Advent: longing

It has been a season for me of reflecting on the challenge of being female: about the power of women in ministry and sexism, about women's anger, abuse (especially at Michigan State), and about what leadership looks like. The reflections have brought with them my own anger at how hard it is to be female today, especially when one goes against expectations.

And so I long for a time and a world where women's gifts are valued and used and when women aren't blamed for abuse (or seen primarily as victims or sinners). Yet, as much as Advent is about longing for the world to be better, Christmas is about remembering how with Christ's coming the world is already better (and one day Christ will come back and everything will be fully right).

The longing is articulated well in recent articles that I read: Longing for All things to be made right and Rahab the Survivor.

Heather Walker Peterson in Longing for All Things highlights how through their Jesse tree, she is seeing the ancestors of Jesus in a new light. She is reminded of how Abram lies "to the Egyptian pharaoh about his wife Sarai being his sister. He was protecting his own skin but not the skin of Sarai, who was a hair’s breadth away from sexual relations with the Pharaoh. Our daughters, seven and nine, although not in complete understanding, are offended. And so am I. How had I lost the grievousness of Abram’s sin in my familiarity with the story?" In reading the story of Ruth and Boaz, she hears again "Boaz telling his male workers to keep their hands off Ruth while she was picking up the leftover grain. I’m glad for Boaz’s integrity, but I wish that the people of God who worked for him didn’t have to be told. Things are not all right."

Jennifer Lucking, in Rahab the Survivor, highlights the strength found in this ancestor of Jesus, while lamenting that her strength and desire to follow God faithfully are often left out when we talk about her:

Most of the Advent stories I’ve read about Rahab go something like this: “Rahab was a prostitute! Rahab was a liar! A harlot! But even someone as shameful and bad as Rahab is in Jesus’s lineage.”And I understand this type of storytelling: we are meant to recognize that despite our own sinfulness, despite the wrongs we do, we are redeemable and we are loved by God. Other articles I read about the women listed in the lineage of Jesus included words like sordid and notorious.. . Today I am choosing to see the resilience of Rahab the Survivor. She was proactive and went to the spies with a plan (see Joshua 2:8, 15-16). Rahab was confident and bold as she proclaimed what she knew (Joshua 2:9-11). She advocated not just for herself, but for her family (Joshua 2:12-13). She was faithful to what God was doing in her life. She is Rahab the strong. Rahab the leader.

As much as the articles point to a longing for the world to be better, they also remind me that through Christ women have been seen and given voices. And we, as Christians, have the ability to use the power of our words to tell a different story: a story that highlights that Jesus comes from a line of women of strength and perseverance who dared to risk everything for God and who cared deeply about justice.

Advent: hope

Several months ago, the Banner published an article about infertility that spoke to me, as it describes well the messiness of infertility and the messiness of hope.

They describe the challenge of not knowing, as well as the difficulties of hoping when one is continually disappointed but each month brings with it the possibility of new life:

"Every month we go through the repeated cycle of hope, then fear and disappointment. . . At times it seems easier to stop hoping than to live with the heartache of repeated disappointment. But it’s hard to know how to mourn when you don’t have definitive answers."

The author also speaks of how unhelpful many people's comments are. They "reveal an unwillingness to sit in ashes with us. This incapacity for solidarity is painfully sad and incredibly isolating for those suffering. Is it any wonder more people don’t speak up about infertility in our churches?"

Finally, the author speaks of the messiness of hope.

Someone will inevitably ask, “Aren’t you forgetting about the gospel and its offer of hope?” Eschatologically, our hope is secure—the risen Christ will return; sin, Satan, and death will be no more (Rev. 20:7-21:4). But hope—biblical hope—should lead us to be more attentive to present suffering, not less. Hope is not an opiate; rather, it keeps us crying out to God. Hope should lead us to groan laments because things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be (Rom. 8:18-27), such as the continuing mutilation of black bodies, the usury of Latino labor without providing legalized status, and, yes, even the silent suffering of infertility.

Hope is fragile, sometimes even dangerous. And yet we cannot live long without hope. 

Not yet.

Advent is the season that we await and long for the coming of the kingdom of God. For as much as Christ's first coming already brought forth the kingdom, the kingdom is not yet fully here on earth.

Without intending to, yesterday became filled with experiencing the emotions connected to the 'not yet.' Perhaps it might be better to say I was overwhelmed by the emotions related to the hard things I felt inadequate to do: hard things that were a result of sin and brokenness. Instead of recognizing my sadness and anger, I avoided reality with computer games and fighting with a program on my computer.

Yelling at God would have been better way of acknowledging my overwhelmedness and all the emotions: not because I expected to prove God wrong on any of it but because I needed to remember that God hears and cares. Crying would also have helped me, as it would have made me able to mourn the brokenness of the world and myself, as well as to mourn in response to the pain and disappointment I witnessed from those who were/are part of the community I love in Amsterdam.

When I express my lack of desire to be part of a world that is broken, including myself, I open myself up to being comforted. Last night the comfort came in having the exhausted child I love fall asleep in my arms. And it came through a conversation about a woman who insisted that Jesus' Kingdom was also for her and her daughter, now already (Mark 7).

Exegesis on the Widow's Coins

I really appreciated Abbot Andrew's recent musings about the widow's coins (Mark 12). Through looking at the surrounding text and the whole Bible, he both validates the widow's offering (encouraging us to do likewise) while also questioning a system/society that would take a widow's last coins.

The following are his own words:

"Highly troubling are the preceding verses where Jesus denounces the scribes who “devour widows’ houses.”. . . the juxtaposition of these references to widows raises questions. The questions become more worrisome when we recall how the prophets denounced those who oppressed widows and orphans almost every time they spoke out on social issues. The very next verse on the other side of the story of the widow and her two coins raises even more urgent questions. In response to a disciple’s commenting on the great stones of the temple, Jesus says: “Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Mk. 13: 1) This suggests that the poor widow is giving her last two coins for a bad cause.  . .  

Is this poor widow a bad example, then? By no means. This poor widow reminds us of the widow who gave Elijah some of the last grains of meal that she had after which she expected to die with her son. (1 Kings 17: 12) . . . Since giving everything is a sign of the Kingdom of God, the poor widow is a sign of the Kingdom while the rich man who went away sad and the rich who contributed lavishly to the temple treasury are not."

I encourage you to read his exegesis on the passage (it is fairly short).

Strong women

One of the obvious joys of my work are the students that I work with. They are curious and intelligent, gracious and loving. And they are strong: one has to be, in order to persevere through grad and professional school. As my daughter grows up, I pray that she remains curious and grows in love for others. But I also pray that she might grow in strength.

One of the students who I've been getting to know was recently highlighted on a forum for women in music. The following are some of her words:

I come from a family full of capable women who have been excellent role models for me. . . Growing up I was very fortunate to have my mother tell me all the time that I could do anything boys could do, and that I could be anything I wanted to be. I like to joke that this actually made it hard when I had to decide on a career, because there were too many options! 

I also remember an important moment that happened during a lesson with a movement coach. . . . At one point the coach stopped me and said something akin to, “Strength can be feminine too. You don’t need to apologize for your presence, or for taking up space, or for the sound you can draw out of this instrument.” I don’t think she necessarily intended for this statement to have the kind of life-changing impact that it did, but it has altered the way I think about myself ever since. 

I pray that all of my students, both males and females, will recognize that strength can be feminine - that women are strong and that strength involves emotions and connections. Those are words that I pray for both the students I work with and the daughter that we are raising.

Sharing sadness

The other day when I asked someone how they were doing, I got the usual "I'm doing okay" response. And I knew that my response was expected to be that I was also doing okay.

I was doing okay, but I was also sad. It was important for me to be honest about how I was sad, and so that was what I said. Even if I didn't have the words, being sad was the best way to capture my disappointment that Matthijs and my life was not - unlike I'd hoped and expected - going to get less busy in the coming months. On top of that, there'd been sad news from friends in our 'old life:' a lot of changes were happening, which might mean more freedom and joy, but also meant great loss.

In acknowledging my own sadness about how things were going in my life, space opened up for the other to talk about her own disappointments and sadness. She, too, had been confronted with the challenge of her life getting a lot more complicated, as a valued research partner wasn't doing well.

I was thankful that opening up about my own sadness about things happening in my life gave her space to share about the complications in her own life. I found it a comfort to share my sadness, but also comforting to listen. Her situation helped put my own situation in perspective. In the midst of my own sadness, I was glad that others cared for me and listened well, and I was able to be there for someone else in the midst of their challenges.

Mystery and Certainty in Theology

Vicky Beeching in Undivided expounds a bit on what she learned about mystery and certainty in theology after being tutored by Bishop Kallistos Ware. She quotes Ware as saying:

"'In the Christian context, we do not mean by a 'mystery' merely that which is baffling and an insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but that we never understand exhaustively, because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God' (Beeching, 95).

I appreciated her further thoughts on the subject of certainty, of which the following quotes give a sense:

"The more I pondered it, the more absurd it seemed that theology could be neatly explained in a theology textbook." 

"The obsession with fixed answers felt increasingly wrong to me: if God can fit into a box, it's no longer God we are dealing with but someone made in our own image." 

"Evangelical theology seemed to paint a picture of God - a graven image of sorts- and tell everyone else it was the only likeness of him that existed." 

"Bishop Kallistos introduced me to a new perspective on what it meant to be faithful to Christian history. We weren't diminishing it by changing our minds on certain things; that was all part of the journey." Beeching, 95.

I had read Bishop Kallistos Ware's book on Eastern Orthodox Theology when I was in college. I remember still how much I appreciated what I learned then of the Orthodox Church - where the focus was less on getting the right answer and more on living for and with God. Years later, as I read his words and their influence, I am reminded again of how much I appreciate making space for less certainty in belief, space that I'd like to share with the grad students I minister to.

Discontent with Church

Shortly after writing my last post expressing my discontent with church, I read an article expressing the good of such discontent. I appreciated that, especially as I'm still not entirely sure about my own expression of discontent, as it feels too much like complaining. I have been taught that complaining makes one more part of the problem than the solution. And complaining doesn't seem to be particularly good at communicating how God is working.

In his recent Banner article, Chris Schoon lists a number of movements throughout history that were birthed out of discontent with the church: "those who launched renewal movements sought a more transformative practice, a more biblically rooted doctrine, or a more robust and personal piety than they had experienced in the church of their day and age. Their reform efforts attempted to address gaps in the church’s character and witness as they realized that the church in their particular contexts was not yet what it was intended to be."

Furthermore, Schoon argues that "In order for the church to be the church, we need a certain amount of holy dissatisfaction with the way things are, and especially with the way we are living as God’s people."

I don't always know what to do with my disappointment with my local church. I do know that it makes me long to once again be part of an intentional faith community (new monastic community), even knowing how imperfect that is. And it does make me want to be more authentic and honest in my own relationships with others, as well as striving for authenticity and honesty in the community of grad and professional students that I pastor.

Chafed by Church

I was grouchy in church yesterday. Since it was church, it seemed fairly obvious that this place and time gave me ample opportunity to sort out with God why I was grouchy.

Part of the challenge was that I was annoyed that I was grouchy. After all, despite it being full, I'd had a blessed week at work: I'd had (and overheard) encouraging conversations at our Welcome BBQ, it's been exciting to think about and plan new activities, I pondered how people of different faiths being present at pub theology are a blessing, and I was deeply thankful to have met with some staff and faculty for prayer this week.

I was also annoyed that I ended up late, especially since it felt like I'd actually left early (and not just the usual: barely on time). Yet, I'd let the little walk from the car to church, we'd stopped to check if there were any lingering students to greet, and I'd made sure the little was excited about being in nursery before I left her there. And so I ended up walking in late to the congregational meeting.

When the meeting ended and we were encouraged to talk to others, I realized that as much as I cared for many of the people around me, I was lonely there. I missed having more people like me: (female) professional, over-educated, (working) mom (of a toddler), and/or under 50. I also missed people who weren't there, especially those who've been leaving - some people have been taking a break from (this) church, others have left, and still others have moved away for jobs or school.

As I was quietly sitting in church, sorting through how I felt with God, I saw someone walk in, someone who I know who has been struggling. For a moment, there was a look of sadness on her face, and then she put a smile on. Her presence - and sadness - reminded me of others who are struggling in the community. And I bulked at putting my own 'happy face' on. I didn't want to talk about my daughter, even though I love her and delight in her. I didn't want to sing happy praise songs; I wanted to lament about the suffering around me. It felt empty singing about God's holiness when we didn't also speak of God's justice on evil, scary though it might be. And I didn't know how to bring into church all the ways I had seen God working in my job this past week. I felt chafed.

Thankfully, God is capable of working in and around my feelings. I was welcomed by old friends and unexpectedly hugged by someone who is becoming a new friend. I was challenged by the sermon. I saw an older couple who I love reach out (again) to a younger couple who have moved into their neck of the woods. God worked in the midst of (and perhaps even through my) feeling of being chafed to meet me.

Ready? Maybe

The school year is almost ready to start. And this morning I feel ready and excited for it.

Matthijs begins his comprehensive exams today (ends Friday at 1), and today I do my first 'resource/welcome fair,' meeting potential students. Campus Edge has hired a part-time staff person to help me out, the little is doing great at daycare and pretty great at home (we have no real complaints, although her sleeping and eating habits are a bit haphazard), and I've spent quite a bit of time this summer resting (by reading lots, biking, and enjoying Lydia). So we're all as ready as we'll ever be!

I don't know what this year will bring. I do hope for the following:
- Matthijs will enjoy more freedom in his program (after the comps get finished),
- Campus Edge will reach more people, especially those struggling with faith,
- I will continue to love and delight in my job, but also be able to work on (and finish up a good draft of) my dissertation,
- Lydia will continue to be healthy, cheerful, and independent, and that we will all enjoy her growing ability to communicate.

Most of all, I pray that we will be able to welcome the challenges and adventures of this coming year with joy and courage.

Finally! Biking with the little

This weekend I finally got to go out with the little on my own bike. It's hard to describe how happy this made me. I really like biking, especially as a way to add exercise to my day, and Lydia loves being outside and seeing things, so getting a bike seat on my bike has been a goal and desire of mine for awhile. While biking with children is standard in the Netherlands (and something we did together at Christmas when I borrowed my mother-in-law's bike), it's not quite so normal here, so it took quite a lot of research and effort to make it happen here (without spending an enormous amount of money).

The first challenge was that my old Dutch bike was not in very good shape - as much as I love how it's built, it's become a one-speed (in low gear). I figured I'd soon tire of biking the 5km (with 2 hills) to and from day care with an extra 25 pounds on the back. So first I had to get a new bike, and I wanted one where I could sit up straight, wear a skirt with, and have the gear chain mostly covered. All of these things are standard on most Dutch women's bikes, but it took me quite awhile to find an American bike which made me happy. 

And then we needed to find a bike seat that fit my bike. I ended up buying two different kinds, and Matthijs put together and attempted mounting both of them (one of them also on his bike), without much success. Last Friday, Matthijs tried once more to make it happen - it finally worked after replacing the rack on my bike with an older and wider one we found in the garage. 

Yesterday, I finally had the joy of going on a family ride. It did not disappoint, as I loved it as much as I'd hoped I would, and the little seemed to enjoy it pretty well, too (despite being forced into wearing a helmet). 

Grappling with faith and doubt

A recent article highlights what we as campus ministers do. I appreciate the focus on pastoral care and justice that the article brings forward, as well as the honest acknowledgement that as pastors we struggle with knowing how to respond well to questions related to sexuality (especially connected to LGBT+) and with doubt.

A few quotes:

Verhoef: “We used to live with a strong sense of transcendence . . . [but] faith is under pressure. And living out our faith with doubt is so common today on university campuses (and elsewhere of course). How can we as chaplains make space for doubts, support faith, welcome questions, and be hospitable to those to whom the doubts have turned towards unbelief?” . . .

Every CRC campus pastor is “trying to figure out how to get good at campus ministry in this day and age .... [and that means] addressing the needs of persons who are LGBT is front and center and very much in the life and work of campus ministry,” said Mark Wallace. 

Campus pastors always keep in mind that they are bringing the entirety of the gospel, its full message of loving your neighbor, to every aspect of the campuses they serve, said Wallace. 

Verhoef said that making a place for persons who identify as LGBT is important, but it can present challenges: “How do we stand as pastors in the CRC with one foot in the CRC moral theology and also one foot on a university campus that has a dynamically different perspective?” . . . 

“I have a lot of conversations about what to do when they do begin to question — even to the point where they're not sure what or if they believe. I see this as a movement forward, but it's hard to figure out how to describe as positive to churches such an apparent movement away from [certain] faith,” said Kronemeijer-Heyink.

In the end, said Verhoef, a core value of CRC campus ministry is to create communities in which students of many faiths or of none at all feel comfortable and have a sense of belonging. In this kind of community, students can let down their guard, get know one another — and hopefully — find God, he said.

The only thing I miss in the article is that I wish the author had emphasized more how we as campus ministers need to recognize how much the Holy Spirit is part of our conversations as people struggle: we have seen how questioning leads people to know and love God more fully.

Reflecting

I feel like my reflections these days are not all that profound. My deepest thoughts are those of thankfulness. Thankful for God’s gracious protection over my family and myself; thankful that Lydia is continuing to grow into a cheerful, curious, and independent individual; thankful for Matthijs’s presence in my life; thankful for my job and that I get to walk alongside people in their faith journeys.

It's not that I don't have questions and things I wonder about. In fact, I have lots of questions: 

• How do we encourage Lydia’s growing independence while providing appropriate boundaries
• How do I make space for her independence when so much of my happiness has been linked to hers this past year (a good result of hormones at the beginning, but it’s not healthy for either of us if our happiness stays too closely linked)? 
• How do I nurture my relationship with Matthijs, especially when both of our lives are quite full and Lydia (rightfully so) takes a lot of our time and energy? 
• What do rest and recuperation look like, especially when vacations (and Sundays) now involve a very active small child?
• How do I love and care for those in my life, not just Matthijs and Lydia, but especially the people who I have come into contact because of my work? 

I’m still working through the answers to these questions (and a bunch more related to work and developing my academic and professional self). I feel like some days I’m doing a great job striving to know how to live well: faithfully honoring God. And some days I just feel a bit overwhelmed by everything. But I am thankful to have the sense of God’s presence, especially through the people around me who are helping me out and providing encouragement.

Being a mother is not a job

Shonda Rhimes, in her book, A Year of Yes, does an amazing job of describing how being a mother is not a job. More importantly, she highlights how each of us needs to figure out how to parent in our own way (in a way that fits us and our situation) and that we can't do it alone (she acknowledges how important her nanny and family are to her situation):

Being a mother isn't a job. It's who someone is. It's who I am. 

You can quit a job. I can't quit being a mother. I'm a mother forever. Mothers are never off the clock, mothers are never on vacation. Being a mother redefines us, reinvents us, destroys and rebuilds us. Being a mother brings us face-to-face with ourselves as children, with our mothers as human beings, with our darkest fears of who we really are. Being a mother requires us to get it together or risk messing up another person forever. Being a mother yanks our hearts out of our bodies and attaches them to our tiny humans and sends them out into the world, forever hostages.

If all of that happened at work, I'd have quit fifty times already. Because there isn't enough money in the world. . .  Do not diminish it by calling it a job.  

And please, don't ever try to tell me it's the most important job I'll ever have as a way of trying to convince me to stay at home with my children all day. . . The most important job to a woman who has rent, has a car note, has utility bills and needs groceries is one that pays her money to keep her family alive. 

Let's stop trying to make ourselves indulge in the crappy mythological lady-cult that makes being a mother seem like work. Staying at home with your children is an incredible choice to make. And it's awesome and admirable if you make it [but] being a mother still happens if you don't stay home with your kids. . . 

Working or staying home, one is still a mother. One is not better than the other. Both choices are worthy of the same amount of respect. Motherhood remains equally, painfully death defying and difficult either way." ― Shonda Rhimes, Year of Yes: How to Dance It Out, Stand In the Sun and Be Your Own Person, 107-8.

The truths mentioned above are things I didn't know or realize before having children. My respect for parents - and the challenges and judgment they face - has increased significantly since having a child. 

Vacation is for us

We dropped Lydia off at daycare this morning. She was thrilled to be back with the other 'littles' and playing with the wonderful toys that they have there. I'm sure it was much better than the 10+ hours that she had to spend in the car to get back and forth to our vacation in Niagara Falls.

But, as Matthijs so aptly put it, vacation is for us - and not her. Vacation is for us to have moments of rest and joy and wonder at the world around us (so that we can better participate in regular life, including the parenting part). At the same time, it makes it a better vacation if she's enjoying things - as her laughter and joy overflows to us.

A barn owl at the butterfly conservatory

That lovely bald head of hers makes a great landing place

Enjoying the butterfly conservatory

Not really that interested in the falls...

Lydia can share the joy of pulling off her socks anywhere - no need for her to have the Falls in the background :)

Remember you are dust

During the Ash Wednesday liturgy of the church, the priest (pastor) places ashes on your forehead while saying, "remember that you are dust and to dust you will return."

This year those words had more meaning. Because the priest also placed the ashes on Lydia's head. She didn't seem particularly impressed, as she turned her head away after the priest had made only half of the cross. Why did she need to be reminded that she was dust?

The ashes on Lydia's forehead felt more like a reminder to me than to her. She, like of all us, will some day return to dust. My hope and prayer is that she will be with us, sharing her joy, for many years to come, but as the recent school shooting in Florida reminded us, so much can go wrong. I see this especially in the picture of a woman, with an ash cross on her forehead, mourning and comforting another. The brokenness of the world, and the suffering of these parents, fills me with sadness.

Not the story I wanted to tell

After Lydia was born, people asked me whether I'd had a c-section. The question annoyed me, but I couldn't figure out precisely why. Reflecting again on the birth stories that are told in Giving Birth with Confidence, it dawned on me that I disliked the question because it felt like I was being pushed to tell her birth story in a certain way. I didn't want her arrival to be whether or not I'd been strong enough (or whatever enough) to have a vaginal birth - or about what medical interventions might have happened.

My response to their question was simply that Lydia had come out. Because that was the story I wanted to tell - the debut of this small person whose arrival we'd been anticipating for months. I wanted to tell her name - and the wonder of knowing that this exact name fit her. I wanted to acknowledge that her arrival made me anxious: On the inside she was easy to take care of - and I knew that, if necessary, at her birth the doctors would intervene to pull her out of me - but that soon we would leave the hospital and be responsible for this small, helpless person. And I wanted to speak of how, through God's grace, Lydia and I persevered to figure out the breastfeeding thing (and I wanted to laugh and smile about the absurdity and stubbornness involved in making practically every nurse who entered our room help me figure out how to breastfeed). But sadly enough, I didn't know how to tell that story, so I didn't tell any story.

Women's March 2018

I only caught the tail end of the women's march in Lansing this year. Between the little getting in an afternoon nap and me recuperating from a twisted ankle and a busy Sunday morning, we weren't very quick in getting out to the protest.

But, because I am female (and so is the little), it seemed important to go. As a pastor I feel like I ought to show up as such events as a way of showing that God (and even the institutional church) cares deeply about women and the things that matter to them/us. And I figured we'd bring joy to others simply by being present, as I took Lydia out in the little car that my sister lent us.

What struck me at the march was the sheer range of ages and types of people present: it wasn't just people like me. It was teenagers, families, older women. People with children and people who had no desire to have children. People who responded enthusiastically to my child and people who responded much more enthusiastically to the dog walking by. I felt joy in coming together with all these people and being reminded of the solidarity that I share with so many others in wanting good for the world.

A child's protest

On the last Sunday of Advent we attended a church where the children would help move an advent calendar to the correct date. As the last Sunday of Advent was also Christmas Eve and many people were planning to go to church that evening and/or the next day, the church service was sparsely attended.

The pastor began the children's message by saying that even though it was tradition for the children to help advance the advent calendar, as this Sunday there were not present any children. . . Precisely at this moment she was interrupted by a fairly loud noise from Lydia, almost as if Lydia understood and wanted to protest being ignored. The pastor laughed with the rest of us, let us all know that she was going to say that there was no child old enough to help her move the calendar, and then invited Lydia and Matthijs up to help her.