burning like matchsticks in the face of the darkness

After dinner tonight, Rob was talking to Julia about ANTS, incl. whether she took many classes at other BTI schools. She said no and mentioned various reasons, one of which was that for some classes -- like pastoral care.

me: "Who teaches pastoral care?"
Julia: "Leanne."
Rob (to me): "BU this fall?"
me: "I'm flipping you off in my head."
Rob: "Come on, I've got to have someone to come with me."
me: "I almost stopped myself from asking the question, because I maintain that I'm not Called to ordained ministry, so why am I even asking about pastoral care classes?"

Julia pointed out that a lot of it would be relevant in various arenas, which I know.

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Rob is also talking about teaching Basic Lay Speaking at CWM -- 2hrs/night after worship for 5 weeks, instead of the 2 Saturdays that is the way MBH usually does it (and hey, the next round is likely to be in Quincy -- which MBTA.com says is a short walk from Wollaston, so that's way better than it could be).

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I also have to decide if I want to go to the UMC holiday party (which is followed by the HGLC holiday party that evening, and I think is the same day as the UCN church fair).

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Edit: And I forgot to mention, apparently RMN is doing YouTube videos for next summer's Convo -- whose theme is "Sing a New Song" -- and some folks have put pressure on CWM to step up and do one. I'm unclear on the exact lead up to this train of thought, but Sean imagined us doing "Getting to Know You" (The King and I), very proper and demure and all, and Samuel stepping out and interjecting stuff like, "And pointing out your racism!" and then me adding, "And fixing it!" ♥

So, we're about ten minutes into service, and Tiffany's doing the Children's Time, and she talks about how the people after Jesus were sad that they didn't know Jesus, and something about the way she says it, even before she gets to the, "And Paul said to them ... [2 Cor. 3:17-4:1]," I realize that yeah, this is about carrying on in the absence of your leader, and I start crying.

(Tiffany's sermon illustration was a mirror -- we see God in ourselves and each other.  In her sermon, she emphasized Paul's "And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Divine as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another" -- all of us.)

Scripture Lessons: 2 Cor. 3:17-4:1 and Luke 9:28-36a
Contemporary Lesson: the song "For Good" from the musical Wicked (which Cassandra performed -- piano and vocals).  Marla cried.

"Who can say if I've been changed for the better?  But because I knew you -- I have been changed for good."

Tiffany said, "Note to self: No emotional musicals right before you preach."
She talked about the Pacific Northwest road trip she and Julie took after she graduated from seminary.  Their last stop was Rialto Beach, and she was so struck by the profound beauty, by being in the Presence of the Holy -- it literally took her breath away.  It's misty, and the beach is shimmering, and she stuffs her pockets with the rocks to take it with her. 
But of course the rocks dried out. 
And Julie said to her: "You know we can't keep captive moments like these."
Tiffany: "But here's the good news [and she looked right at me as she said that] we can be transformed by them."
She quoted Alan Culpepper [on "The Gospel of Luke" in The New Interpreters' Bible] -- "Faithfulness is not achieved by freezing a moment but by following on in confidence that God is leading and that what lies ahead is even greater than what we have already experienced" -- and said, "I believe it -- don't you?  Believe it with me a little bit."
"Transfiguration is the eternal process of the divine itself revealed in humanity."
"We need each other to call out the divine in us."
"Alone, the divine beauty is locked inside; with each other, we glisten and shimmer and glow."
She said that if she ever doubted that God is real, she doesn't anymore, because she has seen God in us.  I choked up.  [I am literally crying writing this up now.  It probably didn't help that I pulled up the Wicked song on YouTube.]
"Christ is present."  [I cried.]
She said that in her eight years with us, she has been "transformed into a pastor and a preacher, and sometimes a prophet and a priest."
"I don't get to stand in front of you every week anymore -- and this is where I'm gonna lose it."  [And she was choked up as she went through that part of the sermon.  I wanted to sob -- but I only quiet-cried the whole time, wiping my face with the sleeve of my black knit shirt.]
"Look around."  [My vision was so blurry with tears.]
"As your memory of me fades -- and it will -- don't forget the lessons of who you are and whose you are."

During Passing of the Peace afterward, she said to me, "You didn't interrupt my sermon.  You cried -- which I think is worse."

In the "Ritual of Farewell to our Pastor" litany, she says, "I release you.  I release you from turning to me and depending on you.  I encourage your continuing ministry here and will pray for you and your new pastor."  I was really struck by, "I release you."

Doing the Words of Institution during Communion, Tiffany has Jesus refer to it as a "covenant between me and you and God and us."
I saw Marla crying as she communed Tiffany (after communing everyone else, the Communion co-celebrants commune each other), and I thought, "Oh yeah, this is the last time they'll get to do this.  So of course it would be the two of them doing Communion today."  [Marla's not just one of the co-lay leaders, she's been with CWM since before its founding, and has been friends with Tiffany since before its founding.]
After dinner, Marla was talking with me and Samuel and she said that it was partway through Communion that it hit her that she would never get to do this with Tiffany again, and she just started crying, and she was so grateful that Samuel was the one standing in front of her at that moment.  They literally held up the line.  And they giggled until Marla was okay to go on.  (Marla said she was glad that it wasn't someone she would feel like needed her to be a strong non-crying leadership presence -- or someone like Tallessyn where they would just both be sobbing.)

On the altar, Tiffany put a basket of rocks from Rialto Beach and invited us to each take one.  I wanted to take one that felt rough, but it seemed like they were all smooth, but the one I took has a chip broken off (though that's not immediately obvious), which I liked.

Because it was Tiffany's last Sunday, I didn't really want to leave until I absolutely had to.  So it was after 9pm (church started, I dunno, quarter past 5, and ended around, I dunno, 7) and it was me, Marla, Samuel, Michele, Tyler, Paul, Rob, Sean -- and Tiffany, who usually isn't here that late since the baby, but again, her last Sunday.

We reminisced some, and Tiffany talked about how much she would miss us -- how she wouldn't have nearly the same experience or group of people at Syracuse.
Samuel said he was sure there were queer Christians in Syracuse.
Tiffany said yes, she's already been in touch with the LGBTQ campus group.
Marla said that LGBTQ does not equal us, and I said, "Remember the conversation we were just having about RMN?  There's queer, and then there's us."
Michele: "Well-said, Elizabeth."

Tiffany's facebook status from ~10:02pm is "still finds it hard to believe it's over."

Marla's, from a few minutes later, is: "Thank you, Pastor Tiffany! That was a pretty incredible 8 years, and a beautiful service tonight. I hope Syracuse is ready, and I hope they know how fortunate they are. Here's to the next 8 years! In some ways we're all right back where we started: we can't even imagine what the future will be like, but here it comes!"

Edit: And Sean: "Amazing night at Cambridge Welcoming! Relived incredible moments of prophetic power, joyous love, and belly-ache-inducing laughter... May our paths ahead be marked by the same guideposts of audacious action and unceasing compassion. Thank you, Pastor Tiffany, thank you."

Edit2: Marla said that David P. said: "She's not dying -- she's just going to Syracuse. I think of all the people I have known over the years who have died, and I think, 'Why couldn't they have just gone to Syracuse instead?'"

We talked about The Wizard of Oz and how we never did a sermon series on that.  Someone said something about doing one followed by one on Wicked, and Michele suggested The Wizard of Oz, The Wiz, and Wicked.  Tiffany was like, "That's 12 weeks..." and said something about the lectionary, and Marla said of course we'd use the lectionary -- "That's what makes it challenging."  I said, "You said you wanted us to do fun and exciting things after you left."

Tiffany was wearing her maroon(?) high heels, and Marla said, "You know where you go if you click your heels three times?"  Tiffany looked confused and said, "Hell?"  Marla said, "No, right here."  I said, "Because it takes you home."

Prelude and Silent Meditation
"Love takes off masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within."
-James Baldwin

Scripture Lesson: Luke 9:28-36
Contemporary Lessons: "We Wear the Mask" by Paul Laurence Dunbar and "Masks" by Sonia Sanchez (excerpt)

Tiffany opened her sermon by talking about masks (and actually wearing one).  She talked about Mardi Gras and how people would wear masks so they wouldn't get found out -- and the debauchery got so bad in New Orleans that the wearing of masks was made illegal in New Orleans.  She talked about how masks limit our own ability to see (and hear, and etc.).  She talked about how we construct masks for ourselves and also often get handed masks.  She talked about the social convention of "How are you?" / "Fine." (which is totally one of my Issues) and said that FINE can be "Freaked-out, Insecure, Neurotic, Exhausted," which is how "when I'm feeling really harried, I can say that I'm fine with integrity" (heart!).
     She talked about the Transfiguration story, when Jesus took off his mask so to speak, and how she thinks that the disciples didn't get it because they were still wearing their own masks.  She said that Peter says, "You can stay up here and be glorious."
     She talked about how those who appear with Jesus are not David and Aaron (royalty and ritual) but Moses -- who led the Israelites out of oppression -- and Elijah -- who was called (by someone who's name I didn't recognize) "the troublemaker of Israel."  She said that this tells us what kind of Messiah Jesus is.
     God says, "listen up," and Jesus tells them to go back down from the mountain, back down to the people, to the work.

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Bulletin insert (with my comments in the bold brackets -- it's a checklist which you're invited to think about; obviously you're not required, or really even encouraged, to do all of them):

Lenten Disciplines

As part of my Lenten journey I plan to strip away those trappings that keep me from God and to create space to listen to God's call in my life by committing to the following: ( cut because this got long )

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We had Church Council, and Dan introduced me as the new Financial Secretary (replacing Thi) and later DavidP. commented that I seemed to still have both my arms intact (i.e., I didn't have to have my arms twisted to the point of breaking).

After Council, we had the last session of the Racism and White Privilege study (though we may come back to it later -- we already have a post-dinner study for Lent), and we talked specifically about the institutional level.

Near the end, Sean said that's hard for us to talk about the ways that we fail, said that when Joy had asked us to look at the chart on p. 234-5 and say where we thought CWM fell, "There was an uncomfortable silence across the table, until Elizabeth bravely said, 'Well, it is a factually true statement that CWM is mostly white people,' but that's still distancing..."

MarkM. mentioned a joint meeting of Fellowship (predominantly African-American) & ONA and how there was this big culture clash.  Joy said that was a really good point -- to not just look at how we worship, but to look at how other people worship.

We talked about ways to be welcoming, and Tiffany mentioned that we don't provide translations, and she speaks Spanish so there are visitors who are more comfortable speaking to her in Spanish than in English, but what about the large community of Portuguese-speaking people, for example.

I brought up the food that we have, referencing a passage from When the Drama Club is Not Enough: Lessons from the Safe Schools Program for Gay and Lesbian Students (scroll down here).

Afterward, Sean and I and Joy and Tyler were in the church office, and Joy was trying to keep track of all the different stuff Sean does, and Sean said he does gay stuff in three different jobs -- but he doesn't do gay stuff at College Ave.  Joy said that was just youth stuff, right? and Tyler asked (in a kind of joking tone) if he had any gay youth, and Sean and I kinda looked at each other, and I said, "Do I count?" and Sean kinda shrugged and he and Tyler said I would have to answer that for myself, and I said I could be the token queer, libertarian, under-30 person, and someone said that every organization needed one of those, and I agreed :)

I was there early, as usual, and I saw Christmas tree lights wrapped around support poles and tacked to the ceiling, and was confused.  Tiffany said it was starry sky in the wilderness.  (The altar drapes were purple.)  She turned down the room lights for the service.

Prelude and Silent Meditation

Desert Prayer by Jan Richardson

I am not asking you to take this wilderness from me,
to remove this place of starkness
where I come to know the wildness within me,
where I learn to call the names of the ravenous beasts
that pace inside me, to finger the brambles
that snake through my veins, to taste the thirst
that tugs at my tongue.

But send me tough angels,
sweet wine, strong bread:

just enough.

( Read more... )

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Joy (who's in a class Marla TA's) brought her friend Dale, who looked really familiar to me, and who thought the same of me, but we couldn't figure out any connection where we might have met before. She went to MHC, '06.

In the kitchen, Dale asked me something like how going to Smith affected my life.  I said it meant I have a lot lower tolerance of liberals.  She was confused.  I started to explain.

Marla said the knee-jerk unthinking. I said yeah, but that for me the big problem was the assumption that we were all left of center and if you weren't then clearly you were evil/stupid/misguided/whatever.

Dale asked so was I a conservative, or did I not pick a label -- I said if pressed to pick a label I choose libertarian, which means nobody likes me :)

Marla said something about how I keep coming back here.  I said I hang out with liberals because they make me less uncomfortable than the conservatives do.  Marla said something about how clearly she hated me.  I said the feeling was mutual, obviously.

[Oh, over dinner, Marla was talking about Romney withdrawal speech where he said if the Democrats win then the terrorists win, and I wanted to interject and explain -- the idea that the Dems are soft on terror so if they're in power the terrorists will gain in strength and so on -- but I didn't.  She also mentioned that Ann Coulter said if McCain gets the Republican nom she's voting for Hillary.  "I want to see her eat crow.  Or eat something.  Like a sandwich."  A couple days later I was reading the most recent Economist, and it explained/had a fuller version of Coulter's remarks -- says she would even prefer Mrs. Clinton in the White House, because "with Hillary, we'll get the same ruinous liberal politics" but Republicans will not be blamed for them.  Which made more sense.]

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trans study series

Marla opened by reading excerpts from Isaiah 43 (vss. 16-19, I think).  I was really struck by the "I [God] am doing a new thing."  We talked a lot about the death imagery -- how we tend to skip/forget that part when we recall this passage, how in the Red Sea story the Egyptians had a lot of attachment to the old ways and how it can be hard to let go of old ways, how changes can often seem like deaths (e.g. parents feeling like their trans child is dead to them, a trans person feeling like the body-self they were born as is dead after they've transitioned).

We watched the first segment of the documentary Call Me Malcolm.  (Sidebar: I really need to watch Transgeneration, 'cause, Smith.  And Transamerica while I'm at it.)

In the documentary, Pastor Emily talked about the "God created humanity in God's image, male and female" bit in Genesis and said that she thinks transgender persons, with their experience of both male and female, best embody the image of God that is talked about in that verse.  I thought this was really interesting, particularly in contrast to the idea I keep running up against of how do you reconcile being created by God with the idea that the body you were born into is wrong.

Tiffany talked about how transgender is threatening to heteronormative ideas of gender roles.  I said that there's also the reverse reaction -- that especially say 70s feminists often feel that they fought so hard so that you could dress and behave however you wanted, regardless of whether you were male or female, and here are these people saying that to be the people they feel themselves to be they have to be the opposite sex.  I said this is something my mom and I both struggle with, for example, that we both believe people should be free to do whatever they want to their own bodies, but it's hard to wrap our heads around, how they can't be who they are in the bodies they were born into.
me: "We're good liberals."
Will: "Did you just come out?"
me: "Shut up."
Marla: "Her story keeps changing."
me: "My story's always been that if I have to identify I pick Libertarian.  I just don't tell that story much."

We talked some about stereotypes, and Mark said those stereotypes were actually freeing for him, because after he came out he had the freedom to be effeminate, didn't have to.

I think it was Sean who brought up that it's also about how people react to you.  Like say you're walking behind a woman at night and she holds her purse closer to her and whatever, is scared of you, because she perceives you as a man, even though you see yourself as like her, a sister.  (I thought of how Joe -- a tall cisgendered male feminist -- has talked about seeing women he doesn't know and seeing them cross the street to avoid him or whatever and how sad that made him, though of course he understood.)

When we were talking about how issues of being trans include issues about bodies, Tiffany suggested a thought experiment: how would you feel if you woke up tomorrow in the body of the opposite sex?  (I thought of Amy Bloom's invocation of Kafka in the introduction to her book Normal but didn't have a chance to bring it up.)  I guess I shouldn't be surprised that a number of people were like, "That would be interesting," rather than having a freak-out reaction.

Xochitl guest-preached [Tiffany had flown back from Wichita that morning] on Luke 9:51-62 (yes, going back in the lectionary a bit). That is a hard text.

The part about burying the dead I immediately wondered what Amy-Jill Levine would say about that, because at one of the Convo sessions she talked about how Christians tend to over-emphasize the importance of Jewish rules about "uncleanness" and talked about how something making you unclean didn't make it bad, using as examples (1) sex and (2) the fact that contact with a dead body makes one unclean but that burying the dead is a mitzvah, a commandment.

(  'If there's magic in boxing [...] It's the magic of risking everything for a dream that nobody sees but you.' See also: replacing 'boxing' with 'Christianity.'  )