… and a dollar short.
I could say that Lent snuck up on me this year. But that would imply that I normally have my act together in terms of Lent. Lent always sneaks up on me. It is a season that has always been mysterious to me. In high school, I had friends who were Catholic. Ash Wednesday they came to school with smears on their foreheads that even they were at a loss to fully explain. We made jokes about giving up ketchup or something silly. But somehow we knew were making the sacred, profane.
Later on, I thought about using the time to give up bad habits that I knew were harmful to me in an attempt to rid my life of them. Cigarettes. Chocolate. Beer. Alcohol. The problem was I didn’t really know what I was doing or why. So I would think really hard about doing it and pretty soon the season would pass and with it the thoughts. I have yet to give up chocolate or beer. I simply reserve them for really special times 😉 and have really good chocolate or beer.
Then I gave up on Lent altogether. I just couldn’t understand it. The church tradition I was a part of had no teaching on it. And, I was quite busy with other things. It was an old tradition for other people. It was no part of my life and I had no need of it.
Then I read a really good book about a year or so ago, called Sacred Rhythms (updated and now called GodSpace), by Christine Sine. In this book, Christine writes about the rhythms of our lives and the heartbeats that we live to. I’ve been pondering where the rhythms are in my life and the life of my family. How does the tide run in and out? What are the larger circadian rhythms and the smaller orbits that we follow? The church seasons impact us and the larger holy days provide markers; those being Christmas and Easter.
Which brings me back to Lent and the preparation for Easter. What will we give up? What will we add? How will we use this forty day period to bring us closer to the orbit of God. In some ways, the Pantry Challenge 2007 was a wonderful preparation. It has changed our view of meals and food in ways that are hard to quantify and verbalize. But I think as I’m moving forward to into 2007 one of my key words for the year will be “simplify” or “enough” … that is, that I and we have enough. Like our pantry, our home is similarly overloaded and groaning with excess.
This Lent I would like to live as we did during the Pantry Challenge. That is, with what we have and to evaluate that bounty against what we need. I want to begin to give a lot of it away to those who might need it more than we. My desire is to live with less. I want to begin to go through our “stuff” a little each day of these 40 days and have it leave our home for good, without the desire to replace it.
I say all of this as I leave for a quilt show. The main attraction is the vendor hall. Filled with fabric calling my name. There is a (very) little which I do need to purchase in order to make this quilt for a class on Sunday:
But … I have so much fabric, that if I were better prepared, I ought not to need even this. So I’m purchasing the fabric I need for this quilt. And two other pieces I need for quilts already in progress. These are pre-planned purchases. My heart is feeling faint as I write this. Please, if you read this, pray for me this weekend.
It was a hockey weekend here at the LightHouse. This was an appropriate end to a hockey week. With the schools out for so much of the week, LightGirl spent an inordinate amount of time at the rink sparring and playing on the ice with her friends. When the kids are out of school, the rink opens up the ice (for a small charge of course) to club members. The kids flock there like lemmings. Don’t mistake me, though, I’d far rather she be there than at the mall or the movie theater.
Friday night she attended something called “Club Sk8”. This is a free skate event for the whole community … well … all teenagers. It was the most teens I’d seen in one place at one time in quite some time. I felt as though I’d stepped into the bar scene of the first (third) Star Wars movie. A brief warning flashed through my mind that I would never ever allow LightGirl to attend one of these events again. But then individual faces began to settle out of the mix and I saw the youth underneath the gloss. She had fun and kept to her friends. She was fine. More fine than I.
Saturday her team played a so-called developmental team one age bracket up. So these 13 and 14 year olds went up against 17-19 year olds. They lost 4-3. But they played hard and fair. Which is more than I can say for the other team; which, despite having more than 3 lines of players, kept their best players on the ice for the entire 3rd period in order to win, while our coach rotated her players according the ethics of the league. Of course, when I say these players were on the ice for the third period that’s something of a misnomer … they were on the ice when they weren’t in the penalty box. This was the dirtiest team I think we’ve ever played. AND … I found out after the game the players complained to the off ice officials that us moms were distracting them with our cheers. That was a first. What a silly game.
Sunday we played against the boys PeeWee Select in-house team. Select means that these boys are hand picked. Our team is come one, come all. They are 11-13 years olds. As the game went on a cheering contest of sorts evolved between the parents. It was good natured, of course, because we all knew that we were part of the same organization. There were cracks made from us about the girls not hurting the boys. There were cracks from them about the boys trying harder to get dates than to win the game. It was fun and funny. The boys won, but they had to work hard to do it. They had to work a lot harder than they expected to. That was funny too. Our girls knocked them all over the ice. Stole the puck out from under their sticks. And raced them from one end of the rink to the other. One of our defensewomen was skating like she was a pro. She was whipping up and down the ice frontwards and back, making it look easy.
While the moms awaited the players, one of the more boisterous of the boys dads came up to us and said, “Hey, I’m the dad of the boys goalie. Your goalie is really good. She’s really good.” He nodded his head and grinned. We all grinned too, because we think DB is fantastic (and she is). Then he said, “You know, she’s so good, she oughta just forget about girls hockey and come on over to the boys.” and he turned around and left, patting himself on the back for what a nice compliment he’d just given us. Nice.
After the game, some of our girls (LightGirl included), went to the boys lockerroom. They poked their heads in and called out, “We’re sorry if we hurt any of you.” and ran away giggling. They’re still laughing about that story. It was all in fun and very good natured. There was free ice time after the game. And, yes, we stayed so that LightGirl could skate some more.
She’s skating again today for about 7 straight hours.
We’re back to real life tomorrow. But it’s been fun.
Child soldiers have been getting quite a bit of press lately. They are in vogue in Sudan. This is an especially distasteful practice wherein orphans are used as cannon fodder and bait to be soldiers in wars which they cannot understand. When it hit the press recently I remember thinking that it sounded familiar to me but I couldn’t put my finger on it. An e-mail from an old friend was a poignant reminder. The friend was our best man and has remained in our circle. He sent us an article which was a memoir of the death of his cousin at the hands of child soldiers in Sierra Leone in 1999. Ahhhh … before it became vogue to report on them. That’s how I know.
It’s strange to look at this photo. To see the line of our friend’s jaw and a shared arched brow and glint in his eye, but yet … overall … a stranger’s face. A stranger who is dead now. His mother and father in perpetual mourning. Murdered at the hands of children the age of LightBoy.
What have we come to?
Do you ever stop being homesick?
I left my hometown and homestate when I was 18. I’m still unsettled. When my mother sends photos like this one, of their most recent snowstorm, I just want to go home.
When I was growing up we lived on what might be called a gentleman’s farm. I always say that with a bit of a laugh. In my mind this conjures up a vision of the English countryside and a man wearing a riding outfit or something equally elegant. My father, while well educated and well read, could not be further from that vision. We had a lot of rocks (it was, afterall, Vermont), a lot of trees, an old, empty barn foundation, a chicken coop, a lean-to for the pony and donkey and some rickety parts of the house that had clearly been added on after the original had been built in 1840. These parts had been added much, much later … say 1940. They were not up to code, so to speak. In one of those old, rickety outer rooms we kept a flock of geese. We also had chickens, a pony, a donkey, turkeys on occasion, sheep, and much later a small herd of cows (Scottish Long Horns). My brother also kept bees for a couple of years. We cut most of the wood we needed to heat our home in the winter and were fairly self-sufficient for a number of years. It’s hard work.
I learned quite a bit about geese when we kept them. Enough that I now have a healthy respect for them. I’m not fond of domesticated geese at all; they poop everywhere and they’re mean as snakes. But I love to watch wild geese come and go in their annual migrations. They are quite beautiful. But shy and reticent. The Canadian geese often winter here and then fly north for the summer.
If you’ve ever watched a goose on the ground, it’s a marvel that they can become airborne at all. When you consider that they fly hundreds of miles each year to nest and reproduce the marvel becomes that much greater. On the ground, geese are bumbly and awkward, with round waddly bodies that must move slowly and pedantically across the ground. But if you put them in the water, they become graceful, clean and smooth. Or with great flapping strides they become airborne and once again graceful, clean and smooth.
They are a flocking creature. They don’t do well on their own. Goslings bond with the first creature they see upon hatching from the egg. Even if it’s not the actual mother goose! So they live in fairly closely knit groups. Those groups expand and contract depending on the needs of the season and what the geese are doing at the time. The adult geese watch over the goslings pretty zealously. Even those who are not parents. There is a pond near our house which geese frequent and sometimes there are goslings growing up on this pond. It’s fun to watch the mom take the babies out for a spin. Other adults will form a line of defense between any humans and the goslings and watch … first the humans, then the goslings, then the humans, then the goslings. Until the goslings are finally finished, then the adults break ranks, fall out and go elsewhere.
It’s also quite interesting to watch these birds fly in their migratory pattern. The well-known “V” of geese flying north or south to nesting and/or feeding grounds is legendary in our culture. But it’s not a true “V.” One leg is always shorter than the other by a good bit. There’s a reason for that, but I don’t know what it is. I always marvel at it though. The other thing that I marvel at is that geese do not have one leader. They have several, or perhaps each goose or gander leads at one or more times during the trip. The lead goose has the most difficult task of breaking the wind for all the others. When one gets winded, s/he falls back and another takes his/her place. Some geese are more gifted for certain types of weather or wind patterns than others. The point is this, all the geese know where they are going (which is fairly miraculous in and of itself) and they follow each other by turns. There is no jostling for position. Leading is hard work and dangerous. It is the most difficult part of the journey for each goose. They each take their turn of service and then fall back when their season/turn is finished. They are not in it for power or glory or money; they are just trying to get themselves and their brethren to the next resting place on their journey.
I think we can learn a lot from geese.
When Phil first sent out a list of possible blog titles for this LoveFest, “Love Them Patriots,” was among them. I found this hilarious and attempted to poke some lame-o fun at Phil. The Patriots (football team) were still in the play-offs and he does live in Massachusetts. I don’t know if he follows football at all, but no one took me up on my silly joke. 😀
I also wondered if this title had anything to do with “loving” those sorts of people who make proclamations like, “my country right or wrong,” with lots of bluster and dare to you to face them down. I sighed deep in my soul, this was a description of my maternal grandfather and, while I loved him, I found his attitude hard to love. How does one love a patriot? How does that happen in our current environment, where “my country right or wrong,” seems to be the attitude required of us?
A short time later I was doing some other research and found this quote by Gandhi. It put patriotism in an entirely new light:
For me patriotism is the same as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive, I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India. Imperialism has no place in my scheme of life. The law of a patriot is not different from that of the patriarch. And a patriot is so much the less a patriot if he is a lukewarm humanitarian. There is no conflict between private and political law. ~Mohandas Gandhi~
I remembered as I read this quote that the root word of patriotism is patros or father in Latin. The meaning of the word may be reduced to a love for the fatherland. Or it may be as rich and textured as this quote which is attributed to Rabbi Sherwin T. Wine:
There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom. The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity. This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.
There are two visions of America. One precedes our founding fathers and finds its roots in the harshness of our puritan past. It is very suspicious of freedom, uncomfortable with diversity, hostile to science, unfriendly to reason, contemptuous of personal autonomy. It sees America as a religious nation. It views patriotism as allegiance to God. It secretly adores coercion and conformity. Despite our constitution, despite the legacy of the Enlightenment, it appeals to millions of Americans and threatens our freedom.
The other vision finds its roots in the spirit of our founding revolution and in the leaders of this nation who embraced the age of reason. It loves freedom, encourages diversity, embraces science and affirms the dignity and rights of every individual. It sees America as a moral nation, neither completely religious nor completely secular. It defines patriotism as love of country and of the people who make it strong. It defends all citizens against unjust coercion and irrational conformity.
This second vision is our vision. It is the vision of a free society. We must be bold enough to proclaim it and strong enough to defend it against all its enemies.
This definition of patriotism is uniquely American and has it roots in the United States and our history. But how does patriotism flourish in other countries? What does it look like to be a patriot in France? or Italy? We have some new friends who have moved here from Italy. The husband is American and spent 15 years in Italy. The wife is Italian and the children were born in Italy and are now spending part of their lives here. They are neither quite American nor quite Italian anymore either.
So what of all of this? In the face of this, should I be a patriot first or a resident of the Kingdom of God first? How does one who claims to follow Christ order his or her life in terms of the claims of patriotism on our soul or on our physical being? Where is my fatherland these days?
I think about these things every now and again especially in the face of the rampant nationalism and patriotism that is filling the airwaves of our culture these days. Some of this nationalism is turning a bit ugly. It has the potential to make us ugly. To turn our hearts two sizes too small in the words of the immortal Grinch. Fear has the potential to do that. Our hearts shrivel while our swagger prospers. It is a sad commentary.
It is tempting to lay claim entirely to Kingdom patriotism. To declare that the Kingdom of God is my fatherland, I have no land in the here and now, it is entirely in the hereafter and the not yet. Or maybe sometimes. This would be somewhat easy. And somewhat arrogant. It would make for an elevated understanding of the the Gospels and I would be able to point my finger in the faces of many American Christians who are currently getting it “all wrong.” At least, according to me.
On the other hand, that does not take into account the substantial direction in the Bible to place myself under the authority of a human government. That I am to have some form of loyalty to this government and responsibility towards it. That I must render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s and render unto God the things which are His.
So. Now I am back substantially where I began. Feeling as though I have my feet in both worlds. Feeling, I imagine, somewhat like our new friends. Not really American yet, neither are they really Italian anymore either. That is me. Not really in the Kingdom yet, but longing for it to come and not really American anymore either. I can’t quite wholly give myself over to the desires of my nation. To paraphrase Gandhi, I cannot hurt Iraq to serve the United States, nor vice versa. My horizon is bigger than that now. And it is smaller. “I am patriotic because I am human and humane.” It has allowed me to see my fellow humans with through the lens of God.
Thus I can see the fear that drives the nationalism, protectionism, jingoism, and even xenophobia. If I could, I would rise up and remind us all that perfect love drives out fear. There are not enough weapons, enough armor; creating fear in others does not beget peace. It begets more fear, more hate and more violence. Finding space to love, on the other hand, pushes out fear, hate and violence. Creating space in which to see that the very people we fear are, in fact, people. Just people. Just like us. They have the same dreams for their children and themselves as we do. They are driven by the same desires as we are. If we can find it in our hearts to love them patriots too, to allow that perfect love to drive out fear, we will be serving both our fatherland and our Fatherland at one and the same time.
Here is a list of my fellow SynchroBloggers. Please visit them and read what they have to say on the subject of love this month:
Christian Sexuality as Ritual Worship at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Christians: choosing who to love at Mike’s Musings
Loving God, Loving others, loving self- responding to the Goddess- a feminist perspective at Eternal Echoes
Trinity by Mike Crockett
Prophet’s Passion at Adam Gonnerman’s Igneous Quill
A Love Supreme from Fernando’s Desk
What is this thing called love? at Steve’s Notes from the Underground
Love as it should pertain to us missionally? at Webb’s Stumbling into the Kingdom
Divine Eros by Handmaid Leah
Loving the Other by John Smulo
The Conjunction Between Sensuality and Spirituality by Matt Stone
The Blogger Whom Jesus Loved at Jamie’s More Than Stone
I’m a better lover than I used to be… by Billy Calderwood
Young people in on love by Tim Abbot
The Art of Making Love….and Soap at Cindy’s Tracking the Edge
Being Missional: Love Comes Before Power by David Fisher at Be the Revolution
I’ve joined up with a group headed by Phil Wyman out of Plymouth, Salem, Massachusetts. It’s a real gang, I tell you. The Syncrobloggers. We’re called Synchies by our leader. We blog about the same subject (gasp) on the same day (oohhhh). It is a unique organization whereby we get a variety of perspectives on a subject out all at one time. This being February we’re concentrating on “Love” and it’s my first ever Synchro-blog so I’m chiming in on the LoveFest. So be looking for that post in a few days. And check out Phil’s blog (Square No More) to see the list of the my fellow Synchies.
Update: As Phil kindly pointed out, he is not from Plymouth … but Salem!! They are close to one another, but different and I should know better.
LightHusband got a surprise today. He had an appointment that wasn’t nearly as long as it was supposed to be. Instead of driving home from Baltimore at 5 in the afternoon, he was able to leave at 2. So he stopped in the new Whole Foods store and we **finally** celebrated the end of the great pantry challenge. We had steak and baked potatoes and grilled vegetables and salad. We’re about to have pie for dessert. He splurged and brought me some new beer. It’s my new favorite … Smuttynose IPA. Yum … and it’s brewed right next door to home in New Hampshire.
Among the friends that I am thankful for, is the multi-talented and oh-so-creative P3T3RK3Y5. Pete, to his friends, makes multi-tasking look ridiculously simple and multi-media like a first grader could handle it. But we all know better. Here is one Pete’s latest creations, set to Chris Tomlin’s Indescribable … it is, well, you know ….
I’ve promised a book review over at Emerging Women (I’ve cross-posted this there as well). I’ve been dragging my feet. You see, I promised to review books I read over 3 years ago. That was a somewhat overwhelming promise to make. Now I find myself having to re-skim them in order to write coherently about them. I also find that some of my basic assumptions have changed. In short, I thought this would be easy and no … now it’s not.
Then I realized, hey … this is my review. I get to make up the rules. What fun! So I’ve changed my own rules. I’m going to write a couple of collective reviews. I’m reviewing books that comprise some of the recent literature on women in ministry. So I decided to group them. Here’s the first group: Paul, Women & Wives by Craig S. Keener, What Paul Really Said About Women by John T. Bristow, Why Not Women? by Loren Cunningham and Ten Lies the Church Tells Women by J. Lee Grady.
This group of books is concerned (in the main) with arguing the point from a Biblical standpoint that the traditional exegesis of Paul is mis-guided. Each author does a great job of sussing out the different strands from the main texts that have been used over the centuries to subjugate women and keep them in a subordinate role to men in the church and until recently, in society as well.
As I was re-reading/skimming these books, I had a sudden insight. The traditional or heirarchical perspective is grounded in the notion that women were created in the subordinate position and that was further exacerbated by the Fall and resulting Curse (Genesis 2 and 3). People writing, arguing and living in this paradigm read the Old and New Testaments with a particular eye. This eye says that women are and always have been subordinate to men, beginning in the Beginning and up til now … it’s just the way “things” are.
People writing, arguing and living in an egalitarian paradigm read the Creation account and see something different. They see man and woman created equally, albeit somewhat differently. They go on to read particularly the Gospels and Epistles of Paul with a markedly different perspective. This perspective is one that looks at redemption of the original created order. If, in the beginning, God created Adam and Eve as equals, the Fall and resulting Curse, corrupted that. The egalitarian paradigm is grounded in the notion that the sacrifice and resurrection of Christ was sufficient to redeem the Fall. It is sufficient to return our relationships to the original created order; that is, that men and women are equal in form, status and function. The much maligned epistle accounts of St. Paul are read from the informing perspective of this paradigm.
These four books are prime examples of rethinking, rereading and re-learning what exactly the Apostle Paul meant in his instructions that women should be silent, not teach, not be put in positions of leadership over men, etc. Each book takes a methodical look at a variety of the primary proof texts (Galatians 3:28, Ephesians 5:21-33, 1 Corinthians 11:2-16, 1 Corinthians 14:33-35, and 1 Timothy 2:8-15). Each takes a close look two or more of these texts and concludes that Paul has been misquoted, misunderstood and generally misused for just shy of two millenia. They are well written. I’d highly recommend any or all of them and one more which I don’t have in my possession as I borrowed it from the library, Good News For Women, by Rebecca Merrill Groothuis. The main difference is in readability. “Ten Lies” was written with a broad audience in mind. It is an easy read, the logic easy to follow, and anyone with a highschool education can profit and learn from it. “What Paul Really Said” and “Why Not Women?” were written to a more sophisticated audience. One might find these books on the reading list for an undergraduate class in the 100 or 200 level. “Paul, Women & Wives” and “Good News For Women” are written as if intended to be texts for graduate level classes. You can pick and choose among them according to how intense you wish your study to become. To get a well-rounded picture, it’s probably best to read at least two.
While they all end up in a similar place (women are equal to men and have the rights and responsibilities of men to leadership in ministry), each heads out in a slightly different perspective, or perhaps it is that the goals of the respective authors are slightly different. This is in some cases reflective of the audience to which each book is projected. Loren Cunningham (founder of YWAM) writes his goal eloquently:
As I envision this, I see every little girl growing up knowing she is valued, knowing she is made in the image of God, and knowing that she can fulfill all the potential He has put within her. I see the Body of Christ recognizing leaders whom the Holy Spirit indicates, the ones whom He has gifted, anointed, and empowered without regard to race, color or gender. This generation will be one that simply asks, “Who is it that God wants?” … This new generation will not be bound by traditions hindering women from obeying God’s call the way my generation has. Instead they will take a fresh look at the Word of God, knowing that the Holy Spirit will never do anything that contradicts His Word. As this emerging generation studies the Bible free of cultural blinders, they will see that the Lord has always used both women and men to proclaim the Good News and to prophesy the Word of God to their generations. (p. 13-14)
John Bristow had too many questions and not enough answers. He describes the beginning of his quest in words that echo Albert Einstein, “I challenged an axiom.”
In a sense, I sought an answer to these questions about Paul’s teachings by challenging another axiom: that what we think Paul meant is really what Paul intended us to think. I began with Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, in which he states that wives are to be subject to their husbands and that husbands are to be as a head to their wives. Now, Paul’s letters are in Greek. Theoretically, if I took our English translation of his words and translated them back into Greek, my words should be similar to Paul’s original words. But when I tried doing this, such was not the case, not at all! In reality, the words that Paul chose to use imply different ideas from those conveyed by the English words we use to translate his writings. (p. xi … preface)
In a sense, I sought an answer to these questions about Paul’s teachings by challenging another axiom: that what we think Paul meant is really what Paul intended us to think.
I began with Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, in which he states that wives are to be subject to their husbands and that husbands are to be as a head to their wives. Now, Paul’s letters are in Greek. Theoretically, if I took our English translation of his words and translated them back into Greek, my words should be similar to Paul’s original words. But when I tried doing this, such was not the case, not at all! In reality, the words that Paul chose to use imply different ideas from those conveyed by the English words we use to translate his writings. (p. xi … preface)
Craig Keener takes a slightly different tack and describes the pinnacle of the argument (for me):
Equal treatment for women (or, indeed, for any people made in God’s image) is not, as some would argue, an agenda borrowed from the secular world. The subordination of women, on the contrary, is an idea practiced (often in brutal ways) by most non-Christian cultures in history. It could thus be easily argued that the subordination of women in Christian history was borrowed from the “secular world,†and that it tells us more about the societies in which those Christian rules were formulated than about God’s eternal purposes. As I hope this book will help to demonstrate, treating women as men’s equals was far closer to the spirit of Paul than making them subordinate. This is significant, since it is to Paul that the alleged repression of women in the New Testament is most often attributed. (p. 10)
It is Keener’s perspective that finally puts to rest the heirarchical notion that women are or ever needed to be subordinate to men. My observation has been (as a budding armchair anthropologist) that throughout time and across most cultural boundaries men have viewed women with suspicion and distrust. In many cultures, women remain in a subordinate position such that the rate of abortions for female fetuses is far higher in many Third World countries (7,999 female to 1 male in one hospital in India alone). Women and girls are a lightly held commodity.
Thus it is that I simply do not believe that the God who came and proclaimed as his mission to “set captives free,” would maintain captivity for fully half of the world’s population. The God who occupies the Alpha and the Omega of the entire universe does not create secondhand goods. He does not leave us in darkness or bound by the traditions of humans. He came to upset that apple cart. Do not believe anything different for one moment. And if you need further proof, read one of these books. And celebrate equality with your friends regardless of gender today.