Relationships

This op-ed by David Brooks is very interesting. I have often wondered about the balance between being an autonomous human being, and a deeply relational one at the same time. He looks at Conservative thinking from this angle, and I think hits the nail on the head...


The Social Animal

Autumn in Seminary

Some of you know that I applied last spring to go to seminary/divinity school for an MDiv degree. I was fairly ambivalent about it, but thought to give it a try. I was a bit relieved when I was not accepted, and decided that God must have other plans for me. I turned my sights away from seminary, and focused in on my work, my own heart and soul, and tried to stay open to any hint of a vocation.

Over the summer, as some areas of my life became clearer, I did indeed feel a sense of call developing...what I think might be a call to combine theology and psychology in addressing the suffering of others. This is not a call I would have chosen for myself, but a call that seemed to be emerging in spite of myself. With the encouragement of many others, I took a look around at local seminaries to see if I could take a class or two this autumn, and...long story short...right now I am enrolled at Seminary as a non-degree student and currently carrying a more-than-full-time course load.

How did this happen? As I sat on stage last Wednesday during the opening process for the school year, receiving the wisdom and blessing of the new President (a woman, hurray!), and looking around in wonder at my new class-mates, most of who had been planning to attend for the past 6 months at least, as opposed to my two-weeks notice, I felt a great deal of awe and not a little terror. I could only look up at the chapel ceiling and wonder if God had known all along what She was doing.

I hope God stills knows what God is doing, because I certainly do not.

That being said, it has been wonderful so far. I have never been in a community so devoted to thought and care of the deepest and most precious things of life. All are welcome, all are engaged, no belief treated cruelly, but few going unchallenged as well. It seems to be a place of strengthening and deepening, a place to ask questions, perhaps find answers, perhaps not, but always be supported in the process. I truly have no idea where this will lead, but it has been a blessing so far and I hope it will continue to be fruitful.

And as for this blog, I will try to use it to share with you all some of what I am learning, and a lot of what I am reading. And I'll try to remember to try some cookie recipes out now and again as well.....

I wish you all a wonderful autumn!

Vacation thoughts...

I'm down in Wilmington, North Carolina for a few days vacation before the autumn schedule starts up. This fall I will be taking classes at a local seminary, and I am quite excited as well as nervous about that. I also need to find a new job, so I anticipate I will be busy. All this to say, I'm enjoying my few days vacation by the beach and Wilmington is an unexpectedly lovely town. It's immensely historic, grand architecture abounds, it's filled with mansions, museums, tree-lined streets laden with fragrant flowers, dockside restaurants and shops. The Cape Fear river flows smoothly by on one side, while on the other the vast and wonderful expanses of the Atlantic ocean pound at the sand day and night.

Getting out of New York always does me more good than I realise. I noticed that down here, everyone (and I mean everyone) who passes you on the street says hello. Men hold doors open for women. People smile at you when you walk in a shop. No one is in a hurry. I don't usually think of myself as a New Yorker, but dressed in black and tapping my foot impatiently when the shop owners direction-giving turns into a half hour musing on the politics of North Carolina, I realise 'if the shoe fits'....

But I don't WANT to be a New Yorker in that sense. There are other things about New York that I love, but I don't love the edgy restlessness that seems to pervade my life and that of so many people I know. I don't love the hardness and entitlement that sometimes characterizes the suburbs. Mostly, what I don't love is a sense of constant fear and stress that shows in the set of the jaw and the way people snap at each other when they are out of sorts (which seems often). New Yorkers often seem to be surviving, which is very different than living.

I know there is no perfect place, but it just does my heart a world of good to be in a place where people seem glad to be where they are, to live where they live. If I had to use one word to describe the somewhat mixed spectrum of people I have conversed with since I got to North Carolina, I might use the word content. They seem to be happy with their lives--not in a fairy tale sort of way, but in a way that leaves room for great amounts of goodness and even pleasure, while also acknowledging the challenges they might face. It's lovely. It takes the wind out of my constantly fighting sails and leave me hanging in a sort of lovely, languid way.

Before I embark on a hectic fall, it is perhaps a gentle reminder (and gift) from God that life (and even theology?) is as much about being as it is about doing. Life isn't always a fight, although I recognize that it is so for far too many people on a daily basis. But healing can seep into the soul even when we are not struggling--perhaps even more when we cease to struggle. All the more reason, perhaps, to stay aware of the impact that rest,nourishment,peace and beauty can have--particularly beauty. The restorative power of beauty is always amazing to me, and I forget it far too often. But beauty often reminds us of God. In the beauty of the created world, we see God's affirmation, His 'yes' to creation, and we can find reconciliation to life in a world that is sometimes so brutal as to cause us to want to split from it altogether. But beauty extends a loving a hand to beckon us back. As a friend has written about in her book Saving Paradise (about which more later), it is a theology of redemptive beauty instead of redemptive suffering. Perhaps God desires to nourish and love us into wholeness and redemption, and the gift of beauty is one of His ways of reaching us with His extravagant love.

A little quote from Augustine comes to mind (taken from that same book):

"I said to all things that throng the gateway of the senses: 'Tell me of my God, since you are not He. Tell me something of Him.' And they cried out in a great voice: 'He made us.' My question was my gazing upon them, and their answer was their beauty."

Last Post for the Evening...

I enjoyed Andrew Sullivan's comments on this as well...check them out here.

On Second Thought...

Ok, so perhaps I was a bit hasty. I'm finding this really interesting--not least because I think Obama is giving some unexpected and interesting answers that I want to hear. I think what I overlooked in my emotional response to this being held in a church is the fact that so many policy issues have been faith-driven, ie stem cell research, so hearing the candidates' views on those issues, directly addressing the faith component, may be more necessary than I thought. Some questions are perhaps less necessary to current policy issues, but on balance, I think it's rather well done...plus, I keep forgetting that it's actually taking place in a church!

Saddleback Saturday

So tonight McCain and Obama will meet at Saddleback Church, where Pastor Rick Warren will moderate a two hour long session, and allegedly they will meet in the middle. Obama is scheduled to go first, and McCain apparently will not be able to hear his answers.

I'm not sure whether I'm more horrified or fascinated. Actually, I'm pretty sure I'm more horrified, although peversely I'll probably end up watching it--at least for as long as I can. This is blurring church and state lines a bit too close for comfort for me, and I'm suddenly reminded of a reversal of Constantine convoking the Council of Nicea in 325 in order to have the various Christian bishops arrive at an ecumenical consensus around the nature of the relationship of Jesus Christ to God. In that case a secular power summoned the religious authoritiy figures to decide 'once and for all' a matter of great religious import (and one which was causing divisions that were threatening the stability of the empire, as I understand it). Today a religious power figure invites (summons?) secular authority figures to answer questions--I don't dare to assume what they will be--but I imagine around faith and also around the increasingly voiced concerns of the 'evangelical' world--poverty, HIV/AIDS, war, the environment and torture among others.

Based on their responses to these questions, they will be evaluated by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of voters. Given that they have yet to meet in an official debate forum, and given the press around this event, this event could have the same impact a debate would have on the public, but it distresses me that this will be taking place in a church. Don't get me wrong, I suspect it will be an interesting discussion, but I wish it could take place in another setting, even if Pastor Rick Warren still were to moderate it. But to do it in the church subconsciously sets the church up as a forum, and authority, for examination of secular candidates, (who belong, by the way, to a country of immense religious pluralism), in a way that I can't help but feel is not part of the mission of the church originally founded by Christ.

At some level I appreciate the dialogue that Pastor Warren is attempting to start. But I also have my misgivings about the type of thinking around faith and politics that such an event may legitimize. Let's see what happens...

Staying Connected

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what it means to be connected. It's an interesting word--connection--used in lots of different ways. Often it means relationship, or a facet of a deep relationship, as in, "we had this amazing connection". Of course, in that context, it doesn't say much about the other aspects of the relationship such as commitment, integrity, or even health, as it can be all too easy to connect in unhealthy ways.

But connection is core to our lives. We connect through the internet, on the phone, across kitchen tables, through prayer, through compassion, through commerce, through policy and politics, through art and literature, and a million other ways small and large that show our lives to be inextricably connected. We connect through, and also to, the food we eat, the air we breath, the earth that sustains us, the animals around us. Love is, of course, a deep form of connection, but so, I would argue, is hate. We may not always be related well to each other, but still we are always connected.

If it is true, then, that we are connected, why do so many people feel so isolated so much of the time?

This is what I have been pondering.

The conclusion I have come to is that many of us, for many reasons, would rather not be connected. We would prefer to feel that we are entirely autonomous, fairly in control, and perhaps most of all, invulnerable. We would rather not be subject to the hurtful emotions others have surrounded us with, perhaps in our past, or even in our present. We distance ourselves from that which is overwhelming, internally or externally, and I suspect it is important that we do that. For a time at least. But sooner or later the price will become too high for this distance, and isolation is that price. It can be the painful emotional isolation of someone who has never known strong loving secure connection to anybody. It can be the--in my belief at least--spiritual isolation of someone who hoards and stores up resources for themselves so as to never know lack, turning a blind eye and deaf heart to the overwhelming cries of the starving. Maybe they never 'had enough' and now that fear drives them to shove away their connection to others who still struggle. It can be the physical isolation of those so scarred by violence that they dare not trust the world they live in, nor those with whom they share this world, and retreat behind a shell of bravado, recklessness or utter withdrawal.

I suppose what I am getting at is that it seems to me that isolation is the price we pay for wounded connection. Whatever coping mechanisms we need to employ to survive a traumatic situation, it seems that some kind of isolation is often--if not always--a side effect. It doesn't seem a fair price, as most people do not choose the situation that abused them. Abuse of connection, or even, if you will, of our basic created status of connectivity, happens in families, job situations, political situations and economic situations. It happens deliberately and inadvertently. But it's still an affront to, and abuse of, an underyling truth of connection. So I come to think that violating connection is a form of abuse. Denigrating another's intrinsic worth is emotional abuse, and violating their physical body is certainly physical abuse, and sadly we see these things all the time happening around us. We do at least name them as forms of abuse, because, in many cultures at least, we have (officially at least) come to accept that the individual has an inherent worth and certain inalienable rights.

But what about the inherent worth of the simple truth of our connection to others? Does that have inalienable rights?

I'm wondering if it would even be safe to say that most of the human-wrought ills in the world--and even some that seem natural--are a product of abused connection?

Which brings me to the faith aspect of these ponderings. If sin is that which separates us from God (meaning, that is the original usage of the word sin), then what we are once again talking about here is connection. We were connected to God, but then 'sin' got in the way and now--to the degree we live in sin (and no, I don't mean living with someone outside of marriage!)--to that degree we are separate--indeed isolated--from God.

So God is all about connection too, because it seems to me that much of the original theological language is talking about a relationship that mankind was created to have, not just a belief system. Beliefs are easier to maintain than connections are though. Less frightening too.

So, the big question for me is, how is our connection to God--our authentic connection--linked to our connection to others, and indeed our willingness to connect. And, if we believe that God created us, and that God is the author and object of deep connection and connectivity, that human beings--like it or not--live in a deeply connected world, does that endow 'connection' with a specific importance? If this is a 'truth', is it one we pay enough attention to?


PS Hope you all have been having a good summer (or winter)! It's good to be back! :)