In “Other” Words

“Much of our dif­fi­culty as seek­ing Chris­tians stems from our unwill­ing­ness to take God as He is and adjust our lives accord­ingly. We insist upon try­ing to mod­ify Him and bring Him nearer to our own image.“ ~ by A. W. Tozer ~ “Take me as I am.” We say that — aloud or tac­itly — to each […]

“No mat­ter how many good friends I had, there were aspects of my life I needed to deal with alone — heart issues and atti­tudes that could not be wres­tled with in a Bible study … They had to be con­fronted by the Holy Spirit in the pri­vacy of my own soul.“ ~~ From “A Glimpse of Grace” […]

On the Hori­zon was launched on Jan­u­ary 13, 2007, so I cel­e­brated my “blo­giver­sary” a cou­ple of days ago.

It was a good time to stop and con­sider my blog­ging adven­tures of the past year, as well as my goals for the next, and the quote selected by Lori this week pro­vided a excel­lent foun­da­tion for my deliberations.

My blo­giver­sary also marked another anniver­sary: One year has elapsed since my lib­er­a­tion from the shack­les of mem­ber­ship in the insti­tu­tional, patri­ar­chal church. It has been the best year of my spir­i­tual life.

So many things demand our atten­tion dur­ing the day: Work, our children’s edu­ca­tional, ath­letic and social pur­suits, tend­ing to our home envi­ron­ment, our hob­bies and inter­ests. Every­where we turn we are invited to focus on some­thing other than being grate­ful for our many bless­ings. We are dared to be faith­less and dis­obe­di­ent to the Word. And nowhere did I find that to be more true than inside the walls of orga­nized religion.

The church on earth is sup­posed to be a fam­ily, the mem­bers of which, i.e., believ­ers, come together each week to wor­ship. Iron­i­cally, after a life­time of church mem­ber­ship and activ­i­ties, I have expe­ri­enced the fullest, freest and more mean­ing­ful wor­ship expe­ri­ences of my life dur­ing the past twelve months that I have not set foot inside a church building.

The rea­sons are read­ily evi­dent in the quote.

A cou­ple of months ago, I attended a Chris­t­ian social event with a group of friends at which the sub­ject of the South­ern Cal­i­for­nia wild­fires came up in conversation.

One of the women seated at our table shared that ear­lier that day, she had watched a tel­e­van­ge­list opine that the fires con­sti­tuted God’s pun­ish­ment. As my good friend kicked me under the table, I found myself com­pelled to ask, in the most inno­cent tone I could muster, “Pun­ish­ment for what exactly?” I already knew the answer, but had to hear it from her lips in order to believe it.

Just as I knew she would, she pro­ceeded to explain that the fires were God’s way of send­ing a mes­sage to Cal­i­for­ni­ans about our “accep­tance of homo­sex­u­al­ity” and oth­er­wise overly-permissive cul­ture. She also men­tioned the “hor­ri­ble” things that our chil­dren are learn­ing in pub­lic schools.

As my friend’s kicks became more emphatic and my shins started to ache, I decided to let it go with a sim­ple, “Well, I don’t believe that’s how God works.” Then I quickly changed the sub­ject to some­thing benign like the unsea­son­ably warm weather, resumed eat­ing my typ­i­cally fla­vor­less banquet-variety chicken breast, and heard my friend breathe a huge sigh of relief as she too con­tin­ued eat­ing her dinner.

Here we go! The hol­i­day sea­son offi­cially begin this Thurs­day, Thanks­giv­ing Day. The hustle-bustle of shop­ping for presents will be the norm for many folks. For most of us, there will be too many par­ties, school pro­grams, and other oblig­a­tory appear­ances to make between now and Decem­ber 24.

Many Amer­i­cans, espe­cially women, are so tired from all the prepa­ra­tions that by the time Christ­mas arrives, they are com­pletely unable to enjoy it.

Hol­i­days also sig­nal another unique kind of stress: The “oh, my god, we have to spend time with the rel­a­tives” vari­ety. Sadly, this time of year is all-too-often rife with anx­i­ety, con­ster­na­tion, and emo­tional upheaval because folks are expected to spend time with their extended fam­i­lies, as well as a vari­ety of friends, neigh­bors, acquain­tances, busi­ness asso­ciates, and, last but not least, fel­low church-goers.

With regard to this week’s quote, I am a failure.

I have tried with­out any suc­cess what­so­ever, over the course of the past sev­eral days, to find one pos­i­tive thing to write about Ms. Paulsen’s words. But I can­not and, there­fore, con­fess that I am a com­plete failure.

Every time I look anew at the quote, I have a vis­ceral reac­tion. The quote lit­er­ally makes me sick to my stom­ach and enrages me. It offends me to the core of my being — as a woman, as an edu­cated woman, as a pro­fes­sional woman, and as a fem­i­nist devoted to liv­ing, work­ing, relat­ing to oth­ers, and wor­ship­ing in a purely egal­i­tar­ian fash­ion. I find myself shak­ing my head in sheer amaze­ment and ask­ing this ques­tion: Why do some Chris­t­ian women con­sciously per­pet­u­ate and rein­force such harm­ful, self-loathing stereo­types about what it means to be a woman in 2007?

It is not often that I totally dis­agree with the quote selected for this writ­ing exer­cise. But this is one of those times.

We are built for moun­tains, dawns and aes­thetic affini­ties because we are cre­ated in the image of the Divine Cre­ator. So to say that we are not meant to reflect that beauty on a con­sis­tent basis is wrong and offen­sive to the one who made us — and reflects totally out­dated think­ing. The above quote was, after all, writ­ten in 1918 and reflects the kind of nar­row, black-and-white, neg­a­tive world view that was char­ac­ter­is­tic of that time period.

We are born pure and capa­ble of being in spir­i­tual con­ver­sa­tion with the Divine in a most pro­found way, but then we grow and go out into the world — and become cor­rupted by its nature.

“They gave our Mas­ter a crown of thorns. Why do we hope for a crown of roses?“ ~ Mar­tin Luther ~   But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sac­ri­fice of him­self. Just as man is des­tined to die once, and after that […]

“Pray­ing is no easy mat­ter. It demands a rela­tion­ship in which you allow some­one other than your­self to enter into the very cen­ter of your per­son, to see there what you would rather leave in dark­ness, and to touch there what you would rather leave untouched. Why would you really want to do that?”

~ Henri Nouwen ~

My first response to this quote was, “Why wouldn’t you?”

When I was grow­ing up, each night before sup­per we said a prayer that had no name. We learned to recite it from the time we could talk:

Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest,

Let this gift to us be blessed. Amen.

As I thought about the quote, mem­o­ries came flood­ing back to me of sit­ting around the table with my fam­ily, say­ing that prayer night after night after night … I changed, the color of the walls in the kitchen changed every few years, the table we gath­ered around was traded in for a newer model a cou­ple of times, my par­ents’ hair color changed and their faces aged … but the words never changed. Never var­ied. The grand­chil­dren learned it, too, and the tra­di­tion continues.