We’re studying shame in CPE right now. Apparently, shame is only now being studied even in the mental health field.

From CPE materials this week: “You cannot shame or belittle people into changing their behavior.” And what a realization for me to understand that guilt and shame are two different things. Shame: “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of acceptance and belonging.”

Shame is the belief that we are not worth “good”; guilt is the belief that “the bad” is inconsistent with who we are in our core. If I feel guilt for eating a doughnut, I believe I am worth eating something more healthy. If I feel shame for eating a doughnut, I don’t feel I am worth eating anything more healthy, perhaps because I am worried that my spouse will not love me for being fat, or will not want to have sex with me.

Guilt can motivate long-term change; shame cannot. I’m not far enough into the cirriculum to understand how guilt might be effectively used, but my guess is that the Church and other cultural influences use shame far more than we use guilt.

“You aren’t worthy of God’s grace, therefore repent sinner.”

“Good people do not engage in destructive behavior like drinking, smoking, drugs, overeating, and ‘abnormal’ sexual practice.”

“The more good stuff you do, the better you are in the eyes of God and the more God loves you and will grant you grace and favor.”

“If you are gay, you are bad and not wanted by God or anybody else.”

“Women are inferior in the Church, on the job, and in marital relationships.”

“Unemployment in this country is due to all the illegal immigrants taking our jobs.”

“The homeless need to stay out of sight. They make the streets so untidy.”

“I am afraid we might be attacked again like 9/11. We should attack other countries that might attack us even if we have to do it alone.”

I’ll cite the author of the cirriculum we are studying later. She cites some people as having “shame resilience.” That is the ability to move from the vulnerability which promotes fear, blame, and disconnection– an inward focused vulnerability– to an open vulnerability. Moving that vulnerability dial to an open place moves shame to empathy. When our vulnerability doesn’t control us but we allow it to be an instrument of empathy and shame resilience, the following happens:

shame moves to empathy
fear moves to courage
blame moves to compassion
disconnection moves to connection

When that happens, if I eat the doughnut I do it because it gives me joy. I can not respond in fear to an attack on my country but with courage to face the challenges of a new age with a different strategy from a position of my own worth. When the ‘other’ shatters a building and even thousands of lives along with it, my own worth does not shatter although surely I will grieve and experience anger– but not fear.

Similarly, instead of blaming others, we move to a place where we have compassion for their struggles. For me I even have to keep this in mind as I try to think of examples as I write but to open my own vulnerability to our human condition and their struggle to in this journey. The unemployment example is one– blaming unemployment on undocumented workers or homelessness on our need for “cleanness” because of our own closed-ness. These are shame responses– there is a threat to self projected as a blame response. Perhaps shame because of losing a job, insecurity of place in a country where racial, ethnic, and national mix is dynamic and power status is changing: “my worth isn’t based on what I thought it was– if this isn’t what gives me my worth then where does it come from?”

For many years, this country raised its children on “national pride.” For me, putting country first leaves no place for God to be first– the God who created all humanity and demands that we are all treated first as God’s children. But for those raised to see “country first,” somebody changed the rules and their whole identity and self-worth has to change as a result. That’s not an easy order.

Connection and disconnection is the final link– the war describes this perfectly for me (although the fear dynamic as well as the blame dynamic plays out as well). In response to the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the US withdrew, isolating itself in internalized disconnection from its global neighbors. How many times did we hear attempts to reframe this, pleading with us, the American public, to believe that our global allies were just as committed in one way or another, because the public perception was that we were in it alone– isolated and withdrawn? Moving vulnerability to risk real connection– even if it means hearing what we don’t want to hear so that we can be in real relationship, avoiding the narcissism of self-defined relational boundaries is what it takes when we make ourselves available by being vulnerable in relationship.

Of course, the Church has been completely culpable in inflicting shame on its congregants since long before America was founded. What perhaps started as guilt to motivate right-living and right-belief turned into shame at some point along the way.

Beginning to understand that, as well as understand that we are created fully in the image of God, loved for being instead of for doing– simply for existing as the treasure both individual and corporate that we are as this human family– is, I think, the beginning of answer for the Church. Some places in the Church have started to realize this. “Whoever you are and where ever you find yourself on your journey of faith” is my parish’s invitation to the table in my tradition. That is the antithesis of an indictment to shame, but a motivator for empathy.

As a hospital chaplain, I see multiple families every day who ask why they are going through suffering. They confess their sins to me and are sure that their “badness” is why they are suffering– if only they had “been better” God would not be punishing them. This is an unfortunate and typical response in our culture to human suffering.

Of course God does not “punish” us. God loves us. It is out of God’s overwhelming love for us that he created us. It is out of that same overwhelming love that he sent his son to suffer with us (not for us) that we might know how much he loves us, and that in the end he conquers that suffering.

My prayer is that we will as a Church, as a nation, and as a human family, begin to engage with our vulnerability to raise our shame resilience and learn that our worth comes from something greater than ourselves. It comes from the one who has created us. We cannot take our worth away (no matter how hard we may try and even think we have succeeded!). It comes with us at our creation. Part of our purpose in our journey through life is to understand how deep a gift that is. That is what grace is: we are so deeply loved without condition, restraint, or restriction– no matter what we do, where we go, who we meet, or what decisions we make, we are valued, loved, and cared for; even when we fail to understand that ourselves.

———————–
All of these ideas are paraphrased or inspired by Brene Brown’s Connections curriculum, or by her book, I Thought It Was Just Me.

As mentioned some time ago, I am no longer maintaining this site save for occassional odds and ends. Here is one of those, my senior seminary sermon. Note that the audio problems at the begin go away after a couple of minutes.

Gospel:  Luke 17:11-19

(If that doesn’t work, click here.)

My son is in third grade this year, and at Lee Elementary, that means that this is the year for the Hawaii program.  You see, each year at Lee Elementary, there is a designated play or show for each grade, a sort of liturgy for the kids (and their parents) to either look forward to or to dread, depending on their personality, gifts, and talents.  This particular year, Brian’s production was the history and culture of Hawaii.

Now I thought that would be wonderful, because my brother lives in Hawaii, and having visited there and being familiar with it I thought my son would find it interesting.  Hawaii has an wonderful natural history, and native Hawaiian culture is so rich and deep.  So when the curtain went up and the opening music was the Beach Boys’ “Surfin’ Safari,” accompanied by about a dozen 9-year-olds in sunglasses and swim suits pretending to surf on the stage, I suppose I should have had a hint of what was to come.  I have to admit that it was cute, even it if wasn’t exactly what I would call…educational.

The production started, and the kids promptly sang to us and told us about the wonders of Hawaii’s origins in the depths of the ocean thanks to the earth’s volcanic activity.  We moved right on to the discovery of the islands by the British explorer Captain Cook in 1778…  Amazingly, when Captain Cook landed, there were people already there!  The play did not explain how, if he discovered the islands, he found people already present, and I kept wondering what the kids must have thought.  Did these other people just appear magically when he stepped off the boat?  Did Capt. Cook bring some indigenous looking people with him so he could mirror Christopher Columbus’ landing?  Or, had the native Hawaiians who had already been there for 1600 years, just not been there long enough to justify calling it “discovered” yet without the benefit of a male Western-European hero?  I wondered what would it feel like to be a culturally and ethnically indigenous Hawaiian transferring into the third grade at Lee Elementary and then have to participate in a program where your existence was just omitted, probably not intentionally, but maybe worse—maybe just because it didn’t occur to anybody to put you in, because they just weren’t aware that they didn’t know who you are, or that you could have even existed before they arrived.  It made me very sad.

Of course, Lee Elementary isn’t the bad guy here, although I had hoped that an elementary school in 2008 in a University setting would have understood the concept of the breakdown of the Western Euro- and andro- centric narrative by this point.  No doubt, they’ve probably had the same rubrics and the same anamnesis for many years—before it was, at least, commonly understood that there is more than one point of view for exactly how Hawaii was discovered.  “Surfin’ Safari” may have very well been the most prominent thing on people’s mind when the play was written—but of course those authors may not have realized that the surf board was invented by the indigenous Hawaiians, not by Elvis in Blue Hawaii.  I guess “Hawaiian culture” is relative.

I was probably taught about the history of Hawaii in the same way, and I know that’s how I was taught other facts about history that I now understand very differently—the glorious empire of Rome that brings order everywhere it goes instead of a many times cruel and unjust imperial overlord; the so-called dark ages instead of the middle ages with a culture and value in and of its own; the genocide of Native Americans and Africans by Europeans in North America, camouflaged by history in order to avoid facing a difficult truth.

Isn’t it funny how we humans get when we are so convinced that we have the “truth,” blind to anything but our own myopic perspective?

I heard another story this summer that reminds me of our convinced-ness, but on a more pastoral level.  A chaplain was visiting a room in a hospital, and in it a mother and daughter who had long been estranged were talking.  When the chaplain walked in, the mother immediately started crying and telling the chaplain about her conversion experience, about how she wanted to be reconciled with her daughter and begin going to church because she was ready to know Jesus.  As the mother was talking and facing the chaplain, drowned in her experience and the agony of her life, her health, and her failed relationships, the daughter was behind her, ecstatically mouthing words to the chaplain and beaming, “I did it!  I saved her!  It was me!”

Over the course of the conversation with the chaplain it became clear that the mother wasn’t “converted” at all but was scared, and was trying any kind of bargaining she could to save her life.  The daughter, as you can see, was finished listening, though.  She had “saved” her mother.  The daughter “knew” she had brought her mother salvation.  Like the author of the Hawaii program, she “knew” the truth.  Her mother had no meaningful existence until she stepped onto the scene and rescued her, healed her.  Now she was healed, and ready to go to the priests to be rejoined to the community, the church, where she would live a happy life knowing that she was saved, unified with her in her belief-system, in her world-view.  The end.  They would all live happily ever after.

And that’s so often what happens, isn’t it?  We play the part of Jesus.  We want so much to be the healer, the teacher, the prophet, the giver.  We have the kingdom of God in us and, by God, we’re going to share it!  Just like the daughter, or like the storyteller in the play, we have what it takes and we know it!  We’re so amazed by the healing we can do, or the lessons we can teach, or the sermons we can preach, that we escort the “other” off to the priests to see them get their blessing and join the community—because it’s our community.  Why should we give it a second thought?  We’re the Body of Christ!  Receive the Good News!

Of course, that isn’t quite how the story goes in the Gospel.  In today’s lesson, they don’t all run off to the priest right away, and Jesus doesn’t go with them.  One of them turns back, a Samaritan.  The one whose whole religious identity has been based differently now turns back to Jesus, as if to say, “My God—the kingdom is breaking in right here!  Right here in you, in this.”  It is the other—the Samaritan, who we focus on, not the other nine– it is the other one who turns back.

I’m reminded of the illustration that Scott Bader-Saye, used in his presentation to us a few weeks ago.  The way he exegeted the story of the tower of Babel was that the primary sin of those building the tower was not to try and reach God by going higher and higher, but rather was fear—fear of being separated.  Their identity was based in an unhealthy unity that prevented them from living into their vocation.  That vocation, he said, was of going into the world to fill it, as God had charged them to do, and so they kept constructing sinful ways to be together—even if it meant literally living on top of each other—in order to do anything but be “othered” from each other.  One might even say that they were trying to reconstruct the homoousious, the one substance of the Trinity, trying to achieve unity of substance when we are necessarily limited and finite creatures, contained by our otherness and only able to have total unity with God.  It feels to me very much like the kind of false unity that, for its own sake, may just not be able to see the original discovery of Hawaii by Polynesians.  We know how the story of Babel ends–  they are forcibly “othered” one from another.

Our story of the lepers has a similar theme but phrased much differently, much less harshly, without a “bad guy” in it—this story focuses only on the way it should be rather than the way it should not be, as the story of Babel does.  It, perhaps, is the complement to the story of Babel as we’ve interpreted it just now.  The lepers desperately long to rejoin their community.  I’d want to rejoin my community too, if I’d been cast out like lepers were.  It’s important to note that Jesus did ask them to go back to the priest to uphold the purity laws so that they could come back into community.  Healthy community isn’t a bad guy here, nor are purity laws.  Jesus asks them to do what any good Jew would do in that day once healed of leprosy and see the priests to uphold the purity code, and that is just what nine of them do right away.

But the really interesting part of the story is that the one who is lifted up, the one Jesus calls our attention to, is the Samaritan, the other.  We all know by now that the Samaritan is not Jewish, at least not Judean, and represents something outside Jesus’ community.  He is the “other” one in this story; the one who stops, turns back, and gives thanks.  And Jesus seems to delight in the turning back of this othered person.  Jesus highlights the significance of the other, here, in a way that shows us what the folks at Babel didn’t get.  It’s the other whom Jesus takes special delight in, whom Jesus calls out, whom Jesus lifts up, and who sees the kingdom most clearly.

What if we took more interest in being like this Samaritan, this other, that Jesus directs our attention to, and worried a little less about how much like Jesus we are, the healer in this story?  The Samaritan must be open to the possibilities of the world around him, he is not limited to his world view, his pre-existing limitations that his own culture and context have defined for him.  He realizes that he doesn’t have the answers within himself, but must look elsewhere to find transformation.  When the Samaritan comes into contact with Jesus, he realizes that the healing he has received is so full and great that he has to turn back and give thanks.  He has been transformed, not because he already had the healing powers he needed within him, but because he found them outside in the world around him.

I wonder if we haven’t made a mistake in building up our identity as the church—as Christians– as being based so heartedly in unity instead of in otherness.

  “I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”  (Mt. 25:35-36).  The Jesus of Matthew identifies himself with the other, perhaps even with our Samaritan: not with the one who is already at our table, who is already unified with us.  Looking at it this way, we look not within the religious community for God as those building the tower of Babel seemed to do, but we must turn our attention outside of it.  Just as Jesus looked outside his community and lifted up a Samaritan, we are charged not just to carry the light of Christ into the world, but to be transformed by the very world ourselves, being awakened by it as we go.

When we’re out there—somewhere—anywhere—outside where that cross is, out beyond those windows– we find him, and delight in him, as He delights in us.  That is where we find our unity.  A unity not based in same-ness, but based in other-ness.  That is the unity of the Trinity—that is the very mystery of it.  That is what they didn’t get at the tower of Babel.

Tomorrow night, I will be at Lee Elementary again.  This time it’s my daughter’s turn for her first grade right of passage.  My son did this production two years ago.  The first graders do a production of the first Thanksgiving.  I researched some details about the first Thanksgiving and I found out some interesting and hopeful things.  Sure, there is some mythology that goes with the first Thanksgiving.  The black suits, the fun pilgrim hats—that’s all a later invention and fashion that just didn’t exist until later in the 17^th century.  But what historians generally regard as the first “official” Thanksgiving happened in 1621 in Massachusetts.  And what did happen there was that some pilgrims invited some native Americans over for a three day party.  And the pilgrims ran out of food because the harvest was thin that year.  So the Wampanoag Indians went back to their home to bring some of their harvest with them to share it with their hosts.  They spent three days together eating, and playing, and getting to know each other in a rather rowdy and festive celebration.  It wasn’t a religious celebration, or it would have been quiet and exclusively celebrated by the Pilgrims.  But it happened, nonetheless, and both the Wampanoags and the Pilgrims risked something in that year of not such a great harvest to spend that time with each other.  Can you picture them, delighting in each other?  I can only imagine that they were all transformed somehow in growing from their differences—and their common humanity.

So as the year marches on, the plays, pageants and parties wind up, and we move closer to the end of another semester, saying goodbye to some old friends, getting ready to make some news ones, and wrapping up another Church year, perhaps it is worth reflecting upon how we can worry a little less about how like Christ we are and a little more about how we’ll seek and serve Christ in the world around us, living humbly into our own other-ness and the other-ness of everything and everybody we encounter.

j

From New Church Revolution:

San Jose, CA, June 27, 2008: Shortly before noon on Friday, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (PCUSA) voted to change ordination policies of the denomination. Up to now, requirements included “fidelity within the covenant of marriage between a man and a woman, or chastity in singleness.” The new passage simply states that candidates for ordination “pledge themselves to live lives obedient to Jesus Christ the Head of the Church, striving to follow where he leads through the witness of the Scriptures, and to understand the Scriptures through the instruction of the Confessions.” The motion will now be sent to the individual presbyteries (regional clusters of congregations) for ratification, and will need to pass by a simple majority in order to change the Book of Order (constitution).

j

I love this song by Snow Patrol.  Especially this part:  “I need your grace, to remind me to find my own.”  That is so beautiful.  It reminds me of this post I wrote a few months ago, and especially of The Body’s Grace, by Rowan Williams.

j

We’ll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don’t need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don’t quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They’re not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life

Let’s waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we’re told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that’s bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they’re all I can see

I don’t know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I know, I know: I just said I was done writing for a while. But I have had something on my mind lately and I’ve decided to write this post, so maybe I’m pulling a Barbra Streisand…

What has caught my eye lately is all of the political fuss over Geraldine Ferraro and the Clinton campaign—the allegations of sexism and racism and the furor it has generated. It seems to me that much of the same stuff gets roiled up in church politics: secular advocacy rolls over into the church because we don’t (and shouldn’t) compartmentalize our lives between what happens in the public square and what happens in our houses of worship.

Perhaps what should happen, though, that doesn’t happen as often, is that we should take our gospel values into the public square (keeping the separation of church and state distinct, for reasons I’ve discussed elsewhere). Those values, I think, shed some light on the problems that have been raised in the recent political campaigns. Namely, inequality in power and the resulting injustice cannot be solved by obtaining and using the same kind of power that originally created the inequality. To do so is a little bit like using the military to oust a military dictator in a coup, and then putting another dictator in his place. Perhaps the new dictator has a different face, but he is still a dictator. It does not fundamentally change the dynamic of the power structure.

The gospel is pretty clear on the use of worldly power. Consider Matt 4:1-11: When Jesus is tempted over and over again in the wilderness to use power for the kind of gain traditional power benefits, he refuses. In Matt 26:51-56, Jesus says, “those who live by the sword die by the sword.” If you live by the traditional power of this world, that is what will rule (and kill) you. Even though Jesus could call on armies to overcome the arresting soldiers, he chooses not to do so. Instead, he has spoken truth to power in his life’s work. The result? Crucifixion on the world’s terms. But God resurrects him on God’s terms—on the Kingdom’s terms.

Our temptation is to try to achieve justice and peace on the world’s terms because it is what we can grasp easily, they are the tools that are readily apparent. Speaking truth to that power is harder and yields another kind of power which is far deeper, more transformative, and longer lasting. Our fear is that speaking truth to the traditional power of this world won’t yield the immediacy and power that we long for as humans—we are afraid to trust that resurrection can really happen, but we are pretty sure that we can be crucified. The worldly powers may crucify us, but that is not God’s wish. God does not justify or require crucifixion, but God brings forth new life from the suffering that the world creates when we name the world’s competition for power. That is the power of the kingdom.

How does the gospel imperative relate to secular views of justice and power, particularly related to race, women, and LGBT issues?

(I am not an expert in the field of feminism, and I understand this is sensitive territory so please try to understand my broader point—I am not making a critique of feminism but of a certain perspective of advocacy in general, including feminism, racial advocacy, and LGBT equality. I consider myself a feminist, or as much of one as a man can be, as well as an advocate of racial equality and certainly of LGBT rights. I believe I am expressing a perspective which is more progressive—although perhaps not more “liberal”—than found in the culture wars today.)

Let’s start by looking at the feminist movement. If we look purely at the secular feminist movement, there are three “waves.” The first wave of feminism worked toward women’s property rights, contract rights, voting rights, and the like. In the 1960’s, the second-wave of feminism began, and depending on what generation you fall in, you may believe it is still the era of feminism which is most relevant. Second-wavers focused primarily on the cultural gender construction of women, focusing especially on power inequalities. Bra-burning and women’s liberation was central, and a key critique was the lack of African-American voices in that movement.

The third-wave of feminism, or post-feminism, began in the 1990s, and counters that the second-wavers missed many things, reducing the feminine to an “essentialist checklist” of constructed ideals. It also recognized that minority voices were missing from the second-waver movement, and some began to realize that feminists could simply be “women that were people” instead of bra-burning activists.

This generational difference has been of much debate in this election as we hear of second-waver mothers who say that their post-feminist daughters do not understand what they had to go through in order for them to come to their “freedom.” They feel underappreciated and their daughters feel overpressured to take roles that they do not want (generalizations, of course).

The struggle for racial equality has faced a similar but different struggle. The nature of the oppression was different, of course—with the brutality of slavery. Most of us are taught or remember at least the basics of the civil rights era timeline. Because the nature of the oppression is so different, it is hard to say if there is a “post-civil-rights” African-American philosophy emerging today: if there is I am not close enough to it to know about it (although it is interesting to look at how someone like James Cone has changed since the 1960s). I do think that the younger generations of white Americans are post-civil rights in that they do not see race in the way their parents did; in that sense the civil rights era “worked”: whether or not it is full equality is another question.

But that brings us back to Ms. Ferraro. I read her most recent comments about Obama being sexist, and thought about her accusations in March that he was only electable because he was black. That clearly let everyone know she was a second-wave feminist: based in white woman power. It seems to me that Obama represents a post-feminist (and post-Black Power) era, where traditional power is not the leverage to be used. It is no wonder that Mrs. Clinton removed Ferraro from the campaign last March. It seems that there are generational issues at play here left over from the 60s and 70s. From what I can tell, Ms. Ferraro’s comments reflect a point of view that sees women taking on the role of traditional (ab)use of power by the patriarchy as the only way to gain true equality.

I don’t buy it.

Men behaving badly isn’t a good reason for women to behave badly too. Just because men have abused power for centuries does not mean that women need to abuse power in order to become equal. That makes no sense to me. That is why I buy much of the post-feminist point of view. We can’t just “replace” the kyriarchy (thanks to feminist Biblical Scholar Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza for this term) with LGBT people and expect lasting change either. That is like replacing the old dictator with a new one—even if he is friendly now, nobody needs that kind of power, and it is inherently inequitable.

I actually think that both feminism and racial civil rights are deeply connected to LGBT rights. Post-feminism acknowledges that gender identity is fluid—it is a spectrum, not a toggle, and a lot of gender construction is culturally based—it cannot be boiled down to an “essentialist checklist.” Heterosexism is deeply rooted in sexism. As the movie “For the Bible Tells Me So” pointed out, one of the worst things you say to a boy is, “You throw like a girl:” sexist and heterosexist. The LGBT movement also has its share of problems with racism, entrenchment in middle-class privileged America, and lack of focus on the fringes of our own double-and triple-marginalized ranks.

We have a bond with those discriminated against on the basis of race, too, though, because we have been targeted. Some of the attacks against us have been brutal. Matthew Shepard. Lawrence Simmons Jr. The struggle for LGBT marriage has mirrored the struggle for inter-racial marriage in many ways. We have much in common. But religious arguments from the African-American community have been harsh. Support from the African-American community is low, even though leaders such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, the family of Martin Luther King Jr., and others speak in solidarity with us.

And Martin Luther King Jr., knew about using power in advocacy. He did not respond to traditional power with the same old ways. He studied Gandhi. He used non-violent direct action. He studied the gospel: the gospel that promotes avoiding the ways of the world to respond to its power, and seeking a third way out. When faced with the power of the world, MLK took action—but not what was expected. He met force with radical peace. He met hate not with hate but with radical love—but also with judgment.

In short, he was a witness. I have heard of some who characterize the different factions in the church like the Episcopal Women’s Caucus, or the Union of Black Episcopalians, or Integrity, as lobbying groups who have no place in the Church. If (or, in some cases, when), we act like Geraldine Ferraro and try to match power with power, I would agree. But that is not any one of those organization’s roles. From what I know of each of those organizations, they seek to be witnesses—to be voices crying in the wilderness for a Church which hasn’t fully heard what is being said yet. Sometimes that means advocacy under the umbrella of witness. Sometimes it means pastoral care and support. Sometimes it means a few other things—all of which have a basis in the Gospel.

But it does not mean responding with the power of the world to the power against us. That is not what we are called to do, and I am quite confident that it is not what any of us seek to do. Speaking only for me, I seek to be a witness to the gospel. That means speaking truth to the power of the humanity of all people, and the God who loves us all. If God loves us all equally, then there can be no kyriarchal relationships. That does not mean the end of power as we know it, but it does mean that power must be dramatically re-shuffled to ensure that those who don’t have it become more empowered.

j

Woo-hoo!!

Of course you’ve heard the news from California by now– there are plenty of sources to find the church’s reactions, good and bad, on it.

If you haven’t noticed, I’m slowing down on posting– I haven’t written much original material this year and am not likely to for a while.  Sign up for email subscription on the right if you don’t want to have to visit to see if I’ve posted everything.

I’m doing CPE (chaplaincy) this summer and then will turn my attention to my last year of seminary formation.  I’m sure something will prompt me to write every now and then, but I’m not going to make intentional efforts to keep the blog updated any more– at least for now.

Thanks for all your support, readership, and comments!

j

From Advocate News, about a story that my kids absolutely love…

“Gay penguin” book most hated, again

If you’d like to buy the book, click here.

j

From The Press Democrat

The Rev. Jane Spahr was cleared Tuesday of charges that she violated Presbyterian Church law by marrying two lesbian couples, but her right to continue the ceremonies remains in doubt, lawyers and church officials said.

For full article, click here.

j

For those of you in Austin, the next performance of the Capital City Men’s Chorus has been announced…

Join the Capital City Men’s Chorus on Saturday evening, May 17, at 8 p.m., as we CCMC take a look back at some of the great award-winning songs that have inspired and entertained us from stage and screen.
From Shakespeare’s “Henry V” to “Brokeback Mountain,” we’ll cover the spectrum of popular entertainment.

This concert will also feature the world premiere of “Resurrection,” a piece commissioned especially for the CCMC through grants from the Hollyfield Foundation and GALA Choruses. With words by award-winning poet George Klawitter and music by Karl Logue, “Resurrection” is a work which reminds us that while our struggle against fear and bigotry is not over, there is hope for our future.

And who knows. . . . a few wigs may fly as well!

Come take part in history!

Tickets $15 advance/$20 door

Sold at ccmcaustin.org, 512-477-SING and exclusively at Lobo.

I had to write a hymn for a class – I thought I would share it.  It can be sung to many tunes in the hymnal — anything with the little abbreviation “CM” in the corner at the bottom for “Common Meter”. I haven’t found a tune I like yet, but when I do I’ll update it.  It is based, of course, on King David and his relationship with Saul’s son, Jonathan, and the Book of Ruth.

David and Jonathan, they met
And wept behind a stone
They kissed and said their sad farewells
Again to be alone

Away, Naomi pushed her love
And Ruth refused to leave
“Where you go, I will go,” said she
Even if death takes me

Thank you God for relationships
You bless our love with life
Through good and bad you lift us up
Deliv’ring us from strife

j