On Banning Books and Forgotten Memory

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Banned Books Week - Censorship is so 1984A reflection for Banned Books Week…

As an avid reader, a common trope I encounter in books is that of cultural history fading from memory. In The Lord of the Rings, the memory of the One Ring fades and we see Gandalf digging through dusty old scrolls to find fragments and mentions. In The Chronicles of Narnia, after the Pevensie children are returned to our world after their reign as kings and queens in Narnia, they later return to discover a Narnia in ruins, devoid of magic and Aslan, where their reign is dismissed as myth. In The Hunger Games, the Districts have forgotten their history (as the United States) and even the very existence of District 13. In Star Wars, the Empire so destroys the Jedi with Order 66 that a mere 20ish years later Han Solo says he’s flown from one side of the galaxy to the other and has seen no evidence of the Force. Even in the Bible, after the Israelites were conquered, the Babylonians relocated the rulers and scholars of Israel by force into exile. When the Persians allowed them to return to Jerusalem some 70 years later, they had forgotten their faith, and it was only after discovering an old scroll of the Torah in the Temple and tracking down the elderly prophetess Huldah that they were able to returned to their faith (2 Chronicles 34).

When the stories of history are no longer told they are forgotten. If the powers that be want people to forget that something exists (usually something of great power in opposition to them), they destroy all mention of its existence. It benefitted Sauron that the One Ring (the source of his power) was forgotten; it benefited the Calormen to destroy stories of Aslan and magic; it benefited Snow to tell people District 13 (the rebels) no longer existed; it benefitted the Emperor and the Dark Side to erase every bit of knowledge about the Jedi and the Light Side; it benefited the Babylonians to destroy the Israelites’ faith and identity as a people. If there is memory of something different than authoritarian oppression it must be destroyed in order for the oppressors to hold onto power. Stories that contradict their narrative can give people hope that a better world is possible and hope is the most dangerous thing of all to authoritarian regimes.

Banned BooksAnd so, one of the very first things authoritarians do is try to control the narrative. Despite them out of one side of their mouth claiming that banning guns won’t stop children dying because banning things never works, they jump headfirst into banning books and knowledge. They change how history gets told – making it illegal to teach about slavery, or internment camps, or the mere accomplishments of women or people of color. They instruct their monuments to take down mentions of Trans people so that story doesn’t get told. They tell their military to remove stories and pictures of women and people of color from their social media. They ban public displays like rainbow crosswalks and “Black Lives Matter” signs. They remove books from schools for even mentioning that LGBT people exist – redefining the very existence of gay people as porn or smut. They make sure they control the narrative in every way, so only the stories they want people to know are ever told. And when someone’s story doesn’t get told, people come to believe they don’t exist or are a strange aberration to be shunned from society.

For instance, under the oppressive USSR government it was considered un-patriotic for visible reminders of the government’s failings to exist in public. So, when their horrible environmental practices and disasters like Chernobyl led to children being born with numerous birth defects, these kids were not allowed to exist in public. Much like when the Nazis rounded up all disabled people into concentration camps, these children were taken from their families and put into “orphanages” where they were hidden away from society, and no one was ever reminded that the government wasn’t perfect. Shortly after the fall of the USSR and before an even more oppressive regime was institute under Putin, I had the chance to visit Latvia and Russia. I almost wasn’t allowed to go on the trip with my youth group because I too am missing my lower left arm and it was well known that people like me were not allowed to be in public there. But I went and at one point we visited one of these orphanages full of people with varying disabilities. I got to spend an afternoon surrounded by kids who were missing limbs just like me being asked questions like “So in the USA are you allowed to go to school?” This is why when RFK Jr. talks about putting people with Autism and other disabilities into Health/Education camps, I know exactly what that is about. If we can be hidden away then we do not exist, we will be forgotten as normal humans and considered freaks. Banning us means us no longer being seen as humans deserving of rights, but as diseases to be dealt with.

Banning people and stories about them rewrites history and cultural perception as well. For example, the Institute for Sexual Science was a sexology research institute in Germany from 1919 to 1933. It conducted research on transgender, gay, and intersex people and campaigned on rational scientific grounds for LGBT rights. When the Nazis gained control of Germany they declared the institute un-German; their censorship programs then destroyed the institute and youth brigades burned its research documents in the streets. The most intensive and detailed research about these topics in existence at the time was not just suppressed, but utterly destroyed. This resulted in a massive setback for LGBT rights and public awareness. To this day people believe that being transgender is some new fad or that intersex people have never existed. None of it is new, none of our sexual desires or attractions are new, but when the research is destroyed and people are banned from talking about it (even sent to concentration camps and tortured for it), it fades from memory and those in control can twist the narrative to make people believe it is something abhorrent and unprecedented. There have ALWAYS been gay, trans, and intersex people but when all records of them are destroyed and it becomes a crime to write or talk about them, the public can be told any lie those in power want and it will be believed.

Come and Take It Pride CrosswalkCensorship is terrifying because it works.  Stories teach us empathy towards others. Knowing a person’s story, a people’s history, helps us see them as human – people to be loved and accepted. Seeing disabled people or people of color, or LGBT people represented in books and media, existing in public without fear, and being able to be fully ourselves normalizes our very existence and leads to greater acceptance. Those that want to harm and oppress us can’t allow that to happen. When people know we exist, know our stories, they come to accept us – people (usually) only fear and hate that which is outside of their experience. So, the authoritarian powers that be seek to ban us – they ban our stories, they ban our presence, they ban any reminders of us. We become erased so that they can more easily oppress us and spin the narrative they desire.

That is why we have to be loud. That is why we celebrate Banned Books Week and insist that all stories should be told. That is why when they paint over Pride crosswalks the community draws the color back in. That is why we still celebrate Indigenous People’s Day despite the government trying to overturn it. That is why we protest ICE removing people of color from our communities and disappearing them into secret prisons. That is why we shout that vaccines work and Autism isn’t a disease to be cured. We will not be erased or silenced or have our stories forgotten.  That is why we rage against the dying of the light and choose to cling to hope. Rebellions are built on hope. We must tell our story.

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On the Americans with Disabilities Act Turning 35

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ADA 35
ADA 35

Cross posted from Turning Aside

July 26, 2025 marks the 35th anniversary of the passing of the Americans with Disabilities Act. For many in the disability community this anniversary is marked both with a desire to celebrate what progress has been made in securing our basic rights, but also with lamentation and frustration at how far we still must go. While (for now) public laws and codes require most public spaces to theoretically meet a bare minimum standard of accessibility (which is generally nowhere near sufficient to earn that label), the collective consciousness of the nation still seems to default to ableism.

I want to believe that the ablism as the default mentality is done out of ignorance instead of malice, but I know it is often a mixed bag. There are people who insist that it is their God-given right to mock the disabled, cruelly insisting on making us the brunt of their jokes or calling us “snowflakes” if we ask them to not use the R-word. Even the current President mocked a reporter’s disability at one of his rallies and his fan-base had no problem with it. So, I see the malice and the cruelty that fuels ablism, but I also see the ignorance.

When I was a kid in grade school the trend on the playground was to tell stump and Helen Keller jokes – making those with limb differences, deafness, and blindness their punchlines. People did this in front of me – a person with a limb difference. I thought we were beyond such ignorance as a culture, but in recent years I’ve been hearing stump jokes resurface – often told to my face cluelessly by people who are utterly ignorant that they are using my very existence to elicit a laugh.

Groups of friends plan events in upstairs locations and never wonder why I can’t attend. At parties I am left sitting alone while groups stand in a circle chatting a few feet away, clueless that I physically cannot do the same. I attempt to join meet-up groups only to discover that they too meet in inaccessible upstairs rooms, or at places with no parking (assuming anyone can park blocks away on the street), or at standing only venues, or at outdoor venues with loose gravel yards that my mobility devices can’t manage. These locations are never chosen with a deliberate purpose to exclude the disabled, it just never ever occurs to them to think about accessibility needs.

Or since developing mobility disabilities I’ve had to pay closer attention to accessible parking spaces. More often than I ever would have imagined I see handicapped spots full of cars without the necessary tags or plates. There have been times when I’ve been at a restaurant for a couple of hours in view of the handicapped spots and over and over again I see cars pull into them with no plates or tags and the person run into some store (usually a liquor store or pizza place) for 5-10 minutes. A selfish, self-centered behavior that puts their momentary convenience above the actual needs of others. When I mention this occurrence to store managers I get told that they don’t want to offend customers by having them ticketed or towed (which tells me clearly that they don’t care about offending their disabled customers). When I mention this habit to friends, they are incredulous and say that they can’t imagine anyone doing that so it must never really happen. Selfishness and ignorance.

The ADA was a start; but it is up against a culture that still looks down on disability. I’ve joined and followed disability groups in the last few years and have been shocked by the sorts of comments trolls leave there. Even the mere suggestion that a house be built with accessible features sparks outrage from these people about how the disabled are lazy, want handouts, and want to ruin life for “normal” people. Liturgies at churches still include prayers for the healing of the disabled – treating us as problems to be dealt with instead of people to be included. If I dare to mention that it is not my disabilities, but the inaccessibility of the world around me that limits me even the most open-minded people I know try to argue with me. When I mention Disability Pride Month the most common response I get is confusion about why I would be proud to be disabled and not just desire to be cured. Ableism abounds.

Fifteen years ago on the 20th anniversary of the passing of the ADA I wrote this blog post about attitudes in the church about the disabled. In the very place where I would have hoped that the disabled would be welcomed and embraced, I was finding deep aversion to including us. Since then, my disabilities have multiplied, but I’ve seen little progress in society in thinking differently. Back then I rarely talked about disability, but now I realize that unless more of us use our voice and challenge all forms of ablism (both ignorant and malicious) then nothing will ever change. Acceptance, inclusion, and accessibility should be the norm, but we are not there yet. I wish more had changed in the past 35 years, but there is still a long way to go.

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Welcome Back to onehandclapping

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Old onehandclapping header

I started this blog, onehandclapping, back in 2005 when I was a new mom in the middle of deconstructing my faith and trying to figure out how I could use my voice. At first the blog was a random assortment of book reviews, commentary on politics and pop culture, silly memes and quizzes, and pictures of my life. Over the next decade as I grew in my writing and explored my beliefs it became more theology and social justice oriented. It saw the publication of my books, my experiences as a conference speaker, my time in seminary, and the development of the Emerging Church movement that I was a part of.

Then it went silent. My life got complicated. Relationships fell apart. Trauma and betrayal made it hard to even feel like writing. Special needs kids entering their teen years and all the joys and sorrows that entails took nearly all my energy and their struggles were not my story to tell. A global pandemic and the rise of fascism in the United States made living uncertain. Personal health issues lead to multiple surgeries that eventually left me with mobility issues and multiple disabilities. Life consumed me, I allowed myself to be caged, and I lost myself as a result. Then computer problems ended up deleting most of the blog and not everything was able to be recovered. I sat with an empty blog for a long time unsure of what to do with it.

And a decade went by.

So now, 20 years later, I’ve decided to republish onehandclapping. And I’m going to do it mostly as it was. Some posts have been lost to the digital nether, some posts of family pictures and updates I am leaving off, and some posts that were links go nowhere these days. But the blog is a fascinating glimpse into my development of thought and into the world as it was during that time. There are many things I wrote that I no longer agree with. There is commentary on pop culture that is no longer relevant (my speculations on what will happen on LOST) and pop culture that is now problematic (Harry Potter, Joss Whedon…). How we interact with media has change in those 20 years – pictures, memes, quizzes, and articles are now posted on Facebook or Instagram while blogs are for more serious lengthy writing. But it is a history of my story of deconstruction that shows my evolution and so it is being posted as it was written during that time. I probably will revisit some older posts as I try to explore in writing who I am now, but the archives exist as they were.

As I’ve grown older and dealt with trauma both physical and emotional, I am a different person. I’ve grown more liberal and compassionate, and yet far more timid in using my voice. I want that to change. Writing helps me and for years I’ve been too scared and stuck to write. I need to make myself speak again. I need to engage deeply with thought again, connecting ideas and stories. It will look different than it did 20 years ago because I am different. My beliefs, my interests, and my dreams have shifted as the years passed by, but there is still so much story to tell.

So, I welcome you back to onehandclapping and invite you to join me as I rediscover my voice.

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Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer

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A few years ago I signed up for a class in seminary on theopoetics. I had absolutely no idea what that word meant, but it sounded fascinating. During my time in that course, I felt that I was finally discovering my theological home. The ways of conceiving of the Divine and experiencing the world with equal measures of both uncertainty and hope that come from a theopoetic sensibility resonated with me. Yes, labels can be superfluous, but in theopoetics I found a name for a way of participating, reflecting, and exploring faith that was life affirming.

Yet, theopoetics is little known in the faith world that all too often clings to dogmatic systems and traditions in order to preserve the status quos of theology, church hierarchy, and worship practices. And while the theopoetic is an idea best lived in practice, grasping what it embodies is a helpful necessity for those who spend their time thinking about the ways faith looks in our world. To that end, I was very excited to be offered free for review purposes from Wipf & Stock a copy of Callid Keefe-Perry’s new book, Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer.

Callid has probably done more than anyone to spread awareness of theopoetics and to spark both academic and practical discussions about what it encompasses. His book serves as a resource providing a brief yet thorough introduction to theopoetics. He provides an academic overview of the history of theopoetics and offers a summary of the main thinkers and writers in the movement. He then turns to an exploration of what an integration of theopoetics in worship, sermons, pastoral care, and church outreach might look like. Then, after acknowledging the fault in talking about theopoetics instead of doing theopoetics, he concludes the book with a series of meditations that express the idea of theopoetics through story and metaphor. This offering is a valuable resource that I hope will help expand the conversation about theopoetics and allow it to integrate more into our everyday approaches to and conceptions of faith.

At the core of theopoetics is the idea that how we articulate our experiences of the Divine can alter our experience of the Divine. While provocative in the idea that we in some way make God (theo=God, poesis=making), theopoetics simply acknowledges the common sense idea that how we choose to encounter things determines what things we encounter. It is a given that we can never speak with certainty about God (to know God with absolute certainty would make us God). But instead of assuming that uncertainty and doubt destroy faith, theopoetics embraces the uncertainty of how we speak of and understand God never being sufficient, and suggests why we might still talk about God anyway. As Callid writes, the defining mark of theopoetics is “an acceptance of a cognitive uncertainty regarding the Divine, an unwillingness to attempt to unduly banish that uncertainty, and an emphasis on action and creative articulation in spite of it all” (111).

Theopoetics instead opens space to discover the myriad of ways God might be encountered and felt in the world, even if that encounter is simply with the rumor or hope of the Divine. It is not a rejection of all that has come before, but does insist that “God is not so insignificant as to be invisible except in that which has come before” (7). Even beyond opening up the avenues in which we accept that the Divine can be encountered, theopoetics clears space for perspectives that have been ignored in the past. As Callid comments, while “formalized and institutionally centered doctrinal certainty tends to support status quo systems of social power, and thus, to the extent that current systems and structures appear to be in collusion with unjust forces, attempts at challenging the mode of discourse might allow for the encouragement of voices that might not otherwise be given space” (117) Theopoetics is not a new theology or a mere application of the poetic to theology, it is an invitation to encounter the vast array of metaphorical, incarnational, and experiential aspects of faith. It is an engage with the embodied world and the possibilities it holds.

Where I most resonate with theopoetics as a movement is in the ways in which it creates space to hear our truths spoken to us in our everyday lives. From the beauty of the world, to the pain of illness, to the stories of our favorite films and books, to the rich conversations we hold as we break bread and drink wine with friends—we are surrounded with theopoetic articulations of the Divine. There is no sacred secular divide here, nor an outdated mind body dualism. All is accepted as icon that draws us in, engages us, and transforms us. To be the church is to encounter these stories, name continually anew the ways the divine is moving in the world, and be moved to action to love, serve, and realize the potential of all.

Our stories, our bodies, our conversations, our pains are charged with meaning. Theopoetics grants us space to find the Divine already there.

To read other reviews and reflections on Way to Water: A Theopoetics Primer click here.

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Can We Ever Truly Give?

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Stop at any major intersection in Austin and you will see someone with a sign asking for money, food, or a job. It is a given in this city. Some of the people standing there have chosen that as their lifestyle often because of fear of the government and subsequent desire to live off that radar. Most though have fallen on hard times through one factor or another. We like to pretend we know those reasons and use our imagined reasons to justify our judgment and dismissal of them, but that is just about us and has nothing to do with who they are.

The popularity of this recent video revealed some of our assumptions. As an experiment a youtuber gave a homeless man $100 and then secretly followed him to film what he did. The homeless man went to a liquor store and come out with several bags. He then went to a local park where he passed out food he had just bought. The filmmaker then approached him and spent the time to learn his story. It is a touching story about the kindness of one man, but that is not the reason it went viral. The video was made because the assumption was that a homeless person would spend money on something inappropriate like liquor. It was only the fact that he did not live up to our preconceived judgments about him that made the story so popular.

It’s our dirty little habit this judging of people. Assuming that we know them and know what they should and should not be doing with any assistance they are given. Who cares how much money we might spend on alcohol (especially if its money given to us for blow money in college or if we are on the company dime), we insist we know how best the homeless should use charity they are given. Or we see a woman with a smartphone and nice haircut use food stamps and ten rant about people who abuse the system. She doesn’t look “poor” (which we assume must mean dirty and unkempt) so we judge, forgetting that a smartphone and good appearance is the only way she is able to seek a job to improve her situation. Our idea of how we want the world to work dictates how we care for the struggling in our midst.

But our self-centered charity does not stop there.

This struck me yesterday as I was stopped at an intersection and saw a man there holding a sign. As he walked down the line of idling cars, I noticed that he was wearing a hoodie with the Jack Daniels logo on it and carrying a sign that read – “Cuss me out for a dollar.” I had to laugh at his ingenuity. He knows that most people assume the homeless are drunks who need a lecture about their poor life choices. And he called us on that. Go ahead and be the self-righteous jerk who judges the homeless, but stop hiding behind your façade. All he is asking for is a dollar to let you be in public who you truly are in private. Brilliant, I thought, and gave him a dollar wishing him a good day.

iphone homelessI don’t regret that, but it struck me that I rarely give to simply give. I pack bags of food with my kids and we distribute them to the homeless, in part so my kids can learn about those in need. I give money to those at the intersections whose signs I find interesting (like the guy yesterday). “Family abducted by aliens. Need ransom money.” “You might live in a $200,000 house, but I live under a $2million bridge.” I was momentarily entertained by their signs, so I rewarded them. Similarily the guys that stand at the intersection juggling or who offer to wash windshields seem to get more responses. They did something for us, so therefore they deserve our charity.

It happens all the time. Charity auctions raise far more money than straight asks for money. Why? We get something out of it, even if it is just the opportunity to dress up and attend an event. Is this necessarily a bad thing? I’m not entirely sure. As Derrida philosophized, there can never be such a thing as an unselfish gift. We are always looking for something in return, even if it is merely a “thank you.” But it is something we must always be aware of. Too often we do unto others because it is best for us. We get some sort of reward, even if that reward is the ability to judge and impose our ideas of how others should live their lives onto them. Perhaps this can never be fully escaped, but we can at least start being aware of that fact and begin to explore what it might look like to do unto others as they would have done unto them.

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Sex, Shame, and Rape Culture

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Since Elliot Rodger went on his rampage this past weekend after writing a manifesto detailing how since a “pretty blonde girl” in middle school bullied and mocked him (wouldn’t go out with him) he hates women and sought violent revenge on them, the media has been abuzz with commentary about the rampant misogyny in our culture. Story after story of women who have been sexually violated by men in one way or another flooded the internet reminding the world that women have ample cause to fear men because so many men see women simply as bodies they can use for their own pleasure. Rape culture is alive and well and this most recent (deadly) temper-tantrum of this boy who didn’t get to play with all the toys he thought he was entitled to is just one more scene in that ongoing narrative.

I’m appreciative that the pervasive misogyny of our culture is being called out. Women are speaking out that their bodies are their own and that is a good thing. But as I’ve watched this story unfold, I can’t help but think that what is being addressed here are symptoms not causes. We can raise our voices, perhaps get better laws protecting women from assault, but all of that simply scratches the surface. There is an entire cultural narrative at work here shoring up the systemic violence against women and until we change the very way we think about things, little will actually change.

So basically we need to be talking about sex.

How we conceive of sex is broken and results in acts of violence. Sometimes that violence is physical, but much more frequently it simply appears in the form of violating the humanity of a person by turning them into a commodity. And I’m not talking about casual visual objectification or even using porn here. That’s a scapegoat. The root of this is much deeper and pervasive in our culture.

Arthur Cho’s brilliant response to the shooting pointed out the failings of this mentality. When guys think that by being strong, rich, or powerful or even by being the sweet supportive friend they are doing things to earn or win the right to sex with a woman they are promoting the idea that women (and sex) are commodities. Seeing that pattern it becomes easy to call out the guy who calls girls bullies and bitches because they won’t have sex with him. He thinks he is entitled to sex and gets pissed off when his actions don’t earn him what he wants. Women don’t want to feel like a conquest or a whore to be bought, but having already been cast as such a commodity in the eyes of the guy, that he then resorts to whatever means necessary to get what he thinks he deserves is not all that surprising.

That aspect of rape culture is easy to spot. But we rarely go further and see that the idea of women (and sex) as commodities is pervasive in our culture. For most of Western history, women were blatantly stated to be the property of a man. They belonged to their father who then arranged a deal to transfer that ownership to her husband in exchange for power, influence, or simply hard cash. Women and their sexuality were therefore something to be guarded and used as bargaining chips in this economic exchange of goods. Fathers and husbands owned the woman, and so treated her sexuality especially as an investment to be preserved until it was possessed by her new owner. In the Western world today, this exchange is perhaps not so overtly economic, but nevertheless remains in different guises. Relationships are still arranged through State controlled legal contracts or else they are seen as incomplete or even sinful. The father often still gives the man permission to marry (or date) his daughter and then gives her away to him in front of witnesses as the contract is signed. Girls are taught to preserve their virginity above all else as their most precious commodity to be preserved for “the one.” Some girls are even encouraged to pledge their virginity to their fathers until the time when it can be transferred to their husband. It is a romanticized version of the historical buying and selling of a woman’s sexuality, but it is a commodity exchange nonetheless.

At the core of this commodification of sex, is the notion that sex itself is a necessary evil which therefore must be regulated and highly controlled. That such an idea pervades Western culture is not that surprising given our roots in Greek Platonic thought that bifurcated the mind and body disparaging the base natural functions of the flesh. That the early Christians threw out Jewish notions of holistic selves and bought fully into the Greek view ensured that sex be cast as evil and therefore have such strange economic regulations applied to it. It was begrudgingly admitted that men might have sexual needs that should be met (erections can be difficult to hide…), so women were bought and sold to meet that need, but it was still cast as a source of shame.

The problem here is that we can rail against the objectification or commoditization of women in rape culture all we want, but what is really at issue here are our cultural attitudes toward the body and sex that created (and preserve) the system in the first place. What if instead of letting our fear of those who see sex as an entitlement cause us to continue to cast sex as a corrupting force of evil that we must transcend, we (like Maslow) embrace our bodies and admit that sex is a basic physiological human need. It is a need all people (yes, even women) have that is not shameful and that we should not be embarrassed to desire to have met. Not that anyone is responsible to meet that need for us, nor that we are entitled to use others for our needs, but that we simply start to admit that our sexuality is an integral part of ourselves.

This is a far cry from the culture of shame that held well into the 20th century that women were not even capable of having orgasms and that at times insisted that a woman be sent to prison for witchcraft or to a hospital to be treated for hysteria if she showed signs of sexual arousal. If women are mere objects of economic exchange that men win or earn to meet the man’s needs, of course any sign of pleasure on the woman’s part is dangerous. Far better to teach her to be ashamed of her sexuality, to preserve her virginity at all costs, and to limit her physical activities to only the man with the right to own her (and slut-shame her if she dares to meet her own needs as she will). Keep yourself pure, preserve and conserve, conceal don’t feel, are the mantras thrown at women to keep them in their place. Let them get riled up about people finding pleasure in the human form and rage about how that objectifies women as long as they remain blind to the fact that their very lives (and especially their attitude of disgust toward the erotic) are the result of their complete and total objectification and commodification.

Thing is, it’s a lot more complicated to let people embrace their bodies and their sexuality. Instead of being a source of shame that turns sex into an economic exchange where there are winners and losers leading to attitudes of entitlement and resentment, people come to know their personal needs, desires, and boundaries. Sex can be celebrated and given not only for one’s own pleasure but as a gift to another. No one has a right to anyone else, but no one can also force someone to shut down or hide their sexuality so that they can horde that commodity for themselves. Each person having his or her own boundaries and expression of sexuality is of course far more complicated than one-size fits all shame-based regulations, but it is also far healthier than the rape culture of objectification that we currently have.

The question is, how much do we really want to change the way things are? Is eliminating rape culture worth rethinking the entire culture of shame our society is built upon? Or is tweaking the status quo and feeling like we have done something good enough? Change takes time and effort and is resisted at every turn. And as we have seen so often in this country, such equal distributions of wealth, agency and power challenge the hegemony of the rich and the powerful who want to keep it all for themselves and so they call equality evil and parade out various harmless scapegoats to be attacked instead. Will we let that happen yet again in this country? With our very bodies? Or will we stage the cultural revolution necessary to put an end to rape culture?

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Never Pray Again

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This post is part of a blog tour for the book Never Pray Again by Aric Clark, Doug Hagler, and Nick Larson. I received a copy of the book as a participant in this blog tour.

Prayer can hurt. All too often it serves as the easy way to meet one’s spiritual quota for the day. Pray before meals thanking God for the food while ignoring the plight of the impoverished workers who labored unseen to bring you the food, send up prayers for stuff you need much like you would wish upon a star, pray that the people/sinners you don’t like will become more like you and check, you’ve done your duty for the day. This is called being close to God. This is the extent of many Christians’ daily spiritual practices. While it may seem benign this sort of praying can often do more harm than good.

As Never Pray Again delves into, prayer often misses the point of what it means to be a Christian. Instead of following the way of Jesus and living into one’s faith, prayer is used as means to look spiritual but not actually do anything. But prayer is not a substitute for action – for actually living out one’s faith. We can hurt ourselves by restricting ourselves from fully embracing our faith when we merely rely on perfunctory prayers, but we also fail to do God’s work in the world. We are God’s hands and feet in this world, it does no good to ask God to fix something in this world unless we are willing to function as such. We let hurt and suffering in this world thrive when all we do is pray. Faith is about going and doing, not simply making a wish and feeling like we’ve been let off the hook.

It is in the chapter titled “Heal!” that the book explores some of the ways prayer can be the most harmful. It is common in churches to pray for the healing of people – from people with cancer, to those with mobility issues, to even those with mental illnesses. And while it may sound extreme the prayers to ‘pray the gay away,’ or that a man or women would live into their God-ordained gender roles, or even that calamity might befall a person in order to stop them from the ‘sinful path’ they might be on are far more common than we would like to believe. I personally have been told by people that they would pray for me because of my belief that women could be pastors. That I shouldn’t take medicine to help with my anxiety issues but that I just needed to cast my cares on God in prayer and I would be just fine. I even grew up being told in church that if I just prayed enough God would heal my arm (I was born missing my left arm below the elbow). And conference after conference I attend think they are being inclusive of disability when they invite people who work with the disabled (and not the actual disabled) to speak about how they serve (seek to heal) those who are different.

The problem with these sorts of prayers and perspectives, as the chapter points out, is that they assume there is some default way of being in this world and that if you don’t measure up to the default you are deficient in some way and so therefore must be healed to be made whole. People who diverge from the default mold are broken and must be fixed. From gays and lesbians, to independent women, to the obese, to the disabled, to the mentally ill – these are signs of not abiding by a culture norm and so must be things people need healing from. These people are lesser than the default model and so must be changed in order to become whole according to whatever the culture currently happens to be defining that as.

Yes, there are some illnesses that people want to heal from so their suffering ends. Others find that using a wheelchair or prosthetic limb or taking an antidepressant helps them function with more ease in the world. There are steps of healing that are necessary and good and that help people become their full selves. But therein lies the distinction. They do not need healing so that they can be more like the default norm, they seek healing and aid because they want to be fully themselves. There is brokenness all around us and in us that prevents us from being whole or loving others into wholeness. But often it is the very implication that one must be healed (become more like the default norm) that causes the most hurt and pain. When families are kicked out of churches because the church can’t deal with their kid with autism, or a person in a wheelchair is effectively shunned because no one is comfortable interacting with a person they know will never be ‘whole’ like them, or someone prays that you would be healed of something that you consider an integral part of your identity, it is hard not to come to believe that one can never be whole and accepted as they are. They accept their place as broken and inferior and come to despise their very selves for being something other than the culture’s default norm. This is not healing; this is the creation of brokenness.

So as the chapter explores, our perspective of what healing means needs to shift. To heal is not to become like the cultural norm, it is to embrace all people for who they are and to communally help us all to live into wholeness. Being with, truly with, someone in a way that shows you love them for who they are is far more difficult than condescendingly sending up a prayer that people not like you need to be healed, but it is the only way to live into both your and their wholeness.

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Transfiguring the Everyday

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This is the text of the sermon I preached at Woodland Baptist Church in San Antonio, TX for Transfiguration Sunday March 2, 2014

Matthew 17

Do you ever wonder why so many tales end with a “happily ever after.” The adventure is over, the battle has been won, true love has been found, so therefore there is no more story to tell. The climax is reached, the excitement is past, and the reader must be left with the contentment that all is well. We don’t need to know about the day to day life of the Prince and Princess after they wed, the PTSD of that soldier who can never quite get over the war – all the storyteller wants us to know is that a grand and beautiful thing happened and everyone lived happily ever after.

If you’re anywhere near as big of a geek as I am, you might know that Tolkien originally had an additional epilogue to his Lord of the Rings trilogy. It takes place years after the events in the stories – long after the ring is destroyed and the true king returns to the land. It is of Sam sitting at home with his wife and children telling the story of his adventures, and one of his daughters laments how sad it is to hear the tales because real life is nothing like the stories her father tells. The day to day reality of life, so easily summed up as “and they lived happily ever after,” isn’t all that exciting. There are chores to do, meals to cook, work to go to. One doesn’t feel like one is living an epic adventure in the mundanity of the everyday.

transfiguration-iconI’ve always seen the Transfiguration narrative as one of those moments of epic adventure. Peter, James, and John got to see Jesus revealed in all his glory. As Peter later described it they got to be witnesses to the majesty, to hear the voice directly from heaven, and were moved in that moment to be as lamps shining in dark places. They literally had a mountaintop faith experience that could not help but make them want to respond with offers of service.

It is an experience familiar to many of us. We’ve had those moments when we have been on the spiritual mountaintop in one fashion or another. Perhaps the encounter with the full majesty of Jesus is what brought us to faith or renewed our faith. Perhaps reading a book or listening to a speaker awoke in us that desire to shine as lamps in the world of darkness, working to right the evils and injustices in the world. But as many of us also know, those mountaintop experiences don’t last. We only get a brief moment with the transfigured majesty of Jesus and then we are returned to the everyday.

And of course we have to figure out what to do in the aftermath.

It’s fascinating to look at how the disciples tried to cope with something as overwhelming as an encounter with the transfigured Jesus.

Their first suggestion – build tents to house the majesty of Jesus in. Perhaps it was to honor the greatness of the one transfigured, but whatever the rationale, their first impulse was to contain that glory.

They were human. There was a mountaintop moment and they wanted to build a structure to preserve it in. They didn’t want to forget the moment in the mundane everyday, they wanted to keep it close. It was such a significant moment that they needed to impose some order on it to preserve it and keep the experience going.

Is this not how we so often treat our religious experiences? We have dramatic encounters with God, we are moved to care for the least of these, and often our first impulse is to create a structure to contain it. We construct churches and denominations, we develop rituals, we start committees, we plan missions. Not that any of these things are bad things, but sometimes we end up missing the real point because of them. What matters is the encounter – of having our lives transformed by the majesty of God. When we try to preserve that encounter by creating structures around it, our gaze often gets obscured by those very structures. The containers for the encounter become what is most important to us, sometimes even to the extent that we forget the transformative experience itself.

It is like that popular Zen story of the ritual cat which I’m sure many of you have heard. The story goes that once when a spiritual teacher and his disciples began their evening meditation, the cat who lived in the monastery made such noise that it distracted them. So the teacher ordered that the cat be tied up during the evening practice. Years later, when the teacher died, the cat continued to be tied up during the meditation session. And when the cat eventually died, another cat was brought to the monastery and tied up. Centuries later, learned descendants of the spiritual teacher would write scholarly treatises about the religious significance of tying up a cat for meditation practice. What mattered was the meditation and yet it was the ritual that over time became the center of the focus.

Thankfully, Jesus tried to sway his disciples away from such habits on the mountainside. No tents were put up and they were encouraged to focus on that moment of worship instead. At the same time Jesus also knew the danger of the other typical way they could respond to the experience. He had to warn them not to tell about the encounter, for while it was astoundingly meaningful to them in that moment, the telling of it would not have quite the same impact on others. In fact he tells them that many have had the opportunity for such encounters, they saw Elijah, they saw John the Baptist, and it didn’t drastically change their lives. They simply continued to do as they pleased. Maybe they had listened to John speak or had even been baptized, and yet that mountaintop experience was not enough to alter their day to day life.

Jesus knew that the tale could not simply end “and having experienced John’s baptism, he lived happily ever after” or even “having seen Jesus transfigured on the mountainside, his disciples served him faithfully and unwaveringly for the rest of their lives.” Because it simply was not true. We know that not much later Peter denies even knowing Jesus, his disciples can’t stay awake to keep him company in Gethsemane, and almost all of them desert him when he hangs on the cross. This one moment of glory did not change everything. The day to day discipleship proved much more difficult.

On one hand I find this discouraging. If seeing Jesus transfigured before them wasn’t enough to move his own disciples beyond the dangerous tendencies to contain that glory or to lose hope in the everyday, what does that mean for us as we attempt to be faithful disciples some two thousand years later? Oh, we might have our mountain top moments, but nothing compared to encountering Jesus transfigured into glory. How are we as regular people with ordinary everyday lives even to dream of living as hope-filled disciples without falling into the dangers of missing the point behind the known safety of structure and ritual or of simply getting caught up in the everyday mundanity of life? How can we live out that call to daily love God and love others, seeking justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God when even the disciples seemed to have difficulty doing so?

I wouldn’t dare presume to have the answer to that question. But I do want to share a story that gives me some hope.

For those of you who have explored the infrequently read and seemingly daunting Minor Prophets section of the Bible, you may already be familiar with the story of Amos.

A poor herdsman from Judah, Amos was part of a population that was subservient to Israel at the time of the divided kingdom. Judah in that position therefore bore the brunt of the expenses of Israel, with the poor and needy of the land frequently being used and abused to cover the expenditures of those in power. Through the manipulation of debt and credit, the wealthy had amassed more and more of the land at the expense of poor landowners. Some scholars believe that the only thing that would have even brought a poor shepherd like Amos to the big city of Jerusalem was the requirement that he pay tribute to those that controlled his lands at an official festival. It is what happened when he journey to Jerusalem that changed him though. If this was a contemporary event, the click-bait headline would be “Poor herdsman travels to Jerusalem, you’ll never believe what he does next!” For what this struggling working class man saw in Jerusalem was a population that not only lived in extravagance, but one that had stopped asking questions about if they were living in the ways of the Lord. In fact they not only had stopped asking questions about whether their lifestyles based on the oppression of the poor reflected God’s desires, they had been told by the powers that be that it was not proper (or permitted) to ask questions that challenged the ways of Israel.

Seeing this abandonment of the faith in the guise of apathy moved Amos, who was not a religious professional, to speak the word of the Lord to Israel. Although the governing religious hierarchy told him to not prophecy against the ways of Israel, Amos knew he could not remain silent about the injustices he saw. He saw the people going through the rituals of religion as normal while the poor were exploited on their behalf. So this ordinary man took up the mantle of prophet – one who calls people to live into God’s ways. The message he delivered on the streets of Jerusalem was that God hates their worship gatherings and the noise of their praise songs because they have given up on caring about what it actually means to be God’s people. Amos told them – Alas for those who lie on beds of ivory, and lounge on their couches,… who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp, and like David improvise on instruments of music; who drink wine from bowls, and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!”

Israel was enjoying the prosperity injustice and oppression of the poor gave them and therefore had accepted the injunction against questioning the practices of the government and economic system (because why would they question something that let them live a comfortable life?). Amos, this ordinary guy from the countryside, called them to instead to stop exploiting the poor and let justice roll across the land. He begged them to ask the hard questions of themselves and of their rulers – to be disciples despite the cost to their day to day lives. But, of course, questioning the status quo is dangerous. Jerusalem had no interest in hearing the word of the Lord that challenged their economic prosperity. The powers that be moved to silence his prophecy and evicted Amos from Jerusalem. And yet the witness of this man who was moved by the day to day reality of the world to be a better disciple and to call others to do the same stands as scripture in our Bibles.

So while at first it may seem that the story of a guy who has his own book in the Bible might not seem like the best encouragement for us everyday people, I find it to be quite inspiring. Why? Because for Amos, the everyday reality of the world was transfigured in a way that led him to acts of worship much in the same way the disciples who saw the transfigured Jesus were moved. Amos saw the suffering of those around him, the injustice of those who lived comfortably at the expense of others, and the silence of the religious community on such matters and his world was changed. This was his everyday world and it moved him to serve as a prophet of God – calling God’s people to actually live in the ways of righteousness and justice that God demands of them.

And just like Amos – this is our everyday world. Our world is filled with injustice. Women trafficked into sex slavery. Workers repeatedly cheated of wages in sweatshops so that our clothes and electronics can be cheap. People who are hungry. People without access to clean water or affordable medical care. If we open our eyes we can see the same injustices in our world that Amos did in his – and if we choose to look in the right way, such can be our daily mountaintop experience calling us to lives of discipleship – not to lose hope or try to contain it in meaningless structures somehow, but to lives as prophets of God turning the world to God’s ways.

jesus benchFor you see, Jesus is transfigured every day at every moment in the world around us. We are reminded in Matthew 25 that whatever we do for the least of those amongst us, we do for Jesus. Jesus is transfigured every day in the guise of the hungry, the poor, the immigrant, the oppressed worker, the homeless, and the sick. We might not have access to one great dazzling mountaintop moment where we encounter the transfigured Jesus, but if we have the eyes to see, we encounter the transfigured Jesus every moment of every day. When we eat food grown by slaves or buy clothes made by oppressed worker we encounter Jesus. When we deny medical care to those who need it or stay silent as aid for the hungry is slashed in our country, we are doing those things to Jesus.

C.S. Lewis referred to this transfiguration of the everyday as being burdened with the weight of the glory of others. If we had the eyes to see we would be overwhelmed he wrote to see that the world is populated with those whom we might refer to as gods and goddesses if we were to see the full glory of God that is in them. To carry the burden of upholding the image of God in our neighbor, to see in them the transfigured Jesus, is our daily task of discipleship. It is not as simple and no where near as easy as ‘happily ever after.’ It truly is a burden to deal with the glory of the everyday but it is far more hopeful.

So when we lament that the thrill of mountaintop experiences may pass or when we get lost in the rituals and structures we build to try and preserve our moments of encounter with Jesus, we would do well to think like Amos instead and see the glory in the every day. To bear that weight of glory by doing to the least of these as we would for Jesus. To transfigure the everyday and become better disciples for it.

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Communion and the Church

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In my last blog post, “Giving Up or Growing Up?” I wrote “I love the idea of the church. A group of people who in gathering around a shared meal of bread and wine commit to being one body—one family devoted to the disciplines of love and forgiveness and the commitment to make the ways of the realm of God present on earth as in heaven. I will always be part of that community” even as I declared that I am done with participating in religious structures that harm others. Interestingly, a common response I received to that post was “So, you’re giving up going to church?”

I get that in our culture the term “church” refers to a place or at best an event. I get that trying to hold fast to the idea that the term ecclesia refers to the people – gathered or called together for a purpose (mattering not if they are physically together in any particular place at any given time) – can be a losing battle these days. But this is one of those things I have to hold fast to. We do not go to, get together for, or do church, we are the church.

That matters.

Oh, it is trendy to talk about being the church, but such discussions quickly dissolve into how we do church. There must be rules and schedules and planned activities and (most importantly) codes of hierarchies and etiquette that must be observed. It’s like being roommates with Sheldon Cooper. It’s not about community, but about staying within the bounds of predetermined appropriate patterns of behavior.

With such responses to my post fresh in my mind, I then read (and got really annoyed by) Preston Yancey’s post “When if the Eucharist is just a symbol, to hell with it.” It hit me that we do to church what we have done to the Eucharist. The historical shift in Christianity from the Body of Christ being the people for whom the bread and the wine were a blessing, to the Body becoming the actual elements removed agency and identity from the people. Adding pseudo-magical ideas like transubstantiation and consubstantiation to theologically back-up that shift (yes, I know I just pissed off most of Christendom…) further distanced people from an identify as being the church to those who do church. Now there can be people arguing that if the elements of the Eucharist are just a symbol of who we are and not something mystical in and of itself, then to hell with it.

We have obviously lost ourselves along the way.

But the critique and the confusion got me thinking. If we are the church that lives in community and choose to demonstrate that we are part of this family together by breaking bread and sharing wine together, then maybe we need a third way between mystical elements and mere symbol to think about that act. Something that moves beyond the lists of rules that set strict boundaries for who we permit to share our bread but which also helps us be and not just do church.

(And this is where I let my nerd show.)

Linguists talk about the power of certain forms of language to perform in their utterance that which they mean. Referred to as speech acts, the idea is that by saying something, we do something, as when in saying “I promise” I actually am making a promise or when a minister joins two people in marriage saying, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” We have mystically applied this idea to Eucharist (by saying the elements are blessed they become so), but what if Communion (and yes I used this term deliberately) was seen as being like an actual speech act. In breaking bread and drinking wine together (in whatever form that actually takes) we are performing the act of being a community, a family, the Body of Christ. It isn’t the symbolism of or the rules around the ritual, but the fact that bread and wine are shared that matters.

Communion is more than a symbol because eating with each other is a vital part of life. And it is not something mystically transformed and delivered by only the one invested with the power to say the right incantation over it. It is far more powerful and active than that. We are a community when we commune with each other and since we are human, that is almost always around food. In the church I used to serve, we called this being foodal (a riff on missional). We did life together over food. We were the church when we were being a community around a table. Over the years, I’ve affirmed my identity as part of the body of Christ by sharing Doritos and Mountain Dew with teens in a youth group. I’ve affirmed this identity by raiding a diaper bag and sharing juice boxes and animal crackers. I’ve affirmed this identity at potlucks, in taking meals to families with newborns, and having dinner with friends. I remember the ways of Christ through such communion, but live it directly in simply being in community. And yes, sadly, I’ve had people refuse to commune with me because the bread wasn’t of the correct type, because the food didn’t pass through the hands of an ordained priest, and because I lacked a penis and therefore could not offer them the food of our shared table. But more often than not I’ve broken bread and shared the cup in joyous ways with my brothers and sisters.

I am not giving up on being the church. I will continue to break bread and share wine as an act of community with those who have chosen to follow in the way of Jesus and live out the dreams of God on earth (or who simply want to join in the community of those who do). For in eating that bread and drinking that wine with whoever so desires to share the table I live into my identity as part of the body of Christ – I am the church.

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Giving Up or Growing Up?: Some Thoughts on Church

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Some might call it resignation or failure; I prefer to see it as maturity.

In a recent conversation with a seminary friend, we both expressed how tired we were with churches that continue to give lip service to being welcoming and inclusive of the gifts of all, but which in reality never seem to actually do anything. The conversation was specifically about women in ministry. Both of us have spent years in Christian circles that are still uneasy accepting women as equal participants in the work of the church. In theory they might say it’s okay for women to preach or be ordained and perhaps they might even speak out against the groups that obviously restrict women, but when it comes down to the practical reality of it all, women are never allowed any real voice. So we’ve served as advocates, trying to bring attention to the voices of women, encouraging leaders to open their eyes to their latent sexism, and hoping we can be a source of change from within the realms we participate in. And yet have seen little change.

I admitted in that conversation though that I was tired of that role. How long was I willing to stay within a broken system helping it slowing become more of a life-giving place of welcome when in reality all I was doing was lending a little extra life-support to a system that doesn’t appear to be getting better. So I mused that sometimes we just have to let things simply die off so that that which is healthy has room to thrive.

Hence why some may accuse me of giving up on the church as we know it.

Maybe.

I prefer to think I’m growing up.

It’s not like the church hasn’t been able to do the dignified death thing before. Yes, most change in the church is a long arduous process often plagued with schism and violence. But not always. For example -Following the ban as set forth by Dionysius the Bishop of Alexandria at the beginning of the third century women who were menstruating were not allowed to participate in the sacraments or approach the alter. Except for a brief challenge to this rule by Pope Gregory the Great in 597 (for did not Jesus permit the bleeding woman to touch his cloak?) this ban was near-unanimously agreed upon for most of Christian history. Although the ban naturally did not apply in anti-sacramental Protestant churches following the Reformation, it remained articulated (if not always followed) in Lutheran, Anglican, and Catholic churches until the mid-twentieth century. And then it simply faded away. Most Christians these days have utterly forgotten that this ban ever existed. It died as more life-affirming practices naturally grew up to take its place.

You see, I love the idea of the church. A group of people who in gathering around a shared meal of bread and wine commit to being one body—one family devoted to the disciplines of love and forgiveness and the commitment to make the ways of the realm of God present on earth as in heaven. I will always be part of that community.

I’m just too tired to waste my energy defending structures that do harm in this world, that teach the inferiority of some, that silence the voices of others, that preach selfishness instead of compassion, that don’t bother to welcome and include all, or that care more for trappings of a building, or altar, or style of worship than they do about living as the family that calls itself the body of Christ. I’m fine with participating in the beautiful and cherishing the depth of tradition, but never when it has such high costs.

Maturity for me right now means letting go of that which needs to die and pursuing that which allows life to thrive. I need to grow up.

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