More (probably stupid) thoughts on racism...

A friend (and the youth minister for my teen's youth group) posted an article on facebook today in which a bunch of teens were saying all manner of ignorant, racist, and rather inarticulate things about the re-election of Barack Obama to the White House.  I posted back to her this:

 Americans are so weird about race. We're afraid to mention it. We want to say it doesn't matter. We have "white guilt" and we forget that there are other races than just black and white.... race does matter but not in the ways we want to think it does. It matters in the wonderful scope of human cultures and foods and stories we can enjoy and explore. It matters in the sheer fun of foreignness. It matters in who, statistically, gets what diseases and to my cocky littlest kid who thinks its funny that he doesn't sunburn as easily as his white-boy older brothers. It does not matter in who makes a good president, employee, neighbor or friend. I just fail to see how our country misses that memo.



Most people responded that they were "heartsick" or otherwise saddened by the post.  (To clarify, she posted this to show the state race relations among those who are young enough to know better, rather than having been indoctrinated into the racism of the past.  She was not endorsing the racism, rather she was pointing out that it still exists.)

And the more I got to thinking about her post, the more I want to say: "of course racism still exists!"

Racism in America is no longer cool. 

That's a good thing.

But because racism has gone so rapidly from being a social norm to a social stigma, we've not had a chance as a culture to process out our real thoughts.  We've had institutions, people, society and such all jumping at the chance to re-educate our racist selves, whether or not we actually are racists, without regard to the fact that real racists won't respond to this sort of re-education.  In short, we've not eradicated racism so much as driven it underground.

And so it is no longer kosher to notice race.

And so it is no longer kosher to say "how cool! You're different!"

And so it is no longer kosher to ask "what is it like to be you?"

And it is no longer kosher to wonder "what is out there that is new, exciting, foreign to my worldview?"

Its probably no longer kosher to say "kosher" because it might be offensive to Jews.  Or liberals.  Or the politically correct thought police.

Because we've come to express equality as sameness.

And it becomes scary to wonder about difference.

And because we've made race a no-man's land...

and so thoughts are thought in isolation.

And there is no safe place to ask innocent questions, make mistakes, step unknowingly on toes, and learn something in the process.

And every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and Jane, is subjected to anti-racism training whether they want to grow in this area or not, that feels like an accusation, that requires an investment of time resources that may seem unavailable, that is forced on them from the outside and that, therefore, like it or not, breeds resentment which in turn breeds racism. 

I am thankful that I have a couple of Asian friends who allowed me to safely ask my impertinent questions when we adopted a Korean child.  I know friends who have children of African descent who are thankful for friends who have offered them similar safe havens for questions about culture, language, life, and yes hair (or in the case of my Asian kid, ears... oh, nevermind).  They don't assume I'm some sort of ignorant racist, they assume I'm a white person with white person hair (and ears), who had never eaten kimchi, never tied a hanbok, and never been asked in my own country whether or not I spoke English. 

I'm thankful for the chance to be that safe friend when people ask me stupid, seemingly racist, innocent questions about my Korean child who does happen to be good at math, and martial arts, and is admittedly on the short side, hates his hanbok like most Korean boys... but doesn't like kimchi and doesn't speak Korean and his English is just fine thanks.

Sometimes we have to air our ignorance to grow.  That's called humility.  And sometimes we have to put up wiht others' ignorance and assume the best, that's called relationship.

And the reason the anonymity of the internet causes real racism to bubble up is that so few people have had the chance for humility and relationship where they can process out their thoughts in a healthy way.  

I'm not sure how to cure the problem, except that the society learn to extend to one another a "freedom to fail."  I guess its a start.  I guess.

Bramble Flowers

delicate white flowers

dotting my landscape

today

tomorrow

amid the thorns

tart dark fruit

 

A poem for my friend Beth, who has often reminded me of the simple value of the poetic.  And for her daughter, whose appreciation for the wild berries on the edge of my yard a few summers ago makes me think of her every time I look at those promising buds.

Busting Loose

I had the privilege of visiting a little guy at Children’s Hospital on Saturday.  I long ago became convinced that hospitals are one of those places where the secular and the sacred collide, with noticeable results.  God is at work, bidden or unbidden God is there, as they say. 

Being a patient in a hospital, aside from whatever reason put a person there in the first place, is boring as all heck.   Boredom is probably worse than pain for a kid.  I think of every little kid I’ve ever known who would rather risk a spanking for misbehavior than sit still while waiting for an appointment or keep quiet while mom’s on the phone.  Boredom stinks. 

But I marveled at the hospital at how little the children’s hospital feels like a hospital.  Its colorful, for one thing, and whimsical.  And it has places where the kids can get out for a stroll (complete with tubes and equipment and wheelchairs and whatnot), a little library, a play room, a giant statue of a robot holding the Stanley Cup (for you robots and Penguins fans) and some sort of funky projected image that little kids seem to like to stomp on.

On the way out of the hospital I came across two healthy siblings of a hospitalized child, going bonkers in the foyer.  I passed a patient room where I heard a child crying, and gave thanks that he or she was healthy enough to squalk a bit.  I met a little mop top child running like mad while being tailed by tubes, parents, and one of those medical “trees” on wheels.   It was a thankful thing, that some architects somewhere had made space for kids to bust out, even if their bodies weren’t exactly able to co-operate.

Even the little guy I was visiting, when his mom was out of the room (shhh… don’t tell), had fun with our adventures to turn on the light switch (which I will sacrifice my adult and professional dignity to confess involved lots of “vroom, vroooooom!” sounds and unnecessary little detours around the room with his wheelchair) and some silly reading of Cat in the Hat (which we didn’t quite finish… I owe him one).   Strolling about with him and  his mom, we had a great view of the city.  Things look different a garden from six floors up.

In the end, I think its easy to underestimate kids who are hospitalized, to dehumanize them into needy objects, especially those who are severely ill.  But they’re still in there, just aching to bust out, even when their bodies don’t wholly co-operate.  They’re still contributing to our world, even when we are too self absorbed and busy to notice their quiet ways. They’re still active, even when so attached to tubes and medical trees that the activity is veiled, when pain or loss of control demands that the activity be slow and deliberate. 

And it makes me thankful for their witness.
And for whoever thought a garishly hot pink ladies room was a good idea. And for the person who painted a six foot Statue of Liberty black and gold for the sixth floor atrium.  And for the garden designer who put a mosaic sun in the middle of the winding wheelchair friendly little paths.   And for the little kids who, heedless of pain and medical accoutrements were busting loose on the path and in the atrium and in countless other corners of the hospital and our world.

If play for children is more important to them than pain or discomfort or risk… what for adults has the same value?

Making "Church Bread" with the small guy....

Okay, I know, I know... I hang around with Anglo-Catholics. I like dalmatics, incense, icons and chant. I think Jesus deserves our finest in music, liturgy, and devotion. I think its all good for us too, multisensory, multi-generational (not just us living generations, too), across all time and places.

But I depart from the traditions of the Anglo-Catholics in this one...

Bread.

I like real bread at the altar.

Yes, I play "crumb police" becaue I really do believe that every consecrated drop or crumb must be handled with devotion. Its not ours, its God's. I'm cool with consubstantiation. But I believe bread is bread. The early saints didn't use what Marion Hatchett called "fish food." They had bread.

Okay, wafers store better if you reserve the elements. There's a place for them.

But Sunday to Sunday, I'm into bread.

Good bread, Jesus deserves good bread.

How can we take cheap pita, crunchy hard tack, or dusty wafers to the Lord who called himself "the Bread of Life" and whose birthplace is literally called "House of Bread" and say "here you go, its the best we have to give you."

So I'm into bread. And so its fallen to me, sort of by default to make the "StEAM Bread."

For the uninitiated StEAM is "St. Elizabeth's Anglican Mission"... the yet nonexistent but still sacramentally functioning congregation I serve these days.

What's cool about making the bread at home is that my kids get involved. There are several tasks involved in StEAMBread making. And thanks to the technology of the modern deep freezer, its really only a job for every other month of so. No big deal.

But as little guy and I were making the StEAMBread today, and he was full of questions, I started thinking.... there are a lot of neat Biblical touchpoints in making bread. Okay, they're cheesy, but its fun to pray and talk through what goes into the bread that goes on the altar. So here it is, complete with little guy (hereafter referred to as "LG") comments and questions.

RECIPE INCLUDED!!!!

The recipe is called "Lebanese-Syrian Mass Bread" and I originally gained it as a handout from a classmate's project the summer I was at Sewannee. The class clearly preferred this bread on every count, taste and texture and whether or not it threw crumbs all over the altar. So this is the recipe I use, though I have several from the same classmate.

Add: 1 Package of active dry yeast... or about a half dollar sized round from the jar. LG and I talked about how Jesus said the Kingdom of Heaven is like yeast making the whole loaf rise and be good for using.
Add: 1.5 c. flour... Talk about bread as the foundational food, offerings in the temple of wheat and grain. This stuff has been essential deliciousness for just about forever.
LG asks if he can pour the flour. Yeah fine. LG asks what happens if we turned the beaters up to "10". "It makes a mess."
Add 1 1/4 c. warm water. "He leads me beside still waters." Jesus walks on water. Whatever. There's a lot of water in the Bible.
LG asks if we can turn it up to ten now. Um, no.
Add 2 Tbs. olive oil. There's a lot of olive oil in the Bible too, anointing for healing and welcome. How about I pour that, kid, its messy.
LG notes the bottle has a cork in it. Yeah. It does. Thanks for noticing.
Add 1/4 c. sugar. "How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" I've thought about trying to make this recipe with honey, but I'm reluctant to mess with it.
1 tsp salt. "You are the salt of the earth." Thinking about how salt is a preservative and a flavoring. Salt is cool stuff if you don't have heart issues.
LG: "What happens if I put my finger in here?" "The mixer will pinch it and you'll squalk."
Add 2 cups more flour, slowly.
LG: "Can we turn it up to ten now?" No it would throw flour everywhere. "Cool!"
Kneed. You can talk about Jesus being beaten before the crucifixion if you like.
LG: "Can I poke the dough." yes.
"Can I smack it?" yes.

Cover and let rise in a warm dark place (I put mine in the oven... blah blah about the tomb and resurrection... and how rising bread takes forever like the eschaton if you're hungry!!!)

Get pestered every five minutes. Is it time yet?

Make the loaves, rounds according to what size your congregation needs. Makes about 12 5" circles. Cut a cross with a knife.

Bake at 400 for 20 minutes, until light brown on the bottom.

And because we only offer Jesus the best, there has to be a family committee to "eat the ugly ones." The oven does all sorts of wonky things to the loaves! Ugly ones are good warm with butter. (hangs head in shame)

They freeze well wrapped in foil and put in a big ziploc.

Anyway, I'm putting this up in case any of you clergy types want to farm off the making of church bread to the Sunday School or a rotation of families. Holler if you want a clean copy of the recipe. I'm sure I can scan it for you. :)

Thoughts on Lent

Many people see it as a fearful thing, to go to church on Ash Wednesday and hear proclaimed “Remember O man that thou art dust, and to dust you shall return.”  We don’t want to deal with our own mortality.  An interesting fear, since everyone who is older than preschool knows that everyone dies eventually.  Somehow we want to convince ourselves that we are the exception to the rules of Genesis 3.

For me, it is a more fearful thing to pronounce those words over others, especially when these others are colleagues, friends, neighbors.  It is like a small and repeated dose of what physicians must experience when they tell a patient their disease is terminal.  I’m sorry, you are going to die.  There is nothing I can do for you.

Its a conflicting message, when the doctor you’ve trusted and who has genuinely struggled and worked to save your life, has failed.  Its a conflicting message in the Church, too, but with different outcome.

How great a blessing, every Sunday, it is to look into the eyes of a loved one, a neighbor, even a stranger and say the words “the body/blood of Christ which was given for you preserve you body and soul into everlasting life.”  Say it just once to someone, and you can’t help but look at them as Jesus does.  You can’t help but love them.

And then, once a year, you look them in they eye and say “remember you are dust.” Remember you are going back to dust.

If dust were the end of the story, the other 364 days of the year, clergy would be liars.  But what is remarkable is that even at Ash Wednesday, we don’t leave them at dust.  Only a few minutes later, we look again on those ashen faces and lift the faithful up to God with those words, “the body and blood preserve you body and soul into everlasting life.”

Remember you are dust.  You are formed by God’s hands.  But you’re returning to the dust.

And God doesn’t leave you there.  You are formed again, this time for life everlasting. 

Its not a circle of life thing, not a reincarnation without end, but a singular recreation, this time without the corruption, without the ashes.  There is no Ash Wednesday in the kingdom. 

Interdependence in Ministry

One of the wonderous things about being a deacon lies in what we can't do. We can't, for example, consecrate the Eucharist.

This isn't a big deal in my life most of the time. I have friends who are called to the priesthood say that the inability to consecrate the Eucharist really haunted them in the time when they were deacons, but not so among vocational deacons.

Except when it proves a point of major inconvenience. Like this weekend; Father is sick.

Thankfully, I have a friend who has a Saturday night service and is always willing to bail me out of a tight spot. The church isn't far off, so its an extra couple hours out of my schedule that get replaced with an opportunity to worship in the pews instead of being in the chancel all the time. Rather relaxing. And its a nice time to visit with a friend who I don't see as often as I'd like. Not a problem.

But the beauty in it lies in the fact that this is a visible witness of how Christians, with our various gifts and callings, need one another. God doesn't gift any of us with everything; instead he calls us into community. And a visible token of that is my need to rely on a priest for Eucharist. Even when I'm the one being relied upon, it doesn't happen in a vacuum. There's a team at the ready, willing and able to stand together to make God's work a reality for his people.

That's pretty darned cool.

(And thanks to the priest, deacon, and congregation at Christ Church, New Brighton, for once again welcoming me and my squirmy little kids. Last night was great fun!)

Finishing Sentences, Thoughts on Community

I used to live in a little, admittedly run down, steel town. Not a big place; you could walk from end to end of town in about an hour, if you were casual about it. About the same size as the quaint little town I grew up near, but this time the town was anything but quaint. When the mills closed, unemployment and drugs came to town and urban renewal, as much as it may be talked about, was usually defeated by a communal low self esteem.

There have been a few new projects, lately, though. And refreshing the landscape does creep along at a pace of sorts. The most recent addition was a small but essential grocery store, near the seminary, where most residents could walk to shop if they were so inclined. I think it will be an important addition to the town. But for now its new and interesting and everyone is coming out to see it. Its bright and clean (let's hope it stays that way) and seems to be well run. Employees are all new hires and the day to day ennui of work has not set in. And the town is enthralled.

The place was crowded, but I still got through quickly, its that small. But on the way, people stopped to chat. A lady with three kids, a grandmother... there was also the guy that looked like he ought to be a neighborhood hoodlum, who was cheerful giving me directions to the right entrance. And there was the local man who informed me that he just came by to chat with people because he didn't have anything else going on.

There was a time, I told him, that people did do that. And perhaps the world is a little poorer because they don't anymore.

In the end, I got a glimps of what the town must have been like in their grandparents', maybe even parents' time. Less jaded and more small town, ready to chat, and maybe needing a bit of an ear. And maybe, if the folks doing the renewal projects there are successful, they'll have that back someday.

Then today, I went on up the road to the next town to hear a friend preach. A friend with whom I'd gone to seminary, who asked me to read a lesson, just because I was there, and who commented on my pronounciation of a Hebrew name, just because she was in my Hebrew classes. As she preached, I could hear our common phrases, learned in class, and could complete her sentences in my head. I settled into the familiar story, the theological rhythms, and thoroughly enjoyed her sermon. There wasn't much new for me in it, but quite to the contrary, it was the familiar, even old, that I enjoyed.

And I realized on my way out that it was the shared vocabulary of our community, seminary in this case, that gave us a casual friendship and a common comfort with the Scripture.

I guess, that's the foundation of community, a shared story, a history together, a common vocabulary and rhythm of life. That's why those little steel towns struggled so when their way of life was taken from them. And that's why, if they'll reconnect with one another when they have such slight opportunities as a new grocery store they have hope of redeveloping the community. I guess that's why the guy who just came to the store to talk to people was such a blessing.

Yoboseo part two.

One of the articles way back (about a year ago) in my blog history is my rambling about Anglicans who don't speak English. It is the article that seems to crop up most often on my traffic reports, where some random person (most often outside the USA these days) has hit that page. Its also the article that I find myself thinking of from time to time. Its not a particularly well crafted bit of writing, that anyone should want to read it, so it must be the topic that is of interest.

I wrote that day because I had stumbled across a congregation in Baltimore called the Korean Anglican Church of Maryland. And though they're Anglicans in America, they don't have an English speaking service. Since then, I've noted in our own diocesan directory (Pittsburgh) that we have two Spanish-speaking congregations in our extended (Chicago) diocese. I've heard rumors of a Korean Anglican congregation out in the Western US and possibly even two.

Anglicanism likes the fact that it is a global communion, but it is not until the modern era that Global Anglicans have been able to truly be in relationship (thanks to modern technology in travel and communications) and approach each other as equals (out of our opposing and complimentary sets of gifts and poverties) and in that way offer balance and completion to our global community. Mission has started to go both ways. Partnership is no longer patronage. Africa, South America, Asia are at our doorstep. The ancient question of "who is my neighbor" bears greater weight than ever before.

And it fascinates me that recognition is more than just seeing, and communication is more than just speaking. We have talked for generations and never heard one another, and now when both sides have contrasting needs and gifts to bring to the table are recognized by all parties, we don't even have to speak the same language to form a bond and communicate.

A few months ago, my mother-in-law, struggling to communicate after her stroke, suddenly seemed to be speaking as clearly as if she had never had a problem. A few words slipped but they didn't matter, I heard her. And when I noticed that, she said, "its easier for me to speak clearly when I know the person I am talking to is listening." I think this is how we are now in Global Anglicanism, when we trust the other is listening, it is much easier to speak softly and still make ourselves heard.

Anyway, short story is that I'm intrigued that the old blogpost seems to keep cropping up on that list of page hits. I wonder if that means other people are thinking the same thoughts, or maybe hearing the same words.