August 21, 2015 by Michael

“Something Must Be Said”

Thanks Aaron Burden

Parents of black male children know that the world poses a much greater danger to our sons than they do to the world. We raise our black sons to be aware of their surroundings and to know how they are being perceived–whether they are shopping in a store, or walking down the street with a group of friends, or even wearing a hoodie over their heads. After hearing what happened to Trayvon as he was walking home from a store wearing a hoodie and carrying Skittles and ice tea, I was once again reminded of what a dangerous world this is for our sons. And I thought about Trayvon’s mother. She sent her son on a trip to visit family, only to have him fall victim to the unfounded fears and stereotypes grafted onto black male bodies. Something must be said, I thought, about what is happening to our black children, especially our sons. This book is my attempt to do that.

From Kelly Brown Douglas’ Introduction of Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God

August 20, 2015 by Michael

In Others’ Words, Pt. 4: Sheila & Alan Frost

When Michael asked me to be a guest author on his blog about fathering, my first reaction was raised eyebrows and a shake of the head. Nope, I thought, No way. I’m too busy… I’m not a writer… I’m not even a parent. Why would he even ask me to write on his blog?

Thanks Pexels

The problem is that Michael has graciously helped me – without complaint or protest – on more occasions than I can recall. So I find myself in a position of owing him a favor. Well…owing him several favors. Besides, he didn’t really offer much of a choice. To quote his email directly: “Don’t tell me ‘no’. Tell me ‘yes’ and that you’re already writing.”

Well, now that I’m finally “already writing”, let me give a brief introduction. My name is Alan. I’ve been married to my wife Sheila for almost ten years. She’s pretty great, and much more thoughtful and sensitive than me. And I’m not just saying that because she’ll be editing (and improving) everything I write in this post. Come to think of it, for the record, let’s upgrade from “great” to “awesome”. She’s pretty awesome.

Three years ago Sheila and I decided that we wanted to expand our family through adoption. I won’t go into much detail here, but the adoption process can be fairly daunting. There are background checks, fingerprinting, countless hours of training, and strangers talking to you and visiting your home for the express purpose of judging you. In reality, they are simply evaluating our competency as future parents, but it can still feel like a long and drawn out process. When we tell friends that have become parents in the more traditional way about our journey, a common response is, “That’s a lot of work, we could never do that.” But Sheila and I just think of the process as our Paper Pregnancy. Yes, we have to do many things that people becoming parents in the traditional way don’t. But we don’t have to deal with morning sickness, maternity clothes, doctor’s visits, or hormones. And all of the tiresome chores of the adoption process have really helped to mentally prepare us to become parents.

Thanks Pixababy

However, even with all of the classes and training, I still don’t really feel prepared for the practical aspects of taking care of a tiny human being. No one has shown us how to prepare a bottle, or discussed sleep schedules, or taught us how to swaddle a tired baby. I’m 42 years old, and I have changed exactly one diaper in my life. It was a year ago, and I was the only adult available at the end of a long list of people called for emergency babysitting services. Our friends Arwa and Jeremy were scrambling getting ready for a cross country move, and needed someone to watch their delightful three-year-old son Aziz for the afternoon. As Arwa ran down the list of responsibilities before leaving for the afternoon, she casually mentioned that after Aziz woke from his nap that I would probably have to change his diaper. Having never done such a horrific task, I remained impressively calm on the outside as I projected an air of quiet competence. But inside I was panicking, and immediately broke out in a mental cold sweat. As soon as Arwa walked out the door, I was online reading articles and watching YouTube videos on changing diapers. (You’d be surprised how many diaper-changing videos there are.) After Aziz woke from his nap and the time came to attend to my duty, it wasn’t the poo-mageddon that I had built up in my head. It was just a simple wet diaper, which I was able to manage with a dampened forehead and slightly shaking hands, like a demolitions expert diffusing a bomb that failed to detonate.

Regardless of my fears, the diaper experience has shown that we will probably be able to figure out most of the practical day-to-day requirements of parenting. People have been raising children and figuring this stuff out for a long time. We have resources. We have friends and family that will help. We have YouTube.

But I suspect that practical day-to-day issues like diaper changing and bottle feeding are really only the tip of the adoptive parent iceberg. There are the worries and concerns over the health of a baby when you’re not directly involved in their neo-natal care. There are the challenges of open adoption and the difficulties of cultivating a relationship with the birth parents. There is the inevitable hurt of the teenage accusation, “You’re not my real parents!” But the issue weighing heaviest on my mind these days revolves around race.

Sheila and I are white. And we have decided that we are open to transracial adoption. As a result – statistically speaking – there is a good chance that our child will be of a different racial background than ours. We did not make this decision lightly; we attended adoption classes focused on race, we sought counsel from wise friends, and spent many hours in discussion and thoughtful consideration. In the end, we decided that we want to share our love with a child, and that we were willing to accept the additional responsibility of raising a child from outside of our cultural heritage.

This decision has raised another whole set of worries and concerns beyond diapers and birth parents. How do we respond to being a conspicuous family (a term used at the adoption agency); the stares, the questions, the assumptions that arise when family members with different skin tones go out in public? How do we instill racial and cultural identity? How do we help our child to develop a sense of pride in their heritage, while at the same time a sense of belonging within our white extended family? We know that the United States was built on a foundation of white supremacy. How do we teach our child about the injustices inherent in our country, when as white people, we benefit from privileges in the same system?

I’m worried about teaching my child about systemic racism and discrimination. These are realities that, as a white man, I have never experienced. How much do we shelter and protect? How will we balance keeping our child safe while simultaneously promoting independence and self-confidence? How do I prepare my child for discrimination when I’ve never felt it? How do I prepare my child for the same realities that faced Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and other young black men across the country? How can I teach our child to stand up for what is right without putting him/her in danger from those in positions of power? Or to simply exist without being in danger from those in positions of power?

There just aren’t that many YouTube videos on “How to Make Sure Your Child Is Not Shot by The Police Simply for Being Black”.

We feel absolutely unprepared to handle these concerns. And, like much of parenting, I’m not sure if it is possible for us to truly be prepared. But while I may not be able to look to YouTube for guidance, there are other resources. Most importantly, we have support. We attend a multi-racial church, where our child will see examples of loving men and women of many different cultures. We live in a diverse neighborhood, where our child will go to school with children from a variety of backgrounds. And we have truly gracious friends, like Dawn and Michael, that are willing to support us and our future child as we navigate the realities of being a transracially adoptive family. And lastly, as my awesome wife reminds me – we have a God that promises that he will make all things new, and will right all wrongs. It is with hope that we plunge into the next phase of our lives – parenting.

Thanks Pexels

PS – We’re not necessarily choosing the child that we will adopt – instead, the birth parents are choosing us. Simply because we are open to transracial adoption doesn’t mean we are going to adopt transracially. There is also the possibility that we could end up adopting a white child. Regardless of the color of our child’s skin, we know that the topics of privilege, injustice, and race will be an essential topic of discussion in our family.

August 15, 2015 by Michael

Heeding Our Lives

Thanks to Micah Hallahan

If we give heed to our lives, and live long enough, we come to understand the things that eluded us earlier because of our youth and the dogmatic posture of our religious teachers. We come to know how the Yahweh-God works in the world, and we come to appreciate the dream of the Kingdom, God’s commitment to and presence in all of humankind. The divisions melt away and we finally understand the meaning of ancient Israel’s claim: “Hear O Israel, the Lord our God is one.” Once our experiences bring us to this point, we can no longer be parochial. We can longer say with conviction that one must be a Catholic. Rather, we rejoice in our own Catholicism, for we see it at its best, incarnating what the God of life has finally revealed to us in our experience, what in fact is revealed by God’s presence in all of humankind: It really doesn’t matter.

From A Theology of Presence, pg. 112

August 14, 2015 by Michael

In Other’s Words, Pt. 1: Aja Favors

I asked a friend, Aja Favors, to respond to the “current moment” and to reflect upon two of her roles in the world, those of mother and lawyer. I’m grateful for her wise, pointed words.

I’m a lawyer. Not long ago, I received a called from a friend asking what she might tell her son as it pertains to getting pulled over by the police. Her son is a freshman in college.

Before going into my normal response to such questions, I thought for a moment. I thought about being a mom. Even more than that, I thought about being the mom of an African American boy in a city that has been rightly or wrongly renamed “Chi-raq.”

My son is a baby—only nine months old. Still, the question I was being asked begged a response congruent with the mindfulness a young man’s mom might give.

After pausing far too long, I said…

“He should pull over. He should keep his hands on the steering wheel. He should be deliberately courteous and compliant. He should accept the citation (if issued) and go on his way. If they ask to search his car, he has the right to say, ‘no.’ There are a few reasons why they may be permitted to search it regardless. If he is asked to get out of the car, he should do so. And yes, the officers may pat him down if they have a reasonable suspicion that he could be a threat.”

I spouted out those instructions the way I had been trained to. Still, the justice-seeking, card-carrying NAACP member in me wanted to “beat my chest,” and talk about Sandra Bland, and Eric Garner, and Michael Brown. However, the mom in me wanted her son to make it home—to live to tell the story.

As a staunch supporter of “the struggle,” I believe and know that Black lives matter. I live in Black skin everyday. I’ve wrestled to elevate myself in a system flanked with those who have proven to themselves that I don’t deserve it…simply because I’m Black. Notwithstanding that reality, as a parent I believe and know that my son’s life matters.

I know that in order to protect him, in order to continue to lay my eyes on him—he has to be smarter than the system that makes it acceptable for him to be shot on sight, hanged with a trash can liner, or gunned down with his hands up.

He has to be smarter.

Thanks to Wellington Sanipe

I’m not in favor of a world that makes Black men more docile, more compliant than their White counterparts, or more at risk because of their Black skin. But, I am in favor of a world in which Black children outlive their parents—a world in which one can be Black and die of old age and not from a police officer’s bullet.

Admittedly, what we tell ourselves as parents often contradicts what we tell our children. It’s true. I’d tell my son exactly what I suggested my friend tell her son.

All the while, on the inside I’m telling myself, “If anybody touches my child (police officer or common citizen), I will hunt them down. I will be neither deliberately courteous nor compliant. I will be vicious and vigilant. And, yes, at any cost there will be justice.”

August 12, 2015 by Michael

“Exchanges Between Fathers and Sons”

Thanks to Patrik Gothe

I read John Wideman’s Fatheralong, and here’s a great quote:

The stories must be told. Ideas of manhood, true and transforming, grow out of private, personal exchanges between fathers and sons. Yet for generations of black men in America this privacy, this privilege has been systematically breached in a most shameful and public way. Not only breached, but brutally usurped, mediated by murder, mayhem, misinformation. Generation after generation of black men, deprived of the voices of their fathers, are for all intents and purposes born semi-orphans. Mama’s baby, Daddy’s maybe. Fathers in exile, in hiding, on the run, anonymous, undetermined, dead. The lost fathers cannot claim their sons, speak to them about growing up, until the fathers claim their own manhood. Speak first to themselves, then unambiguously to their sons. Arrayed against the possibility of conversation between fathers and sons is the country they inhabit, everywhere proclaiming the inadequacy of black fathers, their lack of manhood in almost every sense the term’s understood here in America. The power to speak, father to son, is mediated or withheld; white men, and the reality they subscribe to, stand in the way. Whites own the country, run the country, and in this world where possessions count more than people, where law values property more than person, the material reality speaks plainly to anyone who’s paying attention, especially black boys who own nothing, whose fathers, relegated to the margins, are empty-handed ghosts.

(From Fatheralong, 64-65)

August 5, 2015 by Michael

Planning for Later

Every now and then, I want to point to the increasing need for people I love to have hard conversations about life, about living, and about dying. As an educator and pastor and father and relative, this video touches upon some critical issues worth talking about.

I don’t agree with literal exactness that we can or should choose the way we die, but I do agree with the intentionality behind living well, planning for later, and communicating with loved ones over these matters. I do believe in exercising as much right as we have. And we have the right to communicate our wishes around intensive medical treatment, aggressive and life-sustaining measures, and so forth.

This video feels close, real to me. Even though that rapid response team is small by the comparisons at NMH. I’ve seen 15-20 people in a room and crowding a hall easily, cracking ribs, pumping and sticking, and pounding and trying. And then a nurse, timing the scenario, calling for another person to step up and take over. I’ve seen that for 30-45 minutes.

Beyond that, listen to the story of the video and talk to people about an advance directive for healthcare. And if you can, let that be a part of other important conversations.

And that’s not including talking about money and life insurance and diet and family history. There are many conversations to have. But this one is important.

It’s not morbid. It’s responsible. It’s not short-sighted. It’s visionary and realistic. It’s helpful for you to think through things about your care. It’s relieving for those you love.

August 4, 2015 by Michael

Form of Conversation

I love this picture and this description of Sam Van Aken’s Tree of 40 Fruit. According to CNN, the tree was created by grafting buds from various stone fruits onto the branches of a single tree in order for it to produce multiple types of fruit.

The Tree of 40 Fruit is an ongoing series of hybridized fruit trees by contemporary artist Sam Van Aken. Each unique Tree of 40 Fruit grows over forty different types of stone fruit including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and almonds. Sculpted through the process of grafting, the Tree of 40 Fruit blossom in variegated tones of pink, crimson and white in spring, and in summer bear a multitude of fruit. Primarily composed of native and antique varieties the Tree of 40 Fruit are a form of conversation, preserving heirloom stone fruit varieties that are not commercially produced or available.

Learn more here and here about this ongoing series and this form of conversation.

August 2, 2015 by Michael

Transformed by Struggle

It is a fool’s hope to review Joan Chittister. So I won’t. But I wanted to capture my reading of her book Scarred by Struggle, Transformed by Hope, and the best way to do that was to locate her own words for the task. Her book is both a small view into a painful experience for her and a series of articulations about struggle and the accompanying gifts which come from those respective struggles.

I think this quote snatches the book in a bite. I hope you find it enticing enough to pick up a copy:

The important things in life, one way or another, all leave us marked and scarred. We call it memory. We never stop remembering our triumphs. We never stop regretting our losses. Some of them mark us with bitterness. But all of them, can, if we will allow them, mark us with wisdom. They transform us from our small, puny, self-centered selves into people of compassion. For the first time, we understand the fearful and the sinful and the exhausted. They have become us and we have become them as well. We recognize the down-and-out in the street who mirrors our despair. We commiserate with the anger of the marginalized. We identify with the invisibility of the outcast. We can finally hear the rage of the forgotten. We are transformed.

From Scarred by Struggle (pg 102)

July 31, 2015 by Michael

Malcolm Gladwell on Technology

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Development, Future, Learning, Malcolm Gladwell, Research, Vision
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“We need to be cautious when making conclusions … we can see some things now, but we have no idea where it’s going.”

Read the full piece here.

July 28, 2015 by Michael

History of Pastoral Care in America

Thanks to Patrick Fore

I finished E. Brooks Holifield’s A History of Pastoral Care in America: From Salvation to Self-Realization. The book has been a grounding or a re-grounding for me since my seminary days. As the title tells, it is a history of pastoral care and pastoral theology in the United States of America.

Holifield walks through several Christian theological lanes, surveying and summarizing some of the major figures in pastoral theology broadly and pastoral care more specifically. He intends the book to be narrow in the sense of covering Protestant pastoral counseling and ministry.

I found it broad in how it went about telling that history. The author named several primary voices in pastoral work, drawing out the thoughts and conceptions of thinkers and preachers and teachers who shaped the practical ministry of pastors and the academic institutions who trained ministers. Holifield wanted to show specifically how the “self” was revealed in history, how attitudes about the self developed in American religion, and wrote in that direction.

Any history that covers centuries has to be clear in its scope and intention. Holifield told of theological traditions and how they dealt with (i.e., defined, taught, and constructed meanings for) sin and spiritual development, two primary foci of pastoral care and those seeking such care throughout history. How a church defines sin directly relates to how a person in that church develops him/herself, whether they develop at all.

I appreciate learning names and dates that I was not thoughtful of. Holifield named preachers and leaders who framed debates that I know of but didn’t know the progenitors. One criticism is that the historical debates were framed around churches and communities which regularly disallowed the names and thoughts of non-white people.

That lack of voice is loud in Holifield, and I found myself wondering why he wrote about the influence of Jonathan Edwards but didn’t discuss with equal precision the thoughts and impact of Richard Allen or Alexander Crummell, the Episcopal priest who started what was essentially a society for African American intellectual and theoretical development. The omission is both honest from the historical perspective–since Allen wasn’t “invited to the debate” in his time–and discouraging because I don’t note Holifield walking through his work with the sense of loss with which I read him.

He presented a lot of philosophical material that made me feel informed, and he made the connections to keep me interested because he used several local church pastors to offer what could have been, simply, heady stuff. A central event in American history of the Protestantism Holifield writes about is the Great Awakening. He writes of the psychology of the Awakening and how with the best of intentions, leaders disagreed (meaning argued) about conversion and cure.

He notes the remark of one historian who says that the central conflict of the time was not theological but psychological, about opposing views of human psychology. Holifield points to how misleading that comment was, but it as helpful as it is misleading. As he says, “the theological context of any clerical assertion about psychology profoundly affected the interpretation of the psychological claims” and “the antagonists had far more in common than any such dichotomy might suggest.” Both are true then and seem true still.

The book covers material that can’t, or shouldn’t be covered in a review. There’s stuff about will and affections, comfort, cure, accountability, capitalism, and urban culture which I hardly would relay as urban in contemporary sense. He develops in solid detail the early therapeutic movements which we see but don’t see in pastoral counseling and therapy offices. He documents the beginnings of the Emmanuel Movement, explains less popular figures like Harry Stack Sullivan (whose work I appreciate), and points to how clinical focus moved from adjustment to insight.

He opened up for me a connection between mainstream culture in the US post-Civil War and the accompanying shifts of emphases in counseling and ministry and which established the primary contexts for the 20th century pastoral care movement. The same was true after World War 2. National violence, world violence directly impacted the needs for, methods of, and providers for pastoral care and mental health. Power and achievement and success were foci. Warlike metaphors abound from that time in clinical history, and the residuals of that period are still with us.

The last half of the book was much more relatable. He employed names and methods I have been introduced to, and the book did a good job unearthing the nuanced theories from which today’s approaches in pastoral theology stem. He dealt with the ever popular client-centered therapy and its large reception among pastors, as well as the derivative therapies thereafter. He mentioned early to mid-twentieth century pastoral heavy weights like Hiltner and Boisen and Oates and Wise.

I remember thinking about something one of my Bible professors said. Perhaps they are words I put in a professor’s mouth: the people who write our texts are the people whose stories stuck. Their stories endured. In other words, those we quote continue to be those we hear.

I felt Holifield reminding us of good historical stuff while also, in my view, choosing certain voices and neglecting others relative to a history of United States of American pastoral care. I certainly am developing a personal project to augment Holifield’s good work, thinking through whose voices are missing but shouldn’t be.

In summary, as good as this history is, it is short-sighted in the direction of white, male perspectives which is nothing surprising. Most of theological scholarship bends in that direction. Certainly most recognized histories bend there too. I could see more complementary texts coming alongside this book in order to illuminate the less-told stories of women and people of color. Indeed, I know the work of folks like Carroll Watkins-Ali and Archie Smith should be read with Holifield’s book.

Now, I’m on the hunt for another pastoral theological history that captures and enriches the story by adding the voices that Holifield didn’t include. That said, this quote, pages from the end, summarize well the good ground the author did cover and offers a kind of vista into the next places historically minded theological scholars may next dig:

Pastoral conversation–whether understood as counsel or as counseling–has never been a disembodied activity, isolated from social and cultural expectations and ideals. The strategies of pastoral discourse, the tone and vocabulary of private communication between the minister and the person in distress, always have borne the dim reflection of a public order. One begins to understand something about pastoral counseling by looking closely not only at prevailing conceptions of theology and psychology but at popular culture, class structure, the national economy, the organization of the parishes, and the patterns of theological education. And one must also look at the past.

July 24, 2015 by Michael

Seth Godin on Credibility

Faith-Related, Publishing, Quotes, Reading
Credibility, Integrity, Seth Godin, Trust
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Thanks to Luis Llerena

You believe you have a great idea, a hit record, a press release worth running, a company worth funding. You know that the customer should use your limited-offer discount code, that the sponsor should run an ad, that the admissions office should let you in. You know that the fast-growing company should hire you, and you’re ready to throw your (excellent) resume over the transom.

This is insufficient.

Your belief, even your proof, is insufficient for you to get the attention, the trust and the action you seek.

When everyone has access, no one does. The people you most want to reach are likely to be the very people that are the most difficult to reach.

Attention is not yours to take whenever you need it. And trust is not something you can insist on.

You can earn trust, just as you can earn attention. Not with everyone, but with the people that you need, the people who need you.

This is the essence of permission marketing.

When I began in the book industry thirty years ago, if you had a stamp, you had everything you needed to get a book proposal in front of an editor. You could send as many proposals as you liked, to as many editors as you liked. All you needed to do was mail them.

In my first year, after my first book came out, I was totally unsuccessful. Not one editor invested in one of the thirty books I was busy creating.

It wasn’t that the books were lousy. It was me. I was lousy. I had no credibility. I didn’t speak the right language, in the right way. Didn’t have the credibility to be believed, and hadn’t earned the attention of the people I was attempting to work with.

Email and other poking methods have made it easy to spew and spray and cold call large numbers of people, but the very ease of this behavior has also made it even less likely to work. The economics of attention scarcity are obvious, and you might not like it, but it’s true.

The bad news is that you are not entitled to attention and trust. It is not allocated on the basis of some sort of clearly defined scale of worthiness.

The good news is that you can earn it. You can invest in the community, you can patiently lead and contribute and demonstrate that the attention you are asking be spent on you is worthwhile.

But, no matter how urgent your emergency is, you’re unlikely to be able to merely take the attention you want.

Read Seth’s blog. Daily.

Michael Washington

Reflections on the Spiritual Life

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