The Lens

This week, a couple of times I have had some really interesting conversations about removing our experiences from our faith to be able to share our faith with others. I still stand by what I've said: that you cannot remove experience from faith because our experiences are the lens through which we view our faith. Let me see if I can muddle these thoughts from my head into some sort of sense in black and white...

First of all, I should start with the fact that I don't think you can truly share your faith in a way that can be meaningful outside of relationship with another person. I won't knock on the door of a stranger and ask them to listen to me talk about this incredible God that I love. Sharing faith is meaningful when people are curious - curious about the God I follow or curious about the life I live. I'll continue to say I'm not a shove-my-God-down-your-throat kind of girl and I mean it. With all my heart.

So, when in relationship with others, if it comes up or if you ask me about it, I share my experience. It's not good enough to say I believe in the Christian God and leave it at that. In these conversations, there's an important why. And that why... It is the lens through which I view what I believe.

All the things I have experienced in my life - the joy, the peace, the heartache, the brokenness, the love - play into my experience of God. And as all of those things have happened, they have shaped the way I have come to understand who and what God is and how awesome her love and peace and divine presence is. So to remove those experiences of God from my faith, I remove the understanding of God I have formed and will continue to form.

Without those experiences, God is just a word... No meaning, no weight, no implications. But through my experiences of God, I have formed a deep, rich and meaningful faith. And I can share that with others. If I don't share with you my experience of God, I can't share anything about God, other than the word. So yes. My experience of God is the lens through which I view my faith. And if I remove that lens, I have nothing to share...

I Wonder

My goodness! There are so many things I’ve wanted to write about, but life is so busy that it seems like there’s no time to write about any of them!

Today was Bible Sunday at our church. Each year, we give our preschoolers and 3^rd graders new Bibles. This year, we gave all of our younger kids (infants-preschool) a Bible, all of our Preschoolers and Kindergarteners a Bible, all of our 3^rd graders a Bible and all of the kids who hadn’t already received a Bible their age-appropriate Bibles. We gave out all kinds of Bibles today!

Ben had asked me help hand them out to each child, one by one. How cool it was to present some of our kids with their very first Bible! And it was SO incredible to see their reactions and excitement for their new book!

When I interviewed with our church Cabinet for in-discernment status, I was asked one theological question: “How do you view the Bible?” This morning, as I taught the Bible Sunday lesson to my preschoolers and kindergarteners, I thought that the lesson summed it up quite nicely. I adapted the original story for my kids and am adapting it even more for the blog. But loosely, it goes something like this:

“The Bible is a gift from God! It is full of the stories of God and the stories of the people of God! It was written for us by the people of God to help us understand the best ways to love God and the best ways to love others. The Bible can serve as a history book, telling about what others have done or as a roadmap, showing us what ways we should choose. But the stories of the people of God are a sacred (set apart) gift from God. They are ours. No one can take them from us. Our Bibles help us to tell the stories of God, but the stories also live in our hearts.”

At the end of all of our lessons, we ask the “I Wonder” questions. Today, it was “I wonder what your favorite Bible story is?” My kids’ answers? Jonah and the Whale, Advent, Creation, The Parable of the Good Samaritan…

It’s so cool to have to ask our kids to put away their Bibles for a few minutes during the story time. And incredibly humbling to watch them choose reading stories in their new Bibles as one of their activities during response time.

If I were teaching this lesson to adults, my last question would be “I wonder when we stopped getting so excited to read the stories of God?”

Water and Wine

Every month at our church Cabinet meeting, we complete a task or discussion activity that aims to keep us mindful of our mission. Tonight, we had a discussion prompt. We worked in partners and were to give an example of when a church had turned water into wine for us and then an example of when a church had turned wine into water for us.

In John 2, there's a story where Jesus, his mom Mary, and Jesus' disciples are at a wedding. They ran out of wine at the wedding and Mary was freaking out to Jesus about it. Jesus basically told Mary it wasn't really his problem. Mary ordered the servants to do what Jesus said, so Jesus told the servants to fill all the jars with water and take it to the chief steward. To his pleasant surprise, when he drank from the jugs, the water had miraculously become wine. Yeah! Party on! 

So what's my water to wine? My most recent water to wine moment was on the missions trip last week. I didn't go with the expectation that I would be helping to lead vespers, to offer a prayer of blessing for a new garden or to prepare for a communion service. But I was given all of those opportunities. What I thought would be missions work and chaperoning youth was truly an opportunity for ministry I'd never gotten before.  It doesn't seem like much... But it went from being an ordinary day of work to a sacred time of preparing communion and peaceful prayer before vespers. In many of those moments, I felt closer to God than I ever had before. 

Digging into the wine to water was a little bit harder for me, though. I don't know that I'm ready to publicly share the first one that comes to mind (it isn't even the one I shared with Susan tonight). Maybe that's because it's still one I grapple and struggle with. Maybe because I know that it's one that would likely be taken the wrong way and unintentionally offend someone. And part of it is that it's hard to articulate how something that has been so sacred to me has slowly been pulled apart, thread by thread. 

But don't we have the most to learn from our wine to waters? Aren't the wine to waters the ones where division happens? Where people get hurt? Where disagreements come to surface? Where we have to let conflict be present?

Guess what?! Churches aren't perfect. Sometimes, we mess up. We turn what are really good and awesome things into not so awesome things. We get wrapped up in how awesome they are and how we could make them even more awesome, instead of letting them be what they are and we try too hard. So how do we avoid that? How do we know when to leave good things alone and not mess with them anymore? I don't really have the answers, just the questions... But I know that I have to explore that because I don't want to turn anyone's wine into water. 

Conversations Of God with Teens

I get to spend the next few days with a pretty awesome 16-year-old kid. I've known him for a long time and even though he sometimes has his moments, I love him dearly. Tonight, he asked what he would have to wear to church on Sunday morning when he goes with me. And then our conversation took an interesting turn.

I asked how often C goes to church and if he likes it. He likes church, so I asked what his favorite part of going to church was. Somehow (don't remember exactly how we got there) we started talking about wearing hats in church. He asked if it was wrong to wear a hat in church. I don't know about you, but I really don't think God cares what we wear to church. I told him that some might find it disrespectful to wear it, but that if he wanted to wear a hat to church, it would be okay with me. I didn't think God was going to be upset about it.

And then came the issue of cussing. Anyone who has been around me for any length of time knows that I have a mouth. Sometimes I try to hold my tongue more than other times, but I have a mouth. Here was C's explanation of the issue: someone somewhere along the way told me I can''t believe in God and cuss, but I do both.

Oh, dear child.... Here's the way I see it: We're humans. Language is required to communicate. And sometimes, we have to communicate strong, harsh and unpleasant things. So long as you're not using harsh and unpleasant language towards or about another person in a manner that is hurtful or disrespectful, sometimes, you just have to use it. Please don't get tripped up over this... I don't think it's a topic worth making a fuss over. BUT. On the other hand, your parents have rules regarding your language and I do expect that you follow them. And I will hold you to them. So don't think that you can go around saying whatever you want. You can't. But don't think that God's going to smite you if you say you've had a shitty day.

This is the thing that bothers me so often... Some people get so wrapped up in the things they think God sees as wrong that we forget to show people the awesome, cool and wonderful things about God. Like grace, mercy and love! And so what if we cuss? Doesn't mean God loves us any less! Doesn't mean we can't believe in God!

We talked a little more and C seemed upset that nobody else in his youth group ever seems to doubt God. That breaks my heart... In my eyes, part of being a spiritual leader means inviting people to wonder about God, doubt God and question God... In my faith journey, those points were the points where my understanding of God grew most deeply and profoundly. And because I have been allowed to wonder and doubt and question, I know in my heart of hearts that God is there. And always has been and always will be. But I had to find that conclusion for myself. Just like C will have to find that for himself.

It is not our job to spoon-feed our kids their faith. It is our job to live our faith, to demonstrate our faith, to be real and practical about our faith and it's application in our daily lives. To allow our kids to explore and question and to accompany them on that journey. That way, it's personal. It's real. Faith actually means something.

How Am I Coping? I Have No Clue.

So much of Sunday's events are still a complete shock to me. This morning, I posted the letter I wrote in response to everything. Let me start by saying that I have been completely and totally overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from those who have taken a moment to read about what happened. Thank you. Your kind words really have meant the world to me. Almost every time I have checked my phone, there has been a new comment or message or email with kind and supportive words of encouragement. You are all so kind.

I never intended to share this story because I was looking for support... I believe that when assaults happen on our community, a public forum for working through it and healing is necessary. I don't have a large public forum and I don't know who the people at the tables around me were, so this is the best I've got.

As I continue to work through this whole thing and reflect on the lessons it can teach me, I feel like I'm being dragged on this roller coaster of emotions (cliche, I know). One minute I'm angry that it happened, the next I'm sad, the next I pity him and the next I have a sense of empowerment because of the whole thing. And the way I feel about most of it goes back and forth.

Right after it happened, I was okay with nobody standing up in the moment. A few  hours later, I became really angry about it. I'm not angry or upset or hurt or let down by it anymore... But it has really made me think. I have heard so many people say to me that if they had been there, they would have stood up for me in that moment. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they wouldn't or that I don't believe them. But I thought I would've stood up in that moment. In a moment when hate speech was being tossed at someone, I was positive that I had the strength, backbone and conviction to stand up and shut it down. But when I was actually faced with it, I couldn't. What does that say about what I thought about my character?

I've had a lot of conversations with a lot of people over the last few days about the whole thing, but perhaps the one that was most healing to me was the Facebook conversation I had yesterday with the pastor from my parents' church. He and I have had some pretty major disagreements in the past, which ultimately led me to choose to leave the church where I'd grown up. Although we still were often at lunch together, we never spoke of the issue again. But yesterday, for the first time ever, he apologized. Not for the hurt that happened five years ago (because, in part, apologizing for that could seem like he was saying my being gay was acceptable in  his eyes), but for not standing up on Sunday to a bully. And that meant the world to me. I know (because I know him well enough) that the words and hate of the man Sunday were not a shared sentiment with Ken, but it was really good to hear it.

The other thing that keeps coming up, though, is the fact that so often, we see injustices in our communities and just wait for them to go away. That's really bothering me. Injustices don't go away. Hate doesn't go away. As a community, we have got to start doing something. We have to start understanding that unless we find a way to shut down and overcome hate or injustice, it won't go away! Hate is a powerful force, and unless there is something to stop it, it will only perpetuate and grow. We can't just wait for it to go away or it won't.

Maybe I'm crazy and maybe I'm spending way too much energy to process this, but I think our community needs to be able to heal and work through this. I spent so much of my life believing that things like what happened Sunday didn't exist in our community and it breaks my heart that I've had to face them and know that they do. Now, I just want to know what to do about it.

Such Hateful Things

After church this morning, as after church almost every week, I went to lunch with my parents, their pastor and his wife. We were sitting at Chili's and had finally ordered (which was a feat today, considering all of us wanted just about everything on the menu) when the pastor from small local church walked up to our table. He introduced himself, found out Ken was a pastor and then proceeded to spend what seemed like hours, spewing some of the most hateful things I have ever heard anyone say.

He started with telling us about how he'd spend time at the State Capitol over the last few weeks fighting the amendment to allow gay marriage. I wasn't particularly offended by it, since I believe that everyone has their right to their opinion and view on gay marriage. What followed, however, still shocks me.

He proceeded to stand there and tell us (who, mind you, he had never met before) how the "wicked" and "perverted" people were going to ruin this state. One of the most upsetting things, to him, was the fact that there was no exemption for churches or religious organizations. Even though he, or other pastors, could refuse to marry a couple, "those fags" would still be able "to use our churches."

I was absolutely dumbfounded. Before I even address what he was actually saying, let's just talk about etiquette. What, on god's green earth, ever gave him the notion that his opinion or comments on ANY subject were welcome or warranted?! I am totally cool with introducing yourself and exchanging general niceties. But to even broach a subject with any sensitivity with ANY person you just met is absolutely ludicrous.

But it wasn't just that it was socially awkward. NEVER IN MY LIFE have I witnessed someone spew such unabashed hate. Though the slurs and the hateful, hurtful things he was saying were incredibly offensive, there was also another side I saw it from.

I happen to know (from the funeral industry) that he is particularly aggressive about evangelism and sharing his faith with others. Don't get me wrong - I have NO issues with sharing the God I believe in - but there's a difference between sharing your God and shoving your God down someone's throat. This particular pastor happens to be the shove-God-down-your-throat type, which is always a bit of a turn-off for me, but I sat there wondering exactly how effective that shoving God down people's throats was going to be while spewing hate. See, I believe in a gracious, merciful and loving God. My Jesus chose to hang out with the sinners and tax collectors and treated them BETTER than the Pharisees did. What happened at lunch? That demonstrated the opposite. If our job, as Christians, is to be Christ-like, we can't spew hate. Jesus NEVER spewed hate. He stopped it. He stood up against it.

At first, it didn't bother me that nobody said anything or stopped him... We were completely shocked and dumbfounded at the things coming out of his mouth. I felt like I should have said something, but I also felt so personally attacked (even though he didn't know me and didn't know he was personally attacking me) that I didn't know what to say. But the more time that passes, the more upset I am that NOBODY stood up and said it wasn't okay. Not the people I was with. Not the people he was with. Not the people at the other tables right next to us. I'm as guilty as the next, but every single one of us sat there and let him continue to say hateful things. And we didn't do a thing about it.

After he finally left our table and went and sat down at his, the pastor from my parents' church looked at me and acknowledged how uncomfortable and personal that attack on me was. For the differences the two of us have had on the particular subject, that was a big deal to me. But for the first time in my entire life this afternoon, I didn't feel safe. I felt so personally attacked and hated and cornered that I was powerless. I had never witnessed such hate before. Ever.

I struggle to reconcile the events of today with my belief that people are inherently good. It's so hard to believe that a good person would spew such hate. And I refuse to believe that there is anyone who is not a good person. I am the first to say that your views on anything don't have to be the same as mine. And I will be the first to tell you that we can agree to disagree. I don't need you to hold the same views and opinions and interpretations as I do. But I do demand that you be respectful of ALL people. You can't meet hate with hate. It only perpetuates it. Hate can only be conquered through grace, mercy and love. But I'm struggling with ways to show grace, mercy and love to someone who attacked me so deeply and so personally.

Just Questions

A funny thing... My English book has been discussing the importance of a really good question. Tonight, I'm full of them. I've spent yesterday and today in a conference that's been put on by the Rocky Mountain Region of the United Church of Christ, called Congregations Alive. I went into the conference expecting to learn a lot of best practices, gain some new ideas for spiritual growth and leadership and meet a lot of people I've never had an opportunity to meet. What I've gotten are a whole lot of questions. And not the "how do we run our Sunday School" kind of questions. No. These are the "what is my purpose on this earth" questions, that have answers so complicated and different for each person that I may never figure them out.

A highlight of some of the things I've written down:

• Are the youth of this generation less sensitive to sacred or sensitive subject matters than the generations before them?
• One of the presenters suggested that our youth need to behave first, belong second and then believe. For this to work, it requires us to place community before theology. Do I agree that this is right or necessary or accurate? Why or why not?
• A keynote speaker this morning said "Change can happen when people believe it can happen and if they believe the effort is worth it." Are the changes we've talked about making worth it? Do we believe they can happen?
• How do we, as a faith community, encounter those who aren't part of our faith community in a way that they trust the story we want to share with them? CAN we encounter those who aren't a part of our faith community and help them trust the story we want to share with them?
• Are we using the right language for Spiritual Growth, Faith Formation, Christian Education... Does the language we're using reflect our values and model?
• Is it easier to love one another inside of a congregation? Why or why not?
• What is our church's love language?

I've done three workshops so far, with a fourth on the schedule for tomorrow. Yesterday, I started with Becoming A Youth Whisperer. We discussed the "dominant breeds" of teenagers and how we can find and address their needs, instead of trying to "fix" their dominances (the dramatic, the comedian, the victim, etc), among other things. In ConnectMORE, we talked about how the church continually responds to our changing culture. This morning's keynote, Marian Plant, used the image of a desert flooding after a drought to talk about how we create water flowing from our chancels, down our aisles and out the cracks beneath the doors into our communities. In Faith Formation, Christian Education or Other, we discussed how the use of language in the church affects what people expect and how they perceive faith formation/spiritual formation/Christian Education. In Reaching Those Disabilites: Both Cognitive and Physical, we discussed what we can do to be more inclusive of those who are differently-abled. 

Now do you see why I'm so overloaded? My mind is going a billion miles an hour. There is just SO much to process. I think this could take weeks... I'm also going to make a to-do list of things that I think we could benefit from doing or discussing as a church. Gah. So. Much. Information. 

Questions

Questions are incredibly powerful things. Knowing how to word a question or knowing what question to ask can give you incredible insight into a person's life, thoughts, passions and aspirations. Today, I asked a whole lot of questions. I was interviewing someone at work and asked questions. We had our first meeting as the new Spiritual Growth committee at church and I asked questions that gave me great perspective on where people were in their journeys right now.

A few weeks ago, I spent a couple of hours trying to perfectly construct a set of questions that I would present to the Spiritual Growth group. I wanted them to be very open-ended, inviting discussion, but not leading. I wanted them to be honest - with true meaning and designed to provide useful information. I wanted them to be neutral - with no right or wrong answer. Accomplishing all of that was harder than I thought it would be.

Well, I must have done well constructing these questions. I sent out seven questions in advance. I thought that tonight we'd get through all of the questions and move on to setting a couple of goals. We got through two of the questions. There was SO much feedback. SO many ideas shared and SO much rich discussion! We never got off-topic or sidetracked. And I came back with more notes about our responses than I imagined I could.

When I make a list of things I want to get through and have an agenda or plan, I'm a pretty big stickler to getting it all done. Tonight a little part of me feels like we didn't get much accomplished. After all, we didn't even make it half way through the list! On the other hand, though, the discussion and response was so rich and so telling that I feel like we accomplished a ton. I wouldn't want to have cut that conversation short.

I thought I was crazy for obsessing so long over asking the right questions. But I got what I wanted, so maybe the obsession was worth it....

Honor It

I had a horrible time getting out of bed this morning. Not because I needed more sleep or because I wasn't looking forward to the day. There was nothing in particular I was dreading and I was wide awake. I was just incredibly comfortable and all warm and snuggly and.... Well, you get the picture. But I got up and went to work and did my thang because I'm a big girl and that's what big girls have to do. At one point today, there was a situation I knew could be uncomfortable, so as I drove into Sterling, I decided to make it my first stop. If you've ever read Eat That Frog - I was eating my frog.

When I left that first stop, I sat back down in the car and just cried. I was angry and hurt - the people there had been incredibly rude and belittling to me. So the rest of the day, before walking in to any place, I had to take a moment to remind myself that the rest of the people I would see were not at fault for my anger or hurt and deserved nothing but my smile and best attitude. I made it through the rest of my day, enjoying and appreciating the others I encountered, but I'll admit that even now, I'm still a little bit hurt.

This evening, as I read comments from an earlier Facebook post, I felt surrounded by the love and support of my friends. But one comment, in particular, stood out to me. My good friend, whom I respect very much asked me to honor that feeling. It's not a new concept - I've invented my own process for it. Consider the feeling, recognize it, and validate it.   The next part is the hard part... Ask "What can I learn or gain from this feeling?"

So for the past hour or so, I've been trying to figure out how to honor this feeling of hurt. Am I hurt? Yes. Was the situation earlier today hurtful? Yes. Was there anything I could have done to prevent or change the situation? Not that I can recognize. Do I give myself permission to be hurt? No. But what can I learn or gain from this hurt? 

I'm a little stuck... It's easy to honor things that are exciting or calming or even scary for me. But I'm not so sure I know how to honor this hurt. Maybe it's difficult because I don't want to say that I'm okay with feeling hurt. Maybe it's because I don't know how to find productivity in hurt. And maybe finding a way to honor the hurt is the REASON I have to honor this hurt... 

I hope this doesn't read as a "poor me" post. I really am just fine and have had an otherwise fantastic day, but it's what's on my mind. I'm just trying to figure out how to honor this hurt. How do you honor YOUR hurt?