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.

The Significance of Apples in My Religion

The Significance of Apples in My Religion

Apple season is upon us, and this morning I picked up about twelve dozen apples—a dozen dozen aptly named a “gross.” This was in addition to the many dozen I picked up last evening, and the gross I collected yesterday morning, the evening, the afternoon, and the morning before that, and the day before that, and the day before that.

We’ve had several apple-peeling sessions: one person peels and another person chops, dousing the tart chunks with lemon juice to keep them fresh. When the compost bucket is full we dump it in the back garden—picking up apples as we pass under the tree—and start over again.

So far we’ve enjoyed one large apple crisp and one deep-dish apple pie as well as two apple flans and some apple cakes made by our houseguest who we’ve indentured into the assembly line of peeling and chopping. We’ve given away apples to my church members and our neighbors, and we’ve set aside bags of apples for my husband’s church members and for our mail carrier. Anybody who rings the doorbell must take a bag of apples.

After putting up all the apple slices that our freezer can hold, we decided to dry apple pieces that can be stored in the pantry. My husband express-ordered two mesh screens which go in the oven at a low temperature and dehydrate raw food in about eight hours. Given that there are, still, only twenty-four hours in a day, he works three shifts daily, making the house smell, continuously, like a just-baked apple pie.

When I studied Latin American Church History in seminary, I wrote a paper on “The Significance of Corn in the Mayan Religion.” Originally inhabiting the Yucatan area of Mexico and parts of present Guatemala, the Mayas lived on corn to the extent that their whole civilization—including their religious beliefs—centered on corn. Adept at math and astronomy, and with a highly developed system of carved glyphs for recording past events, the Mayas created a remarkable calendar to chart the best times for seeding, irrigating, tasseling, and harvesting corn.

Unlike us westerners who try to separate the spiritual world from the temporal world, Mayas understood the interconnectedness of the earthly and the divine. Their primary foodstuff, corn, was the chief provider of life and the Chief Provider of meaning and order to life. Daily existence revolved around cultivating corn, and corn surpluses led to trading for other goods and specializing in different corn-related activities, like making crafts or guarding the corn. Thus an organized religious structure arose within Mayan society to maintain—and protect—the whole cycle of life.

Like Western Christianity, Mayas believed that humans were made in the divine image, and given that 75% of their diet was composed of corn they saw themselves as creatures of the God of Corn. They used corn to mark various rites of passage, from dedicating their children, to coming-of-age rituals, to marriage ceremonies and fertility practices, to the final harvest of death and the afterlife.

And like Christians the Mayas had more than one god, but all their gods—indeed, all their relationships—were linked to the Corn God, “Kavil,” which means “surplus sustenance.”

Kind of like my current worship of the God of Apples:

Dear Generous Sustaining God,

You created fruit—fruit of all kinds and colors and textures and smells and tastes—

   and it drops from the trees for me and all.

But I grow weary of having to pick up this free food.

I admit I do not look forward to receiving your many gifts, preparing them,

   even sharing them—because it takes up my time, my energy for a whole season.

Forgive me, O God,

   Creator of the apple tree in my garden and all it produces,

   Maker of the seasons, each hour of the day and every day of creation.

In the beginning, O God, you said, “Let the earth put forth vegetation:  

   plants yielding seed and fruit trees of every kind on earth 

   that bear fruit with seed in it,”

   and it was so, and you saw that it was good.

Energize me, energize each one of us, to lift up your free gifts.

Give us courage to claim your gifts,

   patience to prepare them,

   enthusiasm to share them,

   any time, all the time.

Amen.

Do's and Don't's

Do’s and Don’t’s

When I started this blog, over a year and a half ago, I made two lists to guide my writing.

One list reminded me to be biblically-grounded, historically-informed, socially-engaged, communally-nurtured, globally-connected, ecumenically-involved, and earth-friendly.

The other list warned against being preachy or churchy. No writing about my writing (which I’m doing now), or writing about my living relatives (which I’ve done, mostly to their amusement), or writing about my congregation (I couldn’t help it). Steer clear of Guidepost magazine types of articles, like, “How my dog saved my life again” or “My grandmother’s recipe for canine communion wafers.” Don’t be sectarian and talk down about a particular religion. And avoid insider-speak, which plagues most ministers.

I vowed to keep things personable but not get personal or bitter or whiney. Be professional in the true sense of that word: profess my convictions. Describe rather than judge.

There’s an adage among preachers to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” I aimed to fall on the side of comfort—but hopefully padded with integrity.

Even though I’m a die-hard Presbyterian, I wanted my words to be organic and any humor natural, all lending to a certain poignancy (one of my favorite words to say). There are other Presbyterian columnists in the world, each of whom measures differently on the “get-real” spectrum: Dave Barry (son and brother of Presbyterian clergy) is the one to emulate. Those who spin spiritual candy floss or wallow about whether puppies can cry—they can stay in their self-made hell-hole.

In everything I write I try to employ inclusive language and imagery rather than talk about inclusiveness, so I won’t talk about it now. Inclusiveness speaks for itself.

I enjoy playing with gender and stereotypes and upsetting assumptions. One of the reasons I went into ministry was to challenge patriarchal notions of what a minister is and does. Ministry is full of quotable quotes and cringe-worthy clichés. I happen to believe we are made of—and for—truer words.

Humor Me

Humor Me

Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A: That’s not funny.

Sadly, this is as close as I get to being humorous. I’ve always envied funny people, folks who can say something that makes people laugh. They seem to have a knack for it. I live with someone like this: he has been known to stand up in a meeting of ministers and read an otherwise dull report and somehow cause people to chuckle. Partly it’s his dry, western, could-give-a-damn accent, and partly it’s his timing and intonation, where he chooses to insert a pause before delivering what becomes the punch line—only it wasn’t meant to be a punch line, it was just the end of a boring sentence. Which makes it hilarious without trying.

 I, on the other hand, am a good audience. I laugh at pretty much anything. And as a minister I’ve developed a talent for laughing on the inside. Because people don’t like to be laughed at. Fortunately I inherited from my maternal ancestry a strong German temperament which allows me to suppress giggles, and I have a naturally down-turned mouth that expresses seriousness in the face of ludicrousness.

It’s little old ladies who make me laugh. Get a group of them together and it’s a stitch. Partly it’s because I expect their generation to be polite and well-mannered, and partly it’s because as they age they lose some of their social filters, or maybe when they get away from the menfolk they let down their defences. I remember taking a group of elderly churchwomen to tour retirement homes one day, and one place had a large glassed-in aviary with a variety of small birds flitting about inside it. Our tour guide was a young woman like myself, and as the group paused in front of the aviary, she asked if anyone had any questions—about the retirement home, she meant. One little old lady piped up, “How do they breed?”

It took a number of seconds for the question to sink in, during which time the guide looked at me and I could tell she wasn’t prepared to address ornithological reproduction. Finally she said, “Just like they do in the wild.” The enquirer peered up into the glass case and responded, “Don’t they suffocate?” I got as far as imagining two birds doing it and wondering where the concern for their airwaves came into it when I realized that she wanted to know “How do they breathe?”

Another time I was visiting a women’s monthly Circle meeting—definitely one of the circles of hell and as predictable and painful as a menstrual cycle. I only attend these upon invitation, but I do go each time I am invited. Such gatherings typically take place in someone’s living room, where the hostess serves tea or coffee in china cups set on matching plates. Platters of sandwiches—with the crusts removed and cut diagonally into fourths—would be passed around, followed by trays of home-made sweets. And in Minnesota there was always a dish of salted peanuts and a dish of hard mints.

After we’d all been served and re-served, the Circle President would call the meeting to order and most of the dozen or so ladies would give their attention to their leader. There would always be a few hard-of-hearing, however, who would carry on chatting until someone spoke directly into their ear, “We’re starting now,” and they’d shut up. The President would walk us through the agenda that felt to me like the valley of the shadow of death, only I had to act interested because I was, after all, the honored guest. The Secretary would read aloud the minutes of the previous meeting—which sounded like a scene from an existential drama where the audience members pretend to grasp the profound message therein but in fact don’t have a clue because there isn’t one. Then the Treasurer would report on—really—the number of pennies collected for this or that mission fund since last month’s meeting.

So once again I found myself surrounded by sweet little old nuts, when one of them reminded the group to turn in their stamps. By stamps she meant used postage stamps, this being in the days before snail-mail had been decimated by e-mail. This church matriarch was always telling members of the congregation to turn in stamps, and sure enough they would bring paper sacks or plastic baggies stuffed with American flags, eagles, Christmas religious scenes, and Santa Claus stamps, many of which still clung to the corners of envelopes. I estimate it took each individual a good hour or so to fill one bag with about-one-inch squares, and usually folks would bring several bags to church and pass them off to our nonagenarian stamp collector. Personally I tried to avoid this perpetual project like the plague, because it never quit. And while we all had a vague idea that it had something to do with foreign missions, it was a though Christ had died so that we might go out into the world to save stamps.

I recall that as soon as this little old lady had repeated her appeal for stamps, another little old lady turned to a third little old lady and whispered in a way that little old ladies are wont to do—that is, loudly—“What happens to the stamps?”

The third little old lady must have asked herself the same thing because she had a ready reply: “They probably burn them.”

And with that, we bowed our heads for the closing prayer.

Slug Hunting

Slug Hunting

We know it’s here. It leaves a slimy trail on our living room rug. But we've yet to catch it in action.

Our hunt for the elusive slug began a few weeks ago, when the weather here in Scotland turned unseasonably warm. By warm I mean it got up into the 70’s, and the sun came out from its usual cloud cover. It’s typically cool, overcast, and rainy here in the summertime, but this year we've gotten pretty close to what I remember from the Southern United States as being downright hot and humid. Only the main floor of our century-old stone manse stays cavernously cold all year long, and so the slug must appreciate our natural indoor air-conditioning as much as we do.

I grew up in the South with toads on the sidewalk, snakes in the yard, and ants in the kitchen. We also suffered cockroaches that would scatter as fast as lightening when you flicked the lights on. Occasionally we had mice in the house and opossums in the garage, and in Minneapolis there were raccoons that inhabited the sewers—I know because my dogs would sense them down in the storm drains and bark at them, and I could barely make out their beady little eyes shining fearlessly up at me.

When it comes to non-humans abiding in our Glasgow hame, my partner and I are—fortunately—not squeamish about the same critters. John hates spiders so I handle them, and my height allows me to reach the ones on the ceiling. I on the other hand can’t stand mice, and John doesn't mind setting traps or, more importantly, emptying them.

But this slug is getting the better of both of us. A couple times, when we've each woken up in the middle of the night, we've armed ourselves with flashlights and stealthily gone downstairs to the scene of the slime. Like a pair of private detectives we get down on all fours and train our searchlights over the rugged terrain expecting to find our culprit with its tentacles held up begging us, “Don’t salt!”

Nothing. Not a slug in sight. Only the tail-tale sign of its having come, crisscrossed the floor numerous times, and mysteriously vanished.

Now there’s a reason why a slug is called a slug and not a snake or a springer or a swift: it’s not a fast mover. It’s sluggish, hence its name. So why can’t we spot it in slow-motion? Even if it heard us coming down the steps, how could it make a speedy get-away?

Maybe the slug is a shape-shifter, a magical creature that can transform itself into another creature, say, a spider, scurrying under the floorboards. Or it might turn into a swallow and head for the window, which would explain the opaque imprints on our panes—perhaps they’re on the inside and not the outside. Or the slug could morph into streaks of silver, darting every which way.

One thing's for sure, this heat and the slug will be gone quick enough.

Land of the Fearful and Home of the Bravado

Land of the Fearful and Home of the Bravado

I am not proud to be an American.

Let me say it again, so that any U.S.A.—or U.K., for that matter—government entity can be sure there are no typos in what I mean: I am not proud to be an American.

Following the tragic shooting of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, on February 26, 2012, and the tragic acquittal issued by a jury of Americans to the shooter George Zimmerman in Sanford on July 13, 2013, I am ashamed to belong to a country where the scales of justice are calibrated to support one person’s fear over another person’s freedom to walk down the street.

Add skin color (the fearful person is white, the dead person was black), racial background (the fearful person is a multi-ethnic American, the dead person was an African-American), age (the fearful person is an adult, the dead person was a teenage minor), occupation (the fearful person was training for a career in criminal justice and was coordinator of the neighborhood watch program, and the dead person was a high school student), and circumstances (the fearful person was in their vehicle and had a gun, the dead person was on foot and did not have a weapon), and the question is not “What’s our country coming to?!”

The question is “What’s our country been and how do we want to live differently?!”

European explorers were not good guests where they went—uninvited—to erect systems of exploitation of both natural resources and native people. They used religion and politics to justify economic abuse of foreign environments and their inhabitants. And after claiming for themselves these new worlds—stealing them from the folks who lived there—Europeans have not been good hosts. We keep on bullying. Our national security interests—fear by another name—continue to outweigh other peoples’ freedom to live their lives.

I am not proud to be an heir of this history, but I cannot deny that it is my history. I come from various northern European clans who wanted a better life for themselves even if it meant making other peoples’ lives hell. My great-grandmother Biddle was a piano teacher, in Florida, and I have one of her newspaper ads offering lessons “For Whites Only.” Her son, my grandfather, over the course of his 99 years never quite made the shift from using the n-word to using the term “negro” that Civil Rights leaders used in the mid-1900’s. I only heard Granddaddy Biddle refer to black people as “nigras.”

His son, my father, broke out of that mindset somehow. My dad grew up in the Jim Crow South, in small towns in the Carolinas where my grandfather served as a Presbyterian minister and my grandmother served as a traditional minister’s wife. Needless to say, back then the schools were racially segregated and miscegenation was against the law.

But then a strange thing happened. Some Southern white people and some Southern black people—all Presbyterians—somehow got the idea of letting white teenagers and black teenagers—Presbyterian youth—spend time together in a church camp setting. One of the leaders at these interracial youth events was the Rev. Benjamin Mays, a Baptist minister who was President of Morehouse College and a mentor to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., from King’s student years at Morehouse.

For the life of me I can’t imagine what possessed that group of organizers to go against their deeply-held religion—the white Presbyterians would certainly have been indoctrinated about the Bible supporting white supremacy—and to cross widely-held social and political divisions that were believed to have been divinely mandated since the beginning of time. What were they thinking, to risk putting black and white teenage girls and boys in a room together?! If they stopped being afraid of each other, they might start to love one another, and where would that lead? If they got to know each other as children of God, as sisters and brothers in Christ, that could give way to thinking of one another as fellow citizens—all equally due their civil rights.

At least one of those white youths chose to live differently than his ancestors. According to my mother, my dad’s parents always regretted sending him to those interracial events as they believed “that’s where he got off on race.” I am proud to be his daughter. But until every black youth is free to walk down the street—any street in the U.S.A.—without fear of getting shot, we have to tell the truth, the whole truth, about our country’s history, and we have to live differently.

---------------

Read “A Prayer for My Son and Black Boys Everywhere” by Jane Steiner, posted Monday, July 15, 2013 (myextendedtable.blogspot.com).

Co-existing with fears

Co-existing with fears

I grew up unafraid of bears. Three of them lived in my bedroom closet: a mommy bear, a daddy bear, and a baby bear. Every time I went to bed I’d say good-night to them.

In kindergarten I learned the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. That is, I learned to tell my version of it. On Parents’ Day, I got to use the flannel board and felt characters to illustrate how, after Goldilocks runs off in fear, the momma bear set about making a new batch of porridge, the daddy bear replaced the chairs, and the baby bear made up the beds. The moral of my story was that it isn't finished until everything is where it’s supposed to be, like the bears in my closet.

On family camping trips and when I worked in Yellowstone National Park and Denali National Park, I learned that real bears were to be respected from a safe distance. We put our food in bear-proof containers and stored them outside our tent, we didn’t sleep in the clothes we had cooked in, and we tied bells to our packs while hiking so that bears could hear us coming and leave us alone.

I have only seen grizzly bears in their natural habitat from far, far away, which is a good thing, and to my knowledge they’ve only heard me from afar. They are near-sighted, we employees were told during our orientation, and so if you surprise a grizzly it will want to get a closer look, and then if you try to run away it will run after you, and if you do live to tell the tale it is guaranteed to have an unhappy ending. The park rangers warned us not to hike with food on us or if we were menstruating as grizzly bears have a strong sense of smell and are attracted to the scent of blood or anything edible. The moral here was let live and live.

The same goes for fears. As children we grow up with fears, and somehow we learn to cope. These child-appropriate coping mechanisms aren’t always suitable for adulthood, however.

Here are tips for co-existing with fears, based on advice about co-existing with bears issued by the State of Maryland Wildlife and Heritage Division of the Maryland Department of National Resources:

1. Do not feed fears—feeding fears may place you or your family, friends, and neighbors in danger as they lose their instinctive role and become unpredictable.

2. Don’t tempt fears by leaving or providing fuel within easy reach. Store all fuels and wastes properly.

3. Do not approach any fear in the wild. Maintain a safe distance between yourself and any wild fears to avoid threat or instigating a confrontation.

4. Be alert in areas where fears may be active, especially areas frequented by fears.

Facts about Fears:

Fears normally retreat before you even realize that they are there.

Fears are intelligent, have good long-term memory, and are capable of recalling the location of plentiful fuel sources even years later.

Moral of this story: they all lived happily ever after, with fears in proper perspective.