Growing up without Going It Alone

I guess I realized I was an adult when I found myself in East Tennessee with a new wife and no job. I had graduated from college four weeks earlier, and then got married just two weeks prior to loading up my grandfather’s Chevy pickup and launching out into the great unknown of, what I took to be, adulthood. We moved to Tennessee so I could go to graduate school. There was a little money left over from the honeymoon, which I thought would last us a month or so, providing we could eat on fifty dollars a week. I figured a month would be plenty of time for us both to find jobs and start living like grown-ups.

It occurs to me now that foresight was not a virtue I possessed at twenty-two, because I did not, as I had anticipated, find a job. My wife, at nineteen, already much more readily employable than I, found a part time job as a hostess at the restaurant in the Holiday Inn. Her income, it will not surprise you to know, didn’t turn out to be enough to sustain us. And so, with a nearly empty refrigerator and no prospects for employment on the horizon, we packed up the truck and headed back to Detroit to live with my in-laws.

We didn’t stay too long—though her parents could not have been nicer. After four months we’d both found jobs making sufficient money to move to a small apartment—her working in a doctor’s office, and me in a Speedway.

One might reasonably inquire as to why a situation that resulted in me moving back in with my in-laws made me aware of my status as an adult. Generally speaking, such a move, at least psychologically, means a failure to live up to the standards set for grown-up living. However, it strikes me that though we had folks helping us take care of our basic needs, no one was going to parachute in to right our listing financial ship. A little assistance here and there to help us keep our heads above water, but nobody offered to buy us a boat. It felt lonely at first (and still does sometimes).

But what I finally realized about our predicament was that nobody was going to live our lives for us. Being an adult takes courage and some intentionality, a commitment to hanging on when hanging on seems impossible.

But lest this degenerate into some kind of morally edifying self-help anecdote, it also occurs to me that it’s critical to point out that we were kept afloat. We had people who loved us, who wouldn’t let us fall through the cracks. It is a hard thing to realize that not everyone is so fortunate—and that we could very easily, if just a few things were different, be the people we read about living under viaducts in cardboard boxes. So while living can’t be done by proxy, it can’t be done in isolation either.

Faith, it seems to me, works along the same lines. On the one hand, the spiritual lone wolf is a non-starter; on the other hand, walking through a crowd of people on a journey you happen not to be taking doesn’t make you a pilgrim either. You can neither go it alone nor rely entirely on others to do your work for you. Somewhere in the mysterious middle lies maturity—both as a human being and as a seeker of God.

 

 

The Gift

“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.  Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.  Pray in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:7-15).

Do you pray?  I don’t mean when it’s your turn at the supper table, or when someone calls on you in Sunday School class.  Do you pray?  What do you say?  Is it hard to pray?

Prayer has been addressed for so long as a formal thing that is unlike anything else we do during the day.  We expect that prayers follow some kind of standard of length and prettiness; that is, we figure that the longer and lovelier the prayer, the better it is.  And the better the prayer, the more chance we will have of God hearing it and answering it.  Of course, this view of prayer makes it almost a magical incantation.  Which is to say, you have to find the right words in order to yank God’s chain hard enough to get anything done.

Jesus, on the other hand, heads us in a different direction.  Jesus tells us to pray simply and directly.  One doesn’t have to heap on the words for God to hear it—God already knows what you need before you ask.  Prayer is honest communication between us and the one who made us, and who watches over us.

Prayer is not a tool to manipulate God into doing what we want.  Prayer is the foundation of the relationship between God and humanity.  It isn’t designed to convince God to forgive us, or to take care of us.  God has already promised in Christ to do that.  Prayer is a way of allowing us to see our need (for a “Father who art in heaven”, for forgiveness, for bread, for aid in facing trials and temptations, etc.), of admitting that we couldn’t live without God’s grace.

And maybe that’s why Jesus tacks on the saying at the end about forgiving our brothers and sisters who have trespassed against us.  Because if we can’t see God’s grace in forgiving us so that we might forgive others, then we’ll never experience our bread, our trials, or the kingdom of heaven as a gift from God.  If we never get the picture that God’s forgiveness of us frees us to forgive other people (people that the world says we have a right to hold a grudge against), then we don’t have a clue about the rest of what’s involved in being a Christian.  How can God forgive those who have no idea what forgiveness is, or that they even need it?

Prayer is not a mystical formula, or a flowery show of devotion.  Prayer gives us a sense of the majesty of God, and to what great lengths God has gone to show us mercy.  It gives us understanding about gratitude and about whom we depend upon for even the most ordinary things in life.  Perhaps, most of all, prayer allows us to see that God lost in a Son in God’s desire to reconcile—even with those who have done us wrong.

The Haves and the Have-Nots and How Things Work in the Reign of God

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it” (1 Corinthians 12:26).

I was listening to a show on NPR the one time, which took as its subject college admissions applications counselors.  Apparently, and I didn’t know this, you can hire someone to help your child fill out college admissions applications, to give her/him the best possible shot at being accepted.  College admissions is a pretty complicated game, played for big stakes.  So it stands to reason that an industry would spring up around helping applicants put their best foot forward.  The catch, of course, is that to avail yourself of these types of services, you have to be able to pay for them.  And, as I gathered from the NPR piece, the whole thing can be rather pricey, leading one interviewer to ask one of the professional admissions counselors if that didn’t indicate some sort of inherent division of access between the “haves” and “have-nots.”  The counselor’s reply caught me up short.  She said, “Well, sure.  But what in America doesn’t cause some sort of division of access between the haves and have-nots?  That’s just the way things work.”

And she’s right, isn’t she?  If you have the money to purchase the help, you have access to places that would be otherwise closed to you.  Who would deny it?  If you have the means to hire someone to put your best foot forward for college admission, you increase your chances of getting accepted.  The whole industry is predicated on the notion that you can get better results from a professional.  But what if you can’t afford a professional to help you fill out the admissions forms?  What if the school you attended was one of the forgotten school systems in rural Appalachia or urban Louisville?

Obviously, there is an inherent division of access between the haves and the have-nots in our country.  Not everybody is starting out from the same place.  Some folks in our country are starting from so far back, they can’t even see the starting line the rest of us started at.  Unquestionably, some people have a head start in life.

Which is why the whole issue of a multi-millionaire white broadcaster—on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech—presuming to lay claim to Dr. King’s legacy, sits uncomfortably with me.  The plea for a color-blind society, in theory, makes sense.  But, let’s be honest, we don’t live in theoretical constructs.  We live in the United States of America, where there is an “inherent division of access between the haves and have-nots.”  To say, for example, that college admissions ought to be color-blind sounds good, and fair, and American.  To say that there ought to be no racial preferences sounds equitable.  But what if you were to say that there ought to be no preference shown for a kid whose parents can afford to pay for a counselor to help fill out the applications forms, over a kid whose parents are struggling to pay to keep a roof overhead?  Realistically, you can’t do that, but you see where I’m headed with this.  The playing field can never be level left to itself because there is an inherent division of access between the haves and the have-nots in our country.

What’s my point?  I’m not arguing (at least here) for a legislative action with respect to Affirmative Action (although, I’d be happy to speak with you about it if you want to know how I feel.)  Actually, I want to go deeper than that to talk about how Christians communicate.  If you happen to be a person of color, you hear things like “there is an inherent division of access between the haves and the have-nots” in a particular way.  People of color know who the “haves and have-nots” in our society generally are.  And when they hear someone blithely dismiss the inequities of access with, “That’s just the way things work,” you may begin to understand how the have-nots hear the haves whining about “level playing fields” and “color-blind admissions policies” and “reverse racism.”  It sounds like a sneaky attempt by those with a head start to hold onto what they’ve historically enjoyed.

And here’s the sad part from where I sit as a Christian and as a minister.  Two days ago, as I write this, a wealthy white man, claiming to be tapped by God for the job, led a group of mostly middle class white folks in a rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, declaring a desire to restore America’s honor.  Part of what they believe that honor has to do with is a wish for Americans to stop focusing on the inherent divisions of race, and start focusing on achievement.  But here’s the problem: I’ve heard some of those same kinds of good middle class Christian white folk seek to embrace people of color out of one side of their mouths, while uttering genuinely nice sounding things about “equality” and “color-blindness” out of the other side—because they believe themselves to be starting at the same place in the race as the have-nots, never understanding what the have-nots are all painfully aware of—that the starting line begins at a different point for each of us.  Consequently, our brothers and sisters of color are left to wonder whether or not we really do care about racial unity, because we continue to use the code words that keep them at the back of the line, while making ourselves look fair.

We will have no basis upon which to pursue racial unity within the church until we are honest with ourselves about the fact that the playing field is not level, that it’s not just a matter of hard work, that the language we use, the way we see the world will continue to color our relationships.  Clearly, we all want with Dr. King, a country in which our children “will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of the character.”  But what we Christians need to come to terms with is the fact that not everybody in our country is given the same opportunities to develop the kind of character by which Dr. King thought we all ought to be judged.  Therefore, how we speak about our situation affects our relationship to one another.

Until we begin to understand that as the body of Christ none of us can be truly happy while another of us suffers, we’ll never understand the eschatological vision Dr. King was trying to get us to see.  “Color-blind” is the goal, but before it can ever be embodied among us, we must put away the illusion that we’ve already achieved it.  That’s definitely not “how things work” in the reign of God.

By Derek Penwell

My Stonewall Remarks: 40 Years Ago

40 years ago the silent voice of a community was heard in a riotous action proclaiming that they would no longer be silent.  40 years ago a few hundred gathered to give voice to the marginalization and systemic oppression forced upon them.  40 years ago a movement was born that we celebrate here today.

The most important thing to remember about movements is that they are comprised of people.  People with hopes, dreams, and vision.  People with love in their hearts looking for a place to store that love.  People with the right to be.  PEOPLE! Movements being and end with the people.  Movements cannot sustain the movement when it is boiled down to an idea.

I stand here today a leader in the Christian church.  I stand here today as a white, straight male. I am a part of this movement.

The Christian faith has been utilized in the disenfranchising action of the GLBTQ community.  We have demanded that you must give up your faith if you insist on keeping your love.  We have demanded that you remain silent in order to nourish your soul.  We have demanded that you have a place in the Kindom of God only if you conform to the narrow standards of dubious origins.  For this I am terribly sorry.

It is my hope that we as a church may offer reconciliation and love to our sisters and brothers for the atrocities perpetrated upon them in the name of God.  It is my hope that the beautiful voice of faith embraced by the GLBTQ Community may enrich the faith on communities across Kentucky.  The faith of a few transforms the faith of us all.  This is a lesson we may draw from the actions of those brave people that would not be silent 40 years ago.

I recently read a lecture from Kentucky’s proud son, Bishop V. Gene Robinson, titledWhy Religion Matters in the Quest for Gay Civil Rights. He speaks, “I believe that it will take religious people and religious voices to undo the harm that has been done by religious institutions…It’s time that progressive religious people stop being ashamed of their faith and fearful that they will be identified with the Religious Right, and start preaching the Good News of the liberating Christ, which includes ALL God’s Children.”

It seems that the harm, the damage that is being done is by us, the religious community, by us being in the shadows.  It is time for us to step out of the shadows.  I offer that as this movement progresses and the fires of the Spirit burn in the hearts of the many that we the religious community owe the Gay community love for the silence we offer and the isolation that we perpetrate upon you.  We the religious community owe you that scared space to be fearfully & wonderfully made.  We the religious community owe it to you to emerge from the silence and join our voice with yours and demand that WE shall not be denied the justice imbued within our hearts and souls because we celebrate the diversity of Gods creation.

40 years ago a rebellion began that we are honored to celebrate tonight and participate in today.  40 years ago people came together and would not be silent.  Tonight let us commit ourselves to not remaining silent.  Let us join our voice as we demand that Liberty & justice truly be for ALL.