Category / Scrawled

Things written for the quiet, instead of for the crowd.

by geoffparker

Ebert and Eating

I have, in recent years, become a big fan of Roger Ebert. Not so much because of movie reviews, though he does still post them from home, and they are still well written and biting, but rather his personal writing.

A series of surgeries to prolong his life have left Ebert unable to talk, eat, or drink. He has responded by creating a blog in which he… gets it all out anyway. By reading him, I’ve come to be in conversation with a very funny, nuanced lover of life, art, and culture. A spiritual man, I might say, though he has had – and published – long debates with himself about the possibility of God and what God might be for him (if he believed in the same.) He’s a gift.

A reader recently wrote in to ask if he missed eating and drinking. What came as a response is sort of a love song to memory, which when paired with food makes a minister spin and dance. (We mean it when we say: “We remember… Jesus broke bread… Poured the wine.” Memory and meal are our business!)

Look for the line in which he talks about the society of eating, the way we meet, and talk… “feel god together.” That could be a typo! He might have meant to feel “good,” but I hope not, because he has it right!

Eating, as Ebert puts forward, is not so important. Dining, being together, talking, bumping hands over a dish, sharing our experiences around a table… may be a matter of life and death. It is in our communion, I know. And, as he says… through his blog now, he is creating a dining room table: a place to talk, and share, and be together with so many.

Nil By Mouth [By R. Ebert]

by geoffparker

31.

Well, so, 31 years ago, Charles Mingus died and I was born. This was:

  • A huge ripoff for the world’s supply of brilliant jazz bassists and composers. I tried, I really did. But… no.
  • A net zero sum for the world’s supply of people who are “eccentric” in their social skills.
  • A huge gain for the world’s supply of ministers AND people who don’t punch trumpet players… if they can help it.

Nonetheless, as I am reminded every birthday, I am reminded again that I should be about the business of making something meaningful from my life. Something passionate, something that is perhaps fleeting, something that is almost certainly imperfect, and yet… something of my world and of myself.

Haitian Fight Song. Because, well, I never knew how much art could do until I heard this song… maybe I was 14? Still amazing.

by geoffparker

Burnout and Civic (Communal) Involvement

Interesting article in the Times today that I think has implications for church involvement.

One of the messages as I understand it: burnout and disillusionment have lasting effects on people who engage in community, government, or charitable work. Also, that disillusionment goes far beyond any one organization. The article has a lot more to do with whether or not Teach for America is really configured at this point to produce citizens, or rather just teachers… but I do wonder about the broad pattern as applied to churches.

It’s an increasingly understood concept in congregational living that parishioner burnout is a Bad Thing™. What has not yet been made clear, however, is how churches can hope to reduce that burnout when they are struggling to do the same sorts of things with less and less resources – and less and less people. As Teach for America struggles with the implacable nature of education inequity as a source of burnout, so churches struggle with the implacable nature of shrinking and reconfiguring congregations.

Ironically, both systems are setup to require the influx of more volunteers who will become more disillusioned. (Though this isn’t a straight line, it’s not hard to roughly state… No educational equity = more need for an influx of volunteer teachers who then become disillusioned. Less people in pews = more need for multi-committee, do everything parishioners, who get burnt out from the lack of people in the pews. Rinse and repeat.)

My takeaway from the article is that we need to be more alert to the fact that burnt out parishioners don’t just stop volunteering for committee slots, they can stop going to church… and in some cases lose their faith entirely. Though our responsibilities to our congregations are many, our responsibilities to the larger body of Christ are much, much more.

This is a hard fact. It means that we have to do the work of making our churches DO LESS if we have less resources. It means focusing the congregation like a laser on the things that they can accomplish without exhausting themselves. We have to do this because its the only way to ensure that we don’t continue to weaken the larger church, and because we have to remember that grace abounds, and the ministry we can do today is enough for today, and tomorrow will have its own ministry. A model of church that advocated an ever expanding menu of church programs has given us shrinking congregations and burnout. Is there a way we can grow… by limiting ourselves?

by geoffparker

The Word – fun to play with.

I really don’t have all that much to spout on about except a little gem from the footnotes of my bible. It seems the word for ark (see: Noah, big boat, aminals two by two, etc.), tebah, gets repeated one other time… it’s also the word used for the basket in which the baby Moses (see: a shrubbery!) drifts away to safety in on the Nile. I like a God who does great things at every scale… one baby to save God’s people, one ginormous boat to save God’s creation… fun! And comforting.

by geoffparker

Holiday Work

This semester was a bear in so many ways. Not the least of these was the very fact that I’m nearing the end of my time in New Haven. As I said way back in the early part of the school year, I’ve really had a sense of wanting to “pass on” my home which I love. I want new people to enjoy its richness in the way that I have. Both New Haven and YDS have been communities that meant a lot to me. Trying to give that to others has been hard work.

Even still, the hardest work has come after the semester. I’ve been preparing all of my materials for ordination. This has required:

  • My ordination paper – about 6000 words describing me, my theology, and my sense of call to ministry.
  • Recommendations – A TON. Written and telephone references make up a large portion of this work. The mentors and colleagues I have had in the past few years are awesome in their support of my ministry, but it takes a lot of organization to keep everyone straight through 15+ recommendations. Also, for those keeping track: it’s advent. Not an easy time for church folk.
  • Updated resume – actually, this document won’t get used a lot in my future, but I have to update it anyway. Most challenging is the tracing of the story arc which takes me from computer nerd to candidate for ordination… as usual.
  • Ministerial Profile – 10 Webpages of information that will be reviewed by my committee and any associations and churches that will consider me for ministerial positions. As any form document would tend to be, this is a bit dry for encapsulating my joy for ministry. (Which checkboxes best describe me as a minister?)

Nonetheless, I’m drawing to a close in some of this work. Which leaves me the standard issue concern over how Sarah and I will work, feed ourselves, and afford a family… you know, ever. But… “God is Good…” Now, on to what is (hopefully) my last Christmas season as a civilian, so to speak!

by geoffparker

And so it’s awful.

This.

I’m upset with my town. R said it best: we’re built to handle certain crimes here. Most of them are quick and hot and motivated by money, which lets me say adorable little statements about how systems work together, and crime goes up when the economy goes down, and lets me score some points for my petty little worldview, like if social structures would just follow my lead, there would be an end to suffering and pain and yadda yadda. Pretty egotistical stuff. Pretty much ignoring that whole Kingdom of God thing.

This is different. Someone put someone in a wall. That’s not about desperation (at least in the conventional sense.) Someone found time to hide what they did away, and took what little dignity there might be left to this woman.

Part of my job at orientation was to assure new students that New Haven was wonderful and thriving, and maybe to be careful because, you know, it is a city and all. Ultimately, though, my message was that common sense would keep you safe here. I feel like I lied right now, and I feel like I was naive. I feel like I should have known that there was something senseless here, waiting. I’m not even slightly connected to this poor woman, and I feel… inadequate to the task of even being the vaguest hint of a sliver of a strand of what it would take to undo the kind of systemic nastiness that must be in the world to make this happen.

Reading this book, I was struck by Brueggemann’s point (as I understand it) about prophets and social activists: prophets aren’t interested in the reform of social systems (like activists are)… to pretend that the systems can be changed at all is to be co-opted by the “royal authority.” No, prophets want to imaginatively tear the whole thing down. Their imagination goes beyond some earthly dream of reform, and goes to the godly forming of the new way. I feel like we need to imagine harder right now, and I’m scared that I’m imagining as hard as I can, and it’s not working.

by geoffparker

The hope of being found.

It’s been a really hard week. Sarah’s computer died a terrible death, which cuts down on communication even more. Much of the time that I spent with people was with happy couples living together, or just getting together, or other adorableness that makes me a little crazy right now. (This is very par for the course at a Div. School, but sometimes I feel it worse than others.) I’ve made some moves to get to a better living situation for me, one where I get to have the space and time I need to focus and get this last year of work done.

WARNING: TANGENT NOT AT ALL RELATED TO ANYTHING I KNOW ABOUT THE VERY REAL SCARY THING GOING ON HERE AT YALE, MAINLY JUST A THOUGHT: There are lots of people who physically or emotionally missing here at Yale these days, as I’m sure you have heard from the news. (Well, maybe just the one physically missing one.)

It makes one wonder about these undertakings students get themselves into. These are people who are passionately driven by their desire to study and work, so much so that they often forget to take care of themselves, even to eat in some cases. There’s something not surprising about someone vanishing in the midst of us, which feels very dark, and scary. In the cold of the winter, you lose something to the work and the books and the deep feeling that you are not getting to where you want to get to. And so, you start to feel like you might vanish a little. (It’s very “Master and Margarita.”) So, in case anyone ever asks, “Why YDS?” The answer is this: nowhere else do people insist that they SEE you, and HOLD ON TO YOU, even if they don’t know you very well at all. Nowhere else I’ve been can a guy like me be literally existing from hug to hug, even as the one who I love most is thousands of miles away. These folks vehemently refuse to let people vanish, and so I’m proud to hang out with them.

BACK TO REAL LIFE: We’re all doing ridiculous amounts of praying for finding Annie. I might be the only one praying for the editors of the New York Daily News to be hit with something heavy for allowing a false story about her body being found to print without verification (IT WASN’T). Way to torment people already in torment, fellas. You’re a real class act. Ceiling Cat sees you.

by geoffparker

Ministerial Profile Writing

Thursday I met with my Committee on Ministry (which is sort of like meeting with your Bishop to you apostolic folks.) They walk with me through the discernment and exploration of my call to ministry, and eventually would recommend me for an Ecclesiastical Council (one of the last steps before ordination.)

Anyway, at this meeting, we decided that it was time to begin working on my ordination paper (which is what it sounds like), and my ministerial profile (kind of a huge electronic resume that gets circulated among churches.) The profile is a funny beast, there are lots of text boxes to fill out, some asking for the hard facts, some asking me to produce a complete statement of my understanding of ministry and my call.

This process that is so intense and emotional, so fraught with ambiguities and seeking, has to be shoehorned into text boxes and radio buttons. I spend most of my life trying to know people and be known by them, and now I have to hope they’ll be able to know me through a web form. Scary stuff. I have faith that those looking for a minister will want to read deeper, but I can’t help feeling a little anxious.

by geoffparker

Our Language, Our Heritage, and Our Problems

So, today was convocation at YDS. One of my favorite professors, Bruce Gordon, gave the address. He squinched up his eyes and spoke passionately about history, which I’m glad someone knows how to do, and made me happy.

Yet the reading that he wanted to work off of was John 3, which is the story of Nicodemus coming to visit Jesus in the night. Prof. Gordon’s point was towards the earnest seeking of truth and new knowledge, and so it was well chosen in this regard. More complicated is the fact that the reading also includes tons of very traditional images for the Gospel of John:

“And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’” (NRSV, John 3:19-21)

I don’t think I had ever really realized how damaging some of our language of light and dark can be in a world in which people have different “shades,” until I heard it in the true multi-cultural notion that  YDS tried to have of itself, where a lot of people boldly jump into discussions about these things on a daily basis. I hope I will this semester some. (What’s up, “Metaphors of Evil” with Prof. Townes?)

I preached on Sunday, and challenged some to re-conceptualize “Pharisee” in a way that helps us move away from some of the anti-semitic horror stories of our Christian tradition. I deeply love John’s poetry, symbolic nature, and deeply intimate story of Jesus and God the Creator, yet the text opens up – and has continued to open up  – many hateful systems of thinking in the world. How do we reconcile these things? How do we preach this most painful and beautiful and sometimes very ugly Gospel? It seems unanswerable, and so, perhaps… very human.

by geoffparker

On Seeing through the Bad Guys – Pilate

Pluto must have thought of politics
when he first handed the boulder
over to Sisyphus. The cold, damp, useless
weight of it just sitting there, the sound
of its mass ringing with the promise
of cuts, and scrapes, and the awful grind
of stone on stone and tendon’s pop.
Just so, there wasn’t much to recommend
the sweaty work of Judea before: the
grit and dirt of it works in your robes,
the sun robs you of rich reds and purples
you thought made you so high, until
you are wearing the earth and sand itself,
until you feel you might be stone.
I have lived this toil, I have pushed
men, armies, people, senators, and emperors
up the incline of my life’s ascent. And then,
high above the street on a blinding day, there was a roar of crowd
that seemed to lift the weight, for just the tiniest moment
of hanging stone and hanging time. Friends, I swear, I did not
let go for long! And then the awful, crushing knowledge of its falling: a man slaughtered quietly beneath it, its murderous inertia rushing, dragging, me to judgment…
And so I, Pontius Pilate the Equestrian, came, weeping, to ride a stone.