Category Archives: Dealing with stuff

Stuff is still falling out of the blogosphere about Make Poverty History and the One Campaign and Live8.  I’m glad.  Sometimes theses events are pushed and then die rapidly.  We can’t afford to let the issues of poverty and injustice die. 

Jordon said in a recent entry:
“It’s sad, outside of Rick Warren and a couple of musicians, many high profile evangelicals were totally silent about the One campaign and Live 8 let on the same weekend, many were making noise about Sandra Day O’Conner’s resignation from the bench. It spoke loudly to me about our priorities.”

A site called Covenant Blogs was recently begun linking some of us bloggers of the Covenant sort.  We are not a big denomination but we have a big heart for justice and for poverty issues and so there is some good stuff going on.  It was encouraging to read this report.  And it was nice to make the acquaintance of Adam Philips and through him connect with another site concerned with justice issues within the Covenant Church, The Young Pietists.

I guess Covenant leaders are not usually counted among the high profile evangelical types.  That sounds like a good thing.  Especially if it lets them stay off the pedestal of political and religious self aggrandizement and spend time on the things God told us to pay attention to.

I was just surfing the net tonight while at work waiting for some stuff.  I was sort of sad to see so much criticism of the Make Poverty History effort.  I guess even criticism is an indication that people noticed the effort – which was one of the main goals anyway.  So perhaps the criticism is an indication of success of sorts. 

Someone, somewhere, in my surfing quoted another person who said the efforts towards eliminating the debt of third world countries will only be successful if the leaders of those countries take note and change their behaviour.  True enough.  But the person then went on to say that it is the western world that maybe should be considering changing our ways.  We need to change our lifestyles of excessive and increased consumption of the worlds resources.  We want more and more and we do not want to pay much for it.  We have become oppressors ourselves.  We overlook exploitation if it makes our lives more comfortable; if it produces stuff we “need”. 

We need to be reminded of the needs of the poor and oppressed in the world.  If the folks at Make Poverty History and Live8 made us stop and think for even a few minutes, we owe them thanks.  Lets not fall into our old complacency too quickly.  Lets stop criticizing the efforts of this group.  If they don’t please you, find another group fighting poverty that makes sense to you.  But please do something.

Why does God seem to throw these big challenges up in my face?  Sometimes I wish he would put choices before me that are more palatable.  But I know enough to know that some things are commands.  Like “love one another.”  “Do good to those that hate you.”   Jesus didn’t just mouth these words.  And I can’t and claim to follow him either.

So, has he done this – putting the mother of my daughter’s boyfriend in my care as a patient?  I know that I can carry on providing good treatment.  I don’t let whether I like my patients detrrmine how well I do their work.  And we did not have to carry on a conversation since she hardly speaks any English.  Thank God for that.  At least that is how I felt.  I was hoping she would not ask me anything about Grace – and she did not.  I don’t know what I would have said.  But she did say “thank-you” in a very warm and friendly way as she left.

Maybe I should claim a conflict of interest and ask my partner to care for her.  But she is a Muslim woman and he is a man.  I suspect this is the main reason I was chosen to provide care.  So passing off her care would not be kind or respectful and she has done me no harm really – not her.

It is very difficult to respond in love.  I know Jesus would not have shunned this woman.  So I know what I am expected to do.  But the feelings sure are not there.  I don’t know what I feel.  This woman who has come to Canada from the Sudan; to a land where the language and customs are foreign, where people must look at her strangely, covered from feet to head as she is.  I pity her more than I care about her.  I don’t want to learn to love her really.  But there she is in my face – or rather I am in hers, and will be for several more visits. 

What will become of us – bound together by a common grandchild and a strange doctor/patient relationship?  God – help!  I really don’t want to even think about it.  I did not choose this struggle and right now I don’t want to face it.  But… 

Mondays work out to be my best day to do some walking.  This evening was crisp and cool but with hardly any wind and, with a pair of gloves to keep my hands warm, it was perfect.  For some reason, there were hardly any other walkers out.  When I am alone, I keep myself company.  Sometimes I pray as I walk; sometimes I tell myself stories.  Tonight I did both. 

First of all, I was retelling myself the story of how Jesus fed the crowd of over 5000.  I was imagining how I might tell it to kids but by the end I was telling it to myself.

A young boy, no doubt fascinated by the words and actions of Jesus, must have wormed his way to the front of this crowd.  I’m sure if his mother had been around, she would have made him behave and maybe there would have been no great meal.  Anyway, he sees and probably hears the disciples talking over their dilemma about the hungry people.  I wonder what he felt.  I would guess that Jesus stirred within him a desire to help.  How silly to think that his little lunch would help.  But he boldly goes up to one of these big people and offers his little sac of lunch.  And I can just imagine his wonder as Jesus lifts it up and blesses it, then reaches in and continues to draw out of it more and more fish and bread – enough to feed everyone there.

I ended my walk realizing that Jesus wants to do the same for our resources as he did with this young boy’s lunch.  No matter how inconsequential our little sac of resources is, Jesus will do wonders with it.  We have to give him that little sac of talents and abilities or finances or whatever and he will bless it and continue to draw out of it till we are all astonished at what he has accomplished.

So I think we should, like little kids, sneak up to the front where we can see and hear Jesus really well.  I think if we sit up close and really listen we won’t be able to resist responding when he says he needs something that we have in our hands.

If we did that, I wonder what kind of miracles we would see him do?

LT has been bringing up the subject of women in leadership again so I will throw in my thinking on this subject too.  This will be a bit on the long side.  I appreciate LT’s post expounding on some of the scripture having to do with this whole controversy.  Because I am a woman, and because I have tried to understand what God’s will is for me, I will comment.

Women in leadership is an issue that interests me.  Our denomination has ordained women for years.  Still, some raise it as an issue almost 30 years later.  Our denomination in Canada has never called a female pastor. 

I never realized that, in some denominations, even women like myself, a deaconess, would be offensive to some fellow Christians. (And I have even taught, although I don’t think that is my calling)

My own denomination has a very high regard for scripture.  When there is an issue the question ”where is it written?” is always asked.  So this whole question has been well thought out and backed by scripture.  Two good articles I would refer you to are: http://www.covchurch.org/cov/ministry/bellevillepaper.pdf and http://www.covchurch.org/cov/ministry/calledgifted.pdf .  They are good resources and if this is a subject that interests you, I would encourage you to go and download these papers. 

Unlike most ancient religions, Jesus encouraged and allowed women to follow him.  He encouraged even disreputable women to interact with him.  Mark 15:40,41 and Luke 8:1-3 speak of the women who were disciples of Jesus and helped to finance his ministry.  Mary was encouraged and commended for her desire to sit at the feet of Jesus and learn rather than busy herself with the household chores that were expected of her by her sister.(Luke 10:38-42)  There are numerous other examples of the involvement of women. 

I guess the controversy arises mostly out of the Pauline letters.  I believe, as LT has shown, that Paul addresses specific problems that had arisen in the various churches.  The papers I refer to above also address these passages and certainly helped clarify them for me.   

Determining God’s will in this area is important to me.  I suspect that a sensitivity to where others are in their understanding of faith and a desire to comply with the will of God as revealed in scripture, keeps some women from choosing to explore the possibility of a calling to teach, prophesy and preach the Word.  It is a shame that the women who display many attributes desirable in a servant leader would deny their calls to be proclaimers of the gospel, because of harsh and dogmatic opinions of others in the body of believers.  In fact I think we rarely encourage young women to even consider that God may be calling them to ministry.  We encourage them to music and children’s ministries but rarely to consider that God may want to use them to instruct others.

I also believe that God still speaks to us through his Holy Spirit.  What is the cost to his church of causing a woman to turn a deaf ear to a call due to fear of criticism, or worse yet, due to a fear of displeasing the very God who called her.  Something is very distorted in the body when a part designed to function in one way has to pretend to not have that function.  Like asking a mouth to somehow function instead as arm.

This is not arguing on the basis that men and women are equal and therefore the same.  This is not claiming equality as a right.  This doesn’t even have anything really to do with the emerging church because my denomination is not defined as an emerging church as such.  This is allowing God’s gifts to be used by men and women alike.

Men and women are going to approach things from different viewpoints and work out different and unique leadership styles.  As women are encouraged to serve in leadership I believe we will see the various gifts God has bestowed on us demonstrated in a variety of expressions all working together to build up the body of Christ.

I am deleting some posts and editing a couple others.  I am not doing this because of being flamed in the comments.  I think I am guilty of crossing over into sensitive territory and in so doing I hurt my daughter.  She has always known about my blog but has never read it; has never had an interest in reading it.  But now she has.  We talked about it a long time tonight and she said don’t bother to delete them.  But I will-at least some.  The last thing I want to do is hurt her.  I guess I let the expression of my own pain take precedence over hers.  And I said things that, though honest expressions of how I felt, were critical of her. 

So, writing is one of the ways I deal with my pain, she knows that now.  But in dealing with mine, I have no right to cause pain to her.  So, if I write about her again, it will be with her knowledge and agreement, except to just mention more mundane stuff in passing.  She is OK with that.

And I guess that if you want to write to me about this and aren’t sure if the comment would be hurtful, there is a place to contact me on this page.  I will delete comments that I feel may be misread. 

Real Live Preacher has taken a vacation it seems.  But he has an article in The Christian Century that talks about protecting our personal space as part of the way we pretend in church.  He calls that Disneyland Christianity.  In contrast there is another kind of Christianity that calls for a radical intimate communion with Christ and our fellow believers.

On Wednesday night I kind of fell apart.  This is not like me.  I am strong, you know, keeping my emotions well under control.  But Wednesday night we were reading the chapter on love in Blue Like Jazz; the chapter where Donald Miller talks about coming to the realization that God loves us and how we need to accept this fact in order to love others and ourselves.  Anyway, I was asked about my experience showing love in cases where it is not returned.  My children have taught me much about this.  Wednesday had been a real bad day.  I could not shake the voices in my head that wanted to drag me down.  So being asked this question just kind of broke the dam, so to speak. 

Now, if I had kept on pretending that all was well, that I was handling the immediate problem of Grace’s pregnancy well, I would not have experienced the love of my friends that night.  Maybe falling apart was the best thing for me to do at the time.  It let me take the love they gave me that night and do some healing.  If I did not have friends around me, I would be one of the most lonely people right now.  I have survived loneliness through other family issues.  I do not ever want to go back to that self protective false front – not with my friends; not with my church.

It’s kind of crazy this kind of love that God offers us.  It is so free and so good.  There is so little benefit in hiding behind a false front of fake goodness and peace.  Letting my church (ie, my friends) help me carry my present burdens is letting them be extensions of God’s love to me. 

I hope I can do this for others in my turn.  I hope they can learn like me that real Christianity is radically intimate as God’s love flows through us to meet each others needs and the needs of our communities. 

Last night God showed up as a friend reached over and held me when I cried.  Yesterday the accusing voices were too much for me.  I needed to be reminded that God loves me.  So he did.

This morning I see God in the beauty of the sun rising in a clear sky, in the flight of the geese as they take off from the river, in the breeze moving the branches outside my window.  Like the promises of spring in the world around me, in the surety that it is coming, I am reminded of the constant presence of God. 

God stay close to me this day.  I need to hear your voice.  Silence the voices that want to drown you out.

This was part of my reading this morning.  I have been reading through the accounts of the events leading up to Easter in all the four gospels.  This last week – Holy Week – I am in the account recorded for us by John.

John 14:27 (NLT)
 I am leaving you with a gift–peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give isn’t like the peace the world gives. So don’t be troubled or afraid.

It came to mind that the peace the world gives and seeks – is the peace of a trouble free life.  Jesus stated this  to his friends just before he is betrayed and the whole chain of events that make up the last days before his death begins.  So this peace he speaks about is not freedom from a difficult life.  I think he is speaking about the fact that he left us his spirit – he did not leave us alone.  We are not abandoned to exist only in the physical world.  His peace transcends the circumstances we find ourselves in.

“So don’t be troubled or afraid.” 

This is not an easy kind of peace.  I am beginning to see it though.  And all I have to do is remember this one day at a time.  I don’t have to see the big picture or the end results of everything.  He’s walking with me through today.

So let the day begin.

Today was a difficult one for me emotionally.  I had no idea that I would wear my emotions so close to the surface.  I usually hide them – or rather, I would say, I am in control of them pretty well.  Today they kind of got in the way of everything.  It was even hard to play my recorder this morning during worship and usually music for me is a good reliever of those kinds of feelings. 

As I sat and talked with God before the service a friend joined me – a friend who understands exactly what I am going through.  I have gone through rough stuff with my kids before and it was an extremely lonely experience.  This onslaught of trouble is not finding me struggling on my own.  It will be tough but I will have company through this dark time.

It is painful to be the mother of a seventeen year old young woman being thrust by her choices into adulthood.