Dear Pastor-Blogger (Epistolary Wednesday)

On Wednesdays, I'm writing letters.

Dear Pastor-Blogger,
(Or: Dear Person Who Writes and Cares About People),

It’s a risky vocation you possess, thinking you can straddle the fence, one foot in social media-land, engaging in global conversations with people you know and barely know, with another foot in the local church, teaching classes weekly,  preaching sermons, getting into the grit of daily life with people in your congregation. Sometimes you wonder if you’ve confused your call, if these two things you engage in are mutually exclusive. You feel like, in theory, they ought to be compatible. Isn’t it right that a church leader demonstrate what it means to respectfully and lovingly engage in challenging discourse with people who disagree or see the world differently? Yes, absolutely, you conclude. But then Real Life reminds you that not everyone is going to follow that same model. And, of course, you are human. Of course, any unresolved tensions in your own heart can creep out in your satire in ways that are Unhelpful. You never forget that, but you look for it like a guard dog on patrol and sometimes, even then, you'll miss it. But say you do catch it all: there’s no guarantee that you’ll express yourself so that you are interpreted as you intend. Words mean different things to different people. People will get offended. And it will crush you when this happens, when you’re misunderstood as being what you’re not, or when you're disliked for what you are. What will you do?

Sure, you could just give up blogging about anything significant, about anything that matters, like you've done before. Safe territory is kid stuff, kitchen stuff, Chicken-Soup-for-the-Soul stuff. But that’s not who you are. Kitchens and kids and happy thoughts are not the limit of all your observations and questions about the world that you want to offer the world.

So how do we proceed with diplomacy, Dear One? How do you balance this plate of literary irony, social critique, and agape when those food groups can get out-of-proportion so quickly? And you know how your kids are with disproportioned food groups: constipated or behaviorally jacked up, depending on the kind of excess.  

Consider the following for balance.

1. Learn to care more about people than you care about having the freedom to be careless with your words. You are free, Dear. You are absolutely free. But use your freedom wisely. Use it to help and not to hurt, unless the hurt is Good Hurt, the kind that discomfits us into righting wrongs, seeking truth, making space for those who haven’t gotten any, or speaks for those who can’t/don’t/are afraid to.

2. Work out your offenses/bitterness/anger/hurt surrounding an issue before you ever publish a post about such things. Bitterness gets in the way of constructive activism; it keeps us locked into analysis of the wound, stealing precious attention from finding a solution to the injustice. Plus, bitterness just doesn’t look very pretty on anyone, and you’ll lose friends quickly (unless they’re bitter along with you about the same stuff).

3. Problems with Real, Live People in Real, Live Situations close to your life should be sorted out with those people in those situations and not through a public forum like a blog.  This is Step 2 for Keeping Friends and Influencing People.

4. You should be willing and comfortable to perform anything you write for your blog as a TED talk or a poetry reading—but not as a sermon—in a public venue with your congregation in the audience. No, you are not parsing out the meaning of Job or Genesis, but you should be the same person with the same values, expressed appropriately in different contexts.

5. Sometimes, very personal things happen that, once sorted out, also have merit as kindling for larger-scale conversations. Sometimes this is worth writing about, creating a public space for dialogue. Even when it is painful. Even when it makes the right kind of waves (see #1). Choose these conversations wisely.

6. If you’re unsure about the tone, the heart of a piece, if you’re unsure about whether it does any earthly or heavenly good, ask someone you respect to read it. Someone whose critique would mean something. Someone who would challenge your unkindness and sarcasm but know the difference between that and the irony-that-speaks-louder than any straightforward line. When they give their blessing, rest easy.

7. Think about expressing gratitude if/when you’ve made someone's life (like your boss's or your spouse's) more complicated. Appreciate that s/he’s had to answer emails and phone calls about you over the years. Thank her/him for sticking with you. For believing in you. For believing in the work God is doing in you and through you, imperfect as you are.

8. Also, it would be helpful to convey to your readers, in more ways than one, that the kind of blogging and writing you do is an art form, not a sermon, a Bible study, or a Sunday school class. Artists use motifs, craft, structure, irony, and other devices to offer their message, and sometimes that message takes ferreting out. And sometimes it doesn’t--it’s simple and clean and non-wave-forming. But it’s art, and art’s your way of honing in on What Matters.

9. Sometimes, you'll find out that despite following steps 1-8, you'll confuse people. Maybe, come to find out, your perspective was too narrow. If that happens, widen your lens. Apologize if necessary. Be humble. You'll live to tell about it, and so will everyone else.

Notes #20 In Which I Stay Rooted

A few weeks back, I got a headache that grew louder than the voices of the four women who joined me in a women's retreat planning meeting. My eyes were aching and I just felt wiped out as we talked about themes and speakers and women's issues--and I didn’t know why.  I was juicing a lot that week for heaven’s sake. I was eating tons of greens, no sugar, no meat (...except for those two GF brownies I ate after a day of only juicing). But anyway, I was in this meeting feeling like my progesterone levels were taking a nosedive off a cliff into a rocky canyon, trying to keep up with the ideas, the different directions, which I couldn't do. So I wrote them down and thanked the ladies and prayed and said I needed time to process. 

I got in my car and drove to the preschool parking lot where I would pick up Tiny and I just sat, with my head on the steering wheel and I thought I can’t do a women’s retreat. We should scrap it all. This is too much work! And right there was my second clue (headache being the first) that I was Not Okay--because planning stuff is sort of what I live for. And then my head started spinning through the engagements and deadlines and speaking commitments and classes to schedule and I could feel the anxiety mount. But how did I get there? How does one go from walking at a brisk pace to running out of breath with no chance to stop? Because that’s what it felt like. And my body was boycotting, having it’s own little Revolution Against Over-Extension.

Of course, there’s no one but myself to overextend me. Everyone I work with is gracious and we are mutually protective of each other's energies and abilities. But I often feel this urgency, this urgency to get to the next thing, to build and keep building—a new class, a retreat, deeper levels, better curriculum, more supportive structures for particular areas of church life. There are so many things in the distance, so much possibility for the future. And I want to build it all right now. And yet, I can’t get to them until I set down these foundation stones in my hands, in place and in order, one at a time.

The headache worsened that night. My whole body ached. I had trouble explaining it to my husband, to my friend. I’m sick, I think. And I feel stressed and anxious too. But which caused what? Chicken or egg?

In periods of stress and on the days of Revolution Against Over-Extension, I often have to just bear the revolution out. I don’t always know how it got started or what my soul is trying to tell me or what message it is I need to hear. And so I just wait with my head on my pillow and a questioning eyebrow at God—what? What do I need to know?

Last time, after a day of that posture, there were two things that broke through my frenetic internal buzz. One, I played the audio of my YouVersion online Bible app. I love the NIV, read aloud by some William Branaugh sound-alike. So Shakespearean and poignant, he chided me (and I cried):

And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

And…

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven. You have come to God, the Judge of all, to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel.

I know that, if you’re not familiar with everything the writer of Hebrews wrote of up until chapter 12, that this sounds like a bunch of cultish gobbledygook. Spirits of the Righteous Made Perfect. Sprinkled Blood that Speaks a Better Word?

The writer is saying, in my plain Iowa English, that our God isn’t distant or untouchable. That we have access to a joyful, welcoming God and all of heaven supports his welcome of us.  We are welcomed by God the Judge who judges us as “right” simply because of our trust and faith in Jesus, who helps us continue on in our lives of faith.

Why did I cry upon hearing this? Oh the mystery of our own souls--maybe because it was a spirit-touching-heaven moment, a reminder that all the stuff of our lives—the bills to pay and forms to sign and the offspring’s favorite clothes to launder and the class curriculum to write and the marriage to maintain—is not the endgame, is not the reason, is not the why. 

He loves me. He just does. And that is Something.

And then, the second thing that broke through the noise in head:

I read two blog posts from two of my favorite bloggers, women negotiating writing and blogging and speaking and ministry and parenting. One wrote about reassessing her commitments. It was so helpful to know I’m not the only one asking these questions about what is and is not working and what I’m supposed to be doing in a particular season of life.

The other blogger wrote about criticism, a bad review, of her book.  It was a comfort to remember that I will fail--especially in other people's perceptions of my endeavors--and that this is Okay.

No matter how hard we try and no matter our whole-heartedness in trying, we won't please everyone and we won't always succeed. And so, we must stay rooted in What Has Been Revealed and What Is, and grounded in our purposes, our callings, and the intentions of our lives. 

When Mothers "Happen"

I stumbled into this article by Shauna Niequest last night through Rachel Held Evans' blog. Shauna is the daughter of Lynne and Bill Hybels, founders of the mega-church Willow Creek. Shauna writes about her mother Lynne as a role model of healthy and whole womanhood--and about how, when Shauna was a teenager, Lynne began giving herself permission to pursue her passions, passions and gifts that weren't limited just to her role as a mother.

This journey she was on began when I was fourteen. I was just learning what it meant to be a woman. And the woman I was watching most closely was just beginning to reshape her definition, and in turn, mine.

Watching my mother while I was a young teenager gave me a front row seat to a hard, messy, important, beautiful transformation. I watched my mother become herself. I watched her come alive. I watched her discover her gifts. I watched her eyes sparkle when she returned from a meeting or a trip. I listened to her bubbling over with passion about what she was reading or learning.

And as I watched her, I promised myself that I would follow this new example she was leaving for me, to pay attention to my gifts and passions. The life I was seeing in her for the first time was so inspiring to me. I loved it in her, and I wanted it for myself.

I couldn't help but think of my own three daughters as I read these lines, about how, over the last 6 or so years, they've had a front-row view of their mother redefining and embracing who and what she could be. The two oldest have seen me labor through hours of graduate study, reading and writing furiously and excitedly and passionately (sometimes while crying, sometimes while laughing); they've watched me conduct science experiments in the kitchen, excitement bubbling over as foods fermented on the counter; they've watched me sit with a guitar or at the keyboard for hours, learning parts to songs because it gave me pleasure, because of a driving hunger to hear the sounds, to make melodies out of single notes; I've danced into the house after a prayer time with someone struggling, excited that the person was encouraged, that they encountered God in some significant way; they watched me pastor, teach classes, take difficult phone calls, solve problems, rejoice in making peace with others; they watched me labor nightly, for months, on a book and then listen to triumphant reports of "it's done!" They've watched me refinish furniture, paint endless walls, learn to crochet, use power tools, write book reviews, write sermons; they've listened to me read, through winter months with a quavering voice, literature and stories with which I long to fill their imaginations. They've watched me pack suitcases destined for far- off places, raise money for mission trips, take cookies to the neighbors just because.

Danny Silk talks about how important it is for women to "happen"--for life to surge through them, for their gifts to bubble forth, for the community to bless and encourage their pursuit of all God has called them to be. My own life has been happening these last six years or so, mostly because I've cooperated in ways I never thought about cooperating a decade ago as a new mother, or even as a teenager, when watching my own mother make her way through the world. I was a young woman afraid to open my mouth to sing or speak, afraid to stand up in a room of people sitting because they might see me; I was a woman afraid of being in my own skin, of happening.

There are other mothers happening around me, too. One friend has started a business around her phenomenal ability to create, re-design, and refinish anything she gets her hands on. Another friend decided to address some personal health needs that she'd been long putting off. Another is engaged in study, pouring over historical texts, researching ancient and holistic medicine practices. Others are standing at the foot of the path; they've said yes and they're about to step out on the journey.

I don't care what my daughters decide to "be" when they grow up, but I could weep with gratitude that somehow allowing ourselves to happen in front of their eyes might just inspire a confidence that some of us didn't have for decades, might just banish the protestations of self-doubt that haunted some of us for years, might just pave the way for them to happen, too.

On Art and Ministry and Telling the Truth

At the forefront of my thoughts: I miss art. I miss writing. I write scheduled Facebook statuses for our church, but I don’t think that counts. The New Yorker’d never be interested in my compilation of updates.

Here’s another thought—a lie, this time: Art and faith may not marry. They are first cousins; marriage would yield genetic mutation, deformity in whatever springs off their union.

And here’s the follow-up, another lie followed by others:  Art and ministry together are a codependent couple. Messy. Art displays pain and ministry is a balm for it. Art swears and stings and cuts and smokes pot and is promiscuous and uncontained.  True ministry helps to heal; it is faithful, sometimes containing and sometimes setting free, and rarely swears. And probably never smokes pot. And for sure doesn’t drink too much.

I said these were lies, but I suppose they are half- or three-quarter-truths.  I am working out what it means, what it could look like, to live a life of ministry with its healing and setting free and sometimes-containing and at the same time being a maker of art, of the stuff which, among other things, reveals the need for ministry in the first place.

In my country, I think the church is sometimes afraid not so much of art for art's sake, but of honesty.  Back in the 90s I remember chatter about artists leaving the church because the church couldn’t make a home for them, because their truth-telling--whatever the medium--was disconcerting, unsettling, and at times downright unpleasant. I imagined flocks of sheep, hundreds and thousands, fleeing the pen through the gate.  The artists were leaving! The artists were leaving!  The rest of us were going to keep staring at bare cinderblock church walls, forever singing the only songs we’d ever learned and never any new ones.  I wanted to go with the artists to New York.

Now, as a minister and as one who has remained faithful to the church, I want to embrace art and whatever truth lies in the stories that it tells. But let me admit that I don’t find every story to be overtly truthful. So, I’m not so much interested in the dishonest ones that glamorize or, worse, darken my mood and my heart for no noble cause. But if art can point to something true, even if that truth is unsettling, I’m in. I’ll watch, but I might peek through my fingers.

I read a story a few weeks ago, an essay by a transgenderChristian, writing about her experience first as a husband and father, and then as a woman (all in the context of her Christian faith and an active life within the church). 

I am the first to note the gazillion theological questions that can spring to mind at this mention no matter who you are, no matter what your politics, beliefs, or sexual orientation. But here’s something: this was someone’s life. It happened. It was wrestled with. It was true.   I’d rather look at that than not.