I’m reading Cathleen Falsani’s The God Factor, and there is one commonality that has run through most of the profiles I have read (I’m about halfway through the book). This one commonality is love and forgiveness. Regardless of belief or religion (or “spirituality”) most of the people Falsani interviewed says that God or their view/perception of God is love and forgiveness. Out of the the ones I’ve read so far, I like what John Mahoney has to say about love and forgiveness the best. Mahoney is one of my favorite actors, and few other shows have made me roll with laughter the way that Frasier did. It wasn’t what he said about God’s love and forgiveness that caught my eye. It was his response to that love and obedience in this prayer he says throughout the day: “Dear God, please help me to treat everybody–including myself–with love, respect, and dignity” (p. 134). What a wonderful way to pray “Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Month: July 2006
Sanctuary
A little over a year ago my bedroom became my sanctuary. I let my whimsy take over and designed the room to be my getaway. I painted it to look like twilight right after the sun had went down–my favorite time of day. My doll collection which included fairies were there as well as my icons. I called the motif “spiritual whimsy.” And when I wanted to shut the door on the world and lose myself in writing or a good book, I went in there and lit all the candles. Aaah sanctuary.
I was wondering if the bedroom would feel the same way since my marriage and move. Now I share the bedroom, which means I can’t paint it like twilight. But I do have my dolls out and my icons up. I love the view from the windows, both night and day. The lake is right there, and at night all the lights twinkling in windows make a wonderful mosaic. I put my rocking chair by one of the bedroom windows. Where I can read then look up and see the lake.
I am now on our bed. I decided the bedroom was the only place to be tonight. I needed sanctuary. I am overwhelmed by the violence and barbarism of the world. I have wanted to write on Lebanon and the Middle East, but the truth is I simply cannot. It’s too overwhelming. And I watched far too much news today. I have been careful in the last week to limit how much news I watch. Today I didn’t. Tomorrow I will. So here I sit on the bed, writing, with Bobby Flay’s Throwdown on in the background. (I love The Food Network).The Food Network has sparked another one of my sanctuaries: the kitchen. I love to cook. I love creating dishes and feeding people; my husband loves to eat, so we are well-paired. It renews me, and I can feel the stress from the day slipping away as I rinse, cut, and stir. I have just realized that I have planned a couple of time-intensive meals to make this weekend and in the coming week: time to unwind, to leave the world behind, and to create in contrast to all the tearing down.
I am hoping as I am in my sactuary, building up instead of tearing down, that God will show me ways of buidling up instead of tearing down out in the world. I am praying that I will create peace and be a peacemaker in the world as I receive peace in my sanctuaries. There are four articles that I found that I believe will help me to begin to know how to build up in regards to the Middle East. The links are below. They are very well balanced, and I loved that these two men are listening to each other, and their readers, and responding in Christlike love instead of diatribe. They give me hope that the Church can make a difference in our world instead of being polarized by political crap all the time. They give me a glimpse of what it looks like to be the body of Christ in this world and to act as Christ would act.
The Middle East’s Death Wish and Ours” by David P. Gushee.
Another Point of View: Evangelical Blindness on Lebanon by Martin Accad.
We Risk Not Just Suffering, But Annihilation by David P. Gushee.
“Who Is My Neighobor” in the Lebanon-Isreali Conflict? by Martin Accad.
A Different Way
Though you won’t find it in some of the sanitized versions lining the shelves of the children’s section of the library, an unmistakable strain of sheer brutality runs through the traditional folk and fairy tales. It’s frank and unapologetic, this element of violence and cruelty–naked and unadorned. Anyone even moderately familiar with the work of the Brothers Grimm, for instance, knows how truly grim the Grimms can be. Perhaps this is one of the reasons J. R. R. Tolkein suggested that fairy tales were never really meant for the nursery. Their outlook in life is far too broad–and too realistic–for that. –Jim Ware, God of the Fairy Tale, pp. 49-50.
I really like this book, and it will probably wind up in my collection. In this chapter, “Savage World: The Cruelty of Fallen Creation,” Ware reminds us that the brutality and savageness of our world today is nothing new. This world has been a brutal place to live in since the Fall. We live in a fallen and corrupt world where evil lives, and there are no guarantees of safely making it through the forest, down the street, or across the parking lot. In “Hansel and Gretel” we see parental abandonment, child abuse, torture, and cannibalism. Themes with a familiar ring to them. Ware goes on to note brutality in other fairy and folk tales: the giant telling Jack that he will make bread out of Jack’s ground bones, the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood, and the tales of Mr. Fox and Robber Bridegroom who lured young, beautiful women into their lavish homes only to murder them.
Ware says, “The point here is not to terrify or titillate. Nor is it to echo the all-to-familiar alarmist message that society today is somehow worse than it’s ever been. On the contrary, what ‘Hansel and Gretel’ and the rest of the fairy tales teach us is that terror, cruelty, and savagery are simply ‘business as usual’ in a tainted and fallen world. We shouldn’t be surprised” (p. 51).
Ware notes that Jesus knew this as well. He warned his disciples that his followers would have trouble in this world. John reminds that “the whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one” (1 John 5:19). Christians should be the least surprised over how brutal and savage this world can be. Christians in other parts of the world aren’t surprised. The ones who are suffering persecution for their faith, and have to leave family when they become a Christian to survive, know the truth of Jesus’ words and of fairy tales.
Yet large sections of American Christianity always seem to be surprised by what happens in our fallen world. It makes me wonder if they pay attention to their own beliefs. This world is not a nice place to live, and it will not be until Christ returns and all people and creation are reconciled in him.
Now this is not to say that we do nothing. There is a section of American Christianity that just wants to cover its head, whine to God how horrible this world is, and beg God to take them out of this evil, evil place. But Jesus showed us a different way. He showed us how to live in this evil world: love our enemies, pray for those who despise us, feed the poor, visit the sick and those in prison, and show this evil world a different way to live. Today in church our senior pastor said, “It’s not enough to pray for peace and then go home and do nothing. You have to become a peacemaker.” Paul would call it redeeming the time.
I want to be a peacemaker, but I’m not sure how to do that, but I am praying for God to show me. I know it won’t be popular in a war-mongering society. The war-mongering part of the church really irritates me. Jesus commanded us to be peacemakers, to love our enemies, to care for our enemies if they need it. So when Christians agree with actions that kill people and encourage even more warring ways, it makes me mad. They always cite Old Testament holy war passages, and I want to say, “So the Old Testament trumps the Son of God?” May be I should say it.
I’m not naive–I know there will be times when nations and societies go to war. It does not mean that the Church encourages it. It may be seen as a necessary evil, but it is still wrong. It is still sin. One of the reason I admire Dietrich Bonhoeffer is he never white-washed his role in the plot to assassinate Hitler. He admitted that it was a necessary evil, and that he had to do something to prevent Hitler from continuing his evil, but he always said it was still a sin. And he asked forgiveness.
There is evil in this world. It is a brutal and savage place to live. But Christians are not to be brutes and savages within it. We are the body of Christ in this world, which means we are Christ in this world. To me this means we should be saying and doing the things Jesus said and did: “Your sins are forgiven” to prostitutes, tax collectors and the worse kinds of sinners; “Father forgive them” to those who killed him. He loved his enemies, fed the poor, and alleviated suffering and the effects of sin. He told us to be peacemakers and reconcile the world to him and the Father.
This essay is also posted at Street Prophets.
Asking questions
I am reading How to Think like Leonardo da Vinci, and I am realizing how important asking questions is:
Although we all started life with a Da Vinci-like insatiable curiosity, most of us learned, once we got to school, that answers were more important than questions. In most cases, schooling does not develop curiosity, delight in ambiguity, and question-asking skill. Rather, the thinking skill that’s rewarded is figuring out the “right answer”–that is, the answer held by the person in authority, the teacher. This pattern holds throughout university and postgraduate education. . . (p. 65).
Michael Gelb then goes on to explain that in order to hone our problem-solving skills, we need to ask questions, and we need to ask the right kind of questions. We have to move away from “Is this the right answer?” thinking to “Is this the right question?” thinking. We have to look at different ways of seeing the problem, which means we will be asking more than one question. We have to reframe our initial question in a variety ways to be able to find solutions.
This led me back to a chapter I read in The ASJA Guide to Freelance Writing about ideas. One of the sections of the chapter was on asking questions of your reading. When you read a news article or magazine feature, or something in a book that caught your attention–got your curiosity–you were to ask questions. Not everything that could be said about that person, organization, or situation was in that piece. Ask questions–what wasn’t there? What aspect of the story was glossed over in a line that needs its own story? “Questions lie at the heart of many of the best story ideas. Your job is to select the questions that intrigue you the most and run with them” (p. 45).
It seems all I have right now are questions. That is okay. I will keep asking questions and reframing those questions until I have answers that I can write about. All of my questions will probably have more than one answer, and none of those answers will be “the right answer,” but that is okay. That is how life is supposed to be. It would be nice if there were a right answer for everything, but there is not. All I can do is ask the questions and follow where they take me then tell you about it. And that is what I will do.
Fluttering ideas
Ideas are fluttering around in my head, but none of them are forming into anything close to a coherent article. I am still thinking on how to connect women being created in the image of God when both our society and church environment discount, belittle, and ridicule much of our bodies. I have been reading, writing, and thinking theology for over ten years, and I don’t know where to start. It doesn’t help that I haven’t figured out what to do with my own body. I’m gaining weight. I’m not happy. I have always had a love/hate relationship with my body. I have learned how to love more than hate, but it has taken a long time. And I still have long ways to go. I know this needs to be done, and it will probably be turned into a book. I just need to give the idea time for form and become something substantive. Of course, I’ll keep reading and researching. I’m always reading and researching.
I’ve also had two short story ideas flittering around. Neither of them have gelled enough to begin on either, as well as several ideas on clinical depression. I suffer from clinical depression, so I would like to help and inform other people who live with it. Many, many ideas, but nothing is taking real shape so far. So I will keep reading and researching.
Writing Excercise
We were given an object and told tell why this was the most important thing in the world to us. I was given the 1 birthday candle.
“My Last Birthday”
I kept it in a box in a very safe place. Everyone would laugh if they knew, but I didn’t care. It was from my last birthday. Not the last one I had–it was just my last birthday. It was the last cake my mom baked for me. From the last time she gave me a present. It was all I had left from that day, and it was silly, but I didn’t care. Mom had bought it, and Mom had put it on my cake. It was a candle–the one, and it was all I had left of my 14th birthday–a week later Mom died. That was my last birthday.
I would really like to develop this into a short story.
"A Walk in the Park" Ficlet
Whoever thought up the cliche “a walk in the park”? What kind of park were they talking about? Had to be different than the parks here. I was hiding behind a tree on the edge of the park. The sun had just gone down behind the trees on the other side in furious shades of red and orange. I really had tried to make it here and through the park before the sun went down. It was trecherous during the day. But now…I swallowed. I needed to use what little light I had and not waste it. Twilight would not last long.
I stayed off the path keeping to the trees. Watching my steps, I kept my breathing low and moved quitely, staying low behind the shrub and bushes between the trees. My ears were alert to any sound. The shadows lengthened as the twilight gave way to night.
I was more than halfway through the park when I heard the chuckles. I took off at a dead run for the trees that marked the western boundary of the park. I ran as hard as I could. I heard running behind me, and the chuckling turned into manical laughter. I told myself not to look and to keep running.
Their footsteps were getting closer. My legs ached and my lungs were burning. I kept running and kept my eyes on the treeline in front of me. The pouding came closer and closer. I was almost there. I ran between two big trees and didn’t stop until I was right under the light at the end of the street. Once there I turned and looked back. There was no one behind me. I stood under the light for a few minutes and caught my breath. When my breathing was back to normal, I finished the walk home.
Enough of the critical voice
I journaled this yesterday:
Articles are seeming like a waste of time with how much time it takes just to research to pitch let alone actually write the article. I’ve been trying to put together a query letter–just a query for the last week! I probably should just go ahead and write the article just for all the time I’ve spent on the idea. I wonder how much I would’ve gotten done on the novel in that amount of time? I don’t know. Right now I feel like I’m wasting my time.
What I read today:
If I were ten pounds thinner, I’d be tempted to put my suit on and join them. But not today. Someday soon.
I stopped mid-sentence. A light went on inside of me, revealing a dimension I’d never noticed before. I’d never noticed it because it’s always been with me, a part of me, like a heart or a kidney. It’s grown as I’ve grown.
Inner chatter. Negative inner chatter. A spoiler’s voice. Sentences that begin with, “When I _____†and end with then I will ________.” And “If I ________, then ________will happen.”
I mentally turned around in my brain only to see an invisible line stemming from that thought to a million others like it. What I couldn’t do. Why I shouldn’t do it. What wasn’t up to par. What wouldn’t ever be good enough or strong enough. So many random thoughts, and very few were life-giving or accurate. All of them caused me to live “edited.” Not to try. Not enjoy. Not to move with confidence. . . .
This had been life of late: the real forfeited for the imagined, the actual for the anticipated. I was sure that on some level this was all an insult to God. He gave me the “present moment.” I eschewed it in favor of something else, somewhere else. He gave me my body, anomalies and all, and I had somehow come to the conclusion that it wasn’t good enough. . . .
God created us all in His image. He created us individually to be a part of both a central and an individual purpose. When we feel uncomfortable in our own skin, it’s as if we are saying that God made a mistake. We are not right somehow. The end result is that we are then judging God–His handwork–and then we are God and He is not (Margaret Becker, Coming Up for Air, pp. 39-40).
What I journaled after the reading:
I relate to this. Actually I live this. The “When…then” and “If…then” commentary has been with me my whole life. Like Maggie I have no idea how many times I have let myself be robbed of something because of this thinking. This is happening right now in my writing. If I do a little more research….When I have two more experts…then I’ll send in the query. I just need to send in the query. I’ve done the research; I have experts; I know the topic–I just need to send in the query and put myself out there. I need to stop putting my writing life on hold. I have the talent; I have the skills; I have the knowledge–I just need to do it.
I knew this was going to be a lot of work and take time, but this is not the first time I’ve done something that takes a lot of time and is a lot work: college, seminary, ordination, working my way up from editorial assistant to associate editor.
I have always wanted to write articles as well as books. I’m just scared now, and I’m letting fear dictate what I do. With books I can put off possible rejection for another year. As soon as I send this query letter, possible rejection can happen in a few weeks. I know there will be rejection. In fact, I have one more magazine that I can pitch this same subject to with a couple of variations. It is time to stop being afraid and what I want to do. It is time to do what I am called to do. I have always been a writer from the time I was writing short stories on Mars in the third grade. It’s time to trust God, trust the gifts he’s given me, do my best work, send out queries, and see what happens. The query letter to Discipleship Journal will be sent today, and I will let you know when I send it.
A little fiction
This is a short-short that I wrote a few months ago.
“The Places Between the Spaces”
She walked through the door of the bar. It was your typical Irish pub–all wood with brass rail. It probably looked like every other Irish pub in town, except this one was two blocks from her apartment. A nice stroll. She pushed her way to the bar ordered an Irish Cream and milk then sat down at the table between the bar and the front window. It was the only table in the place–there wasn’t a whole lot of space. But the little round table with its two chairs fit perfectly in the corner. What was she thinking coming here on St. Patrick’s Day? Not that it mattered: every bar in the area would be crowded tonight. She mindlessly watched people walk by as she looked at her drink. She wondered which ingredient they put the green food dye in: the milk or the Irish Cream? She took a sip of the green drink, leaned back in her chair and continued to watch the people walk by. Every now and then a cold gust of air tickled her legs. She must be sitting by a vent, although she couldn’t figure out why the air would be cold. It was March–not cold, but still chilly. One would think the air would still be heated.
It had been a long day at work. Even with the huge, very loud crowd yelling over the very loud band, it was good to be here. The last thing she wanted to do was sit in her apartment alone. Who knew? May be she’d get hit on. Stranger things have happened after all.
The cold air hit her legs again, but this time it kept blowing. The gust had become a breeze, and it was coming from the side of the bar. Why the hell would anyone put a vent there? Someone had left part of today’s paper in the other chair. She grabbed it and dropped to her knees. May be she could block part of the air flow. As she groped along the bar, her hand suddenly slipped through a hole. A really big hole. What in the world? It was pitch black–why couldn’t she see inside the bar area? The partition wasn’t that thick. She should see the legs and feet of the bartenders who were trying to keep up with all the orders, but there was nothing but darkness. The cold breeze was blowing her hair off of her face. She started to crawl forward.
She didn’t know where she was, but she knew it wasn’t the bar. She remembered her grandmother telling her about the “spaces between places”: spaces where ghosts, spirits, sprites, and all sorts of “the otherwordly kind” lived. The blackness ahead of her was turning into a shimmering green. As she entered the green light, she saw a beautiful redheaded woman lying on the floor of the bar, her throat slit, a large pool of her own blood under her. It was the bar, but now it was empty, dark and cold. She and the dead woman were the only two here. She swallowed and began to back out. The green went back to darkness then her feet hit her chair. She slowly stood up and sat down. She polished off the rest of her drink in one gulp. She wasn’t planning on getting drunk when she came here. But then she wasn’t planning on finding out a woman had been murdered here by finding a space between the places either. She stood and caught the attention of one of the bartenders, “An Irish whiskey, please.”
I am interested to see what this little short will turn into once it’s had time to develop.
Someone didn't do all her research
Hugo Schwyzer made me aware of Charlotte Allen’s “Liberal Christianity is paying for its sin” in yesterday’s Los Angeles Times. She makes this claim: “It doesn’t help matters that the mainline churches were pioneers in ordaining women to the clergy, to the point that 25% of all Episcopal priests these days are female, as are 29% of all Presbyterian pastors, according to the two churches.” Mainline churches are far from being “pioneers” in ordaining women. She goes on to imply that ordaining women is one of the sins of liberal Christianity. She also makes a wide sweep of suggesting that only denominations who ordain women are also the ones who ordain homosexuals and are pushing for same-sex unions. I wrote this letter to the editor:
As an ordained female minister with the Church of the Nazarene, I wonder if Charlotte Allen did any research on women and ordination before she wrote “Liberal Christianity is paying for its sins.” The Church of the Nazarene has ordained women since its beginning in 1903. In fact, the American Holiness movement that we come from ordained its first woman 1856. The Salvation Army has ordained women since its beginning in 1865. In fact, Catherine Booth would not marry William until “he saw the light” that women could be preachers and pastors. She wrote Women’s Ministry or Women’s Right to Preach the Gospel. William and Catherine’s daughter, Evangeline, who was an ordained minister, went on to be General of the Army as well. All of these denominations today are conservative theologically. They do not believe in same-sex unions or homosexual ordination, and they are growing worldwide. Ms. Allen made some good points in her article, but she cannot claim that women’s ordination is a factor in men leaving the church, nor lower church attendance. There is plenty of evidence to the contrary on that. She can neither claim that because a denomination believes in women’s ordination that those same denominations also believe in gay marriage and ordination. The Church of the Nazarene, The Wesleyan Church, The Free Methodist Church, The Church of God (Anderson), and The Salvation Army ordain women, but they do not support gay marriage or ordination. Ordaining women is not a sin: it is a biblical tradition that goes back to Miriam, the sister of Moses, who was a prophet during the Exodus, and there are denominations who have always recognized that God does call women to preach and pastor, and we have been ordaining women for 100 years or more.
Sincerely,
Rev. Shawna R. B. Atteberry
The Church of the Nazarene
You can go here to read Catherine Booth’s Female Ministry or A Woman’s Right to Preach the Gospel.