Torah

by Haley

If you and I were to sit down and talk, get to know each other for just a bit, it wouldn’t be too long before you learned that I love the Old Testament. More specifically I love the Pentateuch. Those first five books of the Bible, and Deuteronomy in particular, they have my heart. I had the opportunity to take an intensive class on Deuteronomy this year, and in that short week I fell more in love with Torah. Here is a small glimpse into why I love Torah.

Imagine all of Israel encamped on the eastern side of the Jordan River.

Moses stands before them, his arms spread wide, as he recounts for them their parents’ exodus from Egypt and subsequent rebellion when they were first invited into the Promised Land.

The story is familiar, but each Israelite listens intently as Moses reminds them of the punishment they and their parents endured at the hand of Adonai. And Moses reminds them that throughout the entire journey, a journey which should have taken eleven days but instead took forty years, God was with them, providing for their every need each and every step of the way.

The kings of Heshbon and Bashan have been defeated.

The land has been divided.

Moses stands before them, his arms spread wide, as he begins to instruct those he has loved and shepherded well. Knowing he cannot cross over into the Promised Land with them, he prepares Israel to receive the gift that is the Law.

See, I have taught you statutes and rules, as the Lord my God commanded me, that you should do them in the land that you are entering to take possession of it. Keep them and do them, for that will be your wisdom and your understanding in the sight of the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, ‘Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people.’ For what great nation is there that has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is to us, whenever we call upon him? And what great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today? Deuteronomy 4:5–8

Moses gives them the law so that, in his absence, Israel will know how to obey and worship God.

But Moses does not simply demand their obedience. He tells them why they are to obey. Keeping and doing the Law will be their wisdom and their witness to those around them. And the keeping and doing of the Law will not simply be wisdom and witness.

Moses reminds Israel that in the midst of pagan nations serving capricious gods with unpredictable moods and vulgar appetites, they serve a God who has come close and drawn near. They serve a God whose presence dwells among them. They serve a God who draws near to them.

This God they serve has not just drawn near and dwelt among them. He has, in His drawing near and in His dwelling, given them explicit instructions on how to interact with Him, on how to be in relationship with Him. Moses asks Israel, weary from her desert wanderings, ready to dwell in something other than tents, longing for food that is not manna, what other nation has been given such a good and righteous way to be in relationship with their gods.

“What great nation is there that has a god so near to is as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call upon him?”

“What great nation is there, that has statutes and rules so righteous as all this law that I set before you today?”

His questions are rhetorical. The answer to each is obvious. No nation. No great nation has a god so near or statutes and rules so righteous.

After years of wandering, and dwelling in tents, after years of eating the same thing day after day, what a beautiful picture Moses has painted.

Imagine weary Israel basking in the glow of these words that so beautifully remind her just how special she is to the Lord.

Imagine exhausted Israel soaking up the statues and decrees Moses passes along to them from God, stating so clearly what it will look like for them to be in relationship with Him.

Should you ever find yourself on the edge of the desert, staring westward across the Jordan River imagine Moses there, asking you those same questions.

What other god is there that is as near to you as the Lord your God?

What other god is there who has fulfilled the statues and rules through his own righteous life and sacrificial death so that you might clothe yourself in his righteousness, so that he might always be near to you?

 

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May 24, 2013 in Church with 0 Comments

such strange things.

by Antonia Terrazas

 

Hail thee, festival day!
Blessed day to be hallowed forever;
Day when the Holy Ghost

Shone in the world full of grace.

The song that ushered us in to Easter upon the first alleluia-shout leads me through the park, over a bridge, to the riverside. We, the parish, gather here, outdoors today. Today we’ve traded stained glass for leaves, a full choir for one or two shaky speakers. It’s Pentecost, when things get wild.

Well, at least, our Episcopal version of it—with folding chairs to sit in and folding walkers set aside, with vestments, with bulletins, and a Table set for Body and Blood. We’re gathered in the shade and the wind is in the trees the whole time we sing and speak and stand and sit.  I’m trying to think of that Lauren Winner quote about how only Jesus could get us together to do such strange things.

 

Today, though, it’s the Holy Spirit who comes with fire, who descends like the wind of creation. Today, we plan to read the Gospel simultaneously aloud, in different languages, though no tongues dance above our heads.

It’s lovely and odd when the time comes, with a handful of myriad tongues loose with scripture, disparate paces making swells and lulls with an underlying hum, just like the cicadas that will take this place by force in the heat of the coming months.

 

When the last language stops speaking and we’ve bookended our reading with the bolded proclamation, Praise to you, Lord Christ, I look down to realize that I’ve been clenching the edge of the picnic table the entire time, the grooves leaving marks of anxiety in my fingers. The mixed and hurried murmuring in the crowd, though spoken from a page, stopped my heart with the forgotten familiarity of the old days with phrases forced, to conjure the gift, of rally-cries, of tears streaming for healing, healing, healing in strange sounds in a land with no interpreters, the healing that never came or at least, we couldn’t see. Those were the days when falling out in the Spirit felt a lot like being pushed down by a human hand, and Tongues turned into just another pretty way to sing. The Holy Ghost became a prop to push our own agendas, that otherworldly Prayer Language another way to add our own footnotes.

I haven’t had to look back, not really, in a number of years, but here I am, enveloped by such strange sounds. And as soon as I feel smothered by them, I wonder if I’ve tamed God.

But then I steal a glance at the Table prepared in this version of wilderness by the river—I think of the Creator ordering chaos, of Christ walking and dying with us only to rise again, of the Companion and Comforter of the Holy Spirit. God does such strange things with Body and Blood, with Water and Flame, and it all still seems pretty wild to me.

I pray for my tongue to be afire with it all.

 

photo credit.

May 23, 2013 in Church with 2 Comments

Transparency

by Timothy

Transparency1

I read once that light is the color of transparency. Aristotle wrote it, and he had a lot of time on his hands. The thought befuddles, but I see its truth.

Light is immediacy—everywhere, but traveling nowhere. I look through the glass pane in my kitchen and see the chestnut and maple. I see them because transparency lets me. The window is not transparency, only a clear thing—transparency the effect.

Transparency holds light and allows it to be everywhere. The trees outside shine into my eyes; visible, through transparency. Light is the color of transparency.

I read once that God stands within himself. Like when he came down to Sinai and passed by Moses. He was at once the enveloping cloud of fire and light and commotion, and he was also the angel moving by a cowering human.

Befuddling, yes. But is it so hard to comprehend. We walk in his great cloud of commotion—a resonating world, throbbing with his glory. Pieces of heaven lying all over the place. And yet he walks around in this glory as he lives inside of his mini human temples.

Glory within glory.

I pray for transparency. Not the unmitigated kind that lacks shame and thought. Rather, the kind that illuminates holy truth; that speaks to me in the quiet corners and helps me to see. Because of God, I am visible to myself, and see. “I bring my heart to you, Light that teaches truth.” Augustine always referred to God as light.

To find God is to finally see, even if our human glass dims the view.

For nowhere we go can we now escape his light. It is everywhere and immediate. We cannot close our eyes in hopes of obliterating the light, like the child who shuts tight their eyes and comments on the darkness all the while standing in the brilliance of the sun.

When the scales lift from our eyes, we find new lenses through which to see—our imaginations baptized. We gasp at color quicker. We tear at innocence longer. We see.

Oh, how I pray for sensation. Not the lusty dim kind, but the fiery consuming kind that reveals you to me—the light sparkling in the visible others walking around me. Aliens? No, they’re just mini-temples who wake again and again wanting to sense you so they can know you.

I thought I knew you, until I stepped out and under the canopy of celestial contrast and range; and beheld myself beneath the gulf, my form fixed and flailing in the doubt of my proportion and change. But then, I spied the fixed radiance of your dot-beginning—more perfect than the circle, unique and true, the whole of your infinity and shape.

“Hosanna!” I yelled. “How I need saved. How I need helped. How we all of us need you.” And you gushed on me the immediacy of your brilliance. You ravished me in angelic fire and I cried because my bones no longer ached, my soul was no longer dry.

“Live!” you yelled back. “Revive, and be revived!” you bellowed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

May 21, 2013 in Church with 1 Comment

When God Feels Like an Abusive Father

by Shawn

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*Warning – some child abuse images are described in this post.

The 18-month-old wears a small hospital gown over his puffy diaper. His left eye is a greenish purple and a baseball-sized bump perches on the side of his head, just above a small square patch of white gauze. He sits quietly in the hospital nursery.

The young woman holds her hands out and the little boy reaches for her. She glances at the nurse, who nods in return, so the young woman picks up the little boy gingerly, handles him like an egg shell.

Her husband, who had waited at the door, walks forward quietly and joins the two new friends.

So this is what it means to be a foster parent, he thinks. When he looks at the boy’s head, the unexpected love he already feels mingles with anger and sadness. He puts his hand up on the boy’s hand where it rests on the young woman’s shoulder. The boy looks at him.

And the boy screams in terror. He fights to get away. Two nurses come running and the young woman carries the boy to the other side of the room. Her husband retreats into the hallway, shaken.

* * * * *

They take the boy home and the first time they change him they see the cigarette burns previously hidden by the diaper, a constellation of pain. They see additional bruises and begin to realize that he doesn’t hear so well out of his left ear.

That little boy falls in love with their other children and he cannot get enough attention from the young woman. He eats and he thrives and he grows. He even starts to walk, toddling along the coffee table, the arm chair. But every time the young man comes into the room or looks at him across the table, the boy trembles, cries out and then screams, frantic.

The baby can’t tell the difference between his biological father and this new, loving father. Maybe it’s that their voices sound the same or their faces look similar. Maybe it’s because they both have beards or short hair.

It’s understandable – the wounds were severe. The pain was real. The fear doesn’t evaporate.

So the young man waits. And he waits. And one day he comes into the room and the little boy is standing up, holding on to the side of the sofa. The little boy doesn’t cry, so the young man walks a little closer. He sits down beside the boy, and still there is no screaming, no trembling.

The young man puts his hand down on the sofa beside the toddler.

“Hey, little man,” he says quietly.

The toddler looks up at his face, then reaches over and grabs on to one of his fingers.

* * * * *

Don’t confuse your fathers. God is not the abusive one. He’s not the one telling you you’re not good enough. He’s not the one hurting you just for the fun of it.

He’s the kind voice, waiting.

May 20, 2013 in Church with 29 Comments

Salt

by Tony Woodlief

Salt

She turned back when the angels said look ahead and every cell of the body that was woman and wife and mother hardened into crumbling salt. She became a gray and twisted pillar and soon she was wind-bitten and alone, for her husband could no sooner stay on these unpeopled flatlands with his motherless daughters than he could have convinced her not to leave some covetous or curious sliver of her heart behind in her homeland.

Whether you believe a God who hung the heavens can also breathe words unsullied through sinful man, or you believe that what we have now are just the poetic shards of some deeper truth, you might leave her tale inclined to avoid whatever it is that causes a body to be recast as salt, whether literally or metaphorically.

Don’t turn back. You’ve been called out of that wretched place, for the love of God; don’t turn back.

We are supposed to move forward with a good word for the lost and the broken and sometimes even for ourselves, hidden in our hearts as God’s grace-filled words are supposed to be—and well-hidden at that, as often as we choose our own words in their place. We are supposed to move forward and for God’s sake not turn back lest our moving becomes turning, becomes standing, becomes a cautionary tale, a ragged godforsaken pillar where once moved a pilgrim.

To Lot’s wife, salt was death, yet Mark records Christ exhorting his disciples: “Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.” He refers to Leviticus, where salt indeed represents a kind of looking back, a remembrance of the covenant between God and his wayward people.

We are a backward-looking people, and what we look back to shapes where we are going. I am prone to look back on my best moments, or my sweet and secret sins, or my grievances, which is to say the worst moments of someone else. I am a writer and so I look back; I am a sinner and so I look back, at times with pleasure and others with shame and sometimes with both in equal measure.

I am inclined to say that looking back on what has brought me shame is unprofitable to my soul, that it ignores the forgiveness poured out atop Golgotha. I feel like I am supposed to say that because I’ve heard it said, but I think it is wrong because shame brings repentance and repentance is in short supply—in my life and in the life of the world.

Had Lot’s wife looked back with shame for how she’d embarrassed her husband with their neighbors, as the Midrash teaches, perhaps she would not have been turned to salt, but instead would have found flightier feet, racing past her man and her girls until she stood in the grassy hills gathered about the mountains into which they fled, laughing and encouraging them forward, unburdened precisely because she had looked back on her past and seen herself for what she had been, and therefore for what she was becoming. If salt is remembrance then we can all use salt, a reflavoring, a return to the vision of what we were fashioned to become.

“Have salt in yourselves, and have peace with one another.” They hold together, don’t they? Every time I have been at war with someone—every single time—I have had my own failings far from mind. It’s so much easier, after all, to be aggrieved by another’s failings when I’ve turned my back to my own.

Have remembrance, Christ says, and have peace. Remember what you have come from, then turn to the race set before you, and fly headlong into what you are becoming, into the life bought for you at great price, into the good works laid down at your feet when God knew you in your mother’s womb.

Remember and have peace. Remember—but don’t turn back.

 

Photo by kevin dooley, Creative Commons, via Flickr.

May 17, 2013 in Church with 5 Comments

Seth Haines: Writing a Generous Tune

by Winn Collier

seth with titus and a guitar

seth and titus

I was introduced to Seth Haines a year or two ago when I read a letter he wrote to his wife Amber. The whole escapade’s embarrassing, but a mutual friend invited me to a party at their house. I misunderstood instructions for finding the privy, and I landed in their bedroom. There on the bedside table was a large white envelope with ‘Amber’ scribbled across the front. I mean, if they didn’t want anyone reading their private correspondence, they wouldn’t leave it hanging about during a party, correct?

Alright, don’t look at me that way. I’ve never been invited to a party at their house (slightly bitter), and I did not nose my way into their space. However, the letters Seth wrote and published online had all the grit and honesty of lines he actually penned for the love of his life, not words he simply intended to use as a stringer, a ruse to pimp up traffic for his site. In other words, it struck me that Seth wrote to Amber without constantly looking over his shoulder to make sure we were watching.

I read the letters, and I showed one to Miska. “This is my kind of guy,” I said. And now that I know Seth a bit, my suspicions have been confirmed.

Seth is lover to Amber and (I’m willing to wager a whole lot on this one) hero to Isaac, Jude, Ian and Titus. He hails from Shreveport, Louisiana where his grandfather insisted that a swill of Gordon’s Gin would keep the mosquitoes away. If you’ve spent much time in the bayou, you understand that this is a concern. Seth’s affinity for cajun food stuck, but not the Geauxx Tiger loyalty. Seth went to law school at the University of Arkansas and threw down roots in Fayetteville, so he’s gone local and taken up the Pig Sooie chant. As a native Texan who is still loyal to the old Southwest Conference, I can’t tell you how much this Sooie fact pains me. If I ever see him in one of those Razorback hats with the huge snouts, I will reconsider my affirmation for his character and his writing. However, my wife is from Arkansas, so I’ve already acquired sufficient coping mechanisms.

Most of you will obviously know Seth as a writer. He is the editor of Deeper Church, but he is also a poet who has a steady gig with Tweatspeak Poetry. His prose finds its way here as well as on his own site. What I appreciate most about Seth is that he doesn’t write generally – but particularly. Good sentences alone are not enough to make truly potent and lasting writing. We need sentences that help us see the ground and the sky and the person next to us (not to mention the person inside us) more clearly. Seth does that. Like this:

My grandparents on my mother’s side where Episcopalian. The Mouks, George and Carol, are interred in St. Thomas Episcopal on the bayou. It’s a quiet church, small, community based. On Sunday mornings, sometimes the mallards splash down on the bayou backdrop as the bells usher the congregants in. My Grandfather Mouk wouldn’t have missed a Sunday service for the world, especially in his latter days. He’d sing the hymns, voice quavering, loud. My grandfather Mouk held my grandmother Mouk until the cancer did her in. He had a strong will, too, though maybe it was made of different stuff than steel.

See what I mean?

I mentioned law school earlier. Seth’s day job doesn’t center on any of these fine talents. Rather, Seth pays the bills in the legal profession. He passes out cards where a J.D. hangs at the end of his name. Isn’t that cool? Since I live in Charlottesville, Virginia, I know something about lawyers who crank out the stories. Our local boy John Grisham seems to have made it go. Haines and Grisham, kind of sounds like a country duo doesn’t it?

Speaking of music, could you believe that Seth’s first artistic love may actually be music? Like, real music. I’ve heard his stuff. The man can play. He can even beatbox. A few weeks ago, he offered me a riff over the phone, and I was transported back to the 80′s. Seth’s eclectic musical tastes range from Simon and Garfunkel to Rich Mullins to Blue Oyster Cult. The fellow will simply not stay in one place for too long.

I don’t know what to do with a gent who’s got all this talent bottled up in one body. It makes me want to throw up my hands and just give up. I do know, however, what Seth’s doing with all this creative verve – he’s giving it away. And he’s giving it away beautifully. We’re all better for the gift.

This word ‘gift’ reminds me of one last thing I must say. What strikes me most about Seth is his generosity. In a narcissistic media world (and writing world), Seth truly intends to help others expand their voice. When everyone seems to be fighting tooth-n-nail to hold their space, Seth keeps giving space away. That all by itself would be reason enough to sit up straight and pay attention when Seth has something to say.

May 16, 2013 in Church with 2 Comments

It’s almost Pentecost. Are we ready to worship God?

by Micha

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“’I will not take you out of the world.’ There are enormous implications here that I can so easily neglect. Christ was a carpenter for most of his life, and those years were not wasted ones…. Christianity does not isolate the sacred from the secular. Not only are material things good in themselves, they are also signs of God’s loving attention, and they can, if we let them, open up a way to him.”

 -Esther de Waal, Living with Contradiction

My son stands outside his Sunday School class, a gym sectioned off into age groups by carpeted dividers. He’s in a line with all the four-year-olds. He’s got his classic moves going on so as to impress the “ladies” in line beside him. These moves include hitting himself in the head and making an “Oomph!” noise, then waving his arms in a circle, going “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Then he smiles as if to say, I’m that awesome, girls. It comes naturally.

His teacher asks him to be calm as he comes to the front of the line. “August,” she says, “Are you ready to worship God?”

He shakes his head yes. “Okay, you can go sit in the circle.”

And he walks to the circle where three boys are whispering various forms of “poop” to each other and cackling and two girls are digging in the carpet strands for treasures.

The teacher rolls out the sand table and tells a story about deserts and God’s people and how God loved them and made a way. At the end, the children are invited to wonder out loud about the story. They say, “I like to play with sand at the park” or sometimes they say nothing.

This is how four-year-olds worship. Yes, I said worship.

*

I pray big things for my sons. I pray for gentle spirits and for courage. I pray they will be men of conviction and mercy, justice and forgiveness. I pray they will grow to love the things that God loves.

And sometimes we have tender discussions about faith. We talk about God giving us new, soft hearts, especially on days when our hard hearts seem to be running the show. We talk about taking care of people who need care the most.

But most of my living with my boys is not “spiritual,” it’s physical. I am wiping snot. I am wiping rear ends. I am chopping vegetables; I am singing the praises of vegetables to the child who refuses to try new things. I am holding tools in my hands. I am tending ouchies. I am packing bags and packing snacks and packing my pockets with tissues because someone always has a cold. I am tying shoes and buckling seat belts.

And it is holy work. Yes, I said holy.

*

This Sunday begins the season of Pentecost in the Church calendar. Pentecost has been on my mind lately. On Sunday we celebrate Christ’s promise being a true one. He said he would send a Helper and he did. He said God’s Spirit would fall on us, and it did.

There is much drama in the Pentecost story. Tongues loosened, gospel preached with reckless courage and received the same way. Wild comings to Jesus and all those souls folded in to something so profound it was incomprehensible. It still is.

Sometimes I long for that sort of wild Holy Spirit wind to blow firey into my small life: to light the ordinary and bring fearsome healing to the world around me.

Sometimes I lament the whole thing: My lack of spiritual drama. My small faithful moments and my small weak-willed faith.

And then I remember that there is no distinction in this sacred, this secular. Not really. There is a Holy Spirit renewing all of it, restoring the very foundations of the physical world. The Spirit has come and it has made all the beautiful things true. It is making all the true things beautiful. The Spirit has come to the physical world and the work of God is bright around us.

So the matted man who paces daily beside his packed red shopping cart next to the Walgreens, talking to the air but always looking right in my eyes, that man stands on holy ground at the corner of 9th and Clement. Will I bow before the Lord who made him? Will I recognize the face of Christ?

And the little boy crying for me to wipe the snot that has coated his lips, the boy wrecked without my hand to bring him life and hope and a clean face, his are the lips of Jesus.

And these groceries in my hands. These strawberries are signs of a good God, a God at work in the land and in the Church: planting, tending, creating, harvesting.

It is all Spirit work.

We in the Church are all worshippers, distracted by one another, distracted by ourselves. Digging in the carpet for treasures, guffawing at our own dorky slapstick. And yet, God says, “Church, are you ready to worship?”

And here we are in physical chairs holding physical books, chatting over physical donuts after the service. And that is when the Spirit breaks through. At our most ordinary, most human, most simplistic, there is power.

Yes, I said power.

 

Image Credit: Sivesh Kumar, Flickr

May 15, 2013 in Church with 8 Comments

Pruning

by Kristin

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“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener.2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes[a] so that it will be even more fruitful.”     John 15:1-2

I shifted with discomfort beneath his gaze. I wanted to avert my eyes but they kept drawing me in. His words burned, seared the gardens I had slowly built with flowering pleasantries. I wanted friends and family to be comfortable strolling down soft lit paths of grace and acceptance. “Come, sit next to me. I’d love to hear your story,” I’d say to my visitors. Sometimes it would be just that, I’d listen, making myself available. Other times I’d hear a missed beat in their flowing verse that would cause me to pause, but I’d just pat their hand and tell them to go on. My garden stayed manicured trim and flowered with abundant varieties of fragrant herbs like basil, lemon thyme and rosemary shrubs. The paths were bordered by gentle waving lavender and heather. It was pretty, peaceful. I was being a friend, tending this garden so my guests would be comfortable, not feel judged, safe to come as they are.

The thing is, most times, they left just as they had come.

This revelation blew into my home this week, landed on my front door through the life of someone very close to me. Often I have found myself saying, “I’d rather err on the side of grace in all things.” I feel the concrete swaying like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

It’s easier to sit on the side lines of life.

Witnessing.

There are plenty of soap boxes I’m familiar with, some that have my footprint worn into their splintered tops.

These boxes I know.

I teach.

I live by their tenets; their structure has built my foundation.

Others I’ve tiptoed around watching as others bang their gavels upon them, dig them deep into the earth and make them the high place on which to view their world.

I avoid them.

I don’t want the association. I don’t want my God to be associated. Maybe I don’t want to see Him as a judge.

I like the Jesus that went to the cross and in His mercy took the sin and suffering with him. His gentle eyes that cried when He witnessed pain, that sparkled when the lame walked. The God that holds my hand to cross a busy, bustling, road of life and who will carry me if I have nothing left to give. His grace is a flood that has washed over me time and time again, healing, erasing, nurturing, planting, sewing that garden.

His gaze turns to my prize rose bush. With pruners in hand, He begins to make deep, harsh cuts into the green, thick stems. With precision, He removes a strong limb, with a half a dozen blooms, that started to grow slightly to the center of the plant. “This one is headed in the wrong direction.” Another has just a spot of black, working His way back inches from the spot, He makes another permanent snip. I’d spent so much time tending this beauty and I thought the aromatic, spicy scent of the deep crimson blooms stood as a testament to my craft. My craft.

He stepped back after finishing and turned to me.

His eyes told me all I needed to know.

May 13, 2013 in Church with 2 Comments

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