Sermon preached at the Thursday evening community Eucharist at the School of Theology at Sewanee. Text: Jeremiah 7:23-28
"So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." (Jeremiah 7:27)
Does this sound like a job you'd be willing to sign up for? God tells Jeremiah to proclaim his words to the people of Israel, but tells him ahead of time that the people aren't going to listen to him. Apparently God didn't get the memo about effective ways to motivate your employees. Imagine what a business meeting would be like if the president of a company took this approach: "Well, we've done the research, and all indicators say that the market is going to reject our product," she'd say to her employees. "We basically have a zero chance of making a profit. Now, your job is to devote your life to producing this product."
People aren't usually too willing to go along with a plan they know is going to fail. We might try something that seems unlikely to succeed simply because we never know what the results will be; since we're not omniscient, there is always a chance the statistics and projections are wrong. But coming from God, there is no uncertainty in the claim: "I'm telling you up front, Jeremiah -- these people aren't going to listen to you." Gee thanks, God. I bet Jeremiah could have done without some of that omniscience there.
So what's the point? Why does God call Jeremiah to speak words of warning to the people and call them to repentance if he knows they're not going to listen anyway? Or, to make it a bit more personal, why are we called to proclaim the Gospel when we know many will reject it?
I think the simple answer is, we do it because it's who we are. We do it because we can't not do it. We do it because God calls us to do it.
Working for the kingdom of God is not always a results-oriented kind of endeavor, as much as we would like for it to be. We speak of "sowing seeds" that we may never see sprout as a metaphor that helps us make our peace with the fact that we may not see any visible results or effects of our ministry in the world around us. We "keep on keepin' on," because we believe in faith that those seeds will someday sprout, even if it's not for many, many years… maybe not even until Jesus comes back.
But sometimes, we can feel a little like Jeremiah must have felt when given the instructions he was given in today's reading: like we've been given an impossible task that we know is going to fail, that no matter what we say and how much we say it, the people will just not hear.
Some of us may have felt that way when the Sewanee Chautauquans blog surfaced last spring, with all of its anti-black and anti-gay rhetoric. People who work with those living in poverty and homelessness may feel that way when the same people never quite seem to be able to get their lives together, or when people with whom they've developed long-term relationships betray them. My friends in the interfaith movement and I felt that way when we saw the video released last month of a protest outside a Muslim charity fundraiser event in California, where violently angry women and men shouted insults at the Muslim men, women, and children who arrived for the fundraising dinner.
In situations like these, we may find ourselves asking, "What's the point?" Why am I giving my life to anti-racism training when there continue to be hate crime shootings every year in my neighborhood? Why am I feeding these people when they're only taking advantage of the system? Why have I spent the past ten years in interfaith education and advocacy only to watch a crowd of people waving American flags yelling, "Go home! We don't want you here, you terrorists!" to Muslim children under the age of of ten, whose only existence in this world has been in the context of post-9/11 fear of Muslims?
Perhaps at times like these we can remember the prophet Jeremiah. "So you shall speak all these words to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." And yet, you are still to speak -- to speak the words of faith and love. You are still to call -- to call the people to repentance and reconciliation with their neighbor -- even when you know they will not listen. You do this for the same reason that a mother would throw herself in front of a train to try to protect her child, even if she knew that that action would kill them both. You do it because it's who you are. You do it because you can't not do it. You do it because God calls you to do it, regardless of the results.
There's a famous set of "paradoxical commandments," often attributed to Mother Teresa, but actually written by Kent Keith, a speaker and advocate of servant leadership, that I think say it best. Keith wrote them while a sophomore in college, and they advocate a stubborn faithfulness to love against all odds that I, for one, think is what the church should be all about. Here are a few of them:
People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered.
Love them anyway.
If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives.
Do good anyway.
The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow.
Do good anyway.
What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight.
Build anyway.
Give the world the best you have and you'll get kicked in the teeth.
Give the world the best you have anyway.
I return to these "paradoxical commandments" whenever I feel discouraged about the seeming impossibility of the tasks to which God calls me. Yes, people may continue to be hurtful and angry and bitter and use one another and kill one another -- and they may do those things in the name of God. But we are to continue to preach peace and to speak truth to power and to do justice and to love mercy and to walk humbly with our God -- anyway.
After all, God loved us "anyway" -- despite our shortcomings, despite our sinfulness, despite our rebellion against the love of God. Contemporary Christian artist Nichole Nordeman captures this in her song, aptly titled "Anyway," in which she compares the Christian life to the process of restoring an old painting:
A gallery of paintings new and paintings old
I guess it's no surprise that I'm no Michaelangelo...
But you called me beautiful
When you saw my shame
And you placed me on the wall
Anyway
"So you shall speak the words of God to them, but they will not listen to you. You shall call them, but they will not answer you." Speak anyway.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Wednesday, March 23, 2011
Can we (future) clergy be both shepherds and sheep?
Sermon preached to my seminary colleagues at Morning Prayer, Chapel of the Apostles, Sewanee, Tenn. 2 Lent, Wednesday, Year One (Jeremiah 3:6-18, Romans 1:28-2:11)
Acknowledge your guilt, repent, and return to the Lord. Jeremiah and Paul are saying essentially the same thing in our readings this morning.
How will the ways we hear these passages be different when we’re the ones called upon to preach repentance to our people from the pulpit? As ordained leaders in the church, will we be as quick to repent as we will be to call others to repent?
I think this question is of utmost importance to our integrity and effectiveness as future clergy. There is a danger for those in positions of ordained leadership in the church to start identifying a little too closely with the voice of God and the voice of the prophets in the Scriptures and forget that we are also one of “the people” who are called to repentance.
“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding,” God says, through the prophet Jeremiah.
Though the “shepherds” Jeremiah was referring to were probably kings of Israel, the shepherding metaphor has been passed down through the ages to church leadership – seen in the ubiquitous use of the term “pastoral” with regards to our ministry. Thinking of ourselves as “shepherds after God’s own heart,” who will “feed [the people] with knowledge and understanding” can set us up for a kind of blindness to our own need to be taught and fed – not only by God himself but by “the people” whom we think we are teaching and leading.
As clergy, will we be only prophets and shepherds, or can we remember how to be people and sheep as well? We hear a lot these days about “prophetic preaching,” about how to effectively call our congregations to live out the Gospel in their lives. But what about the value of responsive living? That is, patterning our own lives in response to the Gospel, to not only be the proclaimers but the receivers of the message that is ultimately not of us, but of God. As Paul says, we cannot pass judgment on others while doing the very same things we condemn. We cannot proclaim the message effectively if we do not live it out in our own lives.
Certainly, as priests, we will need to call our congregations to repentance – both in a routine, “it’s Lent so it’s time for repentance” kind of way and in a more specific, “there’s a particular issue in our community life for which we need to repent” kind of way. But how we do this is of utmost importance. We're fooling ourselves if we think our parishioners can't tell the difference between a call to repentance that comes out of self-righteousness and insecurity and a call to repentance that comes out of true humility and a deep familiarity with our own sinfulness.
This is why Mother Julia taught us in Pastoral Theology that a priest should not hear confessions regularly if he or she is not making his or her own confession regularly. We cannot effectively call others to repent if we are not also repentant ourselves – and I would add, not just inwardly, but outwardly – willing to publicly admit our wrongs and to “acknowledge our guilt” before the congregation -- being humble enough to apologize and acknowledge when we mess up, rather than trying to “save face” because we’re “the priest” and therefore somehow must be faultless in the eyes of our congregation.
As Paul reminds us this morning, “God shows no partiality” – not between Jews and Greeks, and not between clergy and laity. We may be called to preach the words of the prophet, but let us not forget to listen to them as well.
Acknowledge your guilt, repent, and return to the Lord. Jeremiah and Paul are saying essentially the same thing in our readings this morning.
How will the ways we hear these passages be different when we’re the ones called upon to preach repentance to our people from the pulpit? As ordained leaders in the church, will we be as quick to repent as we will be to call others to repent?
I think this question is of utmost importance to our integrity and effectiveness as future clergy. There is a danger for those in positions of ordained leadership in the church to start identifying a little too closely with the voice of God and the voice of the prophets in the Scriptures and forget that we are also one of “the people” who are called to repentance.
“I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding,” God says, through the prophet Jeremiah.
Though the “shepherds” Jeremiah was referring to were probably kings of Israel, the shepherding metaphor has been passed down through the ages to church leadership – seen in the ubiquitous use of the term “pastoral” with regards to our ministry. Thinking of ourselves as “shepherds after God’s own heart,” who will “feed [the people] with knowledge and understanding” can set us up for a kind of blindness to our own need to be taught and fed – not only by God himself but by “the people” whom we think we are teaching and leading.
As clergy, will we be only prophets and shepherds, or can we remember how to be people and sheep as well? We hear a lot these days about “prophetic preaching,” about how to effectively call our congregations to live out the Gospel in their lives. But what about the value of responsive living? That is, patterning our own lives in response to the Gospel, to not only be the proclaimers but the receivers of the message that is ultimately not of us, but of God. As Paul says, we cannot pass judgment on others while doing the very same things we condemn. We cannot proclaim the message effectively if we do not live it out in our own lives.
Certainly, as priests, we will need to call our congregations to repentance – both in a routine, “it’s Lent so it’s time for repentance” kind of way and in a more specific, “there’s a particular issue in our community life for which we need to repent” kind of way. But how we do this is of utmost importance. We're fooling ourselves if we think our parishioners can't tell the difference between a call to repentance that comes out of self-righteousness and insecurity and a call to repentance that comes out of true humility and a deep familiarity with our own sinfulness.
This is why Mother Julia taught us in Pastoral Theology that a priest should not hear confessions regularly if he or she is not making his or her own confession regularly. We cannot effectively call others to repent if we are not also repentant ourselves – and I would add, not just inwardly, but outwardly – willing to publicly admit our wrongs and to “acknowledge our guilt” before the congregation -- being humble enough to apologize and acknowledge when we mess up, rather than trying to “save face” because we’re “the priest” and therefore somehow must be faultless in the eyes of our congregation.
As Paul reminds us this morning, “God shows no partiality” – not between Jews and Greeks, and not between clergy and laity. We may be called to preach the words of the prophet, but let us not forget to listen to them as well.
Friday, March 4, 2011
St. Luke's Community House, Nashville
On Friday, March 4, our urban ministry class visited two locations in Nashville, Church of the Holy Trinity and St. Luke's Community House.
The St. Luke's Community House is an Episcopal community center in West Nashville that provides meals, a food pantry, a place for individuals to meet with social workers and case managers, a day camp, scouting troops, income tax assistance, English classes for immigrants, and much, much more. The place is essentially a one-stop shop for community needs in this low-income area, and has been part of this community since 1913, and physically located in the same area since 1920.
The Community House was founded in 1913 by a group of women who were all members of the Episcopal women's order Daughters of the King, from different parishes in the diocese. The original need was to provide a place for women and children to stay and receive meals and medical attention while visiting men incarcerated in the nearby prison. Today it has blossomed into so much more, but the one constant service that has been provided by St. Luke's since its inception in 1913 is childcare. St. Luke's now houses a state-of-the-art preschool that is an official United Way preschool center and uses the "Read to Succeed" curriculum that is standard in United Way preschools to get the children ready to enter kindergarten in the area public schools.
On March 4, our class met with St. Luke's Executive Director Brian Diller, who gave us an overview of the center's programs. He told us that the preschool is particularly important in this neighborhood: the zip code where St. Luke's is located -- 37209 -- has a 40 percent high school drop-out rate, and the two lowest-performing high schools in the state are located in that area. The extra attention and quality education that the children at St. Luke's receive before they ever even enter the public school systems helps to increase their chances of success once they get there.
Brian told us that 46 percent of the children in the preschool come from "very diverse backgrounds," by which I assume he meant either immigrant or recent immigrant families. He listed Vietnamese, Mexican, Latin American, and Eastern European (Croatian) as some of the ethnic backgrounds of the students at the preschool. Vietnamese are a particularly large population at St. Luke's; West Nashville is an center of Vietnamese refugee resettlement. The Vietnamese population is so large in this area that the library at St. Luke's preschool provides books in Vietnamese in addition to English and Spanish.
But the majority of our time with Brian was spent talking about the flood in Nashville last May (2010). Still recent history for the people of this neighborhood, which was one of the hardest hit in the flood, the memories were clearly fresh and poignant for Brian, who told story after story about how the community came together in the wake of the flood to provide for the needs of the neighborhood. As I listened to Brian, I was reminded of stories of disaster relief in New York post-9/11, or in New Orleans post-Katrina. The story of the community coming together in the midst of crisis was the same here as it was in those other places. St. Luke's itself was turned into a triage center for six weeks or so after the flood, and a local restaurant donated three meals a day for weeks at no charge to guests at the center. Because St. Luke's was such a well-known name in the community, it was a natural central gathering place for people to come to in the midst of a tragedy. It was a real testimony to the benefits of building long-term, proactive relationships with a community so that the structures needed for crisis response are in place when they are needed.
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| The food pantry at St. Luke's |
On March 4, our class met with St. Luke's Executive Director Brian Diller, who gave us an overview of the center's programs. He told us that the preschool is particularly important in this neighborhood: the zip code where St. Luke's is located -- 37209 -- has a 40 percent high school drop-out rate, and the two lowest-performing high schools in the state are located in that area. The extra attention and quality education that the children at St. Luke's receive before they ever even enter the public school systems helps to increase their chances of success once they get there.
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| A St. Luke's staff member gives our class a tour of the preschool. |
Brian told us that 46 percent of the children in the preschool come from "very diverse backgrounds," by which I assume he meant either immigrant or recent immigrant families. He listed Vietnamese, Mexican, Latin American, and Eastern European (Croatian) as some of the ethnic backgrounds of the students at the preschool. Vietnamese are a particularly large population at St. Luke's; West Nashville is an center of Vietnamese refugee resettlement. The Vietnamese population is so large in this area that the library at St. Luke's preschool provides books in Vietnamese in addition to English and Spanish.
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| Bumper sticker seen on a car in St. Luke's parking lot |
Church of the Holy Trinity/Church in the Yard, Nashville
The Church of the Holy Trinity is an Episcopal parish located right outside downtown Nashville, in a more industrial area and just down the street from one of the city's largest homeless shelters. It is an historic church, first established in 1849. In 1907, it was designated as "the" black Episcopal church in Nashville. Now, the church has an average Sunday attendance of about 60 people, most of them retired older African-American people from the area -- many of them former professors at the historically-black universities in the area (Fisk and Tennessee State).
But the story that drew our urban ministry class to visit Church of the Holy Trinity isn't directly connected to what the Rev. Bill Dennler, priest at Holy Trinity, refers to as the "inside congregation." It's the larger and fast-growing "outdoor congregation."
On Sundays at 2 p.m., Church of the Holy Trinity offers an outdoor Eucharist in the church yard, aptly called "Church in the Yard," followed by a community meal. The model is similar to The Outdoor Church I was a part of in Cambridge, Mass., which was a branch of Ecclesia Ministries in Boston, but Trinity's outdoor church is not officially affiliated with Ecclesia.
Trinity's outdoor church was born of a local initiative to feed the homeless started by a local chef at an upscale restaurant in Nashville. He was disturbed by the amount of waste thrown away at the restaurant each night, and wondered why those living on the streets shouldn't be able to have just as fine of a meal as the customers in his high-ticket restaurant. So, he started taking leftovers from dinner each night and creating magnificent concoctions -- soups and stews of all sorts -- and serving them in a back parking lot in downtown Nashville to homeless people.
This went on for a while, but as these things usually do, it drew attention -- and not positive attention -- from the neighbors and the city officials. Soon the officials were telling the chef he couldn't continue to serve these meals in public without a permit. And surely his motley crew of folks didn't meet with federal cleanliness guidelines!
So the priest at Church of the Holy Trinity, Bill Dennler's predecessor, volunteered to help out. "Come hold the meal on our church grounds," he told the chef. "They can't kick you off private property."
The unfortunate part of the story is that the congregation at Holy Trinity was never really consulted in the beginning phases of this partnership, so that they still do not see Church in the Yard as part of "their" ministry as the community of Holy Trinity. From what Fr. Bill Dennler described, the relationship seems to be more of a "tenant-landlord" relationship rather than a sense of ownership over the ministry as a Holy Trinity ministry. Fr. Bill hopes to change that, and says that some people from the "inside congregation" at Holy Trinity have indeed begun to become involved with the outdoor service and meal.
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| Fr. Bill (second from left) with Vanderbilt nursing students who offer foot care and clean socks to the congregants of Church in the Yard. Photo from Vanderbilt Reporter. |
The outdoor church and the outreach to the homeless is an issue near and dear to Fr. Bill's heart: he himself has been homeless, served time in prison, and is a recovering alcoholic, and is open about his past with his congregation. He has a kind of clout with the homeless population because he's "been there, done that," so to speak -- he can relate to the struggles many of them are going through with addition and other destructive behaviors.
The Church in the Yard is growing at much faster rates than the "indoor congregation." While the Sunday morning congregation either remains stable at 60 or is declining, the Sunday afternoon congregation continues to grow exponentially. When we met with Fr. Bill on March 4, he told us that they were currently seeing 100 people for the service, and another 100 people who show up just for the meal afterwards. Church in the Yard is beginning to define Holy Trinity's existence and put it "on the map," so to speak, both for the homeless people in the area and for other churches who want to help with this ministry.
Interestingly enough, Fr. Bill reported that a large number of "young people" from non-denominational churches come to volunteer and unexpectedly, seem to enjoy the Episcopal liturgy. These people are real "prayer warriors," Fr. Bill reported, spending a lot of time in one-on-one intercessory prayer with the homeless people who attend the service.
Our class returned to Holy Trinity on Sunday, March 27, to experience the worship service first-hand. I missed that session, since I am currently doing my field education on Sundays at a church near Sewanee. (I am the only student in the class who is a second-year student in the middle of field education work; the rest are all seniors who are finished with field education and one junior (first-year) student who has not yet started her field education.) However, I had already been to Church in the Yard several times, during my first year at Sewanee.
After meeting Susanna at the "Come and See" weekend at Sewanee when I came to look at the school, and realizing how much she "got it" in terms of outreach to the poor and homeless, I had been in touch with her to see if she knew of any groups in Chattanooga or Nashville that were similar to the outdoor church I'd been a part of in Cambridge. She referred me to Church in the Yard, and my husband and I had attended services there several times. I even thought about doing my field education there as a summer immersion experience, but wound up deciding to try something different -- small-town, small-church ministry -- for my field education instead.
Nevertheless, it was exciting to me to see this kind of ministry happening so close to my new home. Like with Church of the Common Ground in Atlanta, I haven't gotten up to the Church in the Yard as often as I would have liked to during my time here, but visiting a few times, and being back through the visit with our class, has affirmed my sense of calling to this kind of ministry. There's something about seeing a priest celebrate Eucharist outdoors in the midst of a crowd of homeless people that just seems to me to be a living icon of what church is really about.
Monday, February 28, 2011
A baby, a NICU, a chaplain, and a half-marathon
Every day, thousands of babies are born too soon, too small and often very sick. I got a first-hand view of this last summer as a chaplain in the Maternity Center at Providence Alaska Medical Center. For all the healthy babies born each day, there were a few whose first destination was not mommy's arms, but the newborn intensive care unit (NICU). One of those babies was Elena Rankin, born during the first few weeks of my internship in mid-June at 23 weeks gestation.
I'm running my first half-marathon in Nashville on April 30 in honor of Elena. And I'm raising money for the March of Dimes to help support the thousands of other families who will spend their first few months with their child in a NICU.
My fundraising goal is $2,300, in honor of Elena's age when she was born (23 weeks). (You'll see a status bar on the right-hand side of my blog logging my progress towards that goal.) I'm asking my supporters to make a donation of at least $23 in honor of Elena and the thousands of babies like her in NICUs right now. Your gift will support March of Dimes research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives. And it will be used to bring comfort and information to families with a baby in newborn intensive care.
Click here to go to my fundraising page and make a donation.
ELENA'S STORY
Elena's parents, Scott and Christina, have given me permission to share her story with you.
Elena is Scott and Christina's first child. When I first met them, Christina had been admitted to the pre-natal unit at Providence for complications with her pregnancy. She was pregnant with identical twins, but after only a few days in the hospital she lost Elena's sister, Sonja. The doctors did everything they could to keep Elena in the womb as long as possible, but just a little over a week later, she delivered Elena at 23 weeks. (In non-"mommy-speak," that's almost 6 months gestation. Christina's due date was mid-October, but she gave birth in mid-June.) Elena weighed just over a pound when she was born.
When I first saw Elena in the NICU, she was barely bigger than my hand, and her skin was red and translucent, like pictures I'd seen of fetuses in utero. She was in an incubator and had wires connected all over her body. I watched in awe as she lay there and sort of shuddered as she tried to breathe, with the help of the respirator that covered most of her face. (One of the biggest complications for premature babies is that their lungs have not yet fully developed, so breathing is an issue.)
Over the next 10 weeks, I watched a beautiful drama play out in that corner of the hospital. Elena's whole "care team" -- the tireless NICU nurses, the doctors, and my fellow chaplains -- surrounded her and her family with love and support. Elena had her ups and downs; days when she was doing great and days when she'd stop breathing or have a heart "episode." But through it all, the support from the Providence staff was palpable, and I was honored to be a part of that team.
I followed Elena's family throughout the summer, listening as her parents rode the roller coaster of never knowing what they would find each day when they entered the NICU. I watched them struggle with deciding to go back to work part-time, so they'd be able to take family leave when she actually came home. I watched them come into the NICU, scrubbing down for the requisite two minutes, from elbow to fingers, every morning before work and every afternoon after work. I celebrated with them when Elena gained a pound or when her breathing levels were higher, and I listened when they grieved over the loss of all the "would have beens."
One Sunday afternoon I ran into Christina in the NICU after what had been a particularly rough day: that day was originally supposed to have been her baby shower. NICU moms deal not only with not being able to bring their babies home, but with losing all the joys and celebrations of a "normal" pregnancy. Instead of sitting in a room full of her friends and relatives cooing over her adorable baby gifts and beaming over her impending twin girls' arrival, she was sitting in a sterile hospital room, rubbing one daughter's back through the small opening in the side of the incubator, having just said goodbye to the other daughter at her memorial service.
I developed a long-term relationship with the Rankins over the summer. They were some of the most dedicated parents in the NICU, faithfully visiting, holding, and singing songs and hymns to Elena every day. Being first-time parents, Christina commented to me once that they realized they didn't know a lot of children's songs to sing to her. "We just keep singing 'Jesus Loves Me' and 'Amazing Grace' over and over," she said, somewhat sheepishly. I smiled. "Not bad songs for her to learn from the very beginning of life," I said. Scott and Christina's love for their child was a living icon of Christ's love.
When I left at the end of the summer, I asked the family if they would be willing to let me continue to follow Elena's progress from afar. They agreed, and I watched via her online Care Page as she grew and progressed over the next few months until finally, in October, just a few days before her original due date, she got to go home! My heart leapt when I signed on to the page that day and saw the report that Elena was discharged, after 116 days in the NICU. It was hard to believe this was the same baby I had watched quiver in the incubator in late June.
Elena is now off all monitors and oxygen and and weighs over 13 pounds! She was recently featured on an Anchorage radio station's Radio-thon to benefit the Children's Miracle Network at Providence Children's Hospital. And in December, she starred in her church's Christmas play as baby Jesus (with mom and dad co-starring as Mary and Joseph)!
I am truly in awe of the miracle that is this child's life. Please join me in giving thanks and praise to God for her survival and for the blessings she has brought to this family.
And, if you feel so moved, please give to support me in my run in honor of Elena and in support of all families who face similar stories.
Thank you for helping me give all babies a healthy start!
Special thanks to the Rankins for their openness in allowing me to share their story, and for providing the pictures of Elena.
I'm running my first half-marathon in Nashville on April 30 in honor of Elena. And I'm raising money for the March of Dimes to help support the thousands of other families who will spend their first few months with their child in a NICU.
My fundraising goal is $2,300, in honor of Elena's age when she was born (23 weeks). (You'll see a status bar on the right-hand side of my blog logging my progress towards that goal.) I'm asking my supporters to make a donation of at least $23 in honor of Elena and the thousands of babies like her in NICUs right now. Your gift will support March of Dimes research and programs that help moms have full-term pregnancies and babies begin healthy lives. And it will be used to bring comfort and information to families with a baby in newborn intensive care.
Click here to go to my fundraising page and make a donation.
ELENA'S STORY
Elena's parents, Scott and Christina, have given me permission to share her story with you.
Elena is Scott and Christina's first child. When I first met them, Christina had been admitted to the pre-natal unit at Providence for complications with her pregnancy. She was pregnant with identical twins, but after only a few days in the hospital she lost Elena's sister, Sonja. The doctors did everything they could to keep Elena in the womb as long as possible, but just a little over a week later, she delivered Elena at 23 weeks. (In non-"mommy-speak," that's almost 6 months gestation. Christina's due date was mid-October, but she gave birth in mid-June.) Elena weighed just over a pound when she was born.
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| Elena the day after her birth |
When I first saw Elena in the NICU, she was barely bigger than my hand, and her skin was red and translucent, like pictures I'd seen of fetuses in utero. She was in an incubator and had wires connected all over her body. I watched in awe as she lay there and sort of shuddered as she tried to breathe, with the help of the respirator that covered most of her face. (One of the biggest complications for premature babies is that their lungs have not yet fully developed, so breathing is an issue.)
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| Elena at 5 days, under the lights in the incubator |
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| For perspective: Elena's hand beside her father's wedding band |
Over the next 10 weeks, I watched a beautiful drama play out in that corner of the hospital. Elena's whole "care team" -- the tireless NICU nurses, the doctors, and my fellow chaplains -- surrounded her and her family with love and support. Elena had her ups and downs; days when she was doing great and days when she'd stop breathing or have a heart "episode." But through it all, the support from the Providence staff was palpable, and I was honored to be a part of that team.
 |
| Elena's first family photo with her parents, 8 days after her birth |
I followed Elena's family throughout the summer, listening as her parents rode the roller coaster of never knowing what they would find each day when they entered the NICU. I watched them struggle with deciding to go back to work part-time, so they'd be able to take family leave when she actually came home. I watched them come into the NICU, scrubbing down for the requisite two minutes, from elbow to fingers, every morning before work and every afternoon after work. I celebrated with them when Elena gained a pound or when her breathing levels were higher, and I listened when they grieved over the loss of all the "would have beens."
One Sunday afternoon I ran into Christina in the NICU after what had been a particularly rough day: that day was originally supposed to have been her baby shower. NICU moms deal not only with not being able to bring their babies home, but with losing all the joys and celebrations of a "normal" pregnancy. Instead of sitting in a room full of her friends and relatives cooing over her adorable baby gifts and beaming over her impending twin girls' arrival, she was sitting in a sterile hospital room, rubbing one daughter's back through the small opening in the side of the incubator, having just said goodbye to the other daughter at her memorial service.
I developed a long-term relationship with the Rankins over the summer. They were some of the most dedicated parents in the NICU, faithfully visiting, holding, and singing songs and hymns to Elena every day. Being first-time parents, Christina commented to me once that they realized they didn't know a lot of children's songs to sing to her. "We just keep singing 'Jesus Loves Me' and 'Amazing Grace' over and over," she said, somewhat sheepishly. I smiled. "Not bad songs for her to learn from the very beginning of life," I said. Scott and Christina's love for their child was a living icon of Christ's love.
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| Elena as she looked in late August, at the end of my internship |
When I left at the end of the summer, I asked the family if they would be willing to let me continue to follow Elena's progress from afar. They agreed, and I watched via her online Care Page as she grew and progressed over the next few months until finally, in October, just a few days before her original due date, she got to go home! My heart leapt when I signed on to the page that day and saw the report that Elena was discharged, after 116 days in the NICU. It was hard to believe this was the same baby I had watched quiver in the incubator in late June.
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| Elena in late September, just a few weeks before she went home |
Elena is now off all monitors and oxygen and and weighs over 13 pounds! She was recently featured on an Anchorage radio station's Radio-thon to benefit the Children's Miracle Network at Providence Children's Hospital. And in December, she starred in her church's Christmas play as baby Jesus (with mom and dad co-starring as Mary and Joseph)!
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| The Rankins as The Holy Family |
I am truly in awe of the miracle that is this child's life. Please join me in giving thanks and praise to God for her survival and for the blessings she has brought to this family.
And, if you feel so moved, please give to support me in my run in honor of Elena and in support of all families who face similar stories.
Thank you for helping me give all babies a healthy start!
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| Elena in mid-January, at 7 months |
Special thanks to the Rankins for their openness in allowing me to share their story, and for providing the pictures of Elena.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Live simply, that others may simply live
Sermon preached at Holy Trinity Parish, Decatur, Ga., on Sunday, Feb. 27, 2011 (the 28th anniversary of my baptism), the Eighth Sunday of Epiphany, Year A. (Matthew 6:24-34).
She stands in the upstairs, attic-loft of the shelter, giving a tour to one of her newest volunteers.
“And this is where we keep the extra coats,” she says, pointing to a motley assortment of puffy parkas stuffed tightly into cardboard boxes and shoved into a room behind the walls made of chained-link fence. “Here we have sheets... we’re down to only a few sets, but we’ll get more in soon,” she says confidently.
She moves further down the central hallway, pointing out the holding places where supplies are kept for the guests of this shelter.
“Where do you get your donations?” the new volunteer asks. “How do you know you’ll be getting more sheets soon?”
“Oh, they’ll come,” the shelter employee says with a smile. “One of the things I’ve learned through working here is that God will provide for whatever we need. We like to have butter for the guests every night at dinner, out on the tables. But if we run out, ok, we just go ahead without butter for a few nights. And inevitably, some butter will be donated within a few days or a week. When we need butter, the universe sends us butter.”
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”
Have you ever been in a place where you weren’t quite sure where the money was going to come from to pay that electric bill? Or when you didn’t know how or when you’d get your next meal? If you have, then you know something about trusting God. I mean, really trusting God. Not just saying you trust God because it sounds nice and looks good to your church friends but then doing everything within your power to guarantee you will be able to provide for your own needs, thank you very much, God. I’m talking about really being dependent on other people for your very survival – as the disciples of Jesus were when he sent them out, instructing them to take nothing with them – “no, purse, no bag, no sandals” (Luke 10:4) – but to depend entirely on the generosity of those to whom they ministered.
Folks who live on the street know about being dependent on others, and the ones who aren’t completely numb and cynical usually know something about trusting God. In fact, I’d dare to say that they know quite a bit more about trusting God than folks who have only trusted God as a matter of personal piety, who have never had to trust God as a matter of life and death. Ask the folks down at the Church of the Common Ground about trusting God, and you’ll likely get an earful.
Of course, despite our illusions that we are able to provide for our own needs, we are -- all of us -- dependent on one another for survival. As one of the collects for Compline says, “grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.” And we are ultimately dependent on God for our very being. Still, knowing all that intellectually isn’t the same as living with it in your everyday reality.
Perhaps this is why Jesus encourages us to give up our possessions and speaks of the poor as “blessed.” Perhaps it’s why he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Our savings accounts, our IRAs, our insurance policies – all set up to ensure our financial security, to protect us and to maintain our standard of living – actually prevent us from experiencing our utter dependence on God and fool us into thinking we can care for ourselves. They are hindrances to our relationship with God.
We store up treasures for ourselves on earth because we believe that it will give us peace of mind. “If only I had more money, I wouldn’t have to worry so much,” we think to ourselves. But the irony of it all is that the more we have, the more we worry about losing it. Monastics take a vow of poverty out of the recognition of this dynamic that Jesus so poignantly illustrates throughout his teachings: the less we have, the less we have to worry about, the less we have to distract us from our relationship with God and from giving ourselves over completely to him. There is freedom in having less. It frees our souls to trust more and opens us to deeper spiritual growth.
But don’t get me wrong – my point is not to romanticize extreme poverty or to downplay the very real hardships and traumas that people in such circumstances face. I’m sure those same folks on the street who would affirm that they have learned to trust God through losing everything would also balk at any suggestion that their poverty – and by extension, the extreme wealth of others – is all part of God’s plan and is for their own good. This smacks of the kind of twisted theology that keeps the oppressed oppressed in the name of spiritual growth. “You may have hardships now, but your reward is great in heaven,” the church has told slaves, and women in abusive relationships, and gay and lesbian people – which has had the effect of justifying the status quo and denying their full membership in the body of Christ and their full flourishing as human beings.
I don’t believe that kind of acceptance of society’s injustices was what Jesus was talking about when he pointed out that having less frees us to be more open to God. I don’t think that was an invitation to endorse or turn a blind eye the horrendous conditions of those in extreme poverty because such conditions are “good for them” and will bring them “closer to God.” No, if that’s what we get out of reading the Gospel, I think we’re entirely missing the point.
Jesus doesn’t just call “the poor,” or those who have less, “blessed” and stop there. No, he calls “the rich,” or those who have more, to give up what they do have in order to experience some of the freedom of having less and to connect more deeply with God. But giving up possessions to address a personal spiritual need has the effect – whether intended or unintended – of meeting a larger, societal need as well.
Think about it. In a world of limited resources, how much we consume has a direct effect on others around us. If we choose to give up some of our possessions, we not only open ourselves more to God, we also leave more available for others to have. By eating less, buying less, using less energy, we allow others to benefit from the generosity of God and distribute it more equally amongst God’s people. Living more simply helps bring about the kingdom of God both within us and around us.
No, I don’t think that the Gospel endorses the status quo of our class system by holding up the blessedness of the poor or by pointing out that we may need to have less in order to really learn how to trust God. Rather, I believe that if we truly follow Jesus, we will find ourselves significantly rearranging that system.
Jesus calls us all to live more simply and thus to experience the freedom of knowing our dependence on God. But as those of us with more choose intentionally to live more simply, we may find that we are able to meet the needs of those in extreme poverty. As a saying attributed to Mahatma Gandhi goes, we should “live simply, that others may simply live.”
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, “strive first for the kingdom of God... and all these things will be given to you as well.”
She stands in the upstairs, attic-loft of the shelter, giving a tour to one of her newest volunteers.
“And this is where we keep the extra coats,” she says, pointing to a motley assortment of puffy parkas stuffed tightly into cardboard boxes and shoved into a room behind the walls made of chained-link fence. “Here we have sheets... we’re down to only a few sets, but we’ll get more in soon,” she says confidently.
She moves further down the central hallway, pointing out the holding places where supplies are kept for the guests of this shelter.
“Where do you get your donations?” the new volunteer asks. “How do you know you’ll be getting more sheets soon?”
“Oh, they’ll come,” the shelter employee says with a smile. “One of the things I’ve learned through working here is that God will provide for whatever we need. We like to have butter for the guests every night at dinner, out on the tables. But if we run out, ok, we just go ahead without butter for a few nights. And inevitably, some butter will be donated within a few days or a week. When we need butter, the universe sends us butter.”
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.”
Have you ever been in a place where you weren’t quite sure where the money was going to come from to pay that electric bill? Or when you didn’t know how or when you’d get your next meal? If you have, then you know something about trusting God. I mean, really trusting God. Not just saying you trust God because it sounds nice and looks good to your church friends but then doing everything within your power to guarantee you will be able to provide for your own needs, thank you very much, God. I’m talking about really being dependent on other people for your very survival – as the disciples of Jesus were when he sent them out, instructing them to take nothing with them – “no, purse, no bag, no sandals” (Luke 10:4) – but to depend entirely on the generosity of those to whom they ministered.
Folks who live on the street know about being dependent on others, and the ones who aren’t completely numb and cynical usually know something about trusting God. In fact, I’d dare to say that they know quite a bit more about trusting God than folks who have only trusted God as a matter of personal piety, who have never had to trust God as a matter of life and death. Ask the folks down at the Church of the Common Ground about trusting God, and you’ll likely get an earful.
Of course, despite our illusions that we are able to provide for our own needs, we are -- all of us -- dependent on one another for survival. As one of the collects for Compline says, “grant that we may never forget that our common life depends upon each other’s toil.” And we are ultimately dependent on God for our very being. Still, knowing all that intellectually isn’t the same as living with it in your everyday reality.
Perhaps this is why Jesus encourages us to give up our possessions and speaks of the poor as “blessed.” Perhaps it’s why he says it’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Our savings accounts, our IRAs, our insurance policies – all set up to ensure our financial security, to protect us and to maintain our standard of living – actually prevent us from experiencing our utter dependence on God and fool us into thinking we can care for ourselves. They are hindrances to our relationship with God.
We store up treasures for ourselves on earth because we believe that it will give us peace of mind. “If only I had more money, I wouldn’t have to worry so much,” we think to ourselves. But the irony of it all is that the more we have, the more we worry about losing it. Monastics take a vow of poverty out of the recognition of this dynamic that Jesus so poignantly illustrates throughout his teachings: the less we have, the less we have to worry about, the less we have to distract us from our relationship with God and from giving ourselves over completely to him. There is freedom in having less. It frees our souls to trust more and opens us to deeper spiritual growth.
But don’t get me wrong – my point is not to romanticize extreme poverty or to downplay the very real hardships and traumas that people in such circumstances face. I’m sure those same folks on the street who would affirm that they have learned to trust God through losing everything would also balk at any suggestion that their poverty – and by extension, the extreme wealth of others – is all part of God’s plan and is for their own good. This smacks of the kind of twisted theology that keeps the oppressed oppressed in the name of spiritual growth. “You may have hardships now, but your reward is great in heaven,” the church has told slaves, and women in abusive relationships, and gay and lesbian people – which has had the effect of justifying the status quo and denying their full membership in the body of Christ and their full flourishing as human beings.
I don’t believe that kind of acceptance of society’s injustices was what Jesus was talking about when he pointed out that having less frees us to be more open to God. I don’t think that was an invitation to endorse or turn a blind eye the horrendous conditions of those in extreme poverty because such conditions are “good for them” and will bring them “closer to God.” No, if that’s what we get out of reading the Gospel, I think we’re entirely missing the point.
Jesus doesn’t just call “the poor,” or those who have less, “blessed” and stop there. No, he calls “the rich,” or those who have more, to give up what they do have in order to experience some of the freedom of having less and to connect more deeply with God. But giving up possessions to address a personal spiritual need has the effect – whether intended or unintended – of meeting a larger, societal need as well.
Think about it. In a world of limited resources, how much we consume has a direct effect on others around us. If we choose to give up some of our possessions, we not only open ourselves more to God, we also leave more available for others to have. By eating less, buying less, using less energy, we allow others to benefit from the generosity of God and distribute it more equally amongst God’s people. Living more simply helps bring about the kingdom of God both within us and around us.
No, I don’t think that the Gospel endorses the status quo of our class system by holding up the blessedness of the poor or by pointing out that we may need to have less in order to really learn how to trust God. Rather, I believe that if we truly follow Jesus, we will find ourselves significantly rearranging that system.
Jesus calls us all to live more simply and thus to experience the freedom of knowing our dependence on God. But as those of us with more choose intentionally to live more simply, we may find that we are able to meet the needs of those in extreme poverty. As a saying attributed to Mahatma Gandhi goes, we should “live simply, that others may simply live.”
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said, “strive first for the kingdom of God... and all these things will be given to you as well.”
Friday, February 25, 2011
H*Art Gallery, Chattanooga
The H*Art Gallery (and that asterisk should really be a little heart symbol in the title, but I can't figure out how to make that symbol on my computer!) is just two doors down from Planet Altered, and we visited there after we were finished with our visit with Linda. The gallery is devoted exclusively to exhibiting art created by people who are homeless. Some of the people who work with the gallery offer an art class on Fridays at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, and there they look for particular talent in the art of the guests and invite those who exhibit particular artistic talent to exhibit their work at the H*Art Gallery.
Exhibiting their work at the H*Art Gallery gives the artists a chance to sell their work; all pieces on exhibit at any given time are for sale to the public. When the H*Art Gallery sells a painting, 60 percent of the proceeds go directly to the artist, 30 percent goes to the gallery, and 10 percent goes to a charity of the artist's choosing. I thought this was a particularly powerful model -- that even when the artists are living on the street and themselves may be the beneficiaries of charities, they still give 10 percent (a tithe) of the money from the sale of their art to a charity.
So how do people living on the streets manage to find the time or space to create art, much less afford the materials required to produce it? In addition to art classes like the ones held at the Community Kitchen, the H*Art Gallery opens its space to artists on Wednesdays and Thursdays, giving them a space to work and materials and supplies they can use in creating their art.
The gallery also holds fundraising dinners in the gallery space five or six times a year. They get a local chef to donate his or her time, and use the small but state-of-the-art kitchen in the back to create extravagant, $75 per plate kind of meals. The guests at the dinner are seated at nice tables with white table cloths and candles right in the middle of the gallery, which allows them to view and appreciate the art all while giving back to the gallery and to the homeless people it benefits.
In addition to being a gallery space, the H*Art Gallery is also available for event rentals in Chattanooga -- so people can hold receptions or bridal showers or any number of other private events here (and use the kitchen in the back!) for a small fee, which raises money for the gallery and raises awareness about the issues of homelessness and brings the beauty of their art to a wider audience. What a brilliant idea.The H*Art Gallery embodies what our professor Susanna Metz wrote about in a recent article on sacred space in the city for a publication called "Tuesday Morning," a resource for clergy:
"Finally it seems we’re beginning to understand that all of us—every human being—regardless of our station in life, have a God-given yearning for beauty. Our creativity makes us whole. Being able to indulge ourselves in what we love, what we consider beautiful, helps us find our wholeness."
"Finally it seems we’re beginning to understand that all of us—every human being—regardless of our station in life, have a God-given yearning for beauty. Our creativity makes us whole. Being able to indulge ourselves in what we love, what we consider beautiful, helps us find our wholeness."
Planet Altered, Chattanooga
Today our urban ministry class visited two locations in Chattanooga, Planet Altered and the H*Art Gallery. Planet Altered is a self-defined "community creative arts center" that offers a fair-trade gift shop, an art gallery, and a community space room dedicated to art classes and, on Saturday afternoons, a non-traditional, non-denominational, artistically-guided Christian worship service. The H*Art Gallery is a gallery that exhibits art created by homeless people.
At Planet Altered, we met with founder Linda Sines, who said she felt led by God to establish this space for art and worship in the middle of Chattanooga. Although the driving force behind her establishment of the center is her Christian faith, she told us that most of the community doesn't even know that the center is Christian-based -- intentionally. Her goal is to reach out to "non-traditional" church-goers, and so she keeps the overt Christian imagery and language to a minimum -- billing herself instead as a "community center." The back room hosts art workshops and a program called Cafe Grants, a community gathering and soup dinner where artists are given an opportunity to talk about their art (painting, singing, etc) to an audience of 35 people from the community who each pay $10 for the evening, and the community votes on which artist to give the $350 from the evening to. Planet Altered hosts these gatherings once a month for five months (from October to February). But on Saturday afternoons, it hosts a worship service.
But as Linda will tell you, the worship doesn't look like your traditional church service. The main focus of the service is creating "worship art," communal art projects that the gathered community works on together. There are some readings from the Bible, but no set liturgy, and no music.
"We don't use music," Linda explained, "because people tend to think of music as 'doing the worship' for them. They go and hear a beautiful choir sing some music in a church, and they think that's worship. There's nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to see what else could do the worship."
She showed us examples of some of the art they'd created in worship: three mask-like faces hanging above the coffee makers, painted in brilliant colors, that had been created the Sunday after Katrina, as a meditation on the passage from 1 Kings 19 when Elijah encounters God at Mt. Horeb (God was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in the "still, small voice" -- or, more accurately translated, the "sound of sheer silence."). Or the rose created from coffee filters, emerging from a charred, burnt heart. (The group didn't believe the rose was truly made of coffee filters until I got up and looked closely at it and reported back that indeed, it was made of coffee filters.)
Linda kept using words like "experiment" and "facilitate" to describe the way she led worship, and I watched the faces of my seminary colleagues grow somewhat puzzled.
"But, so, do you have, like, a liturgy?" someone asked, trying to figure out how someone could possibly lead worship without a set structure and ritual.
"No," Linda said. "It's different every week. There's always the component of scripture reading, and an art project, and some kind of interaction with the community, and sharing of how God is moving in everyone's lives. But I don't plan the worship, per se. Sometimes I show up and I'm not sure what's going to happen. I think we get so caught up with planning in churches sometimes that we don't leave room for the Holy Spirit to do its work."
I looked around and noted blank or hesitant looks from many of my colleagues.
"So how do people know about the service?" someone else asked. Linda explained that it was largely by word of mouth, and that she did not advertise or list the service in any newspapers.
"But... why wouldn't you want to advertise? Why wouldn't you want people to know what you're doing? How are people going to know about it?" someone asked, looking consternated.
"God brings people here as they need to find it," Linda said. "We're not about trying to promote ourselves, but just about seeing where the Holy Spirit guides us."
Finally someone asked the elephant-in-the-room question: what the heck was this lady's religious background or affiliation? (She surely wasn't Episcopalian, seemed to be the underlying assumption.)
Linda told us that she was raised by missionary parents, in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, but that she considers herself a non-denominational Christian and she doesn't like the "arrogance" that is often manifested between different denominations.
I could almost hear a collective "hmmm" from the gathered group of future Episcopal priests. At a coffee shop later, some of my colleagues said that what Linda was doing was great for a sort of alternative space like she had, but it would "never work for Sunday morning."
I wonder about that, though. Why wouldn't it? Just because "we've always done it" this other way? Maybe it would work for Sunday morning for some people -- for people who aren't going to the traditional Sunday morning services we continue to have as an homage to the past?
Our class will be going back to Planet Altered later in the term to actually experience one of Linda's Saturday worship experiences. Unfortunately, that's the day I'll be running my half-marathon in Nashville, so I'll miss the group's reactions to whatever they experience. I'm hoping I'll be able to go back on another Saturday to experience it myself.
Hearing Linda talk reminded me of my experience with a Monday night interfaith devotional gathering hosted by a group of local Baha'is in Decatur, Ga. That gathering was an intentional sacred space where there was no agenda, but an open time of sharing scripture, song, and story from our various traditions. In many ways, it felt more holy and Spirit-filled than anything I'd experienced in an Episcopal liturgy -- with the exception of maybe a few moments at St. James's in Cambridge (my first Episcopal parish). I was reminded of how much I appreciate these kind of alternative spaces for worship and how boring and stifling I can find traditional, repetitive liturgy (in fact, it was for that reason that I left the Lutheran Church in which I was raised -- much of the worship there felt like empty ritual to me). Although I do feel a certain sense of "at home-ness" in the Episcopal Church, this experience of encountering someone doing something different and some of the obvious uncomfortability or uncertainty of my (future) priestly colleagues reminded me of just how "not at home" I can feel in this tradition as well.
At Planet Altered, we met with founder Linda Sines, who said she felt led by God to establish this space for art and worship in the middle of Chattanooga. Although the driving force behind her establishment of the center is her Christian faith, she told us that most of the community doesn't even know that the center is Christian-based -- intentionally. Her goal is to reach out to "non-traditional" church-goers, and so she keeps the overt Christian imagery and language to a minimum -- billing herself instead as a "community center." The back room hosts art workshops and a program called Cafe Grants, a community gathering and soup dinner where artists are given an opportunity to talk about their art (painting, singing, etc) to an audience of 35 people from the community who each pay $10 for the evening, and the community votes on which artist to give the $350 from the evening to. Planet Altered hosts these gatherings once a month for five months (from October to February). But on Saturday afternoons, it hosts a worship service.
 |
| The fair-trade store in the front of Planet Altered. |
But as Linda will tell you, the worship doesn't look like your traditional church service. The main focus of the service is creating "worship art," communal art projects that the gathered community works on together. There are some readings from the Bible, but no set liturgy, and no music.
"We don't use music," Linda explained, "because people tend to think of music as 'doing the worship' for them. They go and hear a beautiful choir sing some music in a church, and they think that's worship. There's nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to see what else could do the worship."
 |
| Linda talking to members of our class in the "back room" space. |
She showed us examples of some of the art they'd created in worship: three mask-like faces hanging above the coffee makers, painted in brilliant colors, that had been created the Sunday after Katrina, as a meditation on the passage from 1 Kings 19 when Elijah encounters God at Mt. Horeb (God was not in the wind or the earthquake or the fire, but in the "still, small voice" -- or, more accurately translated, the "sound of sheer silence."). Or the rose created from coffee filters, emerging from a charred, burnt heart. (The group didn't believe the rose was truly made of coffee filters until I got up and looked closely at it and reported back that indeed, it was made of coffee filters.)
"But, so, do you have, like, a liturgy?" someone asked, trying to figure out how someone could possibly lead worship without a set structure and ritual.
"No," Linda said. "It's different every week. There's always the component of scripture reading, and an art project, and some kind of interaction with the community, and sharing of how God is moving in everyone's lives. But I don't plan the worship, per se. Sometimes I show up and I'm not sure what's going to happen. I think we get so caught up with planning in churches sometimes that we don't leave room for the Holy Spirit to do its work."
I looked around and noted blank or hesitant looks from many of my colleagues.
"So how do people know about the service?" someone else asked. Linda explained that it was largely by word of mouth, and that she did not advertise or list the service in any newspapers.
"But... why wouldn't you want to advertise? Why wouldn't you want people to know what you're doing? How are people going to know about it?" someone asked, looking consternated.
"God brings people here as they need to find it," Linda said. "We're not about trying to promote ourselves, but just about seeing where the Holy Spirit guides us."
 |
| Art supplies storage above the large sink in the "back room." |
Finally someone asked the elephant-in-the-room question: what the heck was this lady's religious background or affiliation? (She surely wasn't Episcopalian, seemed to be the underlying assumption.)
Linda told us that she was raised by missionary parents, in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, but that she considers herself a non-denominational Christian and she doesn't like the "arrogance" that is often manifested between different denominations.
I could almost hear a collective "hmmm" from the gathered group of future Episcopal priests. At a coffee shop later, some of my colleagues said that what Linda was doing was great for a sort of alternative space like she had, but it would "never work for Sunday morning."
Our class will be going back to Planet Altered later in the term to actually experience one of Linda's Saturday worship experiences. Unfortunately, that's the day I'll be running my half-marathon in Nashville, so I'll miss the group's reactions to whatever they experience. I'm hoping I'll be able to go back on another Saturday to experience it myself.
Hearing Linda talk reminded me of my experience with a Monday night interfaith devotional gathering hosted by a group of local Baha'is in Decatur, Ga. That gathering was an intentional sacred space where there was no agenda, but an open time of sharing scripture, song, and story from our various traditions. In many ways, it felt more holy and Spirit-filled than anything I'd experienced in an Episcopal liturgy -- with the exception of maybe a few moments at St. James's in Cambridge (my first Episcopal parish). I was reminded of how much I appreciate these kind of alternative spaces for worship and how boring and stifling I can find traditional, repetitive liturgy (in fact, it was for that reason that I left the Lutheran Church in which I was raised -- much of the worship there felt like empty ritual to me). Although I do feel a certain sense of "at home-ness" in the Episcopal Church, this experience of encountering someone doing something different and some of the obvious uncomfortability or uncertainty of my (future) priestly colleagues reminded me of just how "not at home" I can feel in this tradition as well.
*Disclaimer: All "quotations" of people in this blog post are re-created after the fact from my (rusty) memory and are not meant to be taken literally as the EXACT words these people spoke. And my apologies to any of my colleagues whose expressions I may have misread during this class... this reflection may be more about my projections than anything else!
Friday, February 18, 2011
Chattanooga Community Kitchen
Today our urban ministry class visited the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, by far the most inspirational place we've been yet (to me). We met with Jens Christensen, assistant director at the kitchen, and with Brother Ron Fender, an Episcopal monk in the Brotherhood of St. Gregory whose primary role at the shelter is to wash homeless people's feet.
When our van-load of six or seven students arrived at the kitchen, our professor, the Rev. Susanna Metz, who had driven a few other students in her own car, had already arrived. Her bumper-sticker-covered sedan was parallel parked next to the entrance to the kitchen, and she was standing on the street greeting folks from the shelter with hugs and smiles. It was clear she was a familiar presence in these parts.
We all gathered in front of the kitchen and went inside to the lobby. A middle-aged African-American man sat behind the desk, looking suspiciously at this crowd of clean, well-dressed folks who had wandered in. "We're here for a meeting with Jens," Susanna explained. "Oh, Jens, ok," he answered. "He's around somewhere," he commented, and we continued to wait.
Just to the left of the lobby was the main kitchen area. Although the Chattanooga Community Kitchen has become much more than just a feeding program, here was the center, the heart of what this place had been about from its founding: feeding people. Looming over the rows of tables and chairs was a beautiful mural, depicting Jesus with his arms outstretched in front of a city-scape including a variety of people in brilliant, bright colors. It reminded me of the mural in the parish hall at St. James Cambridge, my first Episcopal parish in the Boston area: there, a mural of Jesus feeding the five thousand took center stage, with Jesus breaking the bread in the center, just as in this picture, and hundreds of people of all different races and colors surrounding him in the background.
The day shelter area was opened in 2008 and is a space where people with nowhere else to go can spend time during the day. Most shelters require that guests leave by something like 5 or 6 a.m., so people without jobs are left with no where to go until the shelters open again at 6 p.m. or so. The day shelter area provides a place where people can play cards or chess or checkers, use the public computers for job-hunting or online classes, or just sit. There is also a meditation room, a quiet room with dimmed lighting where people can go for quiet and stillness. I was amazed at the luxury of this beautiful space within the midst of a shelter -- and indeed, the day shelter area itself was the cleanest, brightest, most inviting shelter space I'd ever been in -- a far cry from the hardly-better-than-a-basement concrete underside of a building where the Peachtree-Pine shelter in Atlanta was housed, or the somewhat grungy and dark day shelter space of Siena Francis House in Omaha.
But Brother Ron showed up anyway, and however much of a crazy nutcase he was, he made himself at home at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, which now touts him as one of their most beloved assets. He washes and cares for the feet of homeless people -- feet that are often tired from miles and miles of walking and from standing all day long. But this is no makeshift, bucket-and-rag foot washing. Although it arose from humble beginnings, the value of the footwashing -- tender, non-threatening human touch it provides to the guests and the ability to diagnose certain illnesses, like gangrene and diabetes -- drew attention, and eventually led to the donation of salon-quality pedicure chairs for the room (pictured at right). Now, in addition to Brother Ron's ministerial presence, nurses and podiatrists volunteer their time to help in this aspect of the Kitchen's ministry.
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| Entrance to the Chattanooga Community Kitchen |
When our van-load of six or seven students arrived at the kitchen, our professor, the Rev. Susanna Metz, who had driven a few other students in her own car, had already arrived. Her bumper-sticker-covered sedan was parallel parked next to the entrance to the kitchen, and she was standing on the street greeting folks from the shelter with hugs and smiles. It was clear she was a familiar presence in these parts.
We all gathered in front of the kitchen and went inside to the lobby. A middle-aged African-American man sat behind the desk, looking suspiciously at this crowd of clean, well-dressed folks who had wandered in. "We're here for a meeting with Jens," Susanna explained. "Oh, Jens, ok," he answered. "He's around somewhere," he commented, and we continued to wait.
Just to the left of the lobby was the main kitchen area. Although the Chattanooga Community Kitchen has become much more than just a feeding program, here was the center, the heart of what this place had been about from its founding: feeding people. Looming over the rows of tables and chairs was a beautiful mural, depicting Jesus with his arms outstretched in front of a city-scape including a variety of people in brilliant, bright colors. It reminded me of the mural in the parish hall at St. James Cambridge, my first Episcopal parish in the Boston area: there, a mural of Jesus feeding the five thousand took center stage, with Jesus breaking the bread in the center, just as in this picture, and hundreds of people of all different races and colors surrounding him in the background.
Eventually, Jens came out to meet us. He was a young, outdoorsy-looking man who looked like he'd spend most of his time hiking or reading poetry, not running a community kitchen for homeless people. He began to tell us the history of the Kitchen: founded in 1982 by seven different churches (two of them Episcopal), that banded together to address the needs that they were seeing in the community. Now the board of the Kitchen includes not just churches but synagogues and even a Satya Sai Baba group (a Hindu sect), "We don't talk about religion, we talk about helping people," Jens said of how the groups work together. "We can come to an agreement about helping people even if we don't agree on why we're helping them."
The Kitchen began as a group of volunteering going out to give sack lunches to people on the streets, and in 1985 they got a building and began to house their feeding program in one central location. Now, the Kitchen includes not just a meals program but a day shelter, a free health care clinic, substance abuse programs, a thrift store, social worker services, and a transitional family housing unit that can house up to 10 families at a time. 181,000 meals were served last year (2010), and the health clinic sees 4,000-5,000 unique individuals each year. There are an estimated 600 to 700 homeless people each night in Chattanooga, Jens told us.
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| An unfortunately blurry image of the meditation room. |
As Jens gave us the tour, he told us about how the shelter had intentionally built this space to be of the same standards one would expect for any public space. "When we went to renovate the space, the staff said to ourselves, 'This needs to be a space that we'd feel comfortable using ourselves.'"
"That's what I'M talkin' about!" a short African-American man in jeans and a raggy t-shirt piped up from the back of our group. A guest at the shelter, he'd joined our group in the lobby and asked Jens if he could tag along for our tour. He interjected occasionally with his own perspective on things.
Jens smiled. "Really," he said, "the bathrooms here were pretty disgusting. They weren't of a quality that any of us on staff would be willing to use. So we decided, you know, when we remodeled, that everything would have to be of the highest quality."
The man in the back of the group nodded vigorously and proudly.
Just one example of that commitment to high quality service for their guests is the foot washing room. The foot washing program at the Community Kitchen was started by Br. Ron Fender, a monk in the Episcopal order of the Brotherhood of St. Gregory. As Jens told the story, "One day we got a hand-written letter from some man up in the Northeast. 'I want to live with the homeless, make minimum-wage, and wash people's feet,' it said. The director of the shelter threw it on the desk dismissively, figuring it was from some crazy nutcase." (Read more about the story in this article from the Chattanooga Free Times Press.)
But Brother Ron showed up anyway, and however much of a crazy nutcase he was, he made himself at home at the Chattanooga Community Kitchen, which now touts him as one of their most beloved assets. He washes and cares for the feet of homeless people -- feet that are often tired from miles and miles of walking and from standing all day long. But this is no makeshift, bucket-and-rag foot washing. Although it arose from humble beginnings, the value of the footwashing -- tender, non-threatening human touch it provides to the guests and the ability to diagnose certain illnesses, like gangrene and diabetes -- drew attention, and eventually led to the donation of salon-quality pedicure chairs for the room (pictured at right). Now, in addition to Brother Ron's ministerial presence, nurses and podiatrists volunteer their time to help in this aspect of the Kitchen's ministry.This entry is already ridiculously long, but the amount of work that the Community Kitchen does in downtown Chattanooga is simply staggering. Even to briefly mention each type of outreach ministry would take much longer than I've spent here. In addition to the services previously mentioned, the Kitchen also has a medical respite facility, where people who are homeless can go after being discharged from the hospital to continue to recover. (Often people are discharged with orders of "bed rest," but how exactly is one to find this "bed rest" if one does not have a home, much less a bed where they can rest on a consistent basis?) Unfortunately, the medical respite area is currently closed (as of Feb. 2010) due to a lack of ability to pay volunteer nurses to monitor the hall.
The Kitchen also has a recycling program, which has been operating since the 1990s, before the city provided curbside recycling. The recycling program provides job training for people connected with the day shelter and the kitchen. Our professor Susanna collects recyclables at the seminary and drives them down to Chattanooga every month to donate to the Community Kitchen's recycling program. (When we showed up today, she had a bag of plastic bottles in hand.)
At the end of our time at the Community Kitchen, we sat down for a brief conversation with Brother Ron (pictured below). Someone asked him how he could keep doing it, keep giving of himself in this way, keep putting himself in harm's way in this ministry. (He'd just told us stories of having guns pointed at his head and of breaking up violent fist-fights outside the Kitchen.) They asked if he was afraid.
"You know, I gave up fear," Brother Ron said, matter-of-factly. "I think that's part of living into the vows."
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| © Chattanooga Free Times Press. |
He spoke eloquently of the value of continuing to show up, week after week, even when people betray you or hurt you or don't seem to be making any changes or improvements to their lives.
"But we can't abandon them," he said. "I think we've gotta keep being there. That's what the Gospel is all about. God doesn't abandon us. So I keep coming back."
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| A mural in the meditation room at the day shelter. |
Waiting
Sermon preached at Morning Prayer (Friday, Feb. 18, 6 Epiphany, Year One) in the Chapel of the Apostles, the seminary chapel at Sewanee.
I assume that that concluding statement from 1 Timothy, “Do not ordain anyone hastily,” was especially poignant to this crowd of seminarians.
The Episcopal Church certainly seems to have gotten that one right! We don’t take anyone’s claim to a call from God at face value. No, we test it and investigate it and analyze it and then we make them wait... and wait ... and study ....and spend a summer dealing with the existential angst of patients in a hospital... and wait some more... and study... and take some tests... and wait... and go before various committees... and wait... and wait. No, it could not be said of us that we ordain anyone hastily!
And despite the frustrations and difficulties that this process can bring, it is a wise and good thing that our church has heeded the words of Scripture and does not ordain anyone hastily. There is wisdom in the church’s tradition and in the vetting process for the ordained ministry. In fact, a similar vetting process used to be required of anyone who wanted to join the church at all, not just those who wanted to be ordained. The ancient practice of catechizing adult converts to the faith, who would become “candidates for baptism” only after an extensive process (as we eventually become candidates for holy orders), ensured that those joining the church were seriously committed to Jesus Christ and to serving him in and with their lives. Perhaps we would be wise not to baptize hastily any more than we ordain hastily.
Waiting can be a good and holy spiritual discipline. Scripture is full of exhortations to “wait on the Lord,” for God’s deliverance and mercy in the midst of trouble. As Christians, while “we remember Jesus’s death” and “proclaim his resurrection,” we are also perpetually “awaiting his coming in glory,” as Eucharistic Prayer B says. Whole seasons of the church year, like Advent and Lent, are devoted to intentional waiting.
Waiting is a forgotten virtue in our modern culture, so focused on instant gratification. Why wait for months for a letter from a loved one when you can text message them and get a response within seconds? Why take the time to prepare a rich, wholesome meal for family and friends when you can get one at the push of a button at your local fast food restaurant? But even within our fast-paced culture, we still value most those things that come at the expense of a significant investment of our time and energy: that promotion that required that we work extra hard, the friendship that was built on years of shared experiences and hardships. Anthropologists have observed that across cultures, people value more what costs them more. Instead of catering to the quick-fix culture, we as the church should be about the business of stressing the value of waiting, of not getting what we want immediately, of putting things off for the sake of spiritual growth.
And we seminarians should be thankful for this opportunity to experience a holy waiting, as we muddle our way through the three years of “liminal” space in seminary. The good news about waiting is that it is something we can actually DO. Some of you might disagree – you might be more of a Tom Petty-ite, affirming that “the waiting is the hardest part.” But think about it. You don’t actually have to DO anything to wait. You can just sit there. Surely it’s easier to “wait for the Lord” than to “love your neighbor as yourself” or to “sell all you have and give it to the poor?” In any case, we have no choice about waiting – unlike the more action-oriented commandments, waiting is forced upon us. We can and do wait, whether we like it or not. It’s not actually hard to wait; the hard part is to wait with a good attitude, with a posture of faith and trust in God.
Some of you may have heard a saying that is popular with people of many faiths who have a meditation or silent prayer practice: “Don’t just do something, sit there!” This inversion of the traditional saying draws our attention to the importance of being over doing, and the value of waiting in stillness and silence before the Divine Mystery.
Oh, but I know, I know. There is so much to be done. You need to find a place to live this summer during CPE. And there’s so much paperwork to be done before scholarship applications are due and commissions on ministry meet this spring. And what if you haven’t found a job come graduation time?
Just remember – there’s a reason we don’t ordain anyone hastily. And the next time you find yourself feeling pressure to do, do, do... don’t just do something, sit there.
I assume that that concluding statement from 1 Timothy, “Do not ordain anyone hastily,” was especially poignant to this crowd of seminarians.
The Episcopal Church certainly seems to have gotten that one right! We don’t take anyone’s claim to a call from God at face value. No, we test it and investigate it and analyze it and then we make them wait... and wait ... and study ....and spend a summer dealing with the existential angst of patients in a hospital... and wait some more... and study... and take some tests... and wait... and go before various committees... and wait... and wait. No, it could not be said of us that we ordain anyone hastily!
And despite the frustrations and difficulties that this process can bring, it is a wise and good thing that our church has heeded the words of Scripture and does not ordain anyone hastily. There is wisdom in the church’s tradition and in the vetting process for the ordained ministry. In fact, a similar vetting process used to be required of anyone who wanted to join the church at all, not just those who wanted to be ordained. The ancient practice of catechizing adult converts to the faith, who would become “candidates for baptism” only after an extensive process (as we eventually become candidates for holy orders), ensured that those joining the church were seriously committed to Jesus Christ and to serving him in and with their lives. Perhaps we would be wise not to baptize hastily any more than we ordain hastily.
Waiting can be a good and holy spiritual discipline. Scripture is full of exhortations to “wait on the Lord,” for God’s deliverance and mercy in the midst of trouble. As Christians, while “we remember Jesus’s death” and “proclaim his resurrection,” we are also perpetually “awaiting his coming in glory,” as Eucharistic Prayer B says. Whole seasons of the church year, like Advent and Lent, are devoted to intentional waiting.
Waiting is a forgotten virtue in our modern culture, so focused on instant gratification. Why wait for months for a letter from a loved one when you can text message them and get a response within seconds? Why take the time to prepare a rich, wholesome meal for family and friends when you can get one at the push of a button at your local fast food restaurant? But even within our fast-paced culture, we still value most those things that come at the expense of a significant investment of our time and energy: that promotion that required that we work extra hard, the friendship that was built on years of shared experiences and hardships. Anthropologists have observed that across cultures, people value more what costs them more. Instead of catering to the quick-fix culture, we as the church should be about the business of stressing the value of waiting, of not getting what we want immediately, of putting things off for the sake of spiritual growth.
And we seminarians should be thankful for this opportunity to experience a holy waiting, as we muddle our way through the three years of “liminal” space in seminary. The good news about waiting is that it is something we can actually DO. Some of you might disagree – you might be more of a Tom Petty-ite, affirming that “the waiting is the hardest part.” But think about it. You don’t actually have to DO anything to wait. You can just sit there. Surely it’s easier to “wait for the Lord” than to “love your neighbor as yourself” or to “sell all you have and give it to the poor?” In any case, we have no choice about waiting – unlike the more action-oriented commandments, waiting is forced upon us. We can and do wait, whether we like it or not. It’s not actually hard to wait; the hard part is to wait with a good attitude, with a posture of faith and trust in God.
Some of you may have heard a saying that is popular with people of many faiths who have a meditation or silent prayer practice: “Don’t just do something, sit there!” This inversion of the traditional saying draws our attention to the importance of being over doing, and the value of waiting in stillness and silence before the Divine Mystery.
Oh, but I know, I know. There is so much to be done. You need to find a place to live this summer during CPE. And there’s so much paperwork to be done before scholarship applications are due and commissions on ministry meet this spring. And what if you haven’t found a job come graduation time?
Just remember – there’s a reason we don’t ordain anyone hastily. And the next time you find yourself feeling pressure to do, do, do... don’t just do something, sit there.
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