Good Things to Find Out Late in the Game

Today I had to sit down and plan a baptism. Not a real baptism, mind you; rather, a baptism for our class “Liturgical Leadership” (a class affectionately known by most as “Magic Hands”). In this last semester of seminary, the class is one of several grand wrap-ups that are meant to pull together everything we've learned and send us out ready to be priests. In Liturgical Leadership we each design a service and then lead as presider (the class entails various Eucharists, Good Friday, Marriage, Funeral, etc.). I get to do a baptism. I've had to imagine the community where it will take place, drum up a willing mom and baby, find at least one godparent, and today, sit down and sketch out the service.

As I was planning the service – picking hymns, thinking over the use of space and symbols, etc. - I realized that I have done a LOT of liturgy planning over the course of seminary. You would expect this. The pleasant realization was that I have yet to get tired of it. I enjoy it. It remains fun.

Back when I was an archaeologist, there was a lot about the job that could be annoying – difficult weather, difficult people, boring projects, annoying logistical problems. However, I never got tired of being on archaeological sites. During excavations I simply enjoyed the slow and steady and technical work and I got a kick out of walking around a site with a trowel in my back pocket. I always enjoyed finding sites and munching around, exploring them, seeing what I could see. I still do, as a matter of fact.

So, I'll take it as affirming that one of the basic aspects of a priestly job – liturgy planning – still holds appeal for me. It's not the only thing I still like – I've yet to get tired of sermon writing, I enjoy researching community issues and trying to connect them with theological insights. I'm sure there will be less than thrilling aspects of this job – any job entails humdrum and annoying aspects. The fact that I still like big parts of the work is probably a good sign. Which, here near the end of this long trip, I'm pleased to find out.

Lenten Discipline

As of tomorrow, Lent comes around again at seminary. After three years of this, I'd have to say that Lent is the most noticeable liturgical season at my seminary at least. There are a wide variety of liturgical changes in chapel worship – more use of the Confession of Sin, use of the Trisagion (Holy God, Holy and Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have Mercy on Us), and a real connection between preaching and campus discussions. And, inevitably, dining room conversations will revolve around the various Lenten practices and disciplines people have in their personal life. There are a huge range of practices and deeply held theologies and ideas behind them.

If I have noticed a trend it is a frustration with “giving something up” during Lent. There is a feeling that it can be an empty asceticism, an act of self-denial with no real purpose, and it reminds people, particularly the former Roman Catholics, of being forced to give up something they liked for an annoying stretch of time when they were kids. I agree with all these arguments. There is no point in simply denying yourself for the sake of denial.

However, there are lots of good reasons for self denial. I actually have one Lenten practice that I've kept for years now – I give up alcohol. This is an old one, one people usually push against. I simply tried it years ago and have found it useful. Here's why:

Lent is a time of personal self-reflection and examination of conscience. It originated as a period of intensive preparation for Baptism – the forgiveness of sins – and still carries a sense that we need to examine what in our lives is keeping us from God and each other. I find it easiest to do this when stone cold sober. No having a beer in the evening, no sitting in a mildly buzzed (and pleasant) stupor. Not drinking frees me up to focus on what I need to examine. I don't spend all my time pondering my sins, but always being sober gives me the space to do it.

As part of our preparation for Easter, I think it is good to reflect both on the cross and tomb – our low points as people – along with the joy and abundance of the resurrection. I'm not a heavy drinker, but I do enjoy a beer, or some good wine, or a nice cocktail, they add some abundance to life. So, over the course of Lent, abstaining gives me some reflection on the tomb, and a glass of champagne on Easter reminds me of God's grace and abundance.

Finally, I think of our work in Lent as akin to preparing a garden for spring. We take a look at the dormant plants, brown and cold. We prune, we fertilize, we prepare. It is a very different time, one where we want to be intentional and directed. For me, every time I don't drink when I might have, I'm reminded of this process.

This particular discipline of self-denial works for me. I also try to add something each year, a “positive” practice. But the stability of this practice frees me to pursue other things.  

An Intentional Community

This year in seminary, among all the goings-on of my third and final year, I've moved into an intentional community. When I'm in Berkeley I'll be staying in a house a few blocks from the seminary with several other seminarians and friends and we are going to collectively experiment and try to find out what a Christian intentional community might look like in this day and age. We've set up a blog to track it, so if you're interested in how we're going about it, what works for us and what doesn't, check out the new blog  for the newly commissioned and blessed Teilhard Guesthouse!

Weird Grieving

My wife and I have been purging the basement. It's a good practice in general and, hey, we might move sometime in the next few years. I decided it was time to get rid of the stacks of archaeology reports I had from my previous life. I wanted to recycle them, but I also didn't want to dump the maps showing site locations in the regular recycling bin for any ol' looter to find. So, I went through each report, pulling out all maps and site-location data. It was a surreal version of “This is Your Life” as I went through ripping out select pages. I could remember lots of things about each project. Strange things stuck vividly in my memory – motels we stayed in, excavating an ancient firepit in the side of a pipeline trench, what a certain valley in Nevada looked like, pulling historical glass fragments out of a muddy screen in the rain. I felt rather odd through the whole purging; very quiet, very subdued.

Mixed in with all the boxes of reports I found what appeared to be a box from my last years of classes in anthropology graduate school at the U. of Chicago. It was full of pages and pages and pages of handwritten course notes and notes for research papers (this was the pre-laptop era after all). Much of it I couldn't remember writing. Here's something I thought worth quoting “Colluvial storage is the most difficult of all the sediment stores to estimate. This is, firstly, because colluvial storage is an inherent component of the distribution and pattern of soil cover, ...secondly, because it occurs in relatively minor volumes in many locations, and thirdly, because the boundaries between the processes of colluviation and alluviation are often not clear.” (1) For some now-unknown reason, I double-underlined the “secondly” and “thirdly” parts. It was an odd feeling to look upon all the note-taking, all the literature research. I filled an entire banker's box with this stuff.

The odd feeling, I think, can rightly be called grieving. It's a weird grieving. I chose to give up archaeology of my own volition. I spent considerable time thinking about it and making peace with the decision. I do not regret the choice. I may yet occasionally do some archaeology, if only for the sheer fun of it. But, nonetheless, for the most part, it has to go so I can do something else. The reports need to make room for my growing theological library; the notes need to make room for my files of liturgical materials. The truth is, I don't really want to crank out any more reports or copy out pithy quotes about colluviation. But, it is hard to not feel a bit sad to say goodbye, bit by bit, to the guy who did so much of that for so long.

Sherwin Nuland points out in “How We Die” that with death, “The operative word here is process, not act, moment, or any other term connoting a flyspeck of time when the spirit departs.” (2) It has been harder than I thought to let the archaeologist in me go. It has been a process. It still has a ways to go.

(1) A.G. Brown, “Long-term Sediment Storage in the Severn and Wye Catchments.” In Palaeohydrology in Practice, ed. by K.J. Gregory, J. Lewin, and J.B. Thornes, pp. 307-322. (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Ltd., 1987), 321.

(2) Sherwin B. Nuland, How We Die: Reflections of Life's Final Chapter, New Edition (New York: Vintage, 1995), 42.

The Poverty of Gaga Theology

What makes us certain we are saved? Or, better yet, what is salvation? A wonderful and disturbing article in the Wall Street Journal highlights a common approach: I know I'm saved when I get what I want, particularly financial and social success. It turns out that Lady Gaga (along with a host of other performing artists from Elvis to Eminem) tend to hold and publicly affirm this belief. Lady Gaga apparently deeply feels that there has been a “higher power that's been watching out for me.” As the venerable Snoop Dogg puts it when speaking of his triumphs, “God makes everything happen.”

I want to first thank the author of the WSJ article for pointing out that these statements are less religion than belief. He calls it “competitive theism, a self-styled spirituality that can be overlaid on any religion...” However, I want to go a little beyond his critique. These statements are theological, they make claims about God and how God interacts with humans. Furthermore, they resonate with a certain simplistic equation of the happenstance of life with Divine Plan that has plagued Judeo-Christianity since its inception and which reaches a real height in a simplistic pseudo-Calvinism that often tries to dominate American Protestantism. From the mouths of stars they sound like the statements of all believers.

They aren't.

In fact, it's pretty poor theology and it is relatively easy to see why:

1. Let's start by exploring what “God wanted me to be famous” says about God. If Lady Gaga is right, and God intends for her to be famous, then the flipside must also be true. Those who are not famous are intended to be un-famous by God. Suddenly we have a God who is deeply invested in human fame and fortune. Why God would give a hoot about human fame and fortune is beyond me, and, indeed, beyond most traditional theology and any rigorous Christianity. Lest we forget, the more basic belief is that God has “cast down the mighty from their thrones and lifted up the lowly” (Luke 1:52). This doesn't sound like a God with a high opinion of human concepts of success.

2. The implications get worse. If your fame and wealth is due to God's plan for you, then the poverty of millions must be due to God's plan for them. This idea is repugnant, and, I and many others would argue, not supported Biblically. I lean on Liberation Theology here. I'm much more amenable to the idea that poverty is actually contrary to God's intention for creation than I am to the idea that God wants some of us to be rich.

3. If Lady Gaga (and Eminem, and Elvis, and Mr. Dogg) do have some latent memory of Calvinism in mind, it's pretty poor Calvinism. Calvin's main concern was an understanding of our standing before and relationship with God. As any good Protestant with a true Protestant Ethic will tell you, God's plan involves your soul and being – are you in right relationship with God; saved in the sense of being beloved of God? Personal financial success, while possibly related to that, is no conclusive indicator of it. Indeed, Calvin would be sure to point out that you do NOT know if you are favored by God – Ms. Gaga, et al. - fame or no fame. I'm not a big Calvinist myself, I've got enormous issues with the idea that God controls every minute detail of creation, but if you're going to sound like a Calvinist, you should at least know what you are talking about.

Ultimately though, the fundamental problem with Gaga Theology is that it only works when you are riding high on the hog. Only seeing God when you are successful, only finding God when you have material well-being, equating salvation with fame, leaves you pretty bereft when success eludes, when fortune turns, when fame is lost (or never found), when you suffer or when you become attuned to the pervasive sufferings of others. The trick is not to see God, thank God, or praise God only when you are successful. The trick is, as liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez points out, to find a way to speak of God in the midst of suffering. The trick is to avoid “...a religion of calculated self-interest, a cynical outlook that forgets the suffering of others...” (1).

To do so forces us to rethink our cherished understanding of salvation and to make the painful step of thinking beyond our selfish wants. It makes us consider that perhaps, just perhaps, salvation might consist of something beyond our own comforts. That maybe salvation is at once more fundamentally related to me – to my soul and not my social status – and at the same time beyond me, involving all of creation. Doing so opens up our possibilities in a wonderful way that Gaga Theology closes them. If salvation is not simply my own material well-being, we can also rest in the knowledge of salvation even in the midst of suffering. This strikes me as a far more wonderful gift than even fame itself.

Reference:

(1) Gustavo Gutiérrez, On Job: God-Talk and the Suffering of the Innocent. Translated by Matthew J. O'Connell. (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1987), 93.

Cue it up

When I was in college, I was a DJ for the campus radio station, WHPK (“So alternative, we don't even like their old stuff”). This was in the pre-iTunes, pre-CD era, and we spun actual vinyl records. You had to cue these records up, scratching them back and forth on the Technics turntable until you found the beginning of the song and then rolling it backwards a quarter turn. This enabled the turntable to get up to speed before the music started. You had to start the turntable a split second or two before you wanted the music to start. We took great pride in timing our fades and transitions between songs so that there was a seamless transition between each cut.

We also discovered that if you simply cued it up right on the start of the track most songs made an awesome “wwvvooorp” sound as the turntable revved up to speed, and we occasionally would do it deliberately for effect. We thought this was cool, clever, and anti-establishment.

I thought of this while leading sung Morning Prayer the other day in chapel. I've gotten to where I can sing without making people hide under the pews, but I'm still no fabulous voice. Starting canticles and hymns a capella is particularly challenging. What's gonna come out of my mouth? Will I find the note? Will WE find the note? The general grogginess of everyone in the morning only adds to the challenge. Sometimes we find that note just perfectly and sail into the songs of lamentation, petition, and praise seamlessly, like a choir of heavenly voices. A lot of times we have to slowly find it together, and the collective effect is like that badly cued record, “wwvooorp...us sing to the Lord, let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation.....”

I've decided, though, that just as in college, I kind of like the wwvoorp sound. I wouldn't record it for posterity, I wouldn't recommend it if you are the National Cathedral in Washington and trying to show people the beauty of Anglican hymnody. However, it can have a lovely feel, that moment of doubt and fear followed by the deep joy and relief when we find a key we can work in harmony; the satisfaction as we collectively search each other out, hear, and then find our voice together.

Saddle up, people.

I write this blog from the Oakland Airport, my flight delayed, probably the 7^th or 8^th roundtrip I've done this semester.

I'm not much of a blogger, that's clear.

But here's some thoughts on seminary, Year 2. One-fourth through the year. 7/12's done with seminary. Not that I'm counting.

Seminary is different, better. Better with some seminary under my belt. The existential crises are passed for now. I actually feel like I know why I'm here. It's a good feeling. Time to get down to work.

Seminary is also harder. The work is harder. More reading for my classes. More writing, meaning more deciding. Giving sermons in front of my peers, an audience both friendly and demanding. Looking directly at God, or at least as best we can when we seek God. If I thought that I had a few assumptions challenged last year, that was an introduction. Time to re-think God. There isn't much more fundamental than that.

Seminary is good. It's a good feeling. Let's put some things together. Saddle up, people, time to figure out your theology for today. What a gift, to be able to have time and help to do that.

Seminary is different. Seminary is different after a summer spent in the hospital with people dying, grieving, suffering. Families looking at me and all I can do is be there. Different after a good program that made me take a hard look at myself. A little perspective never hurts.

Seminary is different with some new faces. My face from last year. People struggling, trying so desperately to listen to a God who is mysteriously right there and so, so, far away.

“Listen, I will tell you a mystery!” St. Paul says (1 Cor 15:51a). Time to make friends with mystery. Amen.