Blogging Theology, pt 1

I was a terrible writing student. At the beginning of every paper, in nearly every class, through a bachelor's degree and three master's degrees, teachers required a thesis statement and an outline prior to beginning research. I would get stuck there, because I didn't understand how one could research anything with the outcome firmly in mind. If I came across data that contradicted my original thesis, could I change the thesis? And would I recognize the contradictory data if I did? Needless to say, both my teachers and I were often frustrated, and unable to see the other's position.

All human beings have limited perspective: we can never have a God's-eye view of anything. That perspective is the lens through which we view the world. We can learn to change lenses, even modify our particular lens, but we the world we see is always framed by our place and person. Being a "situated knower", as this philosophical problem is called, is both Suchocki's strength and her weakness. It is her greatest strength, because it leads her into concern about the effects of a pluralistic world on Christian ideology. It is also her greatest weakness, at least in Divinity & Diversity, because, like all my frustrated writing teachers, her lens is limited by the thesis she must prove.

Suchocki, like her colleague John Cobb, is one of the great explicators of process theology ["PT"]. Process theology (more on that here) has served to bend and puncture the boxy framework of
modern theology, as well as providing a wholly different understanding of substance (of God, of us, etc.). How does all that happen? By understanding everything and all that is, including God, as an interactive set of what I have elsewhere called "matter-moments" whose action and response is dependent upon other matter-moments' action and response. PT makes God necessarily changeable and changing, at least in part (which is really tough on some people). In PT everything is somewhat interdependent on everything else, including God.

Process theology, like Doug Pagitt's quantum physics, saved my life, and paradoxically made a personal relationship with God possible.

As it happens, I agree with Suchocki's strain of argument : the lens of process theology can help Christians take a different look at our ideology of exclusivity (Jesus as the "only way") because
1) "the image of God is not reducible to ... any individual human quality alone...God is... a complex unity that can only be expressed through irreducible diversity(67)"; and
2) God continually calls us into deeper and richer modes of incarnation.
From here, Suchocki argues that the "deeper and richer modes" of incarnation depend necessarily upon ever increasing depth and breadth of community. This leads her to her main conclusion (the one which "solves" human plurality"): God is calling us to a new and more intense form of mission... not to convert the world to our own religion, but to convert the world toward friendship."(109)

And that's where Suchocki, like all those writing teachers, frustrates me. The first three-quarters of her book, in which she explains PT through the lens of pluralistic culture, is clear, thoughtful, transparent. It should be mandated introductory reading for everyone entering seminary anywhere. (So should Henri Nouwen's Creative Ministry, especially if it replaces The Wounded Healer, which metaphor has by now become a sorry excuse for permanent brokenness. But that's another entry.) But that last quarter, where Suchocki applies PT to global relationships and Christian mission, is utterly clouded by her "situated knower"-ness as a 20th century liberal: her image of Christian faith, of mission, of Jesus himself is so limited that it is rendered a straw man.

In other words, the Christianity she is arguing against is a political effect, not a living faith. It is static and hardened, a cigar-store Indian rather than a creation in which God is and moves and has God's being. It is the mid-century bogieman against which the now-irrelevant ecumenical movement was fighting. The Christianity she portrays is dead or dying: there simply aren't that many churches sending missionaries out to convert the heathen through coercion or force.

More importantly, when Suchocki portrays the new Christian mission as no more than friendship and understanding (even highly relational and rarified friendship and understanding), she reduces the transformative (and essential and unchanging) nature of God's grace, as revealed and incarnated in the person and purpose of Jesus, to simply another tenet of simply another faith and culture. At our best, followers of Jesus are living witnesses to the very process Suchocki argues everything is anyway. Transformative community (of matter-moments or of people) cannot be about "why we believe this or that" (113) or "shar[ing] oneself with another so that the other might know who we really are, and how and why we understand God as we do." (113) By her own sense of PT, transformative community cannot be about "the Methodists [host]ing the Muslims for a church supper"(114) even if it leads to the mutual discovery of and action upon the critical need of their shared geographic community(114).

Godly transformation, the morphing of individuals and communities into the image of God -- into Christlikeness -- is not just about intellectual understanding or shared causes. Godly transfomation is not simply holding hands around the globe. It is beyond global and beyond cellular. It is nothing less than the complete transformation of the very matter and moments of all existence into unity with and incarnation of God. That's what we're about. That's what Suchocki's own process theology is about. But it's not where the book leads us, because retaining the thesis trumped the research and theology.

Which, as writing methodology or Christian ideology, still frustrates me.

Ellen feasting

There is a young girl -- five or six years old -- who comes with her mom to the table for the Eucharist. She is a good bit taller than the communion table; from my vantage point it just barely covers her chest. She arrives at the table ahead of her mother, and takes a nice piece of bread. It's not the biggest piece, but it is sufficient. She has to lean to see into the eye-level chalice. Standing a bit away from the table, she carefully dips her bread into the juice, just halfway, which is enough.

Then, rather than cupping her other hand underneath the bread so as not to drip, this child of God stretches out so that her whole face and a good portion of her body are above the table. Then with eagerness and precision, she bites the juicy purple bread, sparing no drop, no crumb.

She chews the body and blood thoughtfully and with obvious pleasure, relishing its sweetness, and remains on spiritual tiptoe until the last bit has been swallowed. At this meal, nothing has been wasted: no food, no opportunity.

This happens every time we feast at the Lord's table: the joyful, thoughtless approach; the careful taking; the delicious bite; the poignant swallow.

We should all take communion so well.

Triduum

Quiet.

that's how our church campus is now. Quiet.
The traffic outside sounds like ocean waves set far apart. This keyboard is the only sound in here, besides my breathing. And the last sigh of Jesus of Nazareth.

Last night we celebrated Passover/communion. More people than ever came. We set up for more than had rsvp'd, and we still had to add chairs, with people squeezing a leg and hand in so as to be actually at the table. The first year we separated Holy Thursday from Good Friday there were, oh I don't know, maybe 30 at one and 15 at the other. Last night we had something like 45-50 people, and at least 12 baskets leftover.

Today, hubbub to set up the stations of the cross: fires, 100-lb crucifixes, crossbeams, candles, sound, ecce homo (by Reni), Gethsemane, a prayer room, journals. All the musee it takes to do what we do. Crazy madness. I got home at 5:20, showered, dressed, picked up the baby and the baby's Chris, and was back by 6. Run, run. "Set" changes. Prayer, lots of prayer.

And then, at some point, maybe after the thunder and His death, it grew quiet. Quiet through the vigil, quiet through private absolution. The sounds of those sporadic ocean waves, and tears. People not really ready to leave when It Is Finished.

Then hubbub as staff gathered for debrief. Then a little food, a little more prayer.

And now, quiet.

And a lynched rabbi, a dead savior, an executed king, and two days of waiting and hoping that new life indeed comes.

Quiet. Thank God.

Resurrection

I woke up this morning excited about diving into the Easter texts. Each gospel account is so similar in event and so disparate in style and focus. Mark (minus the longer, probably added, ending) ends at the edge of a cliff and the disciples wearing hang gliders. In Matthew's gospel, the women worship the risen Christ -- a stark change from the pre-Easter relationship -- and Jesus takes authority for all that is and hands a chunk of it to the disciples. Luke shares post-Resurrection experiences, most notably the Emmaus story, and the disciples are told by Jesus to wait for their authority and power. (Plus Luke includes the ascension, which is always a visual treat; see here and here and here.) Then John, God love him, with Christ's appearance to naked Peter (an attempt to discredit, perhaps?) and the disciples return to their old lives after the crucifixion. It's all so rich and layered, and such an excellent reminder that Jesus does not appear to all of us the same way, regardless of all those paintings of him as Scandanavian, and that resurrection itself lives into our lives differently, that is, in accordance with our lives.

Yippee! What a wonderful thing our God's word is!

Palms and passion

This year I'm preaching on atonement. The sacrificial kind. And this may be the first year it's ever really, truly made sense to me. Funny what the Holy Spirit and a heck of a lot of reading will do.



What wondrous love is this, O my soul, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this, O my soul!
What wondrous love is this that caused the Lord of bliss
To lay aside His crown for my soul, for my soul,
Christ laid aside His crown for my soul.

So long, Tim

Does anyone want to chip in on a goodbye gift for Timothy Geithner? Yes, I know he's still at Treasury, but after his refusal to support the TARP bonus tax, I suspect his days are numbered. If we buy the gift now, we can avoid the rush.

Look, Geithner has been cornered since his confirmation hearings. He's got no staff, and has inherited a truly stupid bailout plan. Not just unpopular, not just unregulated. Stupid. (Feel free to quote me on that.) He's working on some good stuff, including small business loans and the joint lending program. But his constant defense of propping up the banks with taxpayer money, and the pervasive "too big to fail; too valuable to tax" attitude inside the Beltway may mean his days are numbered. Obama is not looking good in the reflected light; he might do well to give Geithner his own payout and wish him well.

I'm thinking that "The Saturated Society: Governing Risk & Lifestyles in Consumer Culture" due to be released next month, could be exactly the thing, and timed just right too!

Why I hate books.

Some years ago I made the mistake of reading a book about a new church community in Minnesota called Solomon's Porch. The book confirmed some of the things I had been thinking about church -- that it's relational, praxi-cal, Spirit-ual, communal. Other aspects of that particular church were Great for Them, but they Wouldn't Work for my community. I read the book a couple of times and put it on the shelf. After that I spoke to the pastor at a conference, did yoga with his wife, blogged a bit about his late night talk on the life-saving dimensions of quantum physics. Read a few dozen more books.

Time passes, including maybe 18 months spent in a fog. Maybe it was a pillar of smoke, but it sure felt like a fog.

On my desk since last September has been another book from Minnesota, this one by the pastor, Doug Pagitt. At some point it moved of its own free will to my nightstand. This morning I woke up at 4:20, feeling like I needed to read it today. I went back to sleep.

At 5:20, I had no other choice. Off to Peets with book.

Now I'm halfway through, and know why I had to read it today. Darned book. Should've gone back to sleep.

Please include my church community and their pastor in your prayers: God is changing something, and I think it's me.

Reading food

For some time now I have been reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver and her family. "Some time" in this case means "some months." I generally read quickly, so my slowness is markable, and attributable to at least two factors. 1) There is rarely enough quiet in our home (and in my brain) to read. 2) I don't want this book to end too quickly. I'm trying to exercise a restraint in reading that is elusive in cookies -- a savoring of prose, image, and idea. The last (narrative prose) book I read that slowed me like this was Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

You might notice a pattern developing. Your skills in observation are admirable.

I have always liked food. I have often also depended upon it to assuage hungers it cannot approach. I am a passibly good cook, having been alone in the kitchen since I was 7 or 8: food that is generally edible, and, rarely, inspired. But it has been only, oh, the last 17 or 18 years that food has provided pure joy, sensual adventure, and soul satisfaction.

There had been portents before. I was an exchange student in Greece right after high school, and discovered the bitter herbal buttery unctuous savor of good olive oil. I learned sherry (cream and fino) when I was living in Amsterdam. But it was a full decade later that I began developing a palate and a terroir-ized imagination.

I remember the first tomatoes I really tasted (a green zebra, followed by a brandywine), and the woman who aroused the tasting. I remember realizing that bread needed salt -- not to rise or brown, but to have been worth the trouble. (At that time I was baking 5 loaves of bread a week for our intentional household of three, plus the man who lived in the park next door. Discovering salt delayed the meltdown of that living situation by a good month.) I remember cooking with my foodie poet lover my first multicourse, wine-paired dinner, and that for exes and chefs and one besotted wine merchant.

As much as I can enjoy food (including a glorious cheese plate taken when dining alone in Minneapolis), I have a secret crush on food writing. I devoured MFK Fisher, nibbled at Elizabeth David, blackened pizza with Jeffrey Steingarten, and hoarded Babette's Feast (a movie, but someone wrote it). I have lolled in typeset restaurants with John Birdsall, and just occasionally simmered in the fatback prose of John T. Edge. And if we're talking Food Network then we're talking Alton Brown's Feasting On series, more literary than televisual, hence naked, somewhat guilty, pleasure.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is a food book, but, like Omnivore's Dilemma, it is more memoir and cautionary tale. A good writer helps you taste the soil and caress the rough hands that held the hoe or the cleaver. There are moments of sheer joy in the reading, satisfying to mind, heart, and soul. So it must go slowly. Thoughtfully. With relish.

Soon I'll take a break and go back to Marjorie Suchocki's new book Divinity and Diversity, which so far might be retitled "Process Theology for Dummies". This is certainly unfair and undeserved, yet next to descriptions of the first spring asparagus and the soil that produced it, how toothsome could it be?

Virtue and hope

Virtue. What an antique and antiquated word. How long has it been since we have heard the call to virtue from the dais, indeed, from the pulpit? How long has it been since the I has bowed down to the We? How long has it been since we condemned greed and praised sacrifice? How long has it been since we have called every people of every nation our friends?

Hope is the nonrational belief in a reality greater than this one. Hope is never fulfilled by will, or by power, or by intelligence. Hope is only fulfilled in the presence of that reality, coming and come. Hope is only fulfilled when we know that we live for something greater than we are: a home, a neighborhood, a city, a state, a nation, a world. And not merely a world, but a reality that is not only concrete, but real and lasting. Hope is the nonrational belief in a reality greater than this one: the reign of the heavens, of love, of justice, of mercy, of enough, on earth and in our hearts.

God bless you, Barack Hussein Obama, our president and our reminder of both hope and the virtue that is needed to maintain and fulfill it.

Power to the people!

The Latina housekeepers just came in and plugged in cable. Woohoo!

In the neighborhood

Can't find cable or satellite inputs for the beautiful flat screen that's in here. Nor a vga cable to plug a computer into it. But even on my little Dell e1405, it's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.

This country has been blessed so often and with so much. May we live like it.

May God have mercy on our incoming President, his staff, and Congress.
May the Holy Spirit lead all of them into humility, wisdom and trust.

Amen.
Yippee!

The challenge of scarcity

I awoke at 4:50, having slept. Fine mood. Ready for coffee.
Lay in bed for a few minutes in prayer and thanksgiving.
Suddenly thought, "if I don't get in there and make coffee I won't get any". Not that articulately, but...
Then thought, "I should check out what rooms those noisy women from last night are in and put notes under their doors how can they be here for Ignatian exercises and be that unaware that others are here in silence why are people here anyway this is my mercy center my floor my time with God."

Hoo boy.

By 4:58, God decided to stop this nonsense: Elane, what ever happened to loving? Mercy is big enough (I think God meant Mercy Center but the abbreviated version was even better). Don't you know yet there is enough of everything, including My love and My time to go around?

The hard part of the great commandment isn't the loving. It's the deep realizing in those dark lizard brain moments that there is enough time, enough stuff, enough room, enough God, enough me, to go around.

Good morning, everyone.

Reducing clutter

Last night my Wonderful Husband, once again abandoned to solo Baby and pet care, sent me off to Mercy Center by saying, "I know you need to get away from us and rest."

I was angry, and insulted, and saddened by the accusation that I was coming here simply to be away from them and to rest from them. As if I were going on vacation. That anger and injury and sadness so fueled me for the evening that I was able to sustain my resentment all the way until bedtime. Powerful stuff, the inference of insult.

This morning, after 5 a.m. reading, 6:30 a.m. meditation, 8 a.m. breakfast, the fuel has been exhausted and I am in a more ruminant mode. (Feel free to think "holstein".) Time away and rest? What a selfish idea! How dare he accuse me of wanting self-care?

Haha, the heavenly hosts chortle. Practice what you preach, sister, Wisdom proclaims from her streetcorner.

The truth: I do not come here to get away from them, or to get away from my church, or to get away at all. I come to get to: to God, to internal silence, to the present.

On a daily basis, the clutter in my own head threatens to pour out my ears, and I live in the next thing, rather than whatever thing is the thing now. I'm planning meals while reading Scripture, writing prayers while feeding Baby, pondering the dirty bathtub while eating dinner. Not having a next thing for a few days helps me to return to the thing now. My church as it is now. My health as it is now. My marriage. My relationship with God. My child. After a couple of days of silence, of reading, of meditation, of meals I don't have to make happen, clutter evaporates.

Two questions (or prayers) arise: 1) How do I bring this now into my regular now -- how do I arrange my life and my brain for more present silence? 2) How do I humbly accept the possibility that yes, perhaps I do need some time away in order to love better, and that spending quiet time with God is, in fact, a kind of vacation for my mind and soul?

On retreat, entry one

Sometimes peace may be found in the unexpected appearance of ice cream.

Pro-life, finally?

Skye Jethani posted (and syndicated at Out of Ur) on an evangelical redefinition of "pro-life". The one comment so far (besides mine) states that "pro-life" has never meant only "pro-fetal-and-embryonic-life-and-anti-choice" to most evangelicals.

Coulda' fooled me, and about 200 million other people. If that's true -- if pro-lifers have had a broader vision in mind -- then the public rhetoric, and political platforms, and funding, and governmental focus, and judicial litmus tests, and protestors, and, (being a little unkind) domestic terrorists killing doctors they don't like, have been co-opted or duped by an itsy-bitsy fringe-y whisper at the edge of "Christian" faith.

Um. Probably not. It's certainly a lot easier to raise funds (and blood pressure) with pics of babies and aborted fetuses than it is with pictures of convicts, hungry mothers, welfare "cheats", and truants. I have never once been spammed, individually or through our church website, by someone imploring me to come to a public pray-in in front of City Hall, demanding higher taxes for better school funding. Not once. But during the last election season I was forced to create a new spam filter for all the emails I rec'd labeling Obama (and others) as "babykillers" and "not really Christians."

So good on you, Skye. Even if it's not quite yet true -- even if for most evangelicals, valuable life ends at birth -- saying life is life may make it so.

on the premise that whatever one does on New Year's Day one will do all year

We reviewed the year last night, as everyone else did:

• We didn't move, which, for a while in the beginning of our marriage, was the annual dislocation.
• No one started a new job, though my wonderful husband left one. That was bigger than we knew.
• Dear friends moved across the country just as the market was crashing: accidental but fortuitous timing, given the state of things in CA.
• Revelations abounded -- of health, marriage, friendship, matterings.

And, oh, yeah, we had a kid. Bug turned one year old the day after Christmas, so officially she was an event of 2007, not 2008. But, really.

The world was just as...unsuspecting? as we were. Though how anyone didn't expect the crash is beyond me. I'm no economics whiz, and I saw it coming years before it happened. But I don't think we expected to elect a brown man, and I don't think we expected the banks and the automakers to be the big welfare recipients of the year. (BTW: you wanna talk socialism?) Israel's bombing of Gaza was a matter of time, as was Pakistan's rebellion against "the war on terror" on its borders and in its mountains. Prop 8's passage was a function of a truly lousy and lazy strategy on our side. People seem surprised by all this, and just a little Disappointed (by everything except the election, God have mercy on the President-Elect). Apparently the pony wasn't under there after all.

No. The pony and the rest of the treasure are peeking out through the silt and ash, way over there. Complain if you must, but:

• Rick Warren is a bold move as Invoker-Select, since traditional evangelicals don't like him any more than liberals do, and he's a Boomer (hence elder generation) par excellence;
• The barbarian hoards attacking the castle walls of common wisdom are finally the environmental version of flat-earthers, rather than the Gores among us; the lifeboaters; the antiseasonal produce-purveyors; the black/whit-ers; and the IwantitNOWers.
• In the religion conversation (at least among my threads of X'y), Third and Fourth and Fifth Ways are being discovered, as we realize the Holy Spirit is less bound by either-or than we are.

Last night, my wonderful husband also asked: so how is your relationship with God these days? And I was able to answer, confidently: peachy. God and I are doing really well, like comfortable old friends who occupy a room together, occasionally chatting, doing things together and apart. When I feel distant, I know it's just me -- that I need to pick up the phone and call.

And that's a pretty good place to be with the Alpha & Omega & Everything-In-Between.

So on the premise that what one does on New Year's Day one will do all year, I'm not rushing, am blogging, am seeing my Renovare sisters, calling the right-coast friends, enjoying Bug and WH and the four-leggeds, drinking champagne, and hanging with the Big G(al/uy).

Happy End Of 2008, everybody.

Luke 19:40

Do You hear the stones cry out their praise?
Do You taste the steam as it rises from the melting snow, or feel the flashing wings of the hummingbird?

Do You see or smell, or is all that fleshly, embedded in the body?

Those trees outside -- are they as silent to You as they are to me? Or more so, since You have no ears to hear?

Perhaps You became flesh and dwelt among us not only for us, but for You, so that You could know Your creation in a new way.

For what are we, what are the stones or the snow or the hummingbird, but the product of Your immaterial hands, Your unbeating heart: wouldn't You want to feel the dirt under your knees as You prayed?

Wouldn't You long to touch the face of a child, or to crunch the fall leaves in Your hands?

Maybe we are Your eyes, Your hands, Your ears, not only because we have work to do in Your name, but also to share with You the beauty and tragedy and joy of all You have made.

Maybe we complete You.

Earthly hope

More than Obama's victory last night, more than the waves of young people and very old people standing on line to touch a screen or punch a ballot, I am moved by both candidates' speeches. McCain was gracious and unifying, silencing negative shouts. Obama was solemn, aware of the mantle being lowered onto his shoulders: humble, hopeful, and mindful of history. The Holy Spirit was moving, inspiring love, humility, and the "hunger and thirst for righteousness".

On 8, the writing of discrimination into the CA constitution: Remember that CA has the very best domestic partnership laws in the union -- that will not end, it will continue to influence the policymakers outside CA -- and the ideas of equality it represents remain in our DNA. We who support true citizenship, rather than an antiquated separate-but-equal philosophy, were complacent about this election, about the notion that human and civil rights in fact extend to all humans.

More important, and the reason I am hopeful and grateful, there is a major shift in the US. The paradigm has changed, and prop 8 is the last fearful gasp, the cold dead hands clutching the old narrow privilege. If it passes, which it may well do, we should count it as the millstone that will eventually drown the voices of fear.

Jesus is my president; may his Holy Spirit continue to move among us.

Zydeco hope

J4P

If you haven't read it, do.