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Camp is Wonderful; Church Signs are Terrible.

Posted on June 25, 2012 by megancastellan

I spent the past week at Chapel Rock, our diocesan camp, training counselors for the upcoming Children’s Camp.  This year, Children’s Camp is Narnia-themed, which means that our Canon for Children’s Ministries went whole-hog and built a WARDROBE over a door.  (Pictures in a future post, so campers won’t be spoiled.)

Suffice to say, I spent the day of the wardrobe’s construction running back and forth through it like a maniac.  People, it even had MOTHBALLS stuffed in the corners for authenticity of smell.  (Behind safely stapled black fabric.  Accidentally poisoning children isn’t Christian.) 

It was a fantastic week.  Bible study every day with counselors, in which we dream-cast a movie of the Prodigal Son (Father: Morgan Freeman, Elder Son: Christian Bale, Younger Son: Charlie Sheen), and composed time-shifted versions of the Resurrection accounts.  

Then, home I came, and to Sedona, I preached.  They got more or less the following sermon.  

 

Mark 4:35-41

When I was a kid in Pennsylvania, we lived behind a Southern Baptist church, with a church sign out front. Each week, my brother and I would wait anxiously to see what message they’d put on that sign.  Every week, it featured some pun, or saying. “God answers Knee mail.” or something about Jesus: “Jesus: he’s coming. Justice: its coming too.”. So basically– of puns and vague threats. A certain, specific type of evangelism.

The one I really remember said “Tears bring rainbows.”. And it appeared the week my mother had a mastectomy, and I decided I just hated that sign. Because it came to encapsulate all of the token phrases people repeated, over and over, like magic words: hoping they would have some effect in the world, but repeated so often that they lose their meaning. Those platitudes we say all the time, without thinking, almost, like charms. God will provide. It’s God’s plan. Have faith.

It’s the easiest thing in the world repeat these. And to say them to someone else.  To tell someone else to have faith! Trust in Jesus! But what on earth does that actually look like? In 2012, at the end of June, here, today, what, does that actually look like? Because repeated words are well and good, and sometimes very comforting, but oftentimes, we need a little bit more of a concrete reassurance than that.

So how do we have faith? How do we trust in God?

Like most behaviors, trust and faith are learned. When babies are born, they learn that someone, hopefully, will be there when they cry to hold them, and feed them, and change them, and stay up all night with them, becoming horribly sleep deprived…but in this way, hopefully, we begin to learn the concept of trust. It’s also how peek a boo works. I’m gone! But I’m coming back.

And also like most behaviors, faith and trust are tricky beasts to master. All the world does not operate like a game of peek-a-boo, and so many of us also learn that occasionally trust can be misplaced. And that hurts. And we get cautious.  We get careful.

Observe the disciples. They have been following Jesus around for a bit now. They’ve left house and family, their livelihoods, and their security behind. They’ve seen him preach, and heal, and cast out demons. They’ve witnessed the massive crowds that are following him.

They’ve seen a lot, they’ve heard a lot. The action in Mark’s gospel up until this point has been nonstop. This is the first break Jesus has had since his ministry started– he’s been followed pretty continually by large crowds, and now he gets in a boat for some peace and quiet, and a nice nap. The introverts among us can identify with this.

And through all of this, the disciples have been witnesses of how Jesus has acted towards them, and towards others.

But their first reaction, when the storm hits, is “Ack! Jesus! Why are you abandoning us to let us drown in a boat!!!!”. You don’t love us, we’re all going to die, ahhhhh!!!”

It’s definitely a human reaction, to be sure. It’s a reaction of sheer panic. To be in a storm in a boat at sea is not a pleasant experience. I can see how they thought they were going to die.

But what in the world had given them the idea that Jesus was going to just let them all drown? The same guy who had healed the sick, conquered demons, and saved Peter’s mother in law from death was now just going to sleep through their collective doom?

In this moment, fear trumped the faith that they had learned. Fear overrode what they knew to be true about Jesus. They knew who Jesus was– they knew that Jesus was not going to abandon them, and hadn’t abandoned them. They knew that Jesus didn’t do that, wasn’t going to do that. But fear is a primal force at times, and can speak pretty loudly, while faith is quieter.

It’s a challenge to keep listening to the quiet voice of faith, even in the midst of fear. It’s a lot easier sometimes to fall back into our patterns of cautious behavior. Easier to go back to believing that trust hurts, faith gets broken, and God acts like everyone else who’s ever hurt us.

 And so, when storms strike, we fall back. When disaster strikes, we revert. We accuse God of hurting us. What caused the earthquake, the hurricane, the wildfire? God must have been punishing someone’s wickedness. What caused the cancer? God must have been trying to teach a me a lesson. Why are we sitting in a boat in the middle of a storm? Jesus is trying to kill us.

 It’s easy to listen to fear, and to forget that none of that fits what we know about God. Certainly, none of that fits what we know about Jesus. The loving God who promises to be with us always, who stayed with the Israelites, even when they complained for 40 solid years, the healing Christ who made whole torn up and sick people. God doesn’t send disasters and sickness and death as punishment, or to teach us lessons. God doesn’t abandon what he has created. God doesn’t manipulate people like that. God suffers when we do–and has suffered with us, in the person of Jesus.

God doesn’t leave us. And will never leave us. Jesus is right in the boat with us, even when we are scared, and even when we panic, and cover our eyes with our hands. Jesus is still right there in the boat with us.

That’s what we know. That’s what we have faith in– a living, loving God-in-Christ. Even when we’re scared, and most especially then. Thomas Merton expressed it in this prayer:

Lord,I have no idea where I am going, 

I do not see the road ahead of me,

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

And that fact that I think

I am following Your will

Does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe

That the desire to please You

Does in fact please You.

And I hope I have that desire

In all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything

Apart from that desire to please You.

And I know that if I do this

You will lead me by the right road,

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust You always

Though I may seem to be lost

And in the shadow of death.

I will not fear,

For You are ever with me,

And You will never leave me

To make my journey alone.

Amen.

 

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In which I try not to have opinions, fail epically.

Posted on June 1, 2012 by megancastellan

I haven’t said anything on this blog about restructuring.

Partially because this is my first General Convention as a deputy, and while I am overflowing with many opinions, it’s one thing to talk about whether we should pass a resolution advocating an end to the Cuba embargo.  It’s another to come up with a plan to reconfigure the entire freakin’ Episcopal Church.
And also, there are times when I’d be happy to let someone else fix the church.  I understand that the young people will save us, the young people are our future, and we shall live off their blood and youth as do the vampires, etc. but there are times when that expectation (and reality) becomes a not-inconsiderable amount of pressure, and I’d just as soon let some Baby Boomers or GenXers deal with this one, ok?
I will sit this one out.  I will sit in the corner, pop some popcorn, and cheer on the players with half-paid attention while I knit.  Let me please, please, have the luxury of not getting all wound up about this one issue.  PLEASE.
But that happy thought collides unhappily with several realities:
1.) Who is going to be President of the House of Deputies after Bonnie Anderson retires?
     Because unless this is happening incredibly quietly, I’ve not seen a great crowd of nominees putting themselves forward.  Unsurprising, since this position is full-time, very demanding, comes with unending criticism, and is not paid.
     Thus, it requires, as several wise minds have already pointed out, a candidate who is either retired with a huge pension, or married to a wealthy and working spouse.  (Hi, class bias!  How ya doing!)
      In succeeding in making the PoHD a position with visibility and power on par with the PB, we have also succeeding in making it a position nearly no one can take.
This might be a problem.
2.) We can’t do this all again in 5-10 years.
Or at least, I really don’t want to do this again in 5 years.  And right now, it looks like that’s what will happen.
Right now, the restructuring plans that are on the table (the more complete ones) would make Rene Girard hold his head in agony.
Each one tends to scapegoat something different. We scapegoat the CCABs.  We scapegoat the House of Bishops.  Or the whole General Convention.  Or 815.  (It’s in New York City; ergo, it is evil, and must be killed with fire.)
But eliminating (or drastically scaling back) any one thing isn’t going to fix the problem.  The House of Bishops isn’t responsible for our humongous overhead, and diminishing and aging population.  Neither is our denominational headquarters either existing at all, or being located in New York City.
And I’m convinced that if we don’t do a full-scale restructuring now, if we just scapegoat something and don’t reconsider the basics of how we are church in the world,
we are going to have to do this again in 5-10 years, and it will go even worse then.  More anxiety in the system, more desperation, and more fear.
So, against that cheery thought, I propose the following:
None of these things are our problem by themselves: not HoB, not Convention, not 815, not CCABs.
Our problem right now, is that The Episcopal Church was set up to be first a government, and then a corporation, when in truth, we are meant to be neither.
The fact that in the 1950s and 1960s, denominations began to imitate corporations has been well-documented.  That part explains our plethora of committees and commissions, and our denominational headquarters in that nifty cement building on 2nd Ave. We expanded, like we were supposed to.  We got our CEO in the Presiding Bishop, gave them more oversight power, and held a lot of meetings so that we looked busy and important.  And it worked fantastically well, smack dab up until the point when “supposed to” didn’t cut it any more, and people started wandering off in the other direction.
But prior to that expansion, right back in the beginning, the lauded William White constructed this church’s governance system on that of the United States’.  Starting in 1789, we were a bicameral government, with the assent of both houses needed.  Laity and clergy included, the virtues of democracy upheld, …and bishops given special powers–just not too many.  A via media compromise in America.  The government of the baby Episcopal church paralleled the government of the baby United States, compromises and all.
It was Christendom and Constantine come to America: the Anglican church was still established in Connecticut (right up until the passage of the Bill of Rights).  The governance of the Episcopal Church was as it was to echo and reinforce the brand-new status quo.
It was the same thing we would do in the 1950s with corporations, only we were doing it here with the government.  William White essentially made a shadow version of the government, and The Episcopal Church became an Americanized version of the Anglican Church we’d just fought a revolution against.
The de jure establishment vanished, but in its place, came the de facto establishment.  For the next two centuries, the Church held on to wealth, power, and status, and commanded an outsized influence that always belied its actual numbers.  And so we could have a governance structure that operated like the political one, because that’s pretty much who we thought we were.  It’s who we acted like we were.  We were kings of the Heavenly Realm.  Congress and the President could take care of the Earthly Realm, they’d clearly consult with us from time to time, and everyone would get rendered unto him what was necessary.  (Women weren’t allowed to do anything yet, so everyone was definitely a king.)
But this is not a system that works any longer.  No part of it works.  And while we’ve discerned that we can’t act like a corporation any longer, neither can we act like the US Congress.  Aside from the fact that the US Congress currently acts like a crowd of angry, sleep-deprived toddlers high on birthday cake, we aren’t in charge of the realm anymore.  We aren’t sitting in smoky back rooms, sipping whisky, deciding how to run the world.
We aren’t in power.  We aren’t in charge.  Our job is not to do that.
Our job is to be a church.
I suggest that so far, in our history, we have not yet begun to do that.
How we might go about doing that is the next post.
Because, hey! It turns out I have opinions on this issue.
Darn it.

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Droids, trust, and a series of connected tubes

Posted on April 25, 2012 by megancastellan

So that will teach me to post something on this here blog, acting like I’m talking to imaginary people.  One of those people actually responded!

(The Interwebz!  A series of connected tubes that is ever amazing!)
If you didn’t read Sarah Dylan Breuer’s generous comment on the last post, please do.  She said so many things that I promised her I would have a long think, and then respond as best I could.  (I’m an introvert, so there’s only so much processing I can do in the moment.)
So here it goes:
First off, I see two major issues here, that are related, but not identical.  There is 1.) what’s in the budget, and there’s 2.) the budget process.  Both are not great, and while one could argue that the process led to the budget contents, I think that the issues are still essentially separate.
As far as #1 goes, the budget contents are now in the hands of PB&F, as per canon.  And while I still don’t think it’s a good idea to try to effect structural change through budget cuts, the people to talk to about budget contents are PB&F.
And for the record, I think that increasing staff, while decreasing program, is effectively that.  By all means, let’s get rid of our outdated bureaucracy, and let’s free up resources so that our networks can minister more effectively. That’s what I hear everyone saying.  I’m all on board.  But when I hear people saying things like “Slash the bureaucracy!” and then I see budgets released like this one, I begin to wonder if I am operating off of an entirely different definition of ‘mission’ and, in fact,  ‘bureaucracy’ as everyone else.  Aren’t we supposed to be funding more programming, less staff?  More doing, less overhead!  More action, less paperwork!  Stuff like that.
Instead of people sitting in cubicles in the Church Center, everyone’s now in favor of these ‘networks’ which function at the grassroots level and adapt quickly to local context and changing times.  Which is a good idea.
But the problem is, these networks don’t appear overnight.  They have to be built.  They don’t pop up out of the ground like daisies.  They take resources: time, energy, and, yes, money.
 So why not divert the money the budget is presently funneling towards increased staffing to block grants to fund and support these networks?  Fund and support groups working in the church in their various ministries; college chaplains, Christian educators, youth ministers, various specialized ministries.
This year, my local parish, the diocese, and the province all cut their budgets.  It’s not realistic to think that if the church wide budget gets cut as well, the deficit can be made up locally.  There is no leprechaun in my basement with gold.  (Alas….)
So that’s #1.
Part #2.  Process!
Ok, so the process didn’t work.  It was an Epic Fail.  And while I still wish we could understand exactly why, so we could make sure not to do that next time, it’s looking more and more like that isn’t going to happen at the moment.  We are still a people of hope, however, and my questions still stand.
But there’s this other thing that has become evident.
In the response from ExCoun, the PB and the President of the HoD on this, I’ve noticed something.  It seems like there’s an ongoing assumption that in this budget mess, trust in the leadership has been damaged.
I don’t think that assumption is wrong for everyone in the church.  However, that assumption is wrong for me, and I’m going to assert that it’s wrong for most others under 40 years old.
It’s not that any trust I had was damaged; it’s that I didn’t really trust institutional leadership to start with, and now I really don’t.
It’s possible this is generational.  Millennials and late-era GenXers were raised postWatergate, and post-Vietnam, and the one thing we learned was that institutions were filled with people who wanted nothing other than to sell us something: something to believe, to buy, to subscribe to.  They didn’t care about you or your welfare; they wanted your money.  They wanted to use you.  There was no era of innocence for us when everyone could pretend the government didn’t lie, Walter Cronkite knew all, and America was perfect.
So there is little more frightening than people, in groups, with power.  And while it seems that for my parents, at least, institutions, and institutional leadership carried with it some level of automatic trustworthiness; for me and my generation, it means the exact opposite.
And this doesn’t really carry emotional weight.  I, at least, don’t actively despise institutions, their leadership, and all they stand for.  (Which certainly makes my life in the ordained ministry much easier.)  On an individual level, the people involved in church leadership are pretty awesome.
But what it does mean is that on the trust scale, institutional leadership always starts from zero, not from any baseline “I trust the office and the process” level.
Trust needs to be built, and not assumed.
Frankly, this happens when you show all the cards.  If you want me to trust that you have my best interests at heart, then you need to let me in on your thinking.  Walk me through the process.  Explain to me how it works, and how it will affect me, and those around me.  Convince me that there is nothing up your sleeve, and that there is no way I will get tricked.
What will not work is if those in leadership just keep repeating “Trust us!”  This is not a Jedi mind trick; we are not stormtroopers, and we have seen this movie before.  (Hence our meta referencing of it.)  If the leadership does that, then my anxiety is just going to shoot through the roof, and I will become convinced that something bad is happening, otherwise, WHY WOULD YOU NOT TELL ME?! And then you’re left with an organization in fits.  No one wins.
My point is that along with fixing what actually went wrong with the budget process, there’s the larger issue of trust that’s now lurking in the background.  For many of us, that trust in our leaders wasn’t just damaged in this mess; it was pushed into the negative quadrant, and that needs to be considered.
So moving forward, how can we build that trust between the leadership and the wider church?  Not just assume it exists, but actually work to construct it?
Dare I suggest…Twitter?

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I got agency, you got agency, all God’s children got agency

Posted on March 26, 2012 by megancastellan

Or: Moral Agency!  It’s something for everyone

It’s possible that you’ve noticed in the news that there’s been a kerfuffle over contraception recently.  This was prompted by the Obama administration’s decison to ask all employers to provide birth control coverage as preventative care, and free of charge.
The Roman Catholic church hierachy has argued loudly that to require a church-affiliated organization to do this, even if they employ a workforce comprised of people who don’t share their religion, would infringe on the employer’s religious liberty.  So they protested mightily and have refused to comply.  For the first time in memory, the conference of bishops sent a pastoral letter to all parishes concerning this issue, and required it to be read in Sunday mass.  That’s how big a deal the bishops made this. (They didn’t send letters during the run up to Iraq I or II or SB 1070 in Arizona, by the way.  Just this. That seamless garment of life appears to be shrinking.)
Now, I’m going to set aside the question of religious freedom for the moment.  That’s another post.  What I’m concerned with is the theology around the status of women towards which this slouches.
The Roman teaching on birth control is straightforward– don’t use it.  Ta-da!  It’s been that way since Humanae Vitae in 1968.  It’s not a surprise to anyone at this point.
So what the bishops could have done in response to the HHS ruling is to turn to their employees and say, “Ok, female employees!  We would like to remind you to please not use birth control.  We are not fans.  We direct you to Humanae Vitae by Pope Paul VI which is a smashing good read, despite being long and in Church Latin. We’ve been talking to you about this for well night FIFTY YEARS, so you know?  You should have gotten the message by now, and there’s no reason, really, why this should be an issue for us.
You are, after all, humans with full moral agency, created in the image of God.
We trust you to make the right decision with God’s and our, continued guidance and help.  And if you don’t do what we are asking, well, y’all are grown-ups so we trust you have a good reason.”
This, they did not do.
Instead, there was a unilateral freak-out, giving the impression that women couldn’t be allowed anywhere near birth control because Good Lord, what would we do with it?!?  (Actually, in this instance, the runaway id that is Rush Limbaugh gave a pretty good idea of what some people thought would happen.  I’m still trying to scrub my brain.)
So here’s what we need to ascertain.  The dividing line seems to be this:
Women are either full humans, with moral agency, trusted to make moral decisions, or we aren’t.
In theological terms, to what extent are women created in the image of God?
The Genesis 1 account is clear, happily. (Ok, it’s clear-ish*.  But it’s the Bible, and I take wins where I can get them.)
Genesis 1:27 “And So God created humankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. “
Anyway.
It’s at the Fall, and the description thereof, where advocates of complementarianism start building their case.  It is in Genesis 3 that we have the text of God saying that the woman will lust after her husband, and he will rule over her.  But, first of all, everything about Genesis in this section points to this being a description of what already was.  Snakes were sneaky and to be avoided.  Childbirth was dangerous and painful.
But even if you made the text prescriptive, following this logic, these are consequences of sin.  They are bad things!  Do you want to continue to sin, and enshrine the consequences in your policy and practices? (Does that equally make epidurals evil?). That would continue the cycle of sin, and how is that good?
More important, I think, is the continuing biblical witness to God’s interaction and seeking out of women who seem to not lack agency in the least.
There’s Hagar, whom God saves in the desert, and is the first biblical character to give God a name.  Naming is an act of power, and even ownership, and Hagar does it.
Then there’s Rahab, who spies on her people for Joshua and the Israelites, Tamar, who figures out a way to get what is due her as the daughter-in-law from her reluctant father-in-law, even though it means seducing him as a prostitute.  There’s Judith, who murders an enemy general via a stake through the head.  There’s Esther, who hides her identity, becomes Queen of Persia, and orchestrates a small palace coup.
  This is not mentioning the Gospel women, who hung out with Jesus, and basically bankrolled him, cared for him, and kept calm and carried on when the male disciples had panicked and run away.  Mary, Jesus’s mother, Mary and Martha of Bethany, and Mary Magdalene were essential to Jesus’ mission and community.  Without Mary Magdalene, we possibly wouldn’t have our Resurrection accounts– in the Eastern church, she is called the Apostle to the Apostles.  (Possibly not coincidently, in the Western church, she’s still called a whore.)

Interestingly, these women all seemed to be able to decide what the right thing to do was.  They didn’t lack the ability to communicate with God. Thei
r sense of the holy wasn’t mediated through anyone else, and they weren’t silent servants of someone else’s plan. They worked in the world alongside God, just as fully participants in the larger scheme of things as anyone else.
But look. It comes down to this: either every human is a full participant, or no one is, and somehow the cross and Incarnation were ineffective in the complete redemption of the world.
Either the cross and the Incarnation were complete, or they weren’t.
And if I am somehow incompletely redeemed due to my gender, because I am still in need of extra mediation when it comes to my relationship with God, then this is a problem.  At the very least, it reflects poorly on God, that God should leave 51% of God’s humanity  incompletely redeemed, and in impaired communion with God.  (I’m Episcopalian; I know from impaired communion!)
When people quote those texts in Ephesians and Timothy which maintains that women should remain silent in church, but ask their husbands at home, because the husband is the head of the wife, as Christ is the head of the church, then what else does this describe but a sort of incomplete redemption, impaired communion, between us and God?
And this can’t be, if we believe the complete biblical witness, the witness of the communion of saints, and the promise of the Incarnation.
God redeems all of us.  God uses all of us.  God trusts all of us to work in God’s world.
And if we’d start trusting each other a bit more, then maybe we could get on with it already.
*I said it was clear-ish because the Hebrew translated ‘humankind’ here is a gender-neutral term for person.  It’s not plural, and it literally means ‘the mud guy’. The words for the people in the Garden don’t get gendered strictly speaking until after the Fall in Genesis 3.  Cool, right?

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Condemned to a life of funny shirts

Posted on May 18, 2011 by megancastellan

Last week, Womenspirit, a vestment and clergy apparel company, announced that they were releasing a new sort of clergy shirt for women.

The remarkable thing about this clergy shirt?
IT IS KNIT.  IT STRETCHES.  IT CONTAINS SPANDEX.
Behold!  I am doing a new thing, saith the Lord. 
Cue singing choirs of angels, cartwheeling seraphim, and flying cherubim.  
Women clergy everywhere gasped.   Could this be?  What we had been waiting for?  Praying for?
The long-expected shirt that would both denote our vocation and ministry, yet not make us look collectively like Laura Ingalls Wilder on a bad acid trip, or like someone with severe body dysmorphia who got dressed in the dark?
After all, we had waited over 30 years now.  30 long years of wearing polyester shirts left over from the men’s section of the catalog.  30 years of wearing shirts that were meant to be tucked in.  Because that’s a thing people still do, somewhere.  (In that place where lost socks and pens live, I think).  30 years of wearing shirts that have mutton-chop sleeves, and ruffled button plackets, and no bust darts, and no tailoring that would indicate the maker has any sort of rudimentary knowledge that women might, possibly, maybe, look different from men.
But we did it.  We sucked it up.  Because Lord knows, we fought hard to get ordained, and stay ordained, and the collar was a privilege, and on the list of things to complain about, the fact that we all looked like we were wearing unfortunate Hefty bags was low on the list, and rightly so.
But, now.  Now, it’s 2011.  Now the Episcopal Church has consecrated the Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson and the Rt. Rev. Mary Glasspool.  We have the Extremely Rt. Rev and Awesome ++KJS and we’ve been on the Daily Show several times.
Now can I get a shirt that fits, please?!?
This is not it.  
This, as one friend put it, looks like a barrel.  A pregnant barrel.  A pregnant barrel that is poorly-fitted.  AGAIN.
(and way too expensive.)
Why is this difficult?  Why?  It’s a shirt.  Shirts aren’t hard.  Wal-mart can pull off shirts, which indicates that literal small children can make them.  This shouldn’t be the hardest thing in the world, yet it seems to be.
Please, Manufactures of Clergywear.  You make vestments that look like safari wear, walking icons, and amazing modern art.  How hard is a shirt?!

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