4 things I learned about elections from Lent Madness

Lent Madness was a much better spiritual discipline than I had imagined.  After a week of being aggravated at the stupidity of people who didn't vote for the saints I thought should move forward, I learned to laugh at myself because--hello!--this doesn't actually count for anything.  Except the glory of the Golden Halo, of course.

And so I started to watch with some fascination what kinds of things seemed to lead to one saint's victory over another.  It wasn't always clear, but there were a few things that seem like practical tidbits as we enter into the slavering maw of a presidential election year.

1. You can't change votes that are already cast.  Over and over, I saw people writing agonized comments wondering how on earth more people could vote for that other saint than the saint of their choosing.  Well, water under the bridge, people. You may never know why, but it also doesn't matter.  Those votes are already in! Moving on.

2. It is easier to recruit new voters than to persuade current voters (who may have already decided).  With Lent Madness this was particularly stark.  All due credit to Lent Madness for drawing a couple of thousand votes each day--but that's still only a couple of thousand votes out of a much, much larger potential pool. If you're only advocating among the faithful voters, boy are you missing a huge opportunity.

3. People are partisan, so find a way to make your team their team.  Emma of Hawaii's triumphant march to the finals was an excellent example of this.  The "of Hawaii" part was important as the Hawaiian vote turned the tide on several apparent shoo-ins. Big Pineapple or no, Emma got votes for being Hawaiian--as well as being a worthy saint.

4. People vote for weird reasons.  I know I did.  I voted for Jerome because I liked the lion puppet. I would have voted for Enmegahbowh because of his awesome wife, had I not been the writer for David Oakerhater (I voted for St. E. in the next round). I voted for some saints because I liked one write-up over another, with nothing to do with the saint at all! People voted because they liked the name, or because their saint day was their birthday, or because the icon was cool.

Are we "voting against our interests"? Maybe, but we have our reasons. I can tell you one thing that didn't help, though, is being told I was voting the wrong way.  It would just get my back up. Or shrug and say, "You don't understand."

Lent Madness made clear to me that if I want to make a difference in the November elections, I shouldn't bother arguing with people whose minds are made up. Instead, I should look for the pockets of people who have a strong interest in one thing or another, make the case why my candidate is their candidate, and make sure they are able to vote. And then let it go, knowing that people do what they do. People. That's democracy for you.

Review: Evolving in Monkey Town

I kept seeing blog posts from Rachel Held Evans being forwarded here, there, and everywhere.  I even posted about one myself.  It finally occurred to me that I might enjoy reading her book, Evolving in Monkey Town.

Subtitled "How a girl who knew all the answers learned to ask the questions," Evolving in Monkey Town is  Evans' memoir of a crisis of faith.  Evans traces her Christian beliefs from her earliest days as the daughter of a professor at an Evangelical school, through her youth and college experience, and as the cracks begin to show in her carefully constructed "worldview" and what happens next. She frames this experience through the notion of her evolution in faith, fighting words for a girl who grew up in Dayton, Tennessee, the home of the Scopes trial.

I read this expecting to find some familiar experiences, having grown up in an Evangelical milieu. But my experience was nothing like Evans'.  Instead, I found myself shocked and amazed at what passes for Christianity for a great many people.  Mostly I was astonished at how unChristian the Christianity she grew up with was: how uncharitable, unforgiving, and unloving.

She describes how she was trained to answer any question thrown at her about her faith, based on 1 Peter 3:15: "Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you," but they are never told the next verse, "yet do it with gentleness and reverence."  As she discovers, when she finally leaves the Evangelical bubble and meets people to whom she can witness, "Not once after graduating from Bryan was I asked to make a case for the scientific feasibility of miracles, but often I was asked why Christians aren't more like Jesus.  I may have met one or two people who rejected Christianity because they had difficulties with the deity of Christ, but most rejected Christianity because they thought it means becoming judgmental, narrow-minded, intolerant, and unkind."

I have to say, though Evans convinced me that she wasn't that way, she didn't exactly show that the rest of the so-called "Christianity" she was part of is anything other than intolerant and unkind.  It was worth reading just for that, just to get a sense of what that culture is like from the inside, how it is so many of them are trained to see the world. (The Unlikely Disciple is also an excellent exploration of this.)  But it was also worth reading because it is very well-written, entertaining, and honest. She writes beautifully and gives a gracious and fascinating glimpse into the life experience of many people in our culture whom we may not otherwise understand. Here's hoping that her experience inspires others to ask the questions and rid themselves, as we all need to do in one way or another, of the 'false fundamentals.'

Monday afternoon preacher

So I went to a church yesterday where in the course of a very short sermon, the priest managed to use the words penultimate, declamation, and denouement.  To his credit, it was clear that these were his words; he wasn't reading from a manuscript. It sounded like he wasn't saying them to impress; he was using them because they are terrific words that perfectly captured what he was trying to say and are words he naturally uses. They are words that I love myself.

On the other hand--come on! Penultimate? Denouement?! Really? You couldn't use "next to last" or "conclusion"--or even "ending"? As a general rule, I think it's a mistake to use $5 words in most homilies, and then only when it's the absolute best, most perfectest word available. But that's me.  What do you think?

Sunday Funnies, April 15

You might think I have a tax themed edition, but no! I am very excited to present this week's episode of Judge John Hodgman which features Rachel and Leeman, who were students at Canterbury when I was the chaplain at Kenyon College. And, as you will hear, Rachel is an Anglican priest--actually being ordained today. Blessings, Rachel!
The Sound of Young America

Various & Sundry, April 13

First off, what would you guess the New York Yankees Fragrance would smell like?  If you guessed sweat, leather, and money, you would be wrong--at least according to the official website:

This fresh, woody scent introduces an invigorating blend of sparkling Bergamot, Coriander and cool Blue Sage. As it evolves, the fragrance reveals a fusion of crisp Ivy leaves, Orange Flower and Geranium enhanced with rich earthy Patchouli, smooth Sandalwood and Suede to create a timeless, masculine scent.

Sounds a bit overwhelming to me.  Kind of lost me at Patchouli.

There's also a Yankees Fragrance for her: "a fun, inviting scent that captures the playful spirit of the Yankees™ girl." Oh goody.

There was an obit this week for Peter Douglas, defender of the California coastline, to whom we all owe a great debt of thanks.

For 26 years, Mr. Douglas was the executive director of the California Coastal Commission, the powerful state agency that he helped create with a mandate to keep the coast open to the public — and one that set a high standard for its counterparts in other states.

So any time you get to the beach, be sure to say a little prayer of gratitude for his work.

The Internet Monk directed me to a blog post by Ed Stetzer on Considering (and Surviving) Unhealthy Christian Organizations, which I thought was spot-on. Here's a hint: unhealthy Christian organizations are all about looking good on the outside.  I think Jesus had something to say about that.

Brene Brown also has words to say about the Worst Advice Ever, that advice being, "You can rest when you're done."  As she says, "How do you 'rest when you're done' when it's never done?" I think God had something to say about resting as well.

Speaking of getting some rest, I sure hope It's Margaret gets a lot since she is dealing with a gutload of gallstones--ugharino! You're in my prayers, babe, and get well soon!

Perhaps a little tango will make you feel better:



Or maybe some baby goats.

Obit du jour: Christine Brooke-Rose

I urge you to read this obit, as much for the style as the subject.  Christine Brooke-Rose was a writer of experimental fiction (novels that never use the verb "to be," for example), and the obit writer had a blast playing with the form.

But if you aren't going to read the whole thing, I'll do you a solid and excerpt a bit from the middle that is particularly fabulous:

Ms. Brooke-Rose’s earliest novels, published in the late 1950s, are conventional satires of manners. But as early as her third novel, “The Dear Deceit,” published in 1960, she had begun to play with narrative form. The novel opens with the death of its protagonist and, in successive chapters, works backward to his birth.

This convention has a time-honored analogue in narrative nonfiction, as when, for instance, a newspaper article begins with word of its subject’s death and, only lower, reads:

Christine Frances Evelyn Brooke-Rose was born in Geneva on Jan. 16, 1923, into a French-, German- and English-speaking household. Her enigmatic English father, who left the family when she was a child and died when she was 11, had been, she later learned, an Anglican Benedictine monk and a convicted thief, though not necessarily in that order; her American-Swiss mother became a Benedictine nun after the dissolution of her marriage.

See that right there? That's some mighty pretty obit writing.  My hat is off to you, Margalit Fox. You can write my obit any time. After my death, of course.

Easter sermon (abridged)

Love this picture! It's apparently a bar in Chapel Hill, NC.

Did this gospel take you by surprise this morning? How many of you were going, “Wait! Isn’t Jesus going to show up along in here?” How many of you were waiting for the part where Mary thinks he’s the gardener. Great story, but it’s not here. Like Jesus’ corpse, there’s a lot that appears to be missing, including any explanation of what on earth happened.

I love the ending. Love it.

“and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” 

The end.

Well, clearly the story leaked somewhere or we wouldn’t be here today.

But the thing that’s so wonderful to me about this version in the gospel of Mark is that it captures the confusion of that morning of the resurrection in a way that to me, at least, brings it home.

So often I think we get blasé about the resurrection. We know too much about it. We hear the story every year and are reminded of it in every Eucharistic prayer. We know how the story is going to turn out and we are not taken by surprise. It’s no shock when Jesus is missing because he’s supposed to be.

But he wasn’t supposed to be missing. He was supposed to be there, where the women had seen him last, placed in a tomb with a big old rock in front of it. What they found instead shocked and surprised them so much that they couldn’t even talk about it, at least at first.

The first surprise was that the stone was moved back.  Who did it? How did it happen? Was this a good sign or a bad one? What did it mean?

So they enter into the first chamber of the tomb where they expect to see some shrouds, perhaps bones in the niches along the walls, and certainly Jesus' corpse resting on one of the shelves along the walls and instead, they get their second surprise: a man dressed in white.

Who is this guy? Is he an angel? Mark doesn't say.  He's just a man dressed in white. There's no other explanation whatsoever.  But he does have something to tell them:

“Do not be alarmed [good luck with that!]; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised; he is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him.”

And that's surprise number three:

Jesus isn’t there, and the only explanation they get is “He has been raised.”  

None of them know what that means. There’s no creed with a tidy summary statement about what Jesus has done and what it signifies. There are no theological treatises on the resurrection; they haven’t even used the word. They went to the tomb expecting to find a body and the body wasn’t there—not because it had been moved, or stolen, or desecrated, but because (they were told) the person they loved whom they had seen shamefully executed had been “raised.”

Whatever that might mean.

You can imagine that for these women—for all of us, actually—one fixed point in the world is that the dead are dead. That’s it. Done. But to show up and discover that dead may not be dead after all? You can see why this would turn a person’s world upside-down.

We really don’t expect the dead to be raised. For Jesus, though, we’re willing to make an exception. Of course, we’ve had a couple of millennia, give or take, to get used to the idea of Jesus rising from the dead. We put it on our calendars and send out flyers to let everyone know when to expect it. It is so hard to imagine how confusing this was in the moment, how completely unexpected and completely unexplained.

And so I’m not going to say anything about what the resurrection is or what it means or what it does or how you should remember it. My hope for you this Easter day is that you leave here confused. At least slightly confused. My hope for you today is that you leave here this morning wondering what happened, what on earth went on in that tomb? What does it mean? If he’s not in the tomb, where is he? Where will he appear? Will he ever be seen again, or will he just vanish? And if he does appear, what will he say or do? And where is Jesus now?

I hope you’ll leave here a little on edge, wondering if Jesus is going to show up around every corner, wondering what you ought to say to people about it, what this means for you. Easter is 50 days long and we’ll have time to mull this over and try to make sense of it. But today, on this first day of the week, I invite you to have no idea what happened and what this means, to be bewildered and astonished at the news. He has been raised; he is not here. Where on earth is he?