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Glasgow, Scotland
Words are formed by experiences, and words inform our experiences. Words also transform life and the world. I am a writer and Presbyterian minister who grew up in the 1960's in the segregated South of the United States. I've lived in Alaska, the Washington, DC area, and Minnesota. Since 2004 I've lived in Glasgow, Scotland, where I enjoy working on my second novel and serving churches that are between one thing and another. I advocate for the full inclusion of all people in the church and in society, whatever our genders or sexual orientations. Every body matters.

Sunday, March 31, 2013

Who am I?


Who am I?

Someone once remarked,                                                                                              
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.

“Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightening about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are born to make manifest the Glory of God that is within us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

That someone was Nelson Mandela: once a political prisoner, now a world leader and visionary, and throughout it all a child of God, just like you and me.

Easter is not some magic trick that happened in a cave two thousand years ago.
Easter is wherever you are dead inside, cut off, forgotten, abused—
and God raises you up,
God grafts you on to the tree of life,
God re-members you,
God restores you to the land of the living.
                       
Someone once described it this way:
“At first it wasn’t safe to express myself, and so I learned how to turn myself off.
Whether out of need or out of habit, it grew easier for me to just stay turned off.
Over time I became like a rusty spigot—to where I couldn’t open myself up, even when I wanted to, especially when I wanted to. That’s when I knew I had died inside.”

That someone was me: never a political prisoner, certainly not a world leader, but always a child of God, just like you and Nelson Mandela and every child.

I don’t believe in the power of the resurrection because I can explain it.
I can’t explain it. I can’t even describe it, really.
All I know is—and I know it as surely as I’m writing this—there’s life on the other side.

The preacher in me wants to go on sermonizing but I’ll save that for Sunday mornings.
At this moment, as in every moment, I’m a child of God and you are a child of God, and this alone makes each one of us worth saving.

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

True Colors



True Colors

If you were given five minutes to address a captured audience of teenagers about the essence of Easter, what would you say?

Our local high school here in Glasgow is getting ready for their Easter assembly, and a close colleague of mine—my husband, the Reverend Dr. John W. Mann—has been asked to deliver a five-minute meditation on this year's theme, "True Colours" (as it is spelled here in Britain), from the song written by Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly and made famous by singer Cyndi Lauper. Here's what John Mann has to say:

"I see your true colours shining through — that's why I love you."

That’s a powerful song. 

It’s not easy to let our true colours show through, especially when we are young. We want to be our own person—to love and be loved—to be an individual. And yet, being part of the group, being loved and accepted by our peers, is most important when we are young.

One day when I was maybe 12 or 13 years old, I was coming home from school and the older kids were coming home from high school. There was this one kid named Timmy, who was a few years older than me, and he was running home from high school. He was being chased by a group of boys. They caught him a block or so from his house and one of the boys—a big guy named David—he gave Timmy a beating.

Timmy was screaming and begging, and David just beat him down.

Why did he do that?

David was a bully and Timmy was a victim.

I knew Timmy all the time I was growing up. He was one of the nicest, kindest people you could ever meet. He was generous, and all he ever wanted of me was to be my friend.

Timmy was gay. In those days that was not an easy thing to be. It was not safe to be gay.

Timmy could have shut himself off in the closet. He could have pretended to be other than who he was. He could have talked a different talk and walked a different walk. But instead of putting himself in a self-imposed prison, he took his chances with life—with the beatings on the way home from school, with the snide and hurtful remarks even from his friends.

All he ever wanted to be was my friend.

I think of my religion and the way that, historically, Christianity has punished people for being different. Still today we have twisted our religion into a conduit of shame and guilt.

But the authentic essence of my religion—the truth that Jesus revealed to the world—is the simple idea that God is love, and love is stronger than death.

That’s basically all Jesus ever did. With every word and every action he showed people: God loves you.

He could have shut himself away in a closet. He could have gone the status quo route—safe and secure, don’t make waves. But Jesus had to be who he was born to be, just like all of us have to be who we are born to be: ourselves to the best of our ability. If we try to be someone else, it will deaden our souls.

That’s a powerful message, and a threatening message too. Jesus was killed for it, for showing that all God wants is to be our friend—to love us as we are.

Easter is about the fact that love is stronger than death. Christ has risen from the dead. Easter is God’s way of saying, You can kill the messenger but you cannot destroy the truth—love is stronger than death. Love will always be stronger than death.

A few years ago a friend of mine made me this rainbow stole that I wear sometimes when I lead worship on a Sunday morning. I wear this as a way of saying to Timmy and to everyone like him who wonders whether or not anyone can love them for who they are, that yes, my friend Jesus and me and a lot of God’s people see your true colours shining through, and you are loved. 

Tuesday, March 19, 2013

Toilet Theology


Toilet Theology

Everything I need to know about a church I can learn from visiting the restroom—or, as it is so delicately referred to here in Britain, the toilet.

This is not something I studied at my seminary (which had standard institutional facilities that were kept spic and span, and I know this because as a student I worked part-time on the grounds crew and occasionally assisted the custodian in cleaning the bathrooms). To my knowledge it’s not taught at any seminary although it should be: Congregational Systems 101—Flushing Out the Works.

One of the churches in which I trained for the ministry did not have lavatories on the main floor. The architects had planned for them, but the space had been left to serve as a long, narrow study for the pastor, leaving able-bodied people to go downstairs to relieve themselves. I understand the situation has since been rectified, with able-bodied pastors having an office on the lower level. How the rooms in a building are used by a congregation indicates who is valued and what activities are deemed important.

The first church I served after being ordained had one potty on the main floor for all to use. It was the size of a small closet, just big enough for an adult my size to squeeze by the small hand sink and sit down on the commode without my knees touching the closed door. It was sufficient if all I had had for breakfast was coffee, but anything more required me to flush, wait until the water tank filled up, flush again, wait, and so on, until that which “goes out into the sewer”—as Jesus put it (Matthew 15:17b)—did so completely. Only at a meeting of the session did I learn that the elder in charge of the building had reduced the water in the toilet tank in order to reduce the water bill—without factoring in the water wasted on multiple half-way flushes. This was the same elder who referred to me as “Little Girl” and called another elder “Princess,” until the other elder and I asked the session clerk to tell the offending elder to cut it out. After a short while the session cut me out.

The second church I served also had just one lavatory. It was inconveniently located downstairs and off of the kitchen, so on those few occasions when I as a menstruating minister had to duck out of worship during a hymn to take care of business, I prayed the hymn was a long one. Like in the first church, every expense was spared; they stocked one roll of toilet paper at a time and kept the rest under lock and key because, they explained, one person in their town was known to come to funeral services at the church in order to steal paper goods. The single roll of toilet paper hung by a string—and so did my tenure with this congregation. Yet this time I was prepared, and I ended up leaving on my own terms.

The next church that would have me had modern women’s and men’s rooms on every floor, each with multiple stalls, a bank of sinks, and a generous supply of paper products. They were good people and they treated me well. I went through my second divorce while serving this congregation, and after I announced it during worship one Sunday, one of the revered men of the church pulled me aside and told me he needed to speak to me. I steeled myself for The Lecture—ministers aren’t supposed to divorce and all that—and went with him outside the fellowship hall, where he proceeded to rail about “that s.o.b.! I want to punch the guy!”—as Jesus would’ve put it. There were a lot of Christ-like people in that church, and unbeknownst to them I had found refuge there, attending worship during a season of Lent and unemployment, while going through my first divorce.

Here in the Church of Scotland it’s typical for the minister to have her or his own loo connected to the office. Equipping it with heat, or soap, or a clean towel, or a spare loo roll qualifies as separate miracles, and all four is an act of God. Of the ten churches I’ve served in the States, only one had a bathroom designated for the minister, but you had to pass through it to get to the minister’s study—which took the privacy out of the privy. And because the bathroom-study was situated across the hall from the sanctuary, the bathroom part was usually occupied by non-ministers right before the call to worship when this minister needed to answer the call of nature.

The congregation presently enduring my gifts and talents, Anderston Kelvingrove Parish Church in downtown Glasgow, are good stewards of an urban renewal building that serves as the neighborhood hub. Several para-church organizations have office space, city and national elected officials meet regularly with members of the public, a hot lunch and an afternoon tea are offered weekly for local residents, folks of all ages come to exercise classes and dance lessons, folks of all needs come to 12-step groups, and folks of different faith traditions come to do their thing. Needless to say, the gents’ and the ladies’ stay busy—and, I have to say, pretty clean.

As if there’s not enough going on already, the church’s elders, supported by the members, recently decided to welcome some people who need a place to sleep at night, every night. Each one of the newcomers is currently without a country and thus without a home, and because they aren’t officially residents of the United Kingdom, they aren’t allowed to work and provide for themselves. They are labeled as “asylum seekers,” “political refugees,” “illegal aliens.” Who they are, really, is “brother,” “father,” “son,” “fellow human being.” Inviting in this group of about a dozen men changes things for everyone, including myself. Our space is no longer ours—but then, it never was ours. It has always been God’s house, and that means God’s kitchen and God’s halls and God’s washrooms and God’s toilets.

As God puts it, courtesy of the Leviticus Holiness Code (19:33, New Revised Standard Version), “When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.”