For the beauty of the earth

So yesterday my friend Hannah and I piled in the car and toodled up to Carver Hill Orchard where we picked peaches and blueberries. We got a little lost along the way, due to Massachusetts' strange abhorrence of street signs, but only a little.

We were the only people there. It is out of the way, and it was a Tuesday after all, so I was not expecting the place to be mobbed but I never anticipated that we'd have the place to ourselves. What a treat!

The house I grew up in had an abundant garden, but we moved from there when I was about fifteen and since then my parents have had a few tomato and pepper plants but that's it. And of course I've been in various apartments and condominimums for the last several years, where I have neither the space, time, or inclination to cultivate a garden. Food comes from the grocery store. They may have a workroom in the back concocting the stuff for all I know. This summer I have been delighted to have a CSA share, which is a little different, but still food comes from a box I pick up on someone's porch.

But my goodness there is something about seeing these plants coming forth from the earth, laden with blessings. Thanksgiving and praise welled up within me.

Now the question arises, would I have the same reaction to string beans and broccoli? Perhaps not to the same extent. Yet there is something quite wonderful about a God who celebrates in creating peaches and strawberries.

Food and Friends and Faith

So it seems like every time I turn around these days I come across something else talking about our overscheduled, overproductive culture and tying that to our eating habits.

Short version: Our lives are generally insane. Everything comes prepackaged and corporatized and disconnected from the natural order, which is bad for us, bad for the environment, and inherently unsustainable. It makes us sick and miserable and yet we keep doing it.

How can we stop the crazy and generally live better lives?

Well, the Slow Food movement says, let's start with how we eat. Instead of looking for food that is faster, let's slow down the process. Let's have soups that simmer on the stove rather than get poured out from a can. Let's eat around a table with family and friends rather than in the car zipping from Point A to Point B. Let's be more connected with the natural rhythms of the seasons rather than always shipping everything all over the globe. Let's have our food be about culture and tradition and community and joy rather than simply ingesting nutrients.

And, let's have our food be about God. The slow foodies don't say this in so many words, but they should. Let's appreciate God's gracious and extravagant creation. Let us be bound together around a common table.

This idea of heritage and sharing meals should be especially resonant for us Christians who regularly gather around the communion table. I recently came across an article which drew some of these ideas together.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/le/2008/003/6.65.html

Leviticus: We are famous!

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/august/13.30.html

Reading the comments is fascinating.

Planning future road trips

So, since I moved to Boston, I've always gotten home to Dayton, Ohio via airplane. It's a 14-hour drive, which is an awful lot to do solo, and if you break it up into two days then you have to pay for lodging and more meals, and well flying just makes sense.

However, my friends are doing an admirable job of buying homes along various points of I-90. This could change things significantly. I now or will soon have friends to see in Cortland NY, Meadville, PA, and Youngstown, OH, all of which would break up the trip into manageable segments and none of which would add much to the total driving time. Hey, if I stopped at all three it would add about another two hours to the drive, and I wouldn't stop at all three on one leg.

Hmmm ...

Giving thanks for Creation's bounty

So, my church friends know that remembering to say grace before meals is, ummm, not one of my strong points. To put it mildly. Everyone grows up doing some things and not doing others. This is not a practice that was a regular part of my family's life, and trying to introduce it later always felt forced and awkward.

I have also gotten more interested in food recently. I’ve paid some attention to ethical growing conditions, sustainability, etc. for several years now but over December I got stuck in an airport for most of the day and read through The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Now I got a lot more interested, specifically with regard to animal products. I haven’t gotten regular-old grocery store meats since.

This was happening at the same time as Project Leviticus but I tried to write it up a couple times and my posts ended up being “The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Abridged” with a shake of “Oh and there are a bunch of agricultural laws in Torah and I’m sure this is in the same spirit somehow.” Rigorous exegesis this is not. Although there ARE a bunch of agricultural laws in Torah, which I figure are fundamentally about respecting the Creator through respecting Creation, and I AM sure this is in the same spirit somehow.

I had been interested in getting a CSA share for a while now but it hasn’t really been feasible as a singleton. This year I have some friends who wanted to share it with me, so we signed up for a vegetable share and a meat share (different farms). The veggies have been coming for about six weeks and we recently got our first meat share.

Given the Massachusetts growing season, it wasn’t all that interesting at first. Lotsa lettuces. Some bok choi. Beets. But now in mid to late July things are getting a lot more fun, and it's become more possible to make meals out of my CSA bounty.

And recently I’ve prepared a few group meals, mostly (though not entirely) from CSA sources and shared with friends old and new and I tell you it has been delightful! Absolutely lovely. Now I always like cooking and sharing meals with friends, but the locally grown and responsibly produced element makes it even better. I feel so much more connected with the natural order of things, as if this is the way it is supposed to be.

And, especially interesting to me, beginning these meals with a prayer hasn't felt forced. It has felt quite natural.

What do we look for in church?

Some of my friends are in the process of finding a church home and so we were talking about what we look for in church. Why is church important?

One aspect that comes up a lot in these conversations is community. We want to find our "urban tribe" in church -- that network of interconnected relationships of people who celebrate together, support each other, create a sort of extended family.

We certainly all need networks like that. And certainly it would be strange indeed to isolate that circle of your nearest and dearest from those you worship with.

Still, that isn't what I expect a church to be. I've lived in my current city for almost six years and attended my current church for all but a few months of that time. My "urban tribe," such as it is, is heavily composed of people from that church, and most of the others attend similar churches. I realized this relatively recently and I find it disturbing. My other close friends -- that circle that is so close geography doesn't matter -- is heavily non-Christian.

If we think of church as an "urban tribe", then it seems to me we have two options. One option is that it is somehow inappropriate to be this close to non-Christians. Of course we should interact with people who don't always see the world in the same way -- but your nearest and dearest circle should be all Christian. I don't care for that option at all. The other option is that my dear friends who are Jews or Unitarians or whatever else are in fact part of my church. If that's the case then I think the word "church" has lost its meaning.

Another friend of mine was part of a large church body for a while but found the relational overload to be overwhelming. After you've been at a place for a while, you've been in a few different small groups, served on projects with a bunch of other people, the numbers add up quickly -- he couldn't maintain all those relationships. After trying a house church for a while he's currently just focusing on spending time with Christian friends, and is quite satisfied with this. I have a very strong sense that he's missing the point. Going out to dinner with Christian friends, talking about spiritual matters is all fine and good and valuable, but that's not what church IS.

Okay, then what IS church? If church isn't basically and fundamentally about relationships, what is it about? One option that comes to mind immediately is "well, it's fundamentally about the sacraments." That's part of it too -- but that were the basic fundamental point then I'd be hanging out with the Episcopalians or Lutherans, or maybe still the Catholics, not the Congregationalists.

So what is it? What is going on here? I realize that I have no clue and I find this fascinating. Thoughts?

What she said

The May 6, 2008 post, to be precise.

http://firstyearminister.blogspot.com/

Seeking allies and recognizing the costs

Today I spent an hour watching this documentary, about a desegregation lawsuit in Yonkers, New York in the 1980s.

www.brick-by-brick.com

The NAACP filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, alleging systemic racial discrimination in housing and education in Yonkers. Suit was filed in 1980, continued through much of the 1980s. The educational element settled, but Yonkers dug in its heels with the housing issues, ultimately being held in contempt of court and paying crippling fines rather than submit to the court order. The first subsidized housing in the good side of town opened up in 1992 and the final resolution didn't occur until 2007. Twenty-seven years after the lawsuit was brought. Did it need to take so long?

I thought the most interesting character was Mary Dorman, going from fearing potential changes in her neighborhood, to actively opposing desegregation, to welcoming her new neighbors. She’s not a horrible vicious stereotype. And there were probably lots and lots of Yonkers residents like her (and also some who were simply virulently racist).

So, it used to be very common when you bought a house that the deed would include a “restrictive covenant” keeping you from later on selling it to a minority. The Supreme Court case that struck down these restrictive covenants was Shelley v. Kraemer and the house in question was in Washington Park, a neighborhood of Chicago that was close to where I went to school. At the time of the case it was a thriving middle class neighborhood. Now it’s the stereotypical depressed inner city.

Now I want to be on record as entirely in favor of Shelley v. Kraemer. Entirely in favor. However, you do not need to be innately evil to really not want your beloved neighborhood to take the same path that Washington Park did. Schooling can be the same way. People can be not racist and still not want their seven-year-olds to be spending hours on a bus going across the city. And in college I spent some time volunteering in a public high school that I would have attended if my family had lived one block north and we had gone to public schools (we went to the neighborhood Catholic schools). That was an eye-opener. I would estimate that this tenth grade class was doing about what my class had done in sixth grade. You do not have to be a horrible person to say “I’m not sending my kid there.” And I’m CERTAINLY not interested in having my kid spending hours on a school bus to go across town when that’s what they’re going to.

During the days of the major desegregation decisions, there was often a criticism that the judges, living happily in their wealthy and overwhelmingly white suburbs, were not going to have THEIR kids bussed across town. Those areas are not going to be meaningfully desegregated anytime soon. That burden will be felt by the people in the cities, etc. The lower economic class whites. And that’s true. However, that doesn’t mean that the judges weren’t right to order desegregation.

It seemed as if the NAACP was reacting to a real and serious and very destructive injustice in Yonkers and in response they went on the warpath. And I can understand why they did so because after all it was a real and serious and very destructive injustice.

But is our goal here front page newspaper stories about our victories or is it actually improving the situation? Maybe it’s both. Precedent matters. Those headlines can make a difference. But gosh darn it, the ultimate goal here has to be actually changing the situation. And I have to wonder if maybe the process might not have been so destructive, might not have taken two decades, if there had been some effort to reach out to the Mary Dormans of the world and enlist them as allies instead of (or in addition to?) going in with guns blazing with the result that the Mary Dormans of the world were threatened, had no one assuaging some relatively reasonable fears (as well as many many unreasonable ones) and were told that they were awful people when gosh darn it Mary Dorman did not think of herself as awful. Given that dynamic, it is not all that surprising (although deeply, deeply wrong) that she went into anti-desegregation activism. Could this have been avoided? Could the NAACP have gotten the Mary Dormans of the world as allies? Could maybe those awful racially divided City Council meetings have been avoided, or at least lessened?

This also raises a question of to what extent we need to be heroic. The big argument for white flight was often “well sure, I have no problem with the new people moving into the neighborhood. But let’s just be realistic, my neighbors will, and property values are going to plummet. I just have to get my house on the market first before they fall too much more.” And that is true. But it also accelerates the process of the property values falling, there being less disposable income in the neighborhood and so not as many stores, etc., so the neighborhood is less attractive so people with some money don’t want to be there anymore, etc. etc. etc. To what extent are we required to say “Yes, property values may well fall. I probably am going to lose a good chunk of my life savings by staying here, meanwhile the neighborhood is becoming a less attractive place to be. I’m still staying.” That’s a huge burden to carry (and it has to be noted, a burden that is not borne at all in the wealthy suburbs – this is a burden imposed on the working class). Same thing goes for schooling. Prosperous families, with time and resources to invest in their kids schooling, are going to avoid that high school I observed if they can. They’ll buy a house that goes to the neighboring high school instead (property values increased significantly in that one block!) or pay the tuition for private schools or something. But, having those families at the public high school and involved in the school community would help make it better for all concerned. Are we obligated to do so? When is the cost just too high?

AAACK. My head is hurting. Why can’t moral issues be simple?

Talking about love

As if I didn't have enough books demanding attention. This one looks like it could be well worth savoring.

http://www.americamagazine.org/content/article.cfm?article_id=3289

I was especially struck by this paragraph from the book review:

Thomas Aquinas explained how differences in closeness and worthiness justify different degrees of love--for, say, a sinful parent and for a virtuous stranger. By contrast, Luther says that Christian love for others should be independent of their worth. The epitome of Christian love, for Thomas, was friendship for God, whereas Luther emphasized obedience to God’s word. While Thomas made self-love central, Luther considered it sinful.

I'm not familiar (yet) with the nuances being summarized here. Luther seems right that Christian love should be independent of the worth of the beloved. While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us and all that.

However, there are differences of roles and relationship and to overlook that seems inhuman. A Christian may well owe a duty to starving children in Africa, but it is very different from the duty owed by a Christian parent to their own children. Any moral system which does not recognize this difference is simply out of line with humanity.

I love Thomas's emphasis on friendship for God. Obedience is very important. Obedience is how we learn to develop a friendship for God, but simple obedience is far from the end goal.

And then there's the issue of self-love. So often we hear about "self-love" and think of narcissism and arrogance. And so often we label our own narcissism as "self-love", which does not help matters. However, it seems to me that the two could not be further apart, and so much sin comes not from an excessive self-love but from the lack of it.

After all, I am the beloved of God! As a follower of God, I ought to love what God loves. And God loves me. God loves a whole lot else, of course, but God definitely loves me. How can I do otherwise? And when I recognize that, what else do I need? I don't need to be the center of attention. I don't need to puff myself up. When I don't know God's love for me, and don't love myself, then I will fall into narcissism.

Fundamentally good and still needing saving

Often at church I'll hear something along the lines of "Modern psychology tries to tell us that while we do bad things we are basically good people. However, the Bible tells us that we are sinners." To which I am always yearning to respond "You are saying that as if those statements are in some way contradictory!" See, I most definitely do sin, but I am also the good creation of an amazingly good God. And all the sin I bring into my life cannot change my basic nature as God's good creation. I'm just not that powerful.

I read an article recently which referred to Jane Austen's "Emma," and specifically Knightley's rebuke of Emma.

http://www.scriptoriumdaily.com/2008/03/24/go-on-agree-with-god/

Emma had just told Miss Bates, in public, that she is a bore. Which, it must be admitted, she is. She will natter on about nothing for ages, leaving everyone else climbing the walls. However, she also has a good heart and precarious financial circumstances and if you are a character in a Jane Austen novel it Does Not Do to let on that Miss Bates drives you up the wall. Emma breaks that social code and Mr. Knightley, appropriately, lets her have it.

However, it seems to me that the writer of this article misses an absolutely essential element of Knightley's rebuke. This author seems to interpret Knightley's rebuke as wholesale condemnation. Nothing could be further from the truth. The end of Knightley's rebuke puts everything into the right context:

"I will tell you truths while I can; satisfied with proving myself your friend by very faithful counsel, and trusting that you will some time or other do me greater justice than you can do now." Emma, Ch. 43.

He is absolutely unsparing about her awful behavior -- because he knows her and loves her and knows she is better than this.

Talking with a friend recently, I was saying that we humans are fundamentally good, although certainly still sinners in need of a savior. He did not understand the concept, but it seems to me an absolutely essential one. We screw up royally -- and yet we remain fundamentally God's good creation. That does not excuse our bad behavior -- if anything it makes our bad behavior all the worse because we are better than this! And it is high time we live up to our God-given good nature.

Knightley is in love with Emma, and that colors everything. He calls her to account because he loves her and knows her current behavior is unworthy of her. We would do well to understand our own conviction of sin in the same light. The Holy Spirit often will call us to account -- always and only because of God's great love for us. We are better than our bad behavior. Time to start acting like it.

What privileges do you have?

Based on an exercise about class and privilege developed by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University.

(If you participate in this blog game, they ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright.)

Directions: Bold the statements that apply to you.

1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college.
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor.
6. Were the same or higher social class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18.
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private high school.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. (occasionally -- usually we were visiting relatives)
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 (most but not all).
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parents owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family.

I have a lot more bolding than not. I was especially struck by the last one. Ummm ... wow.

How then should I live?

I know I have about half a dozen readers, max

But this post on Anderkoo needs to be shared.

Obama’s theology of reconciliation and perfection

Who does God say that I am?

Who does God say that I am? That seems more than a little backwards. And yet it is an important question.

A few years ago, I read "Letters to a Young Doubter" by William Sloane Coffin, in which the elderly Christian encouraged his young friend to consider what it might mean to "let God tell you who you are." There are so many voices in this world trying to tell us who we are. Tune them out and listen to God's voice.

This concept hit me like a ton of bricks. I later learned that if I knew anything at all about twentieth-century American religious history I would have known that the Rev. Coffin was one of the major Christian figures and "it is God who tells us who we are" was his constant refrain. Oh well, I know that now. And it is definitely a refrain worth repeating.

This of course raises the question: if it is God who tells us who we are, what is God saying? Well, when I actually sit down and listen, God tells me that I am his own good creation. I am fearfully and wonderfully made, knit together in my mother's womb by the very hand of God. Yes, I screw that up, and yes that needs to be addressed, but that comes second. First and foremost, I am God's precious and wonderful child.

When I know that, really deep down in my soul know my own inherent goodness, then who needs anything else? Chasing after success and prestige seems pretty ridiculous. When I really hear God's voice and am secure in that knowledge of my goodness, then I don't need to prove anything. I can be much gentler with everyone else because I am better able to recognize that they also are God's good creation, despite how they might be mucking things up at the moment.

This Leviticus project from January continues to haunt my thoughts. A friend of mine has said how Leviticus taught her that she is a terrible sinner, and with that knowledge she can be much more forgiving of those who have hurt her. This makes no sense to me at all. When I see myself first and foremost as a terrible sinner, even a forgiven one, then all I want to do is hide under the bed. I'm in no shape to be reaching out to anyone. When I know that I do sin and need (and receive) forgiveness but underneath it all my essence is profoundly good, I can also recognize that profound goodness in everyone else.

On seeing clearly, literally and spiritually

Several years ago, a friend of mine got eyeglasses for the first time. His comment on the experience has stuck with me ever since -- "I never knew the world was so clear!" I've often had the same reaction when I get a new prescription. I thought I could see just fine -- but it turned out there was a whole other world of possibilities out there, and I didn't even know I was missing it.

I've often thought that this is a good metaphor for the convicting work of the Holy Spirit. I may be chugging along, thinking I'm doing just fine, not even aware that there's this whole other world of possibilities out there. I never knew that my life could be so clear.

And, of course, the entire purpose here is restoration. My optometrist wants me to realize that I'm not in fact seeing all that well -- but only so that I can get the prescription that will enable me to see clearly. There's no interest whatsoever in beating me down for its own sake -- nor is there any expectation that I should forego corrective lenses and just see clearly by sheer force of will. That way madness lies.

The same thing is true in the spiritual realm. The goal here is to get me seeing clearly, seeing through God's eyes. That's never going to happen unless I first realize that I am not now seeing clearly, and take advantage of the offered prescription.

These thoughts were inspired by the latest essay in the excellent Christian Vision Project.

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2008/february/32.76.html

Levitical Wrap-Up 2: Two weeks later

So, after being "free from the law" for two weeks, how do I look back on January's Levitical Adventure?

All in all, I did not care for it. I can handle the thought of making a costly sacrifice that does some good in the world. Living Levitically seemed to be jumping through hoops for the sake of jumping through hoops. It grated. It felt deeply isolating -- and there's a difference between solitude and isolation. This was isolation.

In the process, I lost touch with the character of God. I was beginning to picture the Almighty constantly aggravated with failure to jump through some hoop or another. Ummm, no. There most definitely is a character known as The Accuser ("Ha Satan" in Hebrew) -- but that Accuser isn't who I was thinking it was. Ouch. You really don't want to confuse those two. That's not a good move.

That particular theological disaster took a dramatic turn at the end of the month, thank heavens. The Lord is rich in kindness and abounding in mercy. I want to live in the presence of the Lord. I want my character to grow to be more and more like the character of God. Still, I have a very hard time believing that Leviticus is the way to do that.

I was talking with my Consultant on February 1, musing that maybe I had approached this wrong. I had taken a pretty literal approach, hoping to find meaning experientially. Maybe I should have done more analysis on the front end. I just cannot get worked up about mixed fibers -- but maybe the modern-day equivalent would be avoiding clothes made in sweatshops. Boy would that be hard, and talk about countercultural! But it would be difficult in ways that make sense to me.

He says that's the wrong way to think about it. There are plenty of places in Torah talking about how you treat your workers, and it would be reasonable in a market economy to extend that to refusing to buy from those who treat workers poorly. But prohibitions on mixing are different in kind.

Consultant continues:

"But if you wonder how you might have felt that these commandments brought you closer to G-d, one fairly common viewpoint is that many of these commandments are meaningful precisely because they have no inherent meaning: they are arbitrary acts done to show your utter submission and faith. My dog doesn't know why I tell her to heel and sit -- and she may well be smart enough to realize that I don't need her to on most occasions when I tell her to. But it's something we can do together, that challenges her and gives her an opportunity to show her love. That's enough."

Wow. And gulp. Because if I'm at all honest with myself, I have to admit that's not enough for me. Maybe it should be, but at least right now it's just not.

So, what do I do? Well, this road to holiness is a long one. And neither the Prophets nor Jesus had much patience with those who missed the forest for the trees. So maybe, at least for right now, I focus on the righteousness of God. There are worse things in this world to focus on. And maybe, over time, I'll come to see the holiness codes in a new light. But at least for right now I need to set them aside.

Okay, blogging experts

Anybody know why one of my posts has disappeared and is just replaced with all those lines? I go into "Edit Posts" and all my text is still there but the simply will not show up anymore.

My current guess is that it was just too dark for words and what appears to be a technological blip is in fact divine intervention. This is theologically disturbing. Anybody got other suggestions?

Leviticus meditations: Sin and Mercy

So, I had a hard time with Leviticus month. For about thirty days and eighteen hours, I groused and complained. My postings were progressively getting darker and darker. I was talking to a friend about the month and after I referred to the Law as "unremitting suckitude" he asked if he should be gathering stones. A while ago, I mentioned my childhood pastor describing God's giving the Law as "'I'm going to be your God and you're going to be my people and this is how we're going to live.' Then they shook hands and had a party." I forgot the handshake and forgot the party. It wasn't going well.

Early in the month I had been reading through the sacrificial section and was convinced that the modern-day, post Jesus equivalent is sacramental confession.

(Actual classification as "sacrament" is largely beside the point. Another friend agrees this is certainly a good thing to do, but is not convinced that "sacrament" is an appropriate label. OK, whatever.)

This is something I knew about from my Catholic days, but had never been part of my life. I had "gone to confession"/"received the sacrament"/whatever you want to call it a grand total of once, when I was ten years old. I was not interested in doing this again -- but the way I was not wanting to do this made me think that I really ought to. So I borrowed a Book of Common Prayer to look up the Episcopal liturgy, made arrangements with an incredibly accommodating confessor, who, not being Catholic, had really not signed up for this, took a very deep breath and jumped in.

I don't know what I was expecting, but this was not what I was expecting. This was Large. This was a Major Life Event. I spent hours dredging up the muck in my life and preparing my list -- and then it was all washed away. Gone. I was walking on air.

And all of a sudden I knew that I was in a really good place and I did not want to muck it up. "OK God, this is fantastic. I want to stay here. Whaddya want me to do?" And at the same time, I knew that I was going to muck it up, and that was OK. Well, no, it wasn't OK -- but it was going to happen, and I could keep coming back. The door would always be open.

Everything had changed.

Leviticus meditations: Dispensations

So, I nearly made it through the whole month following the dietary laws (aside from the Burrito Incident which gave rise to TWO posts) but yesterday I slipped up. Actually, it wasn't even a slip-up. It was a deliberate decision when I had an acceptable option right in front of me. And yet I don't feel bad about it.

Right after giving blood I moseyed over to Au Bon Pain for lunch and made a beeline for the vegetarian soups like a good girl. But I wasn't feeling so hot and the pot of chicken noodle seemed like a MUCH better idea. So that's what I did.

(It's always tricky to judge your own motivations but I'm reasonably confident here because I really like the carrot-ginger and would usually choose that over the chicken noodle, Leviticus or no. Trying to be as objective as possible, I do think my body was looking to replenish something it had just lost.)

I talked to my Consultant about this. He says I absolutely, without question, needed to go with the carrot-ginger. Just about all rules are waived in order to save a life. But that's it. "Saving a life" gets interpreted very broadly, as it should, but there's no way I was going to keel over from the carrot-ginger soup so that's what I should have done.

I grew up Catholic and am familiar with dietary disciplines, on a lesser scale. But we also had the idea of "dispensations." As a general rule, avoid eating meat on this day ... but not if you're sick, or very young or very old, or there's some overriding event (post-funeral luncheons is one that comes up a lot). A discipline may generally be a good idea, but life is not one-size-fits-all and exceptions should be made.

Now these dispensations can get abused. Anybody remember the hubbub that ensued a few years ago when the then-brand new Archbishop refused to grant a dispensation from Lenten disciplines on Fenway Park opening day, simply because that happened to fall on Good Friday and he thought Good Friday should trump baseball? The nerve! I also remember my high school having a fundraising festival on a Friday evening in Lent and our chaplain (a good guy, who I respected very much) was going around granting dispensations -- they'll sell a lot more pizza if people can get the pepperoni instead of just plain cheese. Really, people.

Still, just because abuses exist does not mean that the underlying idea is baseless. I think this is a pretty legitimate one. So I gave myself a dispensation and am not worrying about it.

What sayeth the tribe? Is this a sensible and reasonable approach or simply opening the door to justify anything and everything?

Leviticus meditations: The blood is the life

I am sore. I am a "hard stick" as they say in the vampire business and the nice people in the bloodmobile outside had to make a couple attempts before I started gushing. Ow.

A bit more than six years ago, the Twin Towers came crashing down to earth and thousands of Americans were desperate to do something so the swarmed the Red Cross to give blood. I sat that one out -- I had given over the summer and was just barely eligible again. Plenty of other people were donating right now (in fact far more was given than could be used so vast quantities ended up getting thrown away) -- I'll wait a few more weeks until the rush has passed and all these folks aren't eligible again yet. It was a perfectly good theory, except that was more than six years ago -- I hadn't had a "donate now!" opportunity staring me in the face, and hadn't bothered to set up an appointment on my own. Six years! How did I let that go on so long? Well, can't change the past. When the Bloodmobile came to the office I signed up.

The blood is the life. Some life has drained out of me. I've had my juice and cookies, and am dutifully sipping a humongo sized herbal tea, but I am definitely not "all there." I'll be fine tomorrow, but I'm definitely feeling the absence today.

Jehovah's Witnesses have tremendous reverence for blood -- and so refuse to donate or accept blood transfusions. I have nothing but respect for their unbelievably costly obedience, but their reasoning is precisely backwards. Blood is holy -- and is there to be shed so that others might live. We gratefully receive life and health from blood that was shed for us, and in joyous response we offer ourselves as the Body of Christ to be broken and poured out for the world.

Rarely do we get to live that out quite so literally.

Leviticus meditations: Burrito Incident Revisited

So, remember The Burrito Incident from a couple weeks back, where I was at a meeting with dinner provided but there was no vegetarian option and I assumed the meat must have been factory farmed and unacceptable leaving me with the question of what to do now?

You may recall I shrugged and grabbed a chicken one only to reflect later that this was a mistake. Spirited Facebook discussion ensued.

And now ... the rest of the story.

That evening, Amazingly Competent Meeting Organizer had ordered from Boloco. As I try to put together a post about Humane/sustainable agriculture as respecting the Creator by respecting Creation, I see something about Boloco using all-natural, humanely raised meats.

OH!!! So it was OK after all! Excellent! Chalk another one up under "God has a sense of humor."

Then I checked out the Boloco website. Turns out they use naturally raised beef, naturally raised pork, but NOT naturally raised chicken.

http://www.boloco.com/

Deflation.

God's sense of humor is somewhat twisted at times.

Leviticus meditations: What about communal virtue?

Last night I was walking to the T and was accosted by very enthusiastic solicitors for a charity that supports poor children around the world. I've never heard of these folks and such high-pressure "you must do something right now" tactics are rarely a good sign, but let's assume they're on the up and up.

I tried to evade them but no dice. A conversation ensued. "If you decided to sponsor a desperately poor child, do you think that later on you would regret that choice?" "WHAT?!?!" "Or would you regret knowing that some child is dying for lack of basic necessities?"

All right, I do think that these things are important, which is why I already give regularly to this other charity focused on children in the developing world. Thank you very much, have a nice day ...

"Oh yes, that's great. They do wonderful things. But why not give to us too."

Well, because I'm one person and there are tons of good causes in the world and I can't do everything.

"But if you're already giving to some good causes, why does that mean you shouldn't support others as well?"

WHAT?!?!

"I do what I can. Good thing there are a lot of us in this world so that everything can get covered. But right now I'm doing as much as I can. Thank you for what you are doing. Goodbye."

Now, maybe I should be giving far more than I do. That's probably true. But nonetheless, the point remains that wherever my appropriate limit is, it does exist somewhere and does not allow me to take care of everything that needs fixing in the world. That doesn't mean I throw up my hands and don't do anything. But I do my part, and other people do their part, and as a whole community all those little parts can add up to something extraordinary. Tossing up my hands and giving up is a mistake -- as is thinking that I'm supposed to be doing everything myself.

I think I've tended to absorb some of this "you have to do it ALL" attitude that our strange soliciting friend was trying to encourage. A few weeks ago Kristi was talking about communal sin. Might there be communal virtue as well? I don't want to take this too far. "Well, my homicidal tendencies don't really matter, because after all Kristi doesn't go around killing people" -- no, that's going nowhere good.

But just maybe, just as my neighbor's sin drags me down, there's a sense in which my neighbor's virtue builds me up, and can at times carry me through my weak points.

This is all pretty hazy in my head, but there just might be something here.

And I desperately need to work on my solicitor-avoiding skills. That one I'm certain of.

Leviticus meditations: Jumbled up thoughts on holiness and authenticity

Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot. -- Mark Twain

Now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's write up some of the jumble. Those looking for clarity, structure or a point should refer to the above quotation.

So a couple weeks ago I wrote an impassioned comment about the importance of liturgy, of saying prayers that may not represent what's in your heart, but represent what SHOULD be in your heart, and over time they start to sink in and shape you. I do believe that's true. I also believe it's true that putting up a false front in prayer is a really bad idea and one that I fall into far too often. (Note to self: Trying to pull the wool over the eyes of an omniscient being? Not the all-time brightest of ideas.)

And I recently heard about an English college chaplain in the 1960s who was known for prayers like these:

"Hello, it is me, your old friend and your old enemy, your loving friend who often neglects you, your complicated friend, your utterly perplexed and decidedly resentful friend, partly loving, partly hating, partly not caring. It is me."

"O God, I am hellishly angry; I think so-and-so is a swine; I am tortured by worry about this or that; I am pretty certain that I have missed my chances in life; this or that has left me feeling terribly depressed. But nonetheless here I am like this, feeling both bloody and bloody-minded, and I am going to stay here for ten minutes. You are most unlikely to give me anything. I know that. But I am going to stay for the ten minutes nonetheless."

Something in those seems so amazingly true and right. So how do I reconcile that with the idea that following established prayer -- saying what we should be thinking and feeling even if it's the farthest thing in the world from where we are right now -- shapes us into eventually becoming that person? I have no idea. I want them both, and I don't think they fit.

I had a discussion this weekend with an old friend about the idea of getting dressed up for church. He is deeply opposed to the idea. If there's any place where we should come as we are -- set aside pretense and be naked (figuratively!) -- shouldn't that be church? Absolutely. But also, dress signifies "This is important and I take this seriously." I dress differently to go out on a date than I do to scrub out the bathtub. If I go out to dinner and look like a slob, that's saying "This is not important to me. You are not important to me." Is that what I want to be saying to God? Hmmm ... that's another good point. Which totally contradicts the first very good point. Now what?

Three weeks in, I have found Leviticus to be overwhelmingly on the "pray the right way and eventually you'll mean it/make yourself look all pretty for church" end of things. I seem to be overwhelmed with external details and am finding it far too easy to overlook justice and mercy because I only have so much ethical/religious energy and I'm spending so much on jumping through hoops. (Or reducing justice and mercy to more hoops -- tithing because Section IV (A)(ii)(b) Paragraph 7 says you should tithe can crush out an impulse to share your resources out of compassion, love, and gratitude for God's gifts to you. This hardly seems like a step in the right direction.) Now, to the extent that we're talking about developing habits that in time shape who you become, that process takes a lot longer than a month. If this month leaves me cold, that may not be a reason to discard the whole system. It may be the necessary first step in a process.

Still. It's not feeling like a difficult first step in a long and difficult but ultimately very good process. It feels like moving in the wrong direction. And that's just disturbing on a countless number of levels.

Leviticus Meditations: Thank you Rabbi Hillel!

So, now that we're about halfway through, I'm having a rough time with this Leviticus project. I'm tired and drained and it seems like every time I turn around there's some other hoop that I'm not jumping through correctly and God is glaring disapprovingly. Meanwhile, my attention is so focused on the hoops that I seem to lose focus on justice and mercy. This does not seem good.

I've been close to enough Jews to know that this is a profoundly un-Jewish attitude. Nobody follows the law perfectly -- and there's no expectation that you ever will. That's just not part of the human condition. When you screw up -- and you will -- you dust yourself off and try again. And you're a little closer today than you were yesterday, and with God's help you'll be a little closer tomorrow.

Several years ago, my Consultants were telling me about this series of debates between Rabbi Shammai and Rabbi Hillel. Rabbi Shammai took the Torah very seriously and was very strict. This is not something to play games with. This is the LAW of GOD. This MATTERS. One does not cut corners! Rabbi Hillel was much more gentle. Unfailingly patient, he would always take people where they are and if they were generally pointing in the right direction then that is to be celebrated.

There's quite a bit to be said for both. The story goes, God rendered a verdict. Shammai understands the law correctly -- but live like Hillel.

Recently, I was talking to my Consultants about this story again. You cut yourself some slack -- individually and collectively -- because that's what it is to be human. Humans are fragile -- this includes both "everybody else" and me. That often means you say "I know I'm supposed to be doing Y, but really, X is all I can handle right now." For most of us, that's an uncomfortable position to be in. And so we tend to redefine the standard. Really, X is all we're really supposed to do. The Law doesn't really demand Y.

No. We don't get to do that. The Law is Y. If X is all you can handle right now, that can be OK. Nobody does this perfectly, and nobody ever will. That's OK. You keep trying, you're a little closer than you were yesterday and tomorrow, with God's help, you'll be a little closer than you are today. But don't redefine the Law down to what you can handle -- keep the ideal intact.

I think I might have made quite a jumble of trying to explain all this. But it helped me understand this whole undertaking a lot better.

In memoriam

So, a few years ago I found myself on a panel about faith and work for a class of doctor of ministry students who were focusing on faith in the workplace.

After too many horrifying conversations along the lines of "Gosh wouldn't it be great to have a Bible study group meeting at the office" (ummm ... no ... that would in fact suck rocks. Sorry.) I broke in with a story about my parents taking a class on family life while they were dating, taught by a sweet, gentle, grace-filled man, Rabbi Folkman. And every now and then he'd mention his son who was off doing medical research.

About a decade ago, all the news outlets were hopping about a potential imminent cure for cancer within the next few years. The reporters' jobs were made more difficult by the fact that the researcher had no interest in talking to them. Yes, they'd had some hopeful looking results but this was at way too early a stage for all the hype. "Mouse studies do not belong on the front page of the New York Times." (And ten years later cancer is still around, although some very helpful new treatments are now on the market as a result of that research.) They couldn't even scrounge up a recent photo, because he doesn't do that sort of thing. But the reporters had to do SOMETHING when everybody was all excited. And a portrait started to emerge of a brilliant, brilliant man who was very interested in curing cancer but not at all interested in building up his own ego. In a lot of labs, it is just routine that the head guy gets senior authorship credit on every article that comes out of the lab. He didn't do that. He took authorship credit on the articles he actually contributed to and had other people get the credit when that was appropriate. He was always very careful to make sure that his assistants got credit for everything they had worked on. This is not normal behavior in academic research.

That was Judah Folkman, Rabbi Folkman's son. And, my parents said, that made sense. Knowing Rabbi Folkman, of course that's the way his son would be.

THAT, said I, is how a Christian should be known in the workplace. People should see us and say "Of course. It makes sense that she'd act that way. That is how a child of God would be."

(Of course, unless Judah also grew up to break his father's heart, I'm guessing that Rabbi Folkman's son wasn't Christian. And he was my paradigm example for how a Christian should act in the workplace. That's OK. Let's shake up the Gordon-Conwellites a little.)

Judah Folkman died this week from a sudden heart attack. He had absolutely no reason to know I exist, but in some strange way I considered him a friend. I almost feel like I should go to the memorial service this weekend. Rest in peace.

Leviticus Meditations: The Reverse Sabbath Weekend

So I've been using sundown Saturday to sundown Sunday as my Sabbath. (Anybody who wishes to argue that only sundown Friday to sundown Saturday is acceptable is free to do so, but I will not respond.)

One of the regular fixtures in my week is a community dinner on Saturday evenings. So I was treating that as my Shabbat dinner and it all fit together just beautifully. For the first week at least.

However, every now and again, instead of meeting for dinner we'll get together for brunch on Saturday morning. Uh oh. You can't have half my Saturday -- not when I don't get a Sunday. And then I was long overdue for catching up with a friend. Thanks to Sabbath observance I have all kinds of availability on Sundays -- would that be a good time to hang out? Well, no, she's a freelance photographer and was working all day Saturday and most of Sunday -- up until right about sundown, but Sunday evening was just perfect!

Aack. Laundry needs to get done, groceries need to be shopped, food needs to be made, dishwashers need to be loaded and run, trash needs to be taken out, life generally needs to happen. So, if I want to preserve this valuable relationship time, I have from noon to about 4:30 on Saturday to do all this. That's it. I got home at noon, tried to figure out what to prioritize and how to make this happen.

And then I decided, somewhat petulantly, screw it. Nuts to this. I. did. not. want. to. A lot of laundry and housekeeping were done on Sunday during the day -- Saturday day and Sunday night were all about worship, rest and relationships.

I suppose I could have been really on the ball and gotten all that "general life" stuff done during the last week but I'm not that on top of things. That's not going to change, so my options seemed to be prioritizing relationships or prioritizing my own schedule. And prioritizing that schedule would have left me me doing laundry when I could be building relationships and sitting home alone on Sunday. So I chose people.

I'm in trouble. Torah doesn't allow this. I can't switch things around to make things work. Rest on the Sabbath day, not some day that works best for you. If you life doesn't fit with the Law, change your life or get stoned.

Last week, Brandy, Kristi and Lisa didn't have that dilemma as they spent a lovely Sabbath together. Among our fellow Levites, these same restrictions can bind us together -- but it sure does complicate matters when we're dealing with anyone else.That is, of course, largely the point. And I continually keep butting up against the same issue in different ways. You are all wonderful folks -- but I don't want my social circle to be limited to my fellow Levites. I suppose I could do that for a month, but my heart sinks at the thought of doing that forever. I like the world. There are nice people there.

Leviticus meditations: Burritos, holiness, and really long meetings

So, I'm at a meeting last night and dinner is provided. Unsurprisingly, it did not occur to our amazingly organized meeting coordinator to provide a Levitically sanctioned meal, much less my "meat is only acceptable if it comes from tree hugger hippie chickens (or cows or sheep) who spent their animal lives holding hands and skipping around a pasture" approach to Torah, which leaves me going vegetarian except occasionally for meat I prepare myself. Usually at these things, there's some sort of vegetarian something so I didn't think to give her a heads-up, but not this time. Uh oh. Now what? These meetings are LONG -- I didn't particularly want to wait until I got home.

When I adopt dietary Lenten disciplines, my rule is always "this is what I do when I'm making my own food choices." So if I'm abstaining from meat, which I do sometimes, that applies if food is coming from my own kitchen, or if I'm out at a restaurant and can choose from a menu. But if I'm someone else's guest I do what I can do gracefully, but otherwise eat what's put in front of me and don't worry about it. So I took the same approach here and grabbed a chicken burrito. Chicken is a clean animal, there's no blood, it'll have to do.

Upon further reflection, with a full tummy, this was a mistake. Torah makes no provisions for "do this unless it's awkward or uncomfortable or seems somehow rude." If these prohibitions just don't work with the way you live your life, change the way you live your life. Come out and be ye separate. So, if waiting until I got home wasn't a good option, I should have run across the street and gotten something meatless to eat -- even though that would have left our amazingly competent meeting organizer, who did absolutely nothing wrong here, feeling awkward and uncomfortable. That should not be my concern.

Now, here's my problem. I really don't want to do that. And while my tree-hugger hippie approach to eating meat does have a moral dimension, a lot of these prohibitions do not -- they're being separate largely for the sake of being separate. As my Consultant told me the other day, being a "holy nation" is not the same as being a "righteous nation." Israel is supposed to be both, but they're not the same concept, and most of Leviticus is far more about holiness. I have no trouble standing out from the pack when it comes to righteousness (theoretically -- I make no bold claims about my actual track record on the subject). I want my lifestyle to look different. I want to handle money differently. I want to treat people as ends rather than means. I want to recognize myself as God's beloved creation, and when I know that, then chasing after status and acclaim seems pretty ridiculous. If I live that way, I'll look plenty different. But all of that is about righteousness, which is a different question. Separation for separation's sake continues to grate.

Leviticus Meditations: On the Outside, Looking In

Never let it be said that God does not have a sense of humor. I almost never miss church on a Sunday, but here we are on the first Sunday of a month when I'm supposed to be especially pious and I'm not going to church. I can't go, because it's that time of the month and I'm so unclean that anyone who touches me can't go. Fortunately, no one else cares about such silliness so I haven't cut myself off from human contact, but I am sitting around alone at home while everyone else is worshipping and celebrating the Lord's Supper. Oh, did I mention that I really don't miss church on Communion Sundays? I am not happy about this.

I try to remember that the ancient world thought of blood as the life force, endowed with deep spiritual significance. But I'm not totally sure that applies here. This is coming in a public health code about minimizing the spread of infection. I can understand how quarantines were necessary in a world before antibiotics. But menstruation is not a dangerous illness. This is not advanced science.

There's a point that ritual impurity is different from moral contamination. That might help a little, but only a little. And elsewhere in the Bible, there certainly seems to be a moral connotation. Ezekiel 36:17.

Brandy is a good person and points out that we humans are awfully good at twisting God's word for our own sinful purposes. That's certainly true. And it's also true that there are many many misogynistic cultures in the world and the spread of Christianity tends to improve women's status.

But still. Sometimes a misogynistic reading doesn't take much twisting. Sometimes it seems hard to read it any other way. And so I sit around, unable to participate in public worship because my body is functioning the way God made it to function.

But maybe I depend on our weekly worship gatherings too much. Maybe I need to better develop my individual spiritual life. As I was grouchily praying about this situation a few days ago, I sensed "Don't worry, I'll meet you another way." And God did -- today I had one of the most fruitful prayer times I've had in quite a while. I needed that.

So, is this a story about me kicking against the goads only to find that God's way is the best after all? Sorry, no. If periodic exclusion from worship is actually a good idea for women, it should be a good idea for everyone.

Although we believe that Jesus followed the law perfectly, he seemed to violate ritual purity laws with abandon. He touches a bleeding woman, touches lepers. He implicitly condemns a priest who passed by a wounded man, and does not seem to care that the priest had to do precisely that in order to keep himself pure. How do we understand this and also uphold the purity laws as the inspired Word of God? I have no idea.

Fortunately, today, I saw a God who can work through lousy structures -- but that doesn't make the structures any less lousy.

Living Leviticus: My Plan

So here's my plan for our month:

1. Dietary. Separate between clean and unclean animals -- no pork, shellfish, ospreys (that last one probably won't be so tough). No boiling a kid in the milk of its mother, although I don't interpret that to require hours of separation between any dairy and any meat. Also, the prohibition on blood seems to be a very big deal, aside from the distinctions between clean and unclean animals. I'll salt any meat before cooking it to draw the blood out. If I were buying kosher certified meats the salting would already have been done, but I'm not so that's another step for me.

Also, I see the agricultural laws generally as about respecting Creation and therefore the Creator. In my mind, factory farming does not mesh with respecting Creation. So no more supermarket meat counter products for me. Only eat meats from animals that were humanely and naturally raised (e.g. cows are made to eat grass, not corn). Kristi and I will be heading over to Lionette's Market in South End to see what we find there. (We can video the experience if you want to see the excitement of grocery shopping.) I expect this will mean I'm eating a lot less meat. The nutritionists tell me that's probably all to the good.

A kosher certification guarantees how the animal was slaughtered but says nothing about how it was treated prior to slaughter. So although I was originally planning to buy kosher meats, instead I'll buy what meat I end up consuming from these tree-hugger sources and salt it myself.

2. Sabbath. I turn into a pumpkin at sundown on Saturday and re-emerge with sundown on Sunday. This time is for rest and restoring the soul, which includes but is not necessarily limited to worship and prayer. Tossing around a Frisbee can be tremendously soul-restoring as well (well, maybe not in Boston in January but you get the idea). I won't get as extreme about this as some. For instance, I just cannot wrap my mind around thinking of tying shoelaces as work. Shoelaces are acceptable. And I'll probably use the Crock Pot a lot for Sunday meals, so I can have it all ready ahead of time. But if everything is chopped and ready to go on Saturday and sitting in the crock in the refrigerator, I will have no qualms whatsoever about plugging the Crock Pot in on Sunday and pressing the "on" button.

By the way, let me strongly recommend the Sabbath essay in "Mudhouse Sabbath" to everyone. (The whole book is good but the Sabbath one is the best.) 3. Particular attention to honesty and integrity. Nothing new here, just more attention to what I should be doing anyway.

4. Keep reading, over and over again. Back in my college days, one of my philosophy professors talked about how the Greeks approached Homer. It's OK to question, it's OK to challenge -- and then you go back and read The Iliad again. In our day, when we poke a hole in a book or an author we then put it on the shelf and don't worry about it anymore. It has been disposed of. The Greeks didn't do that with Homer. They kept a dialogue going. They challenged, they questioned, they poked holes -- and then they sat down and read again.

This is how I try to approach Scripture. A lot of people won't question or challenge the Bible. They may question their own understanding, but if the Bible certainly seems to be clear, that ends the conversation. I can't do that. Maybe I should, maybe I will someday, but at least right now I just can't. But I can keep coming back. I can have an attitude that I have more to learn here. I can wrestle with G-d -- and then come back and read again.