The Policy of Honesty

I am really cranky lately. I feel stymied and shut down and unsafe about sharing my opinion. I feel as though I've gone to the ends of the earth to a place filled with closed minded bigots who are not able to see not just the importance of the Supreme Court's upholding of marriage equality, but the joy inherent in the decision. I feel the need to be clear: this is how I feel, not necessarily the reality of my situation.

I moved to a new location almost exactly six months ago. I began serving in my new call about 5 1/2 months ago and have been, for the most part, received with enthusiasm and grace. Then, a month ago, I pushed the envelop in a Festival Worship. I was assured that these services, which only occur on the fifth Sunday of the month, were a forum for me to try new styles, to change things up, to be as creative as I want to be. So I did something a little different: instead of a traditional sermon, I performed a one-woman play about a woman with breast cancer and her struggles with the ramifications thereof. It was received resoundingly well. I got emails, cards, and texts of grateful support. I had people press their hands into mine and gravely thank me for telling their story. I had others share health struggles that they had up to that point withheld. AND I had one couple leave the church. To be fair, this wasn't the first thing I had done that they didn't like. The first thing was simply being female, and our relationship went downhill from there. 

The Festival service during which I play a cancer survivor wrestling with despair. (Photo courtesy of Walt Campbell.)

In addition to that, the week after they ostentatiously walked out of the Festival Service, the church held its 275th Anniversary celebration, during which many former pastors and/or their spouses, children, and grandchildren were invited to participate. Several came, and the day was glorious, with worship and feasting and fellowship and stories. However, the previous much-beloved pastor remains very connected with many of the congregants and received a standing ovation after singing a solo during the service. It felt to me like "too much, too soon" as though I had not had time enough to develop, much less solidify, my own relationships with people before they were undermined, however unintentionally, by my predecessor. 

Finally, to put the cherry on top, this blog, a blog in which I've been pretty transparent, was linked to the church's new website without my permission. I knew it was there and was slightly uncomfortable with it, but also believe in what I've written, so I was wrestling with that as well. Then I began to get feedback about it in the midst of my distress over the other two issues. Once again, most of the feedback was overwhelmingly positive, but there were a few who were not happy, and very outspokenly so.

It made me sad, angry, depressed. It made me realize that I'm grateful I'm not a celebrity or someone whose life is parsed regularly by people who don't know me. It made me understand how very thin-skinned I can be, for while I have some emotional baggage, I have been very privileged in many ways and really shouldn't get so upset about what other people think of me. It made me see how cowardly I am. I took the blog down from the church page and linked another much less controversial one to it. Even writing this one, I wonder if I'll have the courage to share it in any way that will assure it's read.

Last summer for my birthday, my daughter Grace and I went into NYC for the day. We parked in Times Square, walked to the Metropolitan Museum, then to a fancy French restaurant on the East Side for dinner, and then back to midtown to see a Broadway show. It was a wonderful day, but I had worn brand-new sandals for the outing. They had seemed incredibly comfortable in the shoe store, but by the end of the day, the bottoms of my feet were covered with blisters. I could barely walk. I went home, lanced them, squeezed out all the juice, slathered them with Neosporin, covered them with bandaids and socks and went to bed. 

Grace and I about to enjoy dessert on my birthday last year. You can thank me for choosing this one to share instead of one of the bottom of my feet. (Photo courtesy of me.)

The next day Grace asked me, "Do your feet still hurt?"

I replied, "Not when I'm standing still. Only when I walk."

"That's like Life!" she said. Yes, I think, yes it is. Everything is fine when I'm standing still. But when I move, when I'm forced to step out of my comfort zone, it's hard. 

So here I sit. Feeling afraid to be who I am, to share what I feel, to preach what I know to be true, especially concerning the momentous decisions handed down by SCOTUS this week, the aftermath of the Charleston shooting, and right that all people have, no matter their race, color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation, to be safe and to love and be loved. God, help me. Please.

On Standing Down Instead of Up

Last week I participated in the National Day of Prayer service at Town Hall in Phillipsburg. It was the second worship gathering that I have been a part of since I moved, the first being the CrossWalk in Shappell Park, which was a Christian liturgy that walked the stations of the cross on Good Friday in a local community square. This was interesting as I never participated in such an overtly Christian service in a public forum; it gave me much food for thought as I considered what it was to be a Christian over the centuries and what it means today in 21st century America.

Before moving to western New Jersey, I had been very active in the Clergy Association in Huntington, NY, even acting as President for a couple of years, where the group was not only ecumenical but interfaith, and where services would include leaders from many denominations and faith traditions. It was not unusual to hear the Islamic azan or the Jewish shofar or both opening a community worship service. So I was very surprised and a bit disconcerted when the liturgy on the steps of Town Hall began with a proclamation of Jesus Christ as Lord of all. This is obviously not a statement I personally have a problem with, but contextually it seemed inappropriate, given my historical experience of diversity. Religious diversity in P'burg, however, is negligible.

Then in the midst of wrestling with the primacy of Christianity to the exclusion of all else in a governmental setting among perhaps 70 people who were all white and apparently all Christian, a few men standing nearby began to talk about the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight and that led to conversation about Floyd Mayweather and his horrible history of perpetrating domestic abuse.

"Well, he's got to practice on somebody," one of the men joked. The others laughed and the conversation continued while I stood stunned, complicit in Mayweather's violence and the men's acceptance or even approval of it by my silence in the face of their discussion.

Meanwhile, the Presbyterian Church (USA) 221st General Assembly has begun a peacemaking discernment process in which Five Affirmations have been sent to each presbytery with the request to discuss and take an advisory vote on each affirmation individually. Numbers 2 and 4 were the most discussed, but number 2 was the one with which I had the biggest struggle:

"We confess our complicity in the world's violence even as we pray for the Spirit's courage to "unmask idolatries," to speak truth about war and oppression, and to stand with those who suffer, and to respond to acts and threats of violence with ministries of justice, healing, and reconciliation."

I had the struggle not because I am sure that am not complicit, but because of my action (or rather inaction) at events like the National Day of Prayer that assure me that I am. It is clear to me that the reason I said nothing was because I was afraid. The question is: Afraid of what?

It's a question I'm not sure I can answer. As the only female clergyperson at the gathering, perhaps I was afraid of being mocked or belittled. As a person who has suffered family violence, perhaps I was afraid being attacked, if only verbally. I was in an unfamiliar situation that already felt awkward and uncomfortable and now my searching for a reason feels like searching for an excuse.

All I know for sure is that I will do my best to speak up when (and I wish I could say if) something like this happens again. For "all tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent," a statement that has been credited to Thomas Jefferson and various others. No matter who said it, it remains true, and I hope not to be a party to the silence again, in this or any other issue where violence is occurring.

Seeing Is Disagreeing - The Dress

A few weeks ago, my friend and colleague Christine Hong was visiting. She was here to lead a dialogue with Haroop Kaur on Sikh - PC(USA) relations, which was amazing. But in some of our downtime, she shared with me "The Dress." The original photo image was of a dress that a Scottish woman planned to wear to her daughter's wedding. When she sent a photo of it to her daughter, the bride and groom disagreed about the color; one saw it as white with gold lace, the other blue with black lace. They posted the image on Facebook and their friends also disagreed about the color. Quickly the image went viral and people around the globe disagreed as well.

What do you see? (courtesy of tumblr user swiked)

The thing is: so did Chris and I. I see white with gold, she sees blue with black. It seemed unbelievable to each of us that the other did not see what we did. We kept going back and forth with each other, "Really? But it's white!" "No, it's blue!" This felt especially surprising to me because we agree on just about everything. We've had so many theological discussions in which we are on the same page. We've talked about race, and gender, and sexuality. We've talked about the thorny issues of the day and even if there are nuances that we need to parse and ponder, in broad strokes we "see" the same thing.

As unreal as it was to me that a difference as distinct as this one was viable, I could not deny her vehemence that the dress was a completely different color in her eyes than it was in mine. Finally, I said to her that I thought there must be a scientific reason for it. Perhaps, I wondered, it had something to do with the cones in our eyes. Several years ago, I had seen a program on aging given on DVD by Professor Francis B. Colavita of the University of Pittsburgh. There was a portion that stuck with me because he talked about people with blue eyes having their eyes get lighter over time because the color literally dropped out of them. I wondered with Christine if my light blue eyes and her deep brown ones had something to do with the differential in our vision.

This got me thinking about those other issues and people with whom I passionately disagree about things that are not visual but still perception-oriented. Could it be that we both are "right" and the disagreement, whatever it may be, is about fundamental biology rather than ethics? Could it be that my interpretation of the Bible and someone else's have equal validity, and that our disagreement is more about biology than anything else?

Perhaps most importantly, if we are not able to come to see things the same way, is there a way that we can "agree to disagree" with respect and even Christian Unity? Can we remain the Church while also remaining true to ourselves and to the gospel as we each understand it?

Sex, Rice, and Videotape: DV should not be available for viewing

I recently joked on both Facebook and twitter that my cat tried to kill me.  He dipped his paw into his water bowl and dripped microscopic drops of water onto the kitchen linoleum, which I stepped into, causing me to slip and fly across the floor, ramming into the cupboards and countertop before slamming into the ground.  A few bruises and aches later I’m none the worse for wear.  But it wasn’t always this way.

There was a time when I sported bruises and felt aches for a far less benign reason.  I, like seven out of ten women, am a survivor of domestic violence.  It’s been 30 years since my former husband and I parted ways and I haven’t seen him in all that time, but I still have nightmares.  Maybe only once or twice a year, but I still have them.  Of course, that’s better than the night terrors that plagued me for the first few years.

When people tell me that they cannot imagine me as a victim of DV, they often ask me why I stayed.  The reasons were too numerous to name, but among them was the fact that he told me often that he would kill me if I ever left.  This was not an idle threat, as almost 1/3 of female homicide victims in the US are at the hands of an intimate partner. My early dreams were usually about him coming after me to do so, even though I had moved almost 2000 miles away.  I would shoot up in bed, shaking and sweating, terrified that he was right outside the window or door.

He abuses me still in my sleep, most often sexually.  I wake feeling dirty and defiled and powerless.  That is perhaps the most lasting injury of all.  That sense of powerlessness.  The thought that there is nothing I can do to change it.  In some sense, it is still true, even though my current suffering is “virtual” and has been for years.

Yet, like Janay Palmer, I married my husband after he first abused me.  I stood by him for several years.  I both believed that he could change and that he never would.  That it would get better and that I would die at his hand.  That it was my fault and if I would only change, the abuse would stop.  That no one else would ever love me and so I had to make this relationship work.  Some of these thoughts were a result of what he told me.  Some of them were very old, ingrained in my childhood and upbringing.  All of it made me feel simultaneously culpable and vulnerable.

This is why last week while I was in Prayer Circle at my church, I tried to explain that I felt for Janay Palmer Rice.  It was wrong for the media to keep showing the video of her abuse at the hands of her then-fiancé Ray Rice, and for youtube to make it accessible to anyone and everyone all the time.  One parishioner, a wonderful older woman, couldn’t understand my point of view at all.

“But if it brings this type of behavior to light and helps to make a change, isn’t it a good thing?  If it had been you in the video, wouldn’t you have wanted to have it shown because of the possible end results?” she argued.

No.  No, I wouldn’t have.  I wouldn’t have wanted the world to see me exposed that way.  I looked it up on youtube just to make sure that I had my facts straight, but you’ll notice I didn’t include a link in this blog.  You can go find it yourself if you need to view it for whatever reason.  I find my parishioner’s argument to be as fallacious as Ravens’ owner Steve Bisciotti’s that “if this becomes a seminal moment for domestic violence and the way we handle it as a society, it's not a burden for us to become the poster boy.”

Domestic violence is unacceptable.  Individuals being beaten up verbally, physically, emotionally, and sexually at the hands of those who supposedly love them is unconscionable.  That should be clear without any need to see it.  Period.

A Personal Take in the Aftermath of Robin Williams' Untimely Passing

My sister is bizarrely pissed off about Robin Williams’ death.  Or not so much about his death, as about people’s continuous recognition of it.  About twitter and facebook posts and blogs and newspaper articles.  She’s made several inappropriate angry posts herself admonishing others and telling them to “Stop It.” In her more articulate writing, she seems to be expressing the feeling that it’s too much.  That there’s nothing else on the news.  But her first comment that I noted was a reply to my daughter’s tweet within an hour or so of us hearing about it, saying, “just btw u and me: geez you'd think John Lennon was shot or something. I get it. I'm sad. Enough.”  This is problematic on many levels: a) who says Robin Williams wasn’t just as important as John Lennon?  Or you?  Or me? b) maybe it was enough for her, but we’d only just heard about it, and were just starting to grieve, which leads to c) why is her amount of grieving time the right amount, while others is too much?

A lovely shot of Robin Williams 

(photo courtesy of Entertainment Weekly)

This is even more inexplicable because my sister has stared into the abyss many times.  In recent years, she’s been taking medication that seems to help, and that she has said makes her life so much better.  That she doesn’t mentally relive mistakes of her youth or worry about others’ impressions of her nearly as much.  So I am wondering if the real reason she is so angry about people’s need to respond to Robin Williams’ suicide is that it comes too close.  If she looks at what happened here to an outrageously smart, talented, and funny man, (did I mention that my sister is outrageously smart, talented, and funny?) she might have to look a little more closely at herself as well?  Maybe things aren’t always so ducky and wrestling with the pain may just be a lifelong process?  At the fact that while it feels like the whole world is grieving over Robin Williams, who would do the same for her?  So it’s easier to be mad at the world than face her own self-perceived shortcomings.

An early shot of my sister (left) and me (right) and my brother (below)

(Photo courtesy of family archives)

I know I was mad at Philip Seymour Hoffman – and I struggled with the amount of attention surrounding his untimely and tragic death.  But then, I’m an alcoholic and drug addict.  An alcoholic and addict who’s been clean and sober for going on 22 years and who is terrified of what might happen if I have drink again.  Or do a line of cocaine.  So maybe it’s easier to shout at people to “Shut up!” than it is to look at yourself.  Maybe it’s easier to do most anything than look at yourself.  That’s kind of the point of all 12 Step Groups.

So I’m trying not to sit in judgment of my sister and her struggle.  Or of Robin Williams and his.  Or Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Or anyone else.  I think I’ll say “Enough” for now, and see if I can figure out what needs to change in me.  Just for today.

Honduras Mission Trip Musings

I just got back from Honduras.  I spent a week in the northwestern corner of the country in the state of Copan in the Andes mountains, helping to build homes for people who don’t have them.  Or much of anything else.  It was gorgeous country and I was doing meaningful work alongside three beloved colleagues and fourteen hard-working teens.  

Our group in front of the van we took to La Cumbre, in the township of Trinidad de Copan 

(photo courtesy of me - I'm on the far right)

I should be sharing stories and hope and inspiration and aspiration galore.  But about midway through the week, I got sick.  Horribly sick.  The kind of sick that you get from drinking the water or eating raw vegetables that haven’t been properly cleaned or doing something else stupid.  But I didn’t drink the water.  I didn’t eat anything improper.  I didn’t do anything stupid.  Except go to Honduras in the first place.

You see, that’s what I’m getting at.  I went on this glorious trip and yet, because of the physical pain of 24/7 nausea and achy joints and chronic diarrhea, I can barely remember the good stuff.  All I can do is complain.

It’s gotten me thinking: what if your life was like this all the time?  What if you didn’t have access to clean water or good doctors or medicine that can heal you in a week – because that’s probably all it will take for me to be back to normal.  And once I feel alright again, I’m sure that I will be positive about my overall Honduran experience.

But what about the Honduran experience for Hondurans?  The town of Trinidad where we stayed got a Water Treatment Facility in 2013.  (Thanks to a Presbyterian church in Alabama who sponsored it– did I mention how proud the trip made me to be a Presbyterian?  Lots of good work being done by people from our denomination all over the area.)  That’s LAST YEAR?!  Still, the Water Treatment Facility requires that all people in the area go to the plant to fill huge water bottles, jugs, or cans.  If I remember correctly, they fill 750 gallons a day.

The water for bathing and washing clothes and force flushing toilets when the water was turned off (which happened quite frequently) was not purified.  Electricity was also sporadic, off more often than on.  Hot water was pretty much non-existent.

As for medical care, well, there was the rare Health Clinic – one in the town of Trinidad that serviced a huge part of Copan – but no hospitals.  One doctor, no nurses.  No CVS on the corner.  No “health and beauty aids” section in the grocery store.  Actually, no grocery store.  And dentistry.  Oh, my gosh, I know Americans are obsessed about their teeth, but these people need some basic dental care.  It’s heartbreaking to see six year olds with more cavities than teeth.

So what I’m trying to say very poorly here is, I’m miserable for one week and have a hard time remembering the good things that happened.  What if you were miserable for your whole life?  All the time.  What if you constantly walked around with body aches and GI problems and nausea and there was never any relief?  What if when you got sick, you didn’t have what you need to get better?  What if when your child had a fever, there’s nothing you can do but hold him while he cries?  What if when your baby got dehydrated, there was no Pedialyte to give her, much less a refrigerator to put it inside because there was no electricity? 

No one should have to live like that.  We should do more as a church, as people of faith, as human beings, to insure that everyone has pure water, and decent homes with electricity, and access to health care.  Hands down.  And if it took me getting a bacterial infection or parasite or whatever the heck I’ll find out it is when the test results come back today to truly realize that, it’s actually a pretty small price to pay.

SCOTUS, Hobby Lobby, and the Loss of Religious Freedom in America

Like many people in our country, I am reeling from yesterday's Supreme Court decision to treat Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood as private individuals with the right to erroneously withhold affordable access to contraception from their employees based on their (HL and CW's) religious beliefs.  I say erroneously because their claim that said contraceptives cause abortions is patently false, according to the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.  Yet these facts are apparently not pertinent to the case, nor is the fact that the very definition of religious freedom is that I don't have the right to impose my religion on you, nor do you have the right to impose yours on me.

I suppose should not have been surprised when this maddeningly conservative Court moved in this direction. Two weeks ago, I was scheduled to go to Albany, along with another clergy colleague and a young woman in my congregation who cares deeply about these issues, to speak with our respective senators about the Women's Equality Act.  The WEA is a 10 point plan proposed by NY State Governor Andrew Cuomo in his 2013 State of the State Address that covers a wide variety of issues vital to women, among them reproductive rights.  Even though this Act is overwhelming popular in statewide polls, it has struggled in the state legislature.  It recently passed the assembly, and we had hopes that it might get through the senate, but here's the rub: our senators refused to meet with us.  There were clergy and people of faith coming from all over the state on Wednesday, June 18th to speak with our senators and their staffers, and they unilaterally refused to see us.  They stated they already had heard from their constituents and knew how they were going to vote.  They then proceeded to vote separately the Monday before our previously scheduled meetings on three of the points but to ignore the rest.  So apparently religious freedom is only important if you are a conservative Christian in this state and in this country - and it is the freedom to impose your very narrow and particular brand of Christianity on others.

The Jesus I follow cared deeply about women, about their hearts, and minds, and bodies.  He healed women dealing with gynecological problems and brought women into the fold who were not of his Jewish faith.  But he never forced anyone to follow him, to believe in him, to live by his rules.  Rather he gave people the information they needed to make a decision, and then allowed them the free will to decide.  How a bunch of unelected old white men (that's right: not one female on the Court voted in favor of this 5-4 decision - Justice Breyer was the only male dissenting) can decide for women (and undeniably financially challenged women if they're working for Hobby Lobby, although it remains to be seen how far-reaching this decision will be) what type of contraception they may use is inconceivable, to steal a pun from my former seminary classmate who wrote an article on this topic for the Huffington Post.

All I can hope is that the fight against such rulings is swift and strong, and that we do not lose heart in the midst of it.  How the country I love and have been blessed to live in and minister in can head down such a treacherous path is a mystery to me.