Spiritual Grammar

Here's an entry I did as guest blogger for the NNPCW... Check out Kelsey's writing on www.networknotes.blogspot.com. I'm so proud of my former roommate!

Boker tov, Achiot! Greetings, my sisters!

My name is Amy, I’m in my first year at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and Kelsey has asked me to be your guest blogger this fine afternoon. Like you all, I just finished my last final this morning, a grueling Hebrew exam. I tell you, there’s nothing worse for a student than the sensation that your mind has suddenly liquidated and gone pouring out your ears the afternoon before the end of the semester. However, learning Hebrew has been exciting for me; I love being able to read the Bible in its original language (even though it can be a struggle), and doing so has brought a greater depth to my own spirituality.

In fact, a few weeks ago, I was writing a paper for my introductory theology course on the nature of the Trinity. Defining God in five pages is truly a hefty task. I was struggling with our traditional imagery of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which we use to define the different ways we see God working. When we describe God with "person" words, those image we have of God project upon God a concreteness and finiteness that isn’t there. They build false separations between the work of the three parts, and create doubts among ourselves and those we dialogue with about whether or not we worship one God, or three. I was struggling to find a way to express the truth of the Trinity without building up those false divisions that can hinder our own understanding.

I went back and examined the call of Moses in Exodus 3:14. When Moses challenges God to define Godself, in order that Moses can respond to those who challenge the nature of the Divine in Moses’s work, God states "I will be what I will be." The God in the burning bush is a God who is defined by becoming and doing and acting in a variety of ways, rather than in anything tactile and concrete. In this verse, God is a verb rather than a noun.

Now, many of you will check your Bibles and say.... "My version says "I Am Who I Am. Why, here, God seems to be a person, a thing you can touch..." My friends, this is where the wonder and horrors of language of take place. Interpretation has played substantial role about God, and has created some limits. In the Hebrew language, there is no present tense, rather only completed actions and incompleted actions. Completed actions are usually translated as past tense, and incompleted actions as future tense. Grammatically, it is impossible in Hebrew to say "I Am Who I Am" for these very reasons. We began to interpret it that way because when Exodus was translated into Greek for the Septuagint, they translated, and in the same action transformed, the verse to the present tense. The Vulgate, the first major European translation of the Bible, used the Septuagint as its model, and so the language of "I am" has continued throughout our tradition, despite its grammatical impossibility in the original language. Indeed, "I will be what I will be" is a more accurate interpretation of that truth that resonated throughout the desert where Moses was exiled.

When I discovered that God refers to Godself as verb, it was if my entire understanding of what God does had been illuminated. As I delved into this new and sudden revelation, and discussed its implications with my classmates, I realized that this understanding had been on nearly every page of the Old Testament, and I had been unable comprehend it because I was limited by language. Where is it, you ask? Why, it is in the very name of God! As some of you may know, the Hebrews had such respect and reverence for the name of God that they were not allowed to speak it. Therefore, whenever the Holy name is written in Old Testament manuscripts, the scribes replace the vowels for the name of God with the vowels for the different words people substitute for it when speaking about God, such as "Adonai," or "Elohim." The only part that has survived of the divined name are the consonants - YHWH. These consonants manifested the third person singular incompeted form of a verb that we have not defined. Indeed, God’s name essentially says "He will do the God thing." Once again, God is defined as verb, as action, as what God does.

That frees us as well to talk about what God does rather than what God is when we talk about the Trinity. When we refer to God as "Father," we are really saying that God acts like a father rather than actually being a father. And there are three patterns of Gods work that we can see in our lives. However, we need to remember that when we talk about those patterns, they are just that, patterns and actions that God takes. Creating God, Redeeming God, and Sustaining God are all examples of actions take by the one loving and true spirit that we all worship and serve.

Mizpah,

Amy

"I heard the bells on Christmas Day
Their old familiar carols play.
And wild and sweet the words repeat
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

I thought how as the day had come
The belfries of all Christendom
Had roll'd along th' unbroken song
Of Peace on earth, good will to men.

And in despair, I bow'd my head:
"There is no peace on earth," I said,
"For hate is strong and mocks the song,
Of Peace on earth, good will to men."

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep;
"God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
The wrong shall fail, the right prevail,
With Peace on earth, good will to men."

By Henry Longfellow


Advent is a time of anticipation. We wait and long for a new birth. We know that hope is on the horizon; that we will soon be transformed in a manner which we cannot currently comprehend. And yet, we are now at our darkest. Without Christmas, December becomes a time of defeat as the bitter cold and the dark remind us of our own pending deaths. Yet it is now that we choose to celebrate with wonder and awe the glorious appearing we experienced once from a humble stranger, and long to see again.
For those of us in the peace community, anxiety and anticipation has been heightened. Two weeks ago, on the first Sunday of Advent, four members of Christian Peacemaker Teams were abducted while working in Iraq for that same transformation we await with longing hearts. These four men left their homes in New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and England in order to make real the vision given to us by Jesus Christ of a world of peace and justice.
Yet, their presence was misinterpreted and they were seen as a threat by those who did not understand their real meaning. And so, these four men were taken captive by an Iraqi vigilante group named "Swords of Righteousness." Yesterday was the deadline given by these insurgents; if an agreement was not come to about the release of Iraqi prisoners, the Peacemakers would be executed. News of their fate has not been broadcast; we long to know that these men of true righteousness will be set free by their captors and given the ability to continue their witness to the message of love they have lived out.
The CPT members went to Iraq, knowing the threat to their own lives, in order to live among and minister to the villagers with their presence. They went to bear witness to the brutality and speak out against it. They went to work with all of us, in order to change our structural, social, psychological, emotional, and physical patterns of violence. They went to accompany. Christ also became incarnate in order to accompany us; to liberate us from our own self-destruction and sin; to teach a new and better way to live. As we remember the birth of Christ our Accompanier, we must remember those who are living out his call today. Christ triumphed over the systems that attempted to destroy him without using their own methods; we can only hope that the same success is waiting for those who follow Christ by accompanying the Iraqi people.
Though I am also tempted to hang my head as I await notice about the lives of these followers of Christ, I must remember that this Christmas, like all Christmases, that "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep," despite the bleakness of our situation. Rather, peace on earth can be established through the imitation of Christ, and our hope continues as we wait His and our rebirth this December.

I have discovered a new form of silence. It is the silence of contentment.

the status of aisle and window

Airplane passengers can be inconsiderate bastards.
My cousin Valerie and I are on our way home from one of the most emotionally difficult journeys I have yet taken. My grandma's memorial service was Monday, a time of tears as we remembered the woman who shaped all of our lives. One of the virtues she instilled in her children, and which has been passed on to her grandchildren, is the value of giving part of yourself to others. Sitting in the small, simple Presbyterian church that was her spiritual home for 45 years, we spoke about her support for the community; whether it was running off the bulletins every Saturday for church the next morning, serving as a campfire leader, or welcoming her future son in law into her basement for four months as he searched for a job, my grandmother took care of those around her even when it was uncomfortable. She taught us how to serve.
I can see these same values in my Eagle Scout brother, who earned this accomplishment despite attention deficit disorder, a learning disability, and other issues that hindered him. I see it in my cousins Elisabeth and Valerie, who each postponed college to spend a year apiece as missionaries for the Baha'i faith in Senegal. I see it in the hospitality of my Uncle Bob and Aunt Renee, who hosted seven houseguests as we prepared for Grandma's service. I see it in my own mother, who gave up one day a week for years, and in the past few months postponed searching for a job, so she could take care of my grandmother as she lost her eyesight and her health declined. Pat Johnston taught us that there are things greater than the self, and that to live a good life meant to actively work for the betterment of others.
This morning, when Valerie and I embarked upon our return journey, still grieving through laughter and holding to each other as we started life grandparentless, we arrived at the airport late because my mother (in typical form) got lost on the way and missed a couple of lanes. We obtained our boarding passes too late to find seats next to each other, and so pleaded in turn with a half dozen of our fellow passengers, trying to find someone willing to change seats so we could continue side by side. In turn, each refused us with simple excuses like "I don't like sitting in the middle." They were relentless, even when they saw my tears at being separated and heard us discuss why we had been traveling. On an already difficult flight, the one thing that had made it truly bearable for me was knowing that I was with someone else, and that comfort was taken from me by the unyielding nature of our fellow passengers. I wonder if there answers would have been different if they had been taught as we were that taking care of others was more important than your own comfort.
And so, I urge each of you to always be willing to switch seats. You never know what it could mean to someone.

Louisville and Athens are one and the same

"There’s always been someone missing in my family, Hans Thomas. Someone has always gotten lost. I think it’s a family curse."
Dad, in The Solitaire Mystery by Jostein Gaarder
Tonight, I long for a sense of satisfaction, a sense of completeness. In one month, I’ll be embarking on a three year journey of Biblical theology and pastoral methodology, a dream of mine that has finally become realized. I know how blessed I am to be given the opportunity to follow the yearnings of my soul as I pursue full time ministry. I know that through this process, and through my future career, I will learn and discover new and exciting ways in which God is being made manifest in our lives anew each morning. And yet, it’s still not enough. There still seems to be one piece missing, something that leaves me feeling unsettled and unfinished.
In the last few years, my relationship with God has become very raw. While I still believe deeply in our very beginning in the Creator, the redemption of Jesus Christ, and the empowerment of the Spirit, I am still very angry and very numb about they ways some things have worked themselves out in the last two years. I don’t understand why, when I leave what I know and cherish to follow God, I end up being misused, belittled, and diminished by the very organizations through which and with whom I was and am striving to further the Kingdom of God. I am scared to enter seminary, though I do sense a calling and a desire, because I am afraid to be irreparably broken if these patterns continue. I don’t know if I can handle another Cincinnati, or another ACORN. Just this afternoon, I broke into tears again as I remembered the bitter and hostile relationship I had with one of my coworkers in Cincinnati, despite my own best intentions.
I remember in high school, going to my Saturday night bible study with my fundamentalist friends, talking about how people would just feel wholeness like they had never understood if they were to just accept and enter into a relationship with God. It all felt so simple. Yes, I knew that there would be hardships, but I believed in an unshakable faith that would enable me to continue to pursue God when the world around me was in chaos. But how do you respond when it seems that it is that same pursuit of God that seems to leave you bewildered and damaged by those alongside you?
Like Hans Thomas, I have left my home a long way away in order to learn and discover how to become complete. Hans Thomas left Norway for Athens, thinking that the woman they would find there would be able answer their questions about why someone was always running away. I left Washington for Cincinnati, and then Louisville, and now am trying to find what I have lost, a faith in and understanding about where I am being lead.

Vulnerable visions

I understand why artists are plagued with emotional difficulties. Expression is an exhausting experience; varying influences and voices merge into a single creation that attempts to communicate one person's understanding of how life intersects within itself. It's an experience that leaves you weak, exposed, and vulnerable in a world where concrete fortresses provide impenetrable barricades between you and those who have power over you. It is to speak truth, and truth inevitably leaves you among the powerless because cloaks of secrecy shroud the actions of our economic and political oligarchy. Fragility and vision are sisters who have been undervalued and repressed amidst the generations of their daughters who were told that an emotional nature made them unreliable in the work place and unable to handle the pressures of public life.

Last Sunday, caught up in the auditory trembling of the Third movement of Dvorak's "English Symphony," in the heat of an under-ventilated gym at the dawn of a Kentucky June, I found myself overwhelmed by the combination of emotional strain, artistic expresssion, and physical proximity that attends playing in an ensemble. I felt as if I would faint because of the physical effect of opening oneself up for an extended period of time in combination with people whose names I am still learning. The easiest culprit to pick out was the heat; however, that was simply one factor in the strain that comes with performance. At the end of the evening, after a program no more physically challenging than a few hours of typing, you fell drained by that same sense of artistic vulnerability that has helped radicalize so many writers, painters, and other cultural revolutionaries.

That same afternoon, I listened as my friend, who has a propensity for tall tales, recounted details of his hometown. Mike described the annual feast when the first calf of the season was slaughtered, when his family would gather around giant mounds of ground beef that they would eat by the handful, celebrating the work that would put home grown meat on their tables through the bitter Pennsylvania winter. He related specifics of the ways that his ancestor’s farm roots were still playing out in his family, including his two bachelor uncles who have parked their trailer on the family property and still use an outhouse a few feet from their home. His stories revealed the way that tradition and modernity intersect in each of our lives. He also spoke with regret about how people refuse to believe him when he talks about his uncle’s outhouse; his reputation as a storyteller has caused those around him to discount what he says as a lie, without listening and delving in to its depths.

I choose to believe Mike’s stories because I know that there is a truth that is greater than fact. I know that storytelling is an art as powerful as symphony, and that like in the case of Rigoberta Menchu, they do not need to be historical to be an honest and open expression about his life. In this act of visioning and believing, we escape our culture’s emphasis on numbers and statistics as the purest way of understanding ourselves. Numbers are cold and easy to hide behind, whereas story is rooted in the human experience. Like music, it leave us open and fragile to our listeners, in that same subversive and fragile action that is inherent within all art.

Yesterday, when I arrived home after toiling away at the phones until 8 pm, an envelope was waiting for me on our dining room table. My roommate, Kelsey, had left it there to greet me as she went out and enjoyed her Friday night. This is a rather normal occurrence, and normally wouldn't be worth noting, except that it was one of the large, official looking envelopes, and the return address was Louisville Seminary.
Immediately, my heart started pounding. I saw the next three years of my life potentially decided by what was contained in that envelope. I knew the admissions committee at the seminary had been meeting this very week. Could they have come to a decision so early? In trepidation, I opened the envelope to find....
A housing application. Oh well - I guess this dress rehearsal for next week helped me prepare for the affect, right?

ashes

Last night, after travailing the Louisville bus system, I fought my way to James Lees Presbyterian Church for Ash Wednesday service. I was late because I didn't recognize my bus stop. As I arrived, harried and upset because I had missed the opening, I saw the table in front of the sanctuary covered in candles. I learned later that there was one lit for each of us in the service.
We were each handed a small piece of paper, on which we were to write down those barriers that keep us from being close to God. Phil, my minister and one of the officiators, quoted a Sufi mystic who spoke about how there are 10,000 veils between us and God, but none between God and us. We bent them in half, and placed each one in front of our individual candle, to shine light upon and through that which we keep between us and our creator. Then, one by one, the Phil and Judd (the other officiator) burned each of them to supply the ashes we would be using. Instead of tracing a cross on each of our foreheads, we dipped our hands in the ashes, covering them. As we felt the grittiness under our fingertips and over our palms, we contemplated how similar this is to the conditions of our own lives, spotted and speckled and coated with a grit that keeps us from revealing what we could be to each other and ourselves. We were charged to go about cleaning up our souls with the same desire we had to clean our hands. It gave a new, deeper theological meaning to Ash Wednesday for me, that I had been missing.
I was also left with a strong desire to keep my hands dirty, not because I didn't want to expose myself, because I felt a yearning to keep on the work of tearing down those barriers. I dipped my hands in the rubble that came from burning up those veils, and I wanted to continue that act of purification. I don't feel that I have done anything significant since I left Cincinnati in August. I have figured a few things out, healed some scars, and restored my emotional state, which is good, but not satisfying. That said, I am anxious to get back to the working for the kingdom of God; I am antsy to get my hands dirty again, helping restore our world and burn up those things that keep us corporately from being that which we are intended to be. I can't wait to get back into full-time service. It's just a matter of time.

We need a prophet

Last night, I watched the State of the Union Address. Once again, I was left indignant about the leadership of our state. I watched THAT MAN started verbally attacking yet another country, in preparation for yet another unjust war, in this case Iran. I heard the sweet-as-molasses-and-just-as-sappy stories he told about those involved in Iraq, which sickened me. He is trying to justify our culture of violence by speaking about the Iraqi elections and their rise of democracy - but true democracy cannot come when we batter people into supporting our causes. He's following the same pattern his predecessors (Reagan, etc.) established in Nicaragua and the rest of Central America. How many countries can we subjugate before we ourselves collapse? We're building something instable - both abroad and at home - because these elections are coming out of weariness, not any belief that the system can work. It's the same reason the Sandinistas in Nicaragua were kicked out of power, though they truly were a people's government - the Iraqis think that maybe if they simply play the game, they'll finally be able to be rid of the violence WE are perpetrating against them. THIS is a crime against humanity.

The Democrats make me just as angry. I listened to them, as they refused to stand up against THAT MAN'S totalitarian tendencies. They spoke about the need to come to the center, and work together to rebuild social security, etc, without actually speaking out against anything except for some privatization scheme that no one really cares about. How I long for a national leader who has the guts to stand up and call this dictator what he is, to stand in the prophetic tradition of Nathan, Hosea, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Daniel Berrigan. One thing we have learned from this election (horror that it is) is that waffling doesn't get you votes. Speak the truth! Get out there and say exactly what is wrong with our situation - that we are oppressors, and our cultural, structural and physical violence needs to stop to ensure our own survival. No one stays on top forever - we need to build a more equitable society, for our own benefit, because when we're toppled, we'll be treated in the same manner that we treated those below us.

The worst part about it is this talk of faith. The Conservatives co-opt it as if Christianity belongs to them. However, they have forgotten phrases like "Blessed are the peacemakers," and "He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble." It is not following Christ to kill and subjugate others for your own gain; there is no such thing as a "holy war." This is a violation of our biblical mandate to love our neighbor and work for the peaceable kingdom.

The true state of our union is in transgression. I can only hope that we see the light, and work to repair and restore our relationship with our neighbors after such destructive behavior.

A cataclysm is defined by Webster as a flood or deluge; a momentous and violent event marked by upheaval and demolition; at the root of it is the Greek word kataklyzein, to wash or inundate.
I've always been taken with the sounds and meanings of words. As an avid reader and a former foreign language student, I am intrigued by the levels one word can have; in three syllables, cataclysm captures the rushing and tearing apart that happens so often in our lives. You can hear the waves crashing down on you. You can feel that overwhelming presence of chaos. You can see all that you know being carried away from you on the currents.

Within it, however, is that same feeling of cleansing and rebirth. Yes, all is washed away by the deluge, but the flood waters also leave you stripped of the grime and salt that has built up and coated you. You are left fresh.

In the Biblical creation accounts, we hear a story about the earth emerging from the deluge and flood. We see chaos as that powerful creative force that is there even before the land and the air. It is that first thing from which everything else is formed. So being, this cataclysm is at the center of each of us, the essence of who we are as created beings.

I consider it appropriate that the sounds of the words cataclysm and catechism are so similar. In a world whose very beginning was inundation; of water, of light, of creative force; we find a need to steady ourselves. In the midst of chaos, we discover answers that we know to be constant. We have been cleansed of falsehood, envy, and sundy other temptations that fall away when we re-examine who we hope to be. In this process, we discern answers about our very nature. For us, these become catechism - what we know to be true, day in and day out, while the deluge of life surrounds us.

As I considered starting this journal that would expose my daily thoughts and concerns to anyone who fancied a peek, the act of naming was my gravest concern. In one phrase, I needed to allow people to identify what they would find; I needed a catch phrase that would give them a glimpse of my reflections, and be the key to whether or not they chose to delve deeper.

I find that these two words capture the essence of what I wrestle with; that constant struggle to remain afloat, knowing that in the middle of the cataclysm, as all is crashing around, I can take solace knowing that some things are constant - those answers about the essence of who we are, our catechism.