“’Do this in remembrance of me.’ Jesus invites you to commemorate his betrayal, death, and resurrection. His invitation makes space for ‘dangerous memory,’ a memory that, as post-Holocaust Catholic theologian Johann Baptist Metz tells us, ‘puts pressure on and questions our present because in it we remember an unfinished future.’ Memory can unsettle the unreconciled present and open up a future for the hopeless and the forgotten, the failed and the oppressed….Remembering keeps the ghosts alive so that they may warn and comfort, haunt and inspire the living: dangerous memories that rush toward an unfinished future. Making the absent present allows for processing grief, strengthening commitments, and opening up vision. Such remembrance commits you to work for a future for those who have been forgotten, erased, and left behind.”
-Hanna Reichel, For Such a Time as This, 88, 89
I believe that most of us experience an internal tug-of-war between the past and the future. In The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis’ titular demon supervisor advises his underling Wormwood that one of best ways to keep a human from doing good is to keep them ping-ponging between those two times that are not the present. One keeps trying to recapture or reach towards moments that are mist. It can keep a person from doing something.
The quote above resonates with me because it harnesses the past and unfinished future into a catalyst that animates our present. We remember the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus because it means something today and compels us to presently work for the Good that is already here, but also not yet. We remember the hope and pain of the past to do something that help us take some sort of step each and every day. We realize that the hope which exists within the gospel story is not yet fully realized. Many people are still being left behind and forgotten. The realization, as the theologian Metz states, puts pressure and questions on the present.
Being a parent forces you to take a close look at yourself. Of course, you don’t have to be a parent to self-examine, but there is something about the reality that another living human is under your care and protection for the foreseeable future that makes you take stock of your strengths, weaknesses, and beliefs. For example, I used to think I was a far more patient person before I had kids; like superhumanly patient. And then a crying toddler shows you the folly of that belief. On the flip side, time has moved on and having two teenagers affirms that, yes, I am ridiculously patient and that has been a strength as a parent.
Among many other reorienting moments that came with parenthood was full acceptance of our LGBTQ+ siblings. That process began many years earlier. As someone who studied religion, I knew that the biblical case against these individuals was not nearly as airtight as I was previously led to believe. Science and stories from people gave strong indication that this life was not a choice. And I had met gay and lesbian folks who were good people. The old axiom that you will know a tree by its fruit applies here.
But the tipping point was holding a tiny infant who I loved more than I thought possible and knowing that I never wanted him to be ashamed of who he is. I did not want a potential future in which one of my children came out as something other than heterosexual with the fear that we would not love them. Not accepting my child was not even conceivably on the table. So we raised our kids to know that LGBTQ+ were beloved members of God’s creation.
There is this typical ice breaker question that is some variation of “If you could have dinner with anyone famous living or dead, who would it be?” And one of my steadfast answers for almost twenty years has been Stephen Colbert. Through both The Colbert Report and The Late Show, he has given hours upon hours of laughter and more than enough on which to ponder. I feel like we’d have a lot to talk about since we are both unabashed nerds, products of the Palmetto State, and he just seems like a good hang.
Beyond all of that, I appreciate how honestly and humbly Colbert approaches his faith. There have been numerous times over the years when his comedy and conversations take a turn into the spiritual that is challenging and convicting. I remember an episode of The Colbert Report where one minute he was making a joke about Ben Franklin’s predilection for French prostitutes and then organically made his way to the following quote:
If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.
Then there are the interviews that he has conducted on The Late Show. Colbert has said that he sort of found the heart of his show when he had a conversation with then-Vice President Biden about grief. Indeed the loss of his father and brothers at a young age has led him to create an empathetic space to explore loss in the midst of celebrities promoting their most recent projects (my mind immediately comes to a conversation that he had with Andrew Garfield about the loss of the actor’s mother).
On the way to school, the youngest burrowed his head into my arm. “I don’t like that you’re getting older.”
“Why is that?”
“Because you’re one year closer to death.”
“There it is.” That’s my kid. Very sweet. Very sensitive. Brutally, bordering on inappropriately blunt. “Well, it’s better than the alternative.”
“Getting younger?” He thinks for a second. “Oh…dying.”
“Yeah, you can’t get younger.” I scratch him on the head. “And hopefully I have a ways to go. Ideally, I’ll still be kicking around when you turn 43.”
“You’ll be 73. So that’s reasonable”
“Yeah.”
“Granddad will be 103.”
“Less likely. But maybe. I hope he is as long as he’s happy.”
“And healthy. Happy, healthy, and alive.” Then he goes into a bit from an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine which makes me laugh.
Birthdays, as my oldest posited this morning, are kind of weird when you get older. Or at least they morph into something different from the second Christmas-esque excitement when you’re a kid. Because there does get to be that point where it creeps into your mind that you are a year closer to death. And that forces you take stock of your life which is a hit-or-miss affair due to being human’s volatility.
One day last week, I picked you up from school after took one of your AP exams and then I moved over to the passenger seat so you could practice driving. In the midst of being hyper vigilant about your speed, how quickly you stopped, how close you were to the side of the road, and what every single other car on the road was doing, I had a distinct moment of looking over at you and realizing that so much is changing. And we’re only at the start.
Today you turn 16. You are about to wrap up your sophomore year of high school. You’ll take a driver’s license test in just a few weeks. We have three more summers before you go off to college. There are times it seems like yesterday when you were sitting in the living room watching cartoons with a couple of dozen superhero toys. There are times it seems like last week when you were a newborn sleeping in my arms.
The feeling of you being 16 is kind of like being the passenger in the car while you are driving. I have a ton of confidence in you and trust you. And I worry about your lack of experience in a big, sometimes frightening world and whether I have taught you well enough. I am wary of everyone else on the road. I wonder if you are going too fast even though you are going an appropriate speed and I am the one who encouraged you not to go as slow in the first place. It is all very exciting, humbling, frightening, and new.
Christmas 1988. My brother Taylor and I receive the Nintendo Entertainment System packaged with Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt and we have been fans ever since. We have grown up with the Japanese company’s gaming systems; the adventures of Mario, Luigi, Yoshi, Link, Zelda, Donkey and Diddy Kong, and more have been a consistent presence in our lives. Even though we are in three different states now as adults, Taylor, my sister Shari, myself, and our kids will get together every so often and play Mario Kart online. We love Nintendo, which is a weird thing to say about a corporation that makes a billion dollars but it is what it is.
With all that said, I loved the Keza MacDonald’s book Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company That Unlocked the Power of Play. Not only is it an engaging journey through video game history through the lens of Nintendo’s iconic (and less iconic) franchises, but the book also has a great deal to say about creativity, community, and culture. In fact, it is that last idea that got me thinking about how this video game company can teach the church (or any other organization) even as I am a bit of an outsider to that world presently.
Here is one of two quotes that jumped out at me from the chapter “Splatoon” which looks at how Nintendo continues innovate and create over 40 years into its video game endeavors:
“Happy Easter?”
That is the first thing EA said to me as I woke up on Easter morning. I stretched and rubbed my eyes.
“I still believe in Jesus. It’s just the church that I’m not sure about.”
Some context: This was the first Easter in our 20+ years of marriage (and likely in either of our lives) in which we did not have a church to attend. It’s been about a year since we’ve gone to church as a family. Honestly, the church that we attended after I stepped down from working in a congregation had a tall order to tend to our hurting family. It was a good group of people, but the services and community never really clicked with our boys. Then early last year, I got moved to a Sunday morning shift. EA tried for a bit to go by herself but it wasn’t what she needed. In the end, I was gone for about eight months before anyone in the church really noticed and we decided to take a break.
I acknowledge my uncertainty about the church is a bit over-dramatic. Of course, there are great churches out there. There are wonderful people in congregations where my family and I have experienced the most pain. It’s akin to writing off burritos for life because you got violent food poisoning from one (This is based on a true story; I have not written off burritos just that particular Chipotle location). But the church hurt is real. As is the MAGA-fication of the denomination in which I grew up that feels so antithetical to the teachings of Jesus. So we don’t have a place to call home and it’s weird and sad and understandable.
Absurdist Note: I really want to add “Woo-ooh!” after the title. If you know, you know.
I have not pulled off this year’s Lenten disciplines the way that I set out to. When this 40 day period began, I set out to take on this fasts/spiritual practices:
Stop drinking Coca-Cola
Stop eating French fries
Stop playing Disney Solitaire on my phone
Do a daily devotional from Richard Rohr’s Wondrous Encounters
Write a blog five days a week
When the war in Iran began and threw another log on the fire that is the world, it pained me both spiritually and physically. One of the ways that played out was headaches and since headaches were already part of removing the caffeine of Coca-Cola from my life, I decided I probably shouldn’t compound a problem and began drinking Coke again. I have had French fries a few times; not many, mind you, but enough to break up the fast. There have been several multiple day stretches where I did not do my devotional. And my efforts to blog five times a week quickly fell by the wayside. I have managed to keep from playing Disney Solitaire, but that still puts my Lenten average in Mendoza Line territory.
Several hundred, some may say several thousand, years worth of anticipation hung thick in the air. Like summer humidity that sticks to your shirt the second you step outside, you couldn’t avoid it if you wanted to. Especially not during Passover week.
There was a guy making his way into Jerusalem; a guy claiming to be the Messiah. This was nothing new. He would not be the first that people claimed would save us. There had been tons of guys going around saying that they were the One; saying that they were going to show Rome what’s what. So a would-be messiah making his way to Jerusalem was about as common as a singer-songwriter making their way to Nashville.
But this felt different. He seemed different. Now there was a fair amount of debate whether he was the right or wrong kind of different. For starters, word got out that he had tried to keep a lot of the messiah talk and even tales of his miracles under wraps. But it is difficult to keep those kind of stories quiet: dead men walking, the blind seeing, demons plunging a herd of pigs over a cliff, and thousands fed from a lunch meant for a single kid. You can tell people to keep that hush-hush all you want, but it’s not going to happen.
I usually go with the written word. That is where I feel like I express myself best, but it just didn’t do. I tried to talk it out and I don’t know if I did a great job. I tried to explain how I’m conflict averse and how I don’t like stepping into these things but how I understand the gospel compels me to. One thing I didn’t say and I wish that I did is: I’m sorry. To my friends and people I don’t know for whom this day was gut-wrenchingly painful, I am so very sorry.
The idea was so perfect in my head. We would cap off our youth group about why worship matters with everyone writing their praises to God on a sky lantern, which we would light and send to the heavens. Up to God. The illustration wrote itself. The visual was going to be awesome. It was going to be impactful.
It was going to be illegal.
To release sky lanterns in Tennessee you have to have the same license as someone who does fireworks display.
That’s okay. We could do something else. Something else going up. Up. Up. Balloons. But balloons are bad for the environment. Do they make biodegradable balloons? They do. I was all ready to get some biodegradable balloons and helium and then…
“Many animals mistake burst biodegradable balloons as food causing intestinal blockage and death.”
It’s wrong to destroy God’s creation in an effort to praise God.
I had to let go of the idea of going up to God. It wasn’t until later that I realized that I had fallen into a common trap. I was thinking of God as being up.
Yesterday was one of those unexpected gifts. In a region where summer lingers and lingers like an unwanted houseguest, the air was cool and drizzly. It was as if Nashville and Portland temporarily switched places. I ran in the morning and I wasn’t a walking puddle of sweat at the end. Each time I went outside, I was greeted by mist and breeze. I could get used to that.
I won’t get a chance to get used to that because the temperature will flirt with 90s again within a couple of days. It will be mid to late October before we maybe (maybe) get that kind of cool weather consistently. But, my goodness, yesterday was nice. It seems like it has been summer for a year and, for a little while, we were reminded that autumn is somewhere down the road.
We need fall. I am not a fanatic about the season. I am not one of those people who loves Halloween and starts guzzling pumpkin spice lattes when they appear way too early in late August. I do like football season (although I have some growing internal conflict about the sport; another post for another time). And I am looking forward to wearing my zip-up hoodie regularly because, in my humble opinion, that is the best article of clothing that humanity has conceived.
When I was a kid, there was a big comic book event that I read called Zero Hour. The conceit was a bad guy sought to wipe out all of history by somehow devouring the time stream of history from both ends. I know…but comics. The ending of one issue in particular has always stuck with me. Lois Lane stood on the top of the Daily Planet building and watched as a blinding whiteness consumed the city in front of her. The color on the page faded panel by panel. The inked lines around her lost volume and became dashed marks. Finally she vanished. The panels became white and the last two pages were completely blank.
Everything was gone (everything eventually got better) and that filled my child-aged mind with this existential horror. It was upsetting. What if everything I loved, everything I knew, all just disappeared?
Part of me feels like something that I loved and knew well has vanished. It has been fading for years and yet it keeps gnawing at me. I have been writing about the unhealthy marriage between the evangelical church and conservative American politics for as long as I have been an adult. And I thought that I had healthy distance from it. I moved to attending a Lutheran church and then a more moderate Baptist church and now I work in a Disciples of Christ congregation.
But as we keep plunging further down a rabbit hole of this present administration, I feel like I am experiencing a genuinely painful loss.
So last Friday I almost died. My wife E.A. has been going to spin class for several months now. She seems to like it and has made a point of staying committed to it. I run but have always heard that these spin classes are a good source of cross-training. So at some point I commented that I might like to try to go to a class with her. We kind of danced around me going for about a month because our children were on break and I traveled a lot this summer. But last Friday, with the boys in school, I joined E.A. at Krank Fitness just a few blocks from here.
Part of me was worried because summer has thrown my fitness regimen off a bit. Then there was another part of me that was not too concerned because I have been a runner since I was in high school. Why would I think that I would not have any trouble with a spin class? Because there’s a seat! In my arrogance, I thought, “If I could sit down while I was running, I could go twice as far and twice as fast.” This was the first of many stupid thoughts that traversed my mind on this fateful morning.
Before we started, I got on the stationary bike and sort of pedaled a little bit to get used to it. I could tell that this exercise was going to tax some muscles that didn’t normally get used, but I was not worried. The whole point was to work on some muscles that didn’t get as much attention while running. So we begin our 30 minute spin session which was to be followed by 30 minutes of strength training. The music is thumping and our instructor is telling us to speed up, get out of the saddle, increase the resistance on the bike, lower it, go up and down and back, up and down and back. And it’s tough.
I write this while E.A. is reading bedtime stories to our two sons. They are locked into her voice. They fidget a little, but they are with her. I'm trying to think what we were doing 13 years ago. Were we still talking to people at the reception or had we started making the trip to Charlotte? I'm not totally sure. I can tell you that she was breathtakingly beautiful in her wedding gown on that evening. And I can tell you that she is breathtakingly beautiful as she sits on the couch in our sons' room right now.
Thirteen years ago, I could not have anticipated the twists and turns that our lives have taken. Who could? When you get married, you think you know what the future will hold, but you really are just drunk on the wonderfulness of the now. Young love and all of that. I still don't know what the future holds, but I can tell you that I want this woman to be part of it; even more today than when I meant with all my heart then. She is my absolute favorite person in the world and I can't believe how lucky I am that I get to share life with her.
The traditional backstory behind Psalm 51 is that it was written by David after the prophet Nathan called the King of Israel out for a particularly heinous episode. You can find the story in 2 Samuel 11-12, but I’ll give you the Cliff Notes version. David saw a married woman named Bathsheba bathing on a rooftop and wanted her. He sends for her. It’s important to remember that Bathsheba doesn’t really have any say over this matter. He’s the king and she’s a woman and the king will get what he wants. David sleeps with Bathsheba and gets her pregnant. He then brings her husband Uriah home from war, and, in what plays out like a scene from a really messed up sitcom, unsuccessfully tries to get Uriah to sleep with Bathsheba so that the husband will be none the wiser.
However, Uriah, even when he’s drunk, is too noble to go home and sleep with his wife when his fellow soldiers are sleeping in tents in a field. So David arranges with his general to have Uriah sent to the front lines of battle and then to call everyone but Uriah back effectively assuring the man’s death. And Uriah dies. David has Uriah killed for the wrong that David committed. Nathan calls David out for his great transgression and David, finally, recognizes the error of his ways and must reckon with the massive way in which he had sinned. Now sin can be a tricky topic and I can think of at least one reason why.
EA and I were once in Las Vegas. We had just camped and hiked the Grand Canyon. Vegas is sensory overload for anyone, but was especially overwhelming after our sojourn in the wilderness. As we walked the Strip, we wandered in and out of lavish hotels and casinos. The sky, which the night before was full of brightest stars I had ever seen, was now dominated by neon, searchlights, and constantly changing advertisements. The sidewalks and casinos buzzed with conversations, music blared from every direction, and there was a chorus of revelers yelling “Wooooooo!” with every passing party bus. We saw real live lions near slot machines and replicas of Venetian canals. We meandered through marble palaces and trudged over littered pamphlets for local prostitutes. Sin City was a lot to take in.
I'm working on a sermon for Sunday. The text is Psalm 51 and preaching from such a familiar passage is both a blessing and a curse. I've been been examining this song of repentance from every angle. What it says is so simple, but often the simplest things are the most difficult to say. Trying to go to sleep tonight, my brain kept turning the passage like a Rubik's cube and then a refrain from a song made my eyes spring open.
And I totally cannot use it in my sermon.
But it was not your fault but mine
And it was your heart on the line
I really f----- it up this time
Didn't I, my dear?
Yeah...songs that drop the f-bomb multiple times don't really make for good Sunday morning illustrations. But it is post-midnight on Wednesday so I'm going to try to write Mumford & Sons' "Little Lion Man" out of my system so that I can move forward.
A couple of days ago, I started to write a post entitled "No Sanctuary." It was about how this has been a long summer and how I am just completely fried physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And I would have written about how there does not seem to be any place that I can recharge because I work at a church, have children who need attention, yada yada yada.
I realized fairly quickly that it would have been really whiny. So I stopped. All of what I felt was real, but my heart wasn't in the right place. I was complaining.
Yesterday I went for a run. It was a bit of a slog despite the fact that it was a rare afternoon when the temperature wasn't oppressively hot. When I got done, I pulled a towel and a Gatorade out of my car and sat down on a slope of grass. Nothing special. It's what I usually do when I run that particular route.
And I felt peace. Peace that I had not felt in maybe two months
RISE! AND SHINE! AND GIVE GOD THE GLORY! GLORY!
For many summers, Friday mornings were for screaming that at the top of my lungs while furiously pumping my arms up and down because we are to give God the glory, glory with all our being and not just daintily swaying our hands back and forth. I was part of a group that was known as the Not Yet Ready for Evening Worship Service Singers (Not Yet Readies for short).
The Not Yet Readies were the camp staff members who were a little less talented in the musical department. We didn't sing solos in worship services. We typically weren't multi-instrumentalists though a fair number of drummers and bassists (guilty) were in our ranks. But what we lacked in tuneful talent, we more than made up for with heart. We would lead our three songs during morning celebration in a state of supernova delirium. We were loud and silly and proud of our not-yet-readiness.
I think about those Fridays often during the summer. Whenever I hear a VBS-style song that is done with motions, I always want to crank the energy up just a little bit more. By the way, did you know that there are regional variations to "Rise and Shine"? There are. Also, if people aren't prepared they will be a little bit terrified if you scream the song at the top of your lungs and throw your whole body into the motions. It's true.
I have a new office in our home and one of the things I am enjoying is decorating the space. I have placed books, Lego sets, and Funko Pops on the shelves. My wall has photos of family, places that I have traveled, artwork my siblings have given me, diplomas, etc. Across from my desk on the wall, hangs a cross that we got from a church in Reykjavik and a small colorfully-painted tile depicting Assisi. On the floor beneath them is the one item in here that I haven’t yet put up: my certificate of ordination.
I was ordained as a minister ten years ago today. It was a step with which I struggled for awhile. My Baptist roots fostered in me a firm belief in the priesthood of all believers. If you say that you are a follower of Jesus, then you are a minister. So the hierarchy implied by being called “Reverend” made me feel a little uncomfortable. I did not use the title for myself often unless I was writing my Congressperson. Despite these qualms, I did ultimately pursue ordination. I am glad that I did. I am just not totally sure what to make of it now.
I don’t serve as a vocational minister anymore; not in a church, not as a chaplain, not in some sort of parachurch organization. I am an Administrative Assistant in a hospital Spiritual Care department. In fact, I haven’t even attended a church service in maybe a year and a half save an Ash Wednesday service that I snuck off to at the beginning of Lent. I did officiate a wedding in a church over the summer; an experience that I loved and was very meaningful for me. But I don’t really know what to do about that ordination certificate. Or church.