In a Circle of Clergy

I had the experience today of sitting with a group of clergy-- all fairly new to the whole minister business-- and participating in a conversation about "Who am I turning out to be as a pastor?" It was so fascinating hearing people talk about the complications of the pastoral role, about the expectations we have versus the reality that hits us, about the expectations they have (the congregation, that is) versus the reality, and what it is to be mutually disappointed and yet recognize the grace therein.

I know of no one else in this group who is gay or lesbian (for certain, that is). But, of course, I have my suspicions. There is one woman with whom I find I am constantly exchanging glances-- we "check in" with one another as the group is talking, we notice one another's reactions. We smile at one another.

We are both waiting to see if it is safe.

Tag, I'm It

Milton from don't eat alone has tagged me, and now I'm an official "Thinking Blogger." For the origins of this award, please see this post. My directive is simple: I am to now tag five bloggers who make me think.

This is hard. In the past eight months I have bookmarked nearly 70 blogs, all of which I try to drop in on with some regularity, many of which feel like communities of which I am a part, each of which offers me something unique.

There are blogs I read because I have somehow become involved in the bloggers' lives... they write about their days with such clarity and precision, I feel as if I know them, they are friends. I tune in wondering how this or that encounter or confrontation turned out... their story has become a part of my story.

There are blogs I read because I am looking for a particular kind of information (usually about church politics and religious life), the latest statement by this body or that leader, often accompanied by insightful commentary.

There are blogs I read for their sheer beauty-- turns of phrase, art, unique design.

There are blogs I read because they are written by other pastors or clergy.

There are blogs I read because they are written by other lesbians.

This is a hard task. Best not to overthink it. I hereby tag the following:

I nominate Santa Ignora. This young, brash and bold blogger has a post you should read, "Who is Santa Ignora?" that starts, "Have you ever been excluded from something?" You should also read "Saul was being kind of a dick." She is Gen Next, and I think she may be a mystic. I could imagine her as a mystical barrista, dispensing emerald words from Christ along with a venti mocha latte.

I also nominate MadPriest of "Of Course I Could Be Wrong..." His blog, and his insistence on a church of radical inclusiveness ("Free Your Mind And Your God Will Follow") probably were the impetus for me to begin this blog, so that I could speak and find a community that he convinced me might be there. Warning: he is not polite. But he is truthful, and there is great beauty in that.

On a much different note, I nominate More Cows of "You've Really Got to Love Your People." When I read her blog I am invited into the world of a young, brilliant pastor who sees the shimmer of grace in every moment, even when church life is at its most challenging. Her current post, "Do you see God all over this?" is a shining example of her manifestation of a meticulous and gifted theological mind living with the heart of a pastor.

Share Cropper describes "23 Acres of Black Dirt" as "Occasional Thoughts About Earthly and Unearthly Life." She writes as easily about theology and politics as she does about her family history. I consider her piece "Love and perspective" to be consummate Share Cropper. Here she tells of her connections with a struggling church family with whom, on the surface, she appears to have little in common, but with whom she feels deep kinship, affection, and some measure of being grounded in the messy, homely reality of human existence.

When I have temporarily lost touch with why I do what I do, I venture over to A Church for Starving Artists. Blogger Jan Edmiston is an emergingly oriented pastor who always manages to take the long view, have the grand scale perspective that I find missing when I get bogged down in things like Great Clipboard Controversies (see More Cows for that post).

And there are 65 other blogs I love, and where I feel at home, and that truly make me think.

Introducing: Me!

I listen to On the Media each week by podcast, but this week I happened to catch the first segment live as I began my Sunday morning routine by making a pot of coffee. Of course, this week's topic was the media coverage of the shootings in Blacksburg, VA. Front and center was the decision of NBC to air what one interviewee called the "press packet" sent to it by Sueng-Hui Cho. Tony Burman, a Canadian Broadcasting Company official, discussed why that news outlet declined to use the footage in its broadcasts. It had to do with the fear of encouraging copycats by focusing on the perpetrator of such crimes, and he explained that, ever since last September's shooting at Montreal's Dawson College (1 dead, 19 wounded), the CBC has decided that it will focus on the victims at a moment like this.

This next little piece of the concersation fascinated me. They played clips of interviews with two VT students, in which they described their experiences. Burman commented that it is clear, listening to those clips, that the students are very aware that they are a part of a story and they have a role to play, in what Burman terms our "performative culture." He says that, ever since John F. Kennedy was shot, the witnesses have been on call to the media to play the part of witness (these are my words). Also a part of the phenomenon, though, are the "witnesses" who heard the news in classrooms or at a bar or wherever they were at those moments, and who then share those "Where were you when you heard?" stories, which people of my generation have, certainly, for the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and, of course, 9/11, which remains the Big Story.

In this performative culture everyone has a right to their moment in the sun, so to speak. And so we have phenomena such as... blogging, in which we all confidently assume that we have a story to tell, for which there will be listeners and to which there will be responders. I began, as Burman spoke, to connect with a slight sense of discomfort about this assumption of center stage on all our part, but now, as I ponder further, I ask, a la Harvey Fierstein, "Is that so wrong?"

Possible defenses of the blogging/ Hello It's Me phenomenon are many. Of course, we all know (I know in a particularly powerful way) that the blogosphere can be a community of care, a community of shared interests, and sometimes, a community the likes of which bloggers cannot find in their day to day non-wired lives. And there is something powerful, too, about saying "This is my story," whether or not one receives a response. The experience of sharing one's life via a blog can affirm and strengthen the individual persona.

And it's not all about "me." Bloggers have been instrumental in rooting out what may turn out to be prosecutable corruption in the current Justice Department scandal involving firing of US attorneys (because they wouldn't prosecute selectively based on partisan politics). The 2008 presidential field is all too aware of the potency of the blogosphere for forming opinion, and they are paying attention (with some missteps-- see John Edwards-- Ha! almost called him "Jonathan Edwards!" Not.).

But I have a sneaking suspicion that it is, if not solely about "me," then at least somewhat about power. And let me hasten to say, that is not necessarily a bad thing. There are a hell of a lot of people for whom blogging offers them an avenue to exercise a kind of power of persuasion or power of visibility who would not otherwise have a forum. These are people who are otherwise entirely or partially disenfranchised by the systems now in place. Someone like me might qualify as being in that kind of category: closted pastors are, by definition, hiding out and impotent to voice their situation-- except in a space like this. For myself, I don't feel honest about accepting the labels "powerless" or "disenfranchised," when the rest of my life is so steeped in privileged: white, US citizen, highly educated, no debt, good income (when compared to 99% of the people on this planet).

Here's my fear about blogging: that it keeps us from discovering the flesh and blood embodied communities that might, just might be available to us if we could just take a bit of a risk to find them. As a Christian, I believe in an incarnated God who tells us by word and deed that our bodies matter, that we are present to one another, healing and loving, by physical presence. I fear that, as much as we of the radicaleft are fighting against a dreary gnosticism that has seeped into orthodox interpretations of scripture, we are, ironically, living outside ourselves by engaging mind and heart and soul where we cannot engage our bodies.

Go and Read

Grandmère Mimi at Wounded Bird has the following collection of thoughts and reflections about the Virginia Tech killings that brought together in a coherent way thoughts that have been floating around incoherently in my head. Read her wonderful reflections here.

Night Prayer

I discovered this prayer a few years ago when going through a difficult time. It became my nightly prayer, as I worked or kept watch or wept through the night. I offer it for our sisters and brothers in Virginia and around the world who reel once again at this reminder of what a mindlessly violent world-- nation-- we live in. We are still at Calvary after all.

Keep watch, dear Lord,
with those who work,
or watch,
or weep this night,
and give your angels charge
over those who sleep.
Tend the sick, Lord Christ,
give rest to the weary,
bless the dying,
soothe the suffering,
pity the afflicted,
shield the joyous:
and all for your love's sake.
Amen.

Six Things Possibly Wierder Than Being a Closeted Pastor

Six Weird Things Meme - I've been tagged by Sharecropper and Catherine+! According to the rules I must:

1. Reveal six weird things about myself on your blog, and

2. Tag six people to do the same.

Wierd things about me... where to begin?

1. I recently came across two pictures of myself taken the same weekend in my sophomore year of college. In one I am wearing a demure, Pilgrim-esque gown and singing a solo (based on a poem by Mother Teresa) with the university chorale at a symphony hall not far from my alma mater. In the other I am wearing a beehive hairdo, grey makeup with black lipstick, a labcoat, safety pins in my ears and an electrical cord around my waist, as I head off to a punk-themed campus party. One girl, one weekend.

2. In my 20's I briefly sold health insurance for a living (no offense intended to anyone).

3. In seminary I loved Hebrew so much I wept, at two o'clock in the morning, when I translated this sentence: The sons of Jacob said to Joseph, We have an old father in the land of Canaan, for they did not know that Joseph was their brother.

4. When I was twelve I read an article in a teen magazine that said that leaving the house without earrings is like leaving the house naked. I took this information fully to heart and, to this day, cannot leave the house without earrings.

5. That said, I have a spiritual relationship with my jewelry. (I know, possible red-flag for idolatry here.) What I mean is that I choose my jewelry every day extremely carefully, for the spiritual message it conveys to the world. I always wear something given to me by my Beloved. I always wear some symbol of faith (and for me these extend beyond crosses-- I count trees as cross-symbols, and also as symbols of the Garden, the tree of knowledge of good and evil... also anything circular can symbolize the eternal nature of God). I almost always wear something I associate with my mother-- either a ring she gave me, or a ring or cameo that belonged to her mother.

6. I still haven't cleaned the mud from the shoes I wore to my mother's graveside service. It's been... a long time. More than a year.

I tag: Junia's Daughter, Cynthia, kj, Milton, Jan, and MoreCows!

Like This

Thanks to Ann. "Hu" is the pronoun for the Divine Presence

Like This

If anyone asks you
how the perfect satisfaction
of all our sexual wanting
will look, lift your face
and say,
Like this.

When someone mentions the gracefulness
of the nightsky, climb up on the roof
and dance and say,
Like this?

If anyone wants to know what "spirit" is,
or what "God's fragrance" means,
lean your head toward him or her.
Keep your face there close.
Like this.

When someone quotes the old poetic image
about clouds gradually uncovering the moon,
slowly loosen knot by knot the strings
of your robe.
Like this?

If anyone wonders how Jesus raised the dead,
don't try to explain the miracle.
Kiss me on the lips.
Like this. Like this.

When someone asks what it means
to "die for love," point
here.

If someone asks how tall I am, frown
and measure with your fingers the space
between the creases on your forehead.
This tall.

The soul sometimes leaves the body, then returns.
When someone doesn't believe that,
walk back into my house.
Like this.

When lovers moan,
they're telling our story.
Like this.

I am a sky where spirits live.
Stare into this deepening blue,
while the breeze says a secret.
Like this.

When someone asks what there is to do,
light the candle in his hand.
Like this.

How did Joseph's scent come to Jacob?
Huuuu.

How did Jacob's sight return?
Huuuuu.

A little wind cleans the eyes.
Like this.

When Shams comes back from Tabriz,
he'll put just his head around the edge
of the door to surprise us.
Like this.

~ Rumi

Translated by Coleman Barks