Getting the house ready for Christmas

Getting the house ready for Christmas

We have a new Advent tradition at our place: we get the house ready for Christmas.

The house Jesus was born in.

A couple years ago the young people in my congregation made a model of a typical first-century Palestinian peasant abode, starting with a large cardboard box and opening it up like a doll’s house. The flat roof is a loft or upper room—kataluma in the Greek (Luke 2:7 and 22:11)—where guests would stay, accessible by steps along the side of the house.

The back corner of the main floor is where the elder members of the multi-generational family would have resided. The youth made tables and chairs out of shoe boxes, and wooden Scrabble tile holders serve as benches. One outside wall has a fireplace, complete with magic-marker red flames, although most of the food preparation would have taken place outside in a courtyard formed by several such houses.

The elders’ corner was also the starting point for sweeping the floor across to the opposite corner where the animals would have been installed. This is where bodily functions took place—including the birthing of babies—and it would have been handy to lay a newborn in a manger, or feeding trough, lined with fresh hay. Which is to say, as the gospels do (Matthew 2:11, Luke 2:7), Jesus was born in a house, the part where the animals were kept, just like every other poor first-century Palestinian child.

Given that Jesus was a child of color, there are several nativity sets—all fair-trade—that are ethnically accurate: one from Bangladesh includes sturdy clay characters with brown faces and dark hair (www.createdgifts.org), and one from Java has tall wooden figures whose bodies are painted light brown (www.tradecraftshop.co.uk). I personally like the set handcrafted with care by Paragon Ceramics in Dedza, Malawi; no two figures are the same, and each one has a captivating expression. In one set Joseph is hugging himself with joy, and in another he is kneeling and his mouth is exclaiming, “Ohh!” The Malawi angel is blowing a cattle horn to announce the good news of the birth of the messiah. All the shepherds carry sticks, and one is holding a lamb on his shoulders. And the wise travelers from afar are riding a donkey, a camel, and an elephant, respectively.

Even though I had studied the social and material world of the Bible in seminary, where one of my teachers drove home the truth about Jesus’ racial heritage—You can’t hide a white baby in Egypt—it took children of color coming into my world—my first two grandsons, adopted from Ethiopia and Thailand—to prompt me to purchase African and Asian nativity sets. And because their parents are white I took some figures from my original white nativity and some from the black and brown nativities to make a complete tableau, sent one multicultural set to them, kept one multicultural set at home, and took one multicultural set to church.

Each year a nativity set from a different country is added to the cardboard house so we get a sense of Jesus’ ever-expanding birthplace: babies and parents, women and men, young and old, extended family arriving for the census and star-followers from the East, and a growing menagerie of livestock and their herders. All of which illustrate the fact that Mary and Joseph are staying in a relative’s home overflowing with Middle-eastern hospitality—not in a “cattle shed” behind an “inn,” neither of which are in the Bible although they continue to plague pageants and perpetuate the anti-Semitic notion that Jesus was rejected by his own at birth.

And to mix it up a bit, there’s a female-looking wise person from Java, and a set of light-skinned figures constructed from rolled-up magazine pages and made in Vietnam (www.serv.org). After all, Jesus came into the world for us whites, too.

Finding Jesus to be gay

Finding Jesus to be gay

One day I was phoned out of the blue by a British tabloid reporter who wanted my response, as a pro-gay Christian minister, to a statement made by Elton John. In a magazine interview the pop star—who is British and white and gay and married and a father—had said that Jesus was gay. Or rather, because Jesus so empathized with outcasts and understood intimately where marginalized people were coming from, Elton John found Jesus to be gay.

What was my comment? I am quoted, almost accurately, in the Daily Record (Friday, February 19, 2010, p. 9) as saying, “I think it’s wonderful for anybody, including Elton John, to imagine Jesus as being like them. This is very common, and in the Western world we do it all the time, imagining Jesus to be white when, in fact, he was a man of colour.” Actually I said, “Jesus was a person of color.”

I grew up in the Southern United States surrounded by blond-haired, blue-eyed baby Jesuses. Even Black churches portrayed Jesus as white. I remember from my childhood a print of Rembrandt’s “Head of Christ” with long dark hair, an unkempt beard, and a brooding expression. There’s no way this “long-haired hippie,” as my grandfather would have labeled him back in the 70’s, would be allowed through airport security without close scrutiny these days.

Over the years I have acquired some art books with pictures of Jesus from around the world and through the centuries: colorful paintings of the Christ Child on Austrian glass, Japanese silk, Ethiopian panels, ancient frescos, and modern felt banners. Carvings of Jesus in ivory (11th century Byzantine), wood (20th century Philippines), marble (13th century Italian), and scrimshaw (19th century Native American). Crucifixes made of all types of castable metal, stained glass, gold-leaf iconography, and woven straw. Each face a different color and reflecting a distinct culture.

Around the time that Elton John came out about Jesus being gay, a painting by Marc Chagall was discovered in an auction in Paris by someone from The London Jewish Museum of Art. Made in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War Holocaust the painting shows Jesus as a modern Jewish person, naked and hanging on a cross, with a Nazi officer at the foot of a ladder that’s just been used to carry out the crucifixion. Chagall—who was Jewish, as was Jesus—depicts Jesus with a male face and upper body but with feminine hips and female genitals, symbolizing the genocide of Jewish women and men and girls and boys in Nazi concentration camps.

I find Jesus to be not only a transgender person but also a lesbian woman and a gay man and a bisexual individual, just like the many “homosexuals” persecuted by the Nazis. And, sadly, still persecuted today. Even for just stating the obvious.

Good Grief

Good Grief

When I visit a family to prepare for their loved one’s funeral, I advise them: Take extra care of yourself because you’re not all here. Part of you has died and gone with your loved one. So give yourself extra time and space, eat healthy, drink water, exercise, and tell people how they can be most helpful to you—just as you've helped them in the past.

Grief opens you to a myriad of emotions, and the thing about emotions is that they just are. Emotions aren't good or bad, right or wrong; they may feel comfortable or uncomfortable, and you might wonder why you’re feeling the way you’re feeling, but don’t worry about it. Feel your feelings, and do healthy things to express them: write about them, play music, talk about them with someone you trust, cry, laugh, scream into a pillow, whatever it takes.

Grief affects each of us differently. There’s not too short or too long of a grief process; you move through grief at your own pace. But you have to move through your grief; you can’t go around it in an attempt to avoid it or else it will manifest itself in illness or depression.

The funeral serves as a threshold through which you step from the initial stage of shock and private grief to the stage of publicly acknowledging your grief and receiving support from others. You have to go through your own grief process, but you are not alone. Know that people are thinking of you and holding you in prayer.

Over time you will develop a new relationship with your loved one who has died. It will be different from the relationship you had with them when they were living, and the new different relationship is up to you. There may be things you want to say or express to your loved one; feel free. But don’t be surprised—seriously—if you sense a response. Take signs for what they are: signs. Every sign contains an element of truth, but not all signs are pointed in the right direction.

Eventually your whole self will come together and you’ll find yourself all here. Things won’t be like they were—they never are, thank God. As the poet Rita Dove says, It’s not the end of the world—just the world as you know it.

On the Hallowed Eve of All Saints' Day

On the Hallowed Eve of All Saints’ Day

I have just returned from the funeral for one of my neighbors (who I describe in the January 12, 2013, blog article). I want to be a saint like her.

One day, a couple years after we had moved to Scotland, two Glasgow police officers came to our door to ask if we had heard or seen anything connected to the mugging of a person in our street. The person was an elderly neighbor woman; another woman had snatched her handbag and then fled in a car driven by a man.

My neighbor—the one who just died—and I each reached out to the woman who was mugged, and that’s how we met. Soon afterwards my neighbor invited the two of us to tea, and since then I have enjoyed many afternoon visits with my neighbor. She welcomed around her dining room table Catholics, Protestants, Episcopalians, and those who don’t practice a faith. She engaged us all—young and old, Scottish and American, traditional and feminist—in hardy discussions about current events, local history, and our personal histories.

Tea just with my neighbor always left me feeling special and upbeat. She was a great conversationalist and would ask after my parents and my church and my life. In my line of work it’s considered professionally appropriate to listen to other people and talk about their stuff rather than my own stuff. Thus I relished having a neighbor who actually wanted to listen to me talk about my stuff, as well as tell me about her stuff.

My neighbor’s front yard was a Garden of Eden. It reflected the seasons of creation, from hibernating bulbs in the winter to crocuses sprouting up in the early spring followed by bright red tulips and potted geraniums and a whole host of colors and textures throughout the summer. Even her weeds were beautiful. In late summer and autumn she and I would exchange fruit from our gardens, and I remember her giving me a flat box lined with a soft cloth filled with carefully-arranged ripe plums, for which she got bags of apples from our tree.

One year, when I stopped to smell the fragrant blossoms of the lilac tree near her front wall, I mentioned to my neighbor that I used to have a lilac bush in my yard in Minneapolis and missed it. That autumn she gave me two cuttings from her lilac tree, one of which took root and is now in our back garden, planted so I can see it from the window of my study—where I am writing this. Even though my tree is still too young to produce blossoms, each year its leaves bud, turn bright green, then change to brown and fall off, just like the mature apple tree near it. It’s only waist high but it’s living life as a tree to the fullest.

Knobby Knees

Knobby Knees

At the age of 17 I was tall, gangly, and loud—and to compensate for these socially-inhibiting attributes I poured myself into the hardest classes in high school: Advanced Placement History and English, Calculus, Latin, and Physics. My one “fun” class was Band (which I describe in the September 15, 2012, blog article) but it too required extreme effort.

My operating philosophy during adolescence was, If I can’t be popular I’ll be smart. If boys weren’t going to like me—they not only called me “Biddle” but used it as a four-letter word—then they could lump it in the classroom, and I took great pleasure in outscoring them and wrecking the grading curve (see the February 28, 2013, blog article).

Which is all to say, I suffered poor self-esteem as a teenager and thus put my hope into going to Davidson College where I trusted my brains, if not my body, would be appreciated. After all the motto of Davidson is Alenda lux ubi ortas libertas: “Let learning be cherished where liberty has arisen.”

Both my grandfather and my father had gone to Davidson, and I had grown up visiting the campus whenever my family vacationed in North Carolina. In the spring of my junior year in high school I visited the college as a prospective student and had my interview with the admissions office.

In the summer before my final high school year I was invited to a social event for prospective students in the Nashville, Tennessee, area. It was hosted by a Davidson student at the home of another Davidson student, and the college president, Sam Spencer, was there to greet us.

My dad and I happened to be the first ones to arrive and we joined Dr. Spencer in the living room. I sat on one sofa facing Dr. Spencer and my father on the opposite sofa. I was wearing a pleated skirt, made from the Lindsay-clan tartan, which came down to just below my knobby knees, per the style in those days. When I sat down the skirt’s hem touched the tops of my knees that—being knobby—did not touch one another.

I will always remember Dad saying to me in Dr. Spencer’s presence, “Put your knees together.” As though I was flashing the president of my future alma mater!

But I also remember Dr. Spencer giving me a knowing look that said, “Don’t worry; you’re fine. This is just your father being a father.”

Sam Spencer led Davidson College to admit female students in the early 1970’s, over and against patriarchal myths (such as, female students would bring down Davidson’s academic reputation), sexist opinions (like, the college’s electricity costs would increase from the use of hairdryers and other feminine appliances), and downright misogyny, including anti-women attitudes held by at least one female professor. A member of the Class of 1940 and an honorary member of my class, the Class of 1983—the last graduating class he presided over before retiring and the tenth graduating class with women in it—he died Wednesday, October 16, 2013, aged 94.

Living on campus as President and Mrs. Spencer did, I imagine Dr. Spencer saw a lot of skirts and shorts shorter than mine. Whatever we students wore—or didn’t wear—Sam Spencer gave each one of us the message, “Don’t worry; you’re fine—just the way you are.”

Equal Rights the Hard Way: Pushing for what you want

Equal Rights the Hard Way: Pushing for what you want

reprinted from The Davidsonian (the Davidson College student newspaper)

Davidson, North Carolina, September 24, 1982

This past summer I worked in the laundry at Yellowstone Park, only five hundred feet from Old Faithful. Old Faithful continued to build pressure and erupt every 72 minutes or so, but I noticed a different pressure rise in me and other women who had everything to gain and nothing to lose from the ratification of the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment]. At the laundry I saw firsthand the need for sexual equality on the job, but I didn’t expect such frustration dealing with these problems. Davidson has probably made me more of a feminist than I might be if I attended a more liberal school. My alma mater displays chambermaids on pedestals, and its women’s tennis team hitchhikes to tournaments, all of which forces me to oppose vehemently its sexist nature. Unfortunately, the state of nature out west reflects sexism elsewhere in the world.

There are two sections in the Yellowstone laundry—a wash floor and a finish floor. The finish floor consists of the drying, ironing, folding, stacking, counting, and loading of 15,000 pieces of linen a day—from towels to napkins to pillow cases. We also checked sheets for stains of various types, but I’ll save those stories for another week. Tedious and unstraining, finish floor proved to be the same day after day.

Wash floor, on the other hand, tests not only one’s strength and endurance but also one’s mental capacity to operate steam valves and 350-pound washers and work with chemicals. Usually the big guys, like Yogi and Boo Boo, work wash floor. Yet my first day at the laundry I was told some women in the past had worked wash floor. I said I would like to work wash floor. No response. Not until the middle of July did I finally learn the mechanics of lifting five-hundred-pound bins into extractors using a two-ton crane and experience strained muscles, aching feet, and hands covered with chemical burns, blisters, and broken skin. Being a masochist, I asked to work wash floor the next day but was refused:

You aren’t strong enough. You don’t have the muscles in your arms, chest and back that you need. You’d have to give 150 percent to match a guy physically. Men and women don’t labor well together. It’s too strenuous mentally as well as physically—you need time to recover.

This reply infuriated me. Who could tell me what I could and could not do? Who had the right to dictate my physical limitations?

After working finish floor diligently a few weeks, I again asked to work wash floor.

No, we can’t afford to replace one of the regular wash floor guys with you, and anyway, you’ll be leaving in a month, and we don’t have time to train you.

Why outdo myself and run my body ragged just to prove I could do the work? All laundry workers were paid the same, worked the same hours, and enjoyed the same watermelon at break. My friends on finish floor were singing, laughing, and having a rollicking time. Why work a wash floor position that would put me in contention for the Miss Body Building contest or Davidson Homecoming Queen!

The week before leaving I figured I had nothing to lose and asked to work wash floor one last time. Again I was refused. Upset, I went to my female supervisor and asked for help. This is what she said:

You can talk all you want about an equal rights amendment and equal opportunity. You can go to the head of personnel and claim sexual discrimination. You can think you have the right to work wash floor and shouldn’t have to beg for the job. Fine. But unless you are willing to push for what you want, equal rights doesn’t mean a thing. Men have to push for what they want, and so do women. Nothing gets handed to you on a silver platter. You have to get in there, work until it kills you, and push! Then and only then will you achieve equality.

The next morning, my day off, I was called to the laundry; a guy didn’t show for work, and the needed an extra person on wash floor. Of all the people with the day off, they asked me! I was ecstatic! And even with a full crew, I kept working wash floor that last week.

Laundry work, usually associated with subjection of women, became my liberation, for although laundry work is sex-biased, it forced me to overcome the norm and be aggressive. Despite ERA’s defeat, I personally ensured my rights as a woman. And until an equal rights amendment is ratified, individual struggles for equality must suffice. Where does that leave us here at Davidson College with its sexist admissions policies? [For every three males admitted, only one female was admitted.] I figure we can either turn the laundry into an admissions office or turn the admissions office into a laundry.

Lindsay Biddle

Class of 1983

Unforgettable Communion

Unforgettable Communion

I was born on the Mississippi River, in Memphis, Tennessee, and my last residence in the U.S.A.—before moving to Scotland in 2004—was approximately 900 miles upstream, in Hennepin County, Minnesota. The difference between Southern culture and northern ways is still as vast as the difference between the early 1960’s of my childhood and today half a century later.

For example, whenever I hosted a meal at my home in the Twin Cities area, guests often took it upon themselves to bring a “salad” (if a concoction of canned fruit and whipped cream and mini marshmallows truly qualified as such, but that’s what they called it) or a casserole (which should be renamed a “cannerole” since most of the ingredients came out of cans), even after I had politely turned down their polite offers to contribute a side dish. I, of course, thanked them and made room on my already-crowded serving table. Later, I had to tell myself that these Scandinavian types were not being rude by arming themselves with extra food. When I had said, No, you don’t need to bring anything, they probably thought I was just being modest and meant, You don’t need to bring anything but it’s fine if you do.

Where I grew up it would have been an insult to the hostess—not that she would’ve shown it—to arrive with an unexpected dish. Even at a potluck the hostess was in charge of the menu. However it was customary to ask a Southern hostess if she would like some assistance in the kitchen. It’s not that she needed assistance—she was perfectly capable of turning out the meal by herself—but it was a matter of courtesy. Yet in Minnesota I had to be assertive if I needed a helping hand; only on one rare occasion did a guest hop up from the table and help me clear the dishes—and I married him.

Having lived all over the United States and now residing in a foreign country, where we enjoy hosting people from different backgrounds, I like to play anthropologist and study various styles of hospitality. “Etiquette” sits right beside “Religion” in the Dewey Decimal library cataloging system—and rightly so, as religion could be defined as social organization in the big picture (that is, our relationship to God, oneself, and others), while etiquette could be defined as social organization in the details (how we behave and relate to one another in particular situations). One has to do with the world-wide table we might call Creation, around which all of us creatures are gathered by God to co-exist. The other pertains to the tables around which we gather for purposes of social recreation: the tables in a church hall for Christian fellowship, the table in a boardroom for conducting business, or our dining tables where rules and expectations are graciously set aside in favor of unforgettable communion that transcends time and place.

Dream Notebook

Dream Notebook

I keep a blank notebook and a pen beside my bed. Whenever I have a dream, the next morning—first thing—I describe as much of the dream as I can remember in the notebook.

Once I dreamed that I needed some money to exit a parking garage, only my change purse had pounds, dollars, and euros all mixed together. In my dream I grew frustrated trying to sort the various coins.

I know what spurred this dream. I spent the first four decades of my life living in the United States before moving to Glasgow where I’ve stayed the past ten years, with occasional trips to other countries. And my Tennessee accent—which I had tried to tone down all the while I lived in Minnesota—has come back, in contrast to the lilting Glasgow patter that I hear and understand more each day but will never be able to speak.

Changing cultures is challenging. Often I’ve wished my new life in Glasgow came with a rule book to help me sort it out. But it doesn’t. Only a dream notebook. And it’s filling up fast.