December 8, 2012 by Michael

10 Reasons Why This Picture Pleases Me

Me & Bryce After Taize

Jon Roy commented on my wall that I must have been pleased by this picture. I replied that he—a soon to be dad—would soon know the pleasures of which he speaks. Then I figured it worthy of further reflection. So here are ten reasons why this photo pleases me.

The person taking the picture was Bryce’s pastor. David had taken Bryce and Eliot up to the altar when we arrived, oriented them to the grand space, pointed out things, said things I couldn’t hear. It was splendid to watch him being a father and pastor in that moment.
Bryce got to sing. It was melodious even if his voice was creating a song different from the one on the page. He’s not reading music yet, but he’s definitely making his own.
Bryce sat and played and sang and worshiped with his friend and cousin. When we met for arepas that evening, before worship, the boys sang gleefully (or yelled), their characteristic greeting. They’re friendship was on display and they got to participate in Taize together.
We worshiped as a family. For different reasons, I work in a different congregation than the one my family worships in. It’s always always always a blessing to sit next to Dawn and Bryce, with all that it brings, and respond to God.
Being there was an education. We had seen one of my greatest teachers, Dr. Scottie May, who taught me the rudiments of what it means to form children faithfully. Seeing her, and introducing her to my son for the first time, was a gift on many levels.
We were with friends. To speak of the Swansons as friends is a poor statement because it hardly reflects the deep reality of who they are. We are relatives in the best sense; we’ve chosen to steadily cultivate an extended family with those good people for more than a dozen years. I cannot say that about most people in my life.
We had done something twelve times. Maggie suggested last December that we attend to our joint relationship by getting together at least monthly, eating, talking, and playing, and the habit stuck. We celebrated last night, against our nutty schedules, and decided that what we had done, in our homes and in other places was worth attempting again.
No one was burned. We lit candles together, us and our children, along with hundreds of others, and no one was hurt. We lifted them together, singing about Christ the Light of the World. Then we went in straight lines to dig our candles in pots of sand around a cross and icons of Jesus. We almost set a woman’s butt on fire as we walked to the altar, but we made it without incident.
Bryce—and Eliot—had spent 10 minutes in silence during Taize. This is not something two and a half year olds and three and half year olds do as a matter of habit. It was an accomplishment in itself. But it also felt very much like the point of it all; there are reasons to close up, sit on a cold marble floor, and say nothing.
Walking Bryce to the altar was metaphorical. The image and gesture of taking him, with our candles, and kneeling before the altar was memorable. It was one of the moments where, upon reflection, I felt like I had done my duty as his father: ushering him to an ineffable something and letting him respond with awe and blazing eyes.
Eliot & Bryce after Taize

December 8, 2012 by Michael

“Which Led To His Death”

I’m almost finished reading James Cone’s The Cross And The Lynching Tree. The book is an insightful and personal addition to the powerful language that I’ve read from Professor Cone in the past.

In the book he turns his critical and historical powers as a premier theologian to the subject of Jesus’s crucifixion and the lynching of black people in the United States of America. Never good at subtlety, his remarks about the perplexity of being Christian, or a Christian nation, while engaging in the systematic and, worse, spontaneous murder of black people throughout history is searing and probing and heavy. He nods to current forms of lynching, though he doesn’t dwell with them. Like backgrounds in a memorable scene, they are there even if they aren’t central.

I love what he’s doing in exalting again the place of the crucifixion and its dark woody symbol the cross. He corrals the great artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance and the lyrics of singers like Billie Holiday; he showcases the testimony of Fannie Lou Hamer and reminds us of the massive, prophetic role of Ida B. Wells. He doesn’t flinch when he heralds the primacy of the cross (and not the resurrection per se) in the African American experience in this country. He does it in a way that is refreshing for the truth within it, and there is love springing through it. He says more in the book than I think he does in other places about his personal story, his upbringing in an A.M.E. church, and his worry over the possibility of his father’s death at the hands of whites in Arkansas.

Here is a quote that doesn’t sum up his thought but that does give you a view into the central ministry of Jesus and his cross as Dr. Cone discusses. Every word has meaning:

The gospel of Jesus is not a rational concept to be explained in a theory of salvation, but a story about God’s presence in Jesus’ solidarity with the oppressed, which led to his death on the cross. What is redemptive is the faith that God snatches victory out of defeat, life out of death, and hope out of despair, as revealed in the biblical and black proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection.

There is little more appealing to me right up through here than this kind of stuff. If you want something growth-provoking this Advent–and this is not the most liturgically appropriate meditation, I suppose–find this book and take it slow.

December 3, 2012 by Michael

Dear Dementia

I didn’t believe it was you when I first saw the signs. The missed memories were small, so slight they were unnoticed. I forget. I get agitated. I make mistakes, lose things, get mixed. I was like everyone else who loved: I wanted more.

I began what is still the dismal existence of a loved one struggling with you and your fingers wrapping and stealing things from my father. I started to look at all those yesterdays, fading in my own memory, and I grabbed for them. I called them back the way a grandparent calls for their only child’s offspring when, because of intuition, they know that was the last visit. The rides in my dad’s white van and then the brown van. There was a black van too, I think. I sniffed for the smell of worms and dirt when we went fishing, when I was so small I felt nothing but incompetence because I couldn’t do what my father found so easy. I listened to the sound of his laughter, not just his laughter, but the way it sang like a Delta blues man. I looked at the crinkle that was his smile. I wanted that grin to be mine.

You pulled me from my memories. Reminded me that you hadn’t won yet. That yours was a most sinister work because no one knew, and no one knows, when your job would be done with my dad’s brain and body. You shouted in the tone that was once was my dad’s. It was his voice, and it wasn’t. And the reality of my life—the lives of my brothers, the lives of our aunts and our extended loved ones—is that you and dad are dancing. And his feet are clipping and stumbling under what was once his best song.

You gave him pain and depression at what he can no longer command. You made him mad at everybody and nobody. You snatched his ability to attend to the mundane affairs of bills and greetings and polite conversations. You made him unpredictable so that he couldn’t travel, so that he couldn’t go home and live on his own and be alone.

I hate you. You’ve taken so much and you’re not even finished. You have hardly done to me, to us, what I know you’ve done to others. But know that I’m not alone in seeing your memory-soaked hand clenching and withdrawing from the collective worlds which have been ours. I hear the prayers of my friends in my ears.

Roland and the way his hand pressed into my shoulder just yesterday, the words he prayed, the faith he had for me, even though today’s conversation with dad tried hard to erase my faith and my friend’s. Libby and her careful way of saying just enough to express a deep understanding, a selective and prophetic care, and how she brings a prayerfulness whenever she approaches. Lisa’s powerful prayers that the ground I’m on is sure and steady and the way she keeps praying, the mirror she is to people I see and don’t see. Lauren’s steady gaze when she asks me respectfully and compassionately how I’m really doing and dealing with the junk you’ve thrown at us. Byron and his admonition to take care of myself, to do what I need, to care for me so that I’m not surprised by my own breaks and broken places. Lucy and the regular ways she brings me before the Presence, keeps me there, helps me see me and see truth and prepare to live from more than pain but love. Winston, his faithfulness and his ability, through history, presentness, and vision for what’s to come, and how he keeps at the work of partnering with God to help make me good through the terror of unknown trials related to you.

Your hand is hard. But I do not envy you. Because you, partner of all that is sinful, will have a lot of giving to do. Diseases like you must hold the things you take and you must return them. So, my faith, sometimes thin as cracking leaves at autumn’s end, feels tiny. And even if it disappears to an invisible quality, it will not leave. It will not depart. You cannot take it from me. You cannot steal it the way you have my father’s best qualities. You cannot leave in faith’s place depression and sadness the way my father struggles now, even without the words to give to his interiority. I’m looking at the collective faith of an increasing cloud of witnesses, and while your reach is long, it cannot capture all my friend’s strengths. There are some things you cannot do.

November 21, 2012 by Michael

A Prayer In Anticipation of A Friend’s Son

I offer this prayer today as we await and expect the arrival of Joseph Byron Durham, III:

Dear God,

Grant Byron the steady gaze to see everything good thing you do today. Make him able to live fully, to feel fully, from joy to fear to awe to surprise to gladness to love. May he feel everything between these and other stirring movements. Give him the ability to help Karen and grant that he might be filled with every necessary gift for all that awaits. Help him listen and act with grace and tenderness and with more love than his best actions before today. Give him gifts for this day and for each day following. Walk out the paths before him, and when he looks ahead, let him see your footprints in every possible direction. Shine light in dark places for the rest of his life because his life is different after Joe comes. It is already different with the baby on the other side of all that skin and muscle and warmth, waiting to come down through all those contractions. Hover over Byron so that he might sense you in places that he hasn’t. Give him witnesses of your abiding, unconditional love. Convince him again and again that what he does matters greatly but that your love comes despite his best or his worst.

For Karen, give her a full sense of your nearness. Keep company with her and grant that she may feel closer to you—and not only to her son or her husband—than she ever has. Pull her into the experience of labor. Shower her with good words and impressions and nudges and pictures as she does what is the tough work of receiving this next joyous gift from you. Sprinkle her throughout this day with more than hope for the good future you’ve assured. Help her to receive every help and gesture as from your hand. Give her strong gratitude. Give her ever stronger peace that is unshakable. Through the movements of this day, give her vision for all the tomorrows you’ve prepared for her, for them. Inspire her. Build in her increasing courage. May her breaths be prayers. Each one a tiny theophany. Grant her the splendid and sparkling blessing of closeness with you, her God and her Rock. May she and Byron be strength for one another. May Karen get all the grace she needs for every next step.

Will you bless Joe with all the memories necessary to live the rest of his life with and for you? Collect in his ears, his heart, and his spirit, the voice of your spirit, the abiding comfort of your company, and the life that always comes from you. Send him into this side of life with increasing joy and purpose, both coming from you. You have counted his days before this day. May even he come knowing that in unsearchable, deep ways. Lay within his belly an appetite for you and your things. Lift his vision to you, even as he looks through the good models of his parents and his family and his friends. May he know that his life has been surrounded by words spoken in your ears about him. May he never feel alone or unloved or unwanted. Grant that he will accept all the love you’ve provided. May he follow the instructions you give, through his parents and through every other good gift that comes from you. Protect him from the plans of all his enemies. Make them your enemies because you win all your battles. Kiss him righteousness and bravery and set his face in the direction of fruitfulness. Be his present and his future.

In Christ’s name,

Amen.

November 21, 2012 by Michael

A Prayer In Anticipation of A Friend’s Son

I offer this prayer today as we await and expect the arrival of Joseph Byron Durham, III:

Dear God,

In Christ’s name,

Amen.

November 20, 2012 by Michael

Denzel Washington’s Preaching A Sermon Worth Hearing

The other week my wife’s supervisor, Eva, told me that I should see Flight. Knowing I am a pastor, she said it’d be good for me to see it. So I saw it. It was a chunk of Sabbath day, right before I picked up Dawn and Bryce from work.

I usually spend those weekly observances, looking for ways to locate the Source of my work so that when I reengage, I have something to bring. That means, on Mondays, I’m looking for art exhibits, photography, film, and other evocative creations to turn me toward the Creator. I’m looking and listening to do less and see more.

My thanks to Eva because her suggestion became part of Monday’s celebration for me when I saw Flight. Each actor’s performance, the story itself, and the images throughout the movie combined to turn my mental and spiritual wheels. There was a clear sense of the Divine for me, something that, for some reason, is simpler when I’m around aircraft. Perhaps it’s the height or the upward motion. Perhaps it’s those early Sunday school lessons returning to convince me that heaven relates to that vertical movement pulling us toward the heavenly host. The movie took me in, and I boarded the experience hoping to enjoy the story, to see something provocative enough to make me think harder about substance abuse and redemption.

The cockpit on the screen made me nervous. The plane was aged and I thought back to my flight class at U of I, when I was in that simulator and, then, when I was behind a Cessna 172, listening to the air traffic controller run through directions too fast to understand. I appreciated the story from the beginning because I had a sliver of experience pushing throttle and pressing a rudder pedal. I have also experienced parts of the emotional context of film, knowing a little about substance abuse in the lives of people in my life.

Like every one of “Denzel Washington’s” films (what does it say that we pay attention to the main character when we write these pieces?), I was enriched for having watched a movie. Me and Dawn never meet disappointment when watching his films. This one left me just off enough to be empathetic, to reconnect with struggles and pains that are commonplace, connections necessary for my work and my life.

Then, today, I read this review at Religion Dispatch. Read it if you’ve seen the film and are considering a response intersecting with theology, particularly relative to Pentecostalism. Maybe you were put off by the explicitly theological and biblical images. Maybe the covert messages bordered too close to overt for you. This will give you another perspective.

The article weaves in a part of Denzel Washington’s story, something I did not know: He received a prophecy as a young actor where the person told him he would preach to millions. The article runs through a quick history of Brother Washington’s work in order to say, I think with the actor, that his career is the fulfillment of prophecy. The film is explicit, in many ways. There’s nothing you haven’t seen if you’ve watched New Jack City or Mo Betta Blues or if you’ve looked in the mirror every now and then. But the material is explicit.

It’s always a stretch to call things so material and carnal and touchable divine. Smarter people can articulate where that bold disconnect started and what maintains it. It’s sad that the sexual, the physical, the ordinary, bodily stuff of skin and beauty and hair and proclivities have such a hard time turning us back to the creative Artist behind us. I’ve known many believing people who press hard to push the physical from the divine, as if Jesus did not honor the material when he took flesh. Brother Washington’s work is profane in that sense. I imagine it’s unspeakable for some of my mentors in the faith to accept a claim that the moving picture that is Flight could spur a viewer God-ward. Regardless of Denzel Washington’s pronounced and faithful Christian experience in a pentecostal church. Regardless of the promoted role of the body, the emotions, and the mind and what those three combine to form in us.

Still, in a way, his profane language (and behavior) in this film is “preaching to the masses.” And considering the body of his work, I’d say that the man not only has an excellent last name, but he has a powerful way of proclaiming truths in accessible, jarring, and captivating ways. Of course, it’s even more interesting to learn that all of this just may be a fulfillment of words spoken at an earlier time in his ears.

I’d love to know what you think, if you’ve seen the film or if you read the RD post.

November 14, 2012 by Michael

Jumping In Sin & Looking For Grace That’s Gone

Bruce Robertson sent me something on Facebook that, coupled with the unrelenting reports about David Petraeus, got me thinking specifically about leaders who fall in and around the Christian community. The post pushed a basic question: What’s the role of that community to those leaders who fall?

These sentences provide a sense of the post:

Sadly, in many cases, when it comes to restoring a fallen leader, the offender’s depiction of evangelical denominational or church discipline, feels more like John 19 where the Jewish leaders request for all the men next to Jesus on the cross to “have the legs broken [as well].” This is a far different response than Jesus’, saying to the woman caught in adultery, “Neither do I condemn you, go and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11).

The result of this law-driven approach to sin is not pretty. Because of this, the evangelical culture dictates that when our worse moments befall us, we must hide. There is a real doubt that we will be lead home safely through our struggle.

I come back to this concern every year or so. Unfortunately the experiences of leaders keep the question before us. How do we respond as a Christian community when leaders in that community fail? Is there a difference between the church’s response to a leader who fails and to a non-leader who does? I keep thinking that there is a clear answer in the scriptures about this, but there isn’t. To be clear, this is because when scripture handles the matter of sin and sins and sinning, it doesn’t split the responses to those who are in leadership roles from those who are not leaders. If anything, there is a pervasive sense that every reader who takes up the dangerous documents of our scriptures is in for it, is a sinner, and is eligible for the free, audacious, and incredible gift of grace and all that comes with it.

There are mentions of how to handle people who have sinned, but those instances are not focused on leaders; they’re open for everyone. There is a clear implication that sins should be addressed, faced, confessed, repented of, and turned away from. There is a reasonable expectation within the scriptures that the consequences of sins live well beyond the times of confession and repentance–again, for leaders like Moses and for hardly named people in crowds. There is also a long theme of forgiveness, and that theme would certainly include the leaders and the non-leaders within the church.

But it fascinates me that people who are led often require that leaders be exploited and punished, even when those leaders have spent themselves 1) protecting those they lead from such ungracious behavior and 2) promoting a Person who gives grace to the sinner. There is this weird and intense curiosity with a leader’s sins, like in Petraeus’s case or in the last preacher to fall, and this continual pressing into the details of what happened, right before there is a slicing off of any chance that leader would have to rejoin the community. There’s an insightful psychological treatment in that, one I can’t give, but it has to do with pedestalizing people in positions a) they don’t belong in, b) we’ll never really get into ourselves, and c) which are properly designed for the Divine.

Sometimes I think we should describe the Church as place where people jump in sin, where leaders never ever ever get up to speak or preach or inspire without the strings of sin attached to us. Sometimes I think that we should wear signs that say “Fire me now because while I didn’t do the big three or the big five or the big seven, I definitely sinned at least sixteen times before I stood up in front of you.” At least it would open a conversation about sin and grace and leadership and restoring everyone to relationship with God.

Sometimes I wonder if churches and faith communities are really communities of grace. When the people who lead them, be they paid staff or not, cannot truly receive “grace to help” in our times of need, then what’s happening in our gatherings may not be graceful at all. Sure, that doesn’t mean that anything goes. It’s never meant that. To think that is to read a different Book. Indeed a place of grace is a place with clear expectations about the gift offered. But would you agree that we are pushed to look for grace and to tell the truth when we don’t find it?

November 1, 2012 by Michael

Two Questions From the Weekend, pt 2

As I mentioned in my last post, I had a great time leading a retreat the other day with Highrock Covenant Church in Arlington, Massachusetts. Before the Saturday retreat, I met for dinner with the two leaders helping me prepare for the day. Michelle and Amy treated me to a tasty meal at a new favorite place, Not Your Average Joes. Incidentally if I’m ever in Boston and you’re there too, you can take me there for a meal. Note that I may come with family.

During our conversation, Michelle asked me two questions. Her first was why do you lead these retreats, and I thought out loud about that in my last post. In this post, I’m rambling about her second question. The context of our retreat didn’t really relate to her second question since it was a broader, bigger question. She asked, what is your dream?

Some kind of way I was expected to answer first. So I tilted my head up and thought about the largeness of the matter. Michelle caught my thought as if it were a tossed ball and said she knew it could be answered in many ways. I knew exactly what I wanted to say. Only later, when she and Amy answered themselves, did I think I miscalculated.

Their answers would hone in on particular things they wanted to do, while mine focused on the broader answer right before that, what I wanted to be. I told them that I wanted to be a faithful pastor while being a good writer. My dream is to serve the congregation in front of me, people I know, and to serve the reader I would probably never meet. That has become a persistent abiding dream. It’s a part of the play that I think of when I close my eyes. Those two worlds combined serve as the stage on which my life is.

I’m thinking about words all the time. I’m listening to the stories of others, making sense of them, or trying to. In one role I’m sharing an old story, turning it over, researching its rudiments and investigating the world from which it was written. I’m trying to interpret that story for my life and community.

In the other role, I’m wondering through the creative process and attempting to write the story in my ear, the story in front of me, the one that, unlike the old story, resists revision right now. It’s the story I’m working over, thinking about, and going back to once I’m done writing this post.

I want to do well at both. I’m not the type to attempt something and quit. I’m destined to send myself nuts, but it’s the only route I know. I blame it on my birth order. At least today. But these two parts of me, these untraceable pieces of my character, compose my dream.

I appreciate Michelle’s question. I wonder how you would answer.

October 30, 2012 by Michael

Two Questions From the Weekend, pt 1

I was in Boston for the weekend to lead a retreat with new friends at Highrock Covenant Church. Our denomination’s department of Christian Formation has facilitators, me included, who are dispatched to facilitate these invitations to prayer when local churches request them. I’ve done a half dozen of these retreats in the last years, and Saturday was my latest opportunity.

Friday evening I enjoyed a meal with Michelle Sanchez and Amy Bositis. We talked about the usual things, our geographies, our stories, and how we came to the places we are. We spoke of our families, ministries, and, of course, we eventually got to the matter of last minute details for Saturday’s retreat.

Somewhere in the midst of eating, Michelle said she had two favorite questions she wanted to raise. Her first question is the one I want to write about today. Her second question comes in the next post. They are questions worth answering, considering, and answering again. They are questions worth keeping. The first one: why do you lead these retreats?

I heard the obvious in her question. She was planning to introduce me in the morning to a group from her church, and she wanted what wasn’t in my brief bio. But I also heard a more general, penetrating question: why do you do what you do? Have you thought lately about that question? Why do you do what you do? Why do you spend the time you do where you are?

It would help to know that the particular retreat we participated in is an assortment of prayer practices paired with various passages from the Bible. I answered Michelle’s question simply. I told her that I get to do, in these retreats, two of the most essential pastoral acts, and since I’m a pastor, the retreats are perfect opportunities for me to do two things I love: I get to teach people other ways to pray, and I get to put people before the scriptures.

So I get in planes or in rental cars and arrive at new places, meet new people, and wade through awkward or familiar ways to pray. There is silence and music. There is usually chocolate, a lot of reading, and, this time, there was bell-ringing. There was my getting lost because Boston’s streets are notorious for their signage. Several participants told me, in other words, either you know your way or you don’t. There were sweet sisters in religious life. There was a visit to a friend’s new church.

But Michelle’s question sparked the weekend. Before the questions and the answers and the warm greetings of members from her church. Before the smiling and hand-shaking with nuns so warm it made me think of fresh bread and a crackling fire. Before the Sunday night return flight and right prior to Sandy’s arrival. Sitting at the table, with a tasty dish of pecan-crusted chicken, roasted sweet potatoes, and green beans, Michelle anchored me into my work.

She helped me remember why I did my work. And I thought about how good that felt, because there are things about work that aren’t always good or enjoyable. There are people I know who grieve their work, people I know who don’t have the work they want or any work at all. There I was getting to enjoy the consideration, getting to look forward to tomorrow, getting to embody the connected pieces of my vocation.

And like the pecan chicken and the tomato basil soup before it, the day ahead would be splendid. The weather would be glorious for it, even if mornings following would bring winds so strong they’d make children shudder. Leaves would fall easily to the ground in many gardens. Sun rays would stretch across our heads and around the chapel like our favorite music. And I would enjoy every moment of it.

Michael Washington

Reflections on the Spiritual Life