Bandwagoning

I have recently begun to follow a couple of blogs/news sites giving updates on global Anglicanism. My favorite site posted some great quotes yesterday, which I thought I would pass along here.

First, a couple of quotes from leaders in the Episcopal church who are trying desperately to keep conservatives from leaving the mainline fold:

"I am very struck by our failure to communicate."
--Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori to clergy of the diocese of South Carolina

This cracks me up! Understatement of the year award slash missing the point entirely!

Meanwhile, in Kentucky...

" 'We're having a family argument,' said [Rev. Katherine] Grieb, a Virginia Theological Seminary biblical scholar and a member of a team drafting a 'covenant' to hold together the Anglican Communion, which consists of the Episcopal Church and other national churches descended from the Church of England.

'There never was a golden age when everybody in the church agreed about everything,' she said at the gathering at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in southwestern Jefferson County."

Ok, true, but as Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall Harmon (the man behind my favorite Anglican site) responds:

"It is so very sad to see a ...[Church leader] once again parlaying the ECUSA hierarchy’s offical party line which is: to be Episcopal means to agree to disagree agreeably, we have been through struggles before, and this is yet another struggle through which the church will find her way.

The problem is the hidden theological assumption here that all theological differences are the same. They are NOT."

So true, so true. As Bishop Rogers emphasized at Winter Conference, unity comes through true doctrine, NOT through institutional bonds.

One more quote, this time from the BCP. Apparently yesterday was the Feast of St. Matthias, so although this is a day late, I thought it was worth sharing:

Almighty God, who in the place of Judas chose your faithful servant Matthias to be numbered among the Twelve: Grant that your Church, being delivered from false apostles, may always be guided and governed by faithful and true pastors; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Amen indeed.

Check it out: TitusOneNine

Gimme that Old-time Angst

Today, as part of a class assignment, I got out a couple of journals from my undergrad days. For those of you who journal, you know how startling it can be to look back at what you wrote, to go back in time and re-live formative moments, to feel strong emotions pass through you like ghosts, not-to-be-ignored.

Before this morning, it had been awhile since I'd opened these journals, written primarily as part of my "quiet times" in undergrad, beginning my sophomore year. I tend to idolize that time in my life as the season in which I was most disciplined, most faithful to God in my personal life , and growing the most in faith. Since graduating from Wheaton, my memories of those years have haunted me, a reminder that at one time I was more disciplined, more faithful... and more in God's favor than I am now. Twisted belief, I know, but deeply rooted.

But I had forgotten how much angst filled those years. Browsing through my journals this morning, I was shocked to look at my soul and see desperate striving rather than deep confidence in God's grace. Now, I am aware that living in Grace is a fundamental struggle for me, but I had forgotten how much I was trapped in despair, striving, and guilt during those years I have idolized. I confess, I feel a bit shaken! I know I've said it before, but I am glad it is Lent - I suspect I have some idols of which to repent.

As I was reading my journals, I came across an overlooked angsty poem (not even sure it could be called a poem - maybe a poetic fragment). It's a bit rough, but I'd like to share it anyway.

Father, where is the prayer I know should be
Subsuming me, consuming me
like that old burning bush?
Is this word a prayer?
or just me, communing with my ache,
hollow poetry -- self-cannibalism,
self-starvation?
Give me those prayer lenses and
the frame of Your Son--
The new perspective for the new creation.

God's grace -- great mystery.

Distractions du Jour

Ah, the life of a student. It might well be described as a microcosm of the ethical life: perpetual conflict between what one should do and what one wants to do. Some distractions never fail me; others take me by surprise.

Distractions, Tried and True

• The wonders of the "Internets"
• Facebook in particular
  
• Checking e-mail compulsively
  
• Random acts of cleaning
• My wandering thoughts
• Making "to do" lists
• Filling up "to do" lists with things I've finished, just so I can cross something off the list
• Acts of grooming
• Consuming beverage of choice

Distractions, In with the New

• This blog
  
• Food blogs
• Word games online
• Cursing the blasted temperature
• Organizing e-mail
• Facebook (yes, I listed it twice - with all the darned apps., there's always something new)
  
• Headlines of the day (Firefox, let me count the ways...)
  
• Checking class syllabi out of paranoia I'm missing something
  
• iTunes!!!!!!
• Tivo, glorious Tivo
  
• Spontaneous sing-alongs (ok, maybe also not quite new, but shall we say rediscovered?)
• Etc., etc., etc. (a la The King and I)

As I have been known to say from time to time, "Homework, like the poor, is always with us."

"The soul is elastic, like a balloon. It can grow larger through suffering."

~Peter Scazzero (153), quoting Gerald Sittzer's A Grace Disguised: How the Soul Grows Through Loss~

Reluctant Emoter(s)

Rabbi Zusya, when he was an old man, said, "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?'" The true vocation for every human being is, as Kierkegaard said, "the will to be oneself." ~Peter Scazzero, The Emotionally Healthy Church, p. 141.

As some of you may know, I describe myself as a "reluctant feeler." When I first took the Keirsey Temperament Sorter in seminary (yes, I am more-than-slightly obsessed with those four mystical letters, but that's another story), I was devastated when the test told me I am an "F," not a "T." In my mind, "F's" were weak, captive to each and every wave of emotion, certainly not qualified to study academic theology in the highest echelons of the British educational system. I wanted to be a "T," one of those dashing intellectuals, firing off spontaneous brilliances with perfect logic. I clung to the rationality and academic prowess I was proud to have built over the course of my up-teen years in school.

But God has shattered that false self-identity. By drawing me into an actual community, teaching me to pour into and draw deep from other people rather than hide beneath the brittle shell of books, studies, fear, shame, and deep loneliness, God has forced me to come to terms with my own inwardness. My fears of captivity to every emotional whim have not materialized, but I have begun to trust my emotions to tell me about reality--a different sort of reality than my intellectual synapses validate, perhaps, but reality nonetheless. Funny--my head knows that as whole people, permeated by Incarnation, our emotions are no less important than our cognition, but in practice I too often live entrapped in the Enlightenment, crowning rationality as the prince of all faculties.

Too often, I suspect, the church does the same. Too often, the church surrenders concern for engaging emotion to a few (charismatic?) denominations rather than seeking the healing, redeeming power of Christ for our emotions as part of our lives. For one of my classes, I am reading The Emotionally Healthy Church, by Peter Scazzero, and I can already tell that this book is going to affect me deeply. Scazzero argues that one of the primary reasons the church in the U.S. is in such dire straits is because we neglect to teach people how to mature emotionally as a necessary part of spiritual maturity. Right now, I can barely begin to process such an idea. But if my own experience is any indication--emotional and spiritual deepening blossoming as two roses on one prickly stem--beware, church! Emotions will out.

Interested in learning more about Peter Scazzero's ministery? Check out http://www.emotionallyhealthy.org/.

Maelstrom

"Holy, You are still holy,
even when the darkness surrounds my life.
Sovereign, You are still sovereign,
even when confusion has blinded my eyes."

At first, I didn't care for this song by Rita Springer ("You Are Still Holy"). The sound of the song isn't exactly beautiful, at least conventionally so. Rita Springer's voice took some "getting used to" on my part. But when our worship team first began to use this song about a year ago, the lyrics took root deep inside me during a dark time in my life. Now, I think it is one of the most profound worship songs I know.

We all go through times in which our thoughts trap us in whirlpools large and small. When confusion replaces clarity, and we lose our way in a multiplicity of perspectives on one concrete situation. When we are in the eye of the tornado, terrified by the shrieking winds that threaten to tear us away, tear us apart, at any moment. In the midst of the horror, the confusion, the mistakes, the misperceptions, the despair, the defeat, God is sovereign. In the midst of multiplicity, God is One. In the midst of loneliness, God is Trinity, Love itself.

When my mind spins so fast that I am too dizzy to center myself and pray, there is One who prays on my behalf. When I am too confused to feel, to process, to ask, He calls. He calms. He loves. He provides.

"Lord, I don't deserve Your tender patience
when my unbelief has kept me from your touch.
I want my life to be a sweet devotion to You."

Lord, have mercy on this poor sinner.

http://www.ritaspringer.com/

SAD

I think I must have Seasonal Affective Disorder. Too much snow. Down day - too depressed to go to class. Class canceled anyway because of the massive amount of snow that is still coming down. Not sure what my problem is. Looking forward to Ash Wednesday service tonight. Should've paid more attention to Groundhog's Day.

Impetus(es) for Crankiness

I hate being cranky. As of yesterday, I have officially decided that I would rather be weepy than cranky (apparently, in my current circle of friends, these are the two most viable emotional options), and I have been cranky for, oh, about 4 days now. @#$(*&!!

Contributing factors to current crankiness:

• Winter storms every other flipping day.
• A car with only one working headlight
• Lack of exercise
• Frustration with current internship
• Ever-present homework
• Realization that only God can heal other people
  
• Messy bedroom
• Resentment of my need for sleep. period.
• Frustration with my own laziness
• Trash needing to be taken out. Again.
• My obsession with sugar.
• Life's annoying details. Like money.
• My own crankiness!
  

Well, cathartic as such a list can be, I'm still cranky. But Lent is coming. As funny as it sounds, I absolutely love Lent! It's amazing how junk builds up in my life over the course of a year (or a month, or a day), and I love this season of the church year -- a time to regain focus, to repent, to be cleansed more deeply, to meditate, to bring my frustrations and despair to the Lord.

Two (cranky days) left before Ash Wednesday...