Blog About It

This past weekend, we had our last two days of our intensive Multicultural Issues class.  At the end of the first day, there was a panal of students (both students of color and white students) to talk to us about their experience with the class, their own ethnic identity, and to answer some of our questions.  I asked a question about what to do next, about wanting to move forward in my ethnic identity development but not knowing where to start.  The suggestion from one of the students?

Blog about it.

So, here I am… blogging about it.  And still, I don’t know where to begin.  Having been aware for so long that racism existed and that I participated in it, I wasn’t really sure what the class was going to be like for me.  Being here on the other side, I’m still not sure what it was like for me.  The only thing that I can say honestly is this: It got me back in the conversation.  After years of being a very angry White woman, and after a year of serving on the Multi-ethnicity team with InterVarsity, I was at my limit.  Burnt out.  I didn’t want to talk about race, think about race, see race.  When I moved to Seattle, I didn’t even want anyone to know that racial reconciliation was something that I had ever been so emotionally invested in.  It was too risky.  Too much. 

But here I am again.  Back in the conversation.  But I’m hoping it’s not the same conversation.  Or at least that I will bring something different to the table.  One thing I can say is that I’m no longer a very angry White woman.  I know that racism exists, I’m comfortable with acknowledging my White privilege and my own prejudices (I might as well go ahead and say it… I’m afraid of black people… black men, in particular), and I recognize that everyone is in a different place in this journey.  As I start to feel more comfortable in my own skin, I don’t have any reason to harbor anger towards other White people who have yet to acknowledge their racism and their privilege. 

And yet I can admit that I still struggle with trying to prove to Black people that I’m not a racist, that I’m okay with them.  I stood on a street corner next to a Black man just this morning, and wanted to casually pull out \”My First White Friend\” so he would know that I’m different than those other White folks that he encounters.  And I just have to shake my head and laugh at myself a little. 

I’m a recovering angry White liberal.

But I still wonder what’s next for me.  For a few short days, there was the possibility of moving to the Central District, a much more diverse neighborhood than where I currently live.  But that isn’t in the cards for me right now.  So what is?  How is this conversation going to continue for me?  The word that remains after all of my race-centered soul-searching over the past month:

Curiosity.  I feel much more unsure of myself than I have in the past, because I know that we’re dealing with people’s stories.  And as one of the students of color on the panel advised us, tread lightly on my story.  Multicultural has gotten me back in the conversation, and I don’t know where it’s going to take me.  But all I can do is move forward with curiosity, treading lightly on the stories of people of color and White people alike.

The Anglo-Catholic Vision

St. Paul’s, the church that I visited last Sunday (and LOVED), is part of what is called the Anglo-Catholic tradition.  They posted these words in their invitation to join an email group, and they literally took my breath away.  This truly makes me want to go to church again:

In the secret places of their hearts, modern men and women are seeking themselves. They sense, although they cannot believe it, that they have enduring value, that there is more to themselves than their employers, their accountants, their government, or even their families can possibly know. What the world craves is the assurance that there is “a splendor burning in the heart of things.” Naked dogma cannot supply this need, nor can empty ritual. Only the Catholic vision will suffice. But if the world is to find that vision it must be found in us, clothed in living thought and embodied in holy lives.

Ours is the vocation of enchantment, restoring to humanity the divine image which sin has hidden but cannot destroy. It is a ministry of holy responsibility as well as delight. We must teach the truth to an age that does not believe in truth, preach hope to men and women bereft of confidence in the past or the future, and labor for justice in a time of ideological bankruptcy and political cynicism. But what will ultimately win souls–drawing human beings out of despondency to embrace their true selves, their brothers and sisters, and their God–is wonder: the spontaneous love and joy which lures us to Mass Sunday after Sunday. The future of Anglo-Catholicism and of the whole Church depends less on our work than on our ability to enflame our neighbor’s hearts.

John Orens in “The Anglo Catholic Vision”

If You Love Me… and a general update

It’s been a while, friends.  You would think that when you don’t have a lot to do, and you don’t have a busy schedule, that you would make time for doing the things you love… like blogging.  :)  But what ends up happening (with me, at least) is that I end up wasting the days away doing God knows what.  I get absolutely nothing accomplished.  And that doesn’t feel very good, and it’s boring.  So here I am, blogging again.  And I’m going to try and keep up with it.  Well, school starts in a few weeks anyway, so I’m sure I’ll be on here a lot more often when I don’t really have the time to blog, and should be doing so many other important things.

Anyways, on to the actual post!  Not having a whole lot to do gives me a lot of time to think, which I have certainly been doing a lot of since I moved to Seattle.  And because school is starting soon, I’ve been thinking a lot about what exactly it is I want to study.  Sounds crazy, since I am about to start graduate school.  You’re supposed to have all this figured out by then, right?  For the last several months, maybe longer, I’ve been nearly 100% sure that I wanted to switch from the MDiv program to the Counseling program.  But now… I’m less sure.  I jumped into the whole counseling kick pretty quickly, and now I’m having second thoughts.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very, very interested in psychology and therapy, and it is definitely still on the table.  But I feel like I’m being pulled in more and more by the MDiv.  For a while, I’ve been hanging on to the MDiv idea by a thread, mostly because I want to take the biblical languages.  But I could easily take those as electives while in the MACP program.  But now there seems to be more drawing me to the MDiv, and I’m having a hard time putting it into words.  I don’t know what it is exactly.  But in the midst of conversations with new friends, and while getting lost in my own thoughts, I’ve found my mind and heart settling often on the Church.

The older I get, the more I see just how many people have been burned by the Church.  There are a lot of disenchanted people out there, especially in my generation.  We’re angry and outraged and frustrated by the Church of our youth and the Church we see around us today.  And a lot of people, myself included, have backed away.  We have stepped away from church and are trying to do this faith thing on our own, or at least just in the company of friends.  And from the conversations that I’ve had, it seems like a lot of us are starting to feel like the Church, as an institution, is dead and beyond repair.  We don’t need it.  We’re going to find our own way.

But in having these conversations, and thinking some of these things myself, I’ve felt this deep sadness.  This deep sense of loss.  And I find myself wondering, is the Church really dead?  Or is She just sleeping?  Has She just been beaten, broken, and bruised?  Has She just been gagged and silenced?  Has She just gotten lost, and can’t find Her way home?

And it’s these questions, I think, that are drawing me towards studying Divinity.  I don’t know that I necessarily want to be a pastor, but the more I think about it, the more I find myself wanting to see healing in the Church.  And not just to see healing, but to be a part of bringing it about.  Jesus died for the Church, and by His wounds we are healed.  As tempting as it is, I can’t seem to bring myself to really believe that the Bride is beyond hope.  I just don’t know what my role is in bringing her back to life.

I discovered this song by Derek Webb this morning.  Here is a link that you can follow to hear it (honestly, it’s not that musically spectacular, I just like the idea behind the lyrics):  The Church

Here are the lyrics:

I have come with one purpose
to capture for myself a bride
by my life she is lovely
by my death she’s justified
I have always been her husband
though many lovers she has known
so with water i will wash her
and by my word alone
So when you hear the sound of the water
you will know you’re not alone

Chorus:

‘Cause i haven’t come for only you
but for my people to pursue
you cannot care for me with no regard for her
if you love me you will love the church

I have long pursued her
as a harlot and a whore
but she will feast upon me
she will drink and thirst no more
So when you taste my flesh and my blood
you will know you’re not alone

Chorus:

There is none that can replace her
though there are many who will try
and though some may be her bridesmaids
they can never be my bride

General Update

For those of you who are still interested, I want to share a little bit about the recent happenings in my life here in the Emerald City, and share some photos of my new home!

I moved into my new place on August 1st, so I’ve been here for a little over a week.  I really, really like it so far.  The twin girls, Rachel and Abigail, are so precious!  And even though they spend most of their time either screaming with delight or crying, I love being around them.  It really doesn’t bother me as much as I thought it would.  Matt and Victoria, their parents, are really great.  It’s still slightly awkward, seeing as I just moved into their house a week ago, but I’m getting more comfortable.  My room is really great.  It’s painted yellow and has yellow curtains, so the sun really lights it up!  And even at night, it doesn’t take much to make it bright and happy.  :)  It really couldn’t be a more perfect room for me.  Matt works from home and Victoria stays home to take care of the kids, so there’s someone here most of the time, which is actually really nice.  I’ve had a lot of moments in the last week where I’ve wanted to just close in on myself, and being alone fuels that and makes it harder to resist.  So it’s been nice to know that I can just go downstairs and hang out in the living room with two 1 1/2 year olds running around.

My therapist and I were talking about my housing situation yesterday.  And both of us agree that the fact that I ended up here was no accident.  This is the last place I thought I would end up, and couldn’t be further from what I was originally planning.  Me, Caitlin, and a couple other people were planning on forming some kind of intentional community, living on the side of the poor, etc. /////// (slashes courtesy of Abigail).  I don’t think any of us really knew what that meant, but we were willing to figure it out as we went along.  But one weekend a few weeks ago, Caitlin and I (who were the only ones in Seattle already) both decided independently that we needed something else from our housing situation.  She felt she needed to live alone, and I decided that I needed something a little less intense after such a hard year, a big transition, and an intense year ahead at Mars Hill.  And that decision has worked out really well for both of us.  Caitlin loves her new place, and it turns out that in a couple weeks, her boyfriend (newly made fiance) will be moving out, they’re going to get married and enjoy their place together as they start their new life here in Seattle.  And for me, I think it is going to be really, really good for me to live with a family that interacts with each other in a healthy, loving way.  But I can see already that it’s going to be hard, too.  But ultimately, I think that living here will be an important part of my long and hard healing process.

Now for pictures!

Here’s a photo of the outside of the house that you can actually see:

The living room:

The kitchen:

It comes with a bird that I’m pretty sure is not particularly fond of me.  But that’s okay.

My room!

And… the girls!

This is Abigail

And this is Rachel

A Whole New Plan?

You already read my post about my frustration with the study abroad credit.  Basically, it put me back a semester (but nothing’s official yet).  I want to get out of Carolina, I feel very ready to move on to something else.  Maybe not the “real world,” but something… not here.  My most recent option has been to finish out my senior year here at UNC, and then study abroad for my extra semester, Fall ’09.  I was almost convinced that I was going to spend my last semester of college in Kenya.

Until last night.

About this time last year, I flew out to Seattle to visit a friend that I had gone to Kenya with, and then we road-tripped it over to Montana to visit some other teammates.  All in all, I think I spent about 2 days in Seattle.  

But I fell in love.  I am convinced that Seattle is the greatest place on earth.  Seriously.  It’s wonderful.  So last night, I was having an “I miss Seattle” moment, and was thinking back on my time there.  The friend that I visited there was a grad student at Mars Hill Graduate School, a very small seminary in downtown Seattle.  Someone else mentioned the school to me the other day, and so I decided to look it up.  

Friends, I fell in love again.  

This place is AMAZING!!!!  From the very first moment that I was on the website, I was so excited and energized by what I found there!  It even inspired me to paint… until 3am!  And then again this morning.  Haha.  So basically, I’m mulling over the idea of taking 18 hrs. next semester, taking both summer sessions to graduate, and enrolling in MHGS in the fall.  None of my other “after college” options are really very appealing to me, even Kenya.  They all make sense, and they’re all good steps to take.  And going to grad school/seminary right away (or ever) was definitely at the very bottom of the list.  But this school completely turned everything upside down.  I get SO EXCITED even thinking about going there, and I almost can’t imagine myself doing anything else.  

Here’s a video that just gives you a taste of MHGS and their mission and values:  

What If… 

Any thoughts?

The Church is a Whore

Yes, I said it.

But St. Augustine said it first – “The Church is a whore, but she is my mother.”

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my generation’s response to the evangelical Church.  There seems to be more and more cynicism and criticism with each generation – generation x, generation y, and the newly termed “millenials.”  Each generation seems to be more and more disillusioned with the Church and the evangelical community as a whole.  I’d even go as far as to say that the low numbers we are seeing in the campus ministries this year may not be the direct result of spiritual “attack,” but rather the failure of the Church to engage with these younger generations.  

I count myself a part of those who are disillusioned and cynical, and on some level, I’m very happy to see my peers questioning the positions and practices of the Church, looking for a more genuine and relevant way to follow Jesus.  But the extent of our criticism has begun to bother me lately.  Honestly, I’m always a fan of criticism, and even criticism without offering a better solution.  But only to a certain degree.  All change begins with people who are dissatisfied with the status quo, who are willing to speak out against the current reality.  But at some point, you have to get beyond the criticism and work to create a new reality.  And that’s where my generation seems to be hitting a wall.  It has become trendy to criticize the Church, and to side with the large number of people outside of the Church who have been hurt and angered by evangelicals.  And I will be the first to admit that I have bought into this trend.  But I am no longer satisfied with distancing myself from the evangelical faith that has ostracized so many.  I am ready to see the Church become what Jesus has called it to be.  

There are a couple of quotes from Irresistible Revolution that forced me to rethink my position on all of this, and I want to share them with you:

“Protesters are everywhere, but I think the world is desperately in need of prophets, those little voices that can point us toward another future.  Some of us have spent so much time fighting what we are against that we can barely remember what we are for….Protesters are still on the fringes like satellites, revolving around the system.  But prophets and poets lead us into a new world, beyond simply yelling at the old one.”

“There is a movement bubbling up that goes beyond cynicism and celebrates a new way of living, a generation that stops complaining about the church it sees and becomes the church it dreams of.”

 

I’ve decided that cynicism is easy.  Criticizing the Church that the rest of our society has been criticizing for some time now, is the easiest thing in the world to do.  But the hard thing (and I would argue, the most necessary thing) is to love the Church.  To love the Church so much that we’re not willing to leave it in the broken place that we have found it in.  The truth is, friends, that no matter how messed up the Church might be, we have that very Church to thank for our salvation.  Like St. Augustine said, the Church is our mother.  Right or wrong, we would not even be able to have this conversation were it not for people in the Church, that we so vehemently criticize, who shared the good news of Jesus with us.  We owe His Church our very lives.  And in fact, we cannot possibly follow Jesus without the Church.  It is His body, His hands and feet, His eyes and ears.  Separating ourselves from the Church is, in effect, separating ourselves from the lifeblood of Jesus Himself.  

What we need is people who are dissatisfied with the way things are, but who are committed to remaining in the Church, offering grace for its shortcomings, and working to make it into the Church that it needs to be, the Church that it is called to be. My generation seems to love adventure, to be unconventional, to color outside the lines.  Let’s put those traits to use, and do the unexpected.  Let’s love this whore that is the Church.  God sees our unfaithfulness, and loves us in spite of it.  It’s time we do the same.  

I will punish her for the days 
       she burned incense to the Baals; 
       she decked herself with rings and jewelry, 
       and went after her lovers, 
       but me she forgot,” 
       declares the LORD.

 14 ”Therefore I am now going to allure her; 
       I will lead her into the desert 
       and speak tenderly to her.

 15 There I will give her back her vineyards, 
       and will make the Valley of Achor ^[a] a door of hope. 
       There she will sing ^[b] as in the days of her youth, 
       as in the day she came up out of Egypt.

 16 ”In that day,” declares the LORD, 
       “you will call me ‘my husband’; 
       you will no longer call me ‘my master. ^[c] ’

 17 I will remove the names of the Baals from her lips; 
       no longer will their names be invoked.

 18 In that day I will make a covenant for them 
       with the beasts of the field and the birds of the air 
       and the creatures that move along the ground. 
       Bow and sword and battle 
       I will abolish from the land, 
       so that all may lie down in safety.

 19 I will betroth you to me forever; 
       I will betroth you in ^[d] righteousness and justice, 
       in ^[e] love and compassion.

 20 I will betroth you in faithfulness, 
       and you will acknowledge the LORD.

 21 ”In that day I will respond,” 
       declares the LORD—
       “I will respond to the skies, 
       and they will respond to the earth;

 22 and the earth will respond to the grain, 
       the new wine and oil, 
       and they will respond to Jezreel. ^[f]

 23 I will plant her for myself in the land; 
       I will show my love to the one I called ‘Not my loved one. ^[g] ’ 
       I will say to those called ‘Not my people, ^[h] ’ ‘You are my people’; 
       and they will say, ‘You are my God.’ “

Hosea 2:13-23

The Elephant in the Room

Spiritual warfare. 

Awkward…

This is one of those subjects that most Christians (in the US at least) are very uncomfortable talking about.  I guess you could say it’s the proverbial elephant in the room.  We spent our IV leadership meeting last night talking about prayer ministry, and at the end, Jennifer mentioned that spiritual warfare is something to consider, and that if anyone was interested in talking about it, they could come up and talk to her afterward.  

No one came.  I wasn’t surprised.

But a few of us were hanging out after the meeting was over (…long after the meeting was over), and we got a chance to talk to Jennifer about spiritual warfare.  Basically, some really strange things have been happening in InterVarsity over the last year or two, and in all of the campus ministries recently.  She didn’t go into a lot of details, but students have been having strange things happen to them, they’ve been having strange dreams, and all kinds of other weird stuff.  All of the staff have had (often unexplained) health problems at the beginning of this year, as well as other issues.  The numbers at Large Group have been incredibly low this year, and many people have felt like something is just off with IV.  I know that I have been at every Large Group so far, and have felt this weird tension, feeling like something is just not right.  Apparently several students have even said that they felt so strange during Large Group that they actually had to leave the room and pray.  Our speaker last week didn’t show, even though all of the correspondence between them and IV were clear about what night it was and the date.  But for whatever reason, the speaker wrote the date down wrong.  She went back and checked all of the emails, but still wrote down friday instead of thursday (a similar thing happened with a guest worship band for another campus ministry).  And after taking over 100 students to New Student Retreat last year, there are only 40 or so signed up this time around.  I know that numbers aren’t always important, but considering the other things that have been happening, there’s something just not right about this.  And it’s not just IV.  Numbers for all of the campus ministries are down, and there is a general feeling on campus that, like I said before, something is just not right.  

I know I’ve felt myself pulling away from IV, and many other seniors I’ve talked to have become very cynical and are pulling away, too.  At first I thought, maybe something about IV needs to change.  Or maybe our class just has issues, or that we need something that IV can’t be for us, or that honestly, we’re just suffering form a collective case of senioritis.  But now I’m not so sure. There might be something more to this.

Some of you may be shaking your heads at me right now, telling me that I’m looking too much into this.  And I’m right there with you.  It’s hard for me to even consider spiritual warfare as a possibility.  Honestly, it freaks me out, and I don’t like talking about it.  But there’s almost too much going on here to deny it.   

There IS an elephant in the room, friends.  It’s time we acknowledge it.  

“Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Resist him, standing firm in the faith…” 1 Peter 5:8-9

A Long Way to Go

Never a dull moment at the Copy Center.

We had a man come in today to work on one of our Xerox machines, and he had some interesting things to say. He was working on the printer and I was putting some brochures throught he folding machine (one of the coolest things that you can do at the Copy Center). He asked me how in the world I could be wearing a jacket, and he was sweating. I told him that I thought that the work he was doing was a little more difficult than what I was doing.

• “I guess it’s just my large, superior male mind…” At first I just laughed it off, thinking that he was just joking. But then when I turned back to what I was doing, I realized that he hadn’t been joking, and I started to get a little angry. The way that women are viewed and talked about as inferior is a new arena of thought for me, and this is one of the first times that I’ve really gotten angry about a comment that someone made to me. But, as my criticism of this is new, I was able to let it go.

But then another wind of ignorance came blowing through.

• “Anthropology. That’s an interesting subject…. Maybe you could explain to me why those people blow themselves up.” I don’t know much about Islam, but I tried to explain to him what I did know. So when I told him that I thought that it was really a small sect that believed that if they died a martyr they would automatically go to heaven, he proceeded to tell me that he didn’t believe that. “It’s a part of their culture.” And when I explained that I had heard that most people didn’t actually agree with it, he responded with “Well, those are the people you call ‘secular Muslims.’” Really? I never knew…

Yet another wind of ignorance. He asked me how many languages I could speak, and I told him that I had taken Spanish in high school, one semester of Chinese…and that’s when he stopped me. After talking about how hard Chinese must be, he asked another question:

• “Now, what is that language like? I mean, is it caveman-like?”

Wow. That is definitely NOT something that you say to an anthropology major…or to anyone who has any interest or love of culture at all. And, unfortunately, I don’t think that his views are in the minority.

Yet another reminder that America has a long way to go. And for the first time in my life, I think I’m willing to stick around and be a part of helping us along.

"One, we are religious. Two, we are right."

A quote from Terry Fox, former pastor of Immanuel Baptist Church in Wichita, Kansas.

The religious right: A buzz word that shows up most often in election years. Also the group that supposedly was one of the most important voting blocs in the 2004 election, often given credit for handing President Bush the White House for four more years.

Way to go. Obviously, that’s worked out real well.

But, maybe not. I guess that depends on how you look at it. If you’re thinking about the issues of gay marriage and abortion, which apparently are the two issues that will either have the angels singing or send the world straight to hell, then maybe the last 8 years weren’t a complete waste.

But that’s not how I look at it. What I’m looking at is a world where people are dying of hunger while others are falling off the wagon of yet another diet plan. What I’m looking at is a world where I hear more people complaining about outrageous gas prices than worrying about the effect that the exhaust from their over-sized SUVs is going to have on the lives of their children and grandchildren…and maybe sooner than we all think. What I’m looking at is a country that is running scared from terrorists, and instead of trying to solve the problems at hand, we’re shooting at everything that moves…that has a darker shade of skin. What I’m looking at is a country that is ruining its image and influence abroad as it wages war and threatens war, forcing our neighbors to accept our agenda or face the consequences, and calling it “freedom.” What I’m looking at is a country where, in the same day, one family decides not to go to the doctor because they can’t afford it, while another buys another BMW, and no one seems to have a problem with the contradiction.

But, worst of all, what I’m seeing is a Church unwilling to change, unable to see beyond what single-minded leaders are saying should be the issues of our time. What I want to know is, when was it decided that the key issues on God’s mind were abortion and gay marriage? When did He tell us that He cared more about whether or not a gay couple could have a joint bank account than the kid in the hood who is denied a good education because all the money goes to the school that the rich kid from the suburbs goes to, or the man working two jobs but still can’t afford health insurance? When did He tell us to care about the unborn child and do everything to save it, but to make the starving child in a slum in Nairobi second, third, or even last on our list of priorities? When did he tell us to spend all our money on bombs to destroy our enemies (they’re all heathens anyway), and not to worry about the droughts and the natural disasters and the air pollution (the earth will eventually fix itself…plus this gives Me extra ammo to punish this sinful world with…hey, it worked on New Orleans)?

When are we going to wake up and look around?! Our world is in trouble, and we’re too busy arguing over the morality of a couple of US laws to do something that could actually affect change.

What would it look like for the Church to stop being the moral police and actually start living out an holistic gospel? The fall of man was about so much more than a couple of humans breaking a rule, and therefore the cross of Christ is about so much more than making us behave. That fateful day in Eden did more than destroy our relationship with God. It destroyed our relationships with each other and our relationship with our planet. When are we going to see that? And when are we going to start living out the FULL gospel in our lives, in our nation, and in our world?