Exercising your salvation....

Recently in a Greek reading group, we wrangled a little with the idea of "working out your salvation with fear and trembling" in a way that reflects that the work is God's but we have a part in it, too.  We tossed around "live out" and "work out" as ideas needing to come together.  I came up with "exercise" which seemed trite and possibly weird, but the group liked it and the more we wrestled with it, the more I like my own idea, too.

Exercise it.  Like a workout in the gym.  Use what you've got, it didn't come from you.  Work out what God is working in.

All of those could be really lame church signs, but I'll take that for now.

In the background hum here is the bishops' statement, that came out at about the same time, on women's ordination (to the priesthood).  These weren't tied together at first but I've tossed them concurrently in my mind enough that they are now.

First a comment on the WO-P statement itself.  It is deeply disappointing.  On the one hand, it announces that there is not scriptural warrant for the practice to be held as a standard but, hey, we're going to do it anyway.  Way to throw ordained women under the bus (and since the statement makes little to no distinction about whether we are talking about women priests or deacons, though everyone kind of knows they mean priests, the mess is double.)

In fairness, here's the quote: "However, we also acknowledge that this practice is a recent innovation to Apostolic Tradition and Catholic Order. We agree that there is insufficient scriptural warrant to accept women’s ordination to the priesthood as standard practice throughout the Province. However, we continue to acknowledge that individual dioceses have constitutional authority to ordain women to the priesthood."

I have long been an advocate for a risky all-in study of women's ordination, first to the diaconate (which we can settle more easily but also remains an open question among various parts of the ACNA) and then to the priesthood. I am convinced enough of the foundation of my call to risk it, both for the good of the Church and for the good of the Order.  I believe there is sufficient scriptural evidence for the practice and to say there is not without really reconciling the question is as damaging as to say there is and must be for all.  While the desire to protect the consciences of those who disagree is essential to our Christian formation, so must be the desire to protect the dignity of the order and to those ordained to it.

Furthermore, just saying, "Well we carried it over from TEC, so we're stuck with it" is disingenuous.  Our ordained women deserve to live and serve without the shadow of rebellion in their ordination vows.  That can only be done in honest theological evaluation, risk taking, mutual submission, and seriously radical Christian discernment.

To date, few involved on either side seem willing to be wrong.

Which brings me back to Philippians.  Treat one another as more important than yourselves.

My experience is that we do this, at least as far as we are able to discern the need.  I have several friends who are vocally anti-women's ordination sometimes including to the diaconate.  I have never been treated disrespectfully.  I am usually welcomed in conversations, fellowship, even real Christian friendship, though I walk around as a woman in a collar.  I will not label those who are against women's ordination as misogynists.  Let the true misogynists have their title and don't dilute it by applying it to those who simply disagree, whose consciences may be more delicate.

How can I not be a stumbling block to those brothers (and sisters)?

So I am writing to ask one not-so-simple thing of each "side" in the discussion, based off Paul's command for mutual submission.  Each is something one side is uniquely poised to give the other.  Hang with me.  Not all of it is fun....

1. Ordained women... speak up for those who do not accept you. Guard their consciences as you would your own.  These are your brothers. Give them voice.

2.  Anti- WO advocates... don't just give lip service to needing to support women in ministry.  Recognize that the College of Bishops' statement in that regard felt to many of us condescending, like a pat on the head.  (Women hate that feeling!)  Do not assume that supporting women's ministry means women's groups (most of them are awful and many of us do not care two licks about being "Keepers of the home") , convents and religious orders (we don't want to be cloistered either... not at home, not at all), and coffee hour.  Recognize that when the COB is all male, there needs to be a way for women's voices to be heard among them.  Right now, most task forces and leadership bodies are mostly male run and led.  Send women to seminary.  Carve out places for women leaders.  Hire us.  Give us voice.

3.  Both sides... be willing to be wrong.  Even at great personal risk.  Ordination is not a right.  This is not about social justice.  Nobody has a right to be ordained.  This is about being faithful, putting the Church first, the whole Church... not just the part you like.  You're talking about the Bride of Christ here, and in this argument you must recognize that she has been abused, battered, and bruised in recent history by both sides.

There is a way forward.  It just isn't the obvious and well worn path.

When near becomes a noun.

The French have a word for it, "proche."  Its an adjective and it translates pretty directly to the English adjective near.  If something or someone is close by, it is proche.  But unlike in English, proche also becomes a noun.  Best I read it, its a word for those people who are near us, too near to simply be friends, but not relatives by any temporal accounting.  The closest we might come in the Church is being brothers and sisters in Christ, but then, that still doesn't grasp the idea.  Jesus had twelve disciples, but only Peter, James and John seemed to be his proches. These are the people close to the heart, the only ones a true introvert can call "friends" without wincing at the weight of that word, the family beyond the familial.

Beth was my proche.   I don't have many.  Despite blogging and teaching and jumping headlong into more ministry that I can sometimes handle, I am a very private person.  So was Beth.  We were seminarians together, but not really friends then.  We knew and liked one another but Beth was the sort of person you had to cultivate before you could use the word friend, she opened up only slowly. 

We were adjunct instructors together.  By that time we were indeed friends, and when I needed someone to vent a frustration to, ask advice of, celebrate a minor publication with, or complain about the lack of a steady gig to, she was there.   She got me.  I didn't have to explain in order for us to share the humor in our situation.  We thought and taught in some ways quite alike.  I remember one term teaching New Testament and she had a bunch for Church History, when I mentioned I was assigning my students a large timeline project.  So was she.  The poor students- we shared a significant overlap in course list- had two big timelines in the works.  We both wanted them to have tools for ministry when they were done.  They, on the other hand, were probably anticipating due dates rather than ministry.

We were moms together, homeschooling two fifteen year olds born a week apart.  Sometimes they got along, my son and her daughter, in their shared geeky interests.  Sometimes they profoundly did not.  It didn't matter, we shared curricula, ideas, and frustrations equally whether our kids appreciated the relationship we had built for them or not.

Beth passed away yesterday.   It took twenty years of cultivating a friendship with Beth-  she even measured her time in PA by how old (and tall, and eventually bearded) the infant I was holding when she met me grew-  but she let me walk a rough road with her the last couple of years.  She hugged me when I lost my dad (2000) and I hugged her when she lost her mom (2015).  She shared her struggles and I shared mine.  We laughed together when she lost her hair to chemo and it came back with the curls both of us wanted from childhood.  We prayed together in her last days. 

We blogged together too. She's over at Endless Books (on my blogroll) and she was far more the verbal craftswoman than I. 

Bon voyage ma proche et à Dieu.

Coal.

My grandfather was a coal miner.
With all that comes with it.
Black lung, mine rebellions, violent endings
both to the rebellions and to human lives.
Family photos of young men in caskets,
when there was no war abroad.
Poverty, feuds, wizened grandmothers,
mountain men.
My grandfather was a union organizer.
A migrant worker
after he left the mines.
He went where the money was.
Cincinnati, New York, Radford, Oak Ridge.
An air raid warden,
leaving my grandmother frightened in the darkness
with two small boys,
while he roamed the town,
attending to the compliance of other homes.
An old man, stooped over, chewing tobacco,
he wanted more for his sons.

A quick mind, sparkling eyes, he wanted more for our world.
My grandfather was a backyard inventor--
a water engine, clean technology.
Safety and efficiency.
He would have been fascinated by your smart phone.
He would have marveled at your hybrid vehicle.
Solar roofing tiles would have delighted him.
He would have reveled in an Ohio River safe work and play.
He would have been shocked by your loyalty to the coal that slowly kills. 

My grandfather used to say,
"We can never destroy the earth,
We will only destroy ourselves first."
My grandfather was a coal miner.
But my father was an engineer.