Warning: This may turn into a rant.

When people are lamenting war, poverty, ignorance, the destruction of the environment, or even the Tea Party, I want to yell,

“I’m not a legislator!
I’m not a journalist!
I’m not a billionaire who could be making big political contributions!
Why are you telling me this?”

(Who am I kidding?  I have yelled it.  Numerous times.  And wanted to even more often.)

We seem to be living in a world of discouragement, frustration, and fear.  And of course we think things have never been this bad in the history of the universe.

My first response is to read a “cozy” mystery novel featuring sweet old ladies and/or soccer moms who are always eating but never gain weight.  (Sometimes the books include recipes.)

But what is the Christian response? We are told to trust God and to do what we can to help improve things.  But what is the best thing that we can do?

There are those who think that giving a homeless person the apple you didn’t eat for lunch or organizing a food bank only offer temporary help, when it is Society that needs to be changed.  How about with each bowl of lentil soup served at the soup kitchen, we give the guest a pamphlet on community empowerment and a list of phone numbers of the local activist organizations?

Others say, “If those people would spend the time they waste demonstrating or lobbying working in a homeless shelter or tutoring in a GED program, they might be accomplishing something.”

Since this has turned snarky, I might as well say that my thought about trusting God is “Good luck with that, honey.”

A priest once told me that is it a sin to worry because worry comes from a lack of faith.  This made me feel good for a while, since people who do worry have said that I’m lazy and uncaring because I won’t join in.  But then when I did worry, I felt guilty.

And of course I’ve been feeling liberal guilt for years.  (I can’t help wondering if one of the reasons conservatism is growing in popularity it that you don’t have to feel guilty about anything.)

I am not offering any solutions as a Christian or a concerned person.  I apologize for ranting and I realize that you probably aren’t a legislator or a journalist or a billionaire.

But I am asking:  What do you think?

Some cozy heroines in case you want a break from thinking:

Miss Jane Marple – Agatha Christie’s queen of the sweet old ladies.

Miss Maud Silver – Not as well-known as Miss M., but just as much fun. She’s a former governess who turned detective.  Created by Patricia Wentworth.  The series ran from 1928 to 1961.

Magdalena Yoder – Mennonite owner of the Penn Dutch Inn in Hernia, Pennsylvania.    The books have great Pennsylvania Dutch recipes.  Created by Tamar Myers.

Lucy Stone – Reporter in Tinker’s Cove, Maine.  Each book centers around a holiday.  Created by Leslie Meier.

Kathryn Koerney – An Episcopal priest in a small New Jersey town, who works with the local police captain.  Author Cristina Sumners is an Episcopal priest.

For more on cozies, see Cozy Mystery www.cozy-mystery.com

 

 

 

"Going Up" Mortified



 



As I child I was fascinated by faith healers on television.  I thought the ones who told you to put your hand on the television to be healed were silly, but it looked kind of neat when people would be stuck by the Holy Spirit and fall over backwards.  Kathryn Kuhlman seemed like a sweet, if slightly eccentric aunt.  (I just watched some videos of her.  She was more than slightly eccentric . There is a look of madness in her eyes.  And with all the money she supposedly made, couldn’t she have done something with her hair or paid someone to do something with it?  Or asked God to do something with it?)

Of course I “knew” that it wasn’t real.  At the very least people appeared to be healed because they had been caught up in the moment and their own belief.  Somehow their minds made them feel better.  Or everything had been psychosomatic in the first place.  Or they were part of the show.

At best, the faith healers were well-meaning, delusional people, who had been tricked by their minds into believing they could help others.  At worst, they were cynical, hypocritical frauds, with great acting skills.

That made me sad.  I wanted to believe that people could be healed through belief.  It was like magic.  And I hated to think that those charismatic people who seemed so sincere were simply exploiting other people’s misery.

As I got older, what made me even sadder was that I wanted to believe.

Episcopal healing services aren’t like that.  Or at least I’ve never been to any that were.  My church has a healing service about once a month, and I usually "go up."   The priest puts his or her hands on one's head and asks for healing.  Since I have arthritis, I usually have something that needs some work, even though my arthritis is "mild to moderate". (One time I even had lice! I was so mortified! I asked the priest not to touch my head and later at coffee hour, when I was sure no one would hear, I explained. Of course, probably having heard a lot worse in his career, he wasn't shocked and was very understanding.)

 And receiving a blessing does help me -- physically. If a more “rational” friend says the whole thing is in my head, I will say that God is causing my mind to think that I feel better.  And I will take that.  It’s certainly better than a headache or nausea.  (This is not to say that I don’t use medicine and doctors.  They are also available because of God.) 
  
 But what is even more important is that by going up, I am telling myself that I can receive healing and the healing is from God and this affirms not just my belief, but the fact that I believe. By acting as if I believe, I will come, through God’s grace, to believe even more strongly.



 

Our Circus, Our Monkeys, Our Selves

 

 

 

One of the things the Episcopal Church says about itself is that it is “a big tent.”   As Paul M. Spellings writes in his blog (http://paulmspellings.wordpress.com) that means “we like to see ourselves as almost obsessively accepting.” (“Big Tent Church:  Possibility and Hypocrisy” February 6, 2014)  Everyone is welcome and everyone is part of the church:  people of all races, ages, nationalities, sexual preferences, those with disabilties, the poor, the homeless, and even the rich.  At least this is the ideal.

(I did not give that last sentence its own paragraph, because this is not about the failure of the church and of individuals to live up to the ideal.  We are trying, if not always successfully.)

When I first saw the phrase, I thought of the tents of the Israelites.  But those tents, even if large, were not inclusive.  And then I thought of a circus tent.

For what are religion and Christian life if not a circus? 

We can look at the circus metaphor in two ways (probably more, but I haven’t thought of them yet.)  A circus is a place of wonder, full of miracles where people fly through the air, twist themselves into unimaginable shapes, and squeeze themselves and a dozen friends into tiny cars.  There are beautiful costumes, processions, and music.    Does that remind you of anything?  (Not the flying, twisting, or car loading, at least in my experience.)  There is manmade magic in the circus and God-made magic in the church.

Then there is another meaning of circus, the half humorous chaos that inspires us to sigh and say, “That was a real circus.”  I’m thinking particularly of getting the family off to school and work in the morning, creating the best Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, or Halloween ever, or going on vacation, when a day at the beach is no day at the beach.  Your whole life can be one big circus.  And it doesn’t stop after the children are grown!

And isn’t church life one big circus?  Not just the Churchianity, worrying about roofs and furnaces, and pageants and candles, but the Christianity, too.  How can we best love God, our neighbors, and ourselves, especially when the church offers so many ways to do it and so many opinions on each way?

Not only do all kinds of people make up the church, but they bring with them all kinds of beliefs.  My small church contains creationists and literalists.   There are those who say that Bible is allegory and symbolism.  And, of course, there are the different tastes in worship.

How do we handle this?  (I apologize if this sounds like a sermon.  What I am really trying to do here is show my struggles with the circus, not offer any suggestions or solutions.)

There is an old Polish saying, (I found it on Facebook) “Not my circus.  Not my monkeys.” That can be very helpful when it comes to feuds with distant relatives or office politics or just as a reminder to stay out of other people’s business.  But how does it work in the Big Tent?

It can be easy to say which things are not your circus.  Creationism isn’t mine.  Neither is the Rapture.  My laissez faire attitude about theology is not the circus of some of my friends.  And other denominations and other religions aren’t our circuses either.

But aren’t we all each other’s monkeys?  Under the big circus tent we are to love and care for each other, even if we disagree.  We can ignore or celebrate differences because as Christians we share more similarities.  And this goes for those outside the tent, too.

 There are many circuses inside and outside the big tent.  We don’t need to claim them all.  But we do need to claim all those monkeys.