Storage

What do Matthew the gospel writer, Mary Oliver the poet, and Marie Kondo the author have in common? They all have some profound things to say about stuff. What kind of stuff? Well it depends on your perspective. As George Carlin noted, "You have sh*t. I have stuff."

Let's start with the sublime and work our way down to the ridiculous. "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also (Matthew 19:21). If this sentiment ran the world, it would fix all our social and economic ills. Some things seem important to me not based on their merit, but because I do them. Do people really need to know a lot of calculus and statistics? Well, because I treasure my career teaching those topics, it sure does seem like they need to know. My heart is definitely there. What if we put our treasure into improving health care, living conditions, nutrition, and other worthy things to show that our heart is with the welfare of our fellow humans?  I don't know if Matthew was suggesting such a virtuous lifestyle or simply stating the fact that if people did it, it would be really great.

Mary Oliver describes moving and not having room for all of her stuff. She rented a storage unit and left her possessions there for years. Then, "As I grew older the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important" so one day she called a trash man to to come take everything away then she wrote the poem "Storage" about it. It reminded me of the weird feelings of both sadness and relief as I watched my parents' estate sale offer up millions of items. There's no way to transfer sentimentality, which turns valuation on its head. Seeing mementos of fun times sold for a quarter can be jarring to say the least, but I was also very happy to know that I wasn't going to have to assume the care and dusting of all that stuff. Which brings us to Marie Kondo. As a side note, I bought her book The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up immediately after I read the first review of it, and this was long before Netflix found her. Not that this matters, but it kind of does to me. Anyway, her ideas of holding on loosely to our possessions and keeping only the ones that "spark joy" struck a chord with me. When parting with the ones that don't make the cut, her suggestion is to be grateful even to the point of thanking the item for serving whatever purpose it was that brought it into the house in the first place. Spring cleaning with gratitude seems like an excellent plan to me. Or as Mary Oliver put it, "Make a beautiful fire!"

Praying with Matthew and Mary Oliver

According to Matthew, Jesus was annoyed by showy public prayers and much preferred the secret, solitary kind (Matthew 6:5-14). I always want to mention these verses when I hear someone say something like, "We didn't have terrible things like [fill in the blank] until they took prayer out of the schools." I think Jesus might have equated athletic fields with street corners in his instructions if he had anticipated the fondness some people feel for prayer before football games. I love Jeff Foxworthy's, "Lord, prepare them for the butt kicking they are about to receive" version of football prayer. I have no intention of wading into the hornet's nest of kneeling on the football field for prayer or protest or crediting God with sports victories. I'm just making the point that the Bible suggests going alone into a room, shutting the door, and using natural language for prayer.

Mary Oliver's poem "Praying" is so short, that I'll just type it out below.

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch
a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway
into thanks, and a silence in which 
another voice may speak.

Oh my goodness, she is so right. Wandering around alone (or with a dog) outside has a lot in common with going into a room and closing the door. Cecil and I pass beautiful lawns and flowers and woodsy vacant lots with weeds on our daily walks, and honestly, at times the abundance of life overwhelms me with gratitude and awe. Sometimes I patch a simple prayer together and sometimes I let the birds and frogs do it. I highly recommend taking a daily walk through the doorway into thanks.

Lent with Mary Oliver: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

I have been rummaging through my books and bookmarked websites thinking about whether I wanted to do anything of substance for Lent this year. As I walked into church this morning, Carolyn Padgett was handing out The Poetry of Lent, A Lenten Companion to Mary Oliver's Devotions. Joy, joy! The idea had Lin Veasey and Chelsea Thornton written all over it, and sure enough, they are as usual the thoughtful, organized ones who got everything ordered, compiled, and distributed.

I am a total dunce when it comes to poetry, and not for lack of trying. I get impatient when I try to read it, and can't focus on much of anything beyond Shel Silverstein. (Although I did read a lot of him when my girls were young.) I've asked for suggestions from literary people. I even took a creative writing class and thought maybe I could approach it backwards by writing it first and then understanding it later. That didn't work. There is one exception to this sad, sad story.... Mary Oliver.

When I read Mary Oliver's poems, I think, Yes!, that's exactly what I think. In fact, I sometimes wonder how it's possible that I didn't write it first. Could it be that she's the poet for dunces? I mean that in the most complimentary way possible. I sometimes feel that my strength as a math professor has always been that I can talk about math to people who aren't quantitative thinkers. In fact, I've frequently gotten feedback to that effect. "This is the most verbal math class I've ever taken. I loved it!" and "This is the most verbal math class I've ever taken. I hated it!" I can't ever remember getting, "I was awed by the theoretical brilliance of Dr. Case." That's not my thing. But it is satisfying to hear that someone appreciates a mathematical concept in a new way for the first time.

Judging by the wild popularity of Oliver's poetry, she's probably had the same effect on millions of other readers that she has on me. She, however, is also admired by people who actually know something about poetry. And she loves dogs. Can't wait to spend Lent with her.

The Lord's Potluck

As a child I didn’t realize that The Lord’s Supper and Church Potluck Supper were different things. Maybe it’s because Baptists didn’t use lofty language like “the sacrament of communion” or maybe as a 5-year-old I was more interested in snacks than theology. And c’mon, they both have the word “supper” in there. Fortunately, my observant mother corrected my misconception and restored me to the proper path of salvation.  It was an understandable mistake, though. Being from a long line of church ladies who made my soul soar with their fried chicken and banana pudding, I knew that no matter where we were eating, I was not to take even a tiny bite before somebody asked the blessing. Thus it was that the sharing of food was forever linked to gratitude to the God for the hands that prepared it.

My favorite recipes are the ones handwritten by the women I love most. They are stained with Crisco, Eagle Brand Milk, and Cream of Everything soup. There is a collective food consciousness among women my age consisting of weird recipes that used Coca Cola as a cake ingredient and held grated carrots together with Jell-O, but then, every all-star cook, even MawMaw, is going to strike out sometimes. The important message was that breaking bread together was a way to express love and faith and joy and all the things that matter.  Maybe my 5-year-old self wasn’t too far off after all.

If I had to pick one recipe as the most memorable, it would be the roast beef made by my mother-in-law, Hazel Case. I promise that the instructions below are straight from the great woman herself.

“Get up early on Sunday morning and begin by dredging a roast in flour, salt, and pepper. Heat a small amount of oil and brown the meat in a skillit. Place the roast in a large covered cast iron pan and put in the oven at 325 degrees.  Go get ready for church. Add peeled potatoes, carrots, and an onion to the roast and return it to the oven. Go to Sunday School, then stay for preaching. The roast will be perfect by the time you get home.”

Rewriting the Obituary

Sometimes I forward obituaries to my daughters with a note that says something like, "here's a good one" which means "which ever one of you writes mine, put some thought into it." I have an aunt who has chosen her photos for the funeral home celebration of life PowerPoint slide show because she doesn't trust the ones who remain to select the most flattering ones. This is something like that. I once suggested that instead of gifts for Christmas, we write obituaries for each other, because truthfully, I wanted to proof mine. My proposal was soundly defeated, and I remain at the mercy of those who I must trust to be clever, witty, and able to present my quirks in a pleasing light.

Perhaps because of my written tribute to a life-well-lived fixation, I was asked to write the obituaries for the two most momentous passings of my life -- my mother and my mother-in-law. In both instances, I had one day to complete it, and it was a sad, sad day of mourning, too. That's my excuse making one huge error in both of them. I have been rewriting their obituaries in my mind for years now. Maybe if I write them down here, the lapse will stop taunting me. It's like my wedding gift thank you note list that contains about 872 gifts and 871 thank you note records. Someone mailed me a warming tray as a gift but no name was included in the package. Obviously, this was before online shopping records, so I called everyone I knew but could never find the giver so that I could thank her. Thirty-five years later I still cringe that I never fully completed the thank you note imperative that every Southern girl is taught is one of the premier measures of refinement.

So here goes....

In Mom's obituary, I said, "Her favorite vacations were with family no matter what the location."

That's not true. She liked family vacations, but they were nowhere near her favorite. The trips she loved were the ones that she took with her church friends. Even worse, I forgot to mention her church membership at all. So here's the replacement.

"She loved to travel with her First Baptist friends from Jacksonville and Pleasant Grove."

For my Mother-in-law, I omitted a child in the family list. She was widowed with five children when she married James Case who had a daughter.  Together they had one child. So that's seven. I omitted the step-daughter altogether and I feel awful about it. She and Mrs. Case had a loving relationship, and also shared a due date. That's right. James Case had a child and a grandchild due on the same day. The grandchild was born first, so James and Hazel's child was born an uncle. Ok, here's the replacement.

"Hazel Case was preceded in death by (parents, first husband, second husband) and stepdaughter, Gail Case Warren."

I feel a little better about this now, and if I could just figure out who to thank for that warming tray, I could move on with my life.

Sunday Shoes

Pastors Dale and Kelly Clem survived a 1994 tornado. Rev. Kelly Clem was leading the Palm Sunday service when the storm hit Goshen Methodist Church and claimed their 4 year old daughter, Hannah as one of its victims. Somehow, they had to grieve every parent's worst nightmare, cling to their other daughter, 2 year old Sarah, and be the supporting light for their church. I will never forget Kelly's swollen black eye as she spoke a message of hope for the TV coverage and then led a sunrise Easter service a week later. It might be the strongest display of faith and courage that I have ever seen, and the fact that my two daughters were the same age as theirs at the time has kept that tragedy ever present in my heart.

So, it's not surprising that 20+ years later it was the Clems who were asked for advice as Jacksonville recovers from our own tornado disaster. In an Anniston Star interview, Rev. Dale Clem spoke frankly about his sorrow and healing, and he gave a wise and thoughtful response for the article. One thing stood out for me, though. He said,

"At Goshen, one of the surprising things to which many became emotionally attached were the shoes which were left behind by the 140 people in the church. Several garbage bags full of shoes were pulled from the debris or around the church. No one wanted to throw them away, but also it took a long time for them to be claimed. It sounds silly but it was hard."

He mentioned a similar phenomena at a New York church where first responders took off their shoes, changed clothes, and went into the Twin Towers on 9/11 then never returned. Part of that church and community's healing was to walk an outdoor prayer labyrinth one evening with the shoes and candles placed along the path. Somehow it gave the mourners an opening for their grief so that healing tears could come.

Here's a more personal example.....

When my daughter Catherine was almost 2 and Elizabeth's scheduled appearance was less than a month away, my mother had to have surgery that was potentially life threatening. Before she left home, she handed me a package and told me it was a gift for Catherine's 2nd birthday in case she wasn't able to be there. When I saw that it was a pair of tiny red leather, ankle strap shoes, all my "put a positive face on it" collapsed and the pent up anxiety over the thought of losing my mother gushed out. Fortunately, Mom had decades of life beyond that surgery. I still have those shoes.

And one more....

I grew up in Birmingham along with the Civil Rights movement. It shaped me for better or worse. It's a long story, but a quote that sums up a lot of it is from Texas columnist Molly Ivins,

"I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point -- race. Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything."

"Lying" is a pretty strong word, but whatever the motive, I was taught some things that I came to realize later were born of fear and not fact. So, what does this have to do with shoes? Well, it took me a long, long time to get to the Civil Rights Museum in Birmingham because I already knew the story and didn't really want to relive it. When I finally got there, I went alone and walked through it acknowledging the "separate but equal" housing and school exhibits and all the other artifacts. I was sad, but composed until I got here.

Look at that display case at the bottom right. It contains the Sunday shoes of the little girls who died in the 16th Street Church bombing. One of them was wearing "heels" for the first time. Suddenly I was every mother who had ever laced Sunday shoes on little girls before heading off to a safe time of worship at church. The other museum visitors politely gave me space to sob for what seemed like a long time. I have no idea why after all the evidence I'd seen that it was the shoes that said it was ok to weep over hatred that created unthinkable sorrow.

 As with many odd things, I thought it was just me, but Dale Clem uncovered a host of people who feel the same way.  I'm probably overlooking some obvious insight into how and why the humble shoe has the ability to release pain and start the healing process. Maybe it has something to do with the Holy Ground that we're all standing on in our Sunday shoes, and sassy sandals, and gotta-be-the-shoes, and wedgies, and sensible shoes, and kinky boots, and mules, and flip flops, and Doc Marten's, and stilettos, and wingtips, and....

Writing in Someone Else's Language

I often roll my eyes at the grammar structure of my department head's memos. English is not her first language, and my snobbery conveniently ignores the fact of my own mono-lingual status. Holy Solitude, my study for Lent, describes the biblical book of Revelation written by John of Patmos as being written in "clumsy, almost illiterate Greek" that was clearly not his first language. Maybe his choice was an attempt to reach out of his banishment to the largest possible audience for his anger and despair. Apparently it was not because he had a gift for the craft of writing. The reflection question asks us to consider the creative power involved in writing in someone else's language. To take it beyond writing, what medium would we choose if we wanted to explore a personal experience through some kind of art?

Sewing is my mother's art language. The whir of her Singer (what an appropriate brand name!) is the defining soundtrack of my childhood. She was flabbergasted by "bought dresses" in which someone didn't even bother to match the plaids, and she didn't mind saying so. In almost every other aspect, she was unusually meek. Maybe the reason I turned to sewing as therapy during a bleak period of my own life is because it represented her strength. Hmmmm. But anyway, when our children were small, we moved from a home and career that I loved to a place that turned out to be a great disappointment for me. It eventually worked out, but for a year I was in a serious funk. One day, mired in the middle of the funk, I picked up a bunch of scrap material and started putting together a rough picture of the front yard, stone walkway, and garden that I had left behind. I cut out pieces and arranged and rearranged, then started stitching by hand and throwing in a little decorative embroidery. It was a marvelous distraction, and looking back in light of this study, a healing time of solitude. Here's the finished product....

 It's not anything special, but it might have kept me sane enough to function day to day. Mom helped me finish it and she put a loop on the back so it could be displayed as a wall hanging. I've never done that, but I might someday. When we were monogramming the tree with the address and the names of our family members and pets who had lived there, my daughter Elizabeth put in her dog Lucy's name as "Loozey." I corrected it and I've regretted it ever since. It was better art with the misspelling.

Writing in someone else's language or sewing in your Mom's language (as the case may be) may let your heart tell you more than your head ever could.

Payback

"It would be wrong for me not to come out here and help after I was helped...I plan to work until I drop or run out of diesel." (Jacksonville resident David Williams)

The Lent study has a lot to say about almsgiving. In the aftermath of the tornado, the questions for reflection take on another dimension. Does giving make us feel rich or poor? How do we decide where to give? Is it meaningful or just an inconvenience? Some disasters (cancer, nature's fury) bring out the selfless best in us, while others (mental illness, poverty) repel us. Why? Jesus also had things to say about giving. Although it's usually stated as a harsh pronouncement, the Old Testament "eye for an eye" rule was generous when compared to the typical response of escalating retaliation. The idea of equal reparation is appealing, but it's so hard to balance a revenge equation. How can we hurt someone in exactly the same amount that they hurt us?  We can win for sure by giving a little worse than we got. Or.... we could respond by turning the other cheek and giving a warm coat to our cold enemy. A generous idea exploded with grace!

Oddly, payback escalates in our response to good gifts too. When my friend's son was starting an egg business, I intentionally overpaid for eggs to help with his startup costs. He responded by throwing in a bag of his organic garden bounty along with my egg purchases. His payback far exceeds my own overpayment. If he was Whole Foods, I would be out some serious cash. The guy I quoted at the beginning was helped on the night of the storm and responded by helping others until he was exhausted and depleted of fuel for his machinery. For the record, I intend to steal that quote at the first opportunity, so when you hear me say that I will do something until I "drop or run out of diesel" you will know exactly where I lifted it.

We all know that payback is hell, but sometimes payback is heaven too.

Poustinia

This was a new word for me, but not a new place. I've been going on an Advent spiritual retreat in the middle of Nowhere, Mississippi for over 20 years with some of my friends. The location is actually Brooksville, MS, but it's mostly a massive pasture,  populated by some charismatic nuns and a few Mennonites who who run a bakery that is almost worth the trip all by itself. There are hermitages for individuals, but my friends and I stay together in the Umbria guest house. It has 4 bedrooms and a common area and a kitchen. No TV or dishwasher, and until recently, no cell phone service.

I guess all catholics know each other or they must have heard of Catherine de Hueck's poustinia description, because it pretty much describes Umbria-- bare furnishings of two twin beds in a room with a desk, chair, table, and Bible. The icons honor St. Francis and the Poor Clares. We have good Mennonite bread, but we supplement with lots of snacks too, because we are Southern girls and it's Christmas after all. Is group solitude a thing? I had the deepest spiritual experience of my life here with two of my friends while we were walking the stations of the cross. We think we're hilarious, so we laugh a lot. I always go home with what Rob Bell calls a "happiness hangover," emotionally drained and fulfilled at the same time. What a luxury to "just be and let yourself be loved by God" and some amazing women. Some years we are all spiritual and deep, and some years we cry together over someone's personal loss, and some years we're all tired and we just rest. If that's not "having a cup of coffee with God, " I don't know what is.

Thirsting

Heidi: Decide if you can realistically go without caffeine.
Me: Nope

I was in graduate school the first time I ever saw someone drink a room temperature beverage by choice. As a kid I sometimes drank out of a garden hose (which we called a hose pipe) because we were afraid if we went inside to get a drink someone would make us stay there and we wanted to keep playing outside. There was also the occasional grown up who deemed us too dirty to come in the house and said if we were thirsty we could get a drink from the hose. These were the exceptions though. No southerner that I ever knew would drink a Coke or tea that wasn't iced or coffee that wasn't hot. It just wasn't done. The first people I saw drinking a tepid beverage were not southern or even American. It was just more proof that the rest of the world was strange. I'm not sure when this changed for me, but now I really don't care about temperature at all. I enter my office every day carrying hot coffee for the morning and iced tea for the afternoon, but as one cools and the other warms, I just keep sipping. I don't know why I bother heating and icing them in the first place. So, the suggested practice of "drink only water, without ice and without flavoring" was not the hardest thing ever. Well, except for the caffeine. I could quit drinking coffee (really) but I don't want to, and I didn't have time to deal with the headache. I did, however, spend time thinking about Heidi's real question.

What am I truly thirsting for in my life right now?

I am a teacher, and it's all I ever wanted to be. I've been teaching for 37 years, and I love it every day. Lately, though, I've been wondering if there is something more or different. I like the Quaker saying, "Proceed as the way opens." I'm trying to be open to other possibilities without doing something drastic that I might regret. Is there another teaching option at JSU? Is there a way to work with students and teachers that doesn't take place in a classroom? It's a good spot to be in because if no way ends up opening for me to proceed into, I'm happy as is. But I'm looking. And waiting. And thirsting.

Here We Sit Like Birds in the Wilderness

Did you ever sing that camp song? It was the go-to when waiting for something important. Like lunch. Here we sit like birds in the wilderness, waiting for this ________. It's a silly song and absolutely not worth remembering, but it rolled around in my head today after I read Thursday: The Wilderness this morning. Beyond silly, the song doesn't even really make sense because wouldn't birds be at home in the wilderness? Heidi says, "Lent is a wilderness set in time" (Forty days to be exact. Actually 46, but who's counting.) and it is "less a time to suffer and more a time to grow in wonder and vulnerability." Wilderness might be as subjective as one's interior castle. I tried to sketch it as suggested, but it didn't go well. Maybe I'll try again. But the point is that solitude in the wilderness can be peaceful or stressful. I learned today that good, happy excitement and sheer terror both result from the exact same chemical that the body sends to the brain. Somehow the stress gets interpreted correctly by whatever system is flipping the switches. Context, and all. Anyway, this reminded me of some cactus that my friend Diana gave me from her garden in San Antonio. They thrived for a while and even bloomed the first couple of years.

Then they became homesick for Texas and very tired of the Alabama wilderness in which they found themselves. I tried to keep them warm and watered, but eventually the loss of their natural sustenance took its toll.

They don't bloom anymore, and one of them is trying its best to grow itself right back to the ground. If there is a moral here, I suppose it might be that too much wilderness leads to diminishing returns. That's probably what would happen to me in my tiny house too. Fun and blooming for a while until one day I realize I'm a cranky old woman who hasn't bathed in a week. I love the church calendar cycle of fasting and feasting with the emphasis on a time and season for everything. Ok, there's a better song to get stuck in my head... There is a season, turn, turn, turn,......

Holy Solitude in the Interior Castle

I wasn't trying for the award for most pretentious title, but I might have won it with that one. Another Lent has come around, and my chosen devotional is called Holy Solitude: Lenten Reflections with Saints, Hermits, Prophets, and Rebels by Heidi Haverkamp. It seems like every time I pick up a study there is some reference to Teresa of Avila's book, The Interior Castle. I know it's a masterpiece which is why I've read it several times over the past 20 years, but I just don't get it. I'm going to try again. On this Ash Wednesday, the author suggests drawing our interior castle. Here's my attempt.

Maybe I chose this book because solitude is my happy place. It fits my introverted (selfish?) idea of a good day spent alone eating popcorn and reading a book after a nice long walk on the trail. I think the author gets this because we share a fantasy of living alone in a little house. Even as a child, my friend Kim had a playhouse in her back yard that I wanted to move into. It was the mother of all playhouses, with steps leading up to a tiny porch and real windows that opened, but still. The author, (can I just call her Heidi?) points out that that scripture doesn't generally encourage solitude. We're reminded that it's warmer in the bed with two people (Eccl 4:10-11) and that living alone is self-indulgent and lacking in sound judgement (Prov. 18:1), but solitude has its place. If I thought this was going to be easy, I should have read a little further to see that Heidi recommends fasting and almsgiving, too. I tried to fast from last night's supper until tonight's, but a friend surprised me at a campus event with Valentine cookies, and I'm pretty sure that Jesus said that the one rule of fasting is to not be a jerk about it. I don't know if I was really thinking about Jesus, but I decided to be gracious and accept the cookie. It was delicious.

Conversations with the Future -- 1

Millennials have officially overtaken Baby Boomers as America's largest living generation. What a relief. Maybe there is still time to salvage America. My generation had it all. We were too young for Viet Nam and too old for the Gulf Wars. We had cheap health insurance, safe housing, fully funded Social Security, and 70s rock music. Education was so affordable that "working your way through college" meant getting a part time minimum wage job and graduating debt free. So did we climb up on the shoulders of these giant advantages and make the world a better place? Oh, heavens no. We built big houses, filled them with trinkets, and sat around in our big hair staring at TV all day and night. Our response to lingering Civil Rights issues was flight to the suburbs or if our town was too small to have suburbs then we founded small Christian academies for all our educational needs. We said "separate, but equal" like we meant it. We turned church into belief clubs that promised insurance against unpleasant eternal consequences. Somehow this all seemed to make sense at the time, then one day our millennial children looked at us and cried bullshit. We were stunned. They said that black, brown, and mixed people were people. They said that life would go on if gay people married the ones they loved. They snapped a picture of our heirlooms with their cell phones and said no thanks when we tried to pass down our trinkets. They moved into tiny houses. And they left church in droves.

I think they may be on to something.

I'm fortunate to spend much of my time on a college campus. It's like watching the future walk around with a backpack and an energy drink. Hopefully my sphere of influence isn't completely eclipsed, but it's their turn. And I'm glad. I see good things ahead. Lord knows we set the bar awfully low, but they don't even seem to be especially angry about it. They have some interesting things to say, and I'm going to listen.

Peacock Theology from Pope Francis

It seems that Pope Francis’ question, “Who am I to judge?” attracted answers from everyone with access to the internet. Now, I’m as smitten with this humble pontiff as a Southern Baptist girl can be, and I could not be more charmed with the world’s response to his embodiment of Christianity. I’m pretty sure he was responding to a specific question about gay priests, but somehow the idea has taken hold that maybe being judgmental isn’t a hallmark of the followers of Jesus after all. Glory, hallelujah!

The Hebrew Bible tells us that God’s people were originally ruled by judges, but being envious of the nations with kings, they wanted one of their own. The prophets tried to tell them that this was not a good idea, but if we learn anything from the Bible it’s that people never listen to the prophets. If you think they were foolish to envy being under the thumb of a monarch, then you must be of the 11 people in the United States who did not get up in the pre-dawn hours to watch Will & Kate’s vows --- a phenomena made even more amusing by the fact that the USA exists because people were sick of their king. Reading I & II Kings reveals some Israelites who got pretty fed up with theirs too.

Judging others is not necessarily a bad thing. I remember being in an adult Sunday School class when the “Who am I to judge?” topic came up. Considering that one member of the class was a federal judge, it was obvious that some people are qualified and even required to judge others. Sometimes we appreciate this, and sometimes it knocks the luster off our affection. I was a fan of both Steven Tyler and Martha Stewart until they entered the reality show realm-- he as a judge and she as a subject to a ridiculous judge with a hideous comb over.  It just hasn’t been the same with us since.

I’m a study in dissonance when it comes to judging and being judged.  No skill is more easily mastered than the ability to judge the flaws of others. Not only is this skill a delight to practice, it has the added bonus of confirming my own vanity. But I seldom welcome criticism directed at me, not even the constructive kind ---especially not the constructive kind. It’s a tricky subject to address because warning people about being judgmental can come off sounding very judgmental. Take it from the Pope, “the reality of vanity is this: Look at the peacock; it’s beautiful if you look at it from the front, 

but if you look at it from behind you discover the truth. 

Whoever gives in to such self-absorbed vanity has huge misery hiding inside them.” 

Lost Things

Why does finding something that was lost feel so much better than not losing it?

Everyone knows the instant blast of happiness when lost keys show up. My sister in law sent a massive group text with a photo of her lost eyeglasses that she found in her dishwasher. She proclaimed them not just found, but clean! Luke’s gospel devotes chapter 15 to the joy of finding lost things. If there are any universal human traits, this might be one of them.

My most recent lost thing was a snap-on accessory for my shoes. I looked down and saw that one foot looked pretty snazzy, while the other had a sad empty snap where a rosette should have been. It was the end of a day in which I had walked all over my three story building at work. I was retracing my steps sure that any other finder of my shoe-completing treasure would toss it in the trash as an unidentifiable bauble. I had no luck, but I did explain the situation to a member of our housekeeping staff who noticed my search and rescue behavior and asked if she could be of help. A couple of weeks later, I received a call that someone had left something for me in the office. See the photo, and imagine my delight.

If my lost accessory is a present day comparison to Luke’s lost coin, then his lost sheep would be the modern lost pet. Anyone who has ever had a dog or cat go AWOL knows the meaning of anguish. This feeling is so prevalent in our culture that AT&T used it in a 30 second commercial that has only three spoken words, none of which refer to the product being advertised.  It’s a shameless marketing play on emotion, but it chokes me up every time. Grab a tissue and watch it now.

Now, wouldn’t it have been better if Sarah hadn’t gotten lost in the first place? Of course it would, but even the joy of having a sweet dog at home is dwarfed by the joy of finding that sweet dog when she is lost.

Luke completes the trilogy that begins with lost things and lost animals with Jesus’ parable of the lost son known by everyone as the prodigal.  I love sassy shoes and sweet dogs, but the love-o-meter jumps several orders of magnitude when my children are added to the mix.  If there is one story that summarizes the entire Bible, it is this story of the joy of redemption when a precious lost son is found. It’s almost like we’re born knowing this truth. Among the first games children enjoy are peek-a-boo and hide and seek.  The fun of Easter egg hunts and scavenger hunts is what makes us vulnerable for snipe hunts during those awkward adolescent years. People love to find lost things. It may be a coincidence, or it may be God’s message that there is grace for us always, like Sarah, lost or found.

Vandalizing Vandalism

I've always had a particular aversion to vandalism. Unlike thievery or speeding or even killing someone who "needs killing", vandalism has no obvious tangible benefit. I suppose the release of rage is a possible motive, or maybe it's the thought of hurting people by defacing their possessions. It just seems to me like there are more efficient ways of doing either of those things that don't involve the destruction of innocent stuff. So that's where I am on that. But then one day I was on the Ladiga Trail and noticed a small metal plaque attached to a bench. Thinking it was some kind of memorial I stopped to read it. But lo! Someone had taken the time to engrave a paragraph of rant about the liberal leanings of American media and attach it to a wooden bench placed along a wooded trail for purposes of rest and reflection. Yes, I said engrave. How far into the woods does one have to travel to escape the perceived persecution of right wingers? (I know, I know. Halfway. Then one is traveling out of the woods.) After an exasperated sigh and a dramatic eye roll, I decided to pry off the plaque and deposit it in the nearest trash can. Since I don't stroll the trail with a wide selection of tools and because that plaque was glued on with some seriously strong adhesive, I had to resort to plan B --- find a sharp rock and scratch out the engraved words. So I did. All except for the words "Christmas Eve" which I deemed inoffensive to pretty much everyone. Also, if the perp ever returned it would be obvious that the scratches were intentional. Afterwards I realized that I had vandalized the plaque and wondered if vandalizing vandalism is like a double negative that becomes positive or if it's just piling on. Also, who is crazier, the primary vandal or the secondary?

Who I Am and Why I'm Here

The Daily Post

The following paragraph is my original introduction to my blog...

"One of my favorite quotes from my grandfather is, "I'm going to have to study on that." He was a man who fixed things. Cars, toys, household items --- anything that had the ability to break. Occasionally he would be temporarily stumped by a situation, but giving up was a last resort. He would "study on" the problem and figure something out. He was also inclined to favor the rapid solution over the elegant one. He was not a detail person. Lack of time and materials led to some memorable creative solutions. Like the time he made a rack for our firewood. When the drilled holes didn't quite match up, he bent the bolts to fit. It seemed odd that the bolts and holes were labeled as pairs until it was time to assemble the rack. And when we paid our final respects, laughter joined our tears when we noticed that he had fixed the loose button on his good navy suit with kelly green thread. Hey, it worked. I've been fortunate to be able to make "study" the central part of the first half century of my life. From my days on the Sunday School Cradle Roll of Wylam Baptist Church to my career as a math professor, I get the opportunity to read, study, teach and learn something almost every day. What a gift! This blog is my attempt to add writing to the list. It begins with the 2011 season of Lent, and then afterwards, well, I'm going to have to study on that."

My name is Case and I like to study, so Case Studies seemed like an appropriate name for my blog. It's public instead of private because I like to hear different viewpoints and listen to other people's stories. I don't expect to draw a large audience, but I do hope to find some kindred spirits who know how to spin a yarn. 

Digging Up Your Digs

Today's daily prompt is called Digging Up Your Digs and it asks;

500 years from now, an archaeologist accidentally stumbles on the ruins of your home, long buried underground. What will she learn about early-21st-century humans by going through (what remains of) your stuff?

I haunt estate sales like an archaeologist on the down low. Why do people keep the things they do? I find the question endlessly fascinating. At one sale, there were thousands of margarine and Cool Whip containers. I imagined the now deceased lady as one who hated to waste things and who often cooked for friends and sent them home with plastic containers full of leftovers for the next day's lunch. Even though that's an image that pretty much describes me too, I still went home and tossed all my saved margarine and Cool Whip containers into the recycle bin. For some reason it seemed sad. Maybe it hinted to me that one day I either wouldn't be able to cook for friends or wouldn't have friends for which to cook and would die with thousands of would-be leftover containers. So, whatever is found in my stuff 500 years from now, it won't be margarine or Cool Whip containers!

So what will it be? Pots and pans and fragments of dishes...turquoise jewelry....mah jongg tiles....baseballs....calculators....tools for straightening hair.....bicycles...and images of birds and nests. The obvious solution is that I am a curly haired math teacher who is married to a baseball coach, likes to play games and ride a bicycle, and gets inspiration from the life that springs forth from a bird's nest. But it might be just as logical to the future archaeologist that she has found a birdwatching gypsy fortune teller accountant circus performer chef who juggles while riding a bicycle.

Truth & Facts

The following is a Q&A from my weekly contemplative theology group. The Q is from Aaron Garrett to the entire group, and this is my A.

How factually accurate do you believe the Bible is? How much does factual accuracy matter to you? Are there any parts that, if they weren't factually accurate, would be debilitating for your faith? Is it possible to be a Christian without believing in the inerrancy of the Bible? What about just the inerrancy of the gospels? What about just the inerrancy of the crucifixion/resurrection? How much can be subtracted while still remaining a Christian in your estimation of what that means?

Confusing truth and fact is a common misconception of some who hold the Bible in high regard. Subjecting mystery to rationalism has led to a bizarre understanding of the gospel not unlike that of the Queen in Wonderland who at times could believe as many as six impossible things before breakfast.  The scripture inerrancy yardstick for faith has been one of the most divisive concepts of the past decades. In fact, when the word “inerrancy” pops up in discussion, it generally means that an “us” or “them” designation is on its way.

So, to begin by addressing the last question first, we might ask… Subtracted from what? There are different Christian Bibles for Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, Ethiopic, Syriac, and Samaritan Churches. There is no universally agreed upon canon. But hair-splitting aside, I think nothing should be subtracted. The whole confusing conglomeration of God’s interaction with humanity has value for revealing God’s nature to us. I personally believe that Biblical information in presented through a mix of literary devices used in some unknown proportion and I’m not particularly bothered by which truths are literally factual. Was the prodigal son a real guy? Was Jonah swallowed by a real fish?  The truths remain the same either way.  The Orthodox consider scripture as “divinely inspired and humanly expressed” and do not take literally any reference to God as angry, jealous, or repentant. St. Issac the Syrian wrote,

“Just because the terms wrath, anger, hatred and the rest are used of the Creator in the Bible, we should not imagine that He actually does anything in anger, hatred, or zeal. Many figurative terms are used of God in the Scriptures, terms which are far removed from His true nature.”

Some stories just can’t be told with facts. As Will Bloom describes his father in Big Fish, “In telling the story of my father's life, it's impossible to separate fact from fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn't always make sense and most of it never happened... but that's what kind of story this is.”

I believe that there is a spiritual reality that supercedes the reality that we know.  Just like Einstein’s physical theory includes and adds to Newton’s, there is spiritual truth that includes and expands upon what we can see and know.  Unfortunately, we generally only think in the context of what we can see and know.  But by his very nature, God is He-who-can’t-be-known and so the Bible is an attempt to express the Inexpressible.  For the sake of argument, say God did take the initiative to reveal himself to us. What if we experienced the impossible? How could that be communicated? Could we write it down in a book or a poem or sing it or tell it through a symphony or a painting? If not, why have people been trying to do that for as long as we have records of people trying to do anything?  I believe that God reveals spiritual truth to us --- sometimes when we’re seeking it and sometimes when we least expect it --- and it’s not necessarily a simple matter of relaying the information. 

The New Testament accounts of the Resurrection seem to indicate an event, not a parable, but the details are far from consistent. Jesus is alive and Rome’s military representatives are “like dead men.” There were anomalies in the natural world --- darkness from noon to 3 pm and earthquakes.  Graves opened up and dead people walked out and visited people in town. The temple curtain ripped itself in two.  From Roman soldiers to some peasant who got to talk to a dead relative, there was a new, updated version of reality.  God revealed himself to people in a way that they could understand but had trouble explaining. Matthew 28:17 says of the 11 remaining disciples, “When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted.” Doubted? Even as they were looking at him?  The Biblical record of God’s earthly interventions culminates in the Resurrection, and in my opinion, there is no version of Christianity that makes sense without it. I think the gospels also clearly indicate that it wasn’t just the people who had believed all the correct facts who were impacted by an encounter with God. Indeed, there appears to have been no effort at all put into making the facts line up.

The Orthodox Church perspective is that the spiritual truth of the Bible is to be found in its non-literal meaning. The crucifixion and resurrection are central to the church with 7 weeks of Lent and 40 days of Pascha (Easter), but I’ve never heard the question, “How much of this literally happened in a way that can fit into human reason?”  But that’s not to say that they don’t have a lot to say about the resurrection. There are comparisons with Genesis (tree of life/cross with paradise lost/gained,  the garden setting, rib/pierced side, etc.) and other Old Testament passages to explain redemption and a multitude of other observances surrounding the gospel accounts, but setting down a literal timeline or fact list is not emphasized.  The same reasoning applies to exactly how Christ’s death saved us.  

“The question isn’t whether Christ’s death was a ransom to the devil or a sacrifice to the Father. Christ did not die on the Cross to “pay off” the evil one, or to quiet the Father’s rage. The sacrifice was for our sake and as an offering for our sins. We must not go any further than this. We cannot know how Christ’s death grants us communion with God. We do not need to know. But one thing is certain. God’s love, not legal negotiations, has saved us.” (Anthony Coniaris)

The words we read in the Bible are not lifeless rules and interesting stories, but insights into a world beyond expression. We are to value both the divine aspect and the human element in Scripture. So, in response to the original questions, inerrancy or factual accuracy matters little to me if “factual” is defined as being verifiable by human reasoning. In a larger sense, inerrancy defined this way would represent not a condition for, but a detriment to spiritual truth.  There is no fact that we have to believe to be a Christian, and there is unlimited truth that we can receive through God’s grace. 

Forgiveness and Holy Icons

This is the third year that I've participated in Lent with St. Luke's Orthodox Church, but the first year that I've attended the Sunday services. The services during the week are beautiful, but Sundays are the deal. The Sunday before Lent begins on Monday is Forgiveness Day, and each person present asks everyone else for forgiveness even if the people are speaking to each other for the very first time. I've enjoyed all the aspects of worship in the Orthodox church that are new to me -- incense, candles, icons, chants --- but for some reason I froze to the spot instead of taking my place in the circle of forgiveness. Everyone else asked me for forgiveness, but I stood there mute. Why did I do that? The last person who asked my forgiveness whispered, "I'm new to this too" so I guess it was blatantly obvious that I was a fish out of water. I love the idea of starting Lent with a spirit of humility and realizing that we often do wrong people that we don't even know. Maybe next year I'll get over my paralysis. The first Sunday of Lent commemorates the Triumph of Orthodoxy and celebrates a church council decision from 843 A.D. that settled a century long dispute over whether it was ok to have icons in church. Oddly enough, the icons were more offensive to the local Muslims than the other Christians so modern day churches that forbid icons are following an Islamic tradition. Anyway, the service ends with an actual parade around the church with members carrying icons to honor the ancient Christians who joyfully carried the icons back into their church. St. Luke's members had extras so that no one had to walk around empty handed, but had I known, I could have brought my own. A longtime Baptist friend gave me one titled "the handmaidens of the Lord" years before I became interested in Orthodoxy. How strange.