A Preaching Slam

Last night I went to a poetry slam, and it was really, really cool. It was my first time in bar, which was nice, although I didn't have anything to drink because I had a huge paper to finish. And some of the slamming poets were pretty attractive and others I'm friends with, but that wasn't it, either. 
I think poetry slams can teach me something about preaching. See, a lot of the slams were laugh out loud, uproariously funny. We were guffawing at times, and yet pierced by the stinging barb of their observations. One slammer shouted fiercely: "Don't write!" and proceeded to explain in hilarious detail why everything good that will be written has already been, and if you haven't conquered Derrida, why should the likes of you bother writing a thing? Another slammer howled that his refusal to capitalize and use proper punctuation in text messaging is actually a political statement-- and went on to explain the war between grammar Nazis and commie comma splicers. I'm making it way more boring than it was!
Humor and truth go together. And they go especially nicely with performance. 
Sort of makes me think of the prophets, and the best prophet, Jesus. I think their jibes and stinging wit get a bit lost in translation sometimes, excessively softened by our sickening sentimentalism that sees Jesus as meek and mild, cosmic Santa who walks on eggshells to never offend anybody and gives us everything we want. A good poetry slam will shatter that idol, as will even a cursory glance at the gospels or prophets. Well, cognitively shatter it, anyway; these idols remain stubbornly entrenched in our hearts without the saving grace of the living God. Sometimes that grace comes through slam poetry.
Jesus insisted the only way to live is to eat his flesh and drink his blood, with the humorous hard hitting dead serious style of slam. Isaiah proclaimed our righteousness is like filthy rags. And he didn't mean the kind you use to wash your car; he meant the ones that start off clean in the feminine hygiene aisle.
I'm sorry if I offended anybody. But Isaiah isn't, I am sure. 
Some religious people take a perverse joy in offending people, and those people are really obnoxious, ironically as bad as the Pharisees whom they claim to hate. I don't think the slammers last night were like that. They were caught up in their message and would use any means possible to rattle us, but they didn't annoy for the sake of annoying. This subtle distinction was clear in their sweaty, sincere, raw faces. And the humor helped, too. It's easier to get the point when we're all laughing or stricken by the absurd. Like when Paul says he counts it all scubula compared to the all surpassing gain of Christ-- scubula is Greek for a word for excrement also beginning with "s" in English. That probably rolled a few heads... but in laughter, in clarity, towards Jesus Christ.
Does that mean I'm going to be a cussin' preacher when/if I get a pulpit? I remember being very young but old enough to know I loved to write, and my mother telling me when (for her it was always a when) I got published, she didn't want to see any swear words and would cross them out if there were any.
So don't freak, Mom, and all the surrogate mothers and grandmothers I will gain by virtue of my ordination. I won't cuss in the pulpit, not aloud, anyway. Those slammers I saw last night would do nothing to distract from their point, from their art. And I will try my utmost to do nothing to distract people from the good news. But sometimes we get the good news best when it comes through jokes, through the absurd. 
The kingdom of God is a slam poetry night. And I pray God will make me half as good a slammer in the pulpit as the folks on the Dukum stage.

Classy Quotes

Quotes from readings in my creative nonfiction, Native American lit, and Japanese religion classes that captured my attention lately:

"I also have a commanding stare, large sad brown eyes that can either be read as gentle or severe"

"Many times, my ironic smile is nothing more than a neutral stall among people who do not seem to appreciate my 'contribution.'"-- Phillip Lapote, "Portrait of My Body"

"We gather at the shore of all knowledge as peoples who were put here by a god who wanted relatives.
This god was lonely for touch, and imagined herself as a woman, with children to suckle, to sing with-- to continue the web of the terrifyingly beautiful cosmos of her womb.
This god became a father who wished for others to walk beside him in the belly of creation.
This god laughed and cried with us as a sister at the sweet tragedy of our predicament-- foolish humans
Or built a fire, as our brother to keep us warm
This god who grew to love us became our lover, sharing tables of food enough for everyone in this whole world"-- Joy Harjo, "Reconciliation, A Prayer"

"I'm not afraid of love
or its consequence of light"-- Joy Harjo, "A Creation Story"

"For Christ's purpose is not for us to fathom. His love is a hook sunk deep into our flesh, a question mark that pulls with every breath. Some can dull themselves to the barb's presence. I cannot."-- Louise Erdrich, Tracks 

"Listening to the old stories and reading books are for the purpose of sloughing off one's own discrimination and attaching oneself to that of the ancients"

"The highest Way is in discussion with others"-- Yamamoto Tsunetomo, The Book of the Samurai 

Zen and the Art of Fast Food Service

This crazy busy-ness of this semester is testing, among other things, my blogging ability. But it's okay. I keep reminding myself: It's okay. All manner of a thing shall be well, to say it the religious way.

As I've gushed to many people less religiously nerdy than myself, I'm taking Japanese Religions this semester, and it's absolutely fascinating. Right now we are studying Zen Buddhism, a tradition that especially intrigues me in part because it seems to defy the gospel and yet hint at its promises. Zen is all about discovering your real self and getting rid of your old self. Sound like a certain Jew we all know and love? "Whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." As the old hymn says, quoting Hebrews (I think?), "My life is hid with Christ on high." And yet Zen dismisses notions of a personal deity, or any deity at all, obsessed with inner enlightenment and attainment of Buddha nature. 

Zen dismisses the mind body dualism, along with the Hebrew thinkers from Genesis straight down to Revelation. The idea that my body and my personality/soul/mind are separate is not a Jewish one. That's what we mean when we recite the Apostle's Creed: "I believe in the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting." We profess in saying the Creed that life everlasting ultimately requires restoration of our bodies, a latter day resurrection which will come when Jesus returns to set all things right. That dualism comes from Greek, gnostic, and finally Cartesian thinking. 

Anyway, Zen says the goal is to make your mind and body one. They sit in zazen or meditation for hours on end, right foot on top of the left thigh and vice versa, spine perfectly straight. They discipline their bodies. As Paul said to the Corinthians centuries before, "I beat my body and make it my slave." You must perform zazen in the proper physical position because of the oneness of mind and body. A disciplined mind needs a disciplined body. 

Christianity can get so abstract. We are caught up in thinking about the Trinity and heaven and lots of other things, while ignoring the bodies God gave us. 

My best prayer lately has been happening at McDonalds. (Seriously.) I work there a couple nights a week, and while putting on my uniform that has permanently locked in the stench of mingled grease and old ketchup, I think of Wesley's question for candidates for ministry: "Are you in debt so as to embarrass yourself?" And then I wear my hot fudge stained pants and man's sized polo that goes down to my thighs with pride.

But as I mop, sweep, take orders, get drinks, there is a kind of calmness inside. I don't know why. I just shut out everything else. You might think you're standing in front of my counter, but really it's just me and God there, and sometimes my coworkers if they feel like chatting. I'm not thinking very much about you, though, the customer. In the act of tiring out my body by running all over the store and performing menial tasks, my body is sufficiently disciplined to get my mind to shut up. And then God and I, we talk.

I'm not bragging. Really-- for somebody who's going into the ministry, I'm not a good pray-er at all. (I know, I know: there are no bad prayers, just like there are no bad coloring book pictures and no bad Mother's Day crafts.) I struggle to concentrate, to focus. An intellectual, I snobbishly see prayer as beneath me. Or I just don't care. But when I really put my body to work, God and I connect. McDonald's is a kind of zazen. Or, to put it the Christian way, I'm like Brother Lawrence, finding the Lord in fry baskets and sauce buckets. Because he's there. 

We Christians could learn a few things from the Zen folks. Like putting our bodies to work in the great work of prayer. 

Man, Wanted

Man, wanted
Who will walk me every Sunday down the aisle.
But first you will pray for me, hold my hands, then gently
Zip up that long, black preacher's robe. 

You will have more in-laws than you ever dreamed.
My mom and dad, yes-- and the church organist and the
Patriarchs, matriarchs, old timers and youth--
All wondering if you're good enough for me
Good enough to join the family.

You know that I am wedded to another.
The Builder is my husband. First.
And my ordination-- I thought that would be
The wedding.

So I don't know quite what to do with you
And you know it. And you love it, better
Love me, love the crazy life we live
Together.

Man, I am waiting for you, but please don't 
Be hurt when I say I don't really know if you're
Out there somewhere; or just in here.

Man, I know you love me and Jesus big enough 
To know. To know first a congregation
Crowded my heart but I saved a place

For you.

Of Mormons and Methodists

For my Religion and American Culture course, I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon watching a four hour documentary on the Mormons. It came out on PBS some years ago, around 2008, I think. Anyway, the Mormons are awfully fascinating. To be clear: I think there are plenty of great Mormon people. In junior high my best friend was a devout Mormon. 
But. There is a but, for me. With the lack of evidence for the historicity of the book of Mormon, the unorthodox theology of the Trinity (God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit are separate according to Mormonism), and the expansion of the cannon orthodox Christianity has known as closed for centuries... I have some problems with the Mormon faith. 
That said, there is a lot milquetoast Methodists and other mainlines can learn from Mormons. For one, the Mormons see themselves as a thoroughly separate people. As John says, they love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. To the point Broadway makes a great musical about them. Too many mainlines are, like Kierkegaard complained of the Danish Lutherans, inoculated with just enough of the Christian virus to be immune to the searing fever of the gospel. But Mormons have a distinct identity in the faith. To be not an employee, not a brother or sister or mother or father, not a student, not even an American-- but a Christian first.  That is what Jesus meant when he said give up everything and follow him. 
Mormons also know persecution. Mormons living today have grandparents who were killed for the faith in Jackson County, not far from where I sit typing this. (I'm home this weekend.) And in Illinois. They know ridicule, know the stinging loneliness of being in the world, not of it. I think we Methodists have gotten too comfortable. When was the last time I was persecuted for my faith in Jesus Christ? (Actually, I have been lashed for my convictions in the church, not the world. But I'm no martyr, except occasionally in the worst, psychological sense.) What would it look like in today's society to be a martyr with the awesome intensity of Joseph Smith?
Well, doing missionary work is certainly one way. (I'm getting to that later.) Beating the gay and abortion issues to death achieves the goal of distinction from the world, while also making Jesus look wrathful and obnoxious. I'm not really sure how martyrdom can be achieved in America. I think it starts with adopting a Mormon consciousness of separation from the world and dogged determination to live out the faith. 
One thing I love about Mormonism: no clergy! Yes, if I were born Mormon (I don't think any white clad hunks at my door could ever get me to convert; I think I'd end up Jewish first), I would not be contemplating professional ministry. Of course, as a woman I couldn't be in Mormon church leadership at all, but I digress.
There is something really cool about the church being run by laity. The pernicious cults of personality around a single charismatic pastor that dissolve the bonds of community, the abiding sense ministry is for the professionals... Mormons sidestep it all. The twelve disciples began as poor fishermen, but Jesus unleashed them for the sacred work of the kingdom. As surely as we are all member of the body of Christ, we all have a job to do. And when clergy start horning in on the laity's work, ceasing to equip them for ministry, the clergy are no longer fulfilling their jobs and the laity haven't gotten to, either. 
And get this-- they go on missions! From age eighteen through twenty, every Mormon man has to go on a mission. Not with a bunch of pals on a bus to go do some good work in the day and play Sardines at night-- but they actually go together with one partner to spread the gospel to everyone they find. In the documentary a church leader wept softly, explaining how he was ready to give up the faith, but went on this mission and felt the Holy Spirit draw him in. I think that if the Methodist church did something like this, we'd have so many more young adults and win so many people to Christ. Young, bright people my age want to make a difference in the world, and they'll go anywhere they can to do that. Teach For America and the Peace Corps and the whole bit... and those are great organizations and certainly sincere Christians participate in them and do God's work there. But as Methodists we believe the church must make disciples for the transformation of the world (which can and should be done by laypeople employed in a variety of ministries.) But do we believe it? Do we commission our young men and women to go on a dangerous task, the greatest adventure they've ever known, to find their identity in the church's mission? By and large, no. 
We milquetoast Methodists and other mainlines have a lot to learn from Mormons. Don't get me wrong; I like toast. Sometimes the world, wounded by the spear of Pharisaical zeal, needs some toast type Christians. But we have to ultimately be the salt of the earth, and the Mormons are doing a pretty good job. 

You Owe Me

What thoughts I have of You tonight, God.
You protect me and You make giant waves
And wash people away. You owe me.
You make the tornados that suck
Up the people and move them to another dimension.
You lift every rock in the whole wide universe and throw them
At the people who try to hit me.

God, I see You playing video games in my room.
You're young, with shiny eyes like mine.
You have a little beard and You play the
Games without using controls
Because You can. Because You
Can fly without wings. You 
Can use magic and make balls of fire and lightening.
God, You are powerful and I am a cell
Compared to you.

This is one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read. It was written anonymously by a ten year old boy dying of cancer and preserved in Miah Arnold's moving essay, "You Owe Me," about her work as a creative writing teacher in a juvenile cancer treatment center. It reminds me of the psalms. So arresting. I want it, I want it in a sermon someday. 

"What use," I whispered, cried for no one in the world to hear, for no one but my soul, as though the words would rid it of the final burden of guilt, and I found myself a child agin, the years shed as a snake sheds its skin, and I was sanding over the awkward tangle of clothes and limbs. "What use, what use, what use..." and no one answered, not the body in the road, not the hawk in the sky or the beetle in the earth; no one answered.-- James Welch, Winter in the Blood

"The more he talked to the floor the more he nodded. It was a though the floor were talking back to him, grave words that kept him nodding gravely"-- James Welch, Winter in the Blood 

"I at length became ambitious to find a family whose cabin had not been entered by a Methodist preacher... I traveled from settlement to settlement, but into every hovel I entered I learned that the Methodist missionary had been there before me"-- ca. 1800's Presbyterian missionary

"Nobody was out but crows and Methodist preachers"-- ca. 1800's popular saying

Notable & Quotable

My new life goal is to start blogging lists of notable, quotable quotes I run across in my studies as an English and Philosophy and Religion major. I read so many great quotes and think, "Yeah! That'll preach!" Metaphorically and literally. But I never write them down or collect them in any organized way. That is changing now. Hopefully.

"In a corner, looking over our shoulders, was a statue of the crucified Savior, all bloody and beaten up. Charlene looked up and said, 'Look at that poor Indian. The pigs sure worked him over.' That was the closest I ever came to seeing Jesus," Mary Crow Dog, Lakota Woman

"He wore black like a cleric; he had the voice of a great dog," Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn

"Conviction, caricature, callousness: the remainder of his sermon was a going back and forth among these" 

"He has diluted and multiplied the Word, and words have begun to close in upon him"

"He stepped back from the lectern and held his head, smiling. In his mind the earth was spinning and the stars rattled around in the heavens. The sun shone, and the moon. Smiling in a kind of transport, the Priest of the Sun stood silent for a time while the congregation waited to be dismissed. 'Good night,' he said, 'and get yours"

"There was such pain in the priest's eyes he could not bear to look into them. He was embarrassed, humiliated; he hated the priest for suffering so"

"Even at fifteen, in Idaho, I hadn't written from within my despair until after I was safely over it, and now, all the more so, the stories that mattered to me were the ones told-- selected, clarified-- in retrospect" Jonathan Frazen, "Farther Away"

"In the summer before he died, sitting with him on the patio while he smoked cigarettes, I couldn't keep my eyes off the hummingbirds around his house, and was saddened that he could, and while he was taking his heavily medicated afternoon naps, I was studying the birds of Ecuador for an upcoming trip, and I understood the difference between his unmanageable misery and my manageable discontent was that I could escape myself in the joy of birds and he could not"

"How easy and natural love is if you are well! And how gruesomely difficult-- what a philosophically daunting contraption of self-delusion love appears to be-- if you are not! And yet  one of the lessons of David's work (and for me, of being his friend) is that the difference between well and not well is in more respects a difference of degree than of kind"

"As long as we have such complications, how dare we bored?"

"I like to play chess. I moved to a small town, and nobody played chess there, but one guy challenged me to checkers. I always thought it was kind of a simple game, but I accepted. And he beat me nine or ten games in a row. That's sort of like living in a small town. It's a simpler game, but it's played to a higher level" Peter Hessler, "Dr. Don"