Cults: Grace and the Law in Lent

I have spent the past 18 years of my life considering how grace and the law work in faith communities.  This interest springs directly from my mother's influence in my life as she would take us off to the Lutheran church for a long time.  Grace was a big deal to Martin Luther.  It shouldn't be a surprise to many people that my favorite Pauline letters are Romans and Galatians.  For the most part, my experience in faith communities has some incredibly high points of grace and consistent, while combined with very low points of, legalistic oppression.

In my Christian Counseling class in my undergraduate Religious Studies degree at ENMU, I became fascinated with the interior workings of Christian communities as I continued to find extremes rather than moderation; while at the same time, the open GLBT leaders in the academic community were being targeted for violence in the name of God on our campus.  A student was arrested.  Her name was ________.  She had been either found guilty, or she was the scapegoat.  Either way, the police had documents that cited "The Hand of God" as the culprit for the posters that were placed around targeting the academic community.

After some research, I learned that "The Hand of God" was a religious group on a cult watch list that operated on the high planes of NM and West Texas.  They actually existed, so there was a real cause for concern.  During this point in time in my undergraduate education, I watched our GLBT leaders have several different responses to this threat.  Some locked themselves in their homes armed for self-defense; some hid in undisclosed locations; a group of us (including me) were taken to a professor's house for a conversation about these kinds of threats, dinner, and star gazing; and some simply ignored the threats.

I encountered an amount of stress that I had never encountered before.  Matthew Shepherd, if memory serves correctly, had been murdered the summer before all of this happened.  There I was: a young GLBT Episcopalian in a small town waiting for the next one to happen.  What we were taught when we were all taken into the country for dinner and conversation under the stars will stay with me until I die.  It was very simple.  There were no parades, no permission needed for the conversation, and no pomp and circumstance necessary.  We were told very simply, "This is beyond your control, and so is God's love for all of us.  That's why we are here together."  In my earnest undergraduate years as I yearned for a grassroots movement in my life so we too could pray with one another and love who we loved, I realized one of the most important things I've ever learned: grace was real.  

There wasn't a great controlling mechanism for the universe or humanity.  No one was there to stop us from praying, conversing, or loving one another.  There was no great "one true way" as we had all been taught in our denominations.  They are all man made.  Denominations and inter-faith groups and all of their rules exist to make money in one way or another.  At some point, I need to agree that they are important as I have spent countless hours studying about religion, scripture, and the like as I can also be employed through those denominations.  The more knowledgeable I become, the more leery I am of those claiming to be "doing good" in the name of God especially when they have great statistics and facts to back up how good they really are.

As I approach the end of my graduate religious studies degree, I am brought back to the reality of grace.  Most people want it, and most don't know how to give it.  I have been blessed to know several people whom have been gracious to me.  I know grace because it has been given to me.  Ash Wednesday was a few days ago.  Today is the first Sunday in Lent.

I love Lent.  I love it because at one point it made my devotional life the norm for others in the church.  For years, I prayed the Stations of the Cross every Friday along with Spiritual Direction and Confession.  It's how I survived graduate school the first time.  I had a focal point every Friday to meet with my parish priest to contend with my spiritual life and guide it out of the mess it was in.  It was the norm for me.  It anchored me at that point in time.  Now, having been told to leave the church and to join one of several suggested cults by a bishop under the guise of "reconciliation with the church," I can look at my life and know that those whom have been trained to find those problems will be excluded.  They don't want me there because I am trained to see the problems.  Those whom point the finger of "too sick to be here," "not normal," or even state "that's now how I was raised" are actually the sicker people.  They don't want to be found to be sicker than the rest of us.

Everything is in how we use power.  So today because so many of my friends are involved in faith communities, I give this checklist.  It is not the best one I have seen, but it fairly good.  The main point is that everything is in how people use power.  Is someone included in everything, but then all of a sudden that person is the "outreach project?"  There's a real emotionally manipulative problem when that happens.  If someone tries to hold a leader accountable for what that person has actually done and can't even through the civil authorities, then there's a definite issue.  If you quit a faith community, then will you be shunned?  Will your membership at a church be stripped away if you don't wear what people want?  Do they demand to tell you how to raise your kids or what you can say to theirs?  Do they interfere with your employment?  Cults exist even when they are inside of denominations and other faith communities.

Do people actually forgive?  So they demand perfect of others, but not themselves.  God loves everyone with or without our permission for His existence.  I suggest that during this Lent, while the faith communities that we are all involved in are focusing on what the individual is willing to give up, that we consider whether or not we are willing to choose for ourselves or continue to be a part of the problems.  How much control should the church, temple, faith community, prayer group, or synagogue really have in our individual lives?       

Finally, is God leading your life, or are you giving your thoughts over to the control of another?

Rev. Janine Stock: Care, Meddling, or Cashing In

Today on Facebook, I made a comment about a book from 2008.  It is titled, Made in God's Image.  I am not opposed to these types of books; however, I am leery of them as a scholar, member of the GLBT community, a remnant theology Christian, and as a theistic humanist.  The number one criticism that I have of books like these is: if you are not one of us, then you really have no place telling the world how to tell us how to approach God, life, or other human beings.

The mere idea that a member of the clergy would have the insight to be able to coach or train people how to talk with, pray with, or support a GLBT member of that person's parish or family is repugnant to me.  You would do that the same way as you would do with anyone else.  GLBT parts of the body of Christ are not human beings.  I have been to the Stations of the Cross.  In fact, it used to be one of my favorite devotions.  I don't need it to be rainbowed in order to find my faith.

My faith is not dependent upon my sexuality or gender identity.  I accept that all of me has been created by God and not just parts of me.  God sought me before I knew those words or concepts.  God knit everyone including me in our mother's wombs (Psalm 139).  I was in communion with God just as every other person was before I was born.  I didn't need a prescribed way to pray or think as God came to me as He does with everyone else.

I've never seen something advertised as "Prayer for the Hetero."  Most people are in some way bisexual.  Everyone has a gender identity.  There isn't one person who isn't part of the GLBT community in one way or another.  What matters is how we define that community, and how people try to gain and negate that community?  Lots of people are finding ways to exclude while cashing in for themselves.  It's kitschy to wave a rainbow flag or place one on an altar in order to receive media attention.  It is much different to actually defend those in the church whom are ostracized because of it.  Most people's hearts can be found where they are making money and keeping it for themselves.

To have continued in communion with one another, Rev. Stock, it would have been easy for you to hear a personal experience with it or to understand that not everyone wants to have the world understand them as specialized so much that prayers need to be invented just for them.  Pride goes with money.

It's really simple to remember:  Everybody gotta birthday, and float building is not cheap!

Moving Forward

One of the most valid statements that I have ever made about the American justice system was in a conversation the other day.  When my advocate called to tell me that after the police took about four years to get the file and evidence to the district attorney that there wasn't enough evidence, which there never is enough in cases in when the police are more concerned if the victim is a legal cigarette smoker at 31 yrs old in America, that I got to tell her that I was told that the person was dead.  She said, "we hadn't heard that yet."  If he's dead, then it shouldn't matter except no one can tell me where he's buried.  I am going to find out where he's buried.  I have things to say to this so-called dead man's grave.

One of the things that I have learned is that the police are more frustrated than I am by other police officers who won't do their jobs.  It's really simple.  When people are able to take care of their own internal issues, then they don't wind up having their organizations brought into court.  Usually, things are scapegoated away by those whom would say that people who approach the courts are just after money or fame or whatever.  The courts are no place for fame and are too costly.  Those whom would claim such a thing I think are the ones whom would seek money from the court systems in order to seek money.  The would be "in it to win it."  My question is still:  what game?  

My advocates, fortunately, seemed to be far more hopeful when I said that I had been told that he was dead, but no one knew where the grave was.  What happened to the body?  Three days later, I was sitting in a room studying scripture when someone else asked the very same question about someone else.  Where is the body?  Where are the dead man's bones?  Those questions spring from the very thing that I have created this blog for: the relationship between the law and grace.  The law is there to prosecute those whom would harm others and there to uphold citizenry and decency for others.  Everyone has a basic human rights.  How those rights are protected and who gets protected seems to change in practice to whomever has the most gold and friends.  It is important to remember that grace brings joy.  

It was grace to be able to say that I was told that he was dead to my advocate.  I was grace to hear her voice lift saying that they hadn't been told that.  It was grace to hear another person question where a dead man's body was.  Grace comes everyday in simple yet miraculous forms.  It is important to know that the way we interact with one another isn't a game.  It's life.  I've been asked whether or not it was worth it over and over again.  

Life is well worth it.  To know that I have done every single thing I could do to have actual justice is worth it.  Absolutely!  Whether or not people realize it, my Baptismal Covenant expects it.  It expects that I would seek justice for myself even within the church, seemingly against the clergy, even it I am thrown out (which happened) for doing so.  Living is worth it.  Knowing that I did everything within my power to exercise my rights as an American citizen in a co-called Christian country (which it isn't) is worth it.  To know that at least I did something and didn't sit there indifferent to what was going on is worth it. 

No.  I don't hold up poster boards at protests for GLBT rights....whatever those are.  Human rights are for everyone.  Every person is a person.  Until every person is a person and use the rights we are told that we have, it is unnecessary to have them.  Since we have deemed it necessary to have a judicial system in order to serve humanity, being able to use it is paramount.  

Yes.  It's worth every mile I have walked instead of driven.  It has been worth ever minute of pain, tears, poverty, and hunger I have experienced.  Yes, dear advocate.  He's dead, so where's the body?  

Life is worth it. 

Choose Life: No More "Little" El Paso

As I was at a bus stop with some people I travel with regularly, another person was talking about another bus stop experience with someone else.  It was snowing in Las Cruces and my Hispanic friend was telling us a story.  He was at another bus stop with "a African-American, Neg.., black guy," as he said, and he had become covered in snow.  My friend said to him, "You're white now."  He apparently laughed and said, "Noooooo!" while laughing.  Yet, somehow, I was not offended.  The other people standing around us were all also not offended.  As a culture, we have become too serious.  In fact, everyone at the bus stop laughed at what he said because it was completely believable.  Yet, for as long as I can remember, El Paso seemed to be held captive by race.

When discussing minorities, I usually get in trouble for this statement: Everyone is a minority.  This is something I have always known because everyone in my family was a minority.  Before I knew that I was English, German, Irish, Scottish, Spanish, and American, I had blue eyes.  Everyone in my family origin had blue eyes except my mother.  Her eyes are hazel.  Our blue eyed minority was the majority, or so my science teacher taught us when we talked about genetics in middle school.  I wasn't ever teased about my blue eyes until someone needed to point out that Hitler liked blue eyed blonde haired people, so I had obviously been engineered that way because we were Lutherans at the time.  There were more kids in school in El Paso around me that hated their own eyes because they were brown like all of the other kids.  Like most El Pasoans, I went to a predominantly Hispanic school for most of my education.  In fact, my university education has been the same experience until I started at Liberty.  I don't remember a point in time when the majority of my classmates were not Hispanic.

I pray that one day El Paso realizes that being Hispanic is not a problem that people seem to think that it is.  I find to be incredibly frustrating that instead of being responsible for themselves and the work that they do that they say that "it's because this is a Hispanic culture to me."  They say it to me as though I don't know what shoddy work is or that I'm not an El Pasoan.  At some point, when I moved to Minnesota, I realized for the first time that I didn't fit in with the rest of the very white Norwegians there that I didn't fit in because, and I remember specifically that I thought, "I'm the wrong color."  The reason that people were speaking to me the way that they were was because they thought I was a white person.  When I wasn't in a bilingual community, I didn't know how to live.  I had lived on military posts in Europe and was always around more than one language before my family moved back to El Paso just before the 5th grade.  I don't remember race when I lived on post.  I remember Army guys and Girl Scouts.  Everyone had a uniform.

One of the things that I am more than painfully aware of about El Paso is that people like to compare it to other cities for a few reasons:  1) It's a Hispanic culture, so people can be sexist, misogynistic, bigoted, and overly capitalistic, 2)  people want to get away with being lazy, 3) illiterate and uneducated, 4) blame emotion or the heat, and 5) are indifferent to their surroundings.  People are people.  If someone can get away with doing whatever he or she wants, that person will.  I'm tired of people telling me why El Paso can't do something.  Usually, this comes to me in the form of something called "small El Paso mentality."  It is shown in the following two statements:  1) El Paso isn't New York, so bigotry is okay and 2) El Paso isn't San Francisco, so people don't have to let GLBT people have decent salaried positions unless they are will to essentially sell themselves as the post child for how inclusive the company really is.  I've been told over and over again, "Well, it's not New Mexico.  This is Texas" which is fairly demeaning since El Paso county is the historically democratic county in Texas.  People who do that are trying to get away with doing whatever they want.  Geographic discrimination is actually illegal.  Being an El Pasoan doesn't make me unenlightened, incapable of working properly, inhumane, or in need of special accommodations to accomplish tasks.

It's not the culture.  It's people's perception of what it is.  Lazy is lazy regardless of where a person is.  I was reading earlier about passive-aggressivity and what astonished me was how many employers and religious leaders I had had in the past five years who are incredibly passive-aggressive because they won't make a decision, will wait years to make one, or that they will intentionally target and sabotage an employee or member of the laity who is more talented that they are.  If you don't care, don't lead.

I accidentally found these passages this week.  "Take care of yourself, have a good time, and make the most of whatever God job you have for as long as God gives you life.  And that's about it.  That's the human lot.  Yes, we should make the most of what God gives, both the bounty and the capacity to enjoy it, accepting what's given and delighting in the work.  It's God's gift!  God deals out joy in the present, the now" (Ecclesiastes 5:18-20)  It really is okay to enjoy our lives.  It seems that people don't think that they have been given the ability to enjoy life.  When at least, Abrahamic believers have been given it as a gift.  El Pasoans should embrace ourselves joyously.

No, we are not New York, San Francisco, Denver, the Twin Cities or even Juarez.  We are not less than the others. There's only one on the border.  We are strong, smart, and capable of doing well.  We are able to serve one another and not tear each other down.  We are able to live well and be at peace.  We are El Paso!

L'Chaim!

Gratitude for Gifts

I had an wonderful phone call this afternoon which has prompted my gratitude list for this evening.

1.  I am grateful for Dr. Victoria Gonzalez.  During our conversation today, she told me that she thought I was a good teacher.  She thought that I would be good at teaching English to people who didn't know any at all.  For those who don't know, she's the reading specialist for Dona Ana Community College.  I was blessed to teach reading for this first time this past semester.  It was a wonderful experience for me and my students did really well.  I actually got to hear someone say that she didn't know why I wasn't assigned another reading class because she wanted me to teach another one.  I met her this past semester and for the spring the enrollment is really low.  She encouraged me to be a part of the training workshops throughout the semester.  She taught in the same room I did right before me.  Bless her heart, Dr. Gonzalez would leave things all the time on the desk.  I was blessed to constantly give her her belongs back.  I love losers because I am a finder.  She lost a lot for me to find.  She has a lot of experience teaching that and what I don't.  It was a blessing to her say that I was good at it; I don't hear that very much at all.  There were a lot of things that she said I would be good at teaching and doing.  She gave me a lot of gifts during our conversation.

2.  I am grateful for Connie Finke.  The conversation I had with her about being an inter-faith person and being a Christian at a Jewish Temple was wonderful.  We had a good time talking with each other and sharing devotion information.  It was a wonderful time.  She's fun and has her own wisdom.  I like that the conversation that I had with her prompted me to look into my Marian devotions again and think about the things within my own tradition that spring from Catholicism.  I had some wonderful prayer time with my Saint Augustine's Prayer Book again which I really like.  I feel more comfortable with it and have for about 7 or 8 years when I have my own person prayer time throughout the day.  I keep two prayer books and a devotion by my bed: 1) Saint Augustine's Prayer Book, 2) Prayers of Christian Consolation, and 3) the Rosary with the Luminous Mysteries.  Connie encourages me to continue to connect with the Blessed Virgin Mary and with Jesus throughout the day.  She is quite a gift to me.

3.  I am grateful for the Holocaust Museum in El Paso, TX.  I was there for the first time this past weekend.  I walked through the exhibit after being at the memorial for Sara Hauptman.  May her memory be a blessing.  I had an experience that I didn't know was going to happen.  I am very leary of public restrooms for several reasons and experiences.  I have been confronted in several of them due to my gender.  I never know what is going to happen in them and when I saw the shower heads in the exhibit which replicated the showers in Auschwitz which poured Zyklon B gas into the rooms, I became nauseous.  The not knowing what would happen in a locker room has been enough of a prohibitive experience for me to keep me out of gymnasiums as well as public bathrooms, unless they were single use restrooms, for a long time.  The fear was so amplified in the museum's exhibit that I thought I was going to pass out.  Thank God that I can choose whether or not to go into the bathrooms and locker rooms that are in society.

4.  I am grateful for the experiences that I have had getting to teach at another university.  I have been looking forward to the experience for a long time.  I am going to have a hybrid class.  I like that I will be able to teach partially online again.

5.  I am grateful for people I have met who just do the business that they are there to do.  I am happy that I know that there are people who are forthright about their business practices and don't make side deals about everything.  I am grateful to know people who will just do the work that they have been given to do instead of looking the other way, making excuses, blaming others, or trying to find ways to get out of doing the work.  I think it is why I like libraries.  I've never haggled with a librarian over checking out a book.  Thank God.        

All of these gifts have been given to me to help balance out the rest of my experiences right now.  It is important to know that I am not only experiencing problems in my life, but have a lot of encouragement and support for the positive things that I am doing.  It is wonderful to know that I have been blessed with so many positive things and trusted to work through the negative experiences in my life.

Headed East?

I intentionally didn't write a blog for Western Christmas.  I don't think I was ready for it.  I love Advent.  I am usually not ready for Western Christmas when it appears.  It is important to me to follow the liturgical calendar and remain within myself.  If it takes me more time to move through the calendar then it does.  I am not held captive by predetermined boxes through which I am to schedule everything.  Since it has been a little while, I hope that people who do read this consider what I have been reflecting upon.  Whether my friends and family live in the north, south, east, or west, we usually have little time during the winter to be able to reflect a little more on what another year in our lives will bring.

While I didn't write specifically about Western Christmas, it seems that I am ready to go from Advent to Epiphany.  But, what happened to the birth of Jesus?  Well, this year, it's the next day: Eastern Christmas.

When I think of the upcoming season of Advent, I think of claymation.  While I understand that this may not be what others think of, I learned about jazz, claymation, and Epiphany through the California Raisins.  I loved the Christmas special when I was kid and watched it with anticipation every year.  "We Three Kings" quickly became my favorite season song while the other kids were in love with Frosty the Snowman and Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer.  When people say Rudolf, I think of Chevrolets.  I'm an El Pasoan.  While this is not the wisest of holiday specials or commercials, tv has played a large role in most people's lives.  It doesn't play such a large role in my life anymore.  So, I didn't watch one holiday special this year and don't intend to which has caused me to question:  What are the wise gifts that I bring this Epiphany for the Christ child?  It's the "Little Drummer Boy" who asks this question in our lore about the nativity.  So what do I bring:

My Gold:  My creativity is the most malleable gift I have been given to give back.  Under standard conditions, just like gold, I think my creativity remains a part of my life as a practice that I have continued to have throughout the work I do and the thoughts about the future I have.

My Frankincense:  Just as frankincense is the most common incense in every major world religion, the one thing I have in common with everyone else is my humanity.  I am not a perfect human being, and it is in the places where I find myself to be human and not other than I am that I bring to give.  My gift is imperfection and difference which is common to everyone.

My Myrrh:  My gift of blood-passion, as myrrh balances the blood from birth, is a connection with nature and the natural world.  I'm from a family of farmers.  Connecting with nature empowers every other gift, large and small, that I have been given.  

Just like a heated censer, gold, frankincense, and myrrh combine to visual prayers of creativity, commonality, and connecting with nature for all of God's children.  This is the wisdom that I have found in the time I have spent reflecting on and preparing for next year.  It is only in wisdom that anyone is really ready for Christmas -- the gift of God of Himself to us with us for us.

Eastern Christmas takes place this year on January 7th, one day after Western Epiphany.  Some people may think it is just 6s and 7s.  2015 in sequence yields between west moving back to the east: "the vision of God is Christ the Lord."  A divine gift to an ailing world seeking for God is oneness with Him to which "All the People Said Amen."

Advent 4: Angels

The neo-orthodox hermeneutic of the Bible requires that each person read the words for him or herself.  There can be no replacement for personal submersion into the scriptures.  It is only when an individual reads for him or herself that the scriptures become valid for that person.  So, too is the spiritual life and the experiences of the people of faith throughout time.  God is valid when we have experiences of God.

Karl Barth's humanism can easily be found in this week's Advent reading.  The transcendent God speaking in 2 Samuel 7:5 "But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, "Go and tell my servant David, 'Thus says the Lord: Would you build a house for me to dwell in?"  God speaks from beyond everything to Nathan to become known in the world.   What is the house of the Lord, though?

Any definition of the house of the Lord is not necessarily going to be able to hold the entire concept of a deity.  Usually people think of a church or of a temple.  Because Jesus is incarnate, or at this point on the way, the Archangel Gabriel announces that Mary has been blessed to carry Jesus.  Furthermore, the Archangel announces that God has done so.  This is the humanistic workings of the Transcendent God found in neo-orthodoxy.  In time, neo-orthodox theology gave birth to liberation theology and postliberalism.  These social uses of the gospel find themselves to be an incomplete understanding and explanation of "housing" God.

While I was in graduate school the first time, my classmates as I would converse about what would be after the postmodern age.  We decided that what would be next would be another Renaissance that a lot of us were already experiencing in our lives.  As we tried to find a way to explain our thoughts, we turned to what we called "The Age of Love."  After our jokes about the hippies and the Age of Aquarius were done, we decided that what the world and humanity really needed was a return to agape love.  If we called it Christianity though, someone would control it.

What our minds and hearts decided, standing in front of Hudspeth Hall at UTEP, was that no tradition or explanation could really define God.  We had found our attempt to find a new explanation in which to house what we were going to call the next age was really the beginning.  What happened in the beginning?  God.

God created the world and so loved it to save it.  Some parts of Christianity argue that there is a messiah in every generation.  We are to be little Christs.  We are to rebuild and fulfill our mission.  We make attempts at explaining our experiences in the hopes that there will be a new way to house God for us.

We cannot house the transcendent God of neo-orthodoxy.  We cannot house the ideas that we have to explain what we believe.  However, was the 19th century can give to us for the transcendent God is a place where conversation can begin to bring a humanistic social gospel that requires human action to further the mission can be discussed a lived.  Yet, what is the message that houses a transcendent God?

The Archangel says it all, "You are blessed."