What I really learned

Fuller people: this one goes out to you :-)

For the last day of my summer class, Presbyterian Creeds, we had to write a one page reflection paper completing the sentence "The one thing I've learned in this class that will impact my ministry most is..."  In typical me-fashion, I threw my paper together an hour before class, writing something kind of vague about studying the confessions and creeds of the PC(USA) as historical documents.  It wasn't insincere, but it also wasn't really the most important thing I learned, or the thing that will impact my ministry the most.  It was something else entirely.

First, a confession is in order: I came into this experience modeling inappropriately judgmental behavior.  It's no secret that my seminary falls pretty hard on one side of the ideological spectrum.  And while I may be one of the most theologically conservative people at my seminary, in general I fit in fairly well there.  Over the last few years, the environment I've been learning in has pushed my boundaries in really good ways, and I've grown tremendously there. 

All this to say: before this summer class, I prepped myself to go to what is, ideologically speaking, the "other" seminary, and to meet the "other" people who believed "other" things about various issues.  The first day of class, I listened for cues in the language used, watched for body language when certain topics were brought up, and inwardly scoffed at some of my classmates' comments.  Let's face it: I was being snotty.

I learned pretty quickly into that two week course, however, that in my effort to pay attention to what people thought about certain controversies, I was forgetting to pay attention to the people themselves.  And what a shame that would've been if I had never woken up.  Because the people I met in this "other" place were wonderful--they were welcoming, funny, dynamic, intelligent, faithful, and kind.  They showed me that, as God's children, we are all much more deep and complex than the opinion we express on one issue, or our ability (or inability) to support the party line.

So what was the most important thing I learned in this class, really?  The most important thing I learned in this class is that, if I want to live authentically as a child of God in community with my sisters and brothers, I have to get off of my ideological high horse and get to know my sisters and brothers for who they are in Christ before anything else.  And that doesn't mean I can't go to bat for the real issues that are important to me; but I think when we start by understanding who we are as children of God, together, it becomes a little easier to deal with the issues.  It makes us less desperate when we realize our salvation, and our Divine heritage, does not rise and fall with our stance on our modern day controversies.

I saw this sort of interaction modeled on the first day of class when my professor invited her mentor, a former PC(USA) Moderator, to speak to us about one particular issue.  He presented one side of the argument graciously and with a directness I admire.  My professor was honest in saying that she completely disagreed with her mentor--but she listened to him with love in her face, and at the end of the day they went to dinner together.  That, friends, is the sort of relationship which I think will keep this denomination alive.  That is the sort of denomination I am proud to be a part of.

So I owe one big thank you to my classmates at Fuller for waking me up to the biases I didn't even know I have, and reminding me of that one very important lesson: issues are important, but people should always come first.  

Healing

Healing.  It's not a very big word, really, but it carries tremendous weight.  It's also a remarkably unclear word: people alternately use it to express medical cures, internal peace, and even spiritual renewal.  It's a loaded word.  

Interestingly enough, it's a word that's been thrown around almost ad nauseam in my intensive class this summer.  It's never meant in a way that's intentionally upsetting; my professor is a very kind-hearted woman who has seen some incredible things (miraculous, really) done by the power of the Holy Spirit.  She claims to have seen people healed (sometimes instantaneously), both emotionally and physically.  Naturally, she is trying to share her experiences in the name of promoting hope in her students--everything she's shared, I know, comes from a deep place of compassion in her.  But I still cringe every time I hear her utter the word "healing."

I know this radiates out of my own experience.  While my health problems have blessedly melted into the background of my life, I still remember how it felt to have people talking about physical healing in a spiritual context.  It was always really painful to have people equate God's healing power with my physical health, because the reality of the situation is that health still alludes me.  I still have epilepsy.  So what does that mean, when we're dealing with "healing" in the spiritual realm?  Did I not meditate hard enough?  Did I not have enough faith?  Does God not love me enough?

Obviously, I don't think any of the answers to the above question are "yes."  I may still have wayward brainwaves, but I still feel like I've been healed through my faith, and through God as I've seen him expressed in the love of my community.  Healing can be so much more than a cure; I think healing is whatever enables you live with hope beyond your circumstances.

I just wish my professor talked about it that way when she shares testimonies about the healing she's encountered.  Especially because I know everyone in the class with me has been touched, directly or indirectly, by the devastating reality of our mortal bodies.  "Healing," as she talks about it, is not theoretical--it calls to mind specific people, places, grief, and hope in everyone present.  And while I know I have found my own healing, when my professor said today that she thought "Jesus was going to heal someone in our class," it felt like one gigantic carrot hanging in front of my nose, just out of reach.

So next time she brings up healing, I wish she'd talk about it as more than just a cure. I wish she'd honor the complexity, knowing that for as many people are healed by the power of God, many more aren't--and I wish she'd talk more clearly about how that does not represent a spiritual deficit on their part.  "Healing" is a loaded word; I wish she'd use it more carefully.

A heart full of love

What is there to say about these last few weeks?  It's been a roller coaster of experience and emotion.  After the crash of finals came the much needed pause, time for reflection and the opportunity to sink into rest.  I feel peace again.  I'm not speechless anymore.  I'm able to close my eyes when I pray again.

I'm taking a summer class at a seminary that is very different than what I'm used to.  It's not bad, by any means, and while there are some things that startle me, overall I'm enjoying the opportunity to see God through the eyes of this place.  I'm especially thinking more about how, and where, God speaks.  "God is still speaking" may be the mantra of the UCC, but I think this little Presbyterian can claim it, too.  God is still speaking.  And where He speaks is usually surprising.

God spoke to me yesterday through an 86-year-old man, whose hunched, tired body stood in stark contrast to his feisty personality.  This is a man who has 7,700 verses of the bible memorized.  And I really do believe that God spoke to me through him yesterday when he looked me, right in the eye, and with no pre-knowledge of my life or circumstances said "Lindsey, shut the door on your past and open the door on your future.  You're about to give the performance of a lifetime."  

God also encourages in different ways, too.  He spoke to me through the voice of my mother.  Just a few weeks ago I was sitting in an airport feeling broken, discouraged, and I told her with my face buried in my hands that I was having a really hard time believing in myself.  And she said to me, "Lindsey, get on that plane and go home with a heart full of love."  

I feel like I'm in a place of transition in my life--and I feel like it's been a long time coming.  I am shutting the door on certain parts of my past, but am starting to feel brave enough to open the door to my future.  While some people may be fading slowly into the background of my history, others relationships are forming and sustaining me.  And I'm grateful that I've been blessed enough to step forward into all the joys that lie ahead with a heart full of love.

No words

It's the end of the academic year for me.  I am 3/4 done with my seminary career--what a blessing that is.  While some of the nuts and bolts have yet to be fixed firmly in their place, it is with mostly confidence that I say I will graduate next year.  Hallelujah amen!

I haven't written in this blog for awhile not just because I've been busily writing other things that have pesky little deadlines attached, but also because there's been a lot going on outside of school.  It's one of those situations of abandonment, loss, and grief that leaves you with everything to say and nothing to say all at once.

And as those sorts of situations are inclined to be, it's coupled with amazing reminders that I live surrounded by the reality of divine love and radical hope.  I see God in my incredible family, my friends who are stepping up for me despite the myriad of commitments and responsibilities they already carry on their shoulders, and the communities of accountability that challenge me while helping to hold me together.  I am seeing God everywhere these days.

But I don't know what to say to Him.  And that's why I haven't written in awhile.  I feel with keen awareness that God is here, that He is around me, that He loves me, and that he is not letting me go.  But I don't know how to talk to God when I am speechless.  I feel like I'll have a lot to say when the words come back.  

Stay tuned.

Catastrophe

Those of you who know me well know that I am what I call a catastrophic thinker.  Some may call this an understatement, and rather categorize me as an apocalyptic thinker :-)  Either way, this refers to my tendency of conflating situations in my life, for which I can find no immediate solutions, into something irreconcilably dire--as if when I can't think up my own logical solutions, the only options left remaining are life-derailing (or threatening).  Hence, I think catastrophically.

This is not something I like about myself.  While sometimes thinking catastrophically has proved mildly helpful (when smaller "catastrophes" are derailed, for example, because of my hyper-vigilance), in general it is not a good way to live.  It's stressful and time consuming.  And, I don't think catastrophic thinking makes me a good steward of my mind, my passions, or my emotional energy.

I don't know why I sometimes think this way.  Of course, a few professionals have posited their own hypotheses.  Many a well-meaning psychologist has leaned back in their chair, hands clasped over their crossed legs and a self-satisfied grin starting to form on their face, and said, "Well, haven't had you had something catastrophic happen to you?  Like being diagnosed with epilepsy overnight?  Wouldn't that make anyone fear impending disaster?"

Ah, yes--the epilepsy card.  While it is true that being diagnosed with epilepsy at 16, and having that be the first real trauma that interrupted the otherwise idyllic landscape of my childhood, has not helped my catastrophic thinking, per se, it certainly did not cause it.  Any member of my family can tell you that.  I think my catastrophically-wired brain was well at work by the time I was 6, and diagnosed myself with a chronic case of appendicitis.  Or when I saw some lights flashing outside of my window when I was 7, and logically assumed that I would be abducted by aliens sometime that year.  Or when I was 11, and thoroughly convinced myself after going to Scotland that I had been exposed to (and acquired) the bubonic plague.

So I hate to break it to you, my psycho-analytically inclined friends--but I think I was just born this way.  It doesn't mean that I'm not trying to change it--I've gotten much better at checking myself and this pattern of thought these last years especially.  I think it will be essential for me to unlearn this way of thought in order to do the ministry I want to do.

However, I'm not writing this to explain my psyche to you all (far too daunting a task for anyone to take on, frankly :-) ).  I'm writing this to explain that I've seen God, even in my catastrophic thinking.  Call it shameless optimism if you must, but there is a silver lining to the way my brain has been hard-wired.  Because when I think catastrophically, it is one of the few times that I actually reach out for help.  And there are few things more holy, to me, than the experience of being vulnerable before and caught by a community of people who live in love.

You see, there always comes a point where I realize that the resources of my own little brain are simply not enough.  So rather than think myself in circles, there always comes a point where I am able to talk, to reach out, and to pray with those around me.  And God is faithful--there are always people, family, friends, who gently listen to my weary musings and remind me, with grace and assurance, of the breadth of God's imagination.  

This is why the Triune God resonates so deeply with me--the idea that God in Godself exists in community.  And if that so, than I think it necessarily follows that our communities of care and accountability are, truly, holy ground.  They are where we are cared for and caught, and where we also do the work of carrying and sustaining.  Sometimes, I'm grateful for my own level of exasperation with myself and how I think--because it reminds me that I cannot exist on my own.

So I am a catastrophic thinker.  I hope I won't be this way forever.  But I am grateful to be reminded that God calls me not to lean solely on myself, but on the trusted friends and family who exist with me in community.  After all, God does not just live in me--He lives all around me, too.  

In which I brag about my brother

Warning: Love Burst to follow.

I have a wonderful brother.  Like, ridiculously wonderful.  The kind of brother that allowed his boisterous little sister to use him as a jungle gym as a baby, who let me hold low-grade hostage negotiations for the toys of his I stole as a kid, and who told me I looked beautiful before my first dance as a teenager.  That is one cool brother.

But there's something about him I find even cooler.  My brother is the kind of guy who became aware of his white, educated, male privilege at about, I'm guessing, three years old.  And he started his work to dismantle that privilege at about three and a half.  All hyperbole aside, my brother is someone who I see working on the front lines to deconstruct the unjust systems of power which are pervasive in our culture and in our history.  I hope I can be like him in that way.

He can do all that because he's brilliant.  But he can also do that work because he is one of the most sensitive, compassionate people I have ever met--I'm serious when I say that, oftentimes, I think he would be a much better chaplain than me.  He has the brains and the heart to do incredible things in this world, and he already is.  He certainly taught me a lot as a kid--through all the deep theological exploration and discernment I've done in seminary, I'm constantly aware that I am able to employ the the concepts of postmodernism, feminism, deconstruction, and liberation because my brother taught me about them first.

All this to say: I love my brother.  He is one cool guy.

An unexpected hero

I was "that girl" in the airport yesterday.  I blame it on my pastor.  He had lent me a copy of "Shackleton's Antarctic Adventure," a short movie about the explorer Ernest Shackleton and his (to say the least) harrowing 2 year journey to survive disaster after disaster in his failed Trans-Antarctic journey.  Shackleton is a personal hero of my pastor's, and I thought it would be interesting to learn more about him.  Also, I thought, wouldn't that be a great movie to pass the time with while sitting in the San Diego airport?

Wrong.

You see, I wasn't expecting to be as moved as I was.  I also wasn't expecting Shackleton's journey to be as intense as it was.  Nor did I expect it to move me to tears.  Thus, I was that girl sitting in the airport, alternately gasping and sniffling as I watched the short 40 minute film.

My pastor had expressed admiration for Shackleton as a leader, and I have to say Shackleton's leadership is what moved me most profoundly.  As I mentioned before, Shackleton's journey was a failed one--due to various unforeseen disasters, he and his 28 person crew did not succeed in their goal of being the first to  cross the Antarctic continent by foot.  What I found inspiring, though, was Shackleton's willingness as their leader to sacrifice his dream for the sake of human life.  When the situation went horribly awry for reasons beyond their control, Shackleton did not push his crew further into danger for the sake of his dream--he changed his dream to be that of preserving the lives of his crew.  

He also made it fun.  According to the movie, many of the crew reported situations of fun and downright levity initiated by Shackleton in even the most harrowing of circumstances.  Shackleton had a way, apparently, of looking at what seemed and felt like failure in the face and turning that into an opportunity for hope.

I mentioned to someone the other day that I think God is a poet, and our lives are His poetry.  I see reflections of that in my own life, but I also see it in Shackleton's.  I think only a poetic God, a God of supreme artistry, could turn a journey like Shackleton's into what it was.  Shackleton embarked on his journey so that he could set a record--to be the first to cross the uncharted Antarctic continent.  He failed at that goal, but in the end accomplished so much more--after 2 years of being lost in the Antarctic, he and his crew survived.  How's that for a record?

It's fitting that the name of Shackleton's ship was Endurance.  I'm on the brink of becoming a leader myself, and I think one of the calls of that leadership is to endure with people.  It's to value human life in it's infinite artistry and worth more than loftier, abstract goals.  It's to look the disasters of life squarely in the face, and try to make meaning of them without dismissing their significance.  That, for me, is how to hope.