another. Women have not traditionally been as good as men about encouraging one another (I highly recommend Tina Fey's book Bossypants on this topic).  And I have to think that at least part of that is due to how we are conditioned by society to think that we have to be "exceptional"--that there isn't room in the world for multiple talented and interesting women.  Fortunately, I think that is beginning to change--I've been fortunate to have some wonderful female pastoral and spiritual mentors in my journey to the priesthood.  And we are getting more and more pop culture where women are actually allow to interact with other women (I kinda hate the new show Once Upon a Time, but at least it has two strong women who talk about something other than men).

While speculations about the state of intra-female relationships is always fascinating, what I'm actually more interested in exploring in this blog post is the state of our relationship with our brothers and sisters within the church. We all know that we live in a world that is becoming more and more dominated by a secular outlook (much as the world was dominated by a 'male' outlook).  And I think sometimes we in our individual churches (both in the sense of our denominations and parishes) can feel this pressure to be "exceptional."  I think we can get lured into the trap of thinking that trying to engage new people in our community or contemplating change is about ensuring our own institutional survival.  We become inwardly-obsessed.  And so we find ourself competing with other churches in an "us-vs-them", "there can be only one" type of mentality.

Unfortunately, if we find ourselves going down that road, we have in a very real sense lost the plot of the Gospel.  There's a great story in Mark 9 when the disciples find someone outside their group performing miracles in Jesus's name.  They go to Jesus in outrage and demand that he make them stop.  Jesus simply replies, in essence: we're all on the same team.  We are all ultimately after the same goal--to help people encounter the healing love of Jesus Christ.  The challenge is for us to let go of the fear which compels our need to be deemed "unique" and "exceptional" in this increasingly secular world.  Our goal is not to promote "Grace Church."  Our goal is to come to a deeper knowledge and love of God and to share that love with those around us.  That is a goal we share with every other Christian in this deanery, in the diocese and throughout the world.

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I've been thinking a lot about mentors the last couple of weeks.  Just before Easter, I found out (through the all-knowing Facebook) that my favorite high school teacher had died of cancer.  I was surprised how much the news upset me.  I mean, it's not like I had had any contact with him for the past 10 years.  All the same, he was one of those teachers who was far more than just an awesome teacher.  I spent part of almost every lunch hour hanging out with my fellow drama geeks in his classroom, and I've lost track of the number of extra-curricular field trips I went on with him and his wife (who was also one of my favorite high school teachers).

Just last week as well, I was at a retirement party in my old medieval studies department at U of T where I ran into several former professors. One of them in particular had been at a conference where she had met up with my favorite undergraduate professor--the person responsible for cultivating my love of medieval literature and encouraging me to go to graduate school.  He's also just one of my favorite people of all time.

It seems like each stage in my life, I have had the good fortune to form strong relationships with these types of "mentoring" figures.  Leeman teases me a bit about it, I have to say, and tells me I have a "John Dorian" complex (referring to the sit-com Scrubs, whose main character craves the approval of the emotionally unavailable Dr. Cox):

But the fact is I'm grateful for the various people who who have influenced who I have become, whether on a personal or professional level.  And what makes those "mentoring" relationships so distinct from any other teacher/student dynamic is that often the most valuable lessons we learn from our mentors have nothing to do with the actual "content" they were supposed to be teaching us. When I look back on that amazing high school teacher I had, yes, I realize he taught me a lot about how to give a good speech.  But I also picked up tips on that from others along the way.  The really amazing things he taught me just had to do with being an interesting and dynamic person--the value of asking the right questions and never conforming myself to others' expectations of me.  Those sorts of lessons come to us through our mentors not from sitting in formal lectures, but in the time we simply spend with them, getting to know who they are and allowing them to have an impact on us.  It was the lunch hours and after school hours I spent with Mr. Thacker's classroom that influenced me, not necessarily the time I spent sitting in his class.  In fact, my best friend from high school was equally upset at hearing about his death and had never technically taken a single one of his classes.

There's something about these types of "mentoring" relationships that is rather relavant to our understanding of the Christian faith, and how we are called to engage with that faith.  There are a few different pitfalls that we can encounter as we reflect on Christianity.  We might feel that our faith pretty is about adhering to a proper set of beliefs about the Bible and the nature of God.  We might believe our faith is less a matter of personal beliefs, and is primarily about living out a Christian ethic through charitable works in the community.  Or we might think that our spiritual lives are primarily about engaging with a supportive, caring community via engagement with the local church.

There is a place for all these different understandings of the "Christian life" within our faith.  We are certainly called to come to a greater understanding of who God is, to be engaged in community with one another, and to serve others through works of love.  But God ultimately calls us to something much deeper and more specific than that.  We are, in a very real sense, called to be in a "mentoring" relationship with Jesus.  That doesn't necessarily mean sitting in church every Sunday listening to sermons, or even doing something like participating in our Bible Book Club and learning how the story of the Bible unfolds.  What it does mean is, essentially, spending genuine time getting to know who God is and allowing that relationship to influence who were are as both individuals and a Christian community.  That happens in different ways for different people--but a good place to start is by simply spending time in prayer, talking to God and reading the Bible with the simple intention of letting God speak to us.  It's this simple "getting to know" God that ultimately provides the foundation for all of those other aspects of the Christian faith we talked about up above.

If you want some helpful tips on learning how to pray and entering into this kind of "mentoring" relationship with God, our theological student this past year did a really great podcast series with some practical insights into developing your personal prayer life.  I encourage you to check it out!  Part One & Part Two

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I am aware that it is the season of Easter.  The church is still full of brightly coloured flowers.  I have just experienced the joy of my ordination to the priesthood and had the honor of celebrating the Eucharist for the first time.  So I feel like I should be posting a blog entry this week which is all about embracing new life and delighting in the power of Christ's resurrection.

On the other hand, today's weather (rainy and gloomy as it is) does not put me in the most Easter-like mood.  And, what's more, I find myself still haunted by a documentary I came home to find Leeman watching one day last week.  Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss tells the story of a man on death row for a crime he committed nine years previously.  The film follows the story of this young man's crime all the way to his eventual execution (which takes place just one week after his interviews.)

Unlike many documentary filmmakers (*cough* Michael Moore *cough*), Herzog avoids polemic.  He states his position only once in the film, telling the condemned man in question: "I don't have to like you, I don't have to think you are innocent.  I do not believe anyone should be executed).  There is so much I could say about this film--how it addresses themes of life and death, justice and retribution with respect to the death penalty--but I feel much of that would be redundant here in Canada.  For the most part, no one here advocates an "eye for an eye" sort of penal system.

What perhaps is worth discussing--and what has haunted me since watching the documentary--is the question of how we can deceive ourselves about the real nature of our actions by masking them in a facade of respectability. Towards the end of the film, Herzog interviews a man who served as the captain of a "death house" for over 10 years.  This man described the process which would define the final hours of the condemned inmate's life. At 4pm they would be allowed to take a shower after which they would be allowed to put on civilian clothes.  At 5pm they would receive their request for their last meal.  At 6pm, in a well-rehearsed, well-orchestrated ritual, correction officers would escort and strap them to a gurney.  The lethal injection would be administered. The last statement would be recorded, and within a matter of moments, the time of death would be recorded.  After explaining this process, Herzog presents a screen capture of the paperwork for the execution of the individual featured in the documentary.  His death is as mundanely recorded as any paperwork one might fill out at the DMV or a Service Ontario Counter.

Something about that "process" sounds wonderfully humane. Surely preferable to the pre-modern days of public executions with jeering crowds or angry mobs, right? I wonder about that.  The whole justification for the death penalty is that the offenders have somehow abdicated that most basic of human rights--the right to life. At least the stocks and the guillotines, and angry mobs are honest about that. Treating the condemned as a "person" in the final moments of his or her life to me just seems to highlight the horror of what is about to happen to them--they are still a human being and their life is about to be taken from them.  It seems like window dressing--designed to make society feel better but does not ultimately diminish the brutality of taking another life.

We in the 21st Century like to pat ourselves on the back and praise ourselves for how much we have progressed from less "enlightened" times.  Those people performing executions in Texas probably like to think how much they have progressed from a society which advocated lynchings, and we in turn who do not practice the death penalty like to think how much we have progressed from the backwards southern United States.  But we are burdened by our own failings.  The economic choices we make every day--whether it's the food we buy or the companies we support--put us at risk of participating in exploitation of labor or the destruction of our environment (a point I believe I have made here several times before, my apologies if I begin to sound like a broken record).

My point in bringing this up is not to make us feel despondent at the hopeless state of our world today.  Because if there is one thing the Easter season assures us it is that even at our lowest points, we are not without hope.  Christ has won the ultimate victory over sin and death.  I am reminded, though, of 1 John 1:8--"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."  The point is that it is not until we are really honest with ourselves and our society and recognize all of our brokenness that we can open ourselves to Christ's redeeming love.  That we can allow Christ to give birth to new life within us and within our society.  So, hey, I guess this ended up being a fairly Eastertide post after all.

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I'm sure most of the people who read this blog will be aware that I was ordained to the priesthood Sunday afternoon.  It was really a wonderful moment.  Even the part where the paten went flying off the chalice I had been presented seemed to be a moment of shared joy and levity, rather than embarrassment.

That moment of the ordination was, however, only one moment of many along the road of vocational discernment.  And in the days leading up to the ordination, I found myself (unsurprisingly) reflecting on the idea of those significant spiritual "moments" in our lives--specifically how profoundly obsessed we all seem to be with dramatic moments of transformation and transition.  And, more specifically, how fixated we seem to be with those dramatic spiritual moments being something internal and subjective.  It's like we all want to be Tim Robbins from The Shawshank Redemption:

I can't say how many times in the last couple of weeks I have been asked when I received "the call" to the priesthood.  And I've realized in my awkward responses to those queries that I really can't point to a "moment" when I first felt "called."  I remember at one point one of my fellow servers asking me if I was considering ordination, and I said: "Absolutely not!"  And then I remember telling another friend that I wouldn't be surprised if I wound up in seminary eventually.  And I know these two events were not very far apart.  But I have no idea what happened between them.  The fact that I can't point to a particular spiritual epiphany in which I received "The Call" to the priesthood, doesn't change my genuine sense of vocation.  It just means the process of my sense of "calling" was more of a process and a journey and it came on so subtly that eventually I just woke up and realized I was being led in a direction I never expected to go.

That's perhaps an important reflection for us when we think about our spiritual journeys.  We can put so much emphasis on our personal, subjective religious experience.  We can think that our spiritual life is about what we are feeling or experiencing and if we aren't feeling or experiencing what we want to feel or experience we can get frustrated.  Our spiritual journey is not necessarily going to be about profound moments of transition or transformation.  But maybe we should think of our spiritual journeys as a more gradual process of growth.  One where we are moving so slowly and steadily that we hardly even notice when something profound has taken place.  It might not be dramatic or profound but it might be a model of spiritual growth which is sustainable and healthy for us in the long run.

It's not that those moments aren't important.  And surely the sacramental life of the Church itself highlights significant moments in baptism, marriage, and--indeed--ordination.  But the important thing about all these "moments" is that they do not constitute "end-points" of spiritual development.  They are all, in a sense, "beginnings" of a new stage of the spiritual journey.  The reminder for us is perhaps to keep our eyes focused on the *end* of our spiritual journey (deeper communion with Christ) than on single moments.  As we read in the book of Hebrews--"Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith."

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Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

 

Happy Easter everyone!  I hope everyone enjoyed a festive Easter day full of chocolate, jelly beans, and spiritual reflection.  One of the education series we're planning in the near future is a look at the resurrection accounts in the four Gospels. Interestingly, each of the different accounts vary on the precise details of the resurrection (were there two angels in the empty tomb...how many women actually came to find Jesus raised from the dead?).  Despite that, they have one very important factor in common--none of them contain an actual account of the resurrection itself. What we get instead are the women coming to the tomb to find it empty!  It seems odd that arguably the most important event in the entire New Testament is not recorded in the Bible.  All we get are the after-events.

Then again, the internet in its bounty of awkwardness affords us ample examples of *why* the resurrection itself is strangely absent.

Example A:

Example B:

I think what these videos suggest to us is that somehow the resurrection as an event is too profound, too dramatic for its full meaning to be conveyed in a literal account of it.

What is even more interesting to me than the lack of a straight-forward account of the resurrection is what we get instead.  In the weeks following Easter, our Sunday readings offer us accounts of *encounters* with the risen Christ.  And there is a very simple point for us in that.  We might never be able to grasp the full reality of the resurrection.  We might never be able to understand all the mysteries and paradoxes of the Christian faith.  But maybe we can grasp our own personal experiences and encounters with the person of Jesus Christ.  The challenge for us in this Easter season is to look for the presence of Christ in the world around us.  Because a big part of believing in a risen, living God is the idea that this God continues to be engaged in our world and in our lives.

 

Alleluia!  Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed!  Alleluia!

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Embracing a last chance to blow off some steam before delving into two hectic weeks of pre-Easter (and pre-Ordination) preparations, Leeman and I went to see The Hunger Games this weekend.  I've of course read the books--as I discussed here once upon a time--and I have been super excited about the movie.

If you've missed all the Hunger Games-related hype, the story takes place in a futuristic version of North America.  Every year, in punishment for a rebellion 74 years ago, each of the 12 outlying districts must send one teenage boy and girl to the capital to compete in a kill-or-be-killed death match.  Only one comes out alive.

To a much greater degree than, say, the Harry Potter movies, the Hunger Games do an admirable job translating the book to the screen.  You can actually enjoy the movie itself in its own right, not just as a companion-piece to the book.  But even more importantly for a page-to-screen adaptation, the film took advantage of its visual medium to draw greater attention to the underlying themes of the story.

One of those crucial themes is the condemnation of a society which sees only glitz and glamor--the things they want to see.  The inhabitants of the capital live lives of decadence compared with the impoverished, often starving, citizens of the districts. For these capital-dwellers the Hunger Games are a thrilling annual event.  They are fed the narrative that the "tributes" from the districts are brave combatants,  proud to represent their homes in this honorable tradition. In the film, we see the tributes paraded around in exquisit costumes and stunning chariots, as we will soon see the contestants in our own Olympic Games.  Only when the camera zooms in on the central characters' faces do we glimpse the truth of the terrified children beneath the facade of bravery.  Very few of the characters within the world of the capital choose to look below the surface to see the true brutality of the Games they enjoy so much.  They are too comfortable.  Too complacent.

The condemnation that the world of the Hunger Games offers to our society is all too direct.  How often do we in our comfortable middle-class, North American really open ourselves up to encounter the desperate conditions we know exist throughout the world?  (or, indeed, within our own city)  We buy our food conveniently packaged in the supermarket.  How much do we think about the exploitative conditions which product our coffee or the cruelty inflicted on the animals we eat?  As one character says in The Matrix when given the choice between living in a comfortable but imaginary world or accepting a true but harsh reality: "Ignorance is bliss."  Much like the Hunger Games, these questions of social responsibility have come up in this blog before as well, along with some reflections on encountering and addressing such corporate sinfulness in our world.

In addition to such cultural and societal commentary, however, I also think that this aspect of the Hunger Games provides us food for spiritual reflection at this point in Holy Week.  Because, just as we often will ourselves into ignorance regarding the misfortunes of those who challenge our comfortable lives, we also sometimes willfully blind ourselves to the darker aspects of our Christian faith.  We so very often choose to see the Christian faith as one of joy, happiness, and love.  We see it as a faith with a *positive* message for us.  This tendency can be particularly noticeable around the celebration of Easter.  It can be quite easy for us to want to rush through to the celebration of Easter.  We might find ourselves wondering why we spend so much time this week fixated on the sufferings of Christ.  Why do we read that long Passion Gospel on Palm Sunday--and why do we read the even *longer* one on Good Friday?

The fact is that--despite what we often *want* to see--there is actually rather a lot of discomfort and suffering as part of the Christian life.  That suffering is brought to the forefront for us in the passion of death of Jesus.  In Philippians, the apostle Paul tells us to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus: "Who, though he was in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave ... and became obedient to death--even death on a cross" (2:6-8).

The fact is, since we live in such a comfortable society, none of us will likely face true physical persecution for our faith. But the Christian life must still inevitably be a life of radical self-denial. A life where we die daily to ourselves and our own best interests and give ourselves to God and to those around us.  This is why we cannot embrace Easter before enduring Good Friday.  If we focus only on the "happy" parts of our faith--if we look only at Jesus's victory before coming to terms with his suffering--we have missed something absolutely vital about how our faith and our relationship with God can radically change us.

Then, when we are willing to let go of a little bit of our comfort--when we are willing to face a little bit more the realities of this world--perhaps we can become agents through which God can begin to transform the whole world.  But, if the later books in the Hunger Games series will teach us as well, radical transformation always comes at a cost.  But now I am getting ahead of myself.

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I have a horrible habit.  Whenever I am at my busiest, I always manage to rediscover some book or TV show that I adore and it becomes absolutely essential that I read or watch it again as soon as possible.  This pre-Holy Week season my distraction of choice seems to be Jane Eyre. I do at least feel I can blame the parish book and film club for showing the 2011 movie version at their last meeting, prompting me to go looking for it on Netflix. And then, naturally, I had to pull the novel off the shelf and go back re-reading my favorite scenes--especially since the film missed so much of the power in the story.

Now, it's not that I didn't like the movie. I actually thought it was quite strong, cinematically speaking.  And the film got basic story right. Jane Eyre is a poor, unattractive girl--governess to the ward of the rich, mysterious Edward Fairfax Rochester. The two fall deeply in love, only for Jane to discover that Edward is married to an insane woman whom the contemporary laws will not allow him to divorce.  Jane runs away from Edward for a time, eventually returning to his estate to find that Edward's wife perished in a fire which destroyed his fine house and left him blind and lame.  Also, conveniently, free finally to marry Jane.  There is a richness beneath this skeletal framework, however, that the recent film utterly failed to realize.

As much as Jane Eyre is a love story, it is also (and perhaps more profoundly) a story of redemption.  Edward made a foolish mistake as a young man, rushing into a marriage with a woman he barely knew, only later to discover the violence and madness she possessed.  In his desire for love, he has become self-indulgent and something of a libertine.  Upon meeting Jane, Edward hopes at last that he can possess a love that is pure and true.  But he does not know how to obtain it. Edward assumes that he can "buy" Jane--that he can shower her with jewels and promises to whisk her away to exotic destinations.  There is a subtle implication that--even if Edward's secret marriage were not uncovered--he and Jane would not be truly happy with such a relationship. It is not only his secret wife keeping them apart.  It is more profoundly Edward's pride.  Jane--strong early feminist character that she is--does not wish to be Edward's kept woman, wholly dependent on his generosity.  Edward is misguided in his quest for redemption.  It is only at the conclusion of the novel--when Edward's grand estate is a burnt ruin, when he is broken and requires a nurse as much as a wife--that Edward's redemption comes to find him.  In his weakness, Edward for the first time finds the humility to receive Jane's love.  The 2006 film version plays this scene quite effectively:

One of the reasons I find Jane Eyre such a compelling story is that for all the condemnation of "religion" we can find in the book (and, trust me, it's there), the story presents a profoundly Christian message.  As a church, we have come now to the home stretch of Lent, and we are coming ever closer to Holy Week.  This is the time of the liturgical year when we contemplate our own need for redemption and the sacrifice that Christ made for us in his crucifixion.

We all, in a sense, stand in the place of Mr. Rochester.  We all need and long for redemption on some level.  We're all aware that there are times we simply don't measure up either to God's standards for us or even our standards for ourselves. And we inevitably have a desire to be the one with the power in our relationship with God.  We always want to believe that there is something that we can do or can offer God that will make God love and accept us.

But, as I mentioned last week, the Christian message--epitomized in the cross--is not one of power.  It is one of powerlessness.  It is only when we are willing to be broken and acknowledge our weakness before God that we can find the humility to accept the reality of God's love for us.  And it is then that we realize "redemption" is not just about getting our personal slate wiped clean, but it is about being in true relationship and communion with the God who loves us.

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Some fairly big news broke in the Anglican world this week when the Archbishop of Canterbury--Rowan Williams--announced he would be stepping down from his post to become master of Magdalen College, Cambridge.

As one might expect, news of Archbishop Williams's retirement has prompted multiple news sources to begin summarizing and evaluating his legacy in the role of spiritual leader of the Anglican Communion. One general trend that I have heard expressed by personal friends and read in various articles is a sense of frustration that, though Archbishop Williams came into office holding liberal views on issues such as the role of women in the church and the debates over human sexuality, he repeatedly betrayed those views in the name of seeking to preserve the unity of worldwide Anglicans.  Giles Fraser (formerly of St Paul's Cathedral, London) sums up this viewpoint in an article for The Guardian. Interestingly, Fraser argues that the Archbishop's handling of controversial issues in the church was almost "too Christian"--a form of "sacrificial Christianity" that bordered on foolishness.

I do not pretend to be able to speak with authority on the politics of the Anglican communion.  Despite the fact that I might be a self-described Rowan Williams fangirl, I don't deny that his personal holiness and richly nuanced theology were not perhaps best suited to his position in a time when the church needed decisive leadership.  I'm actually quite happy to see him return to an academic position where I can personally benefit from his spiritual wisdom.

THAT SAID, however...I wonder if one of the great gifts of Rowan Williams's leadership in the church was his willingness to lay aside his personal opinions in deference to others--in attempt to preserve the unity of our rapidly fracturing communion.  One might (like Giles Fraser and many others) argue that the form of unity Archbishop Williams strove to maintain is an idle dream, impossible given the insuperable differences that face the church today. But maybe that unity is a fantasy only because so often we are so unwilling to question our own convictions.  Because we are so unwilling to compromise with those who do not share all our beliefs--because we are unwilling to entertain the idea that *we* might be the ones who are wrong. That goes for both people on both sides of the various issues with which the church is currently wrestling.

I have heard conservatives as well as liberals express frustration with Rowan Williams's restrained leadership of the Communion.  Our greatest weaknesses and our greatest strengths are often, however, deeply linked.  It is probably true that in hindsight we will look back on Archbishop Williams and wish that he had been a stronger leader in these troubling times.  But it is also likely that we will see in him a true example of Christ: "Who is patient towards us, not wishing any to perish, but all to come to repentance" (2 Peter 3:9).

In some ways, these reflection on the character of Rowan Williams fit quite nicely with the story we heard about recently of the public reconciliation between Jim Ferry and Terry Finlay here in Toronto. To make a long story short, Finlay defrocked Ferry in the 80's when Ferry came out as a gay priest. The willingness of these two men to hold such a public ritual is a great testament to Christian humility. One to acknowledge the hurt his actions caused and the other to accept and forgive.

The Christian faith is not about being "right."  It is not about "winning."  The paradox at the center of our faith is that our greatest victories come when we are weakest--when we lose.  As Rowan Williams himself argues in his book on the Resurrection: this is the central mystery at the heart of the cross.  A fitting reflection for us as we move closer to Holy Week and our yearly commemoration of Christ's passion.

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As I mentioned briefly in my sermon this week, I've been finding the whole debate down south on the subject of government-mandated healthcare including contraception as part of women's preventative healthcare rather frustrating on a number of levels.  It's like we're all sitting powerless on the sidelines watching two warring factions talk past each other--neither seemingly aware or concerned that they fail to understand the other's position.  I don't want to digress into a long political rant.  Suffice it to say that this article sums up my sentiments quite succinctly.

The frustrations I think *are* worth mentioning on this blog, however, are those I feel as a religious woman standing on the sidelines of the debate.  We've all seen that picture of the panel of male religious figures testifying before congress.  And we've all heard the Democrats' outcry that no woman was allowed to be part of the panel.  They maintained, quite rightly, that women should be permitted to speak on issues of women's health.  Fair enough.  What annoys me, though, is the implicit acceptance that religion was legitimately a "male" territory.  Where was the outrage at the thought that women might be interested in or qualified for speaking on behalf of religion?

My frustration came to a head a few days ago when I was watching an interview with Cecile Richards on The Daily Show.  You can see the whole interview here.

At one point, Richards makes a comment indicating "women don't see this as a religious issue, women see it as a health issue."

Excuse me? Yet again, we have "women" in one category and "religion" in another.  Two things bother me here.  First, is that suggestion yet again that "religion" is a "male" world.  Now, obviously, that does not make sense in our Anglican context.  All one has to do is look at the ratio of women to men being ordained in the church today (I was ordained with 7 other women and only 3 men).  But beyond that, to create an artificial distinction between "women" and "religion" is to offer a great insult to the gifted women who have faithfully served in positions of lay leadership in the Christian traditions who do not practice ordination of women.  Our own parish nurse, Susan Rogers, is one such Catholic woman engaged in professional (if non-ordained) ministry.

This leads to my second point, which I actually think offers food for thought to all of us in the church--men and women alike.  Of course, as I woman, I understand that contraception is an important issue in women's health.  But, as a Christian, I absolutely also see it as a religious issue.  And that is because there is no area of our lives that we as people of faith can separate off from "religion," especially not an area so closely bound up with issues of sexuality and reproduction.  That does not mean that I disapprove of artificial forms of birth control, or that I necessarily disagree with the Democrats' position (even if I do have issues with how they tend to present it).  The key issue for us is that our life of faith ought not to be restricted to "explicitly"  religious activities, such as going to church or reading a religious book.  Our faith can and should inform every aspect of our lives--including our politics, whichever direction our political conscience takes us.

If we are people of faith, then our whole lives are going to be lives of faith.  Separating off some areas as outside the sphere of religion is as ridiculous as the policial world separating off a whole gender as outside the sphere of religion.  False distinctions are no one's friends.  And, perhaps, understanding that our faith touches on all issues, not just those monopolized by "values voters" can help us redefine the way faith comes to play in the political arena.

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It will probably not surprise you to find out that the church is full of some very, very weird people.  Sometimes, like when I bring out the scarf a friend made for me several years ago accurately color-coded to the cycle of the liturgical year, I remember that I am as well one of these strange individuals.  The quirks and foibles of churchland has been brought home to me once again by a phenomenon I discovered called "Lent Madness."

Perhaps you, dear reader, being a savvy, "with-it" person of the world are familiar with "March Madness" in the realm of basketball.  Lent Madness poses a similar sort of single-elimination bracket.  Only instead of basketball teams, the competition is between saints.  And instead of an actual sporting event, the winners are determined by a bizarre assortment of people (such as yours truly) who faithfully go online each day to vote for their holy person of choice.

If you would like to embrace the full scope of the wackiness, you can check out the current bracket here.   You can also check out the whole blog and get caught up in the voting yourself!   As silly as it sounds, and as much as I joke about it, the creators of Lent Madness rightly argue that there is no reason a Lenten discipline should be boring.  If you actually play the game every day, you can get introduced to some fairly interesting and little-known figures in the life of the church.  For example...before today did you know the name Enmegahbowh? Turns out, he was the first Native American to be ordained a deacon and eventually a priest.  Nifty, eh?

What I'm really finding fascinating about this whole "Lent Madness" madness is the number of these previously unknown "saints" (the wallflowers of the saintly world, if you will) who have won their face-offs with more well-known competitors like when Enmegahbowh won handily over perennial favorite "doubting Thomas."  As I type this, saintly mother Monica is leading her son the illustrious St. Augustine of Hippo 56% to 44%.  Then there is my personal favorite--when Philander Chase (a 19th-Century pioneer bishop in the Episcopal Church) won out over the contemplative Thomas Merton.  Ok, so that last one *might* have been because alumni of Kenyon College (an Episcopal school founded by Philander Chase in 1824) might have launched a mighty Facebook campaign for him at the last minute.  Not that the author of this blog would ever have participated in such childish endeavors.  And certainly not using the Grace Church facebook page...

Still, Philander's electoral chicanery aside, it is fascinating to me that the saints who really resonate with people in this competition are not the "big names" of the saintly world.   Instead, everyone seems to be impressed with the Monicas and the Enmegahbowhs, who demonstrate lives of courage and strength--but a courage and strength that manifests itself in simply being faithful to God, no matter where they were or what circumstances they were in.  And really, what better example can we ask from the saints than that?

The purpose of the saints is to provide us examples of those who have gone ahead of us in their spiritual journeys--those people who provide us examples of how to live lives of faith in the present moment.  As the writer of the epistle to the Hebrews puts it: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us" (12:1).

In this season of Lent we are particularly called to simplicity and spiritual reflection.  We are challenged to consider how we can more fully live lives that are open to the continual presence of God.  At the same time, I wonder if the high-brow saintly names are always those which offer us the greatest encouragement in the life of faith.  The St Augustines and the Thomas Mertons are sometimes too big to really be relatable or to pose a helpful example to us.

It's the everyday saints who can truly inspire us through their lives of courage and steadfastness.  And, that fact is truly keeping in the spirit of Lent.  This is a season of humility and poverty--not a season to be flashy.  As we draw nearer to the great celebration of Easter, let us remember that God does not necessarily call us to be brash and bold--but simply to be with him and to seek his guidance in all that we do.  This is the life of faith for which the Lenten journey prepares us.

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Sunday night after our Lenten Taize service at the church, I settled in for an evening of the Oscars, as I do every year.  I’ve never figured out exactly why I watch the Oscars.  I’ve seen at best three or four of the nominated movies (if you’ve read much of this blog you have long since realized my cinematic tastes don’t really lend themselves to Oscar-fodder), and I have no interest in the clothes which seem to fascinate commentators.  I think I just really like movies in general, and so I feel obliged to tune in to the academy awards out of some sense of movie lover loyalty.

Given that I watch the awards out of a general affection for movies and not specific interest in the current critical darlings of the cinema, I actually kind of enjoyed the show this year.  I mean, no one in the right mind actually watches any awards show for legitimate entertainment. It’s going to be mediocre at best (unless it’s Neil Patrick Harris hosting the Tony’s…’cause that’s just awesome).   I liked the movie montage consisting mostly of films from the 80s.  I loved all the not-so-subtle Princess Bride references.  Sure, Billy Crystal is older than your average Oscar host, but he was Miracle Max…who doesn’t love Miracle Max?

That’s why I found this article from CNN rather intriguing (it was shared on twitter yesterday by a priest in our area).   The article questions why the Academy would have so emphasized the nostalgia of the cinema in an era when movie-going seems to be more and more a thing of the past.  Did the academy just succeed in making movie-going all the more passé to the younger demographic?

Being the antiquarian curmudgeon that I am at the ripe old age of 30, I’m not bothered by the Oscars romanticizing the movie-going days of yore.  There’s nothing wrong with celebrating the past.  However, there is a deeper and more subtle point this article makes which is worth unpacking.   As much as Hollywood likes to style itself as “progressive,” last weekend’s Oscars were the epitome of conventional and conservative.  As the article points out, nowhere was this more evident in awarding the acting trophies to the likes of old-timers Christopher Plummer Meryl Streep (in the later case over the going favorite, young newcomer Viola Davis).

There is an opportunity for us to reflect here about how we truly allow ourselves to be changed or challenged by our values and convictions.  Our faith, for example, calls us to express concern for the poor, the oppressed and the marginalized.   But unless we actually step up and do something about that concern, our church really can run the risk of becoming an irrelevant, spineless institution (much as Hollywood presented itself the other night).

The season of Lent is a time for introspection; a time to consider where we have strayed from God’s presence and how we can renew our relationship with God.  But during this holy season, we are also called to works of love.  Our internal spiritual reflection does not reach its goal if it does not result in our becoming more loving to those around us—if it does not compel us to act on our spiritual convictions.  This is the heart of that complicated statement from the book of James in the Bible: “Faith without works is dead” (James 2:17).  This could mean becoming more politically involved.  It might be about prayerfully considering our charitable donations.  Or it could simply mean extending a greater degree of patience and forgiveness to the people we know who sometimes make life a little more frustrating than we’d prefer.

So the calling to all of us this Lent—as we grow in our knowledge and understanding of God—is to open ourselves up to where we can put our faith into action.  How can we actually make an impact in the world around us?

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Two of my favorite things are food and theology (probably not in that order).  So, it is fitting that one of my favorite theology-related books is The Supper of the Lamb by Fr. Robert Capon (who was a priest in the Episcopal Church).  How can you not love something which bills itself as a "theological cookbook"?

Among his many reflections on the nature of food and creation, Fr. Capon makes a wonderful observation about dieting.  He's against it.  Rather than "dieting"--which he views as reducing the wonderful and diverse foods God gave us for our enjoyment to mere calories and fat grams--Fr. Capon encourages us to enter into the natural seasons of fasting and feasting that the Church gives us.  Easter and Christmas, for example, are times to feast and really embrace the fruits of the earth in celebration.  At other times, such as Advent and Lent, we are called to abstain from indulgence.  Then there are the "ordinary times" when it's a good idea to stick to general moderation.  It's a helpful reflection for us as we sit poised to enter the fasting season of Lent (as I write this, it is Shrove Tuesday).

Well, armed with Fr. Capon's guidance, I decided to indulge in my own personal "Fat Monday" yesterday.  Leeman and our pal Sam were finally going to check out "The Burger's Priest", a burger joint we'd been hearing much about of late.  They are known for posting their menu on old hymn-boards and using an old confessional screen to divide the ordering from the cooking area. It's an amusing gimmick.

After more than a decade as a vegetarian, I have only recently re-embraced the glory of meat (influenced in no small degree by Fr. Capon's reflections on the matter).  It's still the rare occasion when I feel compelled to consume large quantities of meat. However, I figured this pre-Lenten time was as good an excuse as any, right?  Preempting my ordination by several weeks, I ordered "the priest"...a 1/4 lb cheeseburger, topped with a deep-fried portabella mushroom stuffed with cheese.  Awesome. There is so a time and a place for decadence, even as part of the Christian life!

My reason for writing about this culinary adventure (other than hoping the owners of the joint will come across the post and give me free burgers in exchange for free advertising) is to note that religious theme of the restaurant is actually more than a gimmick.  The place is run by two graduates of Tyndale Seminary, who decided that they had something to offer God rather than just going into conventional church work.  For them, making the best burgers they can is their Christian calling.  The door to their shop states that they are closed Sunday for Church.  And their website has a section dedicated to declaring their faith in the Christian Gospel.  Check out the owner talking about the blending of burgers and faith:

There are two things about the Burger's Priest than can inspire us in our spiritual journeys.  One is that anything worth doing in our lives is worth doing to the honour and glory of God.  These guys recognized they weren't necessarily "called" to be actual priests or pastors.  But they did recognize that God had given them the skills and passion to make ridiculously awesome burgers.  Likewise, we have the potential to serve God by striving to be the best parents, writers, teachers, bankers, doctors, or lawyers we can be.

The other observation is that these guys clearly live up to our charge not to be ashamed of our faith in Jesus Christ (as St. Paul tells us in Romans 1:16).  These burger apostles are not obnoxious proselytizers--my agnostic buddy Sam wasn't called to REPENT before he got his cheeseburger.  But at the same time these guys are honest about who they are and what they are doing.  They let their faith be a natural part of who they are and to infuse their work and their lives.

We are called to fast and pray and pursue works of love in this season of Lent.  A big part of what these spiritual disciplines are about is simply becoming more intensional about how our faith can be part of our everyday lives outside of the church.  If that can happen through a hamburger...surely it can happen in a host of different ways.

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Last night Leeman was off in one of his shows and the puppy was actually not being a nuisance.  So, succumbing to my Sunday evening exhaustion, I popped in my faithful, well-watched DVD of Sense and Sensibility and enjoyed a relaxing evening.  Sense and Sensibility is probably my favorite book, and the movie is one of my ultimate comfort movies (the old one with Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, though I do heartily recommend the 2008 mini-series as well).

If you're not familiar with the plot, suffice it to say it's about two impoverished sisters and their ups and downs in the no-holds-barred world of Regency Romance:

I could probably recite large portions of the novel by heart at this point, but something really struck me on this viewing of the movie: the main plot makes absolutely no sense in light of 21st-century attitudes towards love and romance.  One of the things that has caused Jane Austen's work to endure for 200 years is that the misunderstandings and the motivations of her characters are still so recognizable today (we totally get why Elizabeth Bennet would be inclined to think the worst of a young man who declared she was not pretty enough to dance with).  But that is really not the case for the story of Elinor Dashwood and Edward Ferras.

Let me sum up: If you're familiar with Jane Austen at all, you know any character of marriageable age comes with a price tag.  Edward's places him in the ranks of champagne and caviar.  Elinor is more in the company of discount off-brand Doritoes.  Nevertheless, they fall deeply in love...with one catch.  Edward has been secretly engaged for the past four years to Lucy Steele, even lower down on the clearance bin than Elinor.  Much angst and sighing commences until Edward's family disinherits him for his secret engagement.  This prompts Lucy (dishonorable gold-digger that she is) to dump her now discount-Dorito of a suitor and allows our star-crossed lovers to marry.  The dramatic tension of the plot arises from the fact that Edward and Elinor are both profoundly honorable people.  Edward would never consider breaking faith to Lucy (even though Edward realized he didn't love her long before he met Elinor).  And it is precisely the "honor" Edward shows to Lucy that convinces Elinor he is worthy of her love.

That is where the story loses its resonance with the 21st century.  Most of our romantic comedies begin with at least one of the leads already in a more-or-less "unfulfilling" relationship.  While many other obstacles might keep the would-be lovers apart until the end of the movie, their pre-existing relationships are rarely more than a minor inconvenience.  (The classic for me here is Sleepless in Seattle where Meg Ryan's engagement to Bill Pullman is far down the list of things keeping her away from going out to meet Tom Hanks).

In our society, we are repeatedly told that we are meant to be with the person who most "fulfills" our needs ... that we need to be with the person who makes us happy ... the person who "completes" us:

The emphasis is on us.  Does our prospective partner meet our needs or fulfill our romantic fantasies?  If not, there is a none-too-subtle social affirmation that we are justified in dropping that person the moment "the one" comes along.

Now, I'm not saying that we should all go about our romantic relationships like people in a Jane Austen novel.  But it is interesting to get a 19th century reality check on some of our 21st century attitudes towards love.  It is so easy to get wrapped up in our own feelings in our relationships.  It's so much harder to approach the people we love with a sense of self-denial or sacrifice.  It's so much harder to put the other person's needs first and realize "hey, maybe my sense of personal self-fulfillment isn't the highest goal in the world."

It is, however, worth noting that this notion of self-sacrificial love (whether we're talking about romance, family, or simply friendships) is much more in keeping with the Christian faith we confess.  "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).  A fairly fitting though around Valentine's Day, it seems.

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I've been following far more of the Republican primaries down south than I really feel is good for me.  I suppose it doesn't help that Leeman has developed what can only be described as a disturbing obsession with the live-blogging of all the debates on the Economist's website. Sometimes, it's just hard to look away.

One issues that seems to arise again and again in media coverage of the primaries is the prevalence of negative campaigning.  It's no secret that the prospective republicans--especially Romney and Gingrich--have been beating up on each other pretty badly for several weeks now. It's amazing to think they'll have any spite left for President Obama, but I'm sure they'll find a way.

Of course, mud-slinging campaigns are nothing new.  Paul Gaimatti taught me in the fine John Adams mini-series that Adams and Thomas Jefferson engaged in exceptional attack ads, which surpassed in substance and style anything today's candidates have to offer:

So, while the talking heads demonstrate a depressing (if unsurprising) lack of historical self-awareness in their hyperbolic assessment of the current campaign, I do think that the negative ads we've been seeing lately touch on issues deeper than a mere lack of civility.  They highlight a profound inability to listen...to really engage with what someone else is saying.  The problem with ads that focus only on attacking and tearing down one's opponents is that they allow no time for true self-reflection or self-awareness.

Just like mudslinging is nothing new, being disillusioned with politics is nothing new either.  But the negative ads become all the more troubling to me personally when we consider that the candidates in question purport to be people of faith.  One rather gets the impression that Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich (who apparently preached at my dad's church in Georgia when I was like 3 months old...so, there's my claim to fame) lie awake at night devising new strategies on how to rip one another apart.  They don't seem to lie awake at night worried about how these ads might be affecting the American people (though maybe they do, who am I to say).

My point is, that for all the blustering about "family values" and the "moral vision" of America, the nature of the campaign currently reflects self-centeredness, pettiness, and a lack of humility.  I am reminded of Paul's simple exhortation in one of his letters: "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves" (Philippians 2:3).

The more I reflect on and am disgusted by the blatant hypocrisy and just...meanness... of the election season (and I'm sure Obama will sink to the negative ads himself by the end of the summer), the more I am determined to bring a positive out of it for me personally.  And that is to remember that the Christian faith I hold is not about "winning" or "power" in the conventional sense.  The Christian faith is about the victory that comes from weakness...from powerlessness.  My faith gives me the freedom to let go...to let other be right.  Not to worry about getting the upper hand.  To ask myself what I have to learn from those around me.

See, I've even learned something from Mitt and Newt.  Thanks guys!  :-)

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I have an ongoing game with a particular friend of mine.  This friend is from my former life in academia, and she is pursuing a career in that line of work.  The rules of the game are simple: she gets a point every time an academic is portrayed in a horribly stereotypical manner in popular culture, and I get a point every time a clergy person is depicted in a horribly stereotypical manner.

For example, my friend totally got a point for Dustin Hoffman’s character in Stranger Than Fiction: a coffee-swilling English prof clearly enamored of his own voice.  I think I may have gotten double points for the movie Doubt.  Not only does the film play on our society’s worst fears about priests and their relationship with vulnerable children, but it also depicts them as petty and self-centered:

This little game with my friend has actually made me really aware of how religious folks—particularly the clergy—are depicted in popular entertainment.  For example, we are all too familiar with the image of the malicious, dangerous man (or woman) of the cloth, mostly thanks to Dan Brown and movies like Doubt.  On the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the bumbling, ineffectual cleric—the one who does not deserve to be taken seriously at all.  We might think of Mr. Collins from Pride and Prejudice, or the comical clergyman caricature Rowan Atkinson has mastered so well:

This has led me to the question—what type of religious figure is deemed “acceptable” by our mainstream culture?  It strikes me that most of the good and decent religious role models in the media are people who embrace an abstract, depersonalized view of God.   The perfect example of this is Geraldine Granger in The Vicar of Dibley.  Now, don’t get me wrong—I love the Vicar!  I think she shows a fun and irreverent side of the religious life that we all need to embrace from time to time.  But, all the same, we never really get to see Geraldine wrestling with God.  We never get the sense that Geraldine views God as a being who engages with her on a personal level.

I wonder if the reason so many people have embraced a figure like the Vicar of Dibley (why she is an example of the “acceptable” person of faith) is that she represents a very safe, non-threatening version of the religious life.  A life that doesn’t make any real demands on us.

As much as I love the Vicar, I don’t really think she is a better role model for us as we go about our Christian pilgrimage than the caricatured stereotypes we’ve seen elsewhere.  Because the fact is—if we take it seriously—the religious life is far more challenging, frustrating, and demanding than anything we see in the movies.  But it is also far more rewarding.

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If you've been reading this blog with any regularity, you've probably figured out by now that I am something of a geek.  In keeping with this geekiness, Leeman and I have been catching up on old episodes of Star-Trek: Seep Space 9 for the last several weeks.  It's a fascinating and bizarre window into the early 90s.

One of the episodes we recently watched revolved around a non-human teenage boy who decides that he wants to enter Starfleet (the elite force which does the boldly going where no one has gone before).  This young man comes from a race which places value on commerce and business.  Naturally, he assumes that he can buy a place in Starfleet with enough cash.  However, he must learn that what is required to achieve his goal is not simply a "fee" that he can pay--whether that is a payment of money or completing tasks that prove his skills--but a much more subtle, much less tangible demonstration of character.

I'll admit that Star Trek is a little cheesy.  But this episode brought to my mind the story of the "rich young ruler" from the Gospels. To make a long story short, this young man asks Jesus what he must do to inherit eternal life.  Jesus tells him to sell everything he has, and the man goes away saddened, prompting Jesus to note how hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

It goes without saying that most of us in North America fall into this "wealthy" category. And this can be a very troubling passage for us--are we being called on to give away everything we own in order to become part of God’s kingdom?

I tend to think that question misses the point of the story.  In a sense, asking if we are “required” to give away all we have simply views radical rejection of property as another “price” for entrance into the kingdom of heaven.  We are still trapped in that transactional mode of thinking that comes so naturally to us in middle-class North American consumer culture.  We respond so well to the notion of “pay the price, get the product.”  And we run the risk of rendering God one more good or service that we expect to be able to purchase.  It makes us feel good and comfortable to feel like we’ve done what’s required—paid the price needed—to be in relationship with God.  Some of us might see the price as showing up on a Sunday morning.  For others, it might be participating in laudable and important social outreach project.  The evangelical world I come out of would rail against the notion that we can earn a place in God’s kingdom by anything that we do.  All the same, the practice of “praying the sinner’s prayer” and “accepting Jesus into your heart” were presented in a very reductionist way.  Those actions were—in a sense—the price to be paid, in exchange for which God would grant eternal salvation.

I think one of the hardest things to grasp in the Christian faith is that participation in the Kingdom of God is not something that we “get” in exchange for a particular kind of piety (however we want to define that).  Participation in God’s Kingdom is so much more subtle and so much messier than that.  It is about offering not just all of our possessions but the entirety of our very being to God.  It is about living our whole lives oriented towards the person of Jesus Christ.  It is, in other words, an ongoing process of recognizing our shortcomings and allowing Christ to shape and transform us.  That doesn’t happen in a day, or even in a lifetime.  And the chance to walk with Christ on that journey is not something that we have to buy or earn.  It is an opportunity Christ himself offered to all of us when he came into our world.

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Last week, I listened to an episode of This American Life while on my normal evening walk with the dog.  Most podcasts serve as little more than background noise as most of my attention is focused on preventing the pup from ingesting any number of harmful items along the side of the road.  But this episode really struck me, and has been persistently present in the back of my mind for several days now.

Titled "Mr Daisy and the Apple Factory", the podcast featured a dramatic monologue by actor Mike Daisy, narrating the events of his visit to the Foxconn factory in Shenzhen, China--the manufacturing spot for most Apple products.  Mike Daisy was not really offering an expose of unknown exploitative practices at the factory.  Rather, he simply told stories of the workers he met in an around the factory town--the underage children forced to work 12-hour shifts; the young adults who have already experienced debilitating injuries from the repetitive motions required of their unchanging place on the assembly line.  Daisy's main objective seemed to be to put a human face on the various products that have come to form the backbone of our everyday lives.

You can see a bit of the monologue in this clip here:

What's interesting to me is that I happened across this podcast in the same week that the Foxconn factory has again been featured in the news regarding the working conditions of its labourers (and, indeed, Apple has recently submitted to greater transparency in the wake of increased suicide threats from Chinese workers).

What really gets me about this is that I listened to that podcast on my shiny i-pod touch.  I am sitting in my office in the church typing this blog entry on my Apple computer.  Leeman and I have an i-mac and a macbook pro at home.  I might not be an Apple CEO, but I am culpable for the exploitation that goes on in those factories because I am part of the system that has created the problem.

And the problem is not just about Apple in particular, or electronic gadget in general.  I felt the same despondency when I watch the documentary Food Inc. The banana I ate on my cereal this morning was brought to me by forms of transportation that are ravaging the earth.  The coffee I am sipping at the moment was likely the product of even greater exploitation of workers than my laptop.

The more I think about it, the way we use and consume products seems like a perfect illustration of the concept of original sin.  We aren't always comfortable with the language of "sin" in the church today--we especially aren't comfortable when someone starts telling us that even little babies are tainted with a black mark before they have taken their first breath.  But maybe the concept of original sin is just this.  Just the fact that we are born into this broken system which we are powerless to fix as an individual.  We have to eat.  We need to be able to communicate in an increasingly digital world. But participating in that system inevitably means violating human rights and violating basic tennets of social justice.

What are we to do?

Fortunately, our faith assures us that there is a point coming when Christ will make the world right.  God will win.  Justice will prevail against inequality and exploitation.  We need not despair over the state of the world and our seeming inability to make a real difference.

In the meantime--even though it is not on us to triumph over sin once and for all--we are called to strive to build the kingdom of God in there here and now in whatever small ways we can.  Maybe we don't have the power to opt out of the electronics game altogether.  But we do have the power to decide how often we really need a new computer or the latest model of i-phone.  When it comes to our food, we can make a commitment to buy as much in-season local produce as possible, or to buy only traditionally raised meat.

It's true that no one of us on our own can solve the problem of our sinful, broken world.  But we can allow Christ to transform us and the choices we make.  Who knows what impact that might make?

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We all have our guilty pleasures, and I will confess that I love young adult fantasy literature.  I may have stood in line at midnight to buy Harry Potter books once upon a time.

I took advantage of last week's post-Christmas lull to work through the Hunger Games series.  The premise is a little dark...to say the least.  Taking reality TV to a whole new level, the books take place in a post-apocalyptic society where teenagers are forced to compete in a kill-or-be-killed contest for survival where only one comes out alive.  I have to say, the books involved some compelling characters and strong themes about self-sacrifice and human nature.  With all the hype about the sparkling vampires of Twilight the past few years, I'm just really happy that someone out there is writing decent children's literature.

What is my beef with Twilight, you may ask?  In contrast to something like Harry Potter, the characters in Twilight exist in a solipsistic universe where their romance *is* the most important thing in the world. The kids in Harry Potter are concerned with who's dating whom (et cetera).  But the standard adolescent melodrama plays out against *real* threats and *real* dangers which put their personal angst in some kind of larger perspective.  This image sums it up nicely:

Ultimately, unlike the heroine of Twilight, the protagonist of the Hunger Games must learn that true sacrifice of self is something far more than giving up and allowing herself to be killed in place of her sister (her initial act in the series).  She learns that *living* for others is actually a more meaningful act than dying for them.

So, I guess when I say that I'm happy to see that someone is producing decent children's literature, I mean I'm glad someone out there is producing something that makes kids realize that they are not the center of the universe.  Because, really, whether it's aimed for a teen audience or not (perhaps especially if it's aimed at teenagers) literature should be about challenging our perspectives on who we are and our basic assumptions about the world.

This lesson on perspective--realizing that we are not the center of the world--is an important lesson to learn in our spiritual lives as well.  The whole purpose of the Christian life is to be in relationship with something outside of ourselves (namely, God).  And as we grow deeper into relationship with God, we learn that we have more to offer one another.  This is at the heart of what the Bible is talking about when it says that "God is love": "Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God" (1 john 4:7).  That love is defined not by what we can get from our relationships, but what we have to give to those around us--not only in formal acts of charity and outreach, but also everyday acts of kindness.

Perhaps a bit of perspective on our own self-importance is a useful lesson for all of us, whether we are 14 or 40

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A few years ago, Leeman and I got really into the sit-com 30 Rock, and I developed an instant affinity with Tina Fey.  I mean, how often do you get to see a brown-haired, bespectacled nerdy woman as a TV star?  Specifically, how often do you honestly get to see a successful career woman embracing her awkwardness:

My favorite moment might be when Tina Fey's character Liz Lemon finds herself at a high-brow New York party--and has no idea what to do.  Attempting to crack a joke, Liz elicits nothing but stunned silence from the crowd when she makes an obscure Star Wars reference. This pretty much sums up every time I find myself in a social situation where pijamas are not acceptable attire.

I spent my Boxing Day reading Tina Fey's autobiography Bossypants (a Christmas gift from Leeman).  I could go on a feminist excursus about powerful women, gender relations, et cetera.  But I think there might actually be a more interesting theological point to be gleaned from the book and from someone like Tina Fey.  (Stay with me--I'm not about to suggest that a comedy writer and TV producer is the height of theological sophistication).

Our consumer culture is based on a lack of satisfaction.  I mean, that's what the whole commercial side of this Christmas season seems like--what you have or what you are isn't good enough.  You need to upgrade.  You need something bigger, better, faster!  Something to make you feel better about yourself or make you feel like you'e keeping up with the rest of society.

One of the things Tina Fey effectively deconstructs in her book are the subtle social pressures we place on one another (particularly on women).  Women are, for example, supposed to be simultaneously fairy-tale pretty with blond hair and blue eyes, but also exotically "ethnic."  Taking satisfaction and delight in being the people we were created to be is out of the question.

The awesome awkwardness that Tina Fey embraces cries foul on this whole concept. By embracing her inner dork, she makes the statement that it is ok to love and accept who you are.

I think there is a very important spiritual point for us in that.  Never being *quite* the coolest kid on the block growing up, I've always battled self-esteem issues.  But at some point, we do all need to accept that we are unique children of God.  We have all been created with our special quirks and foibles.  Especially in a high-pressure place like Toronto, it is all the more important to remember that our worth does not come from what we possess or what *we* can make ourselves into.  Our worth comes simply from being who we are and seeing ourselves through God's eyes.

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As I write this, Christmas is a mere six days away.  Last week I began in earnest the annual process of Christmas shopping and gift wrapping and mailing.  This tends to involve the awkward emails from family members asking me what I want for Christmas.  Leeman always compares sending a lists of Christmas requests to sending your loved ones a list of ransom demands.  There's something that's just a little unsettling about it, and it always makes us both feel a little awkward.

It's easy to understand the source of such awkward feelings.  We've probably all seen reports of the woman who pepper sprayed her fellow shoppers [including children!] on "Black Friday" in her quest to get a cheap x-box:

I think a lot of us rightly recoil against this example of "consumerism gone wild" around the Christmas Season.  in response, we adopt staunchly anti-consumerist, "anti-stuff" attitudes this time of year.  Now that they have been ejected from parks around the world, the occupy movement has, for example, decided to take on Christmas.   And I can't even tell you how many times this powerful, challenging image has shown up on my facebook news feed in the last month:

So, where does leave us?  We're all inevitably caught up in this cycle of gift-giving.  Do we just load up on the guilt as we continue to participate in a system we feel powerless to change?  Do we forego gift-giving altogether in an attempt to embrace the pure "spiritual" meaning of Christmas?

As much as I am deeply uncomfortable with the consumer culture that has us ravaging our planet (often by exploiting workers in the developing world), I cannot bring myself to view the gift-giving bonanza of late December as inherently "bad."  There's something about the giving and receiving of gifts that strikes me as so appropriate even to the "spiritual" meaning of the Christmas season.  When I was a kid, Sunday school teachers used to say "we give gifts to each other at Christmas because Jesus is God's gift to us."  That is a trite and overly simplistic statement.  But it does reflect a more nuanced truth.

What are gifts?  They are physical manifestations of our love for one another.  I love looking around my home to see the various gifts I have been given from friends and family over the years.  There's my hippo-shaped tea pot, my hand-made scarf in the colours of the liturgical year, and even my Dalek-adorned "count-down" Advent calendar (hmm...is it chocolate time yet?)--all given to me by people who know me and my sense of humor remarkably well.  And I love going on the quest to try to find the perfect gift for someone else.  These objects are more than just "things."  They are tangible signs of love.  We are just hard-wired to express our love for one another in such physical ways.  There is much good to be had in gifts!

And what is the "spiritual" side of Christmas all about?  It is the time when remember that God chose to reveal himself to us in a profoundly real and tangible way. God literally broke into our human existence: he took on flesh and dwelt among us.  Christmas is a celebration of the greatest tangible sign of God's love for us--Jesus Christ.  I think we would lose something remarkably important to the Christmas season if we let our fears of rampant consumerism rob us of the joy and the inherent good of entering into the loving spirit of gift-giving.

That said, the burden remains on us to stay sane and sober in the face of corporations and advertisers continually pushing us to BUY BUY BUY for the sake of buying itself.  The burden remains on us not to allow something that is at its core an inherent good become a means of exploitation, waste, and greed.

Maybe that means just a little more creativity--making gifts rather than buying them.  Maybe it means purchasing gifts from fair trade or one-of-a-kind craft shows, or simply supporting smaller local markets.  Whatever decisions we come to, I think the best thing any of us can remember is that--however stressful Christmas can be--our celebrations at home with our family and loved ones complement, and do not compete with, our religious celebration of the birth of Christ.

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Over the past couple weeks as I've been pondering Advent, I keep being reminded of this video I once saw about the famous "marshmallow experiment."  Basically, some psychologists wanted to test self-discipline in children, so they left kids in a room for 15 minutes with a marshmallow and a simple proposition: they could eat the marshmallow, or wait until the adult came back when they would get TWO marshmallows.  In other words, if the kids are willing to engage a little self-denial in the short term, they get a bigger pay-off in the long term.

The results are entertaining, to say the least:

My favorites are the kids who sit there fondling and smelling the marshmallows, as if that's almost as good as eating it!

I think there's actually a lot we can learn from this little marshmallow test when it comes to this current season of Advent.  We are in a period of waiting.  We can (often literally) smell Christmas coming around the corner, just like those kids taking in the scent of the marshmallow in front of them.  More importantly, we also have a deal offered to us by cycle of the church year, if we choose to accept it.  As we plow through mid-December, we can jump in to the celebration of Christmas and be disgusted with the whole phenomenon by boxing day.  Or we can hold off on "Christmas" just a little bit longer and treat Christmas Day as what it is--not the end of a hectic holiday season but the beginning of whole new season of Christian celebration.

All around us--everywhere we go--the world is pressuring us to rush in to the celebration of Christmas.  The lure of Christmas movies and holiday-themed beverages at Starbucks (a particular weakness of mine, I must confess) makes it increasingly difficult for us to hold off the celebration of Christmas and to take the time to embrace this rich and wonderful Advent season.  But embracing Advent and holding off on Christmas--just a little bit long--is so worth doing.

I find often, we don't really get a clear sense in our society of when the Christmas season really begins.  We just kind of wake up one day and realize Christmas snuck up on us.  Like those kids in the video, we pick and nibble away at the Christmas marshmallow in front of us, and only then realize that it's gone.  We don't get our second marshmallow, and we didn't really enjoy the first one.

I'd challenge us all to find some small ways to hold off on Christmas and to make more room for these last couple weeks of Advent.  Maybe that means putting off your favorite family Christmas movies for boxing week.  Maybe that means having some special decorations that don't go up until December 24. Or totally confuse all your non-church friends and throw a "12 Days of Christmas Party" the first week of January.  Something as simple as that can go a long way to bringing our private family celebrations of Christmas into synch with the church. Helping us remember that the joy and the feasting of this season really is about the Good News of Christ's presence coming into our world.  And in more mundane terms, by giving ourselves Advent as a season of preparation, it might help us reclaim Christmas as a season we look forward to--a season we have the time to savor and enjoy.

So go on--hold out for that extra marshmallow, hard as it may be!

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One of my facebook friends just uploaded this picture, of which I heartily approve:

 

I have always loved the zaniness of the Muppets.  And, as I may have implied last week, I've been eagerly anticipating the new Muppet movie.  Leeman and I finally got to see it last week.  Good times were had by all!

The movie revolves around Muppet fanboys Gary and Walter in their attempt to help Kermit the Frog reunite the long-since disbanded Muppets.  The question recurring throughout the film is simple: do the Muppets--defined as they were by feel good sentimentality of the 70s & 80s--have any place in the sarcastic, cynical world of contemporary popular culture?

And the sad reality is, pop culture really does reflect the fact that we live in a depressing and cynical time.  We might think of a sit-com like The Office, which I personally love, but which relies largely on watching Michael Scott humiliate himself for its comedic effect.  I am reminded of a podcast called "Losing the Sheen" about the current post-Charlie Sheen season of Two and a Half Men.  The hilarity of two people talking about a show they only just started watching, know nothing about, and don't actually like is something that must be experienced not explained.  But the question they continually ask is: What does it say about the state of western culture that "America's favorite show" is one in which the characters apparently distain one another and behave in mean, petty, selfish ways?

The clear fun and love that the creative team invested in the new Muppet movie says: "Yes, there is room in the 21st-century for fun and whimsy!"  And the critical response seems to back them up on that.

I suppose you might be wondering: ok, what does all this have to do with the Church?  Am I suggesting that as Christians we should reject everything negative in popular culture, retreat into our homes and watch nothing but The Sound of Music and reruns of Leave it to Beaver?  Hardly.  Because, the thing is, squeaky-clean entertainment like that misses out something of the true messiness of the human condition.

I came across a fascinating blog post I'd highly recommend on muppets, religion, and the "culture wars."  The author argues that it was actually Jim Henson's silliness that gave a touch of reality to situations and characters threatening to become too saccharine: "despite going on record about “people [being] basically good,” the Muppet characters were wonderfully and truthfully drawn. Their bickering, broken collective was united by a shared ridiculousness: Fozzie was hopelessly insecure, Piggy an egomaniac, Kermit was long-suffering, Gonzo a self-described “weirdo,” Animal was, well, Animal, the list goes on.  In the Muppets, the weaknesses tell the stories, not the strengths, and those weaknesses are frequently a source of humor."

The point I'm getting at I suppose is simply that I believe God has a sense of humor. And God gives us the gift of laughter (which, according to the Muppet movie, is the third greatest gift--after babies and ice cream).   In the world--and especially in the church--we have to laugh at one another and ourselves.  We have to laugh at our faults and our foibles.  But what the Muppets help teach us is that there is a huge difference between laughter that comes out of love and laughter that comes out of meanness.

Especially going into this season of Christmas, perhaps embracing a touch of the ridiculousness is part of what true joy and hope is all about.  Maybe *that's* why the Muppet Christmas Carol is the best Christmas movie ever:

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The opening of the new muppet movie this weekend has reminded me how much I loved the muppets as a kid.  Specifically how much do I [still] love all those 80s fantasy movies involving Jim Henson creations.  There is so much heart one can capture with muppets and actors in rubber suits that just can't be replicated by CGI.

The other thing I love about those 80s kids movies is that they were so not afraid to just be ... weird ... and kind of dark.  Kids movies today are so tame by comparison.  I mean, lets take The Dark Crystal, in which the young Jen has to restore a shard to a broken crystal to heal a world about to be overtaken by the evil "Skeksis."  He receives his instructions from the mystic Aurghra, who tells him the healing of the crystal will be "the end of something...or the beginning."

This whole end-is-the-beginning thing turns up as well in The Neverending Story, when the child Bastion has to create a new world of imagination when the old world of Fantasia is all but totally destroyed.  In fact, the film's main theme is that endings and beginnings flow into one another in an "neverending story."

This abstract concept of endings and beginnings being one and the same thing is quite relevant to this season of Advent.  The season of Advent begins our church year.  While it might intuitively make sense to begin our celebration of the Christian year with, say, the story of creation, we instead begin the Christian year reflecting on the promised return of Christ.  We begin with the end, the eschaton ("last things").

I think one of the reasons the Christian year begins the way it does is because--according to our faith--endings are indeed new beginnings.  We confess faith in the resurrection of our bodies and new life after death.  And we also confess faith in the new Kingdom of Chris which will be ushered in at the conclusion of human history.  Indeed, one of our readings from this coming week promises that, after the end of the world, there will be made a New Heaven and a New Earth (2 Peter 3:13).  Ending leads to new beginning.

What's more, the conjunction of endings and beginnings applies not only on a grand cosmic scale but also to our personal lives.  We pray for God to bring healing and renewal to our lives throughout this season of Advent.  Healing, change, and renewal from God, though, will inevitably entail that we let go of some parts of our lives which might be hindering full experience of communion with God or with the people we love in our lives.

The coming of Christ to bring new life into the world and into our lives is dramatic and powerful.  It can also be frightening as it calls us to change and growth.

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This past Sunday (yesterday, as I write this) we celebrated the Feast of Christ the King, celebrating the Kingdom of Christ which will extend throughout eternity.  It's a fitting way to tie up the liturgical year, I've often felt.

As I was reading Matthew's gospel text, I found myself thinking of the Houses of Healing scene from Tolkien's Return of the King--the bit where Aragorn, King of Gondor, heals those harmed in battle:

While this is a nice little moment in the film, the book makes it pretty explicit that Aragorn's role as a healer is absolutely essential to his kingship.  One of the maidservants runs around telling everyone the old proverb: "The hands of a king are also the hands of a healer."

We get what seems like a contradictory view of Aragorn in his regal coronation:

To our very non-hierarchical, very democratic sensibilities, we might find it difficult to see these polar opposite images as reflections of one another.  What becomes even more challenging for us is that Tolkien was a Catholic (and a medievalist at that).  His depiction of Aragorn as the long-absent, returning King in fact calls us to ruminate on the nature of Christ's own kingship.

It can be a challenge for us to reconcile the image of Christ in his regal glory:

...with a Gospel reading calling us to recognize our king in the most marginalized members of society: the sick, the lonely, the prisoners.  But I think that dichotomy touches something at the heart of our Christian faith.  Christianity is a religion of paradoxes. Not least among them is that it is precisely through Christ's suffering and persecution (his death on the cross) that his glory and kingship becomes manifest. Christ our king, in all his glory, made himself a servant.  The last shall be first and the first shall be last.

If we are to live as members of Christ's kingdom, we are called to share not only Christ's glory, but also his humility.

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I just got back from a conference on "proverbs in the medieval cultures of northern Europe."  Discussing the intricate differences between "proverbs", "maxims", "gnomic utterances" and (my favorite) "proverb-like" statements in Saskatoon ... in November ... do I know how to have a good time or what?

The text I spoke about is a "catalogue poem"--basically a list of pithy observations about the world.  One of the comments that came up again and again at the conference was that these medieval catalogue poems don't resolve...they don't "conclude".  God's creation is so vast and mysterious that we're never going to be able to compile an exhaustive catalogue of knowledge about it.

On the flight home, I read Wendell Berry's essay "Life is a Miracle," which criticizes the modern reverence for science.  Berry's greatest problem with current scientific trends is that they have lost the ability to wrestle with "mystery."  The created world no longer has mysteries to be wondered at, but only problems to be solved.  In light of the literature I'd spent the last two days discussing, Berry's essay filled me with a twinge of sadness at how we have lost the ability to delight and wonder in the vast creation God has given us.

Now, I can hear what you're thinking ... doesn't this line of anti-scientific thought lead down the road to crazy-town, as currently represented by many of the Republican candidates for the US presidential election?

What is interesting to me is that those GOP candidates (despite their rejection of science) share that very same modern sensibility which Berry condemns in most scientists: the idea that the world is (and should be) "solvable".  The extreme scientific view believes the world is solvable by science.  The extreme religious view believes the world is solvable through the revelation God has already given us (namely, the Bible).  Neither is willing to deal with mystery.

Berry is not condemning scientific advances, or the discoveries science has made about the impact our rabid consumption has had upon the planet.  He is, on the other hand, soundly condemning a worldview (even one grounded in religion) which would dare to assume that the infinite complexity of God's creative activity can be fully comprehended in human terms.

As much as I love the medieval world, I do not suggest that we go back to a pre-modern lifestyle (I like Doctor Who far too much).  And if I do have a criticism of Berry's writing, it is that he overly romanticizes the local subsistance farm as the answer to all society's ills.

At the same time, perhaps we do have something to learn from our pre-modern ancestors.  They looked out into the world and they saw infinite possibility and mystery.  They wrestled with the problem of knowledge, even when they never expected to find the answers.  That took courage and intellectual fortitude.  And--I think--those who compiled medieval wisdom literature lived in a world far richer and more wondrous than ours.

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Earlier today, someone pointed me towards this New York Times review of the current Broadway revival of Godspell.  If you’re not familiar with the concept, suffice it to say that Godspell was the original hippie attempt to present Christianity in an “edgy” and cool way, most notably by presenting Jesus in bozo-the-clown style garb:

What’s that you say?  Jesus dressed as a clown doesn’t strike you as particularly edgy or cool anymore?  That’s precisely the point the review makes.  For the reviewer, Godspell did such an effective job capitalizing on what was trendy in its day that it significantly impacted contemporary churches.  While that might seem like a good thing., the reviewer closes with the comment that watching this review of Gospel now just “felt like going to church.”

I can’t imagine being compared to church was a compliment for the show.  And it is precisely those churches which have bought into the attempt to be “cool” by banking on cultural trends like those originally inspired by Godspell which the reviewer seems to find most tried and boring.

This got me thinking about what the church’s relationship with “cool” ought to be.  We all know the first rule of being cool is that you can’t try to be cool.  Yet, it seems like the church tries over and over again to jump onto the “cool” bandwagon.  The humorous (and occasionally pathetic) results have been chronicled in blogs such as “Stuff Christians Like” and “Stuff Christian Culture Likes” (both take offs from the not at all church-related but highly entertaining “Stuff White People Like”).  The more the church tries to be hip, relevant, and cool, the more the church comes off as the nerdy kid at the high school dance who’s just trying too hard.

So what are we to do?  If the blogs I just mentioned highlight the dangers ecclesial attempts at cool, “Stuff Fundies Like” shows the dark side of a church refusing any influence by cultural trends.  What the fundies and the hipster Christians share is fear.  The fundies fear becoming tainted by anything less than 100% holy, and so they shun change or progress in all its forms.  Like the high school nerd, the hipster churches fear rejection, and try (at times) too hard to fit in to the going trends.  In doing so, they inevitably sacrifice some of their dignity.  I wonder what would happen if we were to accept that the church just wasn’t going to be “cool.” There will always be an element of the church that does—and should—go against the consumerist, self-centered, shallow trends of our culture.  Maybe it’s ok not to be cool.

When I think about myself as a teenager, I was certainly not cool—braces, bushy hair, bad t-shirts featuring more Disney characters than I should admit on a public forum such as this.  But I can never remember being made fun of at all.  I had my things—debate, drama, academics.  I did what I did extremely well.  And I always felt like I had a certain respect from the cool kids because of my own self-confidence.  I was never trying to be something I was not.  And the cool kids were always willing to talk to me in class and treat me like a decent human being (mostly because they were always hoping I’d help them with their homework).

Perhaps as a church, it’s time for us to realize that we have something of great substance—the Gospel, the story of God and God’s love for the world.  We might get farther and earn more respect from the cool kids in the world if we focus on being who we are and proclaiming those eternal truths, not on being hip.

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Earlier today, I was typing out a quotation for the Sunday leaflet from Rowan Williams—aka, the Archbishop of Canterbury; aka, owner of the world’s most awesome eyebrows:

As I was typing, I found myself reflecting on how much I have learned from the archbishop.  He has quite possibly been the greatest influence on my personal spiritual development over the past several years.  Even though I have never met him, I consider him—in some bizarre way—a spiritual teacher and mentor.

What’s more: Rowan Williams is far from the only writer who inspires this sort of feeling in me, and most of the writers on that list are no longer alive.  If you have an hour or three, ask me my opinion of Dorothy L. Sayers—the friend and Oxford colleague of C.S. Lewis who walked with me regularly on my journey to Anglicanism.  (C.S. Lewis himself cannot be ignored either).  Going even further back, there were the countless anonymous Anglo-Saxon monks whose poetry formed the basis of my graduate work and also changed the way I see God working in the natural world.

Something in this relationship that I have with these authors—whom I have never met outside of their writing—hits directly to the meaning of All Saints’ Day (the feast the church celebrates this week).  As a church, we confess belief in the “Communion of Saints.”  The book of Hebrews describes it as a great “Cloud of Witnesses,” encouraging and inspiring us in the life of faith.

We can so easily fall into the trap of thinking that our spiritual journey is about our individual experience of God.  As a society, we also fall into the trap of valuing only what is current and tangible.  The notion of the communion of saints undermines both of these points.  Through faith in Christ, we are connected to all members of the church throughout the world and throughout all generations that have been or will be.   Even though I do not “know” them, I do share a deep and profound connection with Rowan Williams, Dorothy Sayers, and the Anglo-Saxon monks through our shared faith in the person of Jesus Christ.   It comforts me to know that this cloud of witnesses will continue to guide me and instruct me as I move along my spiritual journey.

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So, it seems that every week there is some new scandal or controversy on Facebook.  This week, it was the war between the people promoting this image of a self-supporting student about to graduate debt-free with her undergraduate degree:

…and the people promoting one columnist’s response to the “mythical bootstraps college student.” Given the general political slant of my friends’ list, I will say the latter was more common on my newsfeed.

I will admit that I’m not an overly political person, but I feel this newest Facebook kerfuffle affords as fruitful an opportunity to comment on the OWS (Occupy Wallstreet) movement as you can get.  And, though we may be tired of talking about them by now, I do think the protests going on around us all over the world do merit comment from the theological perspective.

The thing is, both sides of the debate tend to oversimplify the issues of individual vs. corporate responsibility when it comes to personal success and financial viability. “Mythical Bootstraps College Student” offers a fair critique of the “We are the 99%” blog, filled as it is with the woeful life stories, which occasionally come off overly dramatized and blaming “the man” for the author’s own lack of success, level of personal debt, and the reality that sometimes life is about hard work.

On the other had, self-righteous critics of OWS—like that supposed debt-free college senior—promote a dog-eat-dog, “everyone for themselves” worldview which I cannot find it in myself to endorse.

As the column I cited above notes, none of us are really able accomplish material success in this world totally alone.   Whether we were lucky enough to have parents with the means and the inclination to support us through the hoops of higher education or we just landed into the right place at the right time for our dream job, none of us totally get the credit for our own success.

Within the church, however, there’s a deeper theological truth for us to consider than just what scripture says about our inter-dependence on one another (but passages such as Matthew 25:31-46 certainly provide some food for thought).  The fact is that our lives are not our own—we belong to God.  As Jesus puts in it his Sermon on the Mount: “Do not worry saying ‘what will we eat’ or ‘what will we drink’ … But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well" (Matthew 6:31-33)

I’m sure the debate over whether we have the total responsibility for assuring our material wealth and success in this life or whether society has a role to play in ensuring the good of all its members will continue to rage on.  But let us not forget that none of us—not even those reviled 1%-ers—are wholly outside the sphere of God’s providence.

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Impressed by the overwhelmingly positive reviews, Leeman and I checked out the movie “50/50” this weekend.   The film tells the story of a 27-year-old facing his 50/50 shot of surviving cancer.  Sounds like a thrilling way to spend a Saturday afternoon, right?  Actually, there were some hilarious moments in the film, and it’s one of the few movies that had me cracking up one moment and literally crying the next.  I’d highly recommend it!

As much as the writers did an effective job of bringing the audience alongside Adam’s emotional journey, the character I actually found myself identifying with the most was Katherine, Adam’s therapist.  Katherine herself is only in her mid-twenties and, at one point, confesses to Adam that she is still studying for her doctorate in psychology and that he is only the third patient she’s ever had:

During their first meetings, Katherine tries to respond to Adam’s situation by saying and doing what she has been trained to say and do, despite the fact that it is not what Adam needs.  I found myself having flashbacks to my own pastoral training—being thrust into a room with a grieving family and struggling to find the balance between what I’d been taught to do and what was right in the moment.

We might not all be aspiring pastors or counselors.  But we are students or “trainees” in the Christian faith.  The word “disciple” (used to describe followers of Jesus) means “student” or “learner.”  As students of Jesus, our lives are about living in the example that Jesus gave us for perfection and holiness: “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:1-2).

I think often we become wary of overtly identifying ourselves as followers of Jesus because we have been led to believe that the religious life is about do’s and don’ts.  Following the example of Christ our teacher, however, is not primarily about adhering to a list of rules and giving textbook answers to difficult situations.  If we look at our Christian vocation that simply, we will always come off as awkward and stilted in the way we engage with the world around us.

Instead, living as a student of Christ means continually striving to know the person of Christ better—to know how the person of Christ would interact with particular people and particular situations.  On one level, we should do that by studying the “textbook” of our faith (the Bible).   But we also have to flesh out our study of scripture by prayer, worship, and seeking Christ in the people we encounter everyday.  It is only by opening ourselves up to personal engagement with Christ—by allowing Christ to challenge and change us—that we will truly fulfill our calling as students and imitators of Christ.

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As many of you might be aware, Leeman and I just moved into one of the houses just behind the church.  As, with any move, this inevitable has already involved more than one trip to that wonderful (horrible?) land of meatballs and allen wrenches we call Ikea.

I don't know what it is that makes me feel a slight twinge of shame when I confess to shopping at Ikea.  Maybe it's just that Ikea seems to embody all that is wrong with our instant-gratification consumer-driven society.  The whole place gives off the vibe that we can craft a whole unique identity for ourselves buy purchasing a slightly different combination of ready-made products than the hundreds (thousands?) of other people who go through the store on a daily basis.  Not to mention the fact that the furniture is hardly made to last.  What would be the point?  When the table starts wearing out, we should indulge our desire for something new and shiny anyhow!  It all reminds me of that scene in Fight Club where Edward Norton identifies every item in his apartment by its product name and price tag:

It's rather easy to get depressed when we think about consumer culture--it's easy to feel as though we have no power against the corporations and entities vying for our attention.  We need a roof over our heads, and we need places to sit, sleep, and eat under than roof.  The situation only becomes more complicated when we think about the workers in the developing world we're exploiting or the natural resources we're using up by our boundless consumption.

I don't have an easy theological answer to solve the challenges posed to us by our situation in a consumer culture.  Citing Jesus's comments not to worry about what we will eat or wear (Matthew 6) or Paul's exhortation to change the world, rather than being changed by it (Romans 12) just seem all too glib.

As we continue to wrestle with consumerism and all it entails, maybe the best we can do is keep a bit of perspective in our thoughts.  There may (I daresay will) come a time when we have to buy a new couch or kitchen table.  All the same, it is God who has made us each individually far more unique than any products we purchase can signify.  It is building God's kingdom in the world--and not our own private castles--which we are called to embrace as our goal in this life.

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Given that this is only my third blog entry, I hate to reference material I’ve already written.  However, as we approach this Thanksgiving weekend, I can’t help but go back to the captivating Alexander Schmemann and his reflections on how we relate to the world God has given us.  One of Fr. Schmemann’s repeated points is that our biggest problem as the human race is a “non Eucharistic life in a non Eucharistic world.”

What in the world does that mean?  And what in the world does it have to do with Thanksgiving weekend?

Last Sunday we had an instructed Eucharist.  One of the many informative tidbits I did not get around to fitting into the service was the origin of the word “Eucharist” itself.  The term comes from the Greek for “giving thanks.”  So, in a “Eucharistic" worship service what we are primarily doing is giving thanks to God for the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  In the Eucharist, our whole being is (or ought to be) oriented towards God in praise and thankfulness.

The Eucharist is also the central activity that we perform as a Christian community, and a “Eucharistic” mentality should therefore permeate our whole lives as Christians.  When Fr. Schmemann says that we live a “non Eucharistic” life, he means that we have lost that sense of living our lives in a continual, natural state of thankfulness to God.

We might compare the “Eucharistic” mentality which sees the world gift from God to the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings--the simple characters who delight in the natural world around them.

Tragically, I think our "Non-Eucharistic" attitude more often resembles that of the evil wizard Saruman, who rips trees up by their roots and ravages the natural world in order to build a great army for the forces of darkness.

Like Tolkien's bad guys, we have lost the ability to see the world as God’s gift to us.  Instead we see the world as dead, raw material which we can plunder for our own needs.

As we sit down to our bounteous meals this weekend and give thanks for all the privilege and comfort we enjoy in North America, it might be worth pondering how we can translate that sense of thanksgiving into our natural state of being.  A state where we are not just thankful for what we can "get" for ourselves out of God's creation, but a state where we a see creation itself as a profound, bountiful and delightful gift to us.

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One of my favorite parts about working here at Grace is the number of kids who are around the place every day.  Ok, sometimes (like this particular moment as I attempt to draft a blog entry amidst choruses of "this is the way we wash our hands") long for a little peace and quiet.  But most of the time, I’m grateful for the presence of the little ankle-biters and the enthusiasm which breaks the quiet of mid-week parish life.

As we begin meditating on this theme of discovering manifestations of God’s grace in the world around us, I thought it might be worthwhile to reflect on the call to have “faith like a child” that we often hear quoted in Christian circles.  I can still recall my very first memory verse from elementary school (yes, I went to one of those Christian schools that made students learn memory verses): “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:3-4).  That sounds really nice, but what does it actually mean to become like little children in our faith.

Let us turn for a moment to the world of cinema.  Hands-down the best movie my husband and I saw this summer was Super 8, which could also have been called “Stephen Speilberg and J.J. Abrams restore wonder to the big screen.”

If you didn't see the film this summer, check out the trailer.

Super 8 tells the story of a group of kids who get caught up in a real alien invasion while making their own amateur monster movie.  The film had cinematic strengths in its own right, but what Leeman and I (children of the 80s that we are) loved about it was it’s unashamed references to sci-fi classics like E.T. or the Goonies.  These are movies that embrace what it means to be a child, and highlight the difference between the world of childhood and adulthood.

Remember the almost magical connection that Elliot had with E.T.  … a connection the grown-ups around him could not fathom?

Where Elliot approaches E.T. with awe and wonder, the adults (as Elliot puts it) “just want to cut him up.”   In Super 8, the adults respond to the alien invader with fear, desiring to kill it before it destroys their homes.  It takes the eyes of a child to look into the “monster’s” soul and see the creature's own fear and longing just to return home to its own people.

Back to the context of the church: I don’t think having a “childlike” faith means having a simplistic understanding of God or refusing to ask the hard questions.  Quite the reverse.  Having a childlike faith means still having that freshness in our spiritual lives which allow us to be struck with wonder when we see God’s presence in the world.  It means having the humility to recognize that God is far larger than the categories and boxes we create for Him.

This past Sunday, we welcomed two new children into our community of faith through baptism.  One of the prayers the priest offers at the end of baptism asks God to grant to the child: “the gift of joy and wonder in all your works.”   Perhaps if we allow that gift of joy and wonder to truly blossom in us--to open ourselves to seeing God at work around us in wonderful and incomprehensible ways--we will be well on our way to living our lives as real children of God.

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Welcome to Virtual Grace, written by the Rev. Rachel Kessler.  Through this blog we will reflect on the ways we encounter God's grace every day in the world around us.

We often fall into the compartmentalization trap in our spiritual lives.  All that “God” stuff goes in the convenient little “church” box, and “life” stuff goes into all the other little appropriate metaphorical boxes.  The idea of merging the religious and the “worldly” need not result in something as off-putting as the Cheeto Jesus or the so-called “nun bun” sold at a coffee shop in my husband’s hometown.  Some people have even found Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich:

Let me digress, if I may:

I love the writing of Russian Orthodox priest and theologian Alexander Schmemann (may he rest in peace).  One of the major themes that runs through Fr. Schmemann’s work is the idea that the whole created world reflects the very nature of God.  Schmemann puts it fairly succinctly: “it is God and God alone that has made this world His symbol, has then fulfilled this symbol in Christ and will consummate it in His Eternal Kingdom.”  (You can check out Schmemann’s excellent book For the Life of the World here).

The point is: God’s presence manifests itself throughout the world in which we live, whether or not we are inside the four walls of the church building.  The whole world is a source of divine Grace.  We can learn to see and understand something of God’s very nature through thoughtful, reflective attention to our everyday life.

So, that’s what this blog will be all about.  As we focus more at Grace Church on enriching our shared Christian spiritual journey, the blog will provide one avenue for us a chance to discover God’s “grace” in perhaps some unexpected places.  After all, if no area of the world lies outside the sphere of God’s grace, why shouldn’t we be able to glean something of God’s divine presence in movies, books, or current political goings-on?  Read, reflect, and comment!

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