Montclair Presbyterian Church

Talitha is taking two weeks’ vacation and will be back in the office on 8/30.

We are back! With HUGE thanks to adult advisors Debbie Fallehy and Niki Hicks, the youth group returned safely from their trip to Chicago (and for many of them, a trip to Indiana as well). It was an epic adventure, and we used just about every possible form of transportation. We flew there and took Amtrak home, had lots of public transit adventures on buses and trains while in Chicago, and once, when thunderstorms and floods threatened to close the trains, Rev. Beth Brown rounded up a herd of friendly drivers from her congregation at Lincoln Park Presbyterian and got us all safely to our destination.

Please come to church on Sunday to hear some of the teenage travelers present their thoughts and reflections. Some went to Triennium at Purdue University and found themselves asking big faith questions and re-thinking what it means to be Presbyterian. Some served at food pantries for people with HIV/AIDS or at shelters for homeless teenagers. Some took over a restaurant for a day and made 300+ meals for people in need. Some sang and danced and played Bingo at an care facility for the elderly. Almost all got to play with children in a free summer camp program, and to work in a community garden (some with power tools!). Some re-thought their career goals, some got incredibly inspired, some spent a night fasting and thinking about hunger, and many got emotionally stretched by the experience.

All of us got very wet in massive thunderstorms, got hot and sweaty and exhausted touring around Chicago, enjoyed deep dish pizza, and gaped at the scenery as we wound our way home the long way on Amtrak. All of us got closer to God and to one another. And all of us are grateful to you for your extravagant support! Through your participation in our fundraisers, you matched every dollar the youth and their families contributed.

See you Sunday night for more. 
Blessings,

Talitha

Pastor Talitha is traveling to meet MPC Youth for their Mission Trip in Chicago.  Stay tuned for highlights!

Talitha’s Take: General Assembly

The 222^nd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) met two weeks ago in Portland. I wasn’t able to attend in person (as Ben was), but being a committed polity wonk, I followed in close detail on Twitter, facebook, and livestream video. I understand that many people consider such interest in the nitty-gritty of Presbyterian politics to indicate extremely high nerdiness, but I’ll take that label and wear it proudly.

Overall, I’d say it was a pretty great assembly. The bow ties were snazzy, the leaders were highly competent, the youth delegates were smart, and we had a lot of important “firsts.” Our moderators – that is, the highest elected positions in Presbyteriania – were Co-moderators – or “co-mods” (as they tweet) rather than mod and vice-mod, for the first time, and this is the also the first time both moderators have been female. Co-moderator Denise Anderson, at 37, is the youngest ever to serve as moderator, and our new Stated Clerk, J. Herbert Nelson, is the first Black clerk in our history.

Race and discrimination issues were at the forefront of many assembly sessions, beginning with the completion of the process we took to include the Belhar confession against racism and discrimination (which arose in 1982 South Africa). Looking forward, I am most curious and excited to see what comes of a special overture to “take specific action, not just in word, but in deed, to address and improve the worsening plight of the African American male in five cities as a pilot initiative pointing toward future and further nationwide intervention.” This work will be rolled out in Baltimore MD, Pittsburgh PA, Charlotte NC, Cleveland OH, and my home town, New York NY. It will be mainly funded by the Presbyterian Peacemaking offering, which we collect on World Communion Sunday in October.

There was one major disappointment on the last night of the assembly. You may recall that our church petitioned our Presbytery to overture General Assembly to divest our funds from fossil fuel holdings, leaving only minimum requirements for stockholder engagement, as an act of witness to the needs of our planet as climate change escalates to ever greater levels of urgency. It seemed hopeful, for a while, as the subcommittee voted in favor of divestment. But in the end, the minority report from the committee held sway with the assembly. They created a substitute motion that was much softer in direction, focusing on direct corporate engagement first. This sounds fine and non-controversial on paper, but I am disappointed, knowing that our opportunity to speak boldly about a very time-sensitive issue has passed us by.  Meanwhile, 542 other progressive organizations and foundations have divested from fossil fuels; you can read more about it at http://gofossilfree.org/commitments/

We might not be surprised to find ourselves on the trailing end, rather than the cutting edge, of social engagement. Though the church is called to act boldly when God’s call is clear, often our boldness is tempered by the slow pace of group discernment. There is a lot to do, and the way is slow – but we don’t give up. We can try the same thing again at the next assembly in 2018. In the meantime, we have hard questions. What else can we do to build social and economic pressure for a clean-energy future?

Every Blessing,
Talitha

Dear friends,

How are you doing? It’s a nasty world out there right now. We are coming up on Pride Weekend (at least, Pride as it is celebrated in SF, though other cities celebrate other weekends) and I can’t help but think how different it is from last year. Last year the Supreme Court had just gifted our nation with a historic ruling on marriage equality, and the streets were brimming with unbridled joy. But this year, there will be security checkpoints and metal detectors on the streets of San Francisco, because in the wake of the Orlando shooting nobody can take any chances.

I saw a few articles following up on the Orlando shooter and suggesting that Omar Mateen was a deeply closeted, self-hating gay man who could find no other absolution for his sense of self-loathing than to go down in a massive martyrdom effort. As the story continues to unfold, a man who says he was a former lover of Mateen’s suggests the shooting was more vengeful than homophobic. There are probably more layers of meaning, and we may never know exactly what was going on in his mind. We know that self-hatred usually does not burst outward into murder (and is much more likely to be internalized in suicide), but due to other factors, from his cultural background to his mental health situation, this may have been the unusual road Mateen took.

Let’s not engage in too much speculation… but whether this story is true or false, I do want to comment on the suggested narrative in a theological sense, because it is a powerful one. The story of a person hating themselves so much they would die and kill to get rid of the misery rings true in a sense, and convicts us all. We know how homophobic our society is and how difficult it is for people to even internally accept their sexual orientations, much less to publicly come out. It is even harder for people in conservative religious groups (whether Christian, Muslim, or any other religion), and it tends to also be more difficult for people of color, depending on their community. So, we can accept our complicity in a society that has not yet made fully clear on every level that we have the freedom to love whom we love. We can accept our complicity, and ask for forgiveness even as we work to change our society.

MPC has for many years steered well clear of the language of sin and forgiveness. This is important for people who have been hurt by judgmental religion in the past, and especially those who have been told they are “sinners” because of whom they love. But I think we are missing something if we leave it out altogether. For one, we miss the chance to experience the lavish forgiveness of God, and of our loving community.

But more, we are missing the language of complicity. We all have a share of sin, because we take part in a society that lays waste the land, pollutes the seas, leaves hungry children unfed, allows semi-automatic weapons to be purchased over the counter, and leaves far too many LGBTQ people swamped in self-loathing and shame. We all have a share of sin, because even if we devote our lives to it, we cannot do enough to cure the social illnesses that plague our nation and our world.

The good news is that in Christ Jesus our sin is forgiven.                                                                                                                          And there is work to be done.                                                                                                                                                                       As forgiven, beloved children of God, let us commit to this work with our whole heart and mind and strength.

Every Blessing,

Talitha

Trigger warning – this is a serious post. A smiling blond man has taken over my newsfeed with a sickening frequency, and it’s not Donald Trump this time. Even the presidential election can’t overpower the big news story that all my friends are talking about. The Stanford rapist Brock Turner and his recent sentencing – a light sentence of only 3-6 months in county jail – has everyone up and angry.

Parents everywhere are shocked that Turner’s father would plead for such leniency, appealing to the emotional distress that caused his son to lose his appetite for snacks… while dismissing the suffering of the anonymous victim, who after all “only” suffered “twenty minutes of action”. Anti-racists everywhere are outraged as we compare Turner’s sentence to the sentences of Black folks who received harsher punishments for lighter crimes. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the media uses Turner’s yearbook photo rather than a mugshot (an informal honor that even Black crime victims rarely receive, much less convicted felons who are Black). Feminists are analyzing the technicalities of the definition of “sexual assault” vs. rape, and the injustice that allows a rapist’s future to be valued more than his victim’s. All lives matter? No, some matter more than others. Transgender activists just sit back and point out the ridiculousness that allows states to pass laws about what bathroom they are even allowed to enter (in fear of even the CHANCE that anyone be raped in a bathroom), but when a woman is actually assaulted by a cis-gendered male, her attacker receives the maximum benefit of the doubt. Accusations of Affluenza are flying like mad.

I’m not sure what I can add to this robust discussion, but I will point you in a few directions.

If you haven’t read the victim’s statement, please give it a few minutes to read. She wrote beautifully about the ugliest of subjects. https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-powerful-letter-the-stanford-victim-read-to-her-ra?utm_term=.xa4MGny3v#.gbMb0PBax

If you are distressed about the judge’s lenient sentencing, there are various petitions addressed to his actions.
If you are concerned about any of the several the justice issues I’ve mentioned above, please allow these injustices to add fuel to your fire.

If you want to build a world where boys don’t grow up believing that they have the right to approach any girl for sex, and where they don’t think that the first few “no’s” are just part of the game to get to “yes”, where they know that nobody is “asking for” sex by any combination of their clothing, behavior, or intoxication level, and where they know that consent can only be given by consciously communicating peers, well, welcome to the fight. You might read this great blog on consent: http://rockstardinosaurpirateprincess.com/2015/03/02/consent-not-actually-that-complicated/ which we used on this year’s Youth Group retreat.

And if you are despairing… well, Ecclesiastes – that gloomiest of books of the Bible – between muttering “there is nothing new under the sun” and “everything is vanity” over and over, offers a small gem of (still gloomy) insight. “I have also seen this example of wisdom under the sun, and it seemed important to me. There was a little city with few people in it. A great king came up against it and besieged it, building great siege-works against it. Now there was found a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. So I said, ‘Wisdom is better than might; yet the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heeded’.” (Eccl 9:13-16). If there’s something to learn from an example like this, I think it might be that the world always favors power… but we ought not to. Let’s work together toward a fairer and more equal society, where criminals are judged and victims are not; where wealth, race, gender and social standing don’t affect the outcomes of justice; and where sex is not a tool for assaulting another, but a beautiful gift of God to be enjoyed mutually. We’ve still got a long way to go, so let’s walk together and keep on encouraging one another.

Every Blessing,
Talitha

At John Hadsell’s memorial service, Jim McDonald (the president of my alma mater, San Francisco Theological Seminary) shared a quote from EB White which reminded him of how John lived his life. Here is the quote in its fullness:

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.

If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.

But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world,

and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world.

This makes it hard to plan the day.

Savor or save? I mentioned this again later that day, over dinner with the youth from our Faith Exploration Program. One participant had written in her statement of faith that following Jesus would lead her to a fuller and more enjoyable life, and so we all started talking about enjoyment. I shared the first question from the Westminster Shorter Catechism:

What is the chief end of man?
Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy [God] forever.

Our chief end – our main reason – is enjoyment? Oh, how often we forget. We do-gooder types, always signing up for one more service position or taking on extra work here or there. We forget to allow ourselves to enjoy anything, being too busy worrying about it all. I don’t mean that we ought to do less service, or drop out of the important ministries we do here at the church. I mean to enjoy our work, to revel and take pleasure in it, to feel proud and happy and grateful for the little work we can do. Of course, sometimes this requires a robust sense of humor, when the task itself is odious – plunging toilets, for example – one can still enjoy reflecting on it and joking about it.

Sometimes, all it takes is a new attitude. I’ve been learning recently that hurrying doesn’t work well. It gets me through a task with more adrenaline, but usually doesn’t actually save time, and always kills the enjoyment factor. Instead of the constant mantra “I’m late – gotta hurry” what about saying to myself “God wants me to enjoy this”?

My prayer for you is that as summer comes near, may you have many reasons to remind yourself that God wants you to enjoy life.

Every Blessing,
Talitha

This weekend many of us gathered for a Safe Church training. A friend of Ben’s, Jane Odell, led it and did a wonderful job presenting some quite unpleasant materials. We saw video testimonies of people who had been victims of abuse, as well as testimonies from ex-abusers, who explained how they used the safety and trust of a church to gain access to children whom they abused. We will need to study and design ways to make sure our church is safeguarded against any access like that. Looking at the worst-case scenarios is grim but it can teach us a lot.
But we have a lot to learn and do, and not all of it has to do with worst-case scenarios. Education and awareness are important at every step. For example, we talked about inappropriate boundary-crossing, both on the level of physical boundaries and social/relational boundaries. This could be as simple as an adult tickling or hugging a child who doesn’t want to be tickled or hugged, and as unobtrusive as showering an insecure teen with compliments and flattery. I would like to see our congregation as a place where people know they can’t cross a child’s boundaries, and where children know their boundaries and know they will be respected.

Children and teens are vulnerable first because they don’t fully understand the world, themselves, and others… but they are also vulnerable because they tend to be obedient. They live in a world where it is usually right to do what an adult asks you to do. How are they to understand when someone breaks that trust, and asks them to do something that is not right?

Just to keep this example as everyday and simple as possible, let’s imagine that you watch someone at church hugging a kid who clearly doesn’t want that hug. Imagine their body language is saying “ugh” but they are giving an awkward hug back, because they haven’t learned yet that sometimes it’s OK not to do what an adult asks. Small as it may be, this kind of interaction is echoed again and again in abusive relationships. In a situation like this, it’s totally appropriate for anyone to offer some public or private commentary, whether to the adult: “that looked awkward. Maybe she didn’t want the hug…” or to the child, “that looked awkward. It’s OK if you don’t want to hug someone.”

This tiny conversation will be important in a few big ways. First off, having eyes opened and attuned to small warning signs like this can be a way to ward off any would-be abusers who will see that nobody will turn a blind eye to them. Secondly, the children of our community need to learn that their bodies belong to them, and this secure knowledge will strengthen them to reject and/or report any attempts at abuse.
I hope our congregation can be a place that is truly safe, where children can learn to trust a wider group of people, and know that they are respected. I know this is heavy and difficult material to talk about, but it is our sacred duty to take care of the children entrusted to us, and we can do it together.

Every Blessing,
Talitha

This week in our Faith Exploration Program – a small group of high school students that meets before Youth Group – we focused on how to read the Bible with our brains booted up. I asked the participants to bring two Bible verses with them: one they found to be beautiful, good, true, or helpful, and one they found to be ugly, bad, false, or unhelpful.

One girl brought a verse from Numbers, needing no explanation for why she found it unhelpful – it was a description of what animals must be sacrificed (and how) to atone for the sin of the people. Bloody yuck.

Another girl in the group brought not just an unhelpful verse, but an unhelpful story: the story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, eating of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Her question was: why do people focus on this story so much? How did this moralizing tale of sin and punishment become the foundation that everyone focuses on (from the apostle Paul through medieval artists and on up to today’s popular Christianity)… when for two whole chapters before that, everything was goodness and light, balance and order, and all the beauty that God created? Why did the sin-story overpower the light-story?

Indeed. Why?

Now, to be fair, I’ll say that we at MPC do a relatively good job of de-emphasizing it, skipping lightly over the sin and punishment bits. In fact our Godly Play classroom did not even have the Adam and Eve story until last year when we added it as a second Creation option for the older students. So from the nursery on up through 3^rd grade our MPC children might hear nothing of creation except the brightly colored panels announcing “God created… and it was good” seven times over.  But as they get a little older they hear the other story, and of course they face the Real World, with all of art history, and popular religion around them. They read the Bible for themselves and they find the book of Numbers, with all its blood and guts, and the prophets who plead with them to repent of their wicked ways. They visit other churches – our close or distant cousins in the same Christian family – and we cannot hide any longer from the fact that our religion has handed down to us the dubious gift of a strong emphasis on sin.

In situations like these I am happy that our Bible is not a blueprint, an instruction manual, or a systematic theology. No, our Bible is a collection of stories and writings, and in many ways they disagree with one another. Therefore, we must be free to disagree with them too. We are free to prefer one part over another, and we are free to wrestle angrily with the bits we can’t stand. But we don’t walk away entirely, and hopefully we don’t give up on it. Instead we “hold on to what is good,” and we remember those opening two chapters of Creation that were all light and beauty. And we don’t do it alone. Together we work through these puzzles.

Every Blessing,
Talitha

Yes, back by popular demand! The youth haven’t had a pasta dinner in several years, and we wondered if the event would be missed… the answer is YES. We want to feed you some pasta! The youth haven’t had the chance to don their classy white aprons, bowties and top hats (not to mention the fake mustaches) and do their best impressions of Italian waiters in a very long time. They are excited to serve you with all the panache they can muster up.

But at the same time, they are going to invite you to cut loose a bit. This time, it’s not just going to be a regular pasta dinner… but a pasta dinner with karaoke! We know that many of you have a song or two up your sleeve, and are just waiting for the right time… with a glass of wine in hand if needed, and your most trusted MPC friends watching appreciatively… are you ready to bust out your best songs?

Well, whether you are ready to sing or just to sit back and be charmed by your teenage wait staff, please plan to attend our great pasta dinner fundraiser on May 21^st, 6-8PM. It is unusual for us to have three fundraisers in one year, but this is a very big year and we have a lot of fundraising needs. I’m thrilled to share that we are sending our largest delegation EVER to the Presbyterian Youth Triennium. This huge convention happens every three years, and after years of not sending delegates, in 2013 we made great progress by sending four youth with Katie Morrison. They came back raving about the life-changing experience they had, and they were strengthened in their faith. This year we send ten youth and one adult, and our church alone will make up nearly half of the San Francisco Presbytery delegation. Way to represent! Following Triennium, which is in Indiana, we will have an even larger group go on a mission trip. A whopping sixteen youth and three adults will spend a week working in partnership with community organizations in Chicago. By doing the mission trip so near to Triennium, we reduce our travel costs and our carbon footprint.

We greatly appreciate your generosity in continuing to fund the youth group programs. Not only do we have a larger group than ever before, but we also have more youth who rely on scholarship funds to make these adventures possible. So thank you for changing lives, one plate of pasta at a time.