I need to take my own advice

I just glanced through my last post. “Physcian, heal thyself” is one of the phrases that comes to mind. I’m still not doing that much writing. And I’m finding every way out of it that I can: laundry, grocery shopping, “research” (my personal favorite), the cat needs petting, cooking, cleaning, baking. Well everything but practicing yoga or exercising; two other things I need to get on a regular schedule with.

My biggest fear is that I really don’t have anything to say, and once I get it down on paper, I’ll see that I really have nothing to say. What then?

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Politely dismiss fear and have tea with your character

There are things I need to do. I know I need to do them. And there they are waiting for me: Career Women, essays, poems, stories, and a novel. They are all waiting for me. Waiting for me to sit down and to start writing. They whisp and whirl around my head waiting for me to give them substance. They lean in close and whisper in my ear, telling me who the are. Telling me their stories. And I want to write these stories, their stories. I really do.

Then the Wall comes. The Wall in my head. A block, writer’s block, whatever you want to call it. It’s there, and the Wall has brought friends. Every Inner Critic that has ever stuffed itself into my head is there. Those fiends. “You’re never going to finish.” “You don’t have the focus and the stamina.” “You’re not smart enough.” “Everyone else has docorates; you think you can stand with them?” “You’re just going to procrastinate, find other things to do.” “You’ll never make this work.” “You’ll never finish this.” “Why are you  doing this to yourself?” The infernal, internal Critics. Without fail, day, night, or in the wee hours of the morning, there they are. There’s no hiding from them. They are always there. But there is something else too. These were there before the wall and the bullies showed up.

My creations. The characters I live with; I bring to life. They are still there, waiting for me. Waiting for me to give them substance, to breathe life and form into them. They twist and turn through the wall and around the barriers, calling me. Asking me to write them. They want to tell me who they are, what they do, and the weird things that keep popping up into their lives. They want me to stop paying so much attention to the distractions, the Walls, to Critics, to all the other things I should be doing. They want me to sit down and tell their stories while they swhirl around the room, whispering words in my ears. They want me to tell their stories.

So much of the time I don’t. The Wall, the Excuses, and the Critics get in the way. All I see is them. I lose sight my own creations, my muse, my word. I have to make my way back. Back through the Excuses, back through the Critic’s lies, back to my Fears. I look at my Fear, knowing it’s not going anywhere, and make a decision. I look at Fear, and I make that decision. Right behind Fear and little to the left a character flits around the corners of my vision and visits my dreams: Morrighan. I don’t know who she is yet, but I will find out. I look Fear in the eye, and say, “Come back later.” I introduced myself to Morrighan. “Let’s chat,” I say. She smiles as we walk toward the table with the journal and the tea. She has been waiting a long time for this.

I got the idea to talk about my blocks and fears from Havi Brooks. She recently published posts that have made me start to see my own blocks and fears in a slightly different way. Here are the conversations Havi has had with her blocks: Conversations with Blocks, Part 1 and Conversations with Blocks, Part 2.

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I'm sorry that I haven't been around

Getting things squared away at my house in Kansas City has taken longer than I thought it would. The insurance company just decided to pay the claim on Friday. I thought that they had decided that and sent the check two weeks ago. When I called last week to find out what the hold-up was, I found out that they had found other things to quibble about. But it finally went through, and I received a check to get started with the repairs in the house. I’m glad. A lot of work needs to be done: the wall between the bathroom and kitchen needs to be rebuilt, and the ceiling and tile in the bathroom replace. In the kitchen the ceiling and cabinets need to be replaced. The hard wood floor in the living room will be replaced along with the carpet and padding in the bedroom and the flooring in the utility room. I have a general contractor and plumber, and I’m hoping the work can be done by the end of the month. I would love to have it rented by April.

That being said, I plan to start posting three times a week. And I really need to get back to writing. I’m doing a lot of reading and outlining, but hardly no writing. It is time to get back to actually writing posts, book proposals, and just daily journaling. It’s time to tell the fear that I have nothing to say to SHUT UP, sit down, and just write. I have plenty to say; I just have to stop listening to the damn inner critic.

The post about Esther that I promised would be up at the beginning of January will be posted next week, period, no excuses.

So what do you do to shut your inner critic up and do the creative work you’re called to do?

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UMC wants to place female pastors in the pulpits of their largest churches

Yesterday The Wahington Post reported this in their Religion Briefing:

The United Methodist Church, which boasts a history of ordaining women clergy, is seeking to shatter the so-called “stained-glass ceiling” blocking female pastors from its largest pulpits.

The nation’s second-largest Protestant denomination has launched a new initiative, the Lead Women Pastor Project, to examine barriers to women being appointed pastors to Methodist churches with more than 1,000 members. The Nashville-based United Methodist Church has 44,842 clergy, and about 10,000 are female — or 23 percent. Yet just 85 women lead those largest churches, compared with 1,082 men in those positions.

Church leaders say more women are needed to shepherd large churches, given that women make up more than half of those enrolled in master of divinity programs in United Methodist seminaries. Also, almost 58 percent of the 8 million-member denomination is female.

I’m glad the UMC is taking steps to make sure that their female pastors lead in churches of every size. It’s great that they are wanting women in leadership to reflect the percentage of their women in both seminaries and in their denomination.

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RevGals Friday Five: Cabin Fever

Singing Owl writes: Sorry for the late posting! My daughter’s car won’t start, and I just returned from driving her to work. I think she made need a block heater. Speaking of that…

Here in snow country we are settled in to what is a very long stretch of potentially boring days. The holidays are over. It is a very long time till we will get outside on a regular basis. The snow that seemed so beautiful at first is now dirty and the snow banks are piling up. Our vehicles are all the same shade of brownish grey, but if we go to the car wash our doors will freeze shut. People get grumpy. Of course, not everyone lives in a cold climate, but even in warmer places the days till springtime can get long. Help! Please give us five suggestions for combating cabin fever and staying cheerful in our monochromatic world?

1. Read

2. Watch movies

3. Bug The Hubby

4. Drag The Hubby to the bedroom (Hey! We have a TV and a DVR and lots of bookshelves in the bedroom!)

5. Cook and bake

And here’s an extra one: Crochet

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The National Prayer Service Sermon: Harmonies of Liberty

Here is the full transcript of Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins’ sermon from this morning’s National Prayer Service from The Christian Church/Disciples of Christ. You can watch a webcast of the service at the Washington National Cathedral’s site.

Isaiah 58:6-12, Mt 22:6-40
Rev. Dr. Sharon E. Watkins
National Prayer Service; January 21, 2009

Mr. President and Mrs. Obama, Mr. Vice President and Dr. Biden, and your families, what an inaugural celebration you have hosted! Train ride, opening concert, service to neighbor, dancing till dawn…

And yesterday… With your inauguration, Mr. President, the flame of America’s promise burns just a little brighter for every child of this land!

There is still a lot of work to do, and today the nation turns its full attention to that work. As we do, it is good that we pause to take a deep spiritual breath. It is good that we center for a moment.

What you are entering now, Mr. President and Mr. Vice President, will tend to draw you away from your ethical center. But we, the nation that you serve, need you to hold the ground of your deepest values, of our deepest values.

Beyond this moment of high hopes, we need you to stay focused on our shared hopes, so that we can continue to hope, too.

We will follow your lead.

There is a story attributed to Cherokee wisdom:

One evening a grandfather was teaching his young grandson about the internal battle that each person faces.

“There are two wolves struggling inside each of us,” the old man said.

“One wolf is vengefulness, anger, resentment, self-pity, fear…

“The other wolf is compassion, faithfulness, hope, truth, love…”

The grandson sat, thinking, then asked: “Which wolf wins, Grandfather?”

His grandfather replied, “The one you feed.”

There are crises banging on the door right now, pawing at us, trying to draw us off our ethical center – crises that tempt us to feed the wolf of vengefulness and fear.

We need you, Mr. President, to hold your ground. We need you, leaders of this nation, to stay centered on the values that have guided us in the past; values that empowered to move us through the perils of earlier times and can guide us now into a future of renewed promise.

We need you to feed the good wolf within you, to listen to the better angels of your nature, and by your example encourage us to do the same.

This is not a new word for a pastor to bring at such a moment. In the later chapters of Isaiah, in the 500’s BCE, the prophet speaks to the people. Back in the capital city after long years of exile, their joy should be great, but things aren’t working out just right. Their homecoming is more complicated than expected. Not everyone is watching their parade or dancing all night at their arrival.

They turn to God, “What’s going on here? We pray and we fast, but you do not bless us. We’re confused.”

Through the prophet, God answers, what fast? You fast only to quarrel and fight and strike with the fist…

Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice… to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house . .? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly…

At our time of new beginning, focused on renewing America’s promise -yet at a time of great crisis – which fast do we choose? Which “wolf” do we feed? What of America’s promise do we honor?

Recently Muslim scholars from around the world released a document, known as “A Common Word Between Us.” It proposes a common basis for building a world at peace. That common basis? Love of God and love of neighbor! What we just read in the Gospel of Matthew!

So how do we go about loving God? Well, according to Isaiah, summed up by Jesus, affirmed by a worldwide community of Muslim scholars and many others, it is by facing hard times with a generous spirit: by reaching out toward each other rather than turning our backs on each other. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “people can be so poor that the only way they see God is in a piece of bread.”

In the days immediately before us, there will be much to draw us away from the grand work of loving God and the hard work of loving neighbor. In crisis times, a basic instinct seeks to take us over – a fight/flight instinct that leans us toward the fearful wolf, orients us toward the self-interested fast…

In international hard times, our instinct is to fight – to pick up the sword, to seek out enemies, to build walls against the other – and why not? They just might be out to get us. We’ve got plenty of evidence to that effect. Someone has to keep watch and be ready to defend, and Mr. President – Tag! You’re it!

But on the way to those tough decisions, which American promises will frame those decisions? Will you continue to reason from your ethical center, from the bedrock values of our best shared hopes? Which wolf will you feed?

In financial hard times, our instinct is flight – to hunker down, to turn inward, to hoard what little we can get our hands on, to be fearful of others who may take the resources we need. In hard financial times, which fast do we choose? The fast that placates our hunkered-down soul – or the fast that reaches out to our sister and our brother?

In times, such as these, we the people need you, the leaders of this nation, to be guided by the counsel that Isaiah gave so long ago, to work for the common good, for the public happiness, the well-being of the nation and the world, knowing that our individual wellbeing depends upon a world in which liberty and justice prevail.

This is the biblical way. It is also the American way – to believe in something bigger than ourselves, to reach out to neighbor to build communities of possibility, of liberty and justice for all. This is the center we can find again whenever we are pulled at and pawed at by the vengeful wolf, when we are tempted by the self-interested fast.

America’s true character, the source of our national wisdom and strength, is rooted in a generous and hopeful spirit.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,…
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,1

Emma Lazarus’ poetry is spelled out further by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr,: “As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy… I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made.”2

You yourself, Mr. President, have already added to this call, “If there’s a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child… . It’s that fundamental belief – I am my brother’s keeper, I am my sister’s keeper – that makes this country work.”

It is right that college classes on political oratory already study your words . You, as our president, will set the tone for us. You will help us as a nation choose again and again which wolf to feed, which fast to choose, to love God by loving our neighbor.

We will follow your lead – and we will walk with you. And sometimes we will swirl in front of you, pulling you along.

At times like these – hard times -we find out what we’re made of. Is that blazing torch of liberty just for me? Or do we seek the “harmonies of liberty”, many voices joined together, many hands offering to care for neighbors far and near?

Though tempted to withdraw the offer, surely Lady Liberty can still raise that golden torch of generosity to the world. Even in these financial hard times, these times of international challenge, the words of Katherine Lee Bates describe a nation with more than enough to share: “Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain…”

A land of abundance guided by a God of abundance, generosity, and hope – This is our heritage. This is America’s promise which we fulfill when we reach out to each other.

Even in these hard times, rich or poor, we can reach out to our neighbor, including our global neighbor, in generous hospitality, building together communities of possibility and of hope. Even in these tough times, we can feed the good wolf, listen to the better angels of our nature. We can choose the fast of God’s desiring.

Even now in these hard times let us

Lift every voice and sing Till earth and heaven ring,
… with the harmonies of Liberty;

Even now let us Sing a song full of hope…

Especially now, from the center of our deepest shared values, let us pray, still in the words of James Weldon Johnson:

Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us… in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand.
True to our God,
True to our native land.3

1. Emma Lazarus
2. The Words of MLK, Jr., selected by Coretta Scott King, 21
3. James Weldon Johnson

Crossposted at Street Prophets.

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National Prayer Service at 9:00 a.m.

Remember The National Prayer Service will begin at 9:00 a.m. on The Washington National Cathedral’s website. Rev. Sharon E. Watkins (General Minister and President of The Christian Church/Disciples of Christ) will be preaching, and Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori of The Episcopal Church will be giving the benediction. If you watch it let me know what you think.

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My 4 Favorite Moments from the Inauguration

Herbert Bridges, 94, cries as he watches Obama sworn in as president. The photo is from The LA Times.

From the Inaugural Speech:

What the cynics fail to understand is that the ground has shifted beneath them— that the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply. The question we ask today is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works — whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified. Where the answer is yes, we intend to move forward. Where the answer is no, programs will end. And those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government. . . .

For we know that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.  We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers.  We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this Earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace. . . .

For as much as government can do and must do, it is ultimately the faith and determination of the American people upon which this nation relies. It is the kindness to take in a stranger when the levees break, the selflessness of workers who would rather cut their hours than see a friend lose their job which sees us through our darkest hours. It is the firefighter’s courage to storm a stairway filled with smoke, but also a parent’s willingness to nurture a child, that finally decides our fate.

Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility — a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation, and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character, than giving our all to a difficult task.

“Praise song for the day” by Elizabeth Edwards (click here to see video).

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others’ eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.

Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.

A woman and her son wait for the bus.

A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, “Take out your pencils. Begin.”

We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.

We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, “I need to see what’s on the other side; I know there’s something better down the road.”

We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.

Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.

Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.

Some live by “Love thy neighbor as thy self.”

Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.

What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.

In today’s sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.

On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp — praise song for walking forward in that light.

Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowry’s benediction:

And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance. . .

Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against  nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get back, when brown can stick around–when yellow will be mellow–when the red man can get ahead, man–and when white will embrace what is right.

Let all those who do justice and love mercy say amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen!

REV. LOWERY: Say amen —

AUDIENCE: Amen!

REV. LOWERY: — and amen.

AUDIENCE: Amen!

It was such a good day. I am so happy to have seen history made, and to have a president that I was proud to vote for.

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Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori offering closing prayer at National Prayer Service

This is from Episcopal Life Online:

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori will offer the closing prayer at a National Prayer Service set for January 21 at Washington National Cathedral. President Barack Obama and his family are scheduled to attend the invitation-only service.

The Very Rev. Samuel T. Lloyd III, Dean of the Washington National Cathedral, will welcome attendees to the event, followed by an invocation from Diocese of Washington Bishop John Chane.

The 2009 Presidential Inaugural Committee announced on January 16 the spiritual leaders who will participate in the service, which is a tradition dating back to the inauguration of George Washington and is considered the conclusion of the official inaugural events.

The prayer service, set to begin at 10 a.m. EST, will be broadcast live on the cathedral’s website. Online participants can light “virtual” candles and leave personal messages of hope, renewal, and reconciliation at the website. Online visitors can also access an historic presidential photo gallery, view video footage of the national prayer service, and explore the role of this “church for national purposes” throughout the years, according to a news release from the cathedral.

The service will include scripture readings, prayers (including those for civic leaders and the nation), hymns and blessings delivered by faith leaders from across the United States. The Rev. Sharon E. Watkins, general minister and president of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) will deliver the sermon, the first time a woman has preached at the service.

I am not only one happy Episcopalian, but I am one happy feminist theologian. Two women who are ordained and the leaders of their national religion/denominations are part of the National Prayer Service at the Washington National Cathedral on Inauguration Day. I will be watching the live broadcast that morning. I am so happy!

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Martin Marty's response to Warren praying at the Inauguration

Long-time subscribers know that Monday Sightings does not “do” U.S. Presidents or presidential candidates, but this twilight moment after an election and before an inauguration provides me with another category, “President-Elect,” which today’s column will notice for an important reason.  That reason?  The approach to religion-and-politics proposed by President-Elect Obama in his “Call to Renewal” address on May 28, 2006.  I may print it out and use my new Christmas-gift magnets to affix it to a refrigerator door as a text for morning meditations. Here is an excerpt:

“Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values.  Democracy requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason.  I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or evoke God’s will.  I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all…Politics depends on our ability to persuade each other of common aims based on a common reality.  It involves the compromise, the art of what’s possible.  At some fundamental level, religion does not allow for compromise.  It’s the art of the impossible.  If God has spoken, then followers are expected to live up to God’s edicts, regardless of the consequences.  To base one’s life on such uncompromising commitments may be sublime, but to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”

Now, contrast this with a message posted by the Reverend Pastor Richard Duane Warren, with whom I have no motive to pick a fight.  But I wish he would engage in dialogue with his friend, the President-elect, before and after Inauguration Day.  Warren:

“As church leaders, we know our congregations are not allowed to endorse specific candidates, and it’s important for us to recognize that there can be multiple opinions among Bible-believing Christians when it comes to debatable issues such as the economy, social programs, Social Security, and the war in Iraq.  But for those of us who accept the Bible as God’s Word and know that God has a unique, sovereign purpose for every life, I believe there are five issues that are non-negotiable.  To me, they’re not even debatable because God’s Word is clear on these issues.”

These have to do with abortion, stem-cell harvesting, homosexual “marriage,” human cloning, and euthanasia.  He chose these five, about which the printed Bible displays only a few inches of text that can even be used as inferences to support them, as “non-negotiable” themes. He shelves as negotiable the multiple yards of printed biblical texts on some social issues which to him seem negotiable.  With the President-Elect I affirm that Pastor Warren’s “uncompromising commitments may be sublime,” but I do see that “to base our policy-making on such commitments would be a dangerous thing.”

We Bible-believing Christians are offended when some Muslims base social and political policy on the Qur’an, or ruling parties in India, on texts from their holy books, since we do not accept such texts as “God’s Word.”  What Pastor Warren and millions in his camp advocate works only in a theocracy, where the whole population accepts or is forced to accept one faith’s “God’s Word.”  I really, really would like to eavesdrop if the President-Elect and the Pastor were to converse about this question.

The obligatories: this column comes to you via Sightings, a publication of the Martin Marty Center at the University of Chicago Divinity School.

H/T to PastorDan at Street Prophets.

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