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Yes, and…Part 1

Posted on August 3, 2013 by megancastellan

Rachel Held Evans, whom I read like it’s my job, wrote a piece for CNN that now has everyone discussing Millennials and The Church in even more ponderous tones than is normal for this discussion.

If you haven’t read it yet, you should. It’s great, and points out some important dynamics at play right now (I.e. authenticity and depth are important, put not your faith in praise bands or skinny jeans, etc.)
Basically, she says clearly, concisely, and calmly, what any college chaplain or young adult in the Episcopal Church has been saying for YEARS. (With loud voices and emphatic hand gestures, but that may have just been me.)

And now, us here in the Interwebz must add on to the conversation, for that is what we here in the Interwebz do.

So then, a few things I feel should be said:

1. No, this isn’t just Millennials.

Lots of people are leaving the church, and have been leaving the church.
Silent generation folks, GenXers, GenZers (because that’s a thing now, too), even Baby Boomers are leaving.
And all for different stated reasons, and all for different personal triggers, but I think it’s safe to say that a trend is emerging right now that unites a lot of people. The status-quo church is not embodying the spirit of Christ as effectively as it should. So it’s experienced as hypocritical, and, accordingly, people are leaving. That’s not new.
What’s new is two things: now the slow drip of loss is enough to affect our status as “established and privileged” and, by dint of being the largest generation since the Baby Boomers, Millennials just leave a bigger footprint than GenX did when they did they exact same thing.

2. And also, we talk about it.

Arguably, one of the markers of the Millennial generation is a major shift in the divide between what is seen as public and what is seen as private.
A silly example would be Facebook statuses; a more serious one would be the current push towards transparency in government and the Arab Spring.
I’m not kidding. At the national training for IAF, it was this public/personal discussion that split my small group along generational lines, with the younger organizers arguing vehemently that it was dishonest and disingenuous to work with people and claim to represent them if you couldn’t be at least somewhat honest about who you were and what you believed. This was authenticity, we maintained. There was some buy-in, but for the most part, the older folks in the room thought we had lost our minds, and were overexposed, trying to live in our own TV show. Too much Internet, the trainer diagnosed.

My point is this– the gift of the Millennial generation may well be that we are, as a classmate ahead of me in seminary put it, “whiny and confrontational” but in the best way. We name things!

If we feel unfulfilled in church, if we feel like there is something missing, we won’t just let it lie. We won’t just continue to attend in silence. Or church-shop continuously, in a slow round of disappointment. We will take to the blogs, the Internet, Twitter, etc. Because this is a generation raised to talk it out (ad nauseum, occasionally.) What everyone else has been feeling for a while, we will actually name. We shall talk until we reach some conclusion.

And we don’t consider it a taboo subject any longer.

I have more to say about this, but I’m in the middle of moving right now. So come back tomorrow, and behold!
There shall yet be more on this topic.

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Job and Pastoral Care 101

Posted on May 21, 2013 by megancastellan

The past few months have been a crash course in mass trauma, if we didn’t know already. It’s one thing after another, one horrific event piled on another, until The Onion (America’s best pastoral-care-through-satire) ran this headline today:  “Americans dredge up last remaining reserves of grief”

And they were only halfway kidding.
After two elementary schools collapsed outside of Oklahoma City yesterday afternoon, initial reports were that over 50 people had died.  Most of the initial reports I read, from news anchors on NPR, to average folks on the street, to the frenzy of Twitter, were all breathless disbelief and shock.
When that report was revised downward to around 20, Twitter threw a freaking party, the likes of which haven’t been seen since a baby kitten fell asleep in the hand of a sloth.
Except for John Piper.
John Piper is an (in)famous megachurch pastor, well-known throughout the evangelical and Calvinist Christian world.  He also has a Twitter account.
Right in the middle of the initial reports of collapsing schools coming out of Oklahoma, he tweeted this:  “Your sons and your daughters were eating, and a great wind struck the house, and it fell on them, and they are dead.”  Job 1:19
I’ll give you a minute to process.
The only way I can process someone responding this way, is by imagining that Rev. Piper fancied himself in some elaborate game of Bible Verse Trivia, wherein he had to match a Bible verse to the current circumstances, without regard for context, or, y’know, actual people being affected.  If such was the case (and that would be a HUGE STRETCH) then, hooray, he wins whatever imaginary prize he was competing for inside of his head.
However, the Rev. Piper missed something in his elaborate, imaginary game of Pin-the-Verse-On-The-Catastrophe.
The Book of Job actually continues.
It continues for quite a while, in fact.
Because, in the book of Job, after all these catastrophes happen, his three ‘friends’ attempt to comfort Job, in much the manner of Rev. Piper’s tweeting.
They show up, and they offer all the platitudes under the sun:  you’re just being tested!  God is doing this because he loves you so much!  You must have done something wrong to deserve this, because a good God wouldn’t let all this happen to someone who didn’t secretly deserve it! (take note, Calvinists.) If ever you’ve read something trite in a Hallmark sympathy card, rest assured that one of Job’s ‘friends’ uttered it first.
And then, Job just tells them that they’re full of crap.
Actually, he does more than that.  He informs them that not only are they full of crap, but that he is pretty convinced that God is also full of crap, and if God would like to show up down here hisownself, he will inform God of this fact, right to his face.  Job gets sarcastic.  He gets maudlin.  He accuses God of stalking him.  He accuses God of being a giant, omnipotent whimsical bully who should go pick on someone his own, overgrown size.  At one point, he even gets vaguely poetic, and rewrites Psalm 8 to fully detail his great anger and annoyance at God, for letting all this crap happen to him for absolutely no reason.
Seriously, if you need a Masters Class on how to be angry at God, read Job’s soliloquies.
And all this yelling, all this stomping around on a dustheap, and the elaborate poetry, and the biblical snark, is so God will show up and answer Job, somehow, and vindicate him.  Prove to him that he’s not nuts, and that he didn’t deserve all this misery, and then, somehow, Job will be comforted.
All Job wants is for someone to comfort him.  Because his ‘friends’ aren’t cutting it.
At the end of 32 chapters of this shouting, after Job’s ‘friends’ have run out of sympathy-card-schlock, and after Job has run out of things to yell at them, and at the sky, this interesting thing happens.  Possibly the most interesting thing in a book full of them.  (This is why you always read to the end of things, Rev. Piper.)
Job shuts up.  As do his ‘comforters.’*  For a moment, for a beat, in a story that is chock-full of people monologuing, they sit in silence.
And when Job is quiet, God shows up.
In a freakin’ whirlwind, making the best entrance in all the Bible, God shows up, and points out that God created all that is-so this battle of wits Job wants to set up is slightly unfair.
Job responds “I have heard you by the hearing of an ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I relent, and am consoled of dust and ashes.”**
So, something about God’s speech, and the showing up, and the talking to Job helped him.
Nothing the ‘friends’ said.  None of that relentless talking.  None of those platitudes.
What helped Job was the silence.
And getting to yell long and loud at God.
And God responding, in some weird, whirlwind-y fashion, even if it was not at all the answer Job said he wanted.
And when God did show up, he promptly reprimands the ‘friends’, for lying about God, and not speaking the truth, the way Job had done.
So if we’re actually going to take the book of Job as a pastoral care 101, our first move after a disaster shouldn’t be explanations, or defenses of God, or well-meaning speeches.
We should probably just sit quietly for a while in the dust.  And yell angrily for a while if we feel like it.  And cry a bit, if we feel like it.
Because the silence, the anger, the pain, the suffering, the fear– that’s where God shows up.
So that’s where we should be, too.
*I should pause to note that there has now entered into the story a fourth guy, Elihu, but I’m ignoring him because the text itself does, and he doesn’t add anything to the narrative, except for making it more theologically acceptable to whichever scribe it was who inserted him in the first place.
 ** Job 42: 5-6  That’s not exactly how the NRSV translates it, but read the footnote–the committee screwed up here.  The Hebrew here translated as “despise myself” can also be read as relent or recant, and the Hebrew translated ‘repent’ should be translated console.  Basically, Job now feels comforted about being a transient mortal (‘dust and ashes’).  Which makes more sense, given what God does next.

 

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Who do you say that I am?

Posted on May 19, 2013 by megancastellan

Driving home from Prov 8, I let the students play music off my iPhone. The DJing student selected the playlist I had constructed last year entitled “Southern mix”– because it was music that reminded me of being in a kid in Virginia in the summer.
We listened in silence for a few songs, broken only by my shock that several (SEVERAL) of them hadn’t heard the musical genius that is Marshall Tucker Band’s Can’t You See.* (If you haven’t heard it either, go listen. I’ll wait.)

Finally, one of the students said, “There’s a surprising lack of country on this playlist. Aren’t you from the South?”

I was puzzled. There was actually no country on that playlist. There was lots of blues, there was lots of stuff recorded at Muscle Shoals, there was Atlanta hip-hop, there was the Alabama Shakes, and the Black Keys, and Tuesday’s Gone by Skynyrd (piano solo!), and some gospel and Nina Simone, but no country at all. And wasn’t that the South, too?

I don’t associate country music with what I know of the South. Apparently, many other people do, though. Who gets to decide what ‘the South’ is?** Who gets to tell this story?

Those proscribed identities, all those narratives that we assume we know–they’re problematic–both for those inside the group and those outside. It’s a problem when we let the idea of ‘the South’ be represented by only Brad Paisley (saints preserve us) or, worse, Rick Perry or Ken Cucinelli (…let’s just all move to Canada. They have health care.)

In the church? Also not helpful to let our identity, our story get co-opted.
It’s not helpful when the guys carrying the banner of “Christian” are preaching the fiery destruction of hell for 3/4ths the population, or explaining the evils of birth control, or gay marriage. When the loudest Christian voices are preaching anything but love, our voice has been co-opted. And we have a problem, because the story of the Gospel of love isn’t being told.

For a little while now, our collective solution to this has seemed to be to back away quietly, and hope the illogic of the louder voices would soon become clear. (This might be because we are Episcopalians, largely, and someone told us that it was quite impolite to contradict, or argue in public.)

Yeah, that didn’t happen. It turns out, no one hears the truth that you don’t speak out loud. People don’t actually learn through osmosis, and as much as we might think it obviously flawed and ridiculous, if no one presents any alternative, then everyone will go with the single, loudest definition for Christian.

So it’s up to us, who have a problem with the current, dominant definition to say something. To start telling our own story, to play our own song, and present a counter narrative. If we think the loudest religious voices are wrong, what do we think is closer to right?

What does being a Christian mean to you?

*Lyrics like Gonna find me/a hole in the wall/ Gonna crawl inside and die just cannot be argued with if you want to get real about Feelings.
Also, there is a flute. Because this was the 1970s, and this was how you rolled, if you were a legit blues band, evidently.

**If you want to read what a smarter person than me thinks about this, read what Ta-Nehesi Coates wrote about Brad Paisley, and the South here.
It’s what got me started thinking about this, and also what makes me want to get a Faulkner or Ida B Wells t-shirt. Definitely ordering my Harriet Tubman coffee mug, though.

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Care and Keeping of the Snark

Posted on March 15, 2013 by megancastellan

Someone asked me on Twitter yesterday what the virtue of snark was. I’m not sure what the basis of this question was–there’s been a great amount to snark at recently: the Oscars, the papal election, Lent Madness, and ever-present politics. And just to read Twitter or any Internet outlet is to immerse yourself in the waters of Snark.

But I’ve been pondering the role of snark as of late, and here’s what I’ve come up with. (Expanded greatly from 140 characters.)

Snark: (def) the art of mocking the powerful, the strong, the mighty, and Ideally, also any institution with power, of which you are associated, or a member.

Snark, like the Magnificat, can cast down the mighty and lift up the lowly. It is a way of calling to account something or some one which is acting hypocritically and out of step with its authentic self.

True snark, good snark, always comes from a place of love. Snark is not cynical. Because it’s tough to work up a head of steam to mock something you don’t care about.

And snark never punches down. To wit: people who practice good snark always either mock things they themselves do, or are, or things imbued with more power than they. (Herein lies the distinction between plain denigrating and snarking. And I do think there is a distinction.)

And I have this theory that the current prevalence of snarkiness comes from two places:

1. Snark is a filter. When you can make a joke about something, you are communicating that a.) you understand it on a deeper-than-superficial level and b.) you understand that the phenomenon cannot be taken just at face value.
This is why I agree with those (like genius smart-person Meredith Gould) who say that snark is a generational marker. For those of us who have grown up on the Information Superhighway, information overload is a way of life. You grow up in a world where you are plugged in to every event, every moment of every day. Not only does your phone tell you instantaneously every move Kim Kardashian makes, you also get to know what every news analyst thinks about said development. Brave New World, folks.
So to filter out what to take at face value, what to trust, and what you can’t trust (I.e., most things) snark has become a fall back. It’s a shibboleth, a password indicating that we recognize that we’re watching a performance, an agenda of some sort. So the primary targets of snark are those who somehow aren’t being authentic– the powerful of all stripes: celebrities, politicians, the news, poseurs….and in many cases, the Church. (We should work on this. Separate blog post.)
So for this reason, young people today are highly snarky. Not out of disrespect, but because it helps filter the world.

2. But also, snark creates intellectual distance. I said before that I don’t think snark is cynical, for the most part. Call me crazy (I’ll wait….) but snark actually forestalls cynicism. YES! It’s true.
I shall give an example:
This year, the Oscars made some confounding directorial decisions (hiring Seth McFarland to host was but one of their many missteps). At one point, Quentin Tarantino won an Oscar for Best Screenplay for “Django Unchained.” Which: awesome! I really liked that movie, and the script was brilliant. I could write a dozen treatises on race relations in that movie, and his use of soundtrack alone.
But they played him off to what song?

“Tara’s Theme,” from Gone with the Wind.

Jesus God.

Now, I could take to this here blog, and write a thesis on race relations in Hollywood, and the travesty behind the making of GWTW, and how it simultaneously was a step forward and like, 3 back for Black Hollywood, and how Hattie McDaniels wasn’t even allowed to attend the premiere, and she couldn’t even write her own Oscar acceptance speech, and how that movie came to crystalize EVERYTHING that we believe, falsely, the antebellum slavery experience to be, which is why, in part, movies like Django are so needed, and so controversial when they do come out, and really, did they REALLY want to dredge all of that up again and undermine his award with a song clip in a mere 30 seconds, and MAKE MY HEAD EXPLODE WITH IRONY?!?!.

But then, I’d sound like a ranting lunatic.
So I posted something VERY snarky on Twitter. (And man, did it ever get retweeted.)

You can’t fight all the battles, with a serious memo and letter to the editor. You cannot lead a marching protest every single time some company doesn’t live up to their promises. You can’t call out all the craziness, or the irony, or the hypocrisy, and it piles up and piles up, especially right now. You can’t. It will suck all the fire out of you, and you will end up rocking gently back and forth in the corner, singing “I’m a Little Teapot.”

In order to fight some of the battles, and fight them well, you have to learn to preserve your fire, and your drive, and to do that, you have to keep some distance. Make some jokes. Mock

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Because we can’t all be Coach K

Posted on January 27, 2013 by megancastellan

Lent will soon be upon us, and with it, the start of everyone’s favorite dip-into-hardcore-game-theory: Lent Madness!

Yes, it’s that magical time of year when we assemble brackets, make our picks, and then trash-talk our way through Holy Women, Holy Men: the Saints of the Episcopal Church (though, to be fair, some of us trash-talk that volume year round.  But then again, we are professionals.)
This year, Lent Madness promises to be more exciting than ever.
For one thing, NAU Canterbury is hosting our very own Lent Madness Pool of Greatness.*
That’s right.  For those of you who have been wondering how you can deepen your Lenten devotion while taking concrete action to better the world and extend your church’s ministry to young adults, I have made a way!
The way it works is simple:
–Fill out a bracket with your picks and send it to me by 11:59pm February 12 (Shrove Tuesday).  Sending a picture is fine, so long as it’s legible.
–Include a pledge with your bracket–some amount of money for every pick that you get wrong. (i.e. “For every pick I miss, I pledge 50 cents to NAU Canterbury”)
–Vote in Lent Madness, and follow along with your trusty bracket.
–When we get to Easter, I’ll compare brackets, and whoever gets the most picks right, will win the Award of Greatness.  (Which has yet to be determined, but will most likely be a mug.)
–Also, you send me the results of your pledge.
–Everyone can rest satisfied in the knowledge that they have made the world a better place through some light gambling on the Saints of God.  And who doesn’t want that?
The other thing that will make Lent Madness a thrill-a-minute roller coaster this year is that I have the honor of being a Celebrity Blogger.  So if you enjoy my writing on various and sundry topics here, imagine how much you will enjoy reading my biographies of saints!  And, better yet, the other Celebrity Bloggers are even better at this than I am, with more wit, sarcasm and knowledge than I could ever hope to achieve. There is even a running color commentary on YouTube this year.  (Because, let’s face it, color commentary is the best part of all sports programming.)
So no matter what, you should play along at http://www.lentmadness.org.  It promises to be fun, enlightening and redemptive of those of us who may not fully appreciate the glories of whatever-else-involves-brackets this time of the year.
*Title refers to this commercial from the 1990s.  I keep hoping this will happen now that I’m a Celebrity Blogger.  So far, no limos.
**This is like the Pit of Despair, only filled with Greatness instead.

 

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