The Brave Space beyond Safe Space...

"What do you want me to do for you?" 

                                                    -Mark 10:51

I am not a miracle maker. Maybe there are ministers out there who can perform miracles but I am not one of them. If there is some way to go about life in a way that God will provide all one needs, plus more, I do not know it. I am not sure that if I knew such a path I would follow it myself, much less would I share it with those around me. I have never been convinced that miracles and worldly wealth have much long term use. Eventually the miracle or the opulence becomes the new mundane and new issues will come to the fore just as pressing, if not more so, then the old.

I can, however, help create space. I can help define the type of space I am in. I can work to transform the space around me into something dynamic. A space that is not only safe but brave... a space where people can take risks... a space where people do not fear answering the question "what do you want me to do for you?" in a full and honest way.

That is the real crux of today's Gospel in my mind... not that Jesus can be your personal miracle worker but that we can create a space where people can honestly name what their hearts long for before God. 

I do not think, however, that we do this naturally. Like the followers of Jesus this morning we have a propensity to silence individuals, and the questions and wants they carry, from unknown quarters. We like having a community of similar individuals, with like minded questions, like minded answers, and similar wants and needs. It makes our lives and patterns easy.

What we have to remember is that Jesus calls us not only to let those from unknown quarters come into our midst, with all their ideas, questions, and wants... but that we are to rejoice that such a one seeks to come into our midst. The key then, as Jesus' question "What do you want me to do for you?" represents, is that we do not then assume we know what that individual seeks, what their needs might be, and how best to answer them. We allow the individual to name those needs themselves.

Then, outside of a miracle, the real work starts. The work to honor that person as a valuable member of the group. The work to discern and understand the questions and ideas the person brings to the community. The work to answer the question "what do you want me to do for you?" as we open ourselves to the new awareness such questions bring. 

This does not mean that we can answer all the questions, it does not mean that every want can be, or should be, fulfilled... it does mean that people should not be afraid to name what they need from our communities... it does mean that we should not have standard answers that cannot put to a full and complete review... it does mean that we need to recognize that often it is the community that needs to be transformed and not the outsider.

This is what will take us beyond miracles and towards a transformative community that is brave and able to live into full fellowship with each other and the Holy Spirit because of our patterns of being not because of a need for like mindedness and one shot miracles.

Gussying Up a Corpse on St. Luke's Day...

Andrew is on the right... 

I remember when I thought Weekend at Bernie's was an amazing movie. I saw it a few years ago and realized that, in reality, my fandom was based primarily on my preadolescent crush on Andrew McCarthy. Still the absurd concept of gussying up a corpse, pretending it's alive, and fooling an island full of party goers has a certain macabre appeal to it. It is this awkward appeal I find myself required to take up as we enter into the feast of St. Luke's this year. I find my ability to crush on Andrew McCarthy, however, lacking for the task.

The Gospel Lesson I am called to proclaim today simply seems hollow:

Jesus unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written: 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor." And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing."  -Luke 4:16-21


Or, to clarify, the Gospel speaks as boldly and critically as it always has, but it rings through the halls of Christian history in an empty hollow manner. I am confronted not by story after story of populations finding freedom and healing at the hands of Christians seeking to spread this gospel but of Christians using the Gospel as a means to imprison and wound population after population over the past 2000 years.

I can only look at this text and see how we have systematically failed to enter into it as a faith. I can only look at this text and see how again and again we take it up more in the sense of keeping the illusion of Bernie alive and less in the sense of being in a relationship with a resurrected Jesus Christ. If Christianity is a farce, a lie some disciples made up about a resurrected god/man, the tellers of that lie are as likely to live out their lives amidst present history as they are to have been the initial twelve disciples.

Postcard Celebrating a Lynching in Duluth, MN

The reality is that if one looks at human history, takes into account the Doctrine of Discovery and its continued implication over the centuries since it was put forward... what we have is a Gospel of systematic imprisonment, wounding, and death. A Gospel that seeks not to bring about a year of jubilee where all systems of debt, indenture, and oppression are ended but a Gospel that seeks consistently to to privilege Christians and oppress and enslave, wound and kill, the non-Christian or the perceived dissident to Christian social and racial norms.

Centuries of such oppression, coinciding with physical and cultural genocide of the non-christian, followed by the break up of the Christian Empires and the faltering of Christendom throughout Western Countries have brought about negative responses to Christians, responses that do escalate to violence and the death of Christians. What must be noted, however, is that Christians started this cycle of violence. What must be noted, however, is that Christians are not the sole victims of this violence. What must be noted is that centuries of Christian violence have created a reality where minorities of every type, religious and other, are now being oppressed and martyred throughout the world.

This is the prison Christianity has created for itself, a prison of our own privilege whose walls are the gears grinding out a bloody cycle of violence. This is the addiction we have acquired as we pumped our veins with the drug of worldly power. This is the venereal disease disease we contracted raping the civilizations of the world.

There is a cure. The Gospel is as sure a cure as it ever has been, but it is a cure we continue to keep on the shelf. We have gone sick for so long that at points it is near impossible to see where healthy tissue begins and diseased tissue ends. Our call is to stop the cycle of violence, not seek to be at its top. Our call is to place aside worldly power, not to be addicted to holding it. Our call is to be chaste, not glut our passions in dominating other faiths and cultures.

So this St. Luke's day I wonder if we can do it... can we actually take ownership of how the prophesy recited by Christ from the scroll calls for ourselves to be laid low, calls for the healing of the wounds we have cut upon others, calls for the freeing of the very peoples we have imprisoned... or will the disease simply overtake us. Shall we continue to be a gussied up corpse carried about the party as we hope no one discovers the truth or shall we be the body of the resurrected Christ, with all the ramifications for our place and privilege in the world that implies.

I pray this St. Luke's Day that at its end Christian History will result to more than the plot of Weekend at Bernie's... because Andrew McCarthy is cute but not that cute. Its time to take off the tinted glasses and account for the fullness of the what we, christians, have done to the world... even if the glare hurts our eyes.

An Organic Prayerbook: A Millennial Response to A Greener Prayerbook

In the 48 hours since the publication of the Rev'd Mark Michael's A Greener Prayerbook I have had several conversations with millennial church members, lay and ordained, about the proposals held there in. There has been much overlap in our concerns, as well as a bit of eye rolling at each other, but the general feeling is one of trepidation. What is outlined by this piece is not a representation of where we want our church, and our prayerbook, to go.

What I want to suggest is an Organic Prayerbook, one that is based more on the model of Community Supported Agriculture and less on the model of a national super market chain. The important thing moving forward into the information age is not a matter of the content of the book itself but the method of its creation and the facility to which it can be transformed to meet local needs while remaining committed to a core set of standards.

One of the core things to realize is that I am not against the concepts presented in A Greener Prayerbook from existing within our church. I recognize that in some circumstances the traditional Creeds can do more harm than good in bringing a community towards Christ. I recognize that many communities long for Eucharistic Prayers that are connected into the rhythm of the natural order and speak from that critical place of revelation to the church. I recognize that inclusive language can be a dynamic healing resource in liturgy and is crucial for some communities to reach a healthier reality around sexism. I simply do not think that any of these points are universal realities for the church that need to be put forward in the positivistic way that is inherent to making them THE PRAYERBOOK.

Notably a good part of this is that I see these concepts speaking to the generations before mine, specifically to those over the age of 50, in a way they simply do not to me and my peers. The issue is that the creation of a new BCP is a process that will take roughly two decades, a time by which 70% of current clergy will be past the retirement age. The fear is that we will spend two decades creating a BCP as our new norm that speaks principally to a generation that will be quickly worshipping God in Truth not in part with us on earth. If we create a prayerbook that we expect to be using in 2050 it needs to be principally created by those who will still be around to worship in 2050.

Which is not to say that the types of prayers and liturgical concepts that those over 50 desire should not be made manifest as worship in our church. It simply means that we do not make them into a new BCP that sets the standard for worship. There are multiple ways for us to create liturgical alternatives to the BCP that are recognized as completely valid for general use in worship as well as others allowed for use with the Bishop's discretion. The current variety of Marriage liturgies in our church is one such example, the authorized alternative prayers in the Anglican Church of Canada and the Church of England is another.

We can create a recognized inclusive language worship book, building on that already done by the Order of St. Helena, without making it the BCP. We can create an entire creation centered worship book, based perhaps on those prepared by the Iona Community, without making it the BCP. In reality by simply vetting and approving Eucharistic Prayers already in use within the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion we can fulfill tomorrow the needs of many of our churches in regards to worship resources. Communities that desire to use these alternative worship resources can go through a similar process as those that currently use the Anglican Missal or the 1928 BCP. We can have a system of diversity, on both ends of the spectrum, without making any change to the BCP itself and we can have it within a matter of years.

What we do need, and which Rev'd Michael points out, is a grass roots process of creating and forming liturgies that work for a parish or a region that can be offered up to the whole church. We need to make all the liturgical innovations we are doing across our church open source and create an online clearing house for all those possibilities. We need the most liked of those resources to be considered by the Standing Committee on Liturgy and Music to be made into official alternatives, like those found in Enriching our Worship. The result of this will not be a new standard BCP but a rich collection of reviewed liturgical art to which the church has access.

In doing this we are reverting to the general nature of liturgical texts and local custom that existed before the printing press and the mass standardization of the mass across each denomination and region of Europe. This is what our modern information age lends itself towards and what the Church needs to take up if it is going to be relevant for the age of electronic information. Seeking one last stand within the idiom of an information age all but gone, that of the printed book, simply is not going to help the Church. Let us move forward with clear standards for liturgical art and expectations so that we know what such must look like for general authorized use, what that must look like for alternative use under special permission, and what that looks like for communities actively engaged in liturgical experimentation... such a system will serve us so much more in the decades to come than a new Prayerbook, that however so beautiful, will be a limited cultural idiom almost as soon as it is printed.

An honest church is an out church...

Thou Shall Not Bear False Witness...

At the end of the day coming out is simply living into the commandment to not bear false witness. For a member of the LGBTQ+ community to not be out is for them to consistently bear a false witness to the world. For a society to request LGBTQ+ individuals to not express the truth about who they are is to ask them to consistently lie to the world at large. Perhaps one of the greatest sins churches continue to perpetuate is the request it gives to many of its members to commit to a life of daily breaking one of the ten commandments.

The need for Christian community to be based on honesty is why every at the ECM at UofA we have made Coming Out Day a commemoration in our worship cycle. Tonight as we gather we will leave the normal liturgical cycle of prayers and readings for ones we have put together ourselves...

Coming Out Day Propers:

Collect: God, who made us for Yourself, to show Your goodness in us: awaken the life-giving power of your holy nature within us; bring us to a true and living faith in You, make us hunger and thirst for the birth of Christ’s spirit in our souls, so that all that is within us, every inward thought and outward deed, may be turned toward you and your heavenly working in our persons. Amen

Revelation 7:13-17, Psalm 116, Luke 12:2-12

This is not a day that is all about being queer... this is a day that is all about being honest... this is a day when we learn from the queer community what it means to be honest and to no longer live a life as a community, as a church, based on a fabrication of lies and half truths. This is a day when we stop feeling comfortable with the truths we tell ourselves about the other and ourselves and when we allow ourselves to start being transformed by truth.

The persistent issue, throughout history and to this day, is that the church presumes to know the truth of its members. It presumes to know where the spirit is calling them, it presumes to know what the proclamation of Christ Crucified from them will look like, it presumes it can organize and engineer a structure that will serve all equally well... This presumption that the paths of discernment and the reality of proclamations is already known is a consistent sin against the Holy Spirit and a consistent act of abuse to many within our midst.

This is not an admonition just to "other" Christian groups. It is one that we confront in the Episcopal Church, even in the midst of our parishes and organizations striving to be the most welcoming and affirming of the LGBTQ+ community and other historic outsiders as they can.

For over three years we have stated that our discernment process is open to the Transgender Community, but we do not have a single transgender priest in a full time paid position in the church and we are yet to ordain a transgender female to the priesthood. In many parishes and diocese we have been blessing, and are now marrying, the relationships of same gender couples but those very parishes often struggle to create a space for members of the queer community who do not conform to expectations around how to form families and live "normal" lives. Within the LGBTQ+ community of the Episcopal Church there is growing issues of all voices being heard and respected, as some individuals are rejected by historic LGBTQ+ organizations for not conforming to expectations around theology, liturgical practice, and activism.

So now, as much as ever, having a day where we call ourselves to honesty about what is happening in our community, in our church, around LGBTQ+ issues and all others is of utmost importance. The need for each individual to be able to state the truth of the reality of who they are, who they recognize God has made them, and where they feel God is calling them is ever pressing and will not ever go away. It is a consistent point of discernment that, if we enter into it, will ever call us into transformation from where we are to where the Spirit is calling us. 

Our relationships are faulty...

Some Pharisees came, and to test Jesus they asked, "Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?" He answered them, "What did Moses command you?" They said, "Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her." But Jesus said to them, "Because of your hardness of heart he wrote this commandment for you. But from the beginning of creation, 'God made them male and female.' 'For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.' So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate." Then in the house the disciples asked him again about this matter. He said to them "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery."  -Mark 10:2-14

I think we need to be honest... our relationships are universally faulty. That is why we can are so captivated by stories be they comedies, dramas, or tragedies... because there are faults and failings that permeate our relationships with each other. The problem is that while we can recognize in art the faults inherent to our relationships we seem to be unable to do so when it comes to our day to day lives.

As a rule our attempts at relationships are incomplete. We do not become irrevocably "one"with a person to a state of fullness, completeness, and wholeness. But we maintain these expectations regardless of how problematic they are. We maintain them even though, on account of their impossibility, they create a system where happiness and peace of mind are impossible to find. When it comes to creating relationships without faults, without comedy, drama, and tragedy... we are going to fail.

Expectations are Important!

Fail is a strong word. I think that overall we do not want to speak of our relationships with individuals as failing. In a lot of cases even mentioning the possibility will get people in a tizzy. We want to be that which can provide all and everything for another person, complete them, bring them into the fullness of who they are, leave them with no emptiness or concern. We want to be God... but we are not God. So our relationships are, in the end, faulty.

This is a difficult truth to recognize. We want to be the perfect friend, spouse, parent, child. We want to live into these amazing standards that if we could just get right then life would be golden. We do not want to read a statement that says we fail to contribute everything another person needs in the midst of our relationship with them. We confuse the statement, we cannot be another persons all and all, with the statement, we are not giving our all.

Let us say that I honestly commit my all to a relationship, every fibre of my being committed to another person... I am still not going to be able to provide everything they need. It is just not going to happen and that is a reality for each and everyone of us. The reality is that to complete disregard everything but the needs of another individual is not a healthy place for any of us to be in. The reality is that to expect someone else to enter into that space for ourselves or another is to put forward a set of expectations that is abusive.

Hardness of Heart does not build relationships.

When Jesus speaks of the hardness of heart held by husbands towards their wives, and do note that the chastisement is only directed towards husbands, it is my belief that what he was speaking to was the propensity of husbands to make themselves like unto God. He was speaking to their propensity to expect wives to utterly disregard their own needs and sacrifice their very beings in an attempt to provide everything for them. When wives failed to live into these inherently abusive expectations then husbands could discard them. This type of thing will no longer stand... it is not the purpose of the relationships we are called to have with one another.

What the pharisees are talking about is a system of relationships where men are served by women, where men can cast out women when the needs of the man are not met, and where women are basically powerless. What Jesus is talking about is a system where distinct individuals were created and are joined as one equal mutuality, where needs are held in common and provision of them flows from God, and where the abuse and discarding of either party by the other is an offense against God.

We were not created to be alone, we were not created to be as gods lording over each other and forcing others into self sacrifice, we were created to live in mutual relationships that seek provision from God. This is a truth that should permeate itself through every relationship matrix in our live and for which our calls to be spouses should be Icons.

Over the past centuries this and other parts of scripture have been abused as calls to create a hierarchy of privilege with straight males staying at the pinnacle and all others in subservience to them. This has had continual impact on the lives of women and members of the LGBTQ+ community who are asked to either meet the expectations of straight men or be cast aside. In reality what Jesus is doing here is not laying down a new prescription about marriage but requiring the pharisees to interpret their understanding of the laws about divorce in the context of the summary of the law, thou shall love the lord thy God with all they heart, with all thy mind, with all thy soul, and thou shall love thy neighbor as thyself.

Our relationships are going to be faulty. They will not fulfill all our needs. They will be outside of the false expectations society presents for them. As Christians we have to recognize that is ok and that these expectations are not our expectations. The expectations for our relationships is that they are seeking to be done in the midst of love for God, love for ourselves, and love for others and bringing others to do the same. When we require expectations in our relationships beyond this we are hardening our hearts. When we recognize that living into the summary of the law is a life long journey of understanding for all involved, not a static set of laws and expectations, something that we and those around us are going to fail as we go about it... then and only then can we begin to take it up in truth. Then, and only then, can we embrace the faults, the comedy, the drama, the tragedy... not as points of failure but points of success.

Student Debt for Episcopal Ministers

This project began as a conversation around student debt between fellow clergy at a retreat. What I became aware of was that we had little or no context for our situation and that for many of us breaching the topic was problematic. As I drove home I asked myself if there was a simple mechanism for placing our conversation into some context. The answer that came to me was a roll out survey on Facebook.

A roll out survey would not give us a clear picture of actual statistics around student debt for Episcopal clergy; such would take, at the least, a randomized survey. All it can do is provide us with some dots on a map and some very initial information. My hope would be that it would provide enough information to encourage fuller, and more systematic, study.

In forming the survey I kept several thoughts in mind. I wanted to insure it would provide context for those who took part in the initial conversation, all of whom were clergy between the ages of 20 and 50, a group that overall makes up roughly 30% of our current clergy. I wanted it to be able to differentiate on issues of gender, race, LGBTQ+, and ordination status. I wanted it to take about a minute to fill out.

Outside of demographic questions the survey only sought three points of information. The total amount of student loan debt an individual had upon graduating seminary, regardless of source; the amount of one’s income currently going to pay off student debt; and the number of years post seminary it would take an individual to pay off their student debt at the minimum rate required by the lender.

The survey was exceptionally well received and within four days exceeded the amount of entries I was able to freely view by the survey host, 150. Of these responses 121 provided useable data for the study. Others expressed situations outside the studies expectations such as loans being in deferment on account of PhD studies, inheritance or other means had been used to rapidly pay off loans, or filing for bankruptcy. A handful of responses were incomplete.

Recognizing the limited number of responses I would be able to view, the hope to give context to what is a minority population of our clergy, and the nature of roll out surveys, I requested that only clergy under the age of fifty respond. The reality of student loan debt on clergy over the age of fifty soon overwhelmed that request and it became apparent that individuals over the age of fifty were filling out the survey and responding as individuals between the age of forty-five and fifty. This makes the data I report on minsters over the age of forty-five less contextual than that of the other age brackets

Before presenting the information I want to again note that this data is not representative. It provides us some context to what is going on in regards to student loan debt for ministers in the Episcopal Church. Actual objective and representative data will take more research than one individual using a free survey service and promoting it solely through Facebook. My hope is that presenting this information will be a catalyst for that needed further research.

The first column shows the various demographics. The second column the percent of that demographic with student debt. The other columns deal just with those individuals with debt, marking average debt, the range of debt in that demographic, the average percent of income going towards paying off that debt, and the average number of years post seminary it would take to pay off that debt at the minimum rates.

	Participants	% with debt	Average Debt	Debt Range	Average Percent Income	Average Years
All	121	72.00%	$61,101.21	$5-296K	13.45%	24
Under 45	96	72.00%	$66,465.58	$8-296K	13.48%	24
Over 45	25	76.00%	$55,736.84	$5-125K	13.42%	24
Male	56	70.00%	$64,505.71	$6-296K	13.71%	25
Female	65	82.00%	$63,913.68	$5-157K	13.30%	23
LGBTQ+	23	83.00%	$59,421.05	$6-120K	12.63%	24
P of C	7	88.00%	$51,616.67	$30-95K	17.50%	22
Lay	13	77.00%	$96,800.00	$35-157K	15.00%	30
Ordained	108	72.00%	$59,963.14	$5-296K	13.27%	23
20-25	1	0.00%	$0.00	0K	0.00%	0
26-30	14	57.00%	$63,125.00	$20-125K	15.00%	19
31-35	35	69.00%	$70,986.96	$18-100K	13.26%	25
36-40	31	77.00%	$69,978.26	$8-296K	14.35%	24
41-45	15	93.00%	$52,780.36	$24-120k	11.79%	23

I must stress, again, how these numbers are not representative of the church. The demographic numbers themselves show this to be true. All they provide is some context for various demographics. Taking into account the nature of a roll out study, and the varying sizes of the various demographics, no demographic has an exceptionally different context.

The context of ministers under thirty appears to be better overall than those over thirty. How much of this is on account of better funding possibilities, versus a hesitancy of younger individuals with student debt to enter into or get through discernment is unknown. It also appears that the contexts of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ community are slightly more problematic than the overall average context discovered. Again what is causing this reality, and how the church is or is not contributing to it, is unknown.

Overall these numbers present more questions than they do answers. The goal of the project was not to gain answers but to get a better context from which to answer questions. To that end I hope it brings about better and more robust research so that we can understand what is obviously an issue for the majority of Episcopal Clergy.