2014.12.21 Nativity Pageant: Getting Christ Born Again—and Again, and Again

I jumped into something for the wrong reason, or so it seemed. The Nativity Pageant, a drama I have witnessed many times over in various Christian parishes, is a tradition I’ve loved and still do. Taking on the organization of a parish pageant is, however, quite another thing from being an adoring parent watching—and not the usual comfort zone for an introvert like myself. Angels, help!

I can remember when our 4 children were young and used to put on their own home pageants. They would dress up in bathrobes, crowns, aka old hats, a broom for a shepherd’s crook, wire hangers with tissue paper (or ripped pajamas) for angels wings, and a makeshift cradle. I don’t remember what they used for straw. The two older sisters would produce, direct, and have the most important roles, i.e.Mary and the Narrator. The younger brothers would follow orders, very happy to wear crowns and hold crooks, or be Joseph. The reluctant Siamese cat, Coco, was always cast in the role of the baby Jesus, a star role in which she was most uncooperative, scratching anyone who tried to restrain or swaddle her. Mostly there was an audience of one, me. I applauded and adored, as one should for any effort done with such earnest care and cool.

I said I offered to help with this parish pageant for the wrong reasons. What I meant was: I was tempted by my own idea that I could give this great Christian story some extra gravitas within its essential simplicity. Such arrogance!— however, there was a natural break in the adult director roles, so I jumped in, running a phrase from Psalm 107 (translation by Pamela Greenberg) through my mind: They cried out to you about all that made quiver their minds. From all constraints, you lifted them safely away.

I had two agendas. First, that a pageant is a procession with a tableau, not a play. And second, that the story be narrated as it is in the scriptural texts. Oh, one more item: I wanted a swaddled baby doll, not a real baby, to play Jesus. (I was thinking of Coco the cat and the real possibility of a screeching infant. I’m sure Jesus squawked, as all babies do, but just not for this pageant, please.) Others agreed, and off we went. I put together a new script, added a verse of appropriate carols for traveling music to get shepherds, angels, Magi, and the pregnant espoused Mary up the aisle, her faithful, beloved Joseph at her side.

Besides the Narrator, there was only one speaking part for a child. The Angel Gabriel announces to Mary her key role: helping God do a new thing in the world. Our Gabriel, a beautiful young girl of about 10 delivered her one line with angelic flourish and we got a tall redheaded boy to be the Star of wonder. Gabriel's offer was one the young Mary could not refuse. Well, she protested a little. Scripture, tactfully, doesn’t tell us much about Joseph’s feelings, but we can only imagine. My bet is that he helped deliver his son.

Two wonderful Church School teachers and several parents helped, really directed, because I don’t know the children well yet, and I'm terrible at diving into such things, scrambling through mounds of varied costuming variations to locate just the right outfit amongst years of accumulated gear. (I am a good mother, but I'm not as good a mother for young children. I'd rather watch and listen to their amazing antics and verbal precocity, then later listen to their wisdom and their trials as they grow up.) 

The night before the pageant I had a small nightmare: what if we don't have enough wings for all the angels?

But I needn't have worried. The marvelous sea of childhood chaos, earnestness, and innocent wisdom prevailed to offer this gift to parents, to the church, and most of all to Christ. We all helped God get Jesus Christ born again this year.  Thumbs up and high fives....... we did it: Christ is born again in Bethlehem or Massachusetts or Anywhere.  

 

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 

And sure enough, my mind stopped quivering and I felt born again myself!
  

2014.12.14 Fear Not . . .But . . .

The phrase most frequently repeated in the New Testament is “Fear not,” or some version thereof. I find the phrase a comforting half-truth. Of course we have fear, and the wise writers of scripture acknowledge our fear, yet “fear not” is not a condemnation but a consolation.

Being able to feel fear is healthy. Like pain, fear tells us, that something is threatening, something is amiss.  Fear can be a motivator. It shoves us into action, often with great courage—not to erase fear, but to refuse to let it dominate our psyche and soul, to refuse to let it paralyze us. 

When fear dominates we can not hear the Word of God inside us, nor can we listen well to our own good sense or the counsel, or even love, of others.  When the disciples felt afraid they either went into high-gear military mode (let’s fight to kill) or they fell asleep (let’s refuse to acknowledge that there is danger, let’s take care of it tomorrow.)

Ironically, Jesus Christ presented a real trauma (something over which you have no control happens to you that scares and scars you, almost to death) to the world in which he lived, and taught, and healed, and died, and was resurrected. He scared the living hell out of them with his gospel. Jesus advertised a God who could reverse the worst of human conditions by the power of Love.

Jesus trusted the God he proclaimed, yet he was not free of fear; in fact, according to the accounts of the New Testament gospel writers, he sweated it out in the garden of Gethsemane where he prayed fervently just scant days before he would be arrested and executed. What made Jesus different, and therefore irresistible—followable—was that he did not succumb to terror’s paralysis. He was neither free of fear, nor naive to its effects, both internally and externally. Terror was all around. He just did not let it cause a mental, emotional or spiritual blackout!
  
Fear not is a prayer.

Jessica Stern, in her 2010 memoir,  Denial. A Memoir of Terror, relates her own experience of  the terror and trauma of rape. She writes about the disturbing side effects of trauma: “Denying one’s fear makes it possible to survive a life-threatening event but also impairs the capacity to feel fear and worse still, impairs the ability to love.”

I think this is why Jesus Christ spoke of love and fear in almost the same breath. It’s so easy for Christians to deny and push away the fear in our story. In Advent we want to jump into Christmas jollity. In Lent we want to leap into Easter joy. My God, you can hear Christmas jingles blasting in gas stations as you pump your gas. Ick! This is why Advent is important. It reminds us of the dark side of our world. The only way we can feel the love, is if we also can feel fear.

In Easter images that depict Christ resurrected, the wounds from his cricifixion are always pictured. Without them it wouldn't be a true image. The wounds of Christ survive biological death!

Do Christ's wounds also survive biological birth? Are the wounds present from the beginning? I've never seen an artistic rendering of the manger scene with wounds on the infant Christ, have you?   That would be too much, no? Symbolic crucifixion marks on a newborn, the wounds of human mortality on divinity from the beginning? Way too frightening! Or not.......... 

2014.12.07 A Very Wise Spiritual Autobiography

Some clergy have definite ideas on the timing of calls to ordained vocation. If you’re not called before you’re 50, or some definite age, well, it is too late for you to fulfill your calling. That sounds ageist to me. It also is not my take on vocation. Such a schedule is too tight and rigid, ungodly really, and we gave up corsets for us, and for Godde, long ago, no?  I think Creation is about becoming, unfolding, calling and being called —over and over and over. Like this..................
  
Autobiography In Five Short Chapters

Chapter I
I walk down the street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I fall in.
I am lost... I am hopeless.
It isn't my fault.
It takes forever to find a way out.

Chapter II
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I pretend I don't see it.
I fall in again.
I can't believe I am in this same place.
But it isn't my fault.
It still takes a long time to get out.

 Chapter III
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I see it there.
I still fall in... it's a habit... but,
my eyes are open.
I know where I am.
It is my fault.
I get out immediately.

Chapter IV
I walk down the same street.
There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.
I walk around it.

Chapter V
I walk down another street.
- Portia Nelson

Walking down another street, of course, is not the end of this story. Can the deep hole be repaired? If it's a pot hole in Cambridge, MA, probably not. But if it is a rent in a relationship, there is hope to rebuild torn trust. It takes time and willingness on all sides. But repair is as much a way of life as endless creation, vocation, becoming. We keep on walking down streets.

2014.11.30 Final Shout Out for Thanksgiving

I'm resisting letting go of Thanksgiving, mostly because it's my favorite holiday. My first reason for that is that at Thanksgiving there are no gifts!  More deeply, gratitude has become such a cheapened virtue, sadly akin to grace. We live in a very spoiled culture—consumed by consumption. It's nice to have a holy day devoted just to being grateful for who we are, and that's all.

Author Steve Almond, in his November 30, 2014, Boston Globe article, "Full of Nothing," poses a good question: "How do we summon gratitude in an age dominated by grievance. . . . It is this grinding ingratitude that leave us spiritually empty . . . and drives our ravenous consumption."

Would we rather gripe than be thankful?  Sometimes, yes, but not always. 

When I worked in an Alcohol/Drug rehabilitation Center some years ago, I'd get tired of the patients always talking about having "an attitude of gratitude." It sounded like such a cliché—until I saw tears roll down cheeks and listened to story after story about how their Higher Power had given them another chance, and a third and a fourth and a fifth. Gratitude overwhelmed the gripe and the groan for many. Those who stayed with the gripe refused the grace—until they showed up again, and often again. We used to joke about the revolving door, yet these same hopefuls, driven by a tragicomic combination of hope and despair, were always welcome and always ready to try again—and fail again. 

A poem I saw on the NYC Subway train, part of an poster promoting “Ragtime,” a musical first produced in 1996 and revived in 2009, is by the poet, Kevin Young, born in 1970. I liked it!

Like hot food
I love you

like warm
bread and cold

cuts, butter
sammiches

or, days later, after
Thanksgiving

when I want
whatever’s left.


Is gratitude what's leftover, or is gratitude where we locate the leftovers of God?  Or both?

2014.11.27 A Day of Giving Thanks and Praise

2014.11.23 Book Review and a Touch of the Reign of Christ

 BOOK REVIEW:   A CALL TO ACTION. Women, Religion, Violence, and Power by Jimmy Carter

This Sunday marks the Feast of the Reign of Christ in the Christian church. It is the last Sunday of the Christian year—a final blast of triumph for God's intervention before Chicken Little season: Advent when we all cower in fear and call on God to change the world, which Godde does four weeks later on Christmas through child birth.  It is also our 28th wedding anniversary.

There are a lot to things to be thankful for. Jimmy Carter is one.

Jimmy Carter may be our most famous EX-president. Right now he is the oldest at 90, and his voice is strong and more courageous than ever. In this book he packs it all in—everything you would want to know about the issues facing women in the world and church today. This book is a reference book—and more.

Carter roots his amazing capacity for justice in his childhood: biblical religion, the church community where he is still a member, his family, and the deep south. As a young boy, Jimmy felt the incongruence between the free spirit of interaction he experienced with black children and adults, and the segregations imposed on them by his church and culture. How come they couldn’t grow up together being together?

To this childhood truth and question, he devoted his life—understanding this strange injustice and doing something about it. His “Mama,” I’m sure, gave his politics a push. At a White House function she once exclaimed to the King of Morocco, who gave her an enormous bottle of Chanel #5, “You’re just like every other man off on a trip without his wife!”

I first “met” Jimmy Carter on television in 1969 when we were living in Alabama, a foreign country to my cold-conditioned dour New England bones and my, sometimes snarky, feminist discontent. He was campaigning for the governorship of Georgia. I was suddenly arrested by his voice. Who was this man—a deep-south southerner named Jimmy? Not usually my type, but I was hooked. I couldn’t vote, but I hoped he’d win.  

We moved back north within a year, and I forgot about Jimmy Carter until he turned up running for President as a political outsider talking about truth in government in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Political truth-telling sounded refreshing. I voted for Gerald Ford because I was proud of his courage in pardoning Nixon, but Carter won. He wasn’t a charismatic president, however he kept his word about truth, staying true to his early egalitarian vision. 

In the midst of my midlife madness, I more or less forgot about him again. But when, in 2000, Carter, a third-generation Southern Baptist, severed, after 70 years, his ties with their Convention over its opposition to women serving as pastors, I finally knew what I’d seen in him that day in Alabama. He had religious convictions, not just political positions. 

Then I read A Call To Action and found all Carter’s theology, spirituality, religion, politics, and bits of his personal story articulated in a way that turned me into a fan for life. He argues that “the deprivation and abuse of women and girls, largely caused by a false interpretation of carefully selected religious texts has a devastating effect on economic prosperity caused by the loss of contributions of half the human beings on earth.”

Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, have risen above many things that keep the world and the church  warring, while maintaining their own deep religious and moral convictions and spiritual practices. Such equanimity is remarkable, especially in this age of fear and narcissism.

The Carters oppose abortion, extramarital sex, and other practices that today in some circles and countries are acceptable, yet their governing belief transcends personal ethics, especially when it comes to non-violence and the dignity of all living things. It sounds like the Book of Common Prayer's baptismal covenant, our code of ethics in the Episcopal church.

The overarching issue that drives this book is eradication of violence against women and those made vulnerable by poverty, disease and other conditions.  “Violence and sexual abuse is easy if the “victim” is considered inferior—even by God.” Carter includes a lot of biblical interpretation and condemns literalist male clergy who preach in ways that perpetuate injustice and confuse God’s will with their own for the sake of keeping their power in tact.

Well before liberation theology became official theology, Jimmy Carter noticed that Jesus Christ was the greatest liberator who ever lived, and that the lex talonis (eye for an eye morality) was more important to Christians than the teachings of the Prince of Peace. 

This book is thorough to a fault—really an elaborated reference book. Chapters include: The Bible and Gender Equality, Full Prisons and Legal Killings, Sexual Assault and Rape, Violence and War, Women and the Carter Center, Genocide of Girls, Slavery and Prostitution, Spouse Abuse, “Honor” Killings, Genital Cutting (justified by NO Holy Scriptures,) Child Marriage and Dowry Death, Politics, Pay, and Maternal Health.

Quotes and documents about every aspect of the political process toward peace and justice are included. There are fascinating stories and details about human rights heroes around the globe, and specific examples of what Carter and Rosalynn have done for the cause, not the least of which was to found, in 1982, The Carter Center—Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. It's a non-governmental, not-for-profit organization.

Jimmy Carter is not a prophet like MLK, or a charismatic orator like JFK; he is a steady-state, devoted plodder and activist for the common good. This book is no page turner. Its very thoroughness, as well as the clear and dispassionate writing style, can get boring. Nevertheless, it is a book for study and enlightenment, individually and communally, and a book for every parish library.  

From Rita Sharma, Cofounder and President of Women Thrive Worldwide: 

There is no religion that despises women.

Hatred cannot come from the heart of God . . . only humans

 have the capacity to see and treat others as less than they truly are.

It is our minds and hearts that must change to release

women, girls, men and boys

from the bondage of gender-based limitation or violence.

 That change is coming, have faith.  It will be here soon.

2014.11.16 Stretching for Age in Gratitude

It seems odd to be grateful for aging, yet I am, because aging calls me to do things I might not have done, oh, even ten years ago.

What stretches me, quite literally, is my yoga practice.We are instructed to stretch our bodies to our "edge," but not beyond, not to create pain. Now, what a temptation such instruction wards off! (This lovely image is called Dancer's Pose. It's not me. I can do the pose but I sure don't look like this:0)

My culture would tell me to push—do more, be more. My ego would say, show off.  I’ve done this most of my life. Push. Push. Push. This is what my Lord’s prayer warns me against, the temptation I pray God will lead me away from. All my life I’ve prayed this, and all my life I’ve pretty much failed to heed its wisdom. Aging, however helps. It forces mindfulness; it makes me listen.

My attitude, mind you, isn’t greatly transformed. It’s my body. She talks back to me now. Living in a older body that can be crotchety, keeps me mindful of my “edge.” The yogic instruction is good body wisdom. It is also good spiritual wisdom. 

When I stretch my body, I also stretch my soul. We work together more closely now. We don't go over the edge. If it weren’t for the gentle reminders of aging, I’d push the edge.

I know this because when we first retired we moved into a city. I grew up in a big city, New York. I was thrilled to get back to city sidewalks and storefronts to gaze into, watching for my reflection and checking out the wares. There is a lovely 55-acre park near where we live, so I have plenty of opportunity to walk in nature and watch the garb of each season unfold in its course. It’s a perfect balance.

Then I fell, not once but thrice, and apparently for no reason, though I blamed the heaving sidewalks.

But I know I didn’t trip. I was lucky and only suffered black eyes and bruises, but I felt afraid. Medical tests revealed that nothing was wrong with my brain or bones. So? Aging? Yes, brains age along with everything else. My elderly brain let me know that it could no longer stretch itself to walk and daydream at the same time. I would have to be mindful of my steps.

Grateful for these little salvations, I developed a body-soul practice: Every day before my feet hit the floor, I thank God that I can walk. Every day that I take my first morning stretch and breathe, I thank God for my aging lungs that still inhale and exhale, like a bellows to keep me going. Every day I bless my body and give it a word of thanks for accompanying my wild and wandering mind and my roaming spirit—just not over the edge.

With each step I take, I say this mantra to the rhythm of my pace: pick up your feet and fear not. The first part is my own reminder to my feet, and the second I got from Jesus and Mary.

I also thank Godde for the blessing of marriage and a good man (also full of gripes about THE church!) Also, lots of good friends and good Mercy sisters where I am an associate. And for the Holy Eucharist that feeds me daily with grace. If God can stuff grace into that tasteless old wafer we call “bread,” then Christ can surely get some grace into me—and you and you and you, aka everyone who reaches for it.