New every day

“Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.”

So said Henry James. But today I'm thinking it's summer mornings that are most beautiful. There's a breeze this morning and the sound of air, of breath, moving through maple trees. The leaves on the grapevine in my backyard are all a-quiver as they shade and nourish the hard green grapes underneath. There are birds, and even the sound of distant sirens headed for the hospital ER does not disrupt the beauty and the peace of this morning.

The patch of grass in my backyard is overrun with Queen Anne's lace. A week ago I tried to cut the stalks down, to make my weeds conform--if you were looking from far enough away--to the concept of "lawn." But they're back, tenfold! Solid lush green grass would perhaps be more restful on the eyes, certainly closer to the suburban well-kept ideal, but I'm good with a little wilderness meadow next to my cracked cement patio. I'm good.

And now there's a tiny rabbit, too--an infant with delicate ears, no taller than the grass. I'm glad he/she is safe in my backyard. (If I still had a dog, I'd be writing a different story.)

We've had a rough week here in the U. S., confronting fear and injustice, hate, vengeance, helplessness. It can't be wrong to stop for a while, to contemplate the clouds, listen to the pneuma, the spirit, the breath of God moving over all creation--its tender rabbits, its hard urban edges, its people who carry God's own image, though all too often unaware of this image in themselves and others.

The tiny rabbit in the weeds is quietly eating breakfast, alert but trusting, curious. The world is new every day.

July 8, 2016

How are we ever going to sort this all out?

Two days, two police shootings of innocent black men, with horrifying video on social media. And then a night when six policemen protecting a peaceful protest are killed by snipers.

Snipers.

This isn't Syria. This isn't war. But it is America, where the original sin was slavery, where the rhetoric of "all men are created equal" in the founding document did not include men of African ancestry (and did not grant full personhood to any women at all).

Statesmen knew this was going to be a problem. Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia:

Can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference! The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a context.

Abraham Lincoln, in his Second Inaugural Address:

The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgements of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

The discussion about justice is shifting in 2016. We're not talking slavery any more, or flagrant Jim Crow laws, we're talking Black Lives Matter. We're beginning to recognize institutional racism, how the system is built on assumptions about white privilege, how laws and history have created systems that are hard to escape but are no less unjust.

I live in Oak Park, Illinois, a suburb whose eastern border is Chicago's west side. Back in the 1960s, as racial change and destructive housing practices crept westward through the city towards Oak Park, the village made a deliberate and largely successful effort to avoid resegregation and to integrate its schools and neighborhoods. Good for us!—or is that white privilege using its power to preserve its own property values? There's still an "achievement gap" between black and white students at the high school and racial disparities there in discipline and suspensions. We talk about these things in our local newspaper and in local elections, but there's a lot more hand-wringing than there are answers.

Racism has surfaced in our national politics in the "Make America great again" candidacy of Donald Trump. Most news media pundits are appalled, but a significant portion of them explain the Donald's appeal as the response of the economically disenfranchised, these are voters reacting to the disappearance of well-paying manufacturing jobs for those without a college education. But others cite polls that suggest Trump supporters are reacting to "the browning of America," to demographic change that threatens white control. There's a black man in the White House who's a powerful symbol of that change and a target for hateful responses.

Maybe the good news for America about Trump's candidacy is that it's brought racial hatred out in the open, where it can be named and disavowed, if not outright rejected. But the knee-jerk anger, the spite, the hatred are frightening. (See "Hang Hillary" in The New Republic.)

And there is anger on the other side. A comment about one of the snipers in Dallas, from the New York Times at 8:25am this morning:

The Dallas police chief, David O. Brown, said the gunman who was killed had “said he was upset at Black Lives Matter, said he was upset about the recent police shootings.” 

Chief Brown said, “The suspect said he was upset at white people; the suspect said he wanted to kill white people.” He was especially upset at white police officers, said Chief Brown. 

“This must stop, this divisiveness between police and citizens,” said Chief Brown said, who is black.

How will we stop it--not just the divisiveness between police and citizens, but between black and white, between those unaware of their privilege and those victimized by it, between the haves and the have-nots, between those who hold tightly to their place in society and those who know that America has always regarded them as "other" and not entitled to full freedom?

We've seen so much violence in the last 48 hours, in the last month, the sudden and fatal violence of gunshots, followed by arterial blood seeping through the shirts of victims. As Christians we worship a God revealed in Jesus, who died a violent. tortured death on the cross but then was resurrected. Will this heal a broken world? Fast enough? We wait.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. For in hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience. 

 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:22ff)

The news from Dallas was appearing on my phone as I went to bed last night. On Facebook I posted a statement of prayer "for all in the valley of the shadow of death." It seemed feeble. I added an exclamation point for emotion and it looked even sillier, even more hopeless.

Grief and lament--I'll hand that off to the Spirit today. I'll begin to look for my role in sorting this all out.  Because we must.

Definitions on Trinity Sunday

So here's the chain of logic that  I'm puzzling over today:

Suffering > endurance > character > hope. 

The long version, from St. Paul in Romans 5:3-5:

We also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us.

It would seem that Paul is passing on some practical life wisdom here, some elevating advice that will get you through the tough spots in life--the surefire path from hard times to being ennobled by hard times.

But it's St. Paul. And life is complicated. So let's define terms.

Suffering. Whatever--if you think you're suffering, I'm not going to argue with you. No need to measure or evaluate or compare my troubles to yours. We're all going to run into suffering. Some of it whacks us upside the head. Some of it we create for ourselves. Some of it is, as Sartre would have it, Other People.

Endurance. The dictionary app is giving me two choices for a definition of endurance: 1) the power to withstand hardship or stress, or 2) a state of surviving, remaining alive. Is endurance a product of a "training effect," the way stressing the body with exercise builds the power to respond better to the next stress? Or is endurance just hanging on, as in, whatever doesn't kill me makes me stronger? I'm inclined to the latter, being, this week, not very fond of exercise. Maybe Paul's point is as simple as without the challenges of suffering, one can't claim endurance.

Character. The first definition that comes to mind for character is "good repute," and this Perverse Lutheran is going to reject that one flat out. Too easy. Honestly, I think that life's challenges and the way you endure them may not make you into the person of "good repute" who everyone looks up to. Why should it? Challenges--suffering--can make you a bad-ass, can make you bitter, can drive you to drink or worse. You may eat more than your share of chocolate ice cream or Cheez-Its. You may end up being hard to be around or living on the margins, in the shadows, or alone. With that character of "good repute" you may end up being an inspiration to others. I'm not knocking that, but inspirational is really about others and their projected hopes and fears. It's not who you are on your own. So let's say instead that character is who you are and what has happened to you and how those things determine the way you live.

How does character turn into hope? This is serious. "Hope does not disappoint us" is written on a yellow post-it note that's been stuck to the bulletin board over my desk for the last two years. When I put it there, the hope, the tangible hope connected to that piece of paper, was that someone would find some diagnosis for my son Kris that would not be ALS. And we were disappointed there. But the post-it with its pencil scrawl remains on the bulletin board.

Earlier today I drew a diagram of this whole suffering-endurance-character-hope thing. There are straight-ahead arrows from each word to the next, but there are also arrows and curves that swoop low or point upward. Anger is at the bottom of an arrow that points downward from endurance, and it just sits there. It's not going away any time soon. There's a fish-hook curve that points from character back to suffering, with the words "Loving this" written in the drain-trap of that J-shaped arrow. That's a subject for another day.

Pointing upward from the word suffering is "because Jesus" and "because this is God's world." I think that the path from character and all of life's experiences into hope lies through Jesus. But I think it's important to say what that means, because, well, St. Paul and the early church were groping with that. And if we're not still doing that today, how can we say we understand. How can we know how to live?

So what is it about Jesus that the path to hope lies there? Well, it lies through a god who created the world but did not leave it on its own when its very nature became troubled and contradictory and evil. The path to hope lies through a god who took human suffering into god's divine nature and through a god who was and is creator, redeemer, sanctifier all in one. So that we can know hope, no matter what the crap of this world does to character, no matter suffering, no matter endurance.

Lord, this stuff is hard to think through. Often I wonder just what it is that makes us struggle with the infinite and with meaning and all of that. Isn't it hard enough just to get through the grocery store and cook dinner? Many of the Trinity Sunday texts are reduced to praise this and praise that, and holy, holy, holy. Awe without explanation.

But yet that post-it note says "hope does not disappoint us." For all its yellow mundaneness, it says the infinite will break through.

Because it already has.

#KissMyALS

May is ALS Awareness Month. Today was ALS Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill. So I tweeted at my congressional representatives. I changed my profile picture on Facebook to one that says "I asked Congress to support ALS research. Will you?" I've followed  #alsadvocacyday and the Chicago area ALS association chapter all day on Twitter, searching photos and captions for Kris--my 29-year-old son who has ALS and who was in Washington DC doing advocacy visits with congressional staff members today.

Now I'm searching for three words to put in a post or a video to share at als.net, the advocacy site that channels funds to ALS research at the ALS Therapy Development Institute.

Three words, they ask for. Attempts:

This really sucks.

Please bring hope.

Two to five.

Brains locked away.

Beat back despair.

Much too young.

Power wheelchairs rock.

 I am trying to be useful. Trying to bring attention to PALS--patients with ALS who are passionately advocating for research to find a cure or a way to manage the disease--an answer to ALS that likely will come too late to help them, but that may mean an ALS diagnosis is not hopeless in the future.
It is wonderful but true that this effort in itself brings hope to those who suffer now with ALS.

Kris has never shied away from using profanity--at least when hanging out with friends. (He apparently has an off-switch used in his special ed classroom.) He often uses the hashtag #KissMyALS.  The piety of having a fatal disease need not separate one from vulgarity's life force, its anger and defiance. "Kiss My ALS," because I have this disease but I am not this disease--I am still who I always was, only more focused, more certain of what matters.

I struggle to find words to write about all of this. Kris does this memorably, energetically, honestly on his own at his blog Gronks Finding Grace. Anything else you want to know about the disease you can read on any number of websites. When I try to write as Kris's mother, as a family member of someone with ALS, I end up frustrated, tearful, and unable to let the words pour out onto the screen. This is my baby, my sweet son, my friend, someone I esteem, someone who means the universe to me. I am the mom and I am rattled down to my core by the way ALS has interfered with life, the care for life, the joy in living that is there to be passed from one generation to another.

Joy in living--I think of Kris's neon green beer straw, the one visible in his picture today in Tammy Duckworth's office. Presumably there was water in this cup this morning, but by the time I post this, I'm sure he'll be enjoying something more interesting--good beer makes life better. Tomorrow or the next night, I'll talk with him and hear not only about where he went and what he did in DC, but also hear about who he met and his plans for staying in touch with them, giving to and drawing strength from the ALS community. He'll be thanking God for these things on his blog, and so will everyone who knows and loves him.

Three words. More attempts:

Life is good.
Hope is powerful.
I love you.
Hang on, Kris!

Random on Palm Sunday

1. First, this:


 

The copy on the WeRaise page over at Wheat Ridge Ministries says:

As Christ walks among us, Harmony Community Church walks alongside its neighbors in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood. 

Harmony's Pastor, James Brooks, walked alongside my two sons during some tough times when he was the Director of Youth Ministry at our suburban church. He walked alongside them as an image of Christ in their lives, listened, shared his own faith experiences and played a lot of basketball. He does this now for kids and adults who are up against some very tough problems (murder, violence, addictions) and some very basic ones (jobs, hunger). His church is a place of fellowship, coherence and hope, and they need a new roof. Help them, if you can.

2. I've spent so much time reading about politics lately. The primary season came to Illinois last week and has now left for other states. Stunned Republicans are late getting on the #NeverTrump bandwagon. I think that protesters who confront Trump supporters unkindly are playing into their persecuted white victimhood narrative. What on earth can we do? Satire? Is that a good weapon?

3. I'm not doing the drama of Holy Week this year. No, thank you, to waving the palm branch in church this morning. I'm not painting pictures in my head of this morning's procession or of the one later in the week that took Jesus out of the city, carrying his cross, to Golgotha. Not trying to picture myself in the "Crucify him!" crowd, not trying to imagine myself as Peter or even Mary at the foot of the cross. Why not?

4. Because I'm just trying to find myself in all this, myself in relation to Jesus, who is human and divine, who reminds me that my human life matters to God and is part of God's kingdom.

5. Which is how, of course, I can walk, as Christ, with others. God's image in me, God's image recreated in me because of Jesus' suffering and death here on earth. God's image resurrected in creation, in Christ, in me, in all things, in those whom I love.

6. Which brings me to World Down Syndrome Day, tomorrow, March 21. I've wondered many times about how my daughter with DS sees herself but couldn't imagine myself into her head. This video from CoorDown, an Italian advocacy organization, brought me up short. Of course! She sees herself as a beautiful, hopeful young woman with a beautiful, hopeful life. Why did it take me so long to get this?

7. We sang a Bach cantata at Grace this afternoon--Himmelskönig, sei willkommen
(King of heaven, welcome, BWV 182). The final movement--a little gigue--so let us follow the Savior through "Lieben and Leiden," love and sorrow. Follow? Or try to walk alongside, because really, who's leading?

Happy Holy Week.

Random on a Sunday while watching the Oscars

1. Yeah, I'm watching the Oscars. It's a ritual. I watch them more often than not, actually more often than that--I think I've missed one year since 1979, when I first watched the Oscars with Lon. My sainted husband was a movie critic when we first started dating. Later he was the editor on the Chicago end of the phone, talking to Roger Ebert filing his story from the west coast. So the Oscars, it's a family thing.

2. Right now I'm watching each of the supporting actress nominees smile sweetly and modestly after their clips are played. Have they been practicing? And the Oscar goes to -- arghhh-- there's a prepared crawl of who the winner would like to thank, too small and too fast to read. Ah, but  the winner of the best supporting actress Oscar is wearing yellow, beautifully, like a movie star.

3. I need a new dress for an Event. Will I see something tonight on the Oscars that will inspire me to shop? The leather jacket on the Mad Max costumer? Not really me. But everything else I see seems to be strapless. And the women seem to have incredibly broad shoulders. The woman film editor winner has style I can manage, which is to say, not much. But she had such smart things to say ....

4. I cannot imagine sitting down at a computer to write the copy for this show--the stuff that people introducing the awards read. Forgettable appears to be the standard. Or maybe there's some secret rubric the writers have to follow to write sentences that can be read by actors who've been drinking since mid-afternoon.

5. My Sunday began with a quick dip into Marilynne Robinson's collection of essays "The Givenness of Things." And now I have the book open again, looking for something to share from what I've read in the last day or two. It's not super-quotable stuff--it's paragraph after paragraph of ideas opening onto other ideas. Can't read too much at one sitting. My mind stays expanded only if I go bit by bit.

6. "You can make stuff." So say the Oscar-winning producers of "Inside Out."  Hands down my favorite quote of the day.

Something short of perfect

When my kids were younger and we went camping with the cousins, nights away from home and television and streetlights meant games. As the last streaks of sunset faded into the night sky, we'd start off perhaps with Memory, and once everyone had put on socks and sweaters and settled in, we'd choose teams for Pictionary. My family is pretty competitive--we're not sore losers, but we do prefer to win--so it's important that the teams are fair, with skilled and unskilled, young and old players equally divided between teams.

Eliza always wanted to play Pictionary, and Eliza has Down syndrome and the intellectual disability that goes with it. Whose team would she be on? Did she have to have a turn to draw, like everyone else? Would she be able to draw the random thing that came up on the card for her turn? What if she didn't know what it was?

We adapted. We made some new rules. We found ways to give her regular turns just like everyone else. She was happy and excited to be the center of attention and take her turn with pencil and paper, and we had a lot of noisy fun until campground quiet hours arrived at 11 p.m.

Did simplifying the game for Eliza give her team an advantage that was unfair to everyone else? Probably it did. We all had to give up a little bit of what we thought was "fair" in order for her to be included. We also had to be a little more gracious about bragging rights as winners and losers. But the game was better when everyone was included.

In churches we celebrate the idea of inclusion. Jesus is pretty clear about including everyone when he says "Come unto me." But we don't often acknowledge that to include everyone, individuals may have to give up some things and we might even be called on to celebrate the bumps and rough patches rather than judge them.

Our Transfiguration worship service this morning began with an awkward moment. The school handbell choir, students in grades 6–8 who I've been rehearsing with for a couple weeks while their teacher is on leave, was scheduled to play two pieces as the prelude. Neither piece is memorable music--they're short teaching pieces, with fun things in them like thumb damps and marts. As we finished the first and prepared to play the second, the pastor came to the front of church and started the pre-service announcements.

What to do? Darn it, we'd spent serious rehearsal time on "A Joyful Ring," and we were not going to be back to play it on, say, the Fourth Sunday in Lent. So before the organist had a chance to introduce the entrance hymn, we raised our bells and chimes, I beat out a measure, and we played.

So yes, the congregation was a little inconvenienced. They had to figure out what was going on and stand and wait and listen before singing "Love Divine All Love Excelling" (a much better piece of music). My back was turned so I didn't see, but I'm sure some folks didn't know if they should be watching the ringers in the balcony or turn around as directed to face the processional cross.

But they were fine. They gave up a little bit of comfort so that the kids could play. It was a small moment of grace, of God's grace appearing in us.

There have been other moments like that at my church, especially as many people, not all of them regular church-goers, came to a funeral last week for a young man who died tragically and much too soon. There were rough patches in friends' and relative's participation in the eulogies and in the liturgy. There were rough places for all of us, because--well, many tears were shed. But when we share the grief of others--and give up our own comfort--we become God's sweet tears, a sign of God weeping with us and holding us.

If we followed the Pictionary rules to the letter the game would be (might be?) perfectly fair. If everything in worship were slick and smooth and stylistically unified, it might be considered great art and certainly for many people it would be inspiring. But we'd be leaving people out.

We live on the plain, not Transfiguration's mountaintop. We live on the plain where our imperfections are where Christ's love and healing are revealed. Thanks be to God!



This month marks the tenth anniversary of The Perverse Lutheran. The first post was published on Transfiguration Sunday 2006.  There's plenty of imperfection on display in the 277 posts I've published since then, and more failings in the drafts that never were published. Thank you, dear readers, for sticking with me.