Faking it until I make it

Every summer my church has at least one outdoor service, usually preceded by some form of potluck breakfast. Often, instead of a sermon, a few members of the congregation share about some predetermined topic or other. I usually get a little bit sunburned. It’s a chance for us as a community to be a bit more informal with each other than we are on the average Sunday (though not by much–we’re really good at informality at my church, which is one of the reasons I’ve stayed), and I love it.

Today was that service, and one of the people who shared is a parent of two of my Sunday school students. Everyone who spoke was talking about ways they see/experience God. And one of the things this person shared was that his older daughter, who I have made an effort to develop a relationship with, often uses the phrase “Sarah Kelley says.” He went on to explain that I had instilled “a feminist rage” in her, but that I had paired that way of looking at the world with a love of Jesus.

I was floored. Not gonna lie, I was very pleased with myself about the “feminist rage” part, because one of the reasons I started teaching Sunday school was because I’m finding it so difficult to shake off the misogynistic, patriarchal messages about God and faith that I picked up as a kid, and I wanted to try and head those messages off at the pass for the kids, but especially the girls, at my church. So to hear that, in at least one case, I was succeeding in that, was very gratifying.

But what really got my attention was the “love of Jesus” part. Because friends, that’s where I struggle. I have questions and doubts and whenever it’s my turn to plan a Sunday school lesson, the hardest part for me is the Jesus/God part. I love researching historical and cultural context, making pop culture connections, sharing parts of my story, raising questions and (sometimes) getting the kids thinking and talking. But bringing it all back to what we can learn about God/Jesus is hard for me, and I often wonder whether I really did it at all.

Basically, I often feel like I’m faking it until I make it when I teach, because as sure as I am that there is something out there that can safely be called God/dess, as much as I love and try to live by the teachings of Jesus and know that most of my favorite people call themselves Christians, I often feel unsure of how much of orthodox Christian teaching about God and Jesus I actually, truly believe. And that scares me.

So to hear a parent, who is also a professor in the religious studies department at the local university, say that he believes that I combine my feminism (which I often wear louder and prouder than my Christianity, or at least that’s what it feels like to me) with a genuine love of Jesus and am passing that on to the kids I help teach is not just gratifying. It’s much-needed encouragement.

Maybe, in the midst of what feels like faking it, I’ve made it a lot more than I realized. Maybe my belief that, as much as we humans screw it up way too much of the time, Christianity and it’s message of love and grace is one of the best lenses through which to view the world that I’ve encountered is in fact coming through in my teaching just as much as my belief that women are just as human and just as made in the image of God as men, and deserve to be treated accordingly by both society and the church.

So thank you, parent of my student. Thank you for telling our entire congregation that feminist rage is a good thing, and thank you for telling me that I have faith. As weird as it might sound coming from a Sunday school teacher, that was something I really needed to hear.

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God is in the rain

Summer stayed a long time in the corner of Oregon I call home. Sunny with temperatures in the 70s, as if summer was apologizing for not really showing up until July. Still, once October rolled around, my Oregonian heart was ready for the rain.

It came on Friday. It will be here until May, probably longer if the last few years are any indication. Now is the time to bunker down with mugs of hot beverages, snugly blankets, and favorite books and movies and TV shows.

And if you’re nutty like me, now is the time to go for walks in the rain and get completely and deliberately soaking wet (and then change into dry snugly clothes, make a cup of tea, and read or write or watch something with my husband).

I go for these walks because the rain and the dark make me feel fierce and alive. And because I believe there is deep truth to that quote from V for Vendetta: “God is in the rain.”

Now hold that thought.

Tonight I walked a labyrinth as part of my church’s simple evening worship experience. Labyrinths are a way of journeying inward, towards God or self or both, resting in contemplation, and then venturing back out into the world. This particular labyrinth was outside, and it was raining, and we didn’t give a frell because we are Oregonians.

I almost didn’t go to this gathering at all, because I worked yesterday and today was a long day and I was tired. Then, at the last minute, I changed my mind because I was feeling a real need to encounter God. I’ve been having one of those weeks.

So I got to the labyrinth, and began to walk inward, praying as best I could. But I didn’t feel better, and my mind wandered a lot. God is in the rain. Song lyrics from Les Misérables. God is in the rain. According to John Green’s novel Looking for Alaska, Simón Bolívar’s last words were “Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” and in the novel the main character tries to figure out what the labyrinth is. One of the most popular quotes from Looking for Alaska is “I was drizzle, she was a hurricane.” Florence and the Machine lyrics from the song “Hurricane Drunk.” God is in the rain.

By the time I got to the center of the labyrinth, I didn’t feel comforted or closer to God or really any of what I had hoped for. But as I wound my way back out, wet, rain still falling on my face, I thought about God in the rain. The rain that will be a near-constant presence for  the next nine months, minimum.

And I thought, well, that’s at least something.

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Fed but not counted

“Then Jesus called his disciples to him . . . The disciples said to him, ‘Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd? . . . Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children.” (Matthew 15:32-33, 38 NRSV)

Tonight, at my church’s very simple evening service, we gathered in the round at the front of the sanctuary, many sitting on cushions or beanbag chairs rather than pews. We did a sort of group lectio divina of the story of the feeding of the four thousand from Matthew.

I hate that that is the name of the story.

Want to know why? Check verse 38, that last sentence of the quote at the beginning of this post.

Four thousand MEN, and who freaking knows how many women and children. The women and children may have outnumbered the men. We don’t know, we just know they were there, but somewhere along the way someone decided they weren’t worth counting.

At one point during the service, I felt prompted to share some of my dissatisfaction on this front, and received some encouraging comments afterwards.

Which made me think that this was a good topic for a post, especially since I’ve had some further thoughts. Like, for example, that in many ways the difference between the way Jesus treats the women and the way the story treats them is symbolic of a similar disconnect in much of the church.

Allow me to elaborate. Everyone was fed. Jesus gave thanks for the seven loaves and few small fishes, broke them, and gave them to the disciples who gave them to the crowd. A crowd of men, women, and children. Jesus fed them all, through his disciples.

And I’m no biblical scholar, but this story just says “disciples,” so isn’t it a possibility that this is not just the Twelve, but perhaps also some of the women disciples? Can’t you just imagine some of the women who supported Jesus’ ministry financially asking Jesus where they were going to get food for all those people, and really hoping that he’s not expecting them to come up with a solution because that kind of money they simply do not have?

But back to the main point: Jesus, with the help of some disciples, fed everyone. In no particular order. Regardless of gender, age, or class. Jesus fed everyone. “And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full” (verse 37).

Yet somewhere in the course of this story being told and eventually written down, it was decided that the number that mattered was 4000. 4000 men. Again, not a biblical scholar, but it seems to me to be unlikely that anyone who was there was able to do a head count, so this is at best a ballpark number from the get-go. Did the original tellers, presumably people who were there, speak only of the number of men, or did they try to count everyone? I doubt there’s any way to know. Either way, the story is now “the feeding of the four thousand,” never mind that that number includes only the men.

The women (and children) may have been fed by Jesus, but they are not counted by those who passed on the Gospel.

In how many churches today is this all too true? In how many churches do women encounter Jesus, worship and serve and build community, and yet are deemed unfit for leadership, are told by male representatives of the Gospel that when it comes to the people through whom God speaks, they do not count?

We are fed by Jesus. How long before we are counted by His followers?

 

 

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Musings on Wonder

Two of my friends posted the following video to Facebook today. You’ll kind of have to watch it for the rest of this post to make sense, but I think it’s worth the seven-and-a-half minutes, and presumably if you’re here reading you’re willing to take my word for it.

This video sort of punched me in the gut. Because on the one hand, I can be very cynical and sarcastic, mostly when it comes to Christianity and the church and the culture wars and all these theologies and ideologies with which I grew up but that I’m not sure I can take seriously anymore, if only because I want to distance myself as much as possible from shit like this.

On the other hand, I am a nerd. And I’m going to let the fabulous John Green tell you why that is applicable to the topic at hand. The relevant part is from 1:08-1:41, but the entire video is well worth a watch because the vlogbrothers are always wonderful.

I get ridiculously enthusiastic about books, movies, and TV shows that capture my imagination and take me on the most incredible journeys. My friends and family know that whatever I am currently excited about will inevitably become part of almost every conversation in which I participate, no matter how odd the connection may seem to everyone but me. And in this place, this place of being swept away by the miracle of imaginary people and worlds brought to life by countless remarkable individuals, I find God.

In these spaces where people are doing their best to figure life out by telling stories in the best way they know how, where the characters admit to not having the answers and the world is full of magic and light shines in the darkest of places, even when we along with the characters were sure that everything would be dark forever, I experience a little of the deep wonder Rob Bell talks about.

Yet even here I circle back around to cynicism and hard-heartedness, because nothing is perfect and even through the rose-colored glasses I don when I fall in love with a story I see things that I think are wrong. Sometimes I get angry about them, and the blessing and the curse of the internet is that it is very easy to find people who get angry about the same things you do, and are often more articulate and well-informed, so then you read what they have to say and learn that there is so much more at which to rage than you ever imagined.

And now I must ask myself, why is it that even when that happens, even when Steven Moffat writes yet another incredibly sexist episode of Doctor Who, I cannot turn my back on the beautiful story of the two-hearted time-traveling alien, his bigger-on-the inside box, and the friends and enemies they make along the way?

Yet every time I hear of sexism in the name of Jesus I fling my hands up in the air, utter a few choice curse words between stifled screams of frustration, and ask myself why I bother with this Christianity thing anyway.

Is it because I was raised in the church, but I discovered my favorite stories on my own?

Is it because the creators of the books, movies, and TV shows I love hope lots of people will like them but by no means insist that they are the only story of true meaning and significance, while Christianity, at least as most loudly represented here in the States, insists that its truth is the only truth worth paying attention to?

Is it because I’m wishy-washy and lazy and cowardly? Is it because all the wonderful people in my life who are Christians have got it wrong after all?

Normally I’m pretty comfortable not having answers, but I’m not gonna lie, this time I’ve got this icky feeling in the pit of my stomach that I don’t like one bit. So I’m going to handle it the way I usually handle such things: watch an episode of my current TV love (Buffy the Vampire Slayer), then maybe some prayerful journaling and/or a walk. Because in case it wasn’t already apparent, stories usually offer me much better comfort than the traditional “Christian” solutions of prayer and bible-reading.

I choose to see that as a God thing. Which may or may not be a sign that there is hope for me yet.

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