Faceplant

I presented at Truman's Philosophy and Religion Conference. I was really excited about the resume booster and the chance to be a real scholar, presenting my scaling of the academic heights. I practiced. I made a PowerPoint. I got up early to put on a blouse and makeup (that never happens except for Sunday morning!)
I clickity-clacked my way in brown leather heels over to the presentation room, greeted professors with a tight-lipped smile, and daintily ate a complementary bagel. An attractive, tweed-blazer clad student from Missouri Western got up before the podium. 
He's cute, he looks professional, but MO Western? Truman is way better! How good of a presentation is this going to be?
Thirty seconds into the presentation, and the answer became apparent: Very. He sounded like a professor, full of philosophical theories that soared way above anything I'd ever heard of. 
After what seemed like a long time but no time at all, it was my turn to set up my presentation while everyone else chatted and headed for the buffet table. And so began Calamity #1. In my exhaustion the night before, I accidentally downloaded my paper to the flash drive instead of the PowerPoint. Well, because I hadn't brought any notes, because I never speak with notes, there was no way I was going to be able to give this speech. No way.
Trembling, I went up to the conference coordinator. "Um, my flash drive is saying my file is corrupted," I lied, voice strained with forced calm. "I don't know what happened."
Just then, the next presenter, equally attractive and snazzily dressed, walked in. "Uh, hello. I'm having some technological difficulties and I'm wondering if you'd mind switching with me."
"No problem," he replied with a toothy grin.
Trying to smile back, I nodded and half-walked, half-jogged in my heels back to my room and downloaded the PowerPoint. It's going to be okay. It's going to be okay, I kept telling myself. 
Finally I made it back to the presentation room, in time to hear an extremely intelligent sounding presentation combining the story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac with feminism, semiotics, and psychoanalysis. "Of course, there's really no objective reality in this story, no white bearded god in the sky telling Abraham what to do and making everything all right in the end," the presenter said as a kind of aside, as if this were obvious. But I know the God of Abraham is real. I talk to him every day. I sing his praises every Thursday and Sunday. 
And then, it was my turn. After a minor calamity of the projector briefly not working, the computer finally projected my PowerPoint. I grinned. It was going to be okay!
And so I began to give my presentation. I heard my voice fill the room, slightly trembling, anxious. I've never liked the sound of my own voice, and hearing it reverberating around the room was a little frightening. As I kept talking, it was easier to continue, as long as I blocked out the fact that my presentation was so much more simple and informal compared to everyone else's. Finally, thankfully, the thing was over. 
"Any questions?" I asked.
The hand of one of my philosophy professors shot up into the air. And that was the beginning of Calamity #2. 
"Yes?" I asked, hoping for a softball. 
I don't remember exactly what she said, and I don't want to. I just know she shot right through my argument, tore it in two. Well, not all of my argument, but a good 20% of it. I tried to argue back politely, even though I wasn't convincing myself.
"No, no," she said sharply. "No. You're wrong. I can help you go back and fix this paper. But this is wrong."
She said this in front of everyone: all the philosophy and religion professors from Truman, faculty from other schools, Attractive Snazzily Dressed Egghead Male Philosophy Presenters, two friends who came, a couple students in my classes, some freshmen logic students. Everyone. Everyone. 
Luckily, there were more questions, most of them much easier to answer. Although at one point a professor and a student started talking to each other and ignoring me, and I didn't know how to break in.
"David," one of my favorite religion professors said, "let Jessica talk, please."
I was embarrassed but grateful to have control again of the session. I gave what seemed to me like a satisfactory answer. A student tried to jump in, but the conference coordinator announced that we were out of time. 
Thank God! I thought. I ejected my flash drive, grabbed my purse, and walked quickly past the professor who shot my presentation. Luckily, she was too engrossed in conversation to talk to me. The way I felt at that moment, I didn't want to talk to anyone. 
I thought I was a scholar. This conference proved that I am not. I am a college student, and a pretty good one at that. But I'm not an academic, and probably never will be. Learning that really hurt. 
But here's the thing.
Jesus still loves me.
My family and friends still love me.
I am still going to have communion at church (today, now that it's after 1 AM).
I will still graduate from Truman. 
And God still has a place for me in his kingdom, given me gifts and graces by which I can contribute to his church.
But I'm still upset. I guess it's high time I accept that I will never be an academic, that I'm not as intelligent as I wish I were, and that in God's kingdom, intelligence is nice, but not really worth all that much. Just like Attractive Male Philosopher who said the story of Abraham isn't really about God because there is no God. In the eyes of the world, A.M.P. said something intelligent. In the eyes of God, A.M.P. is missing out on grace. 
Grace is more important than intelligence. I long ago traded my dreams of Yale, theology, musty books, critical acclaim, for something bigger. 
Let me, God, hold babies before you, lift the dead up to you, bring your good news to the poor. 
I would rather live inside the church than write about it. Not that I'm judging any academics; I admire their passion, their smarts. But God did not give that to me.
Instead, through this awkward conference experience, I have learned about what I am and am not. I learned that it's important to try new things, and know that failure isn't a big deal in the grand scheme of things, because the grand scheme of things is held by God. 
I'm okay. Yeah, maybe I got Augustine all wrong. But, by God's grace, I haven't gotten Jesus all wrong. In God's eyes, that's what counts. 

Baby Boys

I love my baby brother. But if he knew I'm calling him "baby," he might try to strangle me. He's twelve, going on thirteen. I feel that he has always been a part of my life, and there is nothing he could do to make me love him less. Plenty to annoy me, yes, but I'm his big sister for life. I was seven when he was born, and I loved him instantly. I still can't believe he's nearly a teenager. Where did his babyhood go? Where is the boisterous toddler who ran everywhere, with cars and dinosaurs in tow?

But I love him still, all five foot, two inches of him: the one inch taller than me, the dark fuzz growing on his lip, the soft voice he struggles to make deeper, the big brown eyes always full of thought. 

On Sunday I was running the PowerPoint at my church. I was sitting in the sound booth, paying just enough attention to run the PowerPoint properly, since I'd already worshipped in the pews earlier that morning. Beside me sat the man running the sound. He also happens to be a leader for the boys' high school youth activities. He's a big, fierce guy with a booming voice, but kind too, with a booming laugh and propensity to joke. Between us stood two teenage boys who looked barely older than my brother. Before and during the service, they talked to their youth leader, and he talked back. From the election to sports to history, they were having a lively conversation. He told them to be quiet during the sermon, though, and they did. 

My mind was wandering to the large paper I had due which I had barely started,  but I couldn't quit thinking about, subconsciously, how much these boys respected this youth leader. And then, after the sermon ended, he clapped them both firmly, lovingly, on the shoulder.

I started crying silently. I faced the wall and wiped the tears away, trying to get a grip. What was my problem?

And then it hit me. I wished my brother were up in the sound booth. Partly so I could see him, but also so he could be loved and known by this man, every bit as masculine as our former Marine father. For these two boys up here in Kirksville, worshipping and bantering with a man in church who isn't their father is teaching them 1) that real men worship God and 2) that they are children of God who deserve the love and attention of caring adults. 

None of these guys would have thought of it that way. My brother certainly wouldn't. Ironically, if they had noticed my weeping during the offertory they would have thought, "Why are girls so emotional?" as my brother often asks. But it's true. The part about girls being emotional, and the part about men investing in boys making all the difference in the world.

As of now, my brother has no strong male leader with whom to talk politics and video games in church on Sundays, no man to clap his slowly broadening shoulders with pride and affection. Yes, he has our father, and that's important. But boys need to be shepherded by more than just a dad, and more than just a pastor. 

"Jessica's the religion junkie in the family," my brother says anytime something church related comes up. Where are the men to show him church is for more than girls or people who like to study religion? Where are the men to show him that the essence of manhood is serving Jesus Christ?

I don't know. But I love my baby boy. And I want the church to take better care of him. 

The Liturgy of Roadkill

"Carrion" is a pretty word for an ugly thing: roadkill. In my poetry class on Thursday, we read a beautiful poem by Gerard Mansley Hopkins called, "Carrion Comfort," about those times you feel hopeless, like roadkill is the best you'll ever get in life and it's God's fault. I want to write liturgy using this poem, while interweaving it with (mostly) Bible verses. I don't know if this would ever work in church. It might be too raw or too obscure. But it still seems cool. The whole time in class I kept thinking how cool this would be for liturgy. I had to get it out. So here goes:
L: Let us come before the Lord with open, honest hearts.
C: Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee.
L: For in hope we were saved.
C: Not untwist-- slack they may be-- these last strands of man in me.
L: We have this hope, sure and steadfast, the anchor of our souls.
C: Nor, most weary, cry I can no more. 
L: We can do all things through Christ who gives us strength.
C: I can, can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
L: Hope in the Lord! For you shall praise him.
C: But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me thy wring-world right foot rock?
L: Blessed be God! He has not rejected our prayers or removed his steadfast love from us. 
C: Why lean a lionlamb against me? Why scan with darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones?
L: Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.
C: Why fan, O turns in tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
L: His mercies are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness!
C: Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clean?
L: And we know that in all things God works for the good of those that love him.
C: Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod, hand rather.
L: You hem us in, behind and before, you lay your hand upon us.
C: Lo! I lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, cheer. Cheer whom though?
L: Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high, I cannot attain it.
C: Cheer the Hero whose heaven-handling flung me, foot-trod me?
L: He will never, ever abandon you nor forsake you.
C: Or me that fought him? O which one? Is it each one?
L: I pray that you will, together with all the saints, know what is the height and the depth and the width of his love.
C: Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.
L: This is our God, forever and ever, and surely he will be our guide even to the end.
All: Amen

The Work of the People

Liturgy is the work of the people. I've always wanted to write an unflinchingly honest liturgy, in which people are forced to bare their souls to God and to each other, and do the hard work of admitting the truth. I'm not sure that kind of liturgy is practical in a real worship service. But I still want to try it. Bare with me. 
Liturgist: Holy God, we have strayed far from your paths.
Congregation: The road was straight, and we made it crooked. Your voice was clear, and we drowned it out with our own.
L: We are afraid to confess authentically.
C: If we admit that we are wretched sinners, who will love us? Who will rejoice in us? And from where will our pride and glory come?
L: Hear and believe the good news.
C: But we are not listening, to hear the herald of God's word. We are not believing, to trust in the goodness of our God.
L: But the Holy Spirit will enlighten the eyes of our hearts, if only we let him in.
C: We ask the Holy Spirit to open us up, though we are afraid and do not know what this request could bring.
L: From God comes abundant life, life everlasting.
C: We must give up our pet peeves for joy, our grumpiness for trust, and mourning for holy laughter.
L: You must take up your cross and follow Jesus.
C: We must trade our smiles for godly sorrow, and empty mirth for the agony of the crucified Christ.
L: Repentance requires much.
C: A new teaching, with authority! We have never been asked to give much.
L: The kingdom of God needs you, if only you would come. And your God longs for you, if only you would love him.
C: We do not know to what we are agreeing. We do not know why we were chosen.
L: Give thanks and praise to God the Father! For only in the doubts and questions, the places we do not know, can he meet us.
C: This far we know and trust.
L: Give thanks and praise to God the Son! For he willingly laid down his life for poor sinners and wretches like us.
C: This far we know and trust.
L: Give thanks and praise to God the Holy Spirit! For he stands lovingly and boldly in our midst.
C: This far we know and trust. Amen. 

The Faux Leather Purse

Well, it's almost time to register for classes. And I have no clue what I'm going to do. Drop the English major to a minor? Add a history major? History minor? Psych minor? Folklore minor? Sociology minor? The choices seem literally endless. 
A couple weeks ago I went to the church rummage sale and bought a communion chalice, a piece of wood with a picture of my church decorated for Christmas back in the 80's, and a big faux leather purse, all for a dollar and sixty five cents. It was a transcendent moment. Seriously. I kept asking God what I needed to do with my life and I end up with a picture of a church and a communion chalice. That rainy, cold Friday afternoon, I almost decided I was going to turn my back on the idea of becoming a pastor. Pull the plug on the long drawn out process. And then here I end up with a church picture and a communion chalice. 
"Calling" is such a confusing word. Biblically, I think it's something that God does and we do back. Grace is not something we passively receive. It goes back to the Wesleyan version of Arminianism: We have free will, and we can reject grace or receive it. But God is inside of you, prompting you to do the right thing. You can tune him out, but no way can you say "yes" without the grace that goes before (prevenient grace) every good thing we do.
I bought the communion chalice, church picture, and faux leather purse with my own change from my own change purse. But God whispered, drew me, called me, claimed me at the rummage sale down in fellowship hall.
Isn't it wonderful that God uses the mundane stuff of life to speak to us, to shape us? Who knew that a rummage sale would become a sacrament, where God meets us in the everyday? Life is full of sacraments. Baptismal founts, chalices, holy bread and wine are everywhere. Beware: a bike ride might be a baptism, the local diner a sacred altar.  
My fake leather purse is a reminder that God is calling me to be a grown-up lady with a grown-up purse. One day soon I'll be pumping gas in a car I bought. I'll be paying electric bills, buying pantsuits. And that's as God wills it.
My grandmother used to say, "You can't eat something you like for dinner everyday." If you're a bad cook like me, or if you're living on campus, also like me, that saying is true. You can't create the perfect schedule, either. You can't major in Religion, Philosophy, English, Sociology, Psychology, and History. Life happens: lines get crooked, toes get stepped on, feet get lodged firmly in mouth. Love slips away, tears well up. The icky dinners and boring classes become sacramental-- God meets us and claims us there-- God redeems time.
It's time to accept it, thank God for it, throw the faux leather purse over the shoulder, and move on. 

Texts of Terror Tuesday: Noah's Ark

Welcome to Texts of Terror Tuesday, the day where we look at a scary Bible passage and wrestle with it. "It's not Tuesday," you say? Well, that's how these texts of terror are. They confuse, they seem to lie, they seem to describe a God different from the God we meet in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Therefore, it's only appropriate to have Texts of Terror Tuesday on Wednesday.
That, and I was really busy yesterday. But I digress.
I want to start by looking at Noah. Quick summary: God creates a flood that wipes out the whole world, because they are all sinners, except for Noah and his family. They're supposed to put two animals on the ark and for forty days and forty nights, they hang out on the ark until God makes the flood go away. (Genesis 6-9, New Abridged Jessica Version). 
Most people have heard this story, but if you stop to really think about it, it's scary. Why does God kill everybody? Does God only love "good" people like Noah? Why all the animals on the ark? Is this story only for those crazy creationist folk? Why is this even in the Bible?!
I want to start by saying I don't think this passage is for little kids, who are just learning to meet God, who think in black and white terms and can't grapple with the complex character of God. This is for grown-ups. And I'm not sure I'm quite grown-up enough to understand, let alone explain, this Noah story. But I'll give it a shot.
Genesis 6:5-7 says, "The LORD saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the LORD was sorry he had made humankind in the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the LORD said, 'I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created-- people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.'"
My Bible's commentary says the word "grieved" is the same word used for the pain of childbirth, and that a more appropriate translation might be "anguished." God is really, really hurting here. The pride of his life-- humanity-- has totally turned away from him. And it's killing him. I think it's something like when a parent watches their child grow up and turn away from them and get into self-destructive behaviors, only multiplied across God's thousands of children, raised exponentially because his love for each lost child is greater than any mother's love we can imagine. 
And God is regretful, too. Have you ever worked really hard on a project only to see it fail? That paper you wrote got lost in cyberspace, or nobody showed up to the big event you spent weeks planning. Well, God's big project of creation failed. And God's miserable about it. 
Because really, it's hopeless. "Every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was evil continually." They've made their choice. They don't want God in their lives, they don't want to love others, and they never will. God knows it, and he's in agony. Clinically depressed, a psychologist might say.
But God has Noah and his family. So he has Noah make an ark and put the animals in it. Why not just take Noah and his family up to heaven? Humans have been just terrible, after all. But God wants to start over. He wants to give humans another shot, because as wayward and self-destructive as humans are, God loves them. A lot. And he's willing to start over, risk the pain again, because he just wants to be in relationship with humanity. Even if he has to go through a lot of crap to get there.
Notice, too, that Noah has to actually build an ark. If I were Noah, I might have been tempted to say (and definitely would have thought), "Lord, if you can make a great flood, why can't you save me some work and build this ark for me?" But it doesn't work like that. God wants partners, not pets, people who will work with him, not just receive from him. So Noah had to build that ark, every last plank. 
And why the animals? Who really cares about them? God can just make new ones, right? Well, no. God wanted Noah to participate in this plan, take care of the animals too. Apparently even animals matter to God. Maybe, in our modern day tendency to ignore nature or bulldoze it over to build out suburbs and skyscrapers, we have grieved the God who wanted to make sure every last species made it on the ark.
Now, I'm no vegetarian, nor do I feel any guilt about killing a spider. But I could definitely appreciate God's natural creations more, since apparently God cares about nature. A lot!
And there Noah waits in that ark, waiting, waiting. Why is this taking so long? he's thinking. God made the world! Why not just get this flood done real quick? I don't know. Cliched as it sounds, Noah had to trust God. When we're in the ark, caught between the past and God's plans for the future, waiting, waiting, and the dove comes back to us... we trust. God will get it done, at the right time.
Fundamentally, I think the story of Noah's Ark is a love story. Yes, it's a warning that judgment will come upon us if we turn away from God. But a few caveats: these people didn't just forget to say their prayers or say a bad word when they stubbed their toe. "The earth is filled with violence because of them"; they were "continually" evil. And furthermore, God didn't like wiping them out. He was agonized, anguished, depressed about it. But he didn't have a choice. They weren't going to change. They literally chose hell for themselves, shook their fists at God and refused his kingdom. And God's not going to force people into heaven. The Flood was the most loving thing he could do, so he could start over and try this humanity thing all over again.
God still stands before us, begging, pleading that we not turn away from him like these people did, because it would break God's heart. And like Noah, he calls us to build arks, to enter these crazy plans of his and wait, wait, wait for his timing to come.
Do I think the Great Flood really happened? No. I think it's an inspired story that challenges all who read it while proclaiming the tortured depths of God's love for every lost child. And that's more real than any literal interpretation could be.
So, thoughts? Do you think I let God off the hook too easily? Is this still a text of terror for you? What are some other texts of terror in the Bible? 

While Breaking Basic Safety Rules

So when I was walking through downtown Kirksville today, listening to music on headphones (which is very bad, by the way; you should never wander around town with one of your most important senses cut off. But shoot, I did it anyway), the song "Piano Man" by Billy Joel came on. I immediately felt inspired. Which is weird because it's a) a bit of a depressing song and b) a weird song to even have. I guess I just like weird songs. 

Anyway, I highly recommend you YouTube this. Great music.
I think "Piano Man" is a kind of parable about church, and God, and calling. My first thought, after "When exactly did I purchase this song?" was "Wouldn't it be great if church were like this bar?" I want to see a congregation with these bar patrons in it. John at the bar, a nice guy who gives Billy free drinks, who can't shake the feeling he'd rather be "a movie star." There's a crowd of businessmen, who "slowly get stoned." And Paul, "a real-estate novelist," walking the fine line between day job and daydream, Davy who will never get out of the navy, the "smiling" manager standing on the periphery, the waitresses who know how to flirt. 
I want that congregation.
All of them ache profoundly. They are unhappy with the way life is turning out, and they don't know how to turn it back around. They are, Jesus says, "the poor in spirit." Do they know that Jesus loves them? Do they know that church is supposed to be the place where the questions that haunt them, the questions they try in vain each nine o'clock on a Saturday to drown out, are addressed to the God who cares? 
If not, it's my damn fault. It's all our damn faults. "Damn" here being used in the religious sense-- God damns our failure to take to the streets and compel them to come in.
I pray that one day God will make me half the pastor Billy Joel is. (If, indeed, God is calling me to be a pastor-- that's a whole other story for a whole other time.) They talk to him, really talk to him, about the gashes on their souls. "Bill, I believe this is killing me," says John at the bar, and he knows Billy Joel won't laugh. Best of all, they ask him to sing them songs. Billy Joel takes their agony and turns it to song, so they can understand things about themselves they never knew before. And so they see God in the mess of their lives where they never knew God was, that God is redeeming them, and bartending and real estate and waitressing and the navy become high holy callings where the Lord is present!
I am not Catholic. But there's something sort of right about their understanding of priesthood: The pastor connects the people to God. The pastor stands between them, showing God all the ways his people suffer, showing the people all the ways God has been in their midst. The pastor must become the Piano Man. Or Piano Woman. And so must we all to each other-- this is not a distinctly pastoral calling, but for some reason tonight I can't help but see Billy Joel as an ordained elder. 
It might seem like the Piano Man is the main event, but really the stars of the show are the ragtag parishoners/patrons, for whom every song is written. The Psalms are addressed to God and to Davy, who's still in the navy. 
Liturgy is the work of the people. The pastor just gets to tag along. 
"And the piano, it sounds like a carnival!" The kingdom of God is like a carnival, where we escape this dreary life of failed careers and negligent lovers, and find a new jubilant reality where, like children full of cotton candy, we smile at our Father who gave it all to us. 
"And the microphone smells like a beer." Does it? Do the songs of the churches smell like beer-- familiar to Paul, the real-estate novelist, and comforting, yet full of grace he has never known? If not, it's my damn fault. It's all our damn faults.
Sing us a song! You're the Piano Man.
Here I am, Lord. Send me.