In the closing weeks, now days, of our time here in Gloucester and at St. John’s Church before we move into retirement, we are being treated to many last suppers, breakfasts, lunches, teas and coffees. The bounty is varied and all of it bittersweet.
I can understand the impact and value of the Christian tradition’s focus on Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples and friends. I know why they picked this moment as the scene that would be re-enacted over and over weekly in most Christian churches to remember the love of God communicated by Jesus Christ— a love so broad, so rich, so free as to include us all as guests without invitation, RSVP or conditions.
I can understand the sacred Friday Shabbat supper with ritual candles and remembrance of God’s faithfulness in the covenant.
I can understand why a prisoner facing execution is given a last meal, whatever he or she want without condition, to say goodbye to earthly life. Grace in a meal.
I can understand why as a child I was offered my favorite meal on my birthday and sometimes while recovering from a bout of some childhood illness. Mine would always be tuna fish casserole sans the peas but with potato chips crumbled on top, chocolate milk and vanilla ice cream with chocolate sauce. Now it’s meat loaf of any variety with peas, potatoes smashed, then red wine and dark chocolate.
And I understand why the Last Supper became the Holy Communion/Eucharist sacrament of remembrance, justice, thanksgiving and forgiving, compassion and hope— the food of grace.
Don’t we all know this same experience around a family dining table when the food is sumptuous, the conversation heartening, and love connects? And don’t we all also know the truth that this ideal is rarely unbroken by more difficult feelings like anger, fear, guilt or sorrow?
But we come to the table anyway—again and again and again—with outstretched hands.
Our “last suppers” have all been holy too— lots of love sprinkled with the sorrow of goodbye and the hope of new life and the fear of loss.
For us the theme of “last supper” had many variations: from tea or coffee with dunking biscotti, to caesar salad with chicken times 5-6, to elegant dinners with wine and quail or some bird or other, to the most precious of all, a dinner out at Friendlys complete with my old favorite vanilla with hot fudge sauce no cherry.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Prophetic Lying for Truth
In a lie often dwells a deeper spiritual truth—prophetic and something not to ignore.
When I was in college I nearly had an achievement breakdown. When I joined the world for real at about six I was already working on my strategy of choice to gain my father’s unconditional approval/attention—love by achieving in small matters like learning my letters and then bragging.
It didn’t work because, as I later came to know, my somewhat recessive, depressed, boozy (his own strategy) father loved me all along and it wasn’t for my achievements.
When I hit school in earnest I upped the ante on myself and achieved excellence in most things even Latin. It helped that I did and do love school and learning, but I was fast letting the world remake me in its own image and forgetting the God I’d met under the dining room table at three, the same one who, when I chattered on about all my thoughts, feeling, doings, neither applauded nor scorned but simply listened, made no corrections and, I felt sure, smiled.
Sadly I forgot about my early spiritual experience and took on American culture and its drive to success often at great cost. Even back in the forties we were a can-do culture and I became the most can-do-energizer-bunny I could be—compulsively so.
Phi Beta Kappa,When I called my parents to tell them I had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, my father said “There must be some mistake.” Then quickly he laughed and added, “Just kidding, darling, that’s great.” I think that was the moment when, as inured as I was to my father’s style, I began to remember my God, began to glean truth fragments about myself, my dad and the American addiction to success, a profound cultural deception: if you don’t succeed (top grades, top credentials, top honors) you may not survive (get elected, get a good job, be a winner, survive.)
I remembered my own experience as I read about the recent exposure of painful lies, fabrications devised in worship of a false god. Religion calls this idolatry. It always stems from a ground zero spirituality of fear—not being loved and so engaging in efforts to prove oneself when there is in fact nothing you have to prove.
Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat got caught serving this lie in an effort to prove his worth. Blumenthal, attorney general of Connecticut, is running for Senate in Connecticut. It looked good until it was discovered that he had falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam. Why? Would this make him a hero? He already is a hero, or at least he has served his office well and was very electable—until his lie was discovered.
Most ordinary people, voters want/expect integrity. The biblical God in Genesis chose Noah to build a salvation ark because of his integrity (in Hebrew tam), not for his wood-working skills.
But I wonder if Blumenthal is a prophet in disguise. I wonder if there is a deeper truth under his unwise lying. I wonder if his action exposes the underbelly of the sin of this culture, the lie that drove him to lie in the first place now playing a role in revealing, not his personal sins but the sins of the system that enables, no encourages such behavior, even makes it almost normative.
The drive to succeed exceeds a normal desire for excellence when it causes one to lie to achieve something in easy reach. But before we condemn Blumenthal wholesale let’s look at the larger cultural context.
The paradox I discern is this: whether Blumenthal meant it or not his deceptive action exposes a truth we need to examine. Falsification could be seen as a symptom, a prophetic act of defiance against a system gone awry with rank ordering. The more inauthentic we get the more the deception is revealed and hopefully will lead to a change of ways, to ceasing and desisting from all these categories of who is acceptable and who is not. It is simply not the way of Spirit, not the way of God—and just plain not good for you at any level of being.
Could it be an honor not to have served in war or not to have straight A’s at Harvard?
All the great religious prophets exposed truth by doing something so counter-cultural, so deserving of dishonor that it got them ostracized if not killed. It happened to Jesus a lot and in the end cost him his life. Because he dined with society’s dregs and refused any honors himself he dishonored himself. He also called attention to the need for less competition and more compassion.
And from his dishonor itself we are still learning what true honor is, just as I learned and keep learning over and over not to sell my soul for the next accolade, no matter how sweet.
When I was in college I nearly had an achievement breakdown. When I joined the world for real at about six I was already working on my strategy of choice to gain my father’s unconditional approval/attention—love by achieving in small matters like learning my letters and then bragging.
It didn’t work because, as I later came to know, my somewhat recessive, depressed, boozy (his own strategy) father loved me all along and it wasn’t for my achievements.
When I hit school in earnest I upped the ante on myself and achieved excellence in most things even Latin. It helped that I did and do love school and learning, but I was fast letting the world remake me in its own image and forgetting the God I’d met under the dining room table at three, the same one who, when I chattered on about all my thoughts, feeling, doings, neither applauded nor scorned but simply listened, made no corrections and, I felt sure, smiled.
Sadly I forgot about my early spiritual experience and took on American culture and its drive to success often at great cost. Even back in the forties we were a can-do culture and I became the most can-do-energizer-bunny I could be—compulsively so.
Phi Beta Kappa,When I called my parents to tell them I had been elected to Phi Beta Kappa, my father said “There must be some mistake.” Then quickly he laughed and added, “Just kidding, darling, that’s great.” I think that was the moment when, as inured as I was to my father’s style, I began to remember my God, began to glean truth fragments about myself, my dad and the American addiction to success, a profound cultural deception: if you don’t succeed (top grades, top credentials, top honors) you may not survive (get elected, get a good job, be a winner, survive.)
I remembered my own experience as I read about the recent exposure of painful lies, fabrications devised in worship of a false god. Religion calls this idolatry. It always stems from a ground zero spirituality of fear—not being loved and so engaging in efforts to prove oneself when there is in fact nothing you have to prove.
Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat got caught serving this lie in an effort to prove his worth. Blumenthal, attorney general of Connecticut, is running for Senate in Connecticut. It looked good until it was discovered that he had falsely claimed to have served in Vietnam. Why? Would this make him a hero? He already is a hero, or at least he has served his office well and was very electable—until his lie was discovered.
Most ordinary people, voters want/expect integrity. The biblical God in Genesis chose Noah to build a salvation ark because of his integrity (in Hebrew tam), not for his wood-working skills.
But I wonder if Blumenthal is a prophet in disguise. I wonder if there is a deeper truth under his unwise lying. I wonder if his action exposes the underbelly of the sin of this culture, the lie that drove him to lie in the first place now playing a role in revealing, not his personal sins but the sins of the system that enables, no encourages such behavior, even makes it almost normative.
The drive to succeed exceeds a normal desire for excellence when it causes one to lie to achieve something in easy reach. But before we condemn Blumenthal wholesale let’s look at the larger cultural context.
The paradox I discern is this: whether Blumenthal meant it or not his deceptive action exposes a truth we need to examine. Falsification could be seen as a symptom, a prophetic act of defiance against a system gone awry with rank ordering. The more inauthentic we get the more the deception is revealed and hopefully will lead to a change of ways, to ceasing and desisting from all these categories of who is acceptable and who is not. It is simply not the way of Spirit, not the way of God—and just plain not good for you at any level of being.
Could it be an honor not to have served in war or not to have straight A’s at Harvard?
All the great religious prophets exposed truth by doing something so counter-cultural, so deserving of dishonor that it got them ostracized if not killed. It happened to Jesus a lot and in the end cost him his life. Because he dined with society’s dregs and refused any honors himself he dishonored himself. He also called attention to the need for less competition and more compassion.
And from his dishonor itself we are still learning what true honor is, just as I learned and keep learning over and over not to sell my soul for the next accolade, no matter how sweet.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Flying Prayers at Pentecost
I saw something recently I’ve never seen before.
Before the sun had settled below the horizon there was a pinkened glow on the cloud cover and hanging from it was a rainbow. I’ve never seen a hanging rainbow the rest of its usual arch completely out of view. It looked like a colorful waterfall. I thanked the Creator Godde for this sight, marveled at such beauty, and circled the car for another turn of the harbor road so I could see it again—and again.
I imagined I knew exactly how old Noah in the Bible story must have felt gazing out from the famed ark of his making, an ark to save Creation as the story goes. I was only in my Honda saving nothing but just as grateful—and oddly happy for no reason. I felt suddenly like the young child I was, happy simply with life on its own terms, replete with tragedies, horrors and hanging rainbows. The invisible divine spirit connected me through beauty to my inner beauty.
I understood why children know how to appreciate mystery, how to take holiness for granted, and how to pray with fearless integrity. I understood why Jesus designated a little child as the ideal candidate for Godde’s kingdom.
At St. John’s in Gloucester, the parish where I’ve been Priest Associate for thirteen years, we do a rainbow-like array to celebrate the Holy spirit, Person # 3 of the Trinity, Godde’s helper and the one I call the Great Connector. Every one is invited to write a prayer on a colored dove. The doves of many colors are cut out and strung up on invisible wires to hang in the sanctuary over the altar. The sight astonishes.
All our prayers are flying, a visible recognition of the traveling power of the Spirit—and of prayer.
The best ones belong to children, not for their humor or cuteness but for the raw power of their authenticity and for the themes of love, gratitude, desire, concern for others as well as self, and for their honest recognition of pain and fear without making it the center of the prayer. Here are a few examples from children ages 2 to 14.
God, please don’t let Teddy collapse he’s my best friend. (six year old boy re. his beloved childhood bear that has been mauled by love like the Velveteen Rabbit)
I hope/pray that Piper has a happy life in heaven. (boy, 6 about the dog the family had to euthanize.)
I pray for Piper to let her know I miss her and I love her. (sister, 3, of the above)
That all people of Haiti have food and homes. (girl, 10)
I pray my Daddy’s shoulder gets better so he can play golf with me. (boy 7)
That nobody gets huuuurt. (boy 2 1/2)
I pray that Maggie always stays safe. (girl, 5 about another beloved dog)
I thank God because I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Amen. (girl, 10)
I pray that everyone is happy and that the people in war get home safely. Amen. (girl, 14)
These prayers represent the substance of spiritual truth—the ordinary stuff of life for its own sake encased in hope. They will fly well.
Before the sun had settled below the horizon there was a pinkened glow on the cloud cover and hanging from it was a rainbow. I’ve never seen a hanging rainbow the rest of its usual arch completely out of view. It looked like a colorful waterfall. I thanked the Creator Godde for this sight, marveled at such beauty, and circled the car for another turn of the harbor road so I could see it again—and again.
I imagined I knew exactly how old Noah in the Bible story must have felt gazing out from the famed ark of his making, an ark to save Creation as the story goes. I was only in my Honda saving nothing but just as grateful—and oddly happy for no reason. I felt suddenly like the young child I was, happy simply with life on its own terms, replete with tragedies, horrors and hanging rainbows. The invisible divine spirit connected me through beauty to my inner beauty.
I understood why children know how to appreciate mystery, how to take holiness for granted, and how to pray with fearless integrity. I understood why Jesus designated a little child as the ideal candidate for Godde’s kingdom.
At St. John’s in Gloucester, the parish where I’ve been Priest Associate for thirteen years, we do a rainbow-like array to celebrate the Holy spirit, Person # 3 of the Trinity, Godde’s helper and the one I call the Great Connector. Every one is invited to write a prayer on a colored dove. The doves of many colors are cut out and strung up on invisible wires to hang in the sanctuary over the altar. The sight astonishes.
All our prayers are flying, a visible recognition of the traveling power of the Spirit—and of prayer.
The best ones belong to children, not for their humor or cuteness but for the raw power of their authenticity and for the themes of love, gratitude, desire, concern for others as well as self, and for their honest recognition of pain and fear without making it the center of the prayer. Here are a few examples from children ages 2 to 14.
God, please don’t let Teddy collapse he’s my best friend. (six year old boy re. his beloved childhood bear that has been mauled by love like the Velveteen Rabbit)
I hope/pray that Piper has a happy life in heaven. (boy, 6 about the dog the family had to euthanize.)
I pray for Piper to let her know I miss her and I love her. (sister, 3, of the above)
That all people of Haiti have food and homes. (girl, 10)
I pray my Daddy’s shoulder gets better so he can play golf with me. (boy 7)
That nobody gets huuuurt. (boy 2 1/2)
I pray that Maggie always stays safe. (girl, 5 about another beloved dog)
I thank God because I have everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Amen. (girl, 10)
I pray that everyone is happy and that the people in war get home safely. Amen. (girl, 14)
These prayers represent the substance of spiritual truth—the ordinary stuff of life for its own sake encased in hope. They will fly well.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
"August:Osage County" Theater Review/Life Review
We just saw the play “August: Osage County” starring Estelle Parsons at Boston’s Colonial Theater. It was a three act play, lasting three hours with two intermissions which could have been three because of the intensity of the drama.
For those of us who grew up in families like the dysfunctional/addictive one portrayed in the play it was a life review, an opportunity to view from a distance the way we were—and for some still are.
For me it was a panoramic view on a small stage. It brought tears, laughter, honest empathy and hardy applause for the resilience of all the characters who, in spite of being almost destroyed by the ravages of addiction, forge, each in their own way and according to their own personality, a path to freedom— or at least to another chance at freedom giving life.
But this play, written by Tracy Letts, is a classic tragedy showing as much appreciation for the vulnerability of human life as the classic Greek tragedians did. The matriarch takes pills; the patriarch drinks, but the tragic hero is the whole family (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws.) The tragic flaw is lack of boundaries. The individual is subsumed into the chaotic death-dealing dynamic of a system in which the power of the whole nearly obliterates the parts. In family therapy this is called enmeshment. I call it the sprout family (can’t pick up one without picking them all up.)
People caught up in an enmeshed system divorce their minds.
The opposite of enmeshment is estrangement, a way some systems develop to control the many threatening feelings (anger, guilt, fear, sorrow) that naturally arise but are too dangerous to express in response to the disease of addiction. This is as much of a control strategy as enmeshment. It just looks different, more like a bunch of closely related people all in thick rubber suits with slits for the eyes. They don't talk, feel, hear, touch (just brush up against each other if necessary)—and can barely see. But they all feel safe as they go about the business of living together.
People caught up in estranged systems divorce their hearts.
Either way you sob inside.
This is life as apocalypse now. It’s like living life in a mine field with no time or energy for anything but constant watchfulness and mental, emotional and physical tension.
In this play each daughter copes, taking on a role in order to control the chaos. The oldest is the “hero” who tries to achieve some respectability for the whole by doing it right, if not perfectly. The middle daughter is the “clown,” trying to control by distracting attention from the pain, and the youngest daughter is the “lost child” who controls by being passive and self-denying, believing that her quietism alone will control the raucus “caucus.” All roles fail to achieve the desired end.
The central characters (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws) are drawn and rendered with tenderness not sentimentality and a fierce attentiveness to the irony and humor of the situation. But somehow they all care about each other. And in the end their individuality breaks through the armor of the adopted role. Who cares if their choices are functional? Who cares about the outcome at this point? Truth is revealed. They leave one by one.
All this unfolds because of an excellent script, exceptionally gifted actors and an unexpected twist in the parental dynamic that bring both death and new life.
Estelle Parsons plays the “villain” no less trapped in the system than the others but rising above it in spite of her drug-induced haze by telling the truth with a scalpel for a tongue and no compassion. Yet we witness a transformation here too although she ends up as tragedy would have it abandoned, sick, and as wounded as the rest with less chance of escape.
I found redemption, something I think all great art must have, not only in the characters' individual triumphs but in the final collapse of the matriarch who stumbles upstairs to seek refuge in the arms of the outsider, the family housekeeper, the one who stays for the most part outside the melee and so is able to cradle the pathetic matriarch and croon a lullaby.
For those of us who grew up in families like the dysfunctional/addictive one portrayed in the play it was a life review, an opportunity to view from a distance the way we were—and for some still are.
For me it was a panoramic view on a small stage. It brought tears, laughter, honest empathy and hardy applause for the resilience of all the characters who, in spite of being almost destroyed by the ravages of addiction, forge, each in their own way and according to their own personality, a path to freedom— or at least to another chance at freedom giving life.
But this play, written by Tracy Letts, is a classic tragedy showing as much appreciation for the vulnerability of human life as the classic Greek tragedians did. The matriarch takes pills; the patriarch drinks, but the tragic hero is the whole family (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws.) The tragic flaw is lack of boundaries. The individual is subsumed into the chaotic death-dealing dynamic of a system in which the power of the whole nearly obliterates the parts. In family therapy this is called enmeshment. I call it the sprout family (can’t pick up one without picking them all up.)
People caught up in an enmeshed system divorce their minds.
The opposite of enmeshment is estrangement, a way some systems develop to control the many threatening feelings (anger, guilt, fear, sorrow) that naturally arise but are too dangerous to express in response to the disease of addiction. This is as much of a control strategy as enmeshment. It just looks different, more like a bunch of closely related people all in thick rubber suits with slits for the eyes. They don't talk, feel, hear, touch (just brush up against each other if necessary)—and can barely see. But they all feel safe as they go about the business of living together.
People caught up in estranged systems divorce their hearts.
Either way you sob inside.
This is life as apocalypse now. It’s like living life in a mine field with no time or energy for anything but constant watchfulness and mental, emotional and physical tension.
In this play each daughter copes, taking on a role in order to control the chaos. The oldest is the “hero” who tries to achieve some respectability for the whole by doing it right, if not perfectly. The middle daughter is the “clown,” trying to control by distracting attention from the pain, and the youngest daughter is the “lost child” who controls by being passive and self-denying, believing that her quietism alone will control the raucus “caucus.” All roles fail to achieve the desired end.
The central characters (parents, daughters, aunt, granddaughter, cousin and in-laws) are drawn and rendered with tenderness not sentimentality and a fierce attentiveness to the irony and humor of the situation. But somehow they all care about each other. And in the end their individuality breaks through the armor of the adopted role. Who cares if their choices are functional? Who cares about the outcome at this point? Truth is revealed. They leave one by one.
All this unfolds because of an excellent script, exceptionally gifted actors and an unexpected twist in the parental dynamic that bring both death and new life.
Estelle Parsons plays the “villain” no less trapped in the system than the others but rising above it in spite of her drug-induced haze by telling the truth with a scalpel for a tongue and no compassion. Yet we witness a transformation here too although she ends up as tragedy would have it abandoned, sick, and as wounded as the rest with less chance of escape.
I found redemption, something I think all great art must have, not only in the characters' individual triumphs but in the final collapse of the matriarch who stumbles upstairs to seek refuge in the arms of the outsider, the family housekeeper, the one who stays for the most part outside the melee and so is able to cradle the pathetic matriarch and croon a lullaby.
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
2010.05.05 Fleshing It Out
All flesh.
Beautiful young and beautiful old.
Wrinkled and smooth,
bright pink, coffee, opaque silver, chocolate
freckle-flecked and acne-pocked—meeting ground for divine grace.
All flesh.
Flesh bloated with Spirit—meeting ground for grace
I wonder if flesh energy alone
propels this train forward, hurdles it into the big city
transporting people (SRO)
people eager to
walk twenty miles for hunger,
some hoping to make it
some sure they will never tire
all ready for their own thirst and hunger
and wholehearted pride
But I, not walking today, get caught in the roil,
the heat that spins off all that energy.
I close my eyes, thank them all, feel grateful
for the great kenosis at Park Street
center of the Hub—or the Universe.
And here it was, realized on the T in Boston early one Sunday morning.
Beautiful young and beautiful old.
Wrinkled and smooth,
bright pink, coffee, opaque silver, chocolate
freckle-flecked and acne-pocked—meeting ground for divine grace.
All flesh.
Flesh bloated with Spirit—meeting ground for grace
I wonder if flesh energy alone
propels this train forward, hurdles it into the big city
transporting people (SRO)
people eager to
walk twenty miles for hunger,
some hoping to make it
some sure they will never tire
all ready for their own thirst and hunger
and wholehearted pride
But I, not walking today, get caught in the roil,
the heat that spins off all that energy.
I close my eyes, thank them all, feel grateful
for the great kenosis at Park Street
center of the Hub—or the Universe.
* * * *
I wrote this poem because I suddenly felt awed by so much enspirited human flesh eager to help others raise money so all flesh would have enough to eat. I thought of the God of Jesus who chose to create, empower, inhabit all human flesh; I thought of the biblical prophet Joel who centuries ago wrote a true vision and put it in the divine mouth. “I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see vision. Even on the male and female slaves, in those days, I will pour out my spirit.” (Joel 2:28)And here it was, realized on the T in Boston early one Sunday morning.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
True Love is Always Steadfast and Chooses Life
Just recently my marriage partner, aka husband (I can hardly keep up with gender role diversity!) said something beautiful and true.
We were engaging in a regular practice at our Education for Ministry (EfM) group. We call it spoking in. Doing spokes is a metaphor for checking in or getting on board together after we have prayed and before we begin the theological reflection for the day.
Spoking-in is a metaphor. It brings to mind the image of a wheel with a sturdy rim and center and many spokes to connect center to outer edges. For us the center is Christ, the rim is the huge embrace of Godde keeping it all safe and moving, and our lives with all their many complexities are the spokes.
Often we mentors offer a suggestion or question to focus the group’s spokes. This week the question came from a scriptural invitation. It contains promise and consequence in the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 30:19) who tells the faithful: “See, I have set before you life and death, good and evil, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live . . .”
We asked the group to share a time, recent or distant, when they had made a conscious decision to choose life. (It’s an easy question—and not, if you dare to think about it.) Responses ranged from taking a pass and time to reflect, to recalling major life choices, to sharing choices still beset with uncertainty.
My husband, co-mentor and brother priest responded with care saying something like: “Over the years I have chosen life many times as a father. I have chosen life by choosing to let my children have their own lives, that they may live. I have chosen to be steadfast in love and keep connection rather than to try to intervene or control.”
I felt tears as I listened to this fatherly love.
I have watched this style of his and seen his frustrations too, and my own. Why didn’t you say something? How come you didn’t ask?
I also felt some envy since I can be a mother whose love blurts and blats my own thoughts or anxieties. Maybe it’s my chatty gender. Many times I am quite wise in spite of it all.
There’s a place for all style and kinds of love of course, and all kinds are held in the mystery of divine love which supports us from within in the courage to speak out as well as the serenity to accept and wait.
All true love is steadfast; all true love chooses life.
We were engaging in a regular practice at our Education for Ministry (EfM) group. We call it spoking in. Doing spokes is a metaphor for checking in or getting on board together after we have prayed and before we begin the theological reflection for the day.
Spoking-in is a metaphor. It brings to mind the image of a wheel with a sturdy rim and center and many spokes to connect center to outer edges. For us the center is Christ, the rim is the huge embrace of Godde keeping it all safe and moving, and our lives with all their many complexities are the spokes.
Often we mentors offer a suggestion or question to focus the group’s spokes. This week the question came from a scriptural invitation. It contains promise and consequence in the mouth of God (Deuteronomy 30:19) who tells the faithful: “See, I have set before you life and death, good and evil, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live . . .”
We asked the group to share a time, recent or distant, when they had made a conscious decision to choose life. (It’s an easy question—and not, if you dare to think about it.) Responses ranged from taking a pass and time to reflect, to recalling major life choices, to sharing choices still beset with uncertainty.
My husband, co-mentor and brother priest responded with care saying something like: “Over the years I have chosen life many times as a father. I have chosen life by choosing to let my children have their own lives, that they may live. I have chosen to be steadfast in love and keep connection rather than to try to intervene or control.”
I felt tears as I listened to this fatherly love.
I have watched this style of his and seen his frustrations too, and my own. Why didn’t you say something? How come you didn’t ask?
I also felt some envy since I can be a mother whose love blurts and blats my own thoughts or anxieties. Maybe it’s my chatty gender. Many times I am quite wise in spite of it all.
There’s a place for all style and kinds of love of course, and all kinds are held in the mystery of divine love which supports us from within in the courage to speak out as well as the serenity to accept and wait.
All true love is steadfast; all true love chooses life.
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
The Church Abused: Passive Aggression
Last week I posted about the abuses of the Church which are legion over the centuries in all denominations and in all religious institutions.
The Church is also the most abused institution I know. I admit it’s the one I know best but.......
It is accused of power and control issues, but there are many ways in which the “faithful” visit their own power and control issues on the church. Aggressive use of power, real or imagined, is met with passive aggression: the art of doing something that will disrupt, a little or a lot, someone else’s life—and look innocent. Believe me, it’s aggression hidden and requiring far more cunning.
Which comes first aggression or passive aggression isn’t knowable and doesn’t matter. I often ask couples how they each exercise control over the other and then how they get even. The innocent one looks stunned and the one who thinks him or herself to be guilty looks relieved. Their relationship is stuck in aggression, outright and hidden. The innocent are not so innocent.
Let me count the ways:
Always there for me for ever and ever amen: There is an assumption that the church should be or is at your service without consideration that the church and its clergy and staff also have lives, schedules, calendars and limits. For example, calling a month before your entire wedding is set in cement to tell the parish church that you wish the ceremony to take place on this time, date. Get angry if the answer is no. Someone else says yes of course hoping to gain a new member (carrott #1) and your parish is the bad “guy.”
Lying: Promising to attend church so the child you insist must be baptized can grow up and into the Christian faith and then forgetting the commitment you probably never intended to keep anyway. It’s insulting. The church gets used.
Godlike expectations for human beings: The church is expected to be like God—all loving all the time, forgetting that God is divine and has a more expansive heart than human beings.
Financial or emotional blackmail: The church suffers blows to budget and ego from blackmail, reducing or eliminating financial support because things aren’t going to your liking and indicating support will return when the place conforms. Or threatening abandonment, "I'll leave if......"
Annihilation by narcissism: Arriving late every Sunday and parading grandly all the way to the front row preferably during the sermon.
Wink, wink: Smile mightily as if happy with it all, then grumble behind closed doors or in parking lots.
Blaming: Authority and leadership are automatic enemies, scapegoated for anything. Here authority is confused with control and is demonized irrationally.
Hiding: refusal to respond to invitations to come talk about things because, you argue, you won’t get what you want so what’s the point. There is a point to reconciling conversation that is mutual and open and builds community whether any unfamiliar hymns are used or not.
Reactivity: One “bad” sermon, one “awful” hymn, even a significant loss of members in reaction to some change brings swift, silent, cowardly revenge: the evil eye, the rumor monger, the hit and run, the ample sigh, the sweet lie—anything but connection.
Chronic sourpuss: no explanation necessary.
This all is trivial and not abusive until you it becomes a way of life. Then it is like a constantly dripping faucet that makes rust, an ongoing corrosion that eats away at the system. Most church communities survive and get stronger but it still hurts and some communities become defensive, reactive, aggressive, a close inner group fortress full of fear. Abuses happen in closed systems.
The first three behaviors noted in the Bible are passive aggressive: lying, hiding and blaming. Adam and Eve are persuaded that Yahweh God has been deceptively restrictive on the advice of a snake, so they eat the forbidden fruit. When God comes to see how they’re doing they hide and cover their nakedness; then they lie about what has happened followed by passing blame around like a hot potato, the buck around ending it up on the snake’s slithery back for all time. The Bible gets it.
God was innocent of aggressive tactics but the church is not. God, however, offers the one healing solution for both sides of the tug of war: love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. It's a great commandment. Helps you get a grip on who's in charge.
The Church is also the most abused institution I know. I admit it’s the one I know best but.......
It is accused of power and control issues, but there are many ways in which the “faithful” visit their own power and control issues on the church. Aggressive use of power, real or imagined, is met with passive aggression: the art of doing something that will disrupt, a little or a lot, someone else’s life—and look innocent. Believe me, it’s aggression hidden and requiring far more cunning.
Which comes first aggression or passive aggression isn’t knowable and doesn’t matter. I often ask couples how they each exercise control over the other and then how they get even. The innocent one looks stunned and the one who thinks him or herself to be guilty looks relieved. Their relationship is stuck in aggression, outright and hidden. The innocent are not so innocent.
Let me count the ways:
Always there for me for ever and ever amen: There is an assumption that the church should be or is at your service without consideration that the church and its clergy and staff also have lives, schedules, calendars and limits. For example, calling a month before your entire wedding is set in cement to tell the parish church that you wish the ceremony to take place on this time, date. Get angry if the answer is no. Someone else says yes of course hoping to gain a new member (carrott #1) and your parish is the bad “guy.”
Lying: Promising to attend church so the child you insist must be baptized can grow up and into the Christian faith and then forgetting the commitment you probably never intended to keep anyway. It’s insulting. The church gets used.
Godlike expectations for human beings: The church is expected to be like God—all loving all the time, forgetting that God is divine and has a more expansive heart than human beings.
Financial or emotional blackmail: The church suffers blows to budget and ego from blackmail, reducing or eliminating financial support because things aren’t going to your liking and indicating support will return when the place conforms. Or threatening abandonment, "I'll leave if......"
Annihilation by narcissism: Arriving late every Sunday and parading grandly all the way to the front row preferably during the sermon.
Wink, wink: Smile mightily as if happy with it all, then grumble behind closed doors or in parking lots.
Blaming: Authority and leadership are automatic enemies, scapegoated for anything. Here authority is confused with control and is demonized irrationally.
Hiding: refusal to respond to invitations to come talk about things because, you argue, you won’t get what you want so what’s the point. There is a point to reconciling conversation that is mutual and open and builds community whether any unfamiliar hymns are used or not.
Reactivity: One “bad” sermon, one “awful” hymn, even a significant loss of members in reaction to some change brings swift, silent, cowardly revenge: the evil eye, the rumor monger, the hit and run, the ample sigh, the sweet lie—anything but connection.
Chronic sourpuss: no explanation necessary.
This all is trivial and not abusive until you it becomes a way of life. Then it is like a constantly dripping faucet that makes rust, an ongoing corrosion that eats away at the system. Most church communities survive and get stronger but it still hurts and some communities become defensive, reactive, aggressive, a close inner group fortress full of fear. Abuses happen in closed systems.
The first three behaviors noted in the Bible are passive aggressive: lying, hiding and blaming. Adam and Eve are persuaded that Yahweh God has been deceptively restrictive on the advice of a snake, so they eat the forbidden fruit. When God comes to see how they’re doing they hide and cover their nakedness; then they lie about what has happened followed by passing blame around like a hot potato, the buck around ending it up on the snake’s slithery back for all time. The Bible gets it.
God was innocent of aggressive tactics but the church is not. God, however, offers the one healing solution for both sides of the tug of war: love God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength and your neighbor as yourself. It's a great commandment. Helps you get a grip on who's in charge.
* * * *
I am grateful that most parishes I know well in the Episcopal church do not make this a way of life. I'm also grateful that I have learned not to take it personally, most of the time. And most of all I am grateful to know this truth: that there is nothing like a community of prayer and compassion, a community defined by this identity and ethic, that is in fact there for me at all times. It's called Church.
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