Call and Response

So tornados spun off from Katrina destroyed parts of one of my favorite uber-cheesy vacation spots. In the grand scheme of things, though, so many people have lost homes, even lives to this big storm, and New Orleans appears to still be underwater, according to the Weather Channel. The poorest people in New Orleans, Gulf Shores, Biloxi, Mobile, can't afford motels, or fast food, or anything right now, and likely have no homes to go back to. Red Cross is soliciting donations, and a group from Candler is talking about going somewhere this weekend to help if possible. Please help any way you can.

In not very related at all news, I have been in a bit of a tailspin myself with all the incoming student type stuff this week. In the past two days, I:
got my student ID,
met my new boss,
got my books,
got an umbrella (which I probably should have gotten when I heard a hurricane was hitting the gulf, but I'm really not that together),
filled out a krazillion forms,
attended a reading and writing for theological education workshop,
walked a labyrinth,
took two tours of school buildings,
tried to figure out the shuttle bus schedule (and failed),
gave up and decided to walk several times after getting tired of waiting,
got lost,
walked up a really big hill and back down again when I could have taken a shortcut between two buildings instead,
showed up at the right place on the wrong day,
showed up at the wrong place at the right time,
showed up at the right place at the right time without even knowing it was where I was supposed to be,
met 40 people all of whose names I will never ever remember.

I'm really really frazzled right now and I have to go set out refreshments and attend an ICMMA meeting in about an hour. But tomorrow, blissful empty day-ness awaits. Hubby keeps saying I should start reading my textbooks. He's on crack.

My work-study job for a professor at Candler will involve helping build the membership of Interfaith Children's Movement of Metro Atlanta, and attending their Prayer Breakfast in a month, featuring Marian Wright Edelman! I am so excited to hear her!

And what the movement is trying to accomplish is really important work . It always amazes me that with all the religious people in the world, most of whose religions seem to value children at least a little, we are not able to make things better for children who suffer abject poverty and abuse on a daily basis, and then we are shocked when they grow up to be criminals or terrorists. Go figure. But maybe my efforts with ICMMA will help just a little. I hope so.

I have just added the Progressive Christian Blogger Network blogroll to my sidebar. I also let them know about the location of the new site, but the blogroll will still refer you to the missing old blog for the time being. There are a lot of cool blogs listed, and most of the ones I read are there. To see all the ones I read, check out my kinja digest.

Originally posted on 3/6/04

When people ask me and my husband how we avoided being indoctrinated into the racism and conservatism that is so insidious down here in the deep south, we both attest to the power of the words "Jesus loved the little children, all the children of the world." taught to us from a very young age. We have only built upon that theology over the years, and are now active Democrats and activists for peace and justice. I completely resent the assumption that Christian=Republican. In fact, in my interpretation, there is very little that is based on the teachings of Christ in the Republican platform. To quote the Black Eyed Peas, "Where is the love?"

I also find myself backing up my public policy positions with both faith and reason. It is rare to find other people down here who even put any thought in their positions at all, from the perspectives of faith or reason, beyond parroting what they hear from preachers and politicians.

It has been so hard for my husband and I, native-born southerners, to fit in in our own homeland, home of our ancestors for almost two centuries, that we can't even find a satisfactory church home. We are currently attending both a UU and Episcopal church, but are afraid to reveal too much at either place.

Originally posted on 3/6/04

Hilarious.

I used to love putting stuff on my pets. First my dog, when I lived with my parents, and then when I was out on my own, on all my cats. I have a great picture of my roommate's cat holding a tiny pool cue beside one of those tiny pool tables. Maybe I should scan it and post it here. I found it the other day and couldn't quit laughing. This webpage made me want to put something on some stray cat since I don't have any of my own anymore. I guess I'll just put something on my husband's head when he gets home and make him sit there for a minute so I can amuse myself. It'll be almost as good.

Here is a brief bio that I wrote to send to the church membership committee. We are having a new member induction ceremony next month which will include me although I have been a member for about a year now. Parts of the bio will be used to introduce me to the others during the service and in the newsletter. I always like to know a little about the people whose blogs I enjoy so I thought that I would post it here, with slight edits to preserve my privacy.

I am from the southernmost part of the southern state of Georgia in the USA, and have lived here my whole life. I hold degrees in philosophy and public administration from the regional state university. I am a social worker for adults with developmental disabilities in an adjacent county to the one in which we live. My husband is a teacher and coach at a high school in another adjacent county, in the opposite direction. We both have about a half hour commute to work. I am the chair of the Social Action Committee and help with music during worship services at the Unitarian Universalist Church in the town where I work and where the university is located. My husband and I also attend an Episcopal Church in the town where we live. All of these places, the one we live in, and the two we work in, and the county I grew up in, are within an hour of each other. Our families are mostly within two hours of here as well. So we drive around a lot, but within a pretty small footprint. Our future plans include seminary in Atlanta for me in 2005 to study Christian theory and practice.

Jim and I are Christians, and I describe myself as a postmodern pantheist progressive Christian mystic. Postmodern means that I believe our experiences of truth and the divine can not be separated from our cultural context. Pantheist means that I believe the divine is in everything and can be experienced as a connection between everything. “Tuning in to” this connection has enhanced my life. I do not believe there is a God “out there” somewhere, manipulating things. I believe there is a divinity, or Holy Spirit, or energy, or force, “in here”, in everything. I believe the trinity was an attempt to explain the divinity found in everything, including Jesus. Progressive Christian is best defined by The Center for Progressive Christianity. For me it means that I have found an approach to God through the life and teachings of Jesus, and that everyone has to approach life and faith in the way that is best for them. The Bible is the writings of people trying to describe experiences of the divine and has been changed many times to serve the purposes of the powerful. I like to read the stories and get what I can out of them. I enjoy research into the historical roots of Judaism and Christianity. Mystic means that I believe direct experience of the divine is possible. I have experienced God through music, nature, philosophy, studying world religions, math, quantum physics, other people, and a “still, small voice” in me that urges me to do the moral thing or pursue certain paths, even when that is not the easiest or most socially acceptable thing to do. From now on I will wear a button that says “Ask me about being a Postmodern Pantheist Progressive Christian Mystic!”: seriously, if you want to know more, just ask, talking about religion is my favorite thing in the world.

My Christianity has made me a pacifist, an environmentalist, and a supporter of civil and human rights for all regardless of race, gender, sexuality, class, income, or disability. I express my Christian belief that people and the universe should be treated as we treat ourselves through political positions, social action, and the way I treat others in my daily life. I consider my faith integral to every area of my life, and there is no action that I take that is not affected by my beliefs, even when I find myself regretting that I have not treated myself and the rest of the world as if they are sparks of divinity just waiting to be "tuned in".

Caveat: All of the above theological positions are works in progress. My spiritual life is constantly under construction.

Originally posted on April 22, 2004

Here's my impression of the bible and what God is trying to tell me when I read it. I don't think anybody needs to take any of this as anything more than a peek into my ongoing conversation with God. As a matter of fact, God definitely is not telling me to get y'all to believe this stuff. I think God's just trying to reach me on my level, which is a pretty weird level, if you know what I mean. By all that I mean, please don't go to my comments and yell at me.

In the beginning...

There was God. Or something. Then there was some stuff. Or there was suddenly God and some stuff at the same time. Or God and the stuff are the same thing. Probably that one. (The previous point is of minor importance to me, but what is more important is that I am 100% sure God, or whatever you want to call it, just "IS", as in "the great I AM", you know, so linear time might be completely the wrong descriptive concept.)

The stuff part of God eventually evolved from stardust to people. (See evolutionary theories way too complex to go into here) People were still just one kind of stuff, though. You know, stuff that was born and ate and bred and slept and made waste and died and became a different kind of stuff. Just part of the big ecosystem machine. Total harmony with God.

One day people became self-aware, instead of just being stuff. They started thinking about the other stuff and how they related to it. This made people different than the other stuff. They started thinking about how they related to what they were a part of, and what connected them with other people and other stuff. They told stories to explain these things. These stories were not lies, just their perceptions and theories on how and why they had become the people that they were. The stories that resonated with the most people, that held deep truth, were the ones that survived.

Then some of the people kept feeling like they were made for more than just dog-eat-dog, survival instinct level existence even though other animals seemed perfectly content to kill or be killed, battle for food and territory, mate as much as was expedient for group stability, etc. So they told stories to explain why they felt dissatisfaction with their life, why they yearned for a connection with something greater. The stories that reflected the most truth survived.

They told stories to explain how they felt connected to something bigger that I call God, and felt destined for greater things than mere survival. Their constant struggle to overcome survival instincts and the associated selfishness they were feeling made for really great stories. Some of these stories are about real things that happened to real people, but just like any story, they are more true than factual. Again, the stories that held the deepest truth survived.

Eventually the stories were told so many times, and written down, that people came to believe that every story was a fact, and forgot that the stories were an attempt to connect to something greater than themselves. They called the stories law, and said that if you strayed from the principles presented in the stories, you would suffer greatly.

In spite of this legalism, however, the greater connectedness that they felt kept pulling at them, for centuries and eons. It has always pulled at us people. I don't know why it's like that, it just is. It continues to pull on us constantly to be more than survival and selfishness. Burning bush, talking donkey, voice in the wind, it's kind of a multimedia connectedness. This is what I call God, or usually I call it the Holy Spirit.

During a particular time period (one in which the tribe that had written one particular set of stories was ruled over by a tribe with slightly different stories varying in the number of beings that embodied the connectedness and how people interacted with the connectedness over the years), the tribe in our story had become so rigidly attached to its stories, likely as a defense mechanism, that the people had mostly lost its ability to actually feel the pull of the Spirit.

So someone named Jesus who could still feel the Spirit, or was the Spirit embodied in human form, I'm not sure exactly, tried to show them the way to get around the rigidity and tune into the Spirit themselves. And they killed him for rocking the boat. After he died, some of his followers saw him, or felt his presence, or something like that. It was really hard to explain to people who weren't there at the time. But whatever happened was very real to them.

Reading the stories of Jesus and studying his words and following his example, can tune us into the Spirit of God. In this way we are saved from a life where we live by selfishness and survival instinct alone and uplifted from a life of rigid obedience to law. We can now feel the presence of the Spirit in our lives and be inspired to live in harmony with God, even as we continue to struggle with the selfishness and survival instincts that are at the core of our being.

And they all lived connectedly ever after. Just kidding, but I thought it made a good ending.

Originally posted on April 30, 2004

Originally posted on May 24, 2004
In other news, I was really scared I had some dread disease because my doctor
ordered some extra blood tests last time I went but it turns out I am just fine.
I am the worst hypochondriac.
I try to make jokes about it, like "Ha ha, I probably have the black plague, no
bubonic actually, no I think it's really dengue fever, hee hee snort," to hide
the sniveling weenie I truly am whenever my doctor says "hmmm". So I used to
avoid the doctor except in an emergency. But now I'm all married and so I figure
I should be more responsible, yada yada yada. I tell ya, secretly, I wanted to
pretend I didn't get the message about repeating the blood work and just take
off to Mexico or somewhere and live it up, and if I died, well, at least I
wouldn't be worried all the time until it happened. I'm glad I didn't. It's nice
to know you're well. I even did a little dance after I got off the phone with
the doctor.
One thing about this whole situation worried me the most. For years after I got
kind of sidetracked from one set of plans I had toward the end of college, I
just stopped making plans altogether. I just went with the flow, afraid to get
to invested in any desired outcome, just in case everything fell apart again.
Only recently, within the safety of this amazing marriage, I find myself
dreaming again, planning to go to seminary, to move to Atlanta, to maybe buy a
house, get some Ikea, possibly have a kid somewhere down the line, etc. etc. And
I really thought when I found out I might be sick, "Well, that's what you get
for dreaming." I don't ever want to give up on dreaming now that I've found it
again, but somewhere in my subconscious mind, I guess I think I don't deserve to
dream. I've really got to work on that before I sabotage myself somehow.
I also really had the chance to get inside some of my theology, like how I
believe that God won't heal one particular fellow because he prays about it.
What does that say about all the other people who prayed and weren't healed?
That they suck?
So I've always thought we should pray for the grace to handle our situation
whatever it may be, and use our trials as opportunities to get closer to God. Ha
ha! I've never prayed so hard not to be sick in my life. How can I pray
something I don't believe? I have no idea. Maybe it's like singing hymns. At the
Methodist church near my parents' place in Florida, we sang "Victory in Jesus".
That's totally not how I see atonement theory..."He plunged me to victory
beneath the cleansing flood". Eeeew. But I was singing louder than everybody, it
was great. We all started clapping, and sang a capella, and really had an old
time Cokesbury hymnal campmeeting kind of sound. It rocked. I got chills.
Sometimes hymns and prayers that bear no resemblance to theology that I can
accept intellectually turn out to be the things that bring me closer to God on
an emotional level. That is a mystery of faith, if there ever was one.

"Santana Row is one of those fake-street shopping/lifestyle plaza dealies. They're all over the place here. See, it's like a thriving downtown, without all the poor people and non-chain stores!"

Going Jesus hit the nail right on the head there. When I went to eat with my family at the Atkins Park in Smyrna Market Village, out in the suburbs west of Atlanta, it was charming, but something just seemed sort of Disney, like it was just a facade of a downtown, a hollywood set. Every single building in the Smyrna "downtown" was brand new, and if you got to the end of it it was just field beyond. Very surreal. I don't know what they did with the old downtown Smyrna. Bulldozed it all? I think the main difference (besides the lack of poor people) is the lack of historic buildings, memories, family owned businesses. Coming from small towns, when a charming (or even slightly run down) downtown has those things, you can actually feel the difference. That's what makes a downtown different than a mall. Dressing a mall up as a downtown is just putting lipstick on a pig.

Maybe my fighting being an instinctive caregiver is making it more stressful
than it would be if I just gave in to it. I am torn between worldly advice"Well,
you have to take care of yourself first." and questions of "What would happen to
me if I gave all of myself to other people?"

So what would happen if I just said okay, my instincts are to care for others?
If I really quit worrying about what other people think or about getting taken
advantage of and screwed over, and just cared for people with everything I had,
trusting that I would be provided for, like the birds and the lilies of the
field, what would my life look like? Where would that lead? I can't even imagine
it. It fills me with great anxiety to play this game of pretend. Will I ever
have the guts to try it and find out?
Originally posted on old Call and Response-5/9/04

Well, so far, I haven't posted much about our ongoing saga to get me to Seminary, to respond to this call I have felt tugging on me for over two years now. The transition is upon us and documenting it on a blog is the best way I can think of to help with the processing of this strange in between place where I am right now. And I had to create a new blog to do it since my usual blog is down for some reason. But hey, new era, new adventure, new blog, it all makes sense. Welcome to Call and Response the Second.

Jim and I are all moved in at Turner Village, the Theology student housing at Candler School of Theology/Emory University. We have a nice, but small, one bedroom apartment with a beautiful view from the picture windows in the living room and bedroom of a protected woodland called Wesley Woods forest. According to the Emory website, it is one of the "best preserved hardwood forests in the entire Piedmont Province of the Southeastern United States," and "an infinitely precious aesthetic and scientific resource which we now hold in trust for present and future generations." "It contains a very high diversity of plants, including rare plant species", and "facilitates the movement of plants and wildlife and protects the streambank". We are very excited to live next to such a lovely and important ecosystem.

We have been taking many walks around campus, and even during this hot time of year, the greenery and grass is lush and a vibrant shade of green. The washed out browns of landscapes wilting in the South Georgia heat are nowhere to be seen. It has been at least ten degrees cooler here than in Quitman every day in August so far. The only downside to the Atlanta weather are the thunderstorms, which arrive later and with a ferocity much greater than those in the Valdosta area. The lightning puts on amazing shows for us outside our picture windows, and the thunder rattles the building for minutes at a time. I'm not sure what accounts for the increase in intensity over the South Georgia thunderstorms but that is not something I expected. Many trees have been downed in recent weeks, and unfortunately have damaged some houses and cars in the Emory area, but crews seem to clear them quickly, especially the ones blocking the roads.

Jim has begun his school year, and is teaching American History at a very large high school in a very large school district up here. The school is 99.4% African-American, which is a change in demographics from south Georgia, which is more like 30-40% African American at most schools, but it also has some differences due to being such a big school (2000 students) in such a big school system (over 100,000 students) that are requiring some adjustments on his part. Simple things like obtaining a copy code can take a while in a bureaucracy that is so large. He is impressed with the level of literacy of the students compared with his former school, and says they write and speak with an articulacy not often seen in South Georgian teenagers. Also, most of the ones he has met so far plan to go to college, even the ones in regular level classes (not advanced), which is also rarely seen in South Georgia. He feels that they can achieve great things and hopes to help them reach their goals as much as he can.

Our neighbors seem very nice, and more than half of the neighbors we have met so far are from Korea, as there is much growth in Korean Methodism at this time, and Candler is a Methodist seminary. We have visited one church, which is right on campus, which was very traditional Methodist (some ladies even had on gloves and hats!), but have some leads on others that might have the mix of Christianity and progressive ideas that we desire.

For the strange file: right now, in the middle of Atlanta, with a view of the skyline a 50 yard walk up the hill from our apartment, the crickets are so loud in the woods that I can hardly hear the tv. Who woulda thunk it!

What if eternal is a qualitative rather than quantitative modifier for life? What if eternally is a way to go about living rather than a length of time? I might be able to unpack the eternal life aspects of Christianity if I begin here.

Originally posted on April 20, 2004

Thanks to Philocrites, I read this article on how Democrats could broaden their support among all manner of Christians.

I liked the article a lot, because it really reflected a lot of my own views about abortion. I think abortion is complicated. I think we need to talk about abortion...a lot. I think we need to listen about abortion...a lot. To scientists, to doctors, to those who have or have not had abortions for various reasons, to ethicists, to religious leaders and theologians on both sides of the issue, to everyday people who consider abortion the most important issue in US politics today.

I don't think there is a quick answer to such a complex issue. But I would love to hear conversation rather than rhetoric. I would love active listening rather than vitriol spewing from both sides. Mostly I would love tolerance, from both sides, for those of us who really aren't sure what the ethical position is here, but are willing to try to work it out.

I mean, what if abortion was outlawed. Who would that actually prevent from getting an abortion? Couldn't rich people still get one? Who would then be trying to do it with a coat hanger in their bathroom? The young, the poor, the vulnerable?

If abortion is morally equivalent to taking a human life after a certain point of fetal development, is outlawing abortion after that point the best way to stop people from having abortions? Murder is illegal, but we still have a lot of those.

And how do we decide at what point abortion becomes murder? And how do we consider extenuating circumstances such as the health of the mother? If abortion is murder is it ever self defense? Is abortion ever justifiable for mental health reasons?

Also if we convince people without the means to care for their children to carry them to term anyway, what happens to the babies after they are born?

I really need to have these conversations with people who will listen, and talk, and think, and work with me through these issues before I can come to any sort of conclusion. Unfortunately, some on both sides are more threatened by conversation that might soften the lines between black and white than by the continuation of the current toxic rhetoric that divides our country. If the Democrats can figure out a way to make such a conversation happen, I will spend the rest of my free time until November campaigning for every Democratic candidate in the United States. Heck, I'm tempted to start a dialogue group myself for that very purpose. Maybe a Democrat bigwig will read the article too and become just as inspired to work towards conversation as I have been. I can dream, can't I?
Originally posted on June 14, 2004