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Behold, I am tweeting a new thing!

Posted on February 2, 2012 by megancastellan

As an elected deputy to General Convention 2012, I get to partake in an interesting exercise in in-box management known as the HoB/D listserv.  It’s an email listserv open to all deputies, bishops, and diocesan and Church Center staff (I think).

Thus, many, many people are on this email list.  Collectively, General Convention is the second-largest democratic body in the world.  (India’s parliament is no.1.  We’re no. 2.  T-shirts are on order.)
The conversations are great to read, but like many things in these here interwebz, people who read only, and do not post, greatly outnumber those who do post.  So most conversations get skewed pretty fast, in my opinion, towards the same few voices who protest.
This week, news broke into general consciousness that several people had been live-tweeting the recent Executive Council meeting.  This wasn’t news to those of us on Twitter.  But evidently, it’s news to people who aren’t on Twitter, and someone on Exec Council raised a (similarly public) objection.
So for the past two days now, a heated conversation has been flowing forth on the HoB/D listserv on the appropriateness of Twitter in meetings.
I should like to point out the following things:
1.) TWO DAYS.  This has been a conversation for TWO DAYS.  If the argument is that Twitter distracts from the business at hand, then I doubt you’re making that argument any more cogent by continuing to press it for TWO WHOLE DAYS.
Ahem.
 2.) I’m unclear on how tweeting reports of what’s happening is more distracting than taking private notes.  And I’m extremely hesitant to launch a blanket accusation of inattention against all committee secretaries.  Who would like to go there?  Line up, please.
But most importantly!
3.)  The argument I keep hearing repeated against Twitter as a source of information is that of bias.  Which is entirely true.  Twitter reports are biased.  It’s one person, or one group of people expressing their take on things.
Right.  And now I’d like to introduce you to Rupert Murdoch.
The thing is, this is not at all different from the New York Times, or the Wall Street Journal or the Washington Times or Fox News.  Or the biases involved in books out of Intervarsity Press or Zondervan. All media is biased.  There is no such thing as non-biased media.  (Just like there’s no such thing as a impartial narrator. The Great Gatsby should have taught us that.)
The difference is that with Twitter, as with the new social media, there’s a little picture beside the words, with the person’s name, so that you know exactly who’s perspective you’re getting.  And with one click, you can get as many different perspectives on the same topic as you want. Presto!  Instant variety, instant perspective shift–if you want it.
Of course, that means that no one person/thing has control over the flow of information.  Which can be tricky. Information flowing all over the place means that leaders have to justify themselves and their decisions, and explain things so convincingly that people consciously support them.  Power suddenly becomes diffuse.
It’s worth pointing out that it wasn’t until the development of Guttenberg’s printing press that the Vatican invented the imprimatur: an official blessing that allowed the book to be printed and read.  In 2010, imprimaturs started being applied to iPhone apps as well.
There are ways around this new, diffuse power structure we’re moving into.  But they aren’t good ways.  And they aren’t Episcopal ways.  One of our strengths has been our giant, colorfully democratic method of governance.  Now is not the time to sacrifice that.

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My God can evidently beat up your God

Posted on December 7, 2011 by megancastellan

This past week, the governor of Texas released a television ad which revealed some startling and disturbing news:  children can no longer celebrate Christmas openly.

I’m glad he informed me of this, as I was all set to proceed as normal with Advent 3 and Advent 4, before celebrating my merry little way into Christmas Eve and Christmas 1.  (Possibly I might go nuts and break loose with the Feast of the Holy Name.  Who knows?  I’m unpredictable!)  But thank God for you, Rick Perry!  Who knows what horrors might have befallen me had I proceeded?  Fire from the sky, locusts, plagues, mass chaos, cats befriending dogs, etc, etc.  (Also, suddenly my schedule just opened way up.  Drinks, anyone?)
Is it possible Rick Perry is the Grinch and I have failed to notice up til now?
(A more pressing question: please God, does this make Rick Santorum Max the dog?  Because that would explain so. very. much.)
It’s possible that this has escaped Rick Perry’s notice til now, but there do exist people who choose to either not celebrate Christmas, or to celebrate it differently than he does.  (The same goes for Easter, actually.  Also, Maundy Thursday.  Seriously, Newt Gingrich, anytime you want to spearhead a Catholic-politician movement to widen the federal recognition of such an important religious holiday as Maundy Thursday, bring it on.)
So people celebrate it differently.  Or don’t celebrate it.  And in the mind of Rick Perry, Bill O’Reilly, etc, this creates a war on Christmas.  This is puzzling.  Do holiday trees invalidate the birth of Christ?  Does saying ‘Season’s Greetings!” one too many times cancel out the Incarnation?
What sort of flimsy, wishy-washy Christmas is that?
Once God breaks into creation, God doesn’t drift back out again, like Casper the Highly-Suggestible-and-Holy Ghost.  You can’t take the Christ out of Christmas.
Christ is in this thing permanently.
Which, if you ask me, is sort of the whole point.

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“When we arrive, sons and daughters…”

Posted on November 10, 2011 by megancastellan

The ordained are no strangers to projection.

A colleague once commented that the reason Episcopal clergy wear white albs is to provide clearer screens for our projection-happy parishioners.
There are classes and groups in seminary where serious-looking professors and guides talk to you about how projection works, why it happens, and most importantly, how you can avoid buying into it.  “Don’t become everything they see in you,” these well-meaning sages urge. “That way lies madness.”
It is good advice.  If you want a quick trip to an identity crisis, try to buy into every single word someone says about you, after you’ve spoken publicly.  In my experience, roughly 80% of what is said (being conservative here) isn’t about you at all.  It’s whatever they associate with you, or what you said, or the shoes you wore, or a sound they heard, or how they woke up feeling that day.
In recent weeks, I’ve been listening with great attention to what has been said about ‘young people these days’ both inside and outside of the church.  Now, as I am a youngish person myself, I have always heard a lot of this sort of talk. (I’m unclear as to why.  Maybe people think we have a club?  That I can carry the good word back and reason with the rest of my people?)
I’ve kept a bit of a list in my head, through the years of the ways we are defined by others–right now, there’s been an uptick in ‘young people’ talk, both inside and outside of the church.  Tons more things have gone on that list.  Church officials have amped up the effort to explain who these young people are, and pretty much everyone in society wants to explain why these young people are currently out in the streets of every major city in the country/world, and seem disinclined to leave.
Don’t be shocked, but that list in my head is overwhelmingly negative.  Young people don’t like religion, and have no faith; we are inept at social relationships–bad at community and responsibility, but addicted to the internet and social media at alarming rates.  We’re uneducated, yet drowning in debt, (because we’re bad with money!)  We’re lazy, selfish, and immature, choosing to stay in a perpetual state of adolescence rather than get careers and move out/leave grad school/Americorps/Teach for America.  We’re perpetually trapped in a web of media, consumption, and shallowness from which we shall never escape, because we are too blissed out on cell phones and privilege to know any better.
See?  Negative list!  (Also, somewhat contradictory.  But no matter.)
I should point out that with the exception of some truly enraging articles in the Washington Post and Slate.com, the people who have made off-handed remarks along these lines to me, know me.  And they like me. (The gentleman who told me that people under 35 only understood retributive justice and physical violence, because our brains hadn’t fully developed, also made a point every week to tell me how inspiring he found my sermons.)  These aren’t thoughtless or mean people by any stretch.
It’s not that they look at me and think, “My God, there stands the most spoiled narcissist ever conceived on this planet, and someone should immediately deprive her of all technology post-haste, lest the problem get worse. WHY IS SHE SPEAKING?!”
(At least, I sincerely hope not.  Otherwise, I’m going to get a serious complex.)  For almost everyone I’ve interacted with, after a few minutes of talking, their images of ‘Young Person’ soon give way to the reality…partially.
Problematically, though, many people also hold onto their image of this mythical ‘Young Person” who dwells out in the ether.  So, despite the fact that they can know, standing in front of them!  many awesome, hard-working, intelligent, (and broke, and jobless, and overeducated-for-today’s-economy) young people, this perception remains.  And it’s not helpful.
Driving back from diocesan convention a few weeks ago, I asked my students to make a list of their own.  I asked the them to make a list of songs that would define their generation for themselves.  To explain to someone else, in your own way, what you care about.  Define yourself.  We’ve been trading songs on Spotify ever since.  The results are fascinating. (If y’all want, I can ask them for permission to post a list.)
The #occupy movement is giving rise to a lot of things: a serious widespread conversation about our economic structure, a reconsideration about the unchecked power of our financial sector, and a lot of people learning how to be megaphones.
But I hope that something else that it’s enabling is a way for our generation to define itself, for us to start that process of putting aside others’ projections of us and voicing our own definitions.
Baby Boomers, ya’ll had Vietnam and Civil Rights for this.  The Greatest Generation (and I remain unconvinced that you didn’t give yourselves that name, btw), had World War II.  In each case, there was a transition between events happening to you, and events you actively caused and defined.  (Full disclosure: I’m not sure where Generation X’s event was.  Want to jump in on this one?  Or did you have your own, and I’m unclear on it?)
While we participated and lived through Columbine, 9/11, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, those were events defined, and triggered by others.
That was someone else’s list we got handed.
Here’s hoping we’re now building our own list.

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One of these mornings, you’re going to rise up singing

Posted on November 1, 2011 by megancastellan
 I’ve been following with interest the various church-based reactions to the #OWS movement around the world.
      St. Paul’s Cathedral, London has been a weird, ongoing train wreck of a reaction.  From the outside, it looks like they thought the protest would go away soon, so they didn’t try to engage systematically.  They just sort of tolerated the protesters’  presence, until they didn’t anymore.
        It’s difficult to tell what caused the problem–tourists were getting upset?  (and see, that just makes everyone look bad–the cathedral charges tourists, and that’s a source of income.  So let’s hope it’s not that, shall we?)
     So then St. Paul’s decried the protest as a ‘health and safety hazard.’ And closed.  And asked them to leave.
     At which point, one of the canons of St. Paul’s said he would quit if the protesters were made to leave.  At which point, in jump the media.  And then the dean of St. Paul’s said he would resign, and the church would reopen, and no one had to leave, and didn’t everyone just feel dumb now, what with the quitting and stuff?  And also, the Bishop of London was getting involved, and now they were announcing a special task force!  For ethics and financial systems!  Because we should talk about these things, yes, but in y’know, organized ways, in rooms with proper tea, and biscuits and whatnot.  This task force was to be spearheaded by the Church of England and wouldn’t that please make the protesters happy, and couldn’t they please, maybe, go home now?
Unsurprisingly, they were less than impressed.
Today, news broke that after the dean resigned, the Chapter (vestry of a cathedral) met, and decided to immediately drop legal action against the protesters, and essentially slink quietly away, looking foolish.
This whole thing has been playing out in the media on both sides of the ocean for the past week or so,  and Episcopal Cafe has done a bang-up job of covering it here.
I’d also direct you to what has been going on in NYC and our homegrown Episcopal communities.  Trinity, Wall Street (aka: The Church that Owns Wall Street, in a Fairly Literal Manner) released a statement at the beginning of the Occupy movement.  It is here.  Since then….no drama.  No standoffs.  Members of their staff have participated in the protests, have held Eucharists for the marchers. Other NYC area Episcopal churches have done likewise.  Similar scenes have played out in Boston, Philadelphia,  other cities.
It strikes me that this difference of reaction mirrors, in large part, the divide in the church.
     On the one hand, we have the old traditions, and the institutional memory of being In Charge.  We represented the bastions of our civilization, that Is Not to Be Questioned.  We were content in the knowledge that we were in charge, we had the power, and we got to call the shots.  We got to decide who shared power with us, how decisions were made, and how discussions were held (in comfortable rooms, with tea, sherry and cookies, thank you very much.)  We got to decide who was in those rooms, and even what was allowed to be on the table for discussion.  The buck stopped with us.  And who was anyone else coming in from the outside to question our benevolence and our wisdom?  Seriously, how dare they?  (These people shall get no sherry.)
     On the other hand, we have been slowly coming to the realization that the power we had has left us, in many ways. We aren’t the numerical majority any more, we don’t  attempt to select the leaders of countries (unless you’re Pat Robertson, in which case, I have a LOT more to say to you).
So what we preach rings hollow unless it is backed up with action.  No one will listen to us unless we live out what we preach, individually and corporately.  And we can’t get away with preaching a Christ who ‘came to set the captives free, to preach good news to the poor’ while we try to hold on to our own power and wealth, and protect it at the expense of others.  People, generally, don’t buy that.
The good news is, however, that this frees us up to do amazing things.  Trinity gets to open their doors in an authentic way to be a meeting space for conversations about what an ethical economy.  They get to be a prophetic voice without worrying so much about what part of their entrenched support they will be losing.  If you let someone else uphold the status quo for a while, you get to do a lot more heavy lifting in ministry.
The status quo upholding gets really boring after a while.

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And one returned

Posted on October 18, 2011 by megancastellan

In the ordination vows, as all ordained folk know, there exists an infamous line: “you are to carry out all other duties that may be assigned to you from time to time.”  It’s in the Examination, during the Ordination of a Deacon, and, since ordination is an indelible mark, promises made here are boom!  Permanent!  It is an unassuming little promise, but as aged ordained folks will tell you, this is the promise where They Get You.  This is the promise that ends, five years later, with once-chipper-young ordinand fixing the plumbing in all 5 of the church’s bathrooms and wondering what on earth happened?

That’s the less-fun scenario.  That’s the story told by grizzled elders who, more than likely, did not go on CREDO retreats or pay attention in Fresh Start, so they did not take their most important Day Off.
The more-fun scenarios are ones like I’ve had:  improvising a funeral for a dearly-departed dead bird (RIP Davey).  Unpacking the theological significance of ‘Arrested Development’.  Being given a cat as a thank-you by a parish.
And the most rewarding of all: Periodically I get to be Official Church Presence at something.
This past week was Coming Out Week at NAU.  For the first time at NAU, the university also has an Office of GLBTQ Affairs to coordinate said week, and its activities.  (Give thanks, all readers.  Our president presumably saw a calendar, noticed it was 2011, and decided to Get somewhat With It.)  Two of my colleagues and I noticed this development with glee, and asked nicely if we could do something having to do with inclusive Christianity.  (For such a thing exists, don’t you know.)
The result was a brown-bag discussion this past Thursday, on churches that took an inclusive view of the GLBTQ community.  One of my colleagues had an emergency at the last minute, and couldn’t come, leaving me and my Lutheran colleague to hold down the fort.
I made cookies, and wore my collar, and heels.  (Because when you want to convince people that God does, in fact, love them, you should wear proof that someone thinks you capable to opine for God on occasion, and bring proof that someone loves them enough to bake them Diabetes in Disk-form.)
We expected that we’d get maybe 6 people.  We got over 20.  All talking, all engaged.  We talked for over an hour and a half.  Everything from “how do you approach that verse in Romans?”  to “how do you counteract the media image of Christians as Westboro Baptist?” It was an extremely thoughtful and earnest group of college students.
I didn’t say anything earth-shattering.  However, I did get to be the one to sit there in a collar, and say, “Hi!  I, as an Official Christian-type Person, would like to tell you that the church I represent does not believe that you are going to hell.  We believe strongly, in fact, that God loves you just as much as anyone else, and that happens to be quite a lot.  God actually created you just as you are, intentionally!   And if I am the first person to tell you this about God, then I’d sort of like to stomp on the former religious leaders in your life with the high-heeled shoes I have worn specifically for this purpose.”***
After it was over, and I was packing up the left over cookies, one girl stayed behind.  She came up to me and my Lutheran colleague and thanked us, “You’ve entirely changed my image of the church,” she said, “All I’ve heard before this was negativity and hate.  I didn’t think I would find a place that would accept me, but I heard something different today.  So I wanted to say thank you.”
Sometimes my job is complicated–budgets and funding sources and pastoral care issues and family systems theory.
Sometimes it is just simply awesome.
This was one of the simply awesome days.
***I DID NOT ACTUALLY SAY THESE THINGS.  I used other words.  And I did NOT threaten physical violence, to which I am opposed quite passionately.  PLEASE don’t actually stomp on people with high heels on.  I don’t advise it, no matter how whacked-out their theology may be.

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