Too busy to write. Well, yes and no. Writing, blogging, is a hobby that I’ve moved down the “do it” list for several months now. I can feel the angst beginning to well up. I’ve been away from it, but I’ve been doing my best to model “I want to, but I cannot right now.” Super busy does not equal, nor translate to successful or meaningful living. It just means busy. Sometimes it is of one’s own making, as I have been, and often because there are too many things one cannot say ‘not now,” though it was you, me, that made those commitments. Thus has been my pace of living. I’m not trying to be indespenseb
There are items for reflection right now and will be items for reflection during and after my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) has our General Assembly, next month. I will most likely reflect on some of the resolutions in this space. One, in particular, has been battered about for 15 years now. It has been the constant cuca burr as congregations, clergy, lay leaders, and denominational representatives try to determine how to remain at table with differing opinions about how persons are formed or created in God’s image. When you peal back the layers of exegesis and eisegesis, cultural arguments, and world views I think that becomes the question. Could God create a non-heterosexual being? Said another way, are homosexuals or transgendered persons created in God’s image too? Many base their answer to that question, and their image of God’s creativity, on ancient stories and understandings of the world not meant to provide such direction. Many cannot determine how to hold the biblical witness in juxtaposition with the science that has cured diseases once caused by God. Science and technology that has sent people to the moon orbiting our little slice of heaven. Science that today provides humanity with the ability to end all life, as we know it, but not end creation. Science and technology that can help us end hunger, poverty, and disease rather than be defined by ancient understandings of society and culture.
I don’t read the bible literally. The creation stories in the Christian bible describe a deity, a power, with the capability of creating by simply speaking something into being. How is it that a power beyond our understanding, a claim that all brands of Christendom affirm, can be limited in what it could create? If one believes that the deity, God, created everything, what one calls good and evil, then even what humanity calls “evil” has the residue of the deity. Are heterosexuals that discriminate against homosexuals claiming to have more of the imago dei, the residue of God, within them? This would certainly follow the pattern of what humans do to one another. This was certainly part of the argument when slaves, black people, were 2/3 rds a person. This is why I am puzzled that persons who have experienced and continue to experience real discrimination in our culture, African Americans, Hispanics, and Asian Americans, are the very persons with leaders in our denomination openly limiting the imago dei of God that was used, and still used to discriminate against their race in the human species.
The proof of diversity in creation and within the human species is powerful testimony, to use a religious word, about the creative power of the deity that I call God. Yes, there will be items for reflection as similar branches of Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Judaism continue to parse the image of God to reign over community rather than live peaceably within community. Does that analysis and commentary make me a humanists?
The Humanists Vocation
by David Brooks | The New York Times | June 20, 2013
Somewhere along the way, many people in the humanities lost faith in this uplifting mission. The humanities turned from an inward to an outward focus. They were less about the old notions of truth, beauty and goodness and more about political and social categories like race, class and gender. Liberal arts professors grew more moralistic when talking about politics but more tentative about private morality because they didn’t want to offend anybody.
It happened. My sister’s oldest is graduating from high school on schedule. It makes sense. They have been married 23 years and the oldest turned 18 back in January. My sister and brother-in-law are excited, as proud parents are supposed to be, and not talking about how weird it is to be old enough to have one of your children graduate from high school. Grandparents are in town for the graduation ceremony and the lunch to follow. It is an exciting time for my family because this is the first high school graduation. My younger sister has the two grandchildren.
My companion’s side of the family is also celebrating a high school graduation, but they’ve had that experience before. My companion is the youngest of three. Her oldest sister’s kids are all grown up and have children of their own. It’s her middle sister whose oldest has reached graduation day on schedule. In July we will take both these newly minted “adults” on a celebration trip with us to learn more about them and give them a taste of a bigger world than either have known in their hometowns. Yes, the internet can bring the world to your pocket or laptop, but it is not until you are out there that the diversity, richness, chaos, and challenges become actual. It is not until you are dealing with people and the routine of living that western American adulthood, with all its rights, privileges, and responsibilities, becomes real. Some leave the nest and some are encouraged to leave but don’t. Some stay in the nest and navigate how to be an adult under direct parental guidance, which if you are reading this and just turned 18 or about to, parenting does not cease just because you reached the age you can be drafted and vote. At best, parents learn a different way to listen and parent their new “adult” child. Your task it is to pick up a check, pay some rent, and help out without having to be asked to do so when you are at home. Your task it to get out of the house and not embarrass the family name nor your own future.
I was talking to my sister about the graduate, marriage, and our parents moving to the lake and I said what we were both thinking. “Has it already been that long?” And not meant to “pile on” to my experience of time, but two weeks ago I received an email announcing my 30th high school reunion. That prompted memories of faces, stories, and experiences and I wondered has it already been that long. Sure. I’ve been married 23 years, ordained 21 years, 4 years of divinity school, and 4 years of undergrad. I don’t think you can inventory life as something consumed, but the realization that it had been 30 years since I graduated from high school did spur a conversation with my companion. It is one we visit from time to time with our favorite music as the background, about the kind of kids we were, who we ran with, and what we did. We talk about our married life and review how it has been this long. Faces more than names can be drawn from the memory bank. Experiences, with some specifics, can be recalled from the archive of memories.
I cannot attend my reunion and even if I did there might be a dozen people, out of 700, in my class that I really knew. My family moved to Waco during Christmas break of my junior year in high school. I’m grateful to those that embraces a short, red-head, tennis player. Richfield class of 1983, I tip my hat to you. Those that knew me would probably be surprised by my 30 year story.
I am an ordained minister that serves in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). I was ordained into Christian ministry in 1991. I’ve served in congregations and now I represent the institutional Church and my denomination. In religious speak I am a “middle judicatory representative.” I have a love/hate relationship with the Church and Christianity. I’m comfortable with that relationship. I’m more than comfortable with it. I rely on it as a compass or barometer. I serve in a variety of ways, but my primary focus is program ministries and support of those that walk alongside kindergarden to 35 year olds.
I’m sharing my life with my companion of 23 years, Lisa, who is also an ordained minister. She has a PhD in Hebrew Bible and a Masters in World Religions. She teaches at a seminary. Someone once commented to me that, “You all live well.” I wasn’t sure how to take that since we are not wealthy, but I can tell you we’ve really lived.
I have a few close friends, great peers, and many colleagues.
I don’t know what many, or any, of you are doing, but I trust you found a way to make a difference in your community and in the lives of the “other.” We are the oldest end of GenX. Our culture has overlooked our leadership and skills for the “younger” generation. Maybe it is because we can operate in both the “boomer” world and the “tech savvy” world. We were latchkey kids. Some of us had the first 2 parent homes where both worked outside the home. We lived through Disco, embraced Pop music, Hair Bands, Metal, “Cross Over Artists,” survived “Christian” rock, and heard the roots of Rap and HipHop before they were given the designation. We can remember Nixon and Watergate. We know how politics has changed from governing to “reigning.” We can note how airplane travel has changed. We learned to type on typewriters and took the first computer programming classes. We’ve seen two space shuttles explode, three US wars on TV, hostages, Grenada, three stock market crashes and recessions, and the energy crisis. We can remember the first “ATM’s” and that credit cards were shunned or only for emergencies. We know when “cable TV” became the norm. We can remember when there was some stuff you could not buy on Sunday at the store and we can remember days before soccer, before youth sports were seen as a way to stay out of trouble or a way to get rich. We can remember a day before youth sports leagues took over family lives.
I think GenX may have been overlooked, forgotten, because as a generation we embrace the words on this t-shirt a bit too much. We often have significant questions that require real personal change and systemic change that push the boundaries of too much, too fast. It’s been 30 years since we walked at the convention center in Waco to grab a diploma and head out into life. I’ll borrow words of Kinky Friedman to close. “May the God of your choice bless you.”