in the breaking of the bread

yesterday was ascension sunday.  i did not grow up in a tradition that paid much attention to the church calendar (read: completely ignored it except at christmas and easter), and i’m really enjoying my new adopted home in a liturgical tradition.  it makes me feel much more connected to history and to people all over the world who are part of the catholic (little “c”) church.  it’s making me sort of grudgingly pay attention to the bible again, because the lectionary really wants you to read a particular passage of it every week, and since all the christians all over the world who participate in liturgical branches of the christian tradition are reading those same passages that very same day, it’s sort of cool.

here’s one thing i like about my new community of faith: they don’t really care so much if you don’t buy into it all.  they’re just happy you’re there.  which is why i loved the message i heard yesterday on ascension sunday.  the ascension is one of those things that can be a touchy subject in a crowd of faithful skeptics and seminary students who kind of know better.  the new testament reading was from acts 1 (you know, the ascension scene).  basically, jesus gets sucked up into heaven by a cloud, and the disciples are staring up at the sky wondering what the hell just happened.  whether it happened or not, in the text the disciples are extremely confused, and these “messengers” come to ask them why they are standing there staring at the sky.  the interpretation was this: “why are you wasting time looking up for god?  that is not where the action is.  that is no longer where you look for god, now that this whole incarnation business has been taken care of.  look out.  look around you.  look into each other’s faces and into the faces of every person, every creature, that you encounter.  that is where god now resides (or, if you’re particularly into jesus, that is where to find the christ these days).”  i like it.  i like incarnation, transcendence in immanence, namaste, the divine indwelling the human, all that.  i’m a bit of a broken record about it.  i like it wherever i can find it, and yesterday i found it in christianity, so that was cool.

at another point yesterday, someone read from the 24th chapter of luke, when two disciples encounter the risen jesus on the road to emmaus.  here is the part that struck me: they have no clue who they’re talking to until they eat with him.  they go and tell the other disciples “what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.”  until they share this very basic human experience of one person giving another person food, they don’t recognize that they have been walking with the divine.  chew on that.

also yesterday i attended the ordination service for the significant other of a very dear friend (so, by default, the ordination service of a potential very dear friend!).  the service was beautiful and touching and inspiring and i cried through a lot of it (sign #237 that i’m slowly but surely turning into my mother).  the main reason i was so touched, though, was that i could see so much of what i might have become in lisa during her ordination.  the service took place at the church she had attended since birth, a church that nurtured her and fed her and drew her gifts out of her and caused her to flourish as a leader and as a woman–a church that demonstrated throughout her youth that “spiritual leader” and “woman” are not mutually exclusive identities, and that offered her images and words for god that affirmed that she too was created in the image of the divine.  they supported her during her time in seminary, and they are so excited that this newly ordained reverend is a product of their community.  

i kept thinking, if i had been a part of a tradition that taught me that, if i had seen examples of women in positions of leadership–if i had known that was a possibility–would that be me?  would i have taken a path that would have led to ordination?  if i had not felt the need to make such a decisive break with the tradition in which i was raised and, at times, with faith altogether, would i have found myself in those robes one day?  lisa is now a minister in a branch of the christian tradition that works for peace, for social justice, for equality for all, for creation care, and that invites all people of all faiths–or of no faith–to the communion table, literally and figuratively.  i am grateful to have found such a tradition these days; i just wonder what my journey would have looked like if that was the way faith had always been presented to me.

i actually don’t think i would be a very good minister proper; probably i’m too selfish and i like my personal boundaries too much.  it just seemed like for a while there in late high school/early college i might have been tending that way, if i had known it was something to which i could have aspired.  i am grateful for the way i was raised and the choices i’ve made and the person all of that has turned me into, and honestly i do think i am much better equipped for the classroom than the pulpit.  i just couldn’t help wondering.  and the experience made me think of my dear friends who are most certainly called to ministry; i hope you women will find the support and encouragement and empowerment that i saw people give to lisa yesterday.  in fact, i would recommend not doing it unless you do find a place that offers you all of that.  and there are places like that, don’t worry.  i saw one yesterday.

in closing, i would like to highly recommend the book take this bread by sara miles.  it’s a conversion story but not an annoying one.  it’s mostly about the redemptive power of food.

what a difference a year makes

a year ago this very day, jordan and i were in san francisco, seeing the sights, exploring the bay area, trying to get a feel for this place to see if it might be somewhere we wanted to call home for a couple of years.  i was frantically finishing my thesis, and jordan was working long nights at the newspaper; we were living for summertime.  that weekend he visited the journalism school at cal; i had nervous meetings with people at the graduate theological union (gtu); we admired the palm trees and the bridges and ate thai food and walked around trying to envision ourselves living here, feeling panicky because of how soon the decision had to be made.

now we have lived in berkeley for eight-and-a-half months, and that exploratory weekend seems forever ago.  jordan is almost finished with his first very successful year at cal’s journalism school and is looking forward to a fantastic internship in new york this summer, and i will be starting a doctoral program at the gtu this fall.  yesterday we participated in an easter service with a community of faith we have fallen in love with, and today my friends at work helped me celebrate my 25th birthday with cake and balloons.  reflecting on that uncertain visit this time last year, the normalcy of our life here seems momentarily striking.

i’m really glad we made the decision we made.  it’s been a good year.

a shout-out to my RT women

i came across a link to this story and found it both inspiring and frustrating…maybe i was frustrated because i was inspired by it, and i’m ready for the day when things like this synagogue, whose services and programs are led primarily by women, are not so rare.

still, this is a story of a woman who has successfully created a home for herself and for others who feel displaced in a beloved religious tradition, and for that reason, it gives me hope that such things can be done and that such fights are still worth fighting.

my favorite quote:  “People said you’re never going to be able to get men to come and I’d say, ‘You really underestimate men.’”

southern charm

today at work i took a phone order from a woman in louisiana.  after recording her shipping information, i read it back to her to make sure i had typed it in correctly, and she asked, “where are you from, honey?”  i asked her if she meant originally, or where i was located now; she meant originally.

“alabama,” i replied.

i could hear her smiling.  “you know, i could tell!  you pronounced my name and address the way it was meant to be pronounced.”  i wasn’t quite sure what she meant by this, but i took it as some sort of compliment.  she asked the follow-up question, “and where are you located now?”

“berkeley, california.”

a horrified gasp, a dramatic pause, and then: “well.  i suppose a person can get used to anything.”

a few days late, but…

…still relevant.  this was read at a service yesterday.

Prayer for Leadership

(On Election Day and Other Times)

By Joan Chittister

Give us, O God,
leaders whose hearts are large enough
to match the breadth of our own souls
and give us souls strong enough
to follow leaders of vision and wisdom.

In seeking a leader,
let us seek more than development
for ourselves —
though development we hope for —
more than security for our own land —
though security we need —
more than satisfaction for our wants —
though many things we desire.

Give us the hearts to choose
the leader who will work with other
leaders to bring safety
to the whole world.

Give us leaders
who lead this nation to virtue
without seeking to impose our kind of virtue
on the virtue of others.

Give us a government
that provides for the advancement
of this country
without taking resources from others
to achieve it.

Give us insight enough ourselves
to choose as leaders those who can tell
strength from power,
growth from greed,
leadership from dominance,
and real greatness from the trappings
of grandiosity.

We trust you, Great God,
to open our hearts to learn from those
to whom you speak in different tongues
and to respect the life and words
of those to whom you entrusted
the good of other parts of this globe.

We beg you, Great God,
give us the vision as a people
to know where global leadership truly lies,
to pursue it diligently,
to require it to protect human rights
for everyone everywhere.

We ask these things, Great God,
with minds open to your word
and hearts that trust in your eternal care.

Amen.

“…to increase their tolerance for ambiguity…”

yesterday, i attended this event at uc-berkeley, “qristianity: a conversation on faith and queerness with gene robinson.”  first of all, let me just say how much i appreciate living this close to an academic institution which has a jam-packed calendar full of free events, like lectures, that i can take advantage of and by which i can be enriched.  yesterday was like a little tiny “sorry you can’t go to aar/sbl this year” consolation prize–it summoned all the feelings and reflections that characterize those weekend-long experiences but lasted for two hours instead of four days.

i’m not sure of the best way to describe the event yesterday; i took somewhat copious and extremely messy notes, but simply typing them up here wouldn’t do anyone much good (i think they’re only intelligible to me).  i think i will try to just give you the highlights of what stuck out to me as poignant, intersperse them with some quotes that i found inspiring/challenging, and call it a day.

first of all, if you’re not sure who the right reverend bishop gene robinson is, here’s some information about him.  although his life of ministry extends far beyond the reaches of the lecture topic yesterday, the reason you have probably heard of him is because he is the episcopal bishop of the diocese of new hampshire, and he was the first openly gay and partnered episcopal bishop.  in yesterday’s lecture, the bishop spoke about queer theology and his own experiences as an openly gay and partnered bishop in a denomination that is deeply and passionately divided over the issue of homosexuality.  what struck me was this man’s hope.  he is not a political activist using the religious establishment as an outlet for his views; rather, he is a man of deep, abiding, joyful, unshakable faith, simply trying to fulfill what he believes the will of god is.  here are some highlights:

-”It is not enough to be tolerant…Are you going to celebrate the other?”

-In answer to a question about how he can still be a part of the church when it has wronged him so deeply and when it is so broken by the fissures of intolerance:  “I still believe in the church; I still believe that God believes in the church…The church has a way of self-correcting over time,” citing the church’s (eventual) response to things like slavery.

-In answer to a question about how he manages to continue to serve among those who are still antagonistic toward him: “The role of the clergy is to walk beside people, to hold their hand, and to increase their tolerance for ambiguity.”  i loved that one.

-He told a story about a woman who wrote him a note shortly after he was elected bishop.  She was an inmate at a New Hampshire women’s prison.  She wrote him and said, “I am not gay or religious, but your election gives me hope that somewhere out there is a community that will accept even me.”  Wow.  Yeah, I teared up a little bit at that one.  Now she’s a member of his church–even though she has never actually been there, since she’s still serving time–and the church is working hard to get her parole. Can you say “least of these”?

-On the line between “us” and “them” that otherness draws: “The goal is to move the line further and further away until there is no more ‘them’.”  (It was obvious here that he wasn’t talking about annihilating or assimilating “them” but about coming to say “us” about more and more people/groups/”others”.  Dr. Paula Nesbitt, who also spoke on the panel, put it nicely when she said, “When we embrace otherness as ‘we,’ there’s enough power to go around.”)

-A couple of points on Robinson’s personal “queer” reading of scripture: 1) What we all do when we read scripture is look for ourselves in it.  This is what feminist hermeneutics is–women looking for ourselves in the stories of scripture, so we can relate to something in there–and that is what queer hermeneutics is.  It’s each person trying to find him/herself in the story, owning scripture as our story too.  2) He recalls that in Genesis when the first human is created and becomes lonely, it appears that God does not know the best way to alleviate this loneliness; God parades each animal from the entire garden in front of the human, basically asking, “Does this one make you happy?  This one?  How about this one?”  It is only after God creates the second human that the ha-’adam finally says, “This one.”  The point?  “Adam gets to decide who makes him happy.” 2) Jesus also knew about families of choice; he lived with and treated as family those he had chosen.

-On how he finds it within himself to forgive the very institution in which he serves, which has made it so difficult for him to fulfill his calling: “Forgiveness has more to do with the future than with the past…In the end we all get there; it’s called the reign of God!”

sigh.  i can’t fully relate the beauty of the afternoon.  suffice it to say i came home feeling more encouraged, inspired, and inclined not to completely shun the church than i have in a long time.

a barrage of miscellaneous thoughts

here’s a thing that sucks: for the first time in weeks, i felt the urge to write a blog post yesterday, but the urge hit me at work, where we do not have internet access.  so i jotted down some thoughts on a piece of paper in order that i might type them up when i got home from work, but of course the urge had passed by then.  i don’t think the urge really came back this morning, but i feel obligated to myself to follow through.  so here i sit and type.

work is good.  the job itself isn’t very interesting or challenging, but i stay busy all day and i enjoy my colleagues, which is really all i need right now.  there’s one person who works there to whom i feel a special connection–she and i have been similarly mind-fucked by the christian tradition in the past, and we have had several great conversations about, you know, what you do when you finally realize that.  i have never been so grateful for the training i received which gave me a vocabulary for processing the cyclical journey into/out of faith and into/out of bitterness toward the tradition.  we’ve started swapping books, and i’m really grateful for this new friendship.  also, i realized that i have told everyone i have met here that i have a degree in religious studies rather than in theological studies, and it’s a bald-faced lie, and i understand the immense difference between the two disciplines…somehow it’s just easier.  people know what you’re talking about when you say “religious studies,” but you have to explain the internal struggle and journey of the past several years in order to unpack the significance of “theological studies” for them, because generally people don’t really know what that means. not because they’re stupid, but because they don’t really know why you would study that.  but maybe i should cut that out (although my interest in interfaith dialogue could conceivably fall under both disciplines, so maybe it’s not too much of a stretch…?  yeah, it’s a lie.  i know that.  i’ll stop.).  anyway.  moving on.

i finally got around to exploring the block or two surrounding my place of employment and discovered that it is in a cool part of town.  it’s part residential, part business, and the houses are cool and small and have pretty flowers and trees in their front yards.  there are several coffee shops, a thai restaurant that looks good, a couple of locally-owned vintage clothing stores, and a franchise of the sex toy shop ‘good vibrations’–apparently the flagship store opened in san francisco in the ’70s and is pretty famous.  it’s ironic because the name of the company i work for actually sounds like it could be the name of a sex toy store, rather than a mail-order vendor of toys for children with special needs.

in other news, i don’t really want to talk about the absurd clusterfuck that has become american politics this year, but i do want to let everyone know that my sarah palin impression is coming along nicely (although i have been gently forbidden by my otherwise unendingly patient spouse ever again to hone this impression in his presence ).

my brother visited over the weekend, and it was lovely. it was so nice to have a familiar face around.  he was only here for three days, so we kind of had to do a strategic whirlwind tour of the bay area that wore all of us out, but it was a really great weekend.  it was also really cool to feel like we knew our way around and could be knowledgeable hosts–i think we finally feel like this is our home for a while, and, after all, in order to practice hospitality you must first have a home.

i think that’s all for now.

things are looking up (not that they were looking too far down)

it has come to my attention that it is time for an update, so here one is.

after several weeks of lots of fishing and no bites, i was offered a job on thursday morning, which i heartily accepted.  it’s a non-profit organization in oakland, about 10 miles away, and the job title is “billing assistant,” which sounds incredibly boring, but it really does seem like it would be a great work environment.  the start date isn’t for a couple more weeks.

then on friday, i got a call from a family-owned company here in berkeley, wanting to interview me immediately and hire someone ASAP.  the job is a customer service representative/office assistant for this mail-order company that sells toys and learning tools for special needs children.  the pay is better, the hours are better, and it’s exactly 2.0 miles from the entrance to our neighborhood, so theoretically i could ride my bike to work (once my bike is in working condition) and save tons on gas/public transportation.  they offered me the job yesterday, and i heartily accepted it as well (yeah, oops).

then i had to contact the non-profit and withdraw my acceptance of the position they had offered me, which was not fun at all, and i felt like a complete bitch, but i know people do this in the real world (right???  this happens a lot, yes???  and it’s better to do it before i even start than to do it a month from now, yes???  even though it would have been better to hold off on that hearty acceptance, but oh well…no bites for weeks, i’m telling you…).  just gotta shake it off.  i hate letting people down, even if i’ve only met them twice.

so, anyway, i start my new job today, and i’m pretty excited about it.  it’s going to be nice to actually have something to budget, rather than just operating under the general rule of “spend as little money as humanly possible.” 

yesterday jordan and i got our california driver’s licenses (so we really live here now), registered to vote, and opened new bank accounts.  we are officially settling in for the long haul.

i have zeroed in on a couple of potential friends in my yoga class, and jordan is feeling more of a sense of camaraderie with his j-school classmates.  things are less lonely, and we are feeling better and better about the decision we made to move here.

now i’m going to go get ready for work!

yoga

i gotta tell ya, i’m a believer.  not just because it’s suddenly (or really not-so-suddenly, since it’s been a trend in the u.s. for a while, i guess, and in the eastern hemisphere for, i don’t know, thousands of years–i’m just always the last person to catch on to stuff) the cool thing to do.  it works. thursday evening i went to my very first yoga class ever, and friday morning i woke up without back pain for the first time in months–literally, months.

i’ve been three times now, and i am looking forward to the long-term effects.  on my jogging days in between yoga days, i can already tell a difference in my lung capacity and stamina, and my calves don’t get so sore.  even my toes feel stronger.

my yoga instructor is the good kind of crazy.  she has a streak of clip-on fake hair in ever color, and she always wears one that matches her outfit that day.  she doesn’t use articles when she’s talking you through your excercises (“and now please raise right foot and face front wall,” “take deep breath and lift heart,” etc.).  i told her after class the other day that i thought i had bad circulation, because my feet kept falling asleep while we were practicing a certain position.  she told me that my body just wasn’t used to the position yet, and besides, and i quote, “i don’t like to call any part of my body bad–i’m afraid it might hear me!”  and while i’m not afraid a part of my body might “hear me” refer to it in negative terms, i am becoming more aware of the language i use to talk and think about my body and my whole self, and there really is something to this notion of being comfortable with yourself as you are, as long as you’re doing everything you can do to keep yourself healthy, and not thinking of things in terms of flaws but in terms of beautiful quirks. it’s doing wonders for my outlook on life (like, it’s making me far less depressed about the fact that i am still unemployed and largely new-friend-less), and i highly recommend it.

taking a bite out of life

well, after a long, nomadic summer, we have finally found a place to park ourselves for a while.  that’s right, we are all moved in and starting life in sunny (occasionally foggy) california.

i love our apartment.  it’s nothing super special–i mean, it’s just your basic university housing–but it’s brand new.  we are the first people ever to live in it, ever to turn on the faucets, put stuff in the fridge, hang stuff on the walls, poop in the toilet, etc.  and that’s a nice change from a 35-year-old building with stains on the carpet and holes in the ceiling and a kitchen countertop that was sawed in half.  and even though it’s not a lot bigger than our old apartment, it feels bigger–as my dad aptly put it when he was out here, it feels like you can breathe.  we even have a little balcony…a little tiny patch of outside air that is all ours.

and i love the bay area.  you never need air conditioning, ever–you just crack a window, or leave the door open, in the car or at home.  the weather is perfect.  i don’t know how i went 24 years of my life not living here.  everyone should move here.  (clearly i’m still in the honeymoon phase with my new place of residence…sorry to gush.)  today jordan and i drove across the bay into san francisco (it was a rare fog-free day on that side of the bridge, which was nice) to explore the mission district a little, where he’ll be spending some time as part of his journalism program.  we ate lunch at a place called taqueria el farolito, and

oh.

my.

god.

i ate the best, biggest, freshest, hottest, most jam-packed burrito i have ever put in my mouth.  beans, rice, chicken, avocado, salsa, sour cream…couldn’t finish it (jordan stepped up like a champ, though, don’t worry.  nothing went to waste).  in fact, i decided to write this whole post just so i could mention that burrito.  it was unbelievable.  i wish i had taken a picture of it for you.  i’ll never eat at moe’s again.

now, we have no friends yet, i have no job yet, and things are very expensive here.  but i’m hoping the first two things will change before the honeymoon period wears off.  for the time being, we’re pretty content exploring our new home by day (in the cheapest ways possible) and working our way through all five seasons of the wire by night. 

that’s all for now.  except…come visit!