2009 Books

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2009 Books

So each year I like to survey the past year by posting the list of books I read that year. Looking at this list, which is probably the shortest list I’ve ever posted for a year, I wish I had read far more than I did. I guess life, publishing my own book, and (admittedly) watching the entire Battlestar Galactica series got in the way of reading. But even so, it’s a decent list with books that taught me, challenged me, entertained me, and angered me which makes them worthwhile in my opinion.

2009 Books –

Non-fiction

Fiction

While there are a few books on this list that I would classify in the almost to painful to read category, for the most part I enjoyed this years books. For sheer entertainment in a satirical intellectual sort of way, I would list Cuisines of the Axis of Evil as a favorite. As for books that I’ve recommended the most and mentally returned to most often I would list Mama’s Got a Fake ID and Manifold Witness. I seriously hope to expand my reading this next year – especially by reading non-majority (not white, western, or male) theological works (any recommendations would be appreciated).

So what about you – what were your favorite reads of 2009?

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Urbana 09

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Urbana09

So I am spending a few days this week at Urbana 09. I never made it to Urbana when I was in school, so it’s fun to finally get to experience this massive event. There are some 16,000 people attending and thinking about doing missions and translating Christ’s incarnation into our daily lives. It’s overwhelming, and it’s been a long time since I’ve been a part of anything this full of crazy energy, but I’m excited to see what happens. And I’m looking forward to finally getting to hear from people like Ruth Padilla DeBorst and Shane Claiborne.

I will be part of a panel on missional worship in the church, leading two seminars on seeking everyday justice, and doing a booksigning in the bookstore. So if you are here at Urbana, I invite to to stop by and chat!

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Birthing

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Fourth Sunday of Advent 2009

Births aren’t generally unexpected.  I mean, you kinda know they are coming.  But that doesn’t mean that you won’t be in the early stages of labor and not wonder if you still have time to rethink the whole thing.  Birthing is hard, it’s messy, and it doesn’t always go a planned.

I think of Mary, unexpectedly pregnant, having to face the scorn of her culture – a taint she and her son would have to carry through life.  Then she is forced to travel to Bethlehem, “now obviously pregnant,” as some translations put it.  She was anticipating a birth, a special birth, but I have to wonder if even so it took her by surprise.  Was she at term?  Or did the long journey send her into preterm labor, forcing a child into the world before anyone was ready for it?  Having two children born prematurely, I understand how even something anticipated and desired can still unexpectedly alter one’s world.

I think we often in the church have to face these unexpected births.  When we are pregnant with ideas or passions or a call, we have to see it through.  As much as we want to live in denial that there is new life growing within us, that life is going to emerge whether we are ready or not.  That baby’s coming out.  And it’s guaranteed to be messy.  It’s guaranteed to be painful.  And sometimes it may even come early.  Difficult journeys strain the body to the point that new life has to be birthed in order for both the mother and the child to survive.  It’s sudden sometimes. And it’s scary.  But it’s still a beautiful child.

Mary willingly birthed the messiah – the one she knew would bring rulers down from their thrones and lift up the humble.  And she did it without the support of family, with a strange midwife at her side, and a dingy manger to lay the child in as her broken and bleeding body was tended to.  Was this what she envisioned as she sung the Magnificat? Will generations call her blessed for this?  Or do we forget the pain, and the mess, and the unexpected in our vain attempts to sanitize the way God worked in history?

Are we willing to let God birth new life?

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Journeying

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Third Sunday of Advent 2009

The other day my four year old daughter told me she wanted to go on a journey.  I told her that we would be going to New Mexico for Christmas and asked if that would count.  She said, no, that was just a trip, not a journey.  Journeys involve going on a quest to find something important and discovering stuff about yourself along the way.  So she wanted to find a journey to go on.  I explained to her that often the journeys she’s thinking of are often thrust upon people by strange twists of coincidence or fate.  Dorothy  gets carried in a whirlwind to Oz.  Alice falls through the looking glass.  Lucy steps through the wardrobe.

And a suspiciously pregnant Mary is forced by the government to journey while heavy with child to the town of Bethlehem.

This week’s Advent theme is that of journeying.  Of making our way through life with awareness.  Anyone can get along and move ahead.  We can go on trips and reach destinations, but it takes awareness to give it meaning.  To journey through life requires a commitment to seek after something and to be open to have ourselves changed along the way.  We can be scared and unsure of exactly where we are going, but we accept and commit to it nonetheless.

Mary committed to the journey she was thrust into.  Despite the ridicule and judgement of those who could count the months between the wedding and due date which is likely the reason there were no rooms for them in Bethlehem, Mary journeyed anyway.  Even as the hardship of the journey brought on the pains of labor, she accepted her path.  Even as strange visitors praised her son and fear forced them to flee the country, Mary treasured the moments and journeyed on.  Bethlehem was just the first stop along a journey that led her eventually to see her son crucified on the cross and the Spirit descend in wind and flame at Pentecost.  She was committed to the journey she had accepted no matter the pain it caused her as it unfolded.  It is believed that a good deal of our gospel accounts come from Mary telling the story of her journey.  This wasn’t someone who proceeded through life unaware.  She treasured her experiences in her heart – understanding the significance of the path she was on.

I wish I was more like Mary.  Or like my daughter asking to go on a journey.  I want to see, truly see, the world around me.  I want to seek something truly significant and be willing to let myself be shaped into an instrument of the good along the way.  I appreciate this reminder in the Carmelite Advent tradition that Incarnation isn’t just about God coming to us, but also about us choosing to seek and journey after God as well.  We choose to follow and to do so with open eyes – building awareness of the ways we can better serve.  We choose to journey together.

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Which Jesus?

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baby jesus dollsbaby jesus dollsWhen I first stumbled across this image, I thought it could be a perfect illustration of the commercialism of Christmas. You know, something along the lines of how we have replaced the true meaning of Christmas with crass consumerism. But as I thought about it, I was more struck at how it represents what we in the church so often do to Jesus. We’ve packaged him and turned him into the equivalent of cheap plastic crap that has no greater impact than kitschy home decor. We’ve made Jesus innocuous and safe. Jesus gets reduced to a nice cross necklaces or fish stickers on our car. We sing love songs to Jesus and claim the power of his name without ever taking the time to understand him. This Jesus exists only as a part of the financial transaction of saving us from our sins, as if the point of our existence was to give lip-service to someone so that we can get the goodie in heaven when we die. As I’ve mentioned before, this Jesus is little more than a talisman or fetish. Like the baby in a cheap plastic mass-produced creche, this Jesus is there for adorning our lives when we feel like putting him on display.

This Jesus always makes an appearance at Christmastime. We fight to win the war on Christmas making sure his name gets mentioned or his image displayed. We are more concerned with chanting his name as our mantra and forcing others to do the same than we are following a real person. But when Jesus is just there as decoration, or reminder of a past transaction, I feel as if we are denying the Incarnation. If the particularities of how Jesus lived and the way of life he called his followers to live are ignored in favor of a generic consumer-ready figurehead, then what was the point of God becoming flesh and dwelling among us? We could just as easily have created an idol that looks pretty and unassuming on the mantle without having to have had God go to all that trouble. Unless the Incarnation prompts us to do something other than create cheap plastic Jesus’s for our own sake then I think we’ve missed the point of the whole thing.

In an interview about my book recently, I was asked why people who are saved and just living out their lives as good Christians should even bother complicating their lives by caring about justice. On one hand answering that question is part of why I wrote Everyday Justice. But at the same time, it amuses me that the faith tradition that taught me to pity and ridicule those that say “I’m a good person, why do I need to follow Jesus?” are now the one’s saying “I’ve said a prayer to Jesus, why should I follow him?” Fully embracing the Incarnation means that we actually let it transform us – not just in some brief moment of salvation but in the entirety of our lives. A flesh and blood incarnate Jesus calls us to follow him in tangible flesh and blood ways. Plastic figures and cheezy slogans are insubstantial next to this incarnate God. This transformation makes us the hands and feet of Jesus in such a way that we can no longer ask why we should bother caring but instead accept that this is the only possible way we can live as true Christ followers. Incarnation isn’t a cheap decoration that adorns the veneer of our lives, it’s earthy and messy and complex and demanding. The incarnate Jesus grabs hold of our lives and wakes us up from our complacency.

Some days I honestly would prefer the mass-produced piece-of-plastic-crap Jesus I can idolize or ignore at whim while believing myself to be a “good Christian.” I don’t want to come face-to-face with the flesh and blood Jesus who demands I serve him in real flesh and blood ways. I fight it. I make excuses. I’m a miserable follower. But having woken up enough to start to see the Incarnate Jesus, I can’t go back to sleep.

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Accepting

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Second Sunday of Advent 2009

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.”

The wait for the Messiah was long. Like a couple struggling with infertility, hoping each month would bring the news that the dream they so desperately desired had finally arrived, the people of Israel had waited for a Messiah to come and change their lives. There were false hopes, but those briefly shining stars burnt themselves out quickly playing the world’s games of violence and power grabs. And so the people waited.

And then when God was ready to send a Messiah that would challenge all expectations, he came to a young girl and asked her to carry his child. And she accepted the task – “May it be to me as you have said.”

The Carmelite theme for this second week of Advent is that of Accepting. Mary had to accept that all of her expectations of the savior coming as a king had to be left behind. She had to accept that she could be facing the wrath of her family and fiancé and the ridicule of the town. She had to accept that she had a vital role to play in the saving of her people. In this upside-down world, a poor young girl is chosen to take the first step forward. The unexpected and inappropriate choice, she pushes that aside and accepts anyway.

So often we want the magic-wand fix. The people wanted God to send a powerful warrior king who would rescue Israel while punishing their oppressors. They had a hard time then accepting a messenger who identified with the oppressed because he was one of them. He wasn’t going to abracadabra their troubles away. No, he expected them to follow his path and do the dirty work of ending that oppression themselves. Instead of longing each day to be rescued out of their situation, they were to embrace it fully enough to change it. The message of this unexpected messiah was similar to that the prophet Jeremiah sent to the exiles living in Babylon –

This is what the LORD Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper.” Jeremiah 29:4-7

Be present enough to make a difference – that’s what accepting is all about. Mary chose to accept her task and live into the beautiful mess it would create. The followers of Jesus had to accept that walking alongside and even loving their oppressors was the only way forward. We have to accept the command to settle down in exile in order to ever even begin to change the world.

It’s all about learning to accept.  Accepting the requests that destroy our lives in the best possible ways. Accepting that what we may have been waiting for is not what we really wanted after all. Accepting that our messed-up selves are the ones God is using to reach the world. Accepting God in spite of ourselves.

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Contemplating Feminine Incarnation

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nativity girl2nativity girl2At church this past Sunday we were encouraged to find ways to see the world differently this week. Change our routine and change our perspective to help us get out of the rut of going through life without actually seeing the world. To that end we were asked to draw a slip of paper out of a basket on which was written some sort of paradigm destabilizer. These were just suggestion to help us shake things up a bit – and force us to just do life a little differently. These included everything from “take a new route to work” to “put your fork down between bites.” The one I drew was “imagine that Jesus had been born a girl.” I was amused at first that I had randomly chosen that particular option since I doubted that task would destabilize my perspective as much as it might someone else’s. But the idea has stuck with me over the last few days as I keep asking, “well, what if?”

The first thought that came to mind was, “would Jesus have even of been born if he had been a girl?” In a culture that valued sons, I wonder what Joseph’s response would have been if the angel hadn’t told him “She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.” The birth of sons was celebrated. But if Joseph had known the child in Mary’s womb was a girl would he have gone ahead and divorced her quietly condemning her and the child to a life of abject poverty and ridicule? Or would he have exposed her as an adulterer to have her stoned? Throughout history we have seen women valued solely for their ability to bear male heirs. Henry VIII chopped the heads off a couple of wives for only bearing him daughters. Even today one hears of women apologizing in the delivery room for the baby not being a boy. So I have to wonder if even a divine announcement would have been enough to save the life of an illegitimate girl.

But if she had been born, I wonder what the response would have been. Would the shepherds have scoffed at a baby girl in swaddling clothes and grumbled at having to leave their flocks in the night for that? Would the magi have questioned the stars, or understood the mystery at play? Would Herod have felt threatened by a girl and have ordered the slaughter of the innocents? And would her parents, some years later, marry her off at age 12 to be perpetually pregnant and too busy save the world? Or would they have remembered their angelic visitation and the prophetic destiny spoken about this child?

But let’s just assume that this girl reached a point where she could chose to begin her ministry. Would the truth of her words and the divinity within her be enough to attract followers despite her gender? In other words would something as minor as gender be enough for people to reject God’s invitation to “come follow me”? Would her mother, who prophetically sung the Magnificat, have hushed her up and told her “girls don’t discuss theology?” If she sat on the mountainside and spoke the Beatitudes to the crowds would her words be affirmed as a beautiful new way forward or dismissed as the rantings of a crazy woman who was probably pmsing? Would men have seen an independent woman as vulnerable and used that as an excuse to rape her? To avoid that would she have had to (like Joan of Arc) chop off her hair and dress in men’s clothing – in essence deny that she is a women in order to be respected as a person? Would the authorities have even allowed her three years to spread her message, or would silencing a woman for subversion and heresy have happened much sooner?

On one hand these questions might just seem to affirm why Jesus had to be born male. But making that assumption from either an essentialist or cultural viewpoint simply helps one avoid examining our own perspectives towards women. Even as I reflected on the particular struggles Jesus would have faced if he had been born a girl, I couldn’t help but also think about the positive outcomes it would have engendered. If the person we commit our lives to follow and who sacrificed herself on our behalf was a woman I can’t help but think that would have significantly impacted how we have perceived and treated women for the last 2000 years. If the founder of the church was a woman, then perhaps a patriarchy wouldn’t have developed that effectively shut out and silenced the spiritual voice of women. If the body of a woman savior was treasured as sacrament, then perhaps the bodies of women would not have been so degraded, abused, and despised over the years. If for 2000 years women hadn’t lived in oppression, silence, and fear I wonder how much our collective input would have changed history. Would we have allowed the posturing and pissing contests of men to nearly destroy the world in wars? Would we have allowed nature to be oppressed and raped instead of cultivated and cared for? And would the Kingdom of God be that much more vibrant and alive today if during that time it had been impossible to forget the feminine side of God or to muzzle the spiritual insight of half the church?

These are all hypothetical questions of course. But just the asking can be the first step in destabilizing paradigms. The historical truth of Jesus being born a girl matters less than how asking the question can move us towards living like it was.

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Waiting

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First Sunday of Advent 2009

I love the traditional Carmelite themes for each week of Advent – waiting, accepting, journeying, and birthing.  For a season that is all about the anticipation of a birth, using a framework that is rooted in the experience of childbearing connects it to a side of the divine that is often neglected.  Feminine metaphors are well suited, in my opinion, to tell the story of a birth.

Women who’ve given birth know the mess and horrific pain that accompany the joy of welcoming new life into this world.  And the waiting for a birth is no less conflicted.  Nine months is a long time.  Between the bouts of morning sickness, the swollen ankles, and the indigestion there are the long discussions about names and getting the nursery just right.  Alongside the vivid nightmares and panic attacks that you are just not ready to be a mom, there are the daydreams about what it will be like to hold your baby.  Those few seconds in the ultrasound room with the closed-lipped technician do little to assuage your made-up fears or the gut-level desire to just have the baby out already.  Even before you are sick of wearing the same two pregnancy shirts over and over again, you wish that your belly had a little zipper that would allow you just one peak at the little one inside (or at least a short reprieve from having your bladder used as a trampoline).  Waiting for something beautiful to be born – for joy to fully enter your life – is hard.  The child is already there, the joy is present, but you still long for its arrival.

And so mothers learn to wait.

Waiting for the word to become flesh – for the advent of the Messiah was no less difficult.  The dream was in the making, the prophets had cast the vision of hope, but like a pixelated ultrasound image, it left the people wanting.  They knew one would come who would turn the world upside-down, who would hear the cries of the oppressed and bring justice to the land.  Isaiah had foretold of this coming time yet to be born –

On this mountain the LORD Almighty will prepare
a feast of rich food for all peoples,
a banquet of aged wine—
the best of meats and the finest of wines.

On this mountain he will destroy
the shroud that enfolds all peoples,
the sheet that covers all nations;

he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign LORD will wipe away the tears
from all faces;
he will remove his people’s disgrace
from all the earth.
The LORD has spoken.

…

Trust in the LORD forever,
for the LORD, the LORD, is the Rock eternal.

He humbles those who dwell on high,
he lays the lofty city low;
he levels it to the ground
and casts it down to the dust.

Feet trample it down—
the feet of the oppressed,
the footsteps of the poor.

–          Isaiah 25: 6-8 & 26: 4-6

They were waiting for the world to change, for a new era to finally be born.  Like a mother longing to just hold that baby growing in her womb, they wanted the promise they had held on to for so long to finally come to fruition.  A few even realized that this gestation of a dream would reach it’s fulfillment in an actual birth.  And so we see prophetess Anna in the Temple approaching this incarnate deity exclaiming words of thanksgiving and giving encouragement to those there who had been longing for the redemption of Israel.  This child who Mary had waited a long nine months to finally suckle at her breast, was living proof that the dream was not in vain – that the wait was worth it.  The world that the prophets had imagined was finally being born where tears would be wiped away and all would feast on aged wine.

But births are never easy.  And upside-down kingdoms have a quirky way of being upside-down.  As joy arrived and dwelt among us, we discovered that there is meaning in the waiting.  The hope and joy is perpetually gestating and being born in light of the way this one little baby shattered every preconception we ever had about the dream we long for.

And so we wait. And anticipate. And live. And follow. And serve.

The child is here, the joy is present, and still we wait for the birth.  The waiting changes us and changes the world.

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This has happened before and will happen again…

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My apologies for the title, I have Battlestar Galactica on the brain these days. But the phrase really summed up something I wanted to write about.

The Out of Ur blog recently posted a video of N.T. Wright going off on the dangers of social media. He warms that blogging and the like will stand in the way of real communication with others and he calls the popularity of social media “cultural masturbation.” Now it’s nothing new to hear some voice or other going off on modern technology, putting their own particular “it’s the end of the world as we know it” spin on the matter. And on many issues I truly love and respect N.T. Wright, so I was disappointed to hear someone so knowledgeable about history and faith jump on the “caution people about the perceived dangers of the internet” bandwagon. And admitting the irony that his video was posted on a blog to be discussed on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, let me just rant for a moment why I am tired of this discussion.

Let’s just get it out of the way. The warning that Wright and others give is that social media takes people away from actual face-to-face interaction. That if we spend too much time blogging and tweeting we will reduce our time spent with huggable (Wright’s term) people. The problem is – that just isn’t true. A recent Pew Study busted that myth. It reported that, yes, about 6% of the population are isolated and asocial, but that is a number that has stayed steady since 1985 – before the widespread advent of the internet. The study also found that people who spend time on the internet are actually far more likely to go out and be with real live people than those that don’t use the internet. The point – social media actually builds community, even of the huggable people sort. Not only that, but that community is actually more diverse than those that don’t use social media.

Now I admit, there is the temptation online to not present one’s true self to the world. I think using the internet for role-playing and gaming is one thing (come on, you can freaking FLY in Second Life!), but aside from people who are already social deviants I see most people being themselves online. For example, I recently decided to alter my blogroll to a list of people’s names. Aside from group blogs and the occasional anonymous blog, most people are known these days by their true identity and not just their blog name. That wasn’t the case when I first started blogging or interacting online. Back then, most people hid behind cute avatars and handles. Most of the blogs I read, especially those by women, were anonymous, but over the years people have moved towards being themselves by using their real name. Same thing with email addresses. It used to be that everyone had some personal descriptor/ alter-ego as their email – like JesusGirl98 or SurfrBoy123. And yes, my first email address was [email protected] (ah, the musical obsessed highschool girl demographic). I still cringe a bit when I sign into a site I’ve been on for a long time (like The Ooze) and have my user name be some variation of MaraJade. Back then, I assumed that the internet wasn’t real community and that I could hide behind my username, but I’ve come to realize that I have to be true to myself. And that involves using my real name and only writing the things I am not afraid to own up to.

So as I present my true self to the world and see others doing the same, I get more and more annoyed with those that accuse online communication of not being real communication. I’m sorry, but how the hell is it not real? Communication of this sort has existed for ages, blogs and Facebook and Twitter are just its newest forms. Back in college we had message board and blog posts – only they were of the paper and pen variety. Someone would write out a few paragraphs or pose a question and tape that paper to a wall in the student center or even in a bathroom stall. We would add our replies with pens. Same thing in grade school. We would fill notebooks with Facebook-esqe questions like “What are your favorite bands?” or” Where do you want to live when you grow up?” and pass them around class getting everyone’s responses. And go back a few hundred years. You have Martin Luther posting his 95 Theses to the Wittenberg Door. You have pamphlets being printed to disseminate ideas, and counter-pamphlets appearing in return. Sure, it took longer, but its the same idea as blog posts. Or the way letters to the editor used to functions as a forum for discussion. Or even the popularity of pen-pals one would never meet. Communication of this sort has all happened before, so why is it that this time it isn’t real?

Social media doesn’t destroy or hinder community, it builds it. As a fairly extreme introvert, I had far fewer friends before I started connecting through the internet. Now because of online connections and discussions, I am spending much more time with flesh and blood huggable people. Like any community or form of communication, the online world has its flaws – no one is disputing that. But I am tired of being told to fear something for dubious reasons. So Wright can call this age-old form of communication cultural masturbation if he wants, I’ll just send him a virtual pint on Facebook and have fun discussing his ideas with my friends – both on and off line. Because that’s real community.

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Go and Do Likewise

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So the November edition of Next-Wave Ezine is out and I have an article in it called Go and Do Likewise. It’s based on a meditative exercise we did in church recently on Luke 4:40-44 and is my somewhat snarky realization of how we let our vision of Jesus get in the way of Jesus. I originally titled it, “Go and do likewise or else get the hell out of my way,” but for some odd reason that was changed. So if you’re interested in a ranty re-interpretation of scripture in which I make Jesus cuss (among other things), check out the article.

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