Voting Absentee

This morning, I turned in my last seminary exam. But just when I was about to crash and catch up on my sleep, I realized I hadn’t sent in my absentee ballot. The North Carolina primary is Tuesday, which means my ballot is due by 5pm Monday. YIKES. So, as I scrambled around trying to figure out who all the local officials are and what their issues are, I found this web site www.votesmart.org. It’s probably not the only one of its kind in existence, but I found it to be a quick and easy database of most of the candidates listed on my ballot. Beware, there are some I couldn’t find and some candidates have no information listed, but it’s a good starting point if you’re going to the polls soon. 

When I finished filling out the ballot, I went through my apartment building and had friends sign the TWO spaces for witnesses (I guess somebody wants to make sure I am who I am). Then, I sped over to the Carnegie Center to mail my ballot. But alas, I arrived at the Post Office 13 minutes after it closed. Thankfully, this branch has an automated machine that would allow me to purchase expedited services if I did it before 3pm. So, I filled out the envelopes, printed the postage, got my receipt, and I noticed that the receipt indicated that I had to get that envelope in the mail by 1:30 pm Saturday or it wouldn’t arrive by 3pm Monday. Watch? 1.22. AAAH! I just paid $16 to VOTE in the PRIMARY and I may miss my chance by an 8 minute margin of error? Schnikes. I threw that sucker in the mail.

Well of course at this point, I’m doubting my judgment (I’m imagining the wise cracks) and wonder if I’ve put the envelope in the correct slot. I mean is there a separate slot that’s checked by 1:30 for expedited mail? Who knows? Well, there are people at the post office, but no one available to speak to customers. So, I call the USPS number on my receipt just to see if I can get anyone on the phone (YES, I’m crazy). NO, there was no one at USPS - They’re totally automated. 

At this point, I’m having flashbacks to the week before my wedding, when my honeymoon tickets were stuck somewhere between UPS Trenton and the USPS in Kannapolis. I was on the phone with nobody for hours. I’ve decided I just don’t want to be a patron of any business that only has automated service lines. I mean I called Harper’s Magazine today to change my address and I got a person on the phone within 45 seconds. Seriously, the USPS should really have someone answering phone calls. “What would you like to do? Track and confirm a package?” NO, I don’t want to track a package. I want to speak with a human being, you annoying automated woman!” 

Moral of the story, don’t forget to vote.

The Day of All things Al

This week, I’m working on a research paper for my class, The American Jeremiad: American Religion, American History. At some point during the semester, it struck me that Al Gore has tapped into the heart of American civil religion and begun to reshape it with his mission to bring the environmental crisis to the fore of public consciousness.

In his book Earth in the Balance, published in the early 90s, Gore identifies the environmental crisis as a spiritual crisis, one in which the very foundations of Western civilization are in cataclysmic collision with the natural world, and yet people lack the spiritual ecology to confront the apocalyptic repercussions of our own technology and ambition. He appeals specifically to the United States on the basis of the covenant made with one generation of Americans, but which extends to all, outlined in the Constitution as the fundamental rights of all to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Gore shakes America’s hold on the promise of freedom, saying that the only way to continue to make the world safe for democracy is to heal the world and the already-begun environmental crisis. 

In his most recent book, The Assault on Reason, Gore laments over America’s loss of purpose, reason, and leadership in the world, and attributes this loss greatly to the silencing of informed public discourse in American society. Though he may not have invented the Internet, Gore identifies the Internet as a tool of salvation for the American people, with the capability for reinvigorating communication and revolutionizing the mass media and public exchange of ideas, which in the last half century has become nothing less than a tyrannical system for disseminating deceptions and destructive values. America’s future, he says, depends on a reawakening of spiritual zeal and renewal of informed public discourse, in short, a revolution akin to that which formed the nation centuries ago. 

More to come on Al Gore, the new American Jeremiah. 

NoVember - Rated PG-13 for language

Yesterday, my grandparents took Tommy and I to see NoVember. During brunch, PaPa (grandfather) leaned over and told me that he and my grandmother (henceforth known as Goo (because I couldn’t say Gran when I was little)), and their traveling friends decided that we should practice the language of the play so as not to be shocked by the 148 F*cks that Nathan Lane drops during the course of the 105 minute production.

It’s a good thing that we practiced, because the opening few minutes of the first scene, bombs were droppin’ all over the place. You name it, Iraq, Iran (President Charles H.P. Smith was confused about whether or not we were at war with Iran yet or not). 

After a short warm-up period, Nathan Lane, aka President Chuckie, started dropping bombs over his approval ratings, his impending loss in the upcoming election, the reality that he wasn’t going to get a Presidential library, turkeys demanding pardons, and his press secretary who wanted to marry her partner after adopting a baby girl from China. 

At the end of the day, the Commander in Chief opens up a globe, takes out a Bud, and drops a bomb on us - ‘F*ck re-election. This job’s too f*ckin hard’. 

Shocker. 

In November, David Mamet captures public opinion and unleashes it in the Oval Office, sending Laurie Metcalf, Dylan Baker, Ethan Phillips and Michael Nichols on a wild goose chase with the once-and-again-lame duck, President Bush. While Nathan Lane explodes onto the stage and into his role, November’s storyline and Mamet’s at-times-cliche one-liners have a tough time catching up. But when it does, the cast, story, audience, and contemporary politics find themselves rolling on the floor in one giant White House clusterf*ck. 

Moral of the f*ckin’ story? Practice makes perfect, it seems.

Sunburn

Taking advantage of a reading assignment for my American Jeremiad class, I spent the midday in Palmer Square reading Olivia Butler’s Parable of the Sower. I recommend the book, and hope to read the sequel, Parable of the Talents. All I’m going to say in review of the book is that it really hit on my experience growing up in the 90s. The main character, Lauren, tries to convince her community that they need to be prepared to survive in the wilderness at a moment’s notice, should impending disaster break upon them. Now, Lauren’s community is in far more immanent danger than I have ever been, so maybe I’m just crazy, but as a 10-12 year old child, I felt an urgent need to know how to live off the land, should everything about my post-industrial, globalized lifestyle fall apart. (P.S. I really may be crazy, because upon reading this novel I realized I still have this paranoia/desire). When I finished the novel and started to reflect on what I had dug out of my childhood, I realized that I had a nasty sunburn on my arms. Looking down at my legs, I found a very strange pattern of red triangles, created by the funky slits in my calf-length skirt. Sweet. First sunburn of the season. 

When I got home from my afternoon class, I headed straight for the aloe vera, but after that, I decided that  today was a pivotal day. The first sunburn of the season meant it was time to put away the winter sweaters and scarves, leggings and long underwear. After my last, long New Jersey winter, I found myself singing that song we often sing at the end of seminary chapel services … Aaamen, Aaamen, Aamen, Amen, Amen. 

(Can you see the sunburn?)

 

 

 

The Pope Next Door

Riding uptown on Madison Avenue this morning was a bit creepy. Every Sunday I arrive at Penn Station and am in a yellow cab on my way to Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church by 8 or 8:15. Most mornings, there are very few cars on the road.

This morning was no exception … until we crossed Madison and about 50th. I began to open my sleepy eyes a little wider as I noticed that on every block stood a NYPD officer. In the 60s, there were black cars lining the roads, using all available parking spots. At about 65, black cars were mixed with squad cars, and at 72nd, there was an enormous crowd, with camera lighting and a huge white tent.

Last Sunday I noticed a similar scene, minus quite such a large police presence. Able to catch a quick glace of a woman with a curly blonde mane sitting in a director’s chair, I thought it must have been a Sex in the City shooting, and the woman, Sarah Jessica Parker.

This morning, the shooting could have been done not just with cameras, but also with machine guns in the hands of men and women in uniform on the streets and incognito on the roofs. This morning’s visitor? The Pope.

During his stay in the City, Benedict took up residence at 72nd and Madison, just a block from my church. As I got out of my cab in front of the sanctuary, I had to dodge four big truck-like vehicles that looked like they could plow through a wall - or a crowd. Watching from the front of the worship service, I could see out the back windows 2 ambulances from St. Vincent’s on call and ready. Watching the breaking of the bread during communion, I heard a chopper fly overhead - just about the time the Pope was supposed to be moving from Ground Zero to Yankee Stadium. Wow. Interesting.

As I walked downtown this afternoon, I couldn’t help but think about Oscar Romero, and dozens of other saints who have lived the Catholic faith on the ground so to speak, in the streets, in the line of fire. People whom this Pope, before he was Pope, discredited for their association with populist political and economic movements. People who didn’t have the protection of the Vatican or the United States government. People who died for love of their brothers and sisters.

I couldn’t help but think about all the other hundreds of thousands of people in the City who desparately need the presence of a protector, a mediator, or a medical aid person, but whose resources were reallocated for the guarding of this one person.

Who knows, maybe I’m just a cynical Protestant, but I’m glad I won’t always be going to church with the Pope next door.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/18/popelockdown/

Senior Day, Dr. Pierce, and Kanye West

“I was going to write the sermon to end all sermons … I was even going to dust off my Barth and my Calvin … and get you all excited about all the good things you’re going to do when you leave this place,” and then she said, “But then I heard the voice of God …”.

Dr. Yolanda Pierce began her sermon for our Senior Worship Service at PTS this way. I don’t know what everybody else thought she was about to say, but having studied with her this school year, I knew something good was coming.

She started talking about how she was there for the birth of hip hop. Growing up black in Brooklyn, she was there from the beginning, so the sounds of hip hop shaped her coming of age. She remembers when hip hop was the outcry of people in the streets who were tired of the poverty and the violence and the struggle that was daily life. It functioned like those old African American spirituals that took people out of slavery to freedom. But at some point hip hop sold out or lost its center, its soul, because artists began to glorify materialism, murder, and misogyny. Besides, newer artists like Kanye West were mediocre at best. So, she stopped listening.

From my view on the back pew, I could see some people giving their neighbors a raised eyebrow or a “Where is she going with this” kind of look. After all, this was the worship service for “Senior Day”. What does hip hop have to do with the hallowed halls of the ivory-tower, ivy-league seminary? What does Athens have to do with Jerusalem? 

Dr. Pierce anticipated these questions, experienced them herself. When Kanye West released “Jesus Walks” in 2004 and appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone with a crown of thorns in 2006, she sat up and took notice. “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”. 

West’s poetry may have continued to fall into mediocrity (”The way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way I need Jesus”?), she said, but his message “Jesus Walks” was reaching people whom the church fails.

To the hustlas, killers, murderers, drug dealers even the strippers
(Jesus walks with them)
To the victims of Welfare for we living in hell here hell yeah
(Jesus walks with tthheemm)

Youth who had never stepped into a church, who didn’t know the first thing about what to wear to a house of worship, let alone what one would do in one, were listening to Kanye West on their IPods, hearing him say 

We at war with society, racism, terrorism, but most of all we at war with ourselves
(Jesus Walks)
God show me the way because the Devil trying to break me down
(Jesus Walks with me).

What a simple message, Dr. Pierce said, for people who feel so lost in such complicated situations. “We at war with ourselves”!

It’s not just other people who try to bring us down. It is ourselves, our lack of self-respect, our lack of self-love. Where does one get this self-love if no one else is showing us love? - she asked. 

Jesus walks with you. What does that mean? God loves you - a young girl growing up in the ghetto of Brooklyn. Someone showed her this love, and that message, “God loves you; Jesus walks with you,” changed her life. 

–

A professor of African American Religion and Literature, Dr. Pierce has discovered this through exploring African American antebellum writers : “for African Americans, accounts of spiritual conversion revealed “personal transformations with far-reaching community effects. A personal experience of an individual’s relationship with God is transformed into the possibility of liberating an entire community.” The process of conversion could result in miraculous literacy, “callings” to preach, a renewed resistance to the slave condition, defiance of racist and sexist conventions, and communal uplift.” (From Dr. Pierce’s Hell without Fires).

My hope for the Princeton Theological Seminary community is that Dr. Pierce’s account of her spiritual conversion, as well as the accounts of other brothers and sisters of all walks of life, will yield the continuing transformation of a seminary, a church, and a world in great need of liberation.

Women’s Center Lunch for Senior Women

Today was the annual PTS Women’s Center Luncheon for Senior Women, as well as one of the first days that I have seen flowers in bloom in more than seven months. 

Spring brings lots of beautiful changes, and the warm weather and the brilliant colors call out for us to stop and notice everything that’s going on around us. 

Some of the women at the lunch gave reflections about their time at PTS, and while I sat listening to some music, I began to reflect on my time here. I kept coming back to a couple of conversations I had before I came to seminary, wherein more than a couple of women who graduated from PTS warned me not to even think about going to Princeton. Women were not welcome, in fact they were harassed, during their times at PTS. 

I am grateful that I have not had to endure such a blatantly hostile experience, and perhaps I am lucky. I know that there are still lines in the sand and ceilings to be broken through. But as Dr. Pierce said in class last week, the essence of feminist expression is choice, and I have felt the love and support of many sisters (and brothers) as I have created my unique route through seminary. 

Cheers to my sisters. Cheers to the many choices that are behind and cheers to the many choices that are ahead. Cheers to us who will stand together as we we create our own unique ways through life. 

New home … if all goes well.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about the headaches of looking for a house while being so far away from Charlotte. Well, the situation just got easier, because I think we have a winner! Tommy found a house in the University area (north Charlotte) that seems to be in the perfect location between the church and Alcar. It has a big yard with nice trees, three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and huge floor to ceiling windows in the back of the house. I’ve never seen the house in person, but here’s pictures of the place. We have a closing date of May 2, so if all goes well, we’ll be moving here in about a month.
  

 

San Antonio

This morning I took the hotel shuttle to the airport, and on the way, met Javier. Javier was the shuttle driver and told me a little bit about San Antonio. This had been my first visit to San Antonio, and immediately, I was surprised to find the airport very small for what I assumed to be a large city. Javier said that they were building a new terminal in the airport, because the city had grown so much in the past few years. Just the other evening I found out why the city had multiplied in size recently. Bush. At first I was confused, but then the moment someone said military, I understood. I also noticed how clean the city was, especially since the Final Four crowd left the day I arrived. Javier told me that the city was clean, and really quite safe, considering its size. 

Last night, I and the group from the Presbytery went down to the Riverwalk to enjoy the sights and eat at Boudros (nice atmosphere, OK food, but not worth the $$$). Another hint about Boudros - someone told us on the way in that their signature drink was their Prickly Pear Margarita. So, a couple of us tried this margarita. And after we tried the Prickly Pear Margarita, we made our second round a regular margarita. Go for the regular margarita. Much better. After we ate, we went outside to wait on a couple of taxi’s that someone in our group had called to take us back to the hotel (some distance away). So, we waited. And waited. We watched an enormous number of souped-up cars cruise the strip. (I thought crusin the strip was sort of old school, but apparently I am totally uncool). We also watched an enormous - I mean a truck with ENORMOUS wheels - pass by. At this point, we had been waiting for these alleged taxis to come, so I proposed that we all get in the back of this ridiculous truck and go wherever they were going. 

About the time I was ready to jump out in the street and throw my hand in the air like I do in NYC, Cesar beat me to it. The tricky thing about getting a cab was that all the taxis had lights on the top - but the lights remained on even when there were passengers in the cab. SO CONFUSING. Get a switch, man. 

Last night, my stress levels didn’t have the capacity to be stressed about standing on a street corner for an hour at midnight, but I do feel better knowing that I didn’t need to be worried, since San Antonio is a fairly safe city. Thanks for the reassurance, Javier. 

culture

With two more weeks of seminary left, I find myself away from Princeton and in San Antonio for the PCUSA Multicultural Conference. I have to admit that the first day and a half, I wasn’t sure what I was going to take away from the conference itself. Along the way, I have learned some tools for use in the local church and some important things going on in other areas of the denomination. But what has been far more meaningful to me are the wonderful relationships I have made with a few awesome pastors and elders in the Presbytery of Charlotte. These are good people ya’ll. Yes, I said ya’ll. 

There’s something freeing about being among people from your home neck of the world. Humor, concern, care - we learn how to communicate our feelings, longings, even our silliness in the context of unique cultures. We use particular mannerisms, idioms, and props to express ourselves, and when someone immediately responds appropriately to what we’ve tried to communicate, we feel affirmed, understood, and free to express ourselves again. When we express ourselves and don’t receive congruent feedback, we have to try harder, communicating becomes a task, anxiety creeps in, and we refrain from expressing ourselves as readily as we might in other situations. 

I didn’t realize until I was with these people from Charlotte how hard I have had to work the past three years in seminary to communicate with other people, express myself, find understanding, and reflect all of these things for other people. Within 24 hours of being in San Antonio with the group from Charlotte, I began to feel understood - held even - by these people - and able to freely express myself in ways that it took me two - three years to do so with people in seminary or in church up north. 

Neris, one of the women from Charlotte, also had an interesting awakening while here at the conference. Yesterday, worship began with a mariachi band. The band began to play, people started clapping, and Neris’ face lit up. She turned to Warren and said, “This is so wonderful! I had forgotten what it was like to be Latina in Charlotte”. 

Neris told the group later that she thinks she just set aside a whole part of her culture in order to adapt to American culture in Charlotte. She hasn’t outrightly denied her culture, but neither has she found a place in which she can really express those aspects of her culture that give her life, make her face light up, make her feel comfortable, excited, and renewed. 

Our experiences reaffirm for me what has to remain central to whatever we do in the way of multicultural ministries. Neris and I are sisters in Christ. We have shared just a piece of our lives with one another. We have expressed our desire to support one another in our lives and ministries in Charlotte. We enjoy learning from one another about those things that are unique to our cultures which might enrich the life of the other in another culture. And yet, we both need the cultures, including the religious expressions, which have shaped our lives and which continue to give us life, make us feel understood, and enable us to express ourselves authentically, both with others and with God. 

People must be able to express themselves freely, with their own manners, idioms, and props, so that they can seek authentic spiritual experiences and serve others with joy and love. If the church can’t find a way to make room for that, for people of all different cultures, generations, sexualities, economic status, etc, the church might as well get out of the way.

Many people - in and out of the church - quickly dismiss the church as racist, irrelevant, ridiculous - whatever. But at the end of the day, and in honor of BGLASS week at PTS, “It’s about people”. (I can just hear someone criticizing me from one angle, “Of course it’s about people. It’s always been about people out for themselves and what they can gain at the expense of another person. Hell with it.” I can hear others saying, “No, no, no. It’s not about us, it’s about God”. I get it). 

Bottom line is, the people with whom I have been joined in love to hold up and lean on through all the trials and celebrations of life, they are church (whether they’ve ever set foot in a church). These people are valuable gifts of love for me, and I know they are powerful presences of hope for other people. And our relationships ought not depend on the rise and fall of particular ecclesial institutions. In fact, these relationships should be what critique, reform, and recreate church institutions in service to our witness to the love of God, which animates us in and through our particular cultures. 

And yet … people continue to seek to control one another and everything else under the sun. PCUSA polity continues to be at times a blessing, but on many occasions a curse. How well does the proposed new PCUSA polity address issues of decentralizing power? In the words of Dr. Rivera Pagan, “OK. Discuss”.