the intersection of life and grace

In conversation last night someone I really respect said that another person was “living a very holy, radically holy life” that would be “hard to understand” for young people.

It struck me strangely, and I hope to get to continue the conversation.

Is it possible to be “too holy”? I’m not talking about anything pretentious or false, but too genuinely ‘in this world but not of it’, too radically like the rebel Jesus? And, when (or why) would that distinction be wrong?

Just a thing to make me say hmmm early on a Tuesday.

Yes, there are two actually. And a tarp, and a broom and a sledge hammer are among the construction paraphernalia. Yep, the bathroom remodel has finally begun.

I thought I’d take a moment to post before they start power chiseling the tile and cement (plaster it isn’t) off the other two walls right to the studding so the electrician can come tomorrow to add proper outlets, switches and remove an ancient wall-heater that we frighteningly discovered has had power to it for years. Todays second goal is to free the storage bin, er bathtub, from it’s layers of wall and floor and remove it. That opens the way to fixing the ancient plumbing and adding lines for the eventual installation of a new tub and shower.

As one would expect, there is dust everywhere. The bonus of the day? We discovered that the “next layer down” of the floor (there are 3) is the same color and style of hexagonal tile as our front foyer floor; we’ll be saving whatever we can of that for current and future repairs in foyer floor.

So, a couple of “before & after” shots from day 1:

So, the contractor is here and the pounding has begun. Ahhh, the sound of progress.

I know that I’m not the most savvy political guru on the planet, but I’m a citizen who takes her participation in the process seriously. The way I see it, when I vote I’m participating in the hiring committee. When I hire someone there are some key bits of information I want to know, so I’ve applied that to my recipe for campaign reform.

Ingredients for an informed decision to hire someone for public office:

1. A resume for each candidate – tell me how you’ve spent your education and professional life and what organizations you affiliate with.

2. Tax forms for 5 years – to prevent your telling me you’re poor or middle class when you’re really a millionaire.

3. A statement of your charitable and political giving for the last 5 years – for where your treasure is, your heart is also.

4. Written statements about what you believe to be the main issues to be addressed by your office and how you would hope to address them. Tell me what you think and how you would act in the job. Do not tell me why the other candidates would be bad at the job, tell me why you should have it.

5. A national criminal background check; and, for candidates for federal level office a complete security clearance investigation because you’ll need to be trusted with sensitive national security information should you be hired.

6. Participate in debates and town hall-style meetings, no TV commercials until 45 days before the primary or election day, and only for the 45 days immediately prior to those dates. Feel free to visit people in their communities, but stick to why you should have the office and hearing our concerns and questions.

7. Add a “none of the above” option to the ballot. If there are no acceptable candidates, voters should be able to register their opinion without violating their conscience.

Stir this information together thoroughly and see how it gels with your mind and conscience. Compare to mixtures of other candidates. Then vote to make your hiring decision.

Discuss.

The Bible Belt Blogger has posted the full text of a recent interview with Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori. This is notable, imo, because in the time since her election at The Episcopal Church’s 2006 General Convention there have been a number of quotes from sermons and interviews which have further alarmed EC conservatives and many worldwide Anglican leaders and also given the rest of the church in the US reason to continue driving the diverse, inclusive theology party bus. So, when this post at Get Religion pointed to the interview transcript, I went to see if having the context made any difference for me. Emphasis on me – these thoughts are mine and reflect no official opinions or statements on behalf of my church, my bishops or my diocese whatsoever. Any comments are mine, kapish?

So, here are a couple of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette’s questions and the PBs answers as transcribed:

• ADG: One of them is in an interview with the New York Times, when you talked about Episcopalians being more educated and less –

  KJS: The whole conversation was not reported.

  ADG: I’m sure. I know how that happens. But since Episcopalians don’t have as many children as some other folks, what are some of your ideas for growing the church? One of his passions is reaching out to people in the 18 to 25 age range.

  KJS: More power to him. That’s an essential piece of where our evangelism efforts need to be addressed. There are vast numbers of people in this country who are unchurched, who’ve been raised now without a faith tradition. That may be less so in this part of the country, but in the part of the country I come from, it’s normal. But many of those young people are asking spiritual questions. “Why am I here? What am I supposed to be about as a human being? How am I supposed to live in relationship with other people?” Those are questions that the Episcopal Church is well poised and well experienced in helping people to find answers. Not provide answers, but help people wrestle with the questions.

  ADG: How so?

  KJS: It’s a matter of openness more than anything else, and listening to the hunger that’s out there, offering a space and a community and a space in which to tell a person’s story and then beginning to connect that story with the larger story of our faith, if that makes sense.

  ADG: Could you be a little more specific about some of the things the Episcopal Church offers to help people deal with those questions?

  KJS: Well, we don’t come with a prescribed set of answers. We really do encourage people to wrestle with the question. To bring traditional sources to bear on it. Scripture, tradition and reason is how we talk about those sources. We insist that people use their minds in wrestling with questions. Faith is not meant to be unreasoned, or unreasonable. And I think that’s one of our gifts, that we’re willing to deal with a breadth of perspective, and encourage that breadth of perspective. It’s a mark of health.

  ADG: Speaking of that interview, what did get left out?

  KJS: Well, Episcopalians reproduce at lower rates than some other denominations for several reasons. There are clear connections between [reproductive] rates and educational level. It’s an inverse connection, as average education level goes up that group of people tends to reproduce at lower rates, and that’s certainly true in the Episcopal Church. It’s true of other mainline denominations as well. You don’t have a theological reason to reproduce at higher rates, unlike some other denominations and faith traditions. That’s the piece of complexity that got left out.

• ADG: I want to ask you about a couple of other things you’ve said in interviews. One of those was in the 10 questions in TIME magazine about the small box that people put God in. Could you elaborate a little bit on your take on “Jesus is the way, the truth and the life” [a paraphrase of John 14:16]?

  KJS: I certainly don’t disagree with that statement that Jesus is the way and the truth and the life. But the way it’s used is as a truth serum, or a touchstone: If you cannot repeat this statement, then you’re not a faithful Christian or person of faith. I think Jesus as way – that’s certainly what it means to be on a spiritual journey. It means to be in search of relationship with God. We understand Jesus as truth in the sense of being the wholeness of human expression. What does it mean to be wholly and fully and completely a human being? Jesus as life, again, an example of abundant life. We understand him as bringer of abundant life but also as exemplar. What does it mean to be both fully human and fully divine? Here we have the evidence in human form. So I’m impatient with the narrow understanding, but certainly welcoming of the broader understanding.

  ADG: What about the rest of that statement –

  KJS: The small box?

  ADG: Well, the rest of the verse, that no one comes to the Father except by the son.

  KJS: Again in its narrow construction, it tends to eliminate other possibilities. In its broader construction, yes, human beings come to relationship with God largely through their experience of holiness in other human beings. Through seeing God at work in other people’s lives. In that sense, yes, I will affirm that statement. But not in the narrow sense, that people can only come to relationship with God through consciously believing in Jesus.

• ADG: I want to ask you about something you said [in a radio interview] with Steve Crittenden in Australia. You were talking about issues of sexuality, and you said you thought that [objection to homosexuality] was more of an issue for men than for women, and women were more interested in — you didn’t say the Millennium Development Goals, but that was the kind of thing you were talking about. And right after your election, [a foreign journalist] asked you kind of a snide question about

  KJS: What would the average Anglican?

  ADG: Yeah, and Anglican women in Africa, think about your support for gays, and you said they’d be more concerned about food and education for their children. Do you have some evidence that the sexuality is more of an issue for men than for women?

  KJS: Well, who’s most heated up about it? Gatherings around the Anglican Communion that are primarily male seem to get captured by this issue. Gatherings that are primarily female get captured by passion for a human world. For human people and educating children and providing health care. The UN Commission on the Status of Women and the accompanying gathering of Anglican women at the UN over the year is probably the best evidence. And they have different opinions about issues of human sexuality, but that’s not the focus of their work together. The focus is on humans.

• ADG: That reminds me of something else you said. This was a CNN interview when Kyra Phillips asked you what happens when we die. You had an interesting answer that got some Southern Baptists riled up.

  KJS: OK. I didn’t hear their reaction.

  ADG: Al Mohler – I don’t know whether you’re familiar with him –

  KJS: I’m not.

  ADG: He’s a seminary president [at
  Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville] and has a blog and a radio show. [Mohler posted the exchange on his Web site]. It seemed to some people that you were saying there isn’t an afterlife.

  KJS: I don’t think Jesus was focused on that. I think Jesus was focused on heaven in this life, primarily. The Judeo-Christian tradition has always said yes, there is resurrection. There is life after death. But I think Jesus was not so worried about that. I think he’s worried about what we’re doing to treat our fellow human beings as children of God. He says the kingdom of heaven is among you, and within you, and around you.

  ADG: So does that mean that in your view there is no afterlife.

  KJS: That’s not what I said. I said what I think Jesus is more concerned about is heavenly existence, eternal life, in this life.

Well, the context is important, and I’ve learned that we’re not talking about the same kind of context. It appears to me that KJS is placing a high value on the context of American culture, and specifically transmogrify the faith to fit into the culture. It certainly seems that the voices of the EC leadership resonate with hers in that regard. However, most of the worldwide Anglican Communion continues to believe that the faith as received from Christ and the Apostles and entrusted to the Church is a context unto itself, requiring application to culture rather than adaptation to culture. Knowing the full content of “what she meant” tells me that she was indeed quoted accurately. Yes, context is important.

First let me rejoice that it has been about 48 hours since Tim’s last tremor episode. Since reducing the medication the hospital completely overlooked as the culprit for the trouble he had last Thursday night, he’s been improving. The frustrating nonsense we went through, the ridiculous exercise of undiagnosing him (which, btw, his primary doctor was rather professionally annoyed by), led to nothing. I’m glad about that, in a strange way. Encouraging him to do what he was going to do anyway – the Excel conference and the Military Ball – over the weekend made him happier than we’ve seen him in a while, and he feels good too. That’s what matters, not the labels, so we’ll stay the course.

So, today, Cathie stayed home sick. I feared at first that she had strep because she had an itchy rash on her face and neck. By the time we got to the doctor’s office for our appointment, her rash had become red cheeks. She has Fifth’s disease – annoying but not serious for her. It’s the same strain of Parvovirus B19 that made me extraordinarily ill in the spring of 2005, but in children it’s quite routine and she’ll be fine.

Stacy is recovering well from her gall bladder surgery and seems to be on track now to be back at work next week. We’re blessed to have her here.

My health is on the mend as well. The B12 shots seem to be doing the trick, and I’m told it won’t be much longer before all the numbness in my hands will be gone. I’m really looking forward to that! I’ve been making a lot of typos, dropping things and knocking things over with my silly tingly fingers. I’ll be very happy not to do that anymore!

Thank God, Tom is doing well! So, we’d all like to join him and be well now, if it’s all the same… ok? God has been good to us, we’ve no doubt he will keep his promise of goodness and mercy.

Tim and friend Jennifer had a lovely time.

May we move ever closer to realization of Dr. King’s inspired dream. May Christ- followers realize and take to heart the Kingdom values in MLK Jr’s words and make them part of the way we live out “loving our neighbor.”

Two friends gave me the coolest gift as a thank you for some volunteer work I do for them. Since they know I have a thing for websites, they gave me my own “dotcom” with space to put it, access to an array of design features, and permission to “do whatever you want with it – move your blog, start a business or a ministry, whatever you want.”

That’s the problem. I could love doing any or all of those things. If you were me what would you do with your very own dotcom? hmmm?

Stormy.

I wrote a poem years ago about clinging to the rock in the middle of the raging waters of life. My friend Lisa wrote a song based on that now-lost poem (it lived on a hard drive that’s long gone), and I hope someday to hear her sing that song in person. At the time I wrote that poem, nearly nothing in life was going as I thought it should. The Lord was reminding me by speaking through His truth in my heart, saying “Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.”

Lately, as our family has faced one trial after another, I’ve been remembering the other times where clinging to the rock was all that kept us from drowning in the sea of life raging around us. That’s where I am now, in that place that demands I cling or drown.

I choose to cling. Jesus has never failed me, even when I don’t like what life brings, he never, ever fails to go through it with me. I remember some lyrics another friend, Michelle, wrote a long time back, “sometimes he calms the storm, and sometimes he calms the child.” Even as the storm rages in my family – mostly in the area of health concerns for several of us, but there are ripples into most other areas as well – I trust that God has a plan for this season, and that it will be for our good and his glory. There are honestly times I can’t see past the stormy wind in my face, but God is there, has been always there, will always be there. He gives me the strength to hang on, and he holds onto me keeping me safely in his grip.

If you were so inclined, prayers for us are greatly appreciated.

Yes, a teeny bit of blatant promotion. I had a fantastic time at Youth Specialties’ National Youth Workers Convention in Charlotte catching whomever I could for interviews for the new YMX podcast. Episode 2 of the podcast features a fun segment I did with some of the guys from the now-Grammy-nominated band Leeland.

I first heard Leeland at SoulFest just before their debut album, Sound of Melodies, was released in August 2006. Their sound is fresh and soulful, lead singer Leeland Mooring’s lyrics are deep and his vocals soar. I’m looking forward to seeing how their work fares at the Grammys, seeing as they’re nominated for Best Pop/Contemporary Gospel Album alongside Chris Tomlin’s See the Morning, Third Day’s Wherever You Are, and Mercy Me’s Coming Up to Breathe. See all the nominations here.

Yep, I’m captivated by these guys. They’re a youth minister’s dream in that, they get Jesus and can use their gifts to communicate his truth and their faith. They’re all pastors’ kids, too, which makes it even more precious that they’re not even a little disillusioned with faith because of the fish-bowl lives they’ve lived. In fact, it seems to have prepared them for the public ministry they now have through music. I was blessed to have the opportunity to talk with them, and have fun with them. If they ever need a tour pastor, I volunteer.

I have one other podcast interview with Starfield from the NYWC ready to edit for a future YMX podcast. If you’re a youth worker, this little production is both quirky and useful, and I encourage you to subscribe. All the links to do that – through iTunes and other feeds – are available at the link to episode above.