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My heart beats for love. I want to be different. I want to be who I am called to be. WORTHY and LOVED!

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Frustration

   I've been feeling frustrated lately. The deepest sense of uncomfortable frustration where you cannot put words to what you are feeling. And I can't really find anyone to help me express what I'm feeling. Old friends aren't readily available and new friends are still learning how to help me articulate. And its in moments like this, when I probably have every right to cry out in agony, that I'm so glad that God knows my frustrations with or without words and can bring peace to the hidden and open wounds alike. 

Toys

As I was driving home last night this poem came to me. Before it bring about unnecessary alarm, know that after talking to a few people, I feel much better, but still feel that this poem should be written down for others who may be feeling the same way.


I've been feeling like a discarded toy
the one in the box
or collecting dust on the shelf.
Never really played with,
except for in moments of nostalgia or need.

I'm feeling like Woody
from Toy Story.
All of the shiny new toys are distracting you from me
I try to throw myself to the floor
just to get noticed
but to no avail.
You still chose Buzz.
With all of the lights and whistles.
Although sometimes when he is no where to be found
you still pull my string before throwing me aside again.

I feel like the Velveteen Rabbit.
There through the times of heartache and disease
but now contaminated
So I need to be thrown into the trash
Burned
But all I really want is to be real
When will I be real?

The type of real that cannot be replaced
Or manipulated
But fully acknowledged as real
Someone with feelings
And needs
And as someone more then just your play thing.

Dear God, please cut the strings
that hold me in bondage to being a toy
Forgive those who have treated me as such
And forgive me for making myself less than human to please them.
Cut the strings.
Make me real.
Make me Yours. 

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Memorial Day

When will be our day set aside to remember those who faced death for the gospel? For the martyrs. For those who gave power to the powerless.

For the Mother Theresa's and Oscar Romero's.

Those who spoke up against the injustices in the world in order to bless others. 

When is there day of celebration? 

John 17 and Psalm 1 - Staying Close to the Source

            When I was younger, one of my favorite books was Love You Forever by Robert S. Munsch. The story is told about a mother’s unconditional and unending love for her son, through his two year old trials to his adult antics. No matter what her son did, she rocked him and sang a song: “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.” In the end of the book, as the mother is dying the roles are reversed; the son holds her and sings her song back to the old woman. “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you forever, as long as I’m living, my mommy you’ll be.”

            In John 17 we see another type of role reversal. Jesus, the teacher, model, leader, is about to depart from this world. He takes his disciples aside and prays for them, telling them it is their turn to be the leaders, teachers, and models. He has sung them the song of life, and now it is their turn to sing it to others. I don’t know about you, but when I try to imagine myself as one of the disciples in this particular story I think that I would be a bundle of different emotions and questions. I would be confused as to why Jesus is speaking, yet again, about leaving us. Saddened by the idea of being left alone. And apprehensive about transitioning from the role of follower to leader.

            The chief question that I would be asking is “How?”. “How can I know what to teach, Jesus?” “How can I function without you?” “ How will I have the strength?” But Jesus has an answer for all of my “How” questions in this prayer, stay close to the source – God.

            In the gospel of John, Jesus is constantly pointing back to the Father, and this prayer is no exception. Starting at the beginning of today’s scripture lesson Jesus prays, I have made YOUR name known to those whom YOU have given me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.” Everything that we recognize in Jesus as blessed and vital, his teachings, his following, his power, his love, all come from God. And because God gave him these things, we as disciples are not only given access to them, but are called to have and share. We are to spread and glorify God’s name by our actions and words, just as Jesus did.

            Jesus says, “For the words that you gave to me I have given to them.” The big theme through out the Gospel of John in truth. Jesus speaks the truth because he is the truth. And all that he speaks and is comes from God. But now Jesus has given us those same prophetic words to speak into our world. And he warns that people are probably not going to like what we have to say. However, we must remember that we are not asking for people to like us, but rather to seek and possibly see the truth. But, all too often I think we twist and shy away from Jesus’ truth.

            For the past week I have been taking a summer class to prepare for my upcoming job assignment called Community Organizing. I struggled the whole way through the week with different things that were learning, just feeling overall uncomfortable in my spirit. Finally, on Friday, I realized why I was so unhappy. We were being told to exaggerate statements, twisting the truth, for the sole reaction of agitating people.

            Friends, Jesus gives us hard words to speak, but they are not just to agitate. We are called to share Jesus’ prophetic message, not to shy away and make it more manageable. Those prophetic messages are truth that cuts and hurts and heals in order to re-create the world into the Kingdom that God intended it to be. To focus on God and his power alone. We should not shrink God’s powerful message in order to make ourselves or others more comfortable.

            I also had unease with the class around the topic of power, especially while I was working on this sermon. While Jesus does not explicitly state it, he is giving his disciples, you and me, his power. The training spoke of using power for good, but the power Christ gives us is for much more then doing good – it is for bringing about the kingdom of God and making disciples. We are given the power to bring people wholeness and the truth that can only come by revealing to others whom the source is. Are we singing God’s song to other people “I’ll love you forever, I’ll like you for always, for always and ever, my child you’ll be” or are we like the world, using power to sort people into categories of the important and the unimportant? Christ states in his prayer that, “I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong.”. Dear Friends, if we truly used our power the way Christ did and spoke God’s words of truth, we would not belong to this world. We either shrug off the power we have, because we just don’t want to deal with the tension it will create, or we use power like the world, exploiting some to get further ahead.

            I heard a heart-wrenching tale this week that I would like to share with you. Up until the 1980s, a well-known car company had plants in New Jersey about ten minutes from the small town of Ringwood. They originally planned to build a 50 million closed community there for their executives, but decided against that idea. Instead, they took Ringwood and made it the dumping ground for the chemicals emitted from their plants, burying barrel after barrel of toxic waste and lead paint in its mines and dams. But what is buried on the 900+ acres of land used for dumping could not stay underground forever. The residences of the area, mostly Native Americans, began to find that they were becoming sick and that there woman were unable to give birth and that their children were dying very young. However, the government of NJ, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the car company insisted that the 61 drums of toxic waste and 720 tons of lead paint sludge that had been dumped there could not have caused these problems. The man who was telling me his story shared that his town is dying off – at a rate of two people every 12 days from the effects of the toxins, and that he is a dying man, having over 13 cists and 9 tumors removed from his body, with 7 more to be removed.

            The city of Ringwood is the source of 4 major rivers that flow combine as a reservoir to provide water for over 2 million New Jersey residents. The water in the town resembles orange peanut butter like sludge that is not only unsafe to drink, but has also tainted the Native Americans food as it is absorbed into their fruits and vegetables. The source of their life, the living water, only brings death.

            This story causes me to pause and ask you two questions Practically – what would you do if you knew that other children of God were being poisoned? For far too many religious people around Ringwood, the answer has been to do nothing. But Christ did not pray for us in this prayer to do nothing, he prayed for us to speak God’s truth! Christ prays to God to “Protect them…. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.” But what have we been sent into the world to do? Are we to turn a blind eye to injustice or toss up our hands in defeat? If this the model that we are teaching others, what type of Christians will the generation that follow us be? And is this indifference speaking God’s message of unconditional love to others?

            The Ringwood story originally prompted me to ask the “how” question, similar to the questions the disciples asked when they heard that Jesus would be leaving them shortly. “How can I know what to do and say, Jesus?” and “How can I bring about the Kingdom in this situation?” The answer I found was the same for me as it would have been for the disciples, stay close to the source. This leads to the second question - so what does it look like to stay close to the source? Perhaps an answer can be found in Psalm 1. Here we are told that “[the righteous] are like trees planted by streams of water, which yield their fruit in its season, and their leaves do not wither. In all that they do, they prosper.”

            We all find our source in something. For those whom find their source in and through God, they “delight in the law of the Lord, and on his law they meditate day and night.” As people of God we must first and foremost draw our strength from the scriptures. How do we know the will of God? From his word given to us. We must be a people grounded in the scripture if we are to draw upon life giving water. Secondly, we must be a people of prayer – seeking after God’s heart. Prayer is an expression of our relationship with the source. And finally, we stay close to the source by being in community. Jesus prayed, “And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” This does not mean that we need to agree on every issue or the meaning behind every piece of scripture, but it does we that we are in community with the righteous and follow their direction. The Psalmist writes, “Happy are those who do not follow the advice of the wicked, or take the path that sinners treed, or sit the seats of the scoffers.” For these things expose us to a lack of fresh water. It is like drawing up the orange sludge water from Ringwood into our trees, we will wither and die, not being able to produce fruits for others that reflect God’s goodness. We cannot be paralyzed by fear – of being wrong, of being disliked by others, or of not being with the agenda of the world. May we strive to speak the truth, the word of God, and to do so in love, unconditionally?

            Another one of my favorite stories as a child was “Who’s Going to Take Care of Me?” by Michelle Magorian. The book told the story of Eric, a little boy who looked to his big sister, Karin to take care of him at daycare. But one day, Karin had to go to school instead of daycare, which prompted little Eric to ask, “Who is going to take care of me?” In the end, Eric found himself taking care of another little boy at daycare, leading the new boy as Karin had done for him.

            While I can imagine the disciples asking at the conclusion of this prayer, “Who is going to take care of me Jesus?” their story did not end there. For they learned to take care of each other and the world, spreading the news of the gospel so that we have it today. They told the story that the empire and the religious establishment didn’t want them to tell, because it was against their world. They healed those who had been caste off by society. And they befriended those who were deemed untouchable. They pointed others back to the source that brought life.

            May we too cease to think about ourselves, as little Eric learned to do in the story. Instead of being concerned for himself, he reached out in concern for others. May we stay close to the source through prayer, scripture, and community, drawing upon it for the strength we need to speak the powerful message of truth to the world.

           

Amen. 

Friday, May 22, 2009

Where are the Prophets?

    I'm sitting in IAF training and I want to cry. The presenter is making a statements that he knows are exaggerated and somewhat false. He is using qualitative words that don't match the quantity - never, always, etc. The words that I loathe, because they lack accuracy. When I told the presenter that those words make me uncomfortable and he replied that he was agitating me. All that taught me was that agitation is lying in order to get a reaction. 
    My chief thought is that agitation is so far from prophesy. And I would rather be a prophet. In my Shalom application I wrote that I am honest to the point that I scare people. But its honesty. Not agitation. Agitation lacks the love strand that is core to my life and communities of shalom. Prophesy with love involves encouragement and rebuke. That's not here in this definition of agitation. Speak out of love not rile up! Prophets speak in love because they want to bring about the Kingdom of God. 
    Lord, may I be a prophet, not an agitator. 

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

Vocabulary for what I've been feeling

"Political action does not throughly alter the attitudes that underlie the discrimination." - Nancy Eiesland from The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability

Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Struggling

   I'm really struggling to process this IAF class. It is arising emotions in me that are confusing, a tension that I have not felt in a while. On the one hand, I want to believe what everyone else believes, to say that the church isn't doing its job and that we need to organize the power in the institutions to act. But right now the other side of me, the side that comes from my upbringing to point me to who I am going to be, is struggling and rebelling. I don't like the fact that God is discounted. And I disagree that the church isn't doing its job - at least not fully. My optimistic, affirmative, and asset driven eyes see the beauty in the being, not the offense in not being the potential in other's eyes. Beyond that, people are not going to respond if clergy and lay members just stand up and tell them that they are all wrong, not kingdom minded, and just generally are destructive to themselves and others. I sort of wonder what God would think about our discussions of power, our marriage with politics. Is this what I mean when I pray "Thy will be done, Thy Kingdom come?" Because I don't believe in my heart that it is. 

Obama

    I watched as the IAF crushed the hopes and dreams that they laid in the figure of Obama come crashing down as they saw the network he came from. And the a-political people say, "Welcome to what we've known. A person is not God and cannot bring about the Kingdom."

Thursday, May 14, 2009

The Medicine Wheel


    Yesterday during Shalom Training we looked the one of the Native American Medicine Wheels. There are four animals and seasons that are around the wheel, representing four different personality types. At the top of the wheel in the season of Winter - where the Buffalo represents those people who are driven, task oriented, group organizers, and work for the "greater good", however the Buffalo tends to be demanding upon others and not centered on relationships. To the East is the Eagle flying through Summer. The Eagle is a visionary - full of long views and idealism, but the Eagle often lacks the ability to put details to plans. To the South in Spring we find the deer/ squirrel/ mouse depending on the specific wheel. These docile animals are relationship oriented but are often not driven. And finally to the West we find the Brown Bear in Fall, who are good with data collection and focus on how things have worked in the past, but lack vision and are often viewed as judgemental.
    The wheel in and of itself is great, but I don't find myself fitting in a particular category. I fit in the center. Almost exactly. Which is rare, apparently. Often people need to force themselves to work their way around the circle and understand others. 
     I believe in affirming the gifts from other. Telling what I appreciate in them. And I can work my way across the circle, bridging gaps. When we get so stuck in categories instead of working towards the middle then we suffer and take away something from others instead of blessing them. 

Monday, May 11, 2009

Poor Theology

  This past weekend I went to see my best friends and transfer children graduate. I cried. A lot. I cried out of joy, seeing what they have to offer the Kindom. 

But I also cried tears of frustration. Frustration by some of things that were exiting the mouths of well respected people in the community during this beautiful time of celebration. I heard statements like that we were blessed to be people who will bless our homes (with lots of children) - but I had to ask what that meant for single people. 
I heard that Houghton is unique in that has the finger prints of God all over it - but I had to ask if that means that God isn't present everywhere.
I heard words like "others" and "them" to describe people from different nations - but I had to ask how that leaves any room for solidarity.

How can theology be so skewed in a "God-centered" place?

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Construction

   Today while I was driving through Morristown there was construction. The city is working on building a new complex with housing, shops, and parking known as 40 Park. Construction is a bit tricky in this city because most of the side roads are one way and you can only turn on to Main Street from select locations, one of which is where 40 Park is being built. As a result, traffic was severely delayed. The people in front of and behind me in line were becoming quite impatient. And I caught myself thinking that this is what its like to do community organizing. People want finished, perfect results immediately and get impatient when it takes time. Yet creation and construction take time. Perhaps that is half of the challenge with community organizing, teaching people to ally with you in patience for the birth/ resurrection. 

Saturday, May 2, 2009

Blessed, Broken, Given

   Drew Theo School was blessed to have Yvette Flunder (http://www.radicallyinclusive.com/) who spoke many powerful messages throughout the course of her day. The one that touched me the most was "blessed, broken, and given". Our lives are like Jesus' for we are blessed, broken, and given as people of God. We are like the communion bread that we partake in. However, all too often people just want to be blessed.
  Blessings in the Hebrew Scriptures were symbolized by the pouring of oil. The only problem with oil is that you can wash it off (can you wash off a blessing?) However, if we are blessed, then we will be broken, and brokenness is not something that can easily be washed away by tears or time. It leaves scars - marks of healing. We are an oil-seeking culture and Church, wanting temporary blessings that we can choose to acknowledge or wash away when its inconvenient. But brokenness.... 
  Time and time again I've been rejoicing in my brokenness. When I am broken the most, I realize, is when God is preparing me for some big time giving of myself. We are not givers by nature, we are created into givers. And when we are broken we have something to give and share with a broken world. For God never leaves us broken but always bring us hope to show others.
   So may we move past just being blessed to embracing brokenness and the giving (and sharing) of authentic and entire selves for God's Shalom. 

Friday, May 1, 2009

Grace

     I have been reminded lately about what is missing from life. Perhaps that is a very pessimistic way to start a post, but alas it has been on my mind. What is missing is grace. Not grace from God, which is abundant and overflowing, but rather grace towards one another. 
There was a point in my life when I struggled with forgiveness - both of others and myself. When I share this with people now they seemed taken aback, because this isn't the Michelle they know. The Michelle they know readily forgives everyone, usually by the end of the day, and can point out the good in just about anyone and in any situation. 
  So what's with the dualistic personalities? Perhaps it came from the realization that if I received grace from God and others, then I must give. And following that realization and with lots of practice it has become habit. But through the lens of my habit, I've realized how little humans extend grace, yet we desire people to be patient and gracious towards us when we stumble.
     The other thing we lack is the ability to compliment one another. I was telling a friend the other day that if you don't share what you admire in others with them, then they will sadly never know. We are quick to criticize one another, but to share compliments is a rarity. Why must we bring others down and hold them to such a high standard that they will never be able to reach it, just to make ourselves feel good?