Here Am I, Send Me: The Story of Jonathan Daniels

We're going into the second round of Lent Madness and I've done the write-up for Jonathan Daniels, who is up tomorrow. In case you have an hour and want to learn more about him, take a look at this documentary which covers a heck of a lot that I could do in 450 words.


Here Am I, Send Me: The Story of Jonathan Daniels from Episcopal Marketplace on Vimeo.

I'm going to be happy whoever wins in this match-up. I'm a big fan of Janani Luwum as well and look forward to learning more about him. So as far as I'm concerned, vote for whomever your conscience calls -- but vote!

Use the full names of Harriet Ross Tubman and the women honored with her

Originally posted in a slightly different form in July 2010. I'm reposting today in honor of Harriet Tubman who is paired with Nicholas Ferrar in today's Lent Madness matchup. You can vote here.

There are worse things in the world, I know, but it gets my dander up every year.

Here's the collect for the feast of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Amelia Bloomer, Sojourner Truth, and Harriet Tubman whose feast is July 20:

O God, whose Spirit guides us into all truth and makes us free: Strengthen and sustain us as you did your servants Elizabeth, Amelia, Sojourner, and Harriet. Give us vision and courage to stand against oppression and injustice and all that works against the glorious liberty to which you call all your children; through Jesus Christ our Savior, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

So what's the problem? Let's compare it with the collect for William Reed Huntington whose feast day is one week later.

O Lord our God, we thank you for instilling in the heart of your servant William Reed Huntington a fervent love for your Church and its mission in the world; and we pray that, with unflagging faith in your promises, we may make known to all people your blessed gift of eternal life; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen

So maybe it's because there are several of them on one day, you say. Let's take a look, shall we? Ah, here we go:

Keep us, O Lord, constant in faith and zealous in witness, after the examples of thy servants Hugh Latimer, Nicholas Ridley, and Thomas Cranmer; that we may live in thy fear, die in thy favor, and rest in thy peace; for the sake of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

OK, so first of all, the Episcopal Church is breaking the style for the collects by leaving off the last names of these women. And secondly, they are doing it to four women who fought to see that women would be treated and respected as the equals of men.

Man, it ticks me off. I wrote to the Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music to point this out a couple of years ago, hoping it would be duly noted and corrected at General Convention last year. No dice.

Please pass the word along to any liturgically-minded friends. And if you are marking this feast day, please amend the collect to include their full names. This July 20th, I would like to know that at least a few churches are showing these women the respect they deserve.

Various & Sundry: Lent, Valentines, and Porky Goodness

As you might guess, Lent Madness has come to the fore in the past couple of days. Madness is right! If you haven't checked it out yet, do! And vote -- for whomever you choose. And here's an old post I wrote on 4 things I learned about elections from Lent Madness.

It's been in the 70's around here the past couple of days, but I hear in some parts of the country it's this season called winter. Here's a video my sister made of digging out her car in Portland, Maine.


Now, see, that doesn't look that hard!

It was, of course, also Valentine's Day. And though I did like these Puritan Valentines, as a former Presbyterian, it was the #thingsCalvinistssayonValentinesDay tweets that really set my heart a-flutter.

#ThingsCalvinistsSayonValentinesDay - May I call you Grace, because you are irresistible.
— Relevant Church Guy (@UberRelevant) February 12, 2013

Trust me on this one.

Then again, nothing says Valentine's Day like porky goodness. Wouldn't you like to get something like this instead of a dozen roses?

Gourmet Bacon Assortment This trio of gourmet-quality bacon will light up the eyes and tastebuds of bacon fanatics you know and love. Features the following Nueske's smoked bacon varieties in convenient vacuum-sealed packages: (1) Our famous Applewood-smoked Bacon, 16 oz., (2) Applewood-smoked Peppered Bacon, hand coated with fresh-cracked Tellicherry peppercorns, 16 oz., and (3) New Wild Cherrywood-smoked Bacon, made from an all-natural recipe with no artificial ingredients, 12 oz. A great way to sample the best and choose your favorite!

Mmmm...bacon... Yes, I am now following a purveyor of smoked meats on Twitter.

I haven't been filling you in on the obituaries recently, but there were two excellent ones this week of extraordinary women.

The first, Sarah Baring, was a London socialite who spent much of the war translating German documents at Bletchley Park. She knew German because she'd been at finishing school in Munich where she and a friend "would sit at a neighbouring table and pull faces at [Hitler and his entourage]. They knew us by sight and knew we were English, so they just pretended we weren’t there. We weren’t arrested, because at that stage the Germans were still being frightfully nice to us."

At Bletchley, "Sarah Norton worked on the Naval Section index, helping to provide details of the U-boats to Hut 8, run at that time by Alan Turing, of whom she once said: '[He] was immensely shy, especially of girls... I once offered him a cup of tea, [and] he shrank back as if I’d got measles or something. He was wonderful. We were all very proud of him.'”

The work was gruelling, and Sarah Norton and her colleagues took their pleasures where they could: “One afternoon, we decided to give Jean Campbell-Harris, who later became Baroness Trumpington, a ride in a large laundry basket on wheels that was normally used to move secret files. We launched it down the long corridor where it gathered momentum by the second. To our horror, Jean suddenly disappeared, basket and all, through some double swing doors, crashing to a halt in the men’s lavatories. A serious reprimand was administered and our watches were changed so we were distributed among a more sober group.”

There's more, but you'll have to read it yourself.

Also this week, I learned of the death of Keiko Fukada, whom I had read about a year and a half ago when, at age 98, she became the first woman ever to receive a 10th degree black belt in Judo. "Standing 4ft 10in tall and weighing less than 100lb, Keiko Fukuda took up judo in her native Japan when she was in her early twenties having been schooled in the traditional arts of calligraphy, flower arrangement and the intricacies of the tea ceremony." She has been teaching judo, mostly to women, here in the San Francisco Bay Area since before I was born.

A documentary about her is called Be Strong, Be Gentle, Be Beautiful. Sounds like a good way to be.

Various & Sundry: Starting with National Hot Tea Month and ending with sloths

Let's see what's been piling up during the week that I'm bursting to share with one and all.

First things first: January is National Hot Tea Month. Well, to be honest, every month is National Hot Tea Month, as far as I'm concerned, so I don't have any special celebrations planned. I did think that these tea pods were pretty cute, though.

See how the tag is a little origami boat so it floats on the tea water?

What? Too precious for you? Fine.

How about a website that helps you plan your living wills and stuff? That real enough for you? It's called Get Your Shit Together.

I don't have all my shit together, but I did get my flu shot today, thanks in part to this old post of mine about passing the peace without spreading the flu. I kept noticing it coming up in the stats as people look for what to do in the midst of the flu outbreak. I've added a brief update, based on the comments that were made. I wish there were a perfect solution - or no flu.

After going to the meeting on Wednesday about how Washington plans to reduce gun violence, I was drawn to two articles focused on the NRA: this article traces the fairly recent history of the NRA's connection to fighting for the interests of the firearm industry as opposed to gun owners; while this article suggests the White House may just ignore the NRA. I'd be fine with that.

Lance Mannion has been writing Miserable Thoughts about Les Mis and tying them to our contemporary culture, politics, and religion. I thought his post about the character of the Bishop of Digne was particularly spectacular. Truly, I hope you'll read it. Here's how it ends:

Conservative Christian leaders are quick to tell us that every hurricane, terrorist attack, and school shooting is an angry God’s will. He’s punishing us for abortion, feminism, secularism, “the homosexual agenda,” etc. But he never punishes us for our greed and our lack of charity. We’re punished for allowing gay couples to get married but not for letting children go hungry and old people freeze or swelter to death or sick people to go without medicine or a doctor’s care.

God is always punishing us for not being mean enough to each other and ourselves and never for not doing a good enough job of loving one another.

I'd never heard it put that way. His Fifth Miserable Thought on Jalvert the Republican (French, not American) is also fantastic.

This long reflection on how we need to ask ourselves questions when we consume media was eye-opening to me. I had never thought of the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast as an abuse-apologist narrative. Now, I will not be able to see it as anything but.

I get that it’s hard to see something you love get lambasted, or tarred with a brush you’d rather not think about, or called bad names. I get that it feels like things are being ruined, like people are looking for things to hate, like people are taking things too seriously.

But consuming media critically is a skill, and in an age where media is more prevalent than ever before, it’s a skill worth having. It’s a skill worth having because you are going to continue to be exposed to media, and it is going to continue to attempt to manipulate you. It’s a skill worth having because it makes it less difficult to see people talking shit about things you like, not more. It’s a skill worth having because some of the shit being taught en masse by media is horrible scary damaging shit, and maybe you don’t think you’ve learned that horrible scary damaging shit, and maybe you don’t think you’re susceptible to that horrible scary damaging shit, and honestly? Maybe you haven’t. Maybe you’re not. I don’t know you. But I know that a classroom full of average southern Ohio state school students went silent in horror at the full realization of what Beauty and the Beast teaches kids too young to know better.

On a lighter note, I admire the chutzpah of the man who claimed he was driving legally in the carpool lane with two people because he had Articles of Incorporation in the passenger seat. Corporations are people, my friends.

And finally, because it's been a long week, slow down with some true facts about sloths.

Their Own Country

Cross-posted on the Confirm not Conform blog.

I had an epiphany a couple of days ago.

I have heard many a sermon on the magi that talked about how they traveled home by a different road. But this year, it was the snippet of a phrase immediately before that that caught my attention: “they left for their own country.”

It reminded me of a sermon I heard many, many years ago, probably when I was a teenager myself. I even remember the title: “The three unwise men.” And the argument made by the preacher was, “It’s all well and good that they came to worship Jesus, but why didn’t they stick around?” Thinking about it now, that seemed to be a pointed jab at the Christmas and Easter crowd for Not Faithfully Attending, but I remember being annoyed at the time on behalf of the wise men who had made the effort to travel a very long way. After all, the chief priests and scribes who told the magi where the child would be born were in a town just a few miles away. Why weren’t they there?

But that’s not the epiphany. The epiphany was this: people live in different countries. Metaphorically speaking, I mean. And believe me when I say I think our church can do a heck of a lot better job keeping people involved and included – people for whom our churches are their native land.

But I think a lot of us are like that preacher long ago: we believe that to be truly faithful, you need to stay in our country. Never mind how far you have traveled. Never mind what efforts you have made. If you don’t stay with us, then clearly you are not truly faithful. And all our efforts are spent on making sure you stay in our country, our denomination, our worship services, our programs.

Maybe this year we need to do some more traveling. Maybe this year, we need to visit their countries – not to change people, not to convince them, not to draw them back, but simply to visit, to bring gifts, to rejoice, to pay homage, and to return to our own country, transformed by the God who leads us home.

Opening Act

You know how I said on Sunday that that wasn't a video of my cat?

Yeah, well, this is a video of my cat.

That sound in the background, incidentally, is the Herbert Lom video from the blog post below.

I promise this is not going to become a cat video blog. Not exclusively anyway.

Various & Sundry, June 29

Happy Friday, everyone! Are you ready for a miscellany? Let's get to it!

The only good thing to come out of the death of Nora Ephron is a bunch of Nora Ephron stories, such as this great tale she tells of seeing Steve Wynn accidentally destroy a Picasso. Not just any Picasso. This Picasso. I also appreciate a woman who likes to eat.

A couple of posts explore how to be a good do-gooder--or perhaps more accurately, what are some of its challenges. This article, titled Post-Humanitarian Advertising: Because You're Worth It! is a fascinating analysis of #Kony2012 in the larger context of how aid and development is now being marketed. Key quote:

Kony2012 did not spread like wildfire because it stood in opposition to individualism and consumerism, but because it managed to turn the pursuit of global justice into an individualistic, consumerist activity. It did not aim to inspire feelings of universal moral responsibility, but commodified ‘universal moral responsibility’ into a consumable product that can operate within the capitalist culture most people readily understand.

The second is called Why the word "missional" bugs me and raises some worthwhile concerns, such as what is the difference between being somebody's mission and somebody's friend?

I loved this brief article on why you should hire introverts, and why you should leave them alone.

I also loved this much longer article on why the House of Hufflepuff kicks ass. It made me want to be a Hufflepuff, I tell you what.

Pulling from the vault, I found (after last week's church service) that I had this brief examination of the David and Goliath story that I think is worth sharing again. It's not the story we've been told it is. As I said,"I noticed David took 5 stones for his sling. Five. He's a confident little twerp, but he's not stupid." I love the David saga.

And while we're doing Toepfer promotional stuff, my sister has a cool YouTube channel. You should check it out.

Taking confirmation seriously

Cross-posted on the Confirm not Conform blog.

I suspect I am one of the few priests in the world whose prayer book falls open naturally to the Confirmation Service. And as someone who has spent a lot of time looking at the confirmation service, I want to know why in the world confirmation was ever allowed to become an exit rite.

You know what I'm talking about, right? That exodus that too often occurs after youth get confirmed; that gap we too often see between the ages of younger and adult members in the church. After doing a lot of thinking about confirmation, I have my suspicions about where this comes from.

I've heard stories of adults telling youth, "If you just get confirmed, you don't have to come to church any more." I've heard stories of church folks saying that seeing youth leave after confirmation is only natural. Does that seem...odd to you? To me, it's kind of like saying to someone, "If you just get married, you don't have to spend any more time with your intended spouse," and all the guests at the wedding thinking that's perfectly normal.

Here's what the Book of Common Prayer says "Concerning the service of Confirmation":

"In the course of their Christian development, those baptized at an early age are expected, when they are ready and have been duly prepared, to make a mature public affirmation of their faith and commitment to the responsibilities of their Baptism and to receive the laying on of hands by the bishop."

Sounds pretty serious to me. Public, mature, commitment. Sounds a lot like marriage. In fact, let's see here..."Christian marriage is a solemn and public covenant." Yep. Sounds pretty similar to me. So why would we suggest to youth that confirmation is their opportunity to leave? Why has leaving been part of the youth confirmation DNA?

I've got to tell you, I don't think this is primarily due to the youth.

If we tell youth, "Just get confirmed and you never have to do another thing," we are betraying the sacrament of confirmation. If we watch them leave and think, "Well, that's just what happens after confirmation," we are complicit in devaluing its meaning. We are the ones who have belittled the service and made it a poor ragged little thing, a scrap of a ceremony with no worth whatsoever. We are telling youth, by word and example, "Make this commitment; it doesn't really mean anything anyway." What kind of witness is that?

The good news is, we can change that. If we change our attitude from "just get confirmed; whatever else you do doesn't matter" to "what you do matters; confirmation needs to be congruent with what you intend to do afterwards," then I firmly believe confirmation will no longer be an exit rite. We need to be willing to stand up and say, "If you aren't truly willing to make a commitment to the responsibilities of your Baptism, then don't get confirmed. If you do want to make the commitment, then take your part in the councils of the church. We take confirmation seriously and we take you seriously too."

I truly believe that confirmation is worthwhile and means something. Let's treat it like it does.

The Bloggess LIVE and IN PERSON

I went to see The Bloggess, aka Jenny Lawson, do a reading and book signing on Friday night as she continues her book tour for Let's Pretend This Never Happened.  My pre-ordered copy arrived oh-so-helpfully on Saturday, but that's OK, because I didn't need her to sign it. All I really wanted to do was give her a present: a set of playing cards featuring one of a kind Barbies. I knew she'd like it.

The last time I went to a book signing I got all tongue-tied and flustered, but this time I knew I had the perfect intro sentence: "I'm the person who told you about St. Agatha when you found the magical boobie mushroom." Because how's that for a conversation starter?

So I got there a few minutes before the reading started, knowing the place was going to be packed--and it was.  Standing room only.  Here is my view of Jenny during the reading:

I cannot complain since there were MANY people behind me.

She read a chapter from the book that had us in stitches; then she took questions.  I decided to live tweet the whole event, which made me feel I was being useful, don't you know.  She couldn't see me so she wouldn't have to think I was being rude and ignoring her during her reading.  Far from it.  I thought it was important for the world to know about how the audience went AWWWW when a boy asked The Bloggess "How did you get such a witty personality?" Yeah, he was working it.

I wanted to ask her who she wanted to play her, Victor, and her family in the movie, but she never called on me.  Probably didn't want to show too much favoritism. Or she couldn't see me.

So after about an hour, we moved on to the Book Signing portion of the evening.  The crowd was invited forward row by row, a la communion, except that people brought their own wine.  The woman behind me had cleverly snagged a glass of red wine from the cafe in the bookstore.  I was mighty jealous.

Yeah, she was rubbing it in.

I was in line about an hour by the time I got near the front.  Even then, here's what the line behind me looked like.

Everyone had finished their wine by this point.

I had my intro ready to go.  I had my gift pack of playing cards in my left hand and my phone ready for the guy who was taking people's pictures in my right.  And I approached...

And prattled on like a maniac, talking about St. Agatha and the One of a Kind Barbie Store until Jenny (who must have been completely exhausted at this point) said, "Why don't we get our picture taken?" (reminding me very much of those encounters I've had in the receiving line in church where you have to remind someone gently that though of course you would love to hear the full story, there are others behind them and maybe they should just go on to coffee hour).  Picture.   Oh. Yes.  And here we are:

Jenny Lawson, looking a bit tired but holding up bravely, and me, now wishing I'd given my hair a brush. 

So that was my encounter with The Bloggess who worked that crowd like a pro. And her book is lovely, by the way, poignant as well as hilarious.  I'll tell you more once I finish.

Various & Sundry, April 20

I'll have to be brief today since I'm headed out before long to hear The Bloggess Live and In Person read from her new memoir Let's Pretend This Never Happened.

I'm going to have to pretend that the book I pre-ordered in February arrived since Amazon didn't let me know until Tuesday that they needed a new charge card since the one I placed the order with expired in February. You know, the month I thought I bought the book. THANKS SO MUCH, AMAZON! Oh well, at least I've got my autographed book plate.

I'll try not to be as tongue-tied as I was the last time I met a celebrity author.  Yeah, fat chance. Will it help that I am bringing her a gift from the one-of-a-kind Barbie store? I hope so.

ANYway, what else have I got here?

I don't think I posted this original Muppet Show pitch last week. Well, even if I did, it's worth posting again.



In the world of Biblical scholarship, The Lark reported that a Scroll reveals Proverbs 32 woman was a lazy bum. I always wondered about her.

Two fabulous stories from the elementary school set.  First, kudos to 3rd Grader Sam who used a science fair project to reverse the discriminatory policy in his classroom. What was the policy? He couldn't count comic books towards his daily reading log.  Kudos also to the teacher who changed the policy in the face of the scientific evidence. As I learned when I read The Watchmen, reading graphic novels is hard work!

Finally, I encourage you to watch this video about Caine's Arcade.  Such an upper. Especially knowing that this video has raised over $180,000 for a scholarship fund for Caine. AND, I just saw, he'll be at the Exploratorium in San Francisco tomorrow, April 21.  Awesome. Enjoy.


Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

Monday Morning Preacher: Palm Sunday redux

Well, that's done.  The gospel didn't get the sermon it deserved, I'm afraid.  I wanted to keep it short because the gospel reading was so long, but at the same time I'm afraid I put in too many concepts to be clear.

The keeper is the line from the ever-wonderful Interpreter's Bible (1952) (bolded in the text of the sermon below).  Here's a fuller version:

The unmeasured generosity of her giving moved him.  It was a glorious maximum of sacrifice which never stopped to calculate what might have been a passable minimum--the kind of mathematical computation that so easily besets us...She did not pour out a few drops and say, "Well, I guess that ought to be enough for this occasion."...  She was lifted clear out of arithmetic into love--one of the greatest leaps which a life can take.

The paragraph about how Palm Sunday and the palm fronds we use symbolize the glorious maximum and the passable minimum was a last-second addition, added in the moment and not in the text I had written.  I just thought, standing there, watching each person carefully take one single frond and no more, that this was just the kind of "passable minimum" I was talking about. But that does mean that it is pretty clunky and disjointed at the end.

There was lots going on behind the sermon that didn't get mentioned: a book I'm reading called Evolving in Monkey Town (more on that soon), memories of Palm Sunday in Kampala, the other readings (which never got mentioned but were in play), thoughts on stewardship and how that plays the "passable minimum" card, other incidents of the passable minimum in church life.  It may be that a single story would have been more effective than all this explanation, but I couldn't come up with one that didn't require even further exposition.

It was odd.  The sermon came out more...sharp than I had intended it to.  And a little muddled.  Clearly something I haven't thought through well enough myself so the end got in a bit of a tangle, there, which is a shame because the core idea is an important one.

But it's done, as I said.  It's not the worst sermon in the world; just a bit of a clunker, I think, rushed and awkward. On to Good Friday.

Survey says...

Thanks to all of you who participated in the survey I posted on my 5th blogoversary, asking you what you want to see in the future. I was surprised by the results, actually.  Here's what you said:

What topics or types of posts would you like to see on The Infusion in the future?
Listed in order of preference:
1. Commentary on current affairs. 76.9%
[really?!  You want my commentary? I'm flattered...also very surprised.]

2. A three-way tie at 69.2%:

• Reviews and recommendations
• Religious reflections
• Spouting off/opinionated and often ignorant rants

[a strange combination of things.]

3. Episcopal Church politics 61.5%
[this also surprised me, but I guess it reflects the audience!]

4. A two-way tie at 53.8%

• Photos/videos/tales of cute animals, mostly my own
• Random tidbits of fabulousness

[So I guess I'm keeping the Various & Sundry feature]

5. Obituary observations 46.2%

[Not a shock that this isn't everybody's favorite, but you're probably just going to have to put up with that]

6. A two-way tie at 38.5%

• Garden updates
• Snark

[what if they're snarky garden updates?]

7. The scandalous activities of my friends and relations 23.1%

[Why do I think it was the people who aren't my friends and relations who voted for this?]

8. And the two that tied for last place at 15.4%

• Advice to the lovelorn/bewildered
• Zombies

[which is just as well, since I don't have much advice for bewildered, lovelorn zombies.]

In the comments, people kindly wrote "Anything you want" and "Write early, write often." One person had the specific request for sermons, which I shall continue to post.

I also asked if you would like me to repost old blog entries from time to time.  Over 80% of you said "sure," so I will do that from time to time when I run out of opinionated rants on current affairs.

Thank you all again for your feedback! It was so great to hear from you.

P.S. You can find the map of Kyrgyzstan here.

The Infusion is 5!

The Infusion is five years old today. Can you believe it? I sure can't.

As I tried to figure out how to mark this milestone, I've gone back and read through almost everything I wrote over those years. First of all, there's a lot! Over 1400 posts, if you can believe it, over 280 posts a year--not counting the posts I wrote from Uganda. Astonishing.

Second of all, it's not bad, in my opinion. There's not a whole lot of stuff that I read and cringe, which is a relief (though this post does make me wince a little). In fact, there's quite a bit I think, "Hey, that's pretty good!" I'd be willing to post them again...if that would interest you.

 In fact, I'd like your opinions about a couple of things. If you would take a moment to take the survey below, I'd be mighty grateful. That means you, too, lurker types. I know you're out there; I've seen the stats. What would you like to see on The Infusion in the future? And do feel free to offer further feedback or suggestions in the comments.

My thanks to any and all of you who take the trouble to stop by and read what I write.  I'm mighty grateful.  This is fun to do, but it would seem mighty futile if I didn't know that you were out there. I hope The Infusion is a worthwhile and hospitable waypost as you gad about on the internet. Thank you for your input. (The survey will be open for 1 week, unless weird stuff happens.)

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

You can also click here to take the survey. Thank you!

Invisible rewards

Cross-posted at the Confirm not Conform website.

One of the things that I think all of us hope for when we prepare people for confirmation is that they have a rewarding experience. I was thinking of this today, hearing the familiar Ash Wednesday reading from the Sermon on the Mount: "Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven." And then Jesus goes on to list all the ways that going through the motions--of almsgiving, of prayer, of fasting--are not the reward we are after. The reward that really counts is what "your Father who sees in secret" sees.

To me that suggests the mysterious process of what goes on inside is of far more value than the things we see people do--a process that may not even be perceived by the people going through them, much less those of us watching.

I found this a little depressing. I know I get so much out of it when I see someone get it, when I see the excitement or joy or insight. But I realized today that to try to force those things is to satisfy my needs and desires, that I may be looking for the reaction in order to receive my reward. When we watch youth or adults with an eye to making sure they exhibit the transformation we hope they experience, are we leading them into the temptation to give alms ostentatiously, or pray long and loud, or fast dismally? Do we need to let it go, understanding we may never see the reward?

The truth is, I may never know if someone finds a class or a sermon or a retreat rewarding in the long run. I may never know if Confirmation meant anything to them. Though I want people to be inspired, I may only see someone blase, bored, and disengaged. And when I think I've offered something awesome, that gets frustrating. But people don't owe me their life-changing experiences; no one needs to make me feel better about myself by saying how Confirm not Conform (for example) was the Best Thing Ever. I need to remember that I too depend upon God for my reward, and that the reward that lasts doesn't consist in the number of people who Like What I Do.

God, help me to seek my reward only from you, and not from the behavior or approval of others. May my reward be to love and serve you and those you love, now and always. Amen.

And a blessed Lent to one and all.

Monday Morning Preacher: Me and my best bud, Phillips Brooks

Today is the feast day of Phillips Brooks, most well-known (rather condescendingly I feel) as, "The priest who wrote, 'O Little Town of Bethlehem'." But as I was looking into him a little more, I stumbled across his series of Lectures on Preaching, delivered before the Divinity School of Yale College in January and February, 1877, and I thought, "Brother! Dude! Where have you been all my life? Speak to me!"

Take, for example, his snarky critique of those preachers who love, as he calls it, the "bric-a-brac of theology": "I suppose that all preachers pass through some fantastic period when a strange text fascinates them; when they like to find what can be said for an hour on some little topic on which most men could only talk two minutes." Isn't that fabulous?

Or his take on personality, which he thinks is one of two elements of preaching (the other being Truth with a capital T): "Be yourself by all means, but let that good result come not by cultivating merely superficial peculiarities or oddities. Let it be by winning a true self full of your own faith and your own love."

The longer I preach the more I think one of the most important tasks of the preacher is to deal with your own stuff. Only I generally don't think "stuff." (In the presence of Phillips Brooks I feel I must show some propriety.) And by that I mean, the issues that are raised in your own life by the texts that week in the context of your situation. What does this bring up? What do you really believe? What is your genuine reaction and response? How does this affect you?

You deal with your stuff not on the congregation or through the congregation, but through the hard work of "winning a true self" before you even step in the pulpit. And in so doing, you can bring yourself to the sermon in a way that is not needy, or vain, or self-promoting, or self-avoiding.

So often when I go to hear others preach, I get the sense that they were not willing to go there, to deal with whatever their stuff is, and so they end up preaching, as Brooks calls it, through "criticism."

By the tendency of criticism I mean the disposition that prevails everywhere to deal with things from outside, discussing their relations, examining their nature, and not putting ourselves into their power...There are many preachers who seem to do nothing else, always discussing Christianity as a problem instead of announcing Christianity as a message.

I can understand the tendency, as "going there" can be very hard work.  Much easier to find something interesting in the commentaries and link it to the news than enter into our own issues and frailties, subjecting them to the light of the gospel.

I certainly felt that way this week.  It was a difficult week for me, preaching-wise, as I clearly found myself in the gospel's power.  The gospel text--the call to the first disciples to "follow me"--was the very first gospel I ever preached on, 12 years ago when I was in seminary and thought I knew what my career in the church was going to look like.  It hasn't turned out the way I expected.  At the same time, I believe that in all the zig-zags and reversals, I have been following Jesus as best I know how.  I feel I am doing what I am called to do.

 And so it was a very odd experience, seeing myself 12 years ago and thinking, "You have no idea," and seeing these disciples leaving their nets and thinking, "You have no idea." It was unnerving, in fact, and as close to an out-of-body experience as I've had. But the thing for me was that I both had to deal with my stuff and also bring my self to the preaching. And can I tell you, that was not easy. Not my best sermon either, but still one I feel good about, largely thanks to Phillips Brooks' encouragement and the sense I get from him that I was at least on the right track.

As he says,

The gospel you are preaching now is the same gospel that you preached when you were first ordained, in that first sermon which it was at once such a terror and such a joy to preach; but if you have been a live man all the time, you are not preaching it now as you did then. If the truth had changed, your life would have lost its unity. The truth has not changed, but you have grown to fuller understanding of it, to larger capacity of receiving and transmitting it. There is no pleasure in the minister's life stronger than this.

Monday morning preacher: Preaching in the first person (ay ay ay)

I had a devil of a time coming up with a way to approach the sermon that you see below. What was killing me was I didn't want to start with "I," even though in one way or another, that is what tends to happen. "The other day, I..." "One thing I have noticed...", etc. On Saturday, I was literally sitting in my office with my head in my hands trying to come up with a way into this sermon. I finally gave up and said "I." And after that, it poured right out.

I have to admit, I'm still a little uncomfortable with the sermon. I think it's all right. But there's something a bit dubious about preaching in the first person, it seems to me. As a once in a blue moon technique, OK. And (apparently) as a desperate Sunday morning Hail Mary pass, sure. But I don't want to make a habit of it. There's too much focus on me personally as the preacher rather than on God or the Word or how we can love one another.

What do you think?

Sermon for Easter 2

Abridged for blog readers, who got a lot of this thinking along the way. I didn't know that one handy thing about this blog was that it helps for sermon prep.

As you well know, I am an obituary fan. And as you may recall, at Easter I was reminded of an obituary for a theologian named Nancy Eiesland who wrote a book called The Disabled God.

In the book, as referenced by the obituary, Eiesland writes about the gospel we hear today.

“In presenting his impaired body to his startled friends, the resurrected Jesus is revealed as the disabled God,” she wrote. God remains a God the disabled can identify with, she argued — he is not cured and made whole; his injury is part of him, neither a divine punishment nor an opportunity for healing.

I suspect that many of us would like to get rid of our bodies – the actual physical parts of them. The parts that ache or leak or don’t look “right” or don’t work the way they should. I find it surprising that it’s here in the resurrection, the very part when I thought Jesus would be most spiritual and least fleshy, that I am finding him to be at his most physical, thanks to Nancy Eiesland.

I looked around and found another quote from her that I liked very much:

“Resurrection is not about the negation or erasure of our disabled bodies in hopes of perfect images, untouched by physical disability; rather Christ’s resurrection offers hope that our nonconventional and sometimes difficult bodies participate fully in the [image of God] and that God whose nature is love and who is on the side of justice and solidarity is touched by our experience.”

There are two very difficult things to believe in this:
1) that our non-conventional and sometimes difficult bodies participate fully in the image of God.

and, 2) that God is touched by our experience.

But these two things remind me of Susan Boyle. And though I'm still trying to figure out why she has had such an impact, I think in part it is because she very much embodies these two things.

I was reminded of this quotation from Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Maybe you are a doubting Thomas on this point. Maybe you don't think that your non-conventional and sometimes difficult body has anything glorious and radiant about it. And that is all right. There’s a solution for that. It’s in seeing other scarred and risen people show forth the glory of God that we begin to believe that we can do so ourselves.

Christ is risen, and we are set free. Christ shows us through his scars that our bodies are not the miserable husks we might think they are, that the body is not something to get rid of in exchange for radiant perfection. Instead, he shows us that “our non-conventional and sometimes difficult bodies participate fully in the image of God.” You, in the flesh, in your body, are witnesses to the risen Christ. Truly. Believe it.

I will never be Ian McEwan. Or finish one of his novels, frankly. I barely sat through the movie version of Atonement.

I’m a plot person. I told this to a friend of mine last night while we waited for our dinner sitting at the bar at Chevy’s. That’s just the kind of lowbrow I am, you see: I like a good plot, and I get my Mexican food at Chevy’s. My friend reassured me by telling me that she herself knows that any book nominated for the Booker prize is one she isn’t going to like.

I was reminded of Nick Hornby’s collection of book reviews, The Polysyllabic Spree (fabulous), in which he writes that not only could he not write one of these novels; he couldn’t be a character in one of these novels. My friend said that if she were a character in a novel of this certain kind of profundity, she would be looking at the collection of bottles behind the bar at Chevy’s, and the color of the glass would remind her of some remarkable event from her childhood. I had, in fact, been looking at the bottles earlier and wondering who ever thought to make orange vodka. We both brooded on our shallowness.

As we were leaving, I put my hand in my coat pocket and stabbed my finger on a thorn that had somehow gotten inside. A perfect example, I said to my friend, of what ought to be symbolic and invested with deep and profound meaning. She said, “Either that, or the napkin that is stuck to your shoe.” Just then a server flagged me down to let me know of my humiliation, the white tassel dragging dramatically behind my weather-beaten heel. Which was probably symbolic of something.

Autumn sets in

After the first flurry of the start of the program year, I'm starting to feel the wonderful rhythm of fall, my favorite season of the year. This year, I have the opportunity to do some gardening, an activity I haven't been able to indulge in for at least eight years. I had forgotten what an active season fall is, such a season of promise, as I bought bags of bulbs and prepare to tuck them away until springtime. The whole season of fall seems to suggest digging in. It's not at all a passive season, but it's a season to start when results are still far off and full of potential. And for whatever reason, I feel very good about this year.

Kids these days...

Reading about the National Spelling Bee this morning made me think about my own wasted childhood of underachieving sloth. OK, so I was a straight-A student and played the flute and was on the staff of the school newspaper, big deal. That could hardly get me into a state school these days.

I can't help but think they must be exhausted, these kids who must strive and strive in order to get into a good school. And what do they do then? What is it like after college for these wunderkids when it is no longer a matter of traveling from accomplishment to accomplishment, but a slow, steady stream of doing your best?

I suppose I was one of them, for the time, expected to go on to Great Things, and I certainly feel I have adjusted to the routine with a measure of contentment. But I still look at these bright young things and think, "Why are you working so hard?" Life seems to happen in the pauses and the steady forward movement, not the Accomplishments with a capital A.

I still remember with tremendous chagrin the pointed truth of the novel "All Is Vanity" when the narrator realizes at the end, "I thought I was brilliant, but I was merely smart." Oh, that is so true. There are so many of us out there who had been prompted into brilliance and I suspect will have to settle for smart in the end.