Posts Tagged ‘faith’

The Power of Symbols

Saturday, November 2nd, 2013

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dancing_saintsHappy All Saints Day!

I  love the “dancing saints” at St. Gregory of Nissa Church in San Francisco.  Completed in 2009, this wonderful 3,000 square foot painting depicts a staggering variety of traditional and surprising saints depicted in a style that recalls ancient iconography and yet all of them are dancing.  The artist,  Mark Dukes, collaborated with the congregation to select and choose the individuals in the painting so that “as the congregation dances around the altar, the saints dance above, proclaiming a sweeping, universal vision of God shining through human life.”

Placing icons of saints in a church is hardly new, although St. Gregory’s has definitely turned this old tradition into a vibrant new expression of 21st century postmodern faith.  This painting also makes the unique vision of this congregation visible and clear.  Gazing upon the unusual juxtapositions of Biblical figures with 20th century “saints” such as Harvey Milk, Anne Frank, and Malcolm X (dancing with Queen Elizabeth I) instantly conveys a vision of inclusion that makes the visitor to the church know this church is not your average church.

Yesterday was Reformation Day and it was a delight to think a bit about our spiritual ancestors from the reformed tradition including Martin Luther, Jean Calvin, and Huldrych Zwingli. The collective reforms they wrought on a corrupt medieval church were breathtaking and continue to inform the practice of many, many people all over the world, whether they participate in church or not.

The influence of Zwingli, who decried all paintings, statuary, and even pipe organs in churches, lives on in the sparse, image-free architecture of many American churches.  We may have brought musical instruments back (even thought there is a tendency to hide organ pipes) and learned to enjoy art again, as long as its’ relatively abstract, but “symbols” in the sanctuary are generally limited to baptismal font, communion table, and pulpit.  No dancing saints for Zwingli!

doctoraldragIn many churches that inherited the reformed tradition, the practice of pastors wearing medieval academic regalia including “Calvin” tabs continues.  When I was a child, that black academic gown, hood, and the “tabs” that my childhood pastor wore stood out – like the dancing icons at St. Gregory’s – from what other pastors in our small town wore during worship.  It proclaimed a commitment to an educated clergy and to a literate laity. And it was accurate: our pastors were highly-educated and the members of the church held many academic and professional degrees.

Most of the churches in my small town in Texas were conservative and evangelical and their ministers did not attend seminary and often only had a high school diploma and a couple of years at Bible college.  For those churches, a pastor (who was always a man) wore a suit and tie and never, ever, never wore an alb-style robe like the Catholic priest (who was Hispanic and the mass was conducted in Spanish) nor did they ever wear the black Geneva gown worn by my Presbyterian minister.

These evangelical pastors’ wardrobe symbolized their commitment to the “priesthood of believers” and their heartfelt desire to not “lord it over the people”.  It also said something about their often hostile views of higher education.

They thought our pastor’s robe was offensive and it didn’t help that my pastor’s Geneva gown also made him look like a judge since the same garb is worn by the judiciary. And in the 1970’s, the great refrain from Laugh-In of “here comes da judge”, was certainly a running joke within my Presbyterian youth group every time our pastor appeared in his robe.

Flash forward to 2013, however, and liturgical drag has become as diverse as our churches.  In many progressive congregations that I have served, the minister might wear an alb that recalls the medieval garb for baptism with a stole and perhaps even a cincture that might be a salute to contemplative monasticism.  The alb is also thought to more closely resemble the first century clothing worn by Jesus and the disciples.

This brave new woFemale+Priestrld of liturgical “drag” also raises certain subtle issues related to gender.  It is harder for clergywomen to figure out what to wear when they preach if robes are not an option.  In a perfect world, it wouldn’t matter, but in the real world these things do matter.

This is a constant conversation amongst clergywomen who have gotten into trouble in a particular church because a skirt was too short, a neckline too low, jewelry too flashy, or in the case of one friend, her breasts were too visible because a too narrow stole got tucked beneath her arms thereby emphasizing her breasts.  On the hilarious, but really very serious website, revgalblogpals,  you can purchase a t-shirt that asks, “does this pulpit make my butt look big?”

Dressing like those in the pews these days, especially in California, might lead to shorts, t-shirts, and flip-flops and I wonder whether a preacher would be taken seriously in such casual attire.  And I’m absolutely sure that a dressed down man would be more acceptable in the pulpit than a dressed down woman – especially in shorts.

The Geneva gown still makes an appearance in progressive circles, but is usually reserved for Lent and Holy Week (and Reformation Day?) to provide a more somber look.  Some ministers have created liturgical outfits with many multicultural references from their justice commitments.  Cotton shirts from Hawaii, Mexico, the Philippines or dashikis from West Africa are common.  Some clergy friends wear kimonos or saris, depending on their commitments, personal taste and personal budget for special clothing.

Amongst “emerging” christians  – many of whom have left church buildings behind and are now leading worship services in bars and coffeehouses – tattoos, piercings, and leather jackets are common.  Check out progressive, emerging church pastor Jay Bakker’s website  to see this sort of liturgical look. (yes, he is the son of televangelists Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker)

In churches committed to diversity, it seems to me that a wide-variety of clerical garb and liturgical garments could be enjoyed as a reflection of the many wells that congregants draw from for their faith.  The monastic alb tends to appeal to those who value contemplative practice.  A Geneva gown certainly recalls the commitment to an educated clergy when it is worn in worship.  Creative and multi-cultural stoles and robes testify to our globally-connected commitments to social justice.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERAFor myself, I like to wear robes (I own a white alb, an indigo cassock, and a Geneva doctoral gown that I bought when I got my D.Min.) and a beautiful collection of stoles (many made by a professional quilter in Marin County) because they make my wardrobe choices simpler.

These garments can also add beauty to worship in much the same way that banners and beautiful flower arrangements make the church seem like a special place and not just another space for getting together in community.  Wearing liturgical drag is also a bit like wearing a costume in the theater, it helps me to be “in character” and to draw my frail human self up to the task of preaching and leading worship.

It is also true that when I wear liturgical vestments, and I am also open about my identity as a lesbian, I am claiming important symbolic ground in the culture wars over the ordination of lgbt folks (and women, for that matter)  So as a woman and as an out lesbian, the wearing of liturgical drag is a positive symbol of great change in some churches and a symbol of resistance in a culture that still does not always affirm this complex identity.

Symbols matter in a church.  Symbols provide subtle – and sometimes not so subtle – statements about the identity, theology, and practice of a local church.  But symbols also have to keep pace with the times and when it comes to liturgical garments, the commitments and identity of the one wearing the clothes also matters along with the identity of the community that minister is called to serve.

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Just-Us Church

Friday, October 18th, 2013

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emptychurchOne of the most telling differences among individual American churches lies in their approach to the world beyond their doors. In my mind there are two major camps:  the “just-us” churches and the “justice” churches.

For some congregations, the “just-us” sort,  interactions with the wider community are strictly limited to their evangelism efforts.  In such churches, members are encouraged to invite their friends, acquaintances, co-workers, dry cleaner, dog groomer, or whoever to come to their worship services.  The goal of these invitations is to “win souls for Christ”.  The invitation to participation in such communities assumes that the visitor will (hopefully!) become “one of us” and will adopt the primary religious beliefs of that congregation.

Traditionally, these “evangelical” churches limited their outreach to “soul winning” and they stayed away from anything political AND they did not engage in ministries in the community separate from that goal such as food pantries or other programs to address poverty.  In such churches, there are ministries of care for “members” such as taking casseroles to a grieving family or other such kindnesses, but those ministries to those in need stay “inside the house” and do not usually venture forth to provide food, shelter, clothing, or other support to strangers beyond their doors.

Meanwhile, whole other swaths of Christian churches have always been engaged with the wider community without any emphasis on spreading their beliefs or even inviting folks to attend their church services.  For these, “justice”or “mission-oriented” churches; hosting a food pantry, homeless shelter, and/or providing various other social services is a highly-desired activity.

All of these sorts of congregations, through their denominational connections, sponsor “missionaries” throughout the world.  But these mission workers can be similarly divided – like their parent churches – into those who are going to other countries for the purpose of “soul-winning” or “service”.

Having been a Presbyterian or member of the United Church of Christ all of my life, I have always been part of “justice-oriented” congregations that engaged in the wider community to serve the hungry, the poor, and those who are oppressed.  My spiritual ancestors have also engaged in struggles for justice at home and abroad for hundreds of years moving beyond attention to those in need to becoming advocates in the public sphere.  We’ve worked to abolish slavery, end apartheid, and now we are on the cutting edge of movements to address climate change, economic inequality, and the growing prison-industrial complex, to name a few.

In my experience, many people are really confused by these very different ways of “being church”.  And for those of us who do not engage in any “soul winning” sort of evangelistic outreach, we often bristle when there is any suggestion of doing “outreach” that does not have “justice” or social service at its’ core.  We are delighted to work in the food pantry, but are allergic to speaking of our faith to others.

The irony is that we are prone to become just as isolated from the wider community as those “just-us” churches that only focus on “soul-winning” when we fail to link our love for our faith community AND our faiths and beliefs to our service in the wider community.  This isn’t easy for us progressive religious types.  We really are opposed to anything that looks like evangelism.

And yet, we love our faith communities.  We truly value being part of a church family.  We are dedicated to our spiritual growth and to sharing that journey “inside the house” with our sisters and brothers.  Part of our problem is that many of us have a hard time describing our faith to others.  We don’t really have the words or courage to share what we believe (or don’t believe) with ease.  This is especially hard for a community like Montclair where wide theological difference is the norm.

So . . . when the opportunity arises, what say you?  What words shall we borrow to describe our common life together?  How do we invite others to join us in our “justice” church so that we don’t become a “just-us” church?

Starting on Sunday November 3rd, we will begin to explore what it means to be church in these first years of the 21st century.  What’s new?  What’s old?  What still works? What needs some attentive change?  This would be a swell time to attend Celebration regularly and . . . you might even invite your friends too.

 

 

 

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Silence Still Equals Death

Friday, October 11th, 2013

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Logo_ncod_lgIn honor of National Coming Out Day (NCOD), here’s a portion of a chapter from my doctoral thesis, Bringing the Refugees Home: Faith Formation for the Dechurched.  This chapter chronicles some of my own history with HIV/AIDS and my participation in creating the very first National Coming Out Day back in 1988. 

For my friends who do not identify as LGBTQQI or as any sort of sexual minority, “coming out” as whoever you are wherever you are is a gift.  Silence is deadly. And if there is anything to be learned from those of us who have had to come out as lesbian, gay, liberal, christian, atheist, presbyterian or whatever seems to be unpopular amongt your friends and colleagues, I encourage you to, as we wrote in that first NCOD brochure to “take your next step” towards being fully who you are, everywhere you go.

Silence Still Equals Death

Back in 1987, posters, buttons, and t-shirts featuring a pink triangle on a black background with the words “Silence Equals Death” began appearing in “gay ghettos”[1] throughout the U.S.  Soon this became the slogan and rallying cry for ACT-UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power) a direct-action political group that staged massive demonstrations, marches, rallies, and “die-ins”[2] to call attention to the plague of HIV/AIDS.  As the disease ravaged the gay community, the silence of the Reagan Administration was appalling.  Reagan never uttered the word publicly until 1987, even though the disease had first been identified in 1981. [3] By the time he finally said the word “AIDS” in public, almost 20,000 Americans were dead, hundreds of thousands were infected, and a global pandemic was underway.[4]

While serving as a community-based chaplain serving women and families living with HIV/AIDS in the late 90’s, I attended the first AIDS and Religion in America Conference held at the Carter Center in Atlanta in 1998[5], I sat in dumfounded grief as a researcher from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) showed a series of slides documenting infection rates in the 80’s in the U.S., Australia and Switzerland.  In Australia and Switzerland, aggressive education campaigns, easy access to condoms, and clean needles kept the epidemic in check and caused new infections to almost flat line.  These countries recognized HIV as a public health emergency and reacted accordingly.

But in the U.S., where people with AIDS were stigmatized and there was no public health response from the federal government, infection rates have continued to rise and the virus has moved into more communities.  As I looked at the presentation, I realized that almost everyone woman I had ever worked with had been infected in large part due to the failure of the Reagan administration to respond.  Ironically, this was the first conference where folks from more conservative religious organizations such as the Salvation Army and the Southern Baptist Convention had ever shown up.  There is so much HIV-infected blood on the hands of Reagan and all his friends in the religious right.

Most activists surmised that Reagan’s silence was only broken when it was made public that his longtime friend, the actor Rock Hudson had died from AIDS.  It is harder to stereotype and ignore someone, or a whole group of people, when you discover that one of “them” is a member of your family or circle of friends.  Pollsters often report that support for gay rights is directly correlated to knowing a gay or lesbian person.[6]

To those of us who were valiantly trying to stem the tide of new infections and to ease the isolation and suffering of the dying, it was obvious that silence about the virus was deadly.  Routes of infection needed to be discussed with candor.  Everyone needed to have accurate information to assess his or her own risk for contracting the virus.  Those already infected needed compassion, not derision from their families, friends, and the wider community.

Reagan’s silence was deadly too because his friends in the religious right were anything but silent.  Pat Buchanan, Reagan’s communication director, pronounced that AIDS is “nature’s revenge on gay men” while the Rev. Jerry Falwell went a step further and claimed that “AIDS is the wrath of God upon homosexuals.” [7] Each one of these public falsehoods and blame-filled statements led to complacency among heterosexuals at-risk and hideous shame for gay men that drove many deeper into the closet or “on the downlow”.[8]

The “outing” of Rock Hudson also made it obvious that closets were deadly too. And so, in 1988, National Gay Rights Advocates (NGRA) launched the first National Coming Out Day.  As a desktop publisher and feminist activist in Los Angeles, I was hired by Jean O’Leary, executive director of the NGRA to help design and produce materials for the campaign.  The artist Keith Haring had designed a beautiful cartoon of a gender-ambiguous character stepping out of a closet and we designed the “Take Your Next Step” campaign to flesh out the cartoon.  In those days, the process of coming out was still fraught with difficulty that could lead to the loss of a job, housing, family, and of course, a church or other religious community.  It was a fearful and dreadful time to come out, but with AIDS outing and killing people right and left, it was necessary.

In the brochure, we suggested lots of “steps” for coming out such as “look in the mirror and admit that you are gay or lesbian” or “tell your best friend that you’re gay”.  I have racked my brain and looked for those old brochures without success to see if we even suggested “coming out to your pastor or church”.  I don’t think we did.  It was just too radical a step to imagine in 1988.  Instead we suggested things like “tell the check-out lady at the grocery store that you’re a lesbian”.  Jean O’Leary summed it up well: “Our invisibility is the essence of our oppression. And until we eliminate that invisibility, people are going to be able to perpetuate the lies and myths about gay people.” [9]  Right-wing preachers were erasing the humanity of lgbt people because too many of us were not telling our stories for ourselves.

Silence still equals death for those who are oppressed and suffering.   Even if a deadly virus is not involved, invisibility and silence are soul killers.  The founder of City of Refuge, San Francisco (now City of Refuge, Oakland) Bishop Yvette A. Flunder writes,

I have found that it is of vital importance that people who have been silent and silenced far too long be given an opportunity to give voice to their struggle.  Secrets kill and silence often equals death.  People often speak forth the answers to their own issues as they talk it out in a supportive environment.  It also has a purgative effect on the teller of the story.  Shadows are not longer threatening when the light shines on them; when the secret is exposed, the demon is uncovered and rendered powerless.[10]

From the pulpit, Flunder says it more like this: “first you discover you are welcome.  Really welcome.  Then you tell your story – you tell everything you have ever done.  And then they love you anyway. That is how you get free!” [11]

[1] Places where a high concentration of lgbt choose to live and/or congregate such as these three that I know best: West Hollywood in Los Angeles; the Castro in San Francisco; Greenwich Village in New York and Montrose in Houston. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=gay%20ghetto (accessed December 6, 2011)

[2] All over America we laid down in front of government buildings and various other venues and traced around our bodies with red chalk or water-based red paint leaving our “outlines” to remind people of the massive death toll due to HIV/AIDS.

[3] Allen White “Reagan’s AIDS Legacy/Silence Equals Death”, sfgate.com, June 08, 2004, accessed November 28, 2011.

[4] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001896.htm (accessed November 28, 2011)

[5] http://www.wfn.org/1998/11/msg00216.html (accessed November 29, 2011)

[6] http://www.gallup.com/poll/118931/knowing-someone-gay-lesbian-affects-views-gay-issues.aspx (accessed November 28, 2011)

[7] Allen White, sfgate.com

[8] Keith Boykin.

[9] http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jean_oleary.html#ixzz1f1kujtwl (accessed November 29, 2011)

[10] Yvette A. Flunder. Where the Edge Gathers: Building a Community of Radical Inclusion.  Cleveland:  The Pilgrim Press, 2005, pg. 39.

[11] Flunderism.

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Preaching What You Practice

Saturday, September 21st, 2013

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handsonpianoIf  you have read any of the posts on my personal blog, you will at once notice that I have written a number of posts on practice.

Spiritual practice, musical practice, ethical practice, best practice:  practice, practice, practice!  It certainly seems obvious that a longtime musician is committed to practice, but there is a deeper historical and theological component to my fascination with practice.

As a child growing up in a small Presbyterian church in the Texas panhandle, and then in big Presbyterian churches in Midland and Houston, I don’t ever remember hearing the term spiritual practice.  Through all those years, I was certainly practicing music all the time, and I knew that if you wanted to play Beethoven and Brahms you were going to have to practice, but I didn’t have a clue as to how to “practice” my faith.  I think, like most people, that faith as I learned it, was a set of belief systems that helped you to get closer to God and then live your life well. If you got your beliefs in order, then a good and happy life would follow. The difference was subtle, but important as we did many of the practices I now value.  We prayed, we sang, we served, but somehow I learned that practice followed belief and I failed to learn that good spiritual practice could actually lead to belief.

This “faith before practice” spiritual life fell apart when so many friends got sick and then died from HIV/AIDS.  I couldn’t find a belief system that explained this repeating horror.  My experience of those years made me question everything.  Does God exist?  And if so, and if God is good and if God is love, than why are my friends dying so horribly?  And why would a loving and gracious God tolerate having followers who simply heaped invective upon invective upon those of us who were suffering?  And worse yet, if God is not good and God is not love, but is indeed the vengeful, wrath-filled villian who has inflicted HIV/AIDS upon all these beautiful young people all over the world, well then, I don’t know what to believe at all.

Meanwhile, those of us who were infected and affected by HIV/AIDS loved one another through the pain.  We encouraged each other to come out as gay or lesbian.  We built an entire infrastructure of care outside of the normal health and social services circles.  We developed practices for caregiving, treatment, safer sex, and for community.  We developed practices for hope.  We did what we could do and developed ethical practices on the fly.  We developed practices for political engagement that drew upon the practices of non-violence, but added in dimensions of personal storytelling that drew from the “personal is political” commitments of the second wave of feminism.

We discovered over and over that practice works when faith fails. 

You don’t have to believe in God to practice the love of God.

And if you practice the love of God, pretty soon you will begin to believe in God again.

When I came back into the church, (I was unable to bear the silence and homophobia of the “Church” during the worst of the “dying years”) weary with grief and in desperate need of peace, consolation, and rest in the midst of so much practice, I was not able to simply resume a spiritual life based upon belief alone.  I needed spiritual/faith practices that would sustain me.  I needed spiritual practices that would lead me closer to God.  For throughout all my struggles with faith and death, I could not shake the presence of God.  In fact, my trust in the existence of God had been greatly strengthened by the experience of so much dying. I felt a deep kinship with the suffering of Jesus and the power of transcendent love to heal.  The gentle Jesus “meek and mild” of my early childhood faded away when I began to identify with those outcasts and lepers whom Jesus loved so fiercely.  For me, practice without belief finally led me home to faith that cannot be separated from practice.

Now what I find is that lots of folks are looking to preach their practice.  This is a counter-cultural move to fundamentalist faiths that continue to insist that right belief is more important than right practice.  An emphasis on spiritual practice is also helpful in allowing folks with deeply divergent theological and philosophical points of view to work well together in community.  Finding a set of common practices for service is essential in interfaith efforts and ecumenical cooperation.

What are your own spiritual practices?  Do they lead you to greater faith?  Do you find peace and comfort as a result of your spiritual practice?  If there are “holes” in your faith, could you imagine practices that might help you?

 

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