Happy (or not) International Women's Day 2011

Happy International Women's Day!!!

I lurve women.

But not in that way. Not that there's anything wrong with that way. There's not.

But it's International Women’s Day, so I want to talk about women...

I think of poetry when I think of women. Not just because poetry is aloof but concise…. Beautiful, poignant…. Powerful.... Often conquering wars within and without that guns or angry words or even the most powerful of resolutions can’t stave off.

But because so much has been written in the poetic world about women. And why not?

Why not? Never stop writing men, and women, and men who want to be women and men who want to conquer women, and men who just want to be with women.

Never stop writing.

For we are a wonder.

Mother says she may have pushed the “woman thing” a little too hard with me. But I disagree.

Push harder, I say. We’ve got a lot further to go…

Check out this article and sign the Petition against “Corrective Rape,” an atrocity committed against lesbians to “cure” them of their “disease.”

Or how about “Honor Killings?” To prevent shame from coming upon a family, they will murder a girl (yep, even 13 or 14 year old kids) or a woman in their family who has (willingly or not – and often the women have been raped) had sex outside of marriage or engaged in adulterous acts.

Female Circumcision, now called "female genital mutilation” or FGM (but I would hate to soften the sting of this sin our by reducing it to an abbreviation). Somewhere around 25 countries in Africa still practice this on girls between the ages of 1 and 15 years old.

Last year, Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton released the Human Trafficking report. This is when people (but predominantly women) are sold into modern day slavery. Often this is sexual slavery, but even here in American we have discovered slaves (even children) forced to work without pay in shops and restaurants. This is a great short story about my friend/author and her recent experience. Modern day slavery people. It’s crazy, but it exists. Even in America.

And speaking of America, for every dollar your boyfriend or husband or brother or that stapler-obsessed guy in the next cubicle makes, you only make 77.5 cents. In other words, if he makes $50,000 a year, you make $38,750 for doing the same job. Even worse… the higher up you go, the greater the disparity. Example: doctors, executives, etc. Those women only make 72.3 cents to every professional man’s dollar. And if you’re black or Hispanic then you’re really out of luck cause America will give you even less than that. Shitty, I know. (In Europe, we only make about 18 cents less than the men… yet another reason to move to France.)

Except, even in France where feminism flourishes, it’s not equal…

Happy (or not) International Women's Day 2011!!But don’t get downhearted women and women lovers! According to John on Ally McBeal, we’ll make it through:

JOHN: I'm troubled.

BILLY: You're troubled.

JOHN: My therapist, she knows.

BILLY: She knows... she knows what?

JOHN: They'll eventually lead. The women. They'll lead.

BILLY: Your therapist knows this.

JOHN: And she's telling them.

And here’s some clips of poetry to raise your spirits, make you think and hopefully inspire you to love and speak out on behalf of women every day of your life and to be a better woman yourself…

excerpt from Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Now you understand

Just why my head's not bowed.

I don't shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It's in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need of my care,

'Cause I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

excerpt from Ladies Who Lunch by Stephen Sondheim

...So here's to the girls on the go--

Everybody tries.

Look into their eyes,

And you'll see what they know:

Everybody dies.

A toast to that invincible bunch,

The dinosaurs surviving the crunch.

Let's hear it for the ladies who lunch --

Everybody rise!

Clara: In the Post Office by Linda Hasselstrom

I keep telling you, I'm not a feminist.

I grew up an only child on a ranch,

so I drove tractors, learned to ride.

When the truck wouldn't start, I went to town

for parts. The man behind the counter

told me I couldn't rebuild a carburetor.

I could: every carburetor on the place. That's

necessity, not feminism.

I learned to do the books

after my husband left me and the debts

and the children. I shoveled snow and pitched hay

when the hired man didn't come to work.

I learned how to pull a calf

when the vet was too busy. As I thought,

the cow did most of it herself; they've been

birthing alone for ten thousand years. Does

that make them feminists?

It's not

that I don't like men; I love them - when I can.

But I've stopped counting on them

to change my flats or open my doors.

That's not feminism; that's just good sense.

And some old thoughts (in praise of and not) from that great book, the Bible itself...

Amos 4

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan who are on the mountain of Samaria,

Who oppress the poor, who crush the needy,

Who say to your husbands, "Bring now, that we may drink!"

²The Lord GOD has sworn by His holiness,

"Behold, the days are coming upon you

When they will take you away with meat hooks,

And the last of you with fish hooks.

³"You will go out through breaches in the walls,

Each one straight before her,

And you will be cast to Harmon," declares the LORD.

Song of Solomon 1

I am black but lovely,
O daughters of Jerusalem,
Like the tents of Kedar,
Like the curtains of Solomon. ⁶"Do not stare at me because I am swarthy,
For the sun has burned me.
My mother's sons were angry with me;
They made me caretaker of the vineyards,
But I have not taken care of my own vineyard. ⁷"Tell me, O you whom my soul loves,
Where do you pasture your flock,
Where do you make it lie down at noon?
For why should I be like one who veils herself
Beside the flocks of your companions?"

⁸"If you yourself do not know,
Most beautiful among women,
Go forth on the trail of the flock
And pasture your young goats
By the tents of the shepherds. ⁹"To me, my darling, you are like
My mare among the chariots of Pharaoh. ¹⁰"Your cheeks are lovely with ornaments,
Your neck with strings of beads." ¹¹"We will make for you ornaments of gold
With beads of silver."

And for those who like to make sure they're remembered...

I've Always Enjoyed Her Sense of Humor by Gerald Locklin

She's an old friend

And I don't see her very often,

But she has a way of turning up

When I'm talking to a girl I've just met,

And she will invariably storm up to us

And confront me with, "where is the child support check?!"

Then turn on her heel and storm from the room,

Leaving me to make inadequate explanations.

Don't Cry For Me Austin, Texas!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago in a blog post, I'm playing Eva Peron in Evita at a local theater in a suburb of Austin. I'm loving it, and have a few more fun pictures and videos to share to entice those of you in the Austin area to check out the show, and to help those of you too far away to attend (grandma) to abate your curiosity.

Here is Michael Meig's of Austin Live Theater's review of our show. He writes, "The voices are superb, the leads are very well cast both for appearance and for presence, and as usual the Palace fills the stage up with action, spectacle and dance." Additionally, he came to our preview night and took this video footage:

On local radio station KOOP 91.7, Evita's director, Cliff Butler, and I were interviewed by Off Stage and On the Air, and I sang "Don't Cry For Me, Argentina". You can access us via their facebook site or we're "Act IV, Scene 94" on their blog. You can listen to the interview and song here (we come on the air a little over half-way through the show).

Local Georgetown paper gave us *5 Poppies* (welcome to small town, texas) for our performance and while you can't read their review online (again, welcome...), here's some pics someone posted of the paper's review...

And finally, here's some of my favorite pics taken during our preview night by Rodnesha Green at INspired Photos.

So check out the show at The Georgetown Palace Theater... only three more weekends!

"I Remember" an assignment from my dad

My father has a blog, Pitt's Viewpoints. In his second blog of all time (two of two), he assigned someone - the internet? his students at school? to "remember." And then he lists fourteen random memories he has, none of which i knew about him.

So, because I am a good girl and does what my father tells me to (i know their will be backlash on that last sentence, but lets keep it to a minimum), here is my paper. I hope I get an "A."

I Remember...

• I remember which bedroom was mine in my grandparents' house when we would sleep there occasionally.
• I remember when the wasp landed on me in our tree-house - the worst thing that could ever happen to a nine year old - and Amy and Andee ran to get my dad who flew to the tree house, flicked it off my chest and swooped me out of the tree.
• I remember spinning in circles in the living room of our old house, spinning around and around as I sang along to the Annie record we played before preschool. I can still see that carpet and those circles.
• I remember each window I was scared of as a child, in every room I ever slept in.
• I remember arguing with Paul Kuhlman in the music room at school that yes, indeed, Santa Claus did exist because, like my dad would climb up on our roof and leave orange peels up there, pretending the reindeer had eaten the oranges we left for Santa.
• I remember peeing my pants playing outfield near third base because I couldn't hold it any longer. I think I remember that...
• I remember talking about how Paul Kuhlman kissed Sugar Ocker in the first grade at the reading table for years and years to come.
• I remember making a village in my favorite teacher, Mrs. McFall's third grade class, and my house was clear plastic. A glass house if you will. I remember volunteering at church as a youth and always hearing the joke, "glass house, Ann, glass house." Who would have known...
• I remember being sent to the principal's office when Paul Kuhlman slapped me in the face with a dirty rag off the playground. (Paul Kuhlman caused me a lot of problems as a child).
• I remember my first kiss was actually a stage kiss. And we bumped noses.
• I remember dance classes with Cliff and Paul. I remember that I refused to take it the first year it was offered because Amy was in it and I was sick of being around my little sister. But I wanted in that second year, and even now, even this week, I thought about Paul and how much I miss his dance class.
• I remember what I wore on my first date with the first person I really loved: short khaki skirt, white button down shirt, pastel green and pink and purple handkerchief around the neck (yes, that was cool then).
• I remember the first time I got a dozen roses from a boy.
• I remember how Jake Camp stunk up the room so much in Chemistry our Sophomore year (first hour), the teacher would make him sit in the hall most days.
• I remember avoiding the smoker's bathroom my freshman year in high school.
• I remember avoiding Jock Hall too.
• I remember when the boys came back to school the fall of our 8th grade year and wondering where all that hair came from and what in the world happened to their voices?
• I remember telling Nancy Nelson I wouldn't be able to call her Mrs. Nelson just because she was now my school guidance counselor. Nancy would just have to do.
• I remember declining the invitation to change someone's Latin grade on my mother's home computer. And I remember knowing who cheated in French class, but not telling my mother.
• I remember the first boy I thought was a "creeper." Of course, we didn't have that jargon then.
• I remember the trip my dad took our family on to Excelsior Springs and how Amy, the swimmer, did laps in the saltwater pool and ran into the side of the wall.
• I remember my mother reading to me from giant art and mythology books as a child.
• I remember the layer of smoke that hung across the lobby of the Missouri Theater (back when you could smoke anywhere) as I watched my father give notes to the cast of one of his many productions.
• I remember the first time I was offered alcohol (and not by my parent).

Oh my gosh, this is so fun, I can't stop. I'm sure y'all are bored stiff, but this is awesome. Great assignment dad.

• I remember eating pizza on the beach in Oahu with my family in the seventh grade and watching the sunset. I remember always wanting to recreate that moment every time I visited Hawaii after that.
• I remember practicing kissing on our balled-up fists with Kara Elder in her bedroom.
• I remember when my father told me he was sorry he hadn't prepared me for real life.
• I remember how proud I was of my mother at my sister's wedding - that she wasn't stressed at all, but just had fun.
• I remember eating hamburger party pizza and playing Life with Amy on the den floor over and over again until I was so sick of both that we never did that again.
• I remember how pretty I thought my mother was when she was pregnant with Emily.
• I remember my mother's fortieth birthday party at Diane and Terry's house.
• I remember the present Nancy Nelson gave me when I was sick in the hospital as a young child with a stomach virus. It was a book about a bird who was a mailman.

Okay, I could seriously go on forever, this is a great writing activity. And I didn't even get to college or seminary or real world or whatever. Thanks, dad.

Art & Faith, Session One

Art and Faith:

The Art of Storytelling

(from my lecture to Guatemalan Pastor's conference, January 2011)

To begin our session this morning, I would like to look at a story we are probably all familiar with. It is the story of David and Bathsheba. Do you remember it?

King David, a man after God’s own heart, is supposed to be off at war with his army, but is instead lounging around his castle in his capitol city. While wandering around one afternoon on the terrace, he spies Bathsheba, one of his top soldier’s wives, bathing. He sends for her, he has his way with her, he sends her home, and assumes his sin has gone undetected. But sin always complicates things and the next month Bathsheba sends word to the King that she is pregnant.

This is, you remember, a problem because her husband is where King David is supposed to be… off at war. And the punishment for adultery (well, for women who commit adultery – not that she had a choice) is stoning. As if being forced to participate in an adulterous act weren’t enough, now Bathsheba faces certain death should her neighbors notice she is showing. King David tries to cover his sin by bringing Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, home from war, congratulating him on his hard work and giving him a few days to recuperate with his wife. One would think the unsuspecting Uriah would be thrilled! A compliment on your service from the king and paid vacation with your wife, who wouldn’t jump at the opportunity?

Unfortunately, what King David forgot was that during the last war, in a moment of zealotry, he had made a law forbidding anyone in military service to participate in sexual acts. Their devotion must be reserved only for God and winning the current battle. Uriah was a faithful man, and even though the King granted him permission, he couldn’t break the law by going to bed with his wife when all his comrades were still at war! So passing off Bathsheba’s pregnancy as Uriah’s own doing wasn’t going to be an option for King David. And as David’s sin entangled him even more, he sent Uriah back to battle with a letter to the general of his army Joab, “put Uriah in the front line of battle.” Yes, Uriah carries his own death sentence to Joab. But of course, because Uriah is a faithful man, he doesn’t open the letter. King David’s request to Joab that he put Uriah in the front line of the troops and then have the rest of the troops pull back seems suspicious to Joab. Don’t ask questions, just do it, the letter read. But while Joab doesn’t know the King’s reasons for this strange act – putting one of his best military leaders in the front line to have him killed, Joab devises a better plan and puts Uriah on the task of fighting near the wall of the opposing city, also a position that would ensure his death, but one that would look much less suspicious to the troops. Uriah goes there to fight and of course dies.

Upon his death, King David and Bathsheba mourn for the required period and then in an act of false chivalry, King David takes Bathsheba to be his wife so the his valiant warrior’s wife is taken care of. Sin committed. Sin protected. It took a lot of work, but King David got away with it.

Or so he thought.

Because who then pays a visit to the King at his castle?

Nathan.

And what does Nathan do when his request to see the King is granted?

He tells a story.

He doesn’t read from the Mosaic Law scrolls, he doesn’t call down the wrath of God upon him. He doesn’t even ask the King what really happened.

He tells a story. "Once upon a time," Nathan starts, "there was a man with a little lamb..."

Nathan uses his imagination to communicate creatively with his king, to help him understand what he had done wrong. Nathan used a familiar art form to talk about God.

The imagination is inseparable from the human mind. It is a gift from God to color our language and brighten our minds. Whether or not we pay attention to it, the act of imagination is all around us. We must first recognize this. Recognize our inability to escape imagination and its function in our language and theology, and secondly we must allow our imaginations to be used by God to help us better understand theology and ultimately our relationship to our Creator. Imagination must not be seen as secondary to intellectual pursuits or theological propositions, imagination is not superfluous or something we do when we have time. To fail to use our imagination or render it secondary to theology or hermeneutics or morality is to deny a part of whom God has created us to be – imaginative people.

When we hear the word art, we often thing of the physical arts: paintings, sculptures, mosaics. But for this session, I would like to focus on an imaginative art form that we cannot see with our eyes, but rather hear with our ears, process with our minds and connect to in our hearts. I want to talk about preaching, the art of storytelling.

One of our greatest preachers spoke mostly in stories; often using the rhetorical device we call parables. Of course I am speaking of Jesus Christ. Think back with me. What did Jesus say when the Pharisees would approach him with a trick question? He told a story. What happened when the disciples asked him to explain something they’d been arguing about? He told them a story. When he preached on top of the hill we now call the Mount of the Beatitudes, he told stories.

Once upon a time, there was a woman searching for a coin. Once upon a time, there was a farmer planting seeds. Once upon a time there was a Samaritan man traveling on a road…

Jesus was a great storyteller and we can learn from him how to design our own sermons. But first, I would even like to look even further back than Christ’s lessons and return to the book of Second Samuel.

While many of you may probably remembered the first story we re-told today, there is another story just a few chapters later that I would also like to examine. After the Bathsheba incident in Second Samuel, King David has a string of bad things happen to him (most of which the prophet Nathan predicted would happen as a result of his sin with Bathsheba). The son born to Bathsheba and David becomes very ill and dies. David’s son from a different marriage, Amnon, rapes his half-sister, Tamar. And his son Absalom, from yet another wife, murders his half-brother Amnon for the sin he committed against their sister Tamar. Absalom then flees Jerusalem and David in left to mourn the division of his household and the violence that has befallen his family. Turn in your Bibles to 2 Samuel chapter 14. Remember Joab, King David’s general from the last story? Well he returns in this one. Noticing how devastated his King is over the loss of two sons (one to death and one to exile), Joab devises a plan. Read 2 Samuel 14:1-11:

Now Joab son of Zeruiah perceived that the king’s mind was on Absalom.Joab sent to Tekoa and brought from there a wise woman. He said to her, ‘Pretend to be in mourning; put on mourning garments, do not anoint yourself with oil, but behave like a woman who has been mourning many days for the dead. Go to the king and speak to him as follows.’ And Joab put the words into her mouth.

When the woman of Tekoa came to the king, she fell on her face to the ground and did obeisance, and said, ‘Help, O king!’ The king asked her, ‘What is your trouble?’ She answered, ‘Alas, I am a widow; my husband is dead. Your servant had two sons, and they fought with one another in the field; there was no one to part them, and one struck the other and killed him. Now the whole family has risen against your servant. They say, “Give up the man who struck his brother, so that we may kill him for the life of his brother whom he murdered, even if we destroy the heir as well.” Thus they would quench my one remaining ember, and leave to my husband neither name nor remnant on the face of the earth.’

Then the king said to the woman, ‘Go to your house, and I will give orders concerning you.’ The woman of Tekoa said to the king, ‘On me be the guilt, my lord the king, and on my father’s house; let the king and his throne be guiltless.’ The king said, ‘If anyone says anything to you, bring him to me, and he shall never touch you again.’ Then she said, ‘Please, may the king keep the Lord your God in mind, so that the avenger of blood may kill no more, and my son not be destroyed.’ He said, ‘As theLord lives, not one hair of your son shall fall to the ground.’

So what happens in this text? Two things that I see: again we have a woman telling the king a story, using imagination to communicate a message of truth, but because she is given the words to say and told to act them out, I think we also have one of the earliest recorded theatrical plays here in this chapter! While many of us know Nathan’s story to King David about the rich man and the poor man and the many sheep versus the one little lamb, often we skip over this similar passage where Joab hires a woman to tell David another story to help him see the grievous sin he is committing.

Let’s go ahead and finish reading the story so we know how it ends… verses 12-23.

Then the woman said, ‘Please let your servant speak a word to my lord the king.’ He said, ‘Speak.’ The woman said, ‘Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God? For in giving this decision the king convicts himself, inasmuch as the king does not bring his banished one home again. We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished for ever from his presence. Now I have come to say this to my lord the king because the people have made me afraid; your servant thought, “I will speak to the king; it may be that the king will perform the request of his servant.For the king will hear, and deliver his servant from the hand of the man who would cut both me and my son off from the heritage of God.” Your servant thought, “The word of my lord the king will set me at rest”; for my lord the king is like the angel of God, discerning good and evil. TheLord your God be with you!’

Then the king answered the woman, ‘Do not withhold from me anything I ask you.’ The woman said, ‘Let my lord the king speak.’ The king said, ‘Is the hand of Joab with you in all this?’ The woman answered and said, ‘As surely as you live, my lord the king, one cannot turn right or left from anything that my lord the king has said. For it was your servant Joab who commanded me; it was he who put all these words into the mouth of your servant. In order to change the course of affairs your servant Joab did this. But my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God to know all things that are on the earth.’

Then the king said to Joab, ‘Very well, I grant this; go, bring back the young man Absalom.’ Joab prostrated himself with his face to the ground and did obeisance, and blessed the king; and Joab said, ‘Today your servant knows that I have found favour in your sight, my lord the king, in that the king has granted the request of his servant.’ So Joab set off, went to Geshur, and brought Absalom to Jerusalem.

Storytelling. It’s not just something we do to entertain small children or make people laugh at parties, storytelling is essential to our very nature and when used creatively can communicate with people messages from God.

How many of you can tell me the story of the Good Samaritan? How about the story of the 10 Bridesmaids? Or what about the story of the shepherd and the one lost sheep? Or the story of the wicket tenets?

Now how many of you can recite the laws concerning violence from Exodus 21? Or can you tell me the decree made by King Darius in Ezra chapter 6? Or can you list the neighbors or even the tribes of Israel who receive Judgment in the book of Amos?

Maybe you can. But I can’t. What I can remember though are stories. Because storytelling is art. And art changes us.

Let’s review the overarching Biblical story…

• Creation
• Patriarchs/Matriarchs (Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob, Rachel... and Joseph who ends up in Egypt)
• Egyptian Slavery
• Exodus (Moses!)
• Wilderness Wanderings (40 years)
• Period of the Judges (Deborah, Samson...)
• United Monarchy (Saul, David, Solomon)
• Divided Monarchy (Israel & Judah, a whole slew of kings and prophets too)
• Babylonian Exile
• Second Temple Period (Persia conquers Babylon and lets the Israelites return to Jerusalem)
• (Maccabbean Revolt – Apocrypha, intertestimental books)
• Jesus
• Church

If we want to reach our congregants in a new and fresh way, we need to learn how to be storytellers. We need to learn how to re-tell the text for the week in our own language. You’ll notice that at the beginning of our session, I re-told the entire story of David and Bathsheba. Often when a text is read, people zone out, they stop paying attention. They’ve heard the words too many times, or maybe the style of the words is so foreign that they’ve learned to mentally check out before the text is finished being read. But when we, as pastors, retell the story in our own words with our own language, then the people begin to hear the story fresh and new again.

Retelling the stories we hear over and over again in our own words is one way to engage our congregations creatively.

When we read a biblical story, we are already hearing it filtered through many people and communities already. Think with me. We have the author of the text who is first telling the story. Then we have the biblical redactors, the people who put the story like the one of King David and the wise old woman in the specific book like Second Samuel and then there was a community of people who decided which stories needed to be included in the canon of the Bible and where they should go within the canon. Then there is the church’s interpretation of the biblical stories throughout history from the first church fathers, to the Christian mystics, to the Roman Catholic Church to the Greek Orthodox Church to the early Protestants to Christians who were born after the Enlightenment and the list goes on and on. And finally we have the story filtered through our own tradition, and we interpreted by our pastors, teachers and parents…

In other words, these stories are complicated and before we even read them out loud, they have thousands of years of interpretation and storytelling already imposed upon them.

And when we read the stories, we bring our own story to the text as well.

Flannery O’Connor writes that “What we bring to and do with texts matter… as much as what texts… bring to and do with and to us.”

Our stories are important, and they affect how we read the Biblical story.

And truthfully, God is not just asking us to tell the biblical story. God asks us to tell our stories too. And so today I would like to give you some time to practice that.

Your story is sacred. My story is sacred. Why? Because it is the story of the people of God and we are God’s creation. God, the first artist, molded us from clay, breathed into our lungs and offered us this world to live in and create our own art in.

So we need to tell our good stories. We need to tell our bad stories. We need to tell the story of a good God who is at work in our complicated lives. We need to tell our stories of life lived abundantly.

Now, there’s a catch. You live in a predominantly Catholic/Protestant nation. You are in the majority. And when a religion is in the majority, just like we Christians do with texts we’ve heard over and over again, so do our neighbors begin to tune out the Christian message when it is told over and over again with the same foreign jargon.

So when you begin to think about your story, I want you to think about telling it creatively. It is easy to tell your story using church or religious words. I could probably write each of our stories out here on the board.

"I grew up in church where I received the gospel of Jesus Christ when I was years old. I confessed with my mouth that Jesus is Lord and believed in my heart that God raised him from the dead and I was baptized in town by Pastor . And I felt the joy of my salvation and have been trusting in the Lord’s providence ever since."

If this is your story, scrap it. Wad up the piece of paper and throw it out the window and start over. Instead, when you tell your story, you need to tell it the way you would tell any story. Make it creative and make it yours. Leave the churchy talk behind and use your own words, your own metaphors, tell your own story. Jim Rayburn once said, "It's a sin to bore a kid with the Gospel." What he means is, be creative. Don’t preach doctrine. Preach your story.

When you are speaking to people who aren’t Christians, or to people who are hurting and need to hear a story of hope, words like salvation, justification, sanctification and all those other “tion” words don’t make since. Those are words that shut people out. They are words and concepts that people “within” the club of Christianity know and they are not words that invite people into conversation or into the church.

In other words, you don’t have to know a certain language to be able to tell your story. You and your parishioners can tell your story with the two things God’s given you: the language of your culture and the imagination in your mind.

What makes your story sacred is not the verses of the Bible you can recite or the path to salvation that you can lay forward, what makes your story sacred is that it’s yours. When the Pharisees come to Jesus and ask him about the laws of adultery, Jesus tells them, “You’re missing the point.” The point of the law is not who can deliver a letter of divorce and in what time frame. The point is we are supposed to love one another and do our best to respect each other.

You don’t have to know a single thing about the Bible to tell your story. The members of your congregation don’t have to have memorized the Baptist distinctive, the four spiritual laws or even the 10 commandments. They just have to be able to talk… about their parents, their first job, their spouses, their children, their jobs, their hobbies, their pain, their passions, their traditions, their favorite song on the radio, and in that, they are telling the story of them and God.

A pastor in my hometown writes, “The Western church has had four centuries of viewing salvation in a mechanistic manner, presenting it as a plan, system or formula. It would be much better if we would return to viewing salvation as a song we sing.”[1]

Your story is sacred simply because it is yours and you are a child of God. My story is sacred not because I’m an ordained Baptist minister from the United States of America with a Masters degree from a seminary there, but simply because I am a child of God.

Good art points beyond itself and helps us recognize the human condition and hope in a divine intrusion. Good art calls us to more faithful relationship with the world, a relationship that witnesses to beauty of a Creator. In this way “art can be a powerful source of truth-telling, sometimes even uncovering the stories we would rather forget.”[2]

And we were fashioned by a creative Designer. Vigen Guroian writes, “God is more like a cantor who chants his Creation into existence and rejoices everlastingly over its beautiful harmony. His song continues, and its melody moves and inspires humankind to restore beauty and harmony to a Creation that is fallen and misshapen.”[3]

So What’s Your Story?

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[1] http://brianzahnd.com/beauty-will-save-the-world/

[2] http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001487.cfm

[3] The Melody of Faith: Theology in an Orthodox Key