Fear (and Loathing)

There are certainly hundreds of other blogs out there which address fear in our world today. Our impeteus for so many actions is fear--fear of the future, of the other, of rejection.

Why do we let fear determine our lives?

Bee? Mine!

The last few weeks, I've been thinking a lot about bees.

There are many things they stand for:

self-sacrifice

communal living

female power

the resurrection

eternal life

fertility.

There's the land of milk and honey. John the Baptist ate locusts and wild honey.

Legend says that, at Christ's crucifixion, the bees swarmed.

My grandfather was a bee keeper.

Bees hum.

And bees, they dance.

I'll make the bee mine.

The Ultimate Zing!

Ok, so an obscure show on Cartoon Network may not be what I want to use to make this point. But the fact that "The Ultimate Zing!" is said with a sing-song tone and all about getting the last word in like a jab.... it illustrates the point quite well.

In the past week, I've been on both sides of that Zing, and I can tell you one thing--it doesn't feel good on either side of the Zing. Tonight I had the unfortunate knee-jerk reaction of simply laughing at something a colleague said, when said colleague was trying to be helpful.

It wasn't a pretty laugh, either, but one of those belly-rolling "how stupid" laughs. And the worst part is, I was nasty in front of others.

Worthy of work: always putting myself in the other person's shoes, in fact, making it an automatic practice. And not only because you feel like a huge douche when you realize you've done it, or even having to apologize in front of others because you realize how utterly embarrassing it could be for others.

But because it lacks the Grace God calls us to. Consider the Psalmist's praises: "The LORD is gracious and compassionate,

slow to anger and rich in love."

Are we, as his people, showing this in our daily interactions with one another?

As easy as Grace may seem--simply asking for forgiveness, or an empathy which allows you to avoid even needing to ask for forgiveness--it is not cheap, not true Grace. It requires us to make ourselves low, and wait for Christ to raise us up. We must think nothing of ourselves and respect the person across from us; we act out of love, not out of "right" and "wrong", which God does not consider when he deals with us.

Redeeming the Sabbath

Weekends always seem to be jam-packed, especially when you need rest. This weekend and the coming two weekends will be no exception, so it seems... I'll just have to make sure to get some dissertating in now.

Part of this past weekend was a wonderful Sabbath retreat, where we talked about what the Sabbath means, how to work it into your life, how it works with your faith. Making distinctions between physical and spiritual rest. The spiritual rest--letting yourself be, not judging what you've done or what you've not done. An approach I've been striving to learn through yoga, honestly.

We were fed wonderfully by Bonnie and Benjamin, who know good food and love producing it. What a treat, to spend a whole morning thinking about the Sabbath, followed by a feast of "Slow food".

There's one take-away lesson which was part of the silent hour we got to spend in reflection. An hour which was very helpful. I took mine and prayed through the Stations, which I've never done before. The Church of the Redeemer, where the retreat was held, had liturgical readings to go with the stations. And it's at the final station, number 14, that something amazing was revealed to me.

Growing up in a Fundamentalist/Bible church which claimed to teach about the Grace of God, the rush to get the body ready for Christ's burial always seemed to be the focus of the sermon, with Mary's anointment of Christ in the foreground, or the emphasis on the significance of the body being in the grave for three days in fulfillment with earlier scripture.



But sitting there, contemplating the waiting, the rest--Christ spend the Sabbath at rest before his greatest work, the resurrection, which marks the first day of the new creation. Even in his death, Christ emphasised a great aspect of his humanity--the need for rest.

What happens when we move away from the legal aspects of Christ's burial, the business of it all, the preoccupations with doing things "right"? We still get a redeemed world, a new creation.

And it includes rest.

Pollen Count

Nashville was, legend has it, called something like "Valley of Death" by the Native American populations settled near by--none actually settled where Fort Nashboro was built on the banks of the Cumberland. Why didn't they settle here? Apparently the way the land sits, pollen gets captured in the area, making spring time miserable for all those who live here.

Why do I bring this up?

Well, I currently sound like eighty-year old Edna who smoked two packs a day for her whole life. My voice is deep and husky, thanks to the blooming plants and the smokey bars of yesterday's pub "crawl". Of course we had a fun time in East Nashville, natural habitat to the hipster. And of course we had fun making fun of the hipsters, in part because all of us share fun characteristics with them. Three of the company actually live in East Nashville. Two of them drive Subarus. I ride a bike everywhere and count as a "Yuppster" (yuppie hipster, for those of you keeping track at home).

Isn't that part and parcel of being a hipster, anyway? Self-reflexive irony? Like those silly T-Shirts I love to hate?

Redemption / God's Best

A few weeks ago, Graduate Christian Fellowship had the first of its three talks on the series Creation/Fall/Redemption. Sadly, I missed the "Fall" talk to go see Das Weisse Band / The White Ribbon, but it winds up that I would have simply agreed with many of the things addressed at the talk. The focus was how, post-fall, relations between the sexes was put awry, and how this is not God's intention. Yet we, the Church, continue living as though the curse had real weight for us, weight not simply as a description of how the world is fallen, but as a prescription, as though God truly intended for us to be out of touch with nature and for men to rule over women.

Radically feminist? Perhaps. But it's also very much a Biblical concept. In Galatians, the church is corrected for incorrect teaching, for having hierarchies among the believers, for wanting to draw distinctions where none were intended:

For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's descendant, heirs according to the promise. (Gal. 27-29)

So why do we still treat women as second-class citizens in the Church? In relationships? Why do we continue to believe that woman's desire for man and man's rule over woman is what God intends for marriage, which is a metaphor for covenant?

Perhaps this is why I was so disturbed a few months ago when a male colleague, a believer, intended to be sympathetic when he acknowledged how difficult things are for women in academia, women who try to have families, a career, and still get paid less than their male counterparts. He said to me, "Gosh, don't you sometimes just wish you were a man? Then you wouldn't have to worry about this."

He meant well, but sadly, was his hope for me was not any different from the Jewish prayer said by men every morning, "Blessed are you...for not having made me a woman."

Where is the redemption there?

If Christians truly believe that we live in a world redeemed by Christ and in the process of reflecting this, can we really say that women must remain under male authority (note that I do not question people being under authority generally--this is reason for another post)?

I believe I have been redeemed, and therefore thank God for having made me a woman--a difference which does not matter in his eyes.

Saints' Lives

Part of the dissertation groundwork includes reading the primary resources my author read, which is slow going, but proving fruitful. I've come across some gems in Therese of Lisieux's "Story of a Soul". Of course, I'm cheating and reading it in English rather than French....

One section I found particularly entertaining is where Therese discusses her pilgrimage to Rome. The female pilgrims, herself included, wanted to touch all the relics, the ground where Christians were martyred, and pray in specific parts of the church. This, however, is expressly forbidden. Therese reflects on this as a problem of gender:

"I still cannot understand why women are so easily excommunicated in Italy, for every minute someone was saying: "Don't enter here! Don't enter there, you will be excommunicated!" Ah! poor women, how they are misunderstood! And yet they love God in much larger numbers than men do and during the Passion of Our Lord, women had more courage than the apostles since they braved the insults of the soldiers and dared to dry the adorable Face of Jesus. It is undoubtedly because of this that He allows misunderstanding to be their lot on earth, since He chose it for Himself. In heaven, He will show that His thoughts are not men's thoughts, for then the last will be first."

It's a pretty bold statement on her part--women are closer to Christ because of his choice to be misunderstood on earth, his willingness to become last when in Heaven he is truly first.

Elsewhere, Therese challenges the concepts of female vocation:

"To be your Spouse, to be a Carmelite, and by my union with You to be the Mother of souls, should not this suffice me? And yet it is not so. No doubt, these three privileges sum up my true vocation: Carmelite, Spouse, Mother, and yet I feel within me other vocations. I feel the vocation of the WARRIOR, THE PRIEST, THE APOSTLE, THE DOCTOR, THE MARTYR. Finally, I feel the need and the desire of carrying out the most heroic deeds for You, O Jesus. I feel within my soul the courage of the Crusader, the Papal Guard, and I would want to die on the field of battle in defense of the Church."

Despite her clear reading of Christ's love in her life and the apparently feminine role she accepts where Christ is her fiancé, Therese does not limit herself to the traditionally feminine, and I believe her contributions as a Doctor of the Church reflect this. While we here on earth want to attribute specific roles to the sexes, Christ does not make this distinction, either here or in the hereafter.