Good Reading Today

It's heating and humidifying up again, my jaw aches from a replacement filling yesterday, and I basically have nothing whatever to contribute to the world.  But that hasn't stopped anyone else:

A brilliant exploration of the doctrine of original sin, via Miranda Priestly (pun intended?)/Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.

Planning your next trip to Rome?  Have to do it from home?  Addicted to Renaissance art?  Check out these links.

A few days ago, I discovered a fantastic blog ~ filled with all kinds of riches.  As you know, I took a Hauerwas class last spring, and for obvious reasons I spend a lot of time thinking about what ministry is (and what seminary education was for me).  Here's a post that combines it all.

And finally, staring me in the face at the grocery (hey, it's air-conditioned) a couple of hours ago: Did your kindergarten teacher matter?  More than you might have imagined.

How could I have known when I was sleeping on my little rug in Ohio (first half of kindergarten) or drawing gulls over the the ocean in Florida (second half), it would all coalesce into Meryl Streep, Michaelangelo, and the language of faith?

Hauerwas

So, what do you think?

Kinda long, but not too long, and worth reading. 

Bonus Question for Churchgoers: Is there a flag in your church sanctuary? 

Scattered Wednesday Thoughts

Taking a page from QG:

• My day started with a trip to a Pittsburgh Toyota dealer, brought on by a scraping squealing crunching noise in the brake system last night.  Nothing major wrong, but all the minors will add up to major bucks. Have to take care of it; don't want to drive the 135 miles home tomorrow night feeling like the car is on the brink of collapse.
• Spent the rest of the morning working on my final very last ever paper on Miroslav Volf's views on memory and forgetting.  Personally meaningful due to encounters and dialogue with my Jewish students of years past and my own recent history.  I have now reached the happy point where you realize somewhere in the middle of a project that you have absolutely no idea what you're doing.  Except that I think I have come around to his theory that we will in the new life ahead forget all the bad stuff and that that will be a good thing. Our loss of memory will not destroy our identities but will create us as new beings.  What do you think?
• Brightened up at seeing a friend at lunch but the presence of other not-well-known folks at the table constrained conversation considerably.
• Went to my last Hauerwas class, which I am auditing, so got to listen to other people present their ongoing papers.  The professor passed around Hauerwas' new autobiography and noted a couple of hours later that I had become completely absorbed in it.  Oops.  Well, Hauerwas is an engaging writer and I appreciate very much his ecclesial promiscuity.
• Now I am going for a long walk in what has become a gorgeous day, and then I guess it will be Volf till midnight.  Look for me taking FB breaks!

Some Kind of Grace, I Suppose

So, I am taking this course on theologian and ethicist Stanley Hauerwas. The last time I quoted him, it had to do with what God intends to make of us, and my personal wish that God would be a bit less ambitious.

I can't say that what struck me tonight made me feel any better:

"Discipleship is quite simply extended training in being dispossessed. To become followers of Jesus means that we must, like him, be dispossessed of all that we think gives us power over our own lives and the lives of others. Unless we learn to relinquish our presumption that we can ensure the significance of our lives, we are not capable of the peace of God's kingdom."

Really, I would just like to go back to the kind of life where words like that did not reverberate, resonate, or re-anything at all.

Maundy Thursday Musings

It seems to be a requirement that those who go to a Tennebrae service tonight or a Good Friday service tomorrow endure the singing of O Sacred Head, Now Wounded. It is, indeed, a beautiful and thought-provoking hymn. As I am assisting at services tonight and tomorrow, and going to another one tomorrow afternoon, no doubt I will hear it once, twice, or three times.

I don't suppose I would sing it even if I could carry a tune. Having cradled the broken and bruised head of my own child in my arms . . . it will be many decades before that music is not utterly personal. Maybe forever.

In an exchange of emails with an almost-80-year-old Jesuit this past week, I questioned the possibility of Easter. "Is Easter possible?" he responded. "Good question ~ think about all the meanings of each of those three words" -- and then added, "You've given me my Sunday sermon."

Perhaps I can steal it back from him some year.

In the meantime, the past few days have given me much to ponder with respect to how we care for one another in light of the seemingly impossible Easter that offers the most astonishing hope of anything at all. I have said some harsh and angry things in some conversations, and been a model of self-restraint in others. (Really. There should be an award.) Tears sting my eyes as I read some of the generous comments online, and sometimes my sense of humor returns. "I'm thinking about what you'll be able to offer your parishoners in light of your experiences," said one of the deans. "I don't have to worry about parishoners unless I pass this damn exam," I chuckled.

I look at this post and I think my life holds a great deal of . . . stuff. In a matter of a few minutes, it incorporates worship leadership and devastating memories of brokenness, conversations with Catholic priests and Presbyterian ministers, Passover memories and Easter plans, challenges of bureaucratic insensitivity and loving gifts of personal care, decisions about what to say and what not to say that could have lifelong ramifications . . . and floating through all of it, those words: attention, reverence, and devotion. I am not actually very good at any of those three things. No awards there.

But you know, it is a great gift to be offered the opportunity to work at them, as we all are.

One of the classes I am taking this term is on theologian Stanley Hauerwas. In his book Resident Aliens, he says, "It is an awesome thing to realize how much God intends to make of us." Personally, I wish that God would be a little less ambitious.

But it is almost Easter, and so we are reminded that, if Easter is indeed possible, God's dreams for us are far wilder than our own.