blood lines

Sometimes, I mean often, I am certain that I am more like a woman of centuries past masquerading as those roles mentioned in my profile. I go to a community meeting, in my black skirt and wool coat with the fur collar to “wax eloquent” about a neighborhood crime problem. Then I go home and secretly can tomatoes like a pioneer woman or swing a sledge hammer at a wall I don’t want there anymore.

My former roommates called me crazy. My current roommate calls me wonder woman. Sometimes I don’t know who to believe. Occasionally, I develop a bit of a complex about my dual identity and I find myself hiding certain innate habits.

I like Dorcas’ little stories because they remind me of why I am who I am—like this one about canning. http://dorcassmucker.blogspot.com/2006/10/canning.html . I also find refuge in Hajar’s stories http://neo-gioconda.blogspot.com/ . And then there are the relief workers I run into now and again, who talk about them sturdy Mennonites, who would do things no one else would do, and go places no other group of people would go. Then last night at a party, I ran into someone who has a friend who lives here in the Twin Cities, who used to be Amish before he had a conversion experience. I’m certain I made a fool of myself as my eyes turned into saucers and the blood rushed to my face as I nearly leaped out of my chair in my eagerness to get a phone number and meet this person. What is this thing called tradition that runs in ones bones, which is as thick as life itself?

dreams fulfilled

Last week I realized that a long ago dream of mine has been fulfilled. I was standing in the front of my parents’ church talking to the pastor about learning the Biblical languages, Seminary and such things. I had just finished another conversation with an elder who owns the only local java joint and WiFi hub. (I’m in touch with that place!) He likes talking with me about the rapture, Revelation (the book) and America’s military exploits done in the name of the Lord. Suddenly it dawned on me as I stood there in that little country church. My dream has been fulfilled. A couple Sunday’s before that, I had gone to church at the Amish-Mennonite church of my childhood with my English friend. (Wow, did we get looked over!) They had a guest speaker there that day, who is a part of a higher education initiative amongst the conservative Mennonites called FaithBuilders. I was surprised, when after the service, the speaker pointedly came over to greet my friend and I. Somehow, I ended up telling him that I had just recently received my MATS and that I work at a Seminary. With numerous onlookers, we discussed higher education, how to navigate the myriad of information in the various disciplines. He dutifully broke off our conversation each time his host shuttled him off to meet this or that person or talk about this or that engagement. But somehow we kept bumping back into each other to continue shop talk.

When I was young, I used to long to be able to converse with the pastors who seemed at that time to know so much about faith and the scriptures and the church. Usually, no women I knew would ever be involved in those conversations but it didn’t matter to me, I wanted to talk about faith and the Spirit and God and Jesus’ sacrifice. I think I made myself an annoyance in Sunday School asking probing questions and bringing up complicated ethical scenarios. But I longed to participate in the circle of pastors and teachers. I used to read, from Luke, the story of Jesus getting lost in the temple at the yearly Passover his parents took him to. Jesus’ parents then find him in the temple courts sitting among the teachers listening to them and asking them questions. I was like 13-15. I used to read this story and cry, having no idea why it drew me, nor how one could go about getting such a thing. I just knew I wanted it.

dust to dust ashes to ashes

I crashed a funeral soon after the vision of my own death. I crashed a funeral soon after her death. Somehow it felt appropriate to join the throng of mourners wearing black. It was November then. It was November when she died. It will soon be November again.

the best of both worlds

I am grateful for the position the Lord has put me in. I would call it the best of both worlds. The platform of my childhood provided me with a strong frame of dedication and discipline for my faith. The current evangelical circles I run in provided for me a more emotional, expressive and also an intellectual influence. I’ve found pieces of the contemplative in both circles. And as I allow the two influences to speak to each other and embrace the other, my life becomes much more interesting and dynamic. The best way I know to demonstrate the best of both is through songs that express each culture’s sentiments.

Did You Think to Pray

Ere’ you left your room this morning
Did you think to pray?
In the name of Christ our Savior
Did you sooth for loving favour
As a shield today

When you’ve met with great temptation
Did you think to pray?
By his dying love and merit
Did you claim the Holy Spirit
As your guide today?

When your heart was filled with anger
Did you think to pray?
Did you plead for grace my brother
That you might forgive another
Who had crossed your way.

Oh how praying rests the weary
Prayer will change the night to day
So when life seems dark and dreary
Don’t forget to pray

The song turns one's mind to devotional regularity in response to life, as it happens. It prods one to maintain a relationship with God which bears on interpersonal relationships with others and those stray feelings that crop up. It’s very practical. And if the lyrics float through your mind during the day—one is instructed by its words.

How Great is Our God

The splendor of the King,
Clothed in majesty
Let all the earth rejoice,
All the earth rejoice
He wraps himself in light,
And darkness tries to hide
And trembles at his voice,
And trembles at his voice

How great is our God,
Sing with me
How great is our God,
and all will see
How great, How great
Is our God

Age to age he stands
And time is in His Hands
Beginning and the End,
Beginning and the End
The Godhead, Three in one
Father, Spirit, Son
The Lion and the Lamb,
The Lion and the Lamb

Name above all names
Worthy of our praise
My heart will sing how great
Is our God

This song is more along the line of romance language. It’s like those cute little nothings one would whisper to their spouse or a proclamation to one’s friends about someone that grabs your fancy in a gossip session over coffee—“He’s so amazing.” “My Heart will sing.” “Clothed in majesty.” What does that mean? Well, mostly it means you’re in love.

But like any marriage, one becomes cynical about the words spoken when all one hears is sweet little nothings. Likewise, if the everyday practical and routine relationship duties elbow out the sweet little nothings, life in relationship is a bore.

the power of prophetic declarations

Remember back in kindergarten when chubby faced Molly came up to you with wide-eyed inquisitiveness, asking, will you play on the merry-go-round with me. Everyone always responded in the affirmative, yes, even me. She would then, with confidence say, “You are now my friend.”

A while back my brother and sister-in-law invited me onto my space or that other one like it. After a few clicks, it said, “My brother’s name is now friends with My name.” Wow, how cool is that! The last time I heard that was at my brother’s wedding when the minister said, “I now pronounce you husband and wife.” And the time before that it was Molly pronouncing me to be her friend. And the time before that it was the creator saying, “Let there be light.”

Thanks, my space. You are this generation’s prophetic voice. You serve us well in bringing us back to a child-like simplicity.

the emergent child

The emerging church movement now days is quite a movement. It has all the ambition of youth and new ideas and an exciting new start. It doesn’t carry with it the depressive element of, like, rehabbing an old building, where one has to get rid of asbestos, mold, dry rot and such things. You start everything fresh. Right! Yeah, right. There are certain anticipations and an element of excitement that come with all pregnancies. However, a certain sadness hits when one discovers their child has special needs.

While Emergent, the child, was still in the womb, she was coddled by her parents at home for a few hours in the evening. She slept well and her every physical need was provided for. During the day she was bussed off to school to perform elaborate rituals in unison with a long line of homogenous peers. She went to church on Sunday and maybe a Wednesday to develop her spirit. At church she was shuttled off to another homogenous class designed specifically to meet the spiritual needs of numerous little people just like her. She lived in a neighbor hood of family units just like her. The neighbor’s toys were just like her own. Twice a year or so her family disrupted their cycle of homogenous type activities in homogenous style interactives, to visit grandma and grandpa who lived in a building of people who were old just like them. The whole family hated going there and wished they could be doing anything but that.

So then the emergent child emerged from its cocoon and sought out something different from all the homogeneity. She hungrily sought out the “dangerous” the “innovative” the “new” and the “unusual.” She found herself in the inner city. She found herself wearing black. She found herself angry and smoking something that would alter that. She wanted everything, anything that wasn’t that. She settled for a whole lot of all of that along with everyone else who was like that. She was named Emergent, for that was what she was. A product of the former—a child of homogeneity. Nothing new here—so says Ecclesiastes.

The emergent church would like to describe themselves and characterize themselves and their activities as organic. But allow me to point out—a farmer has to raise crops in his field organically for 5 years before the 5th year of crops can be truly called organic. It takes five generations of crops to cleanse the field of its non-organic element.

This is basically the same message as my post called, “the artist.

a bouquet is not a football

There is a true story about my sisters that I love to tell, because it is so funny. Now, I fear the story has become a parable of my own life and the joke is on me.

The first of my brothers got married in 1998. We all went to the wedding out in North Dakota. My family was quite a bit younger back then. Most of my sisters were still in the boys have cooties stage of life. Now, half of them have boyfriends. But back then they somewhat scorned the wedding merrymaking and made every attempt possible to insert boisterous competitive activity. We all still wore the traditional Beachy dresses back then, with basketball shorts underneath in preparation for the highly probable upset in a scuffle with our cousins. For the last time ever, did we all wear matching pink dresses together. It was the consensus among us that this was cruel and unusual torture—and it was for a family of tomboys. Everywhere we went during that weekend necessitated a football or a soccer ball or a basketball—the groom’s dinner, the rehearsal, the wedding itself. After much prank playing during the reception lunch and the opening of gifts, came the bouquet toss. I didn’t understand it but my sisters, competitively and boisterously positioned themselves like football players for the catch. Don’t they know what this means—I thought to myself. The bride tossed the bouquet over her shoulder and sure enough my sisters are diving and jumping and grabbing for it. One of them catches it and carries it like a trophy, whooping and hollering. Then my uncles and cousins chime in, “Do you know what that means?” la la la laa la. Suddenly, the bouquet becomes a despised object and a weapon to bat at the offensive messengers.

Recently, I too have been caught fighting to catch the bouquet and I had no idea, as to the symbolic meaning of it. Suffice it to say that there are certain flying projectiles one does not attempt to catch no matter what the internal competitive urge demands.

transformations that matter

Jacques Derrida, a philosopher I have studied, writes on forgiveness within the context of politics and international relations, or perhaps misrelation. All the switches in my brain turn off the second he mentions “politics” but what he says about forgiveness is noteworthy and applicable universally.

Whenever and wherever there is a wrong done, a period of mourning is necessary. Derrida calls it the work of mourning. Calling it the “work of mourning” indicates that it has a purpose and an appropriate end to which it works toward. Additionally, the memory continues. The memory then can inspire a prophetic freedom or a doom filled bondage. The memory of wrongs done to my person yesterday can cripple me for life if I nurse them forever—this is not true mourning. However, prophetically speaking life into the darkness of yesterday, transforms the memory, taking the worst of evils, turning it into a victorious expression of love and life.

...yet returning to forgiveness. Forgiveness is not possible—pardon cannot be granted unless the unpardonable is committed and the unforgivable act is wielded upon a soul. Derrida calls anything pardonable given pardon a mere transaction, thus not true forgiveness. Forgiveness can only be performed on the unforgivable. “It is not and should not be normal, normative, normalizing. It should remain exceptional and extraordinary, in the face of the impossible: as if it interrupted the ordinary course of historical temporality.” This is the paradox that transforms the world from a space of a bazzilion wrongs passed on into a measure of wrongs turning all wrongs into their prophetic victorious destiny.

the true service of innocence

The symbolic action of the Amish in their most recent splash across the media is mostly sensational to those who watch from the outside. It is a shock to almost everyone—particularly the image of innocence which these young girls represent, meeting such a violent outburst of revenge—to the death. Everything within a person cries out—this is unjust! For innocent young lives that were intended to suffer only as told by the perpetrator’s own story and by another story in Colorado. For the most vulnerable of professing non-violent people to be the subject of such brutal bloodshed. It comes as a slap in the face to a nation that prides itself on a particular standard of justice. Our standards insist that innocence should be protected and punishment measured out in accordance with crime committed. No one should ever suffer for another’s wrong. Each should suffer for their own crimes. Right?

Actually, no! Only the innocent can exact justice by suffering for the sins of the other. And only the innocent can redeem the world in their enactment of forgiveness to those who do them wrong. This is the highest service of innocence and peaceful blessing and good will—to be exploited. For peacemakers to be slaughtered in the hands of the violent. In this crux of injustice…Herein is found our opportunity for redemption. The gospel never asserted anything else. Prophesied by Isaiah “led like a lamb to the slaughter…” and fulfilled by the innocent Christ as he was dieing, “Father, forgive them…”

Can we live with any cheaper version of Christianity? Can we satisfy ourselves with our own justice.

Those who wish to argue with me on the logic of this—forget it! There is no arguing for it. It’s not logical. It is pure insanity. But somehow…it is true.

I've kept this image in my files for years. Every once in a while I take it out and look at it. It has come to represent my life manifesto.

a lamb to the slaughter

A prayer for those who have seen the love of the Creator for his Christ, that they may be indwelt by the Spirit of Christ, who was glorified in his selfless love.

Vater, ich will, daß, wo ich bin, auch die bei mir seien, die du mir gegeben hast, damit sie meine Herrlichkeit sehen, die du mir gegeben hast; denn du hast mich geliebt, ehe der Grund der Welt gelegt war.

Gerechter Vater, die Welt kennt dich nicht; ich aber kenne dich, und diese haben erkannt, daß du mich gesandt hast.

Und ich habe ihnen deinen Namen kundgetan und werde ihn kundtun, damit die Liebe, mit der du mich liebst, in ihnen sei und ich in ihnen.

solitude sustenance and sleep

Last week I found myself in the back seat of my car in some parking lot near a bookstore I had gone to—to pick up my textbooks. It was late afternoon. I had just woken up from a power nap, was eating a cucumber feta cheese salad that tasted 3 times more fermented than it did the day before. I kept on eating it, even though it tasted terrible, because the thought of finding something else to eat was too burdensome. (I didn’t get sick from it either.) As I ate, I remembered the last time I had been reduced to a similar situation—eating, sleeping out of my rusty, red, Ford Ranger, while driving to places where I’m a stranger in order to find solitude. That was 4 years ago.

Getting in my car and driving to an unknown place to eat, sleep and reflect has since been my way of finding solitude. I’m running out of places to hide at work. At one job I used to crawl under my desk to find a moment of solitude. Think about it—it’s strange enough to hide under your desk but even stranger still for someone to get on their haunches to converse with a voice coming from under a desk. That idea backfired on me at a temp job I had, when the IT guy discovered me, as he came crawling under the desk I was under, to lay some cable.

Last week I was working constantly to meet deadlines on a project and keeping up with my day job and community service work. There was no time for anything besides eating, sleeping, calming my head and brief contact with friends—so that I still have them when the project is over. Thus, to preserve energy and time, I returned to habits I learned on my trip to the Mojave, 4 years ago. I have learned to sleep anywhere and often challenged myself grab some zzz’s in all sorts of awkward spaces. I eat anything (culturally different or of undesired, fermented or discarded status. And I look for opportunities for solitude and overcoming the fear of being a stranger in an unfamiliar place, doing something just a bit abnormal.

So, if there are those of you who haven’t heard from me in a while—now you know what I’ve been up to.