Transgender Day of Rememberance

 

A Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance 2013

God,
of all the vast varieties of humankind,

Help us to move beyond
the exclusiveness
of an either / or mentality
to the inclusiveness
of an all and every
way of thinking.

Move us beyond binary definitions
to the mystery and complexity of
Your infinite creativity
and creation.

As we pause to remember those
senselessly
Murdered
because of their
all encompassing humanity
open hearts that need to hear
souls that need to know
and minds that need to see
that there are
no limits
to You
nor Your creation.

A Prayer by Vickey Gibbs.

 

Nanowriting and other musing

Culturally I am very interested in how the arts are playing out for millennials. 

I mean we’re mostly broke, so maybe creativity will abound? (this is my hope)

Let’s review

Couch Surfers

Open Source Computer Programs

Etsy

Carshares

and now I’ve re-discovered nanowriMo: National Novel Writing Month(which I’ve heard of briefly last year): in which you set yourself a goal to write a novel through writing about 50,000 words by the end of November

What I love is, you are really doing it for you….the website is (to me) like a self-determined excercise program where you count calories…no wait I mean words 🙂 on your own time and set goals for yourself.

I probably won’t keep up with the word count…but (partially inspired by avidly reading Robin McKinley’s KES) I’ve decided to give it a try…..I will definitely be farther along than I have been so far, I’m four short chapters in already 🙂

GO CREATIVITY! 

YAY BOOKS!

 

Talia: Chapter 4 #nanowriMo

“I don’t know if I’d call this a sword mother…it looks more like a…knife, a curvy-knife”

My mother shrugged, “All I know is its yours. Someone gave it to me about three years ago, you know, when everything……started, and it whispered your name…so I’m giving it to you” at this my mother grinned impishly, completely belying her age.

So I set off, trudging determinedly towards the unknown…

And it got pretty boring. I tried to spot pixies in the trees, but the glitter I caught was too fast to be identifiable. I walked a steady pace, but soon found it to be…..too quiet.

One day from home, and I already miss conversation, I’m not used to being quiet. My mother and I can talk as merrily as the day is long (as the poet says). Plus, I don’t limit my conversation to just my mother. The cat and I often have long in depth observations together….Ripp never says anything out loud, but of course I know better than to believe that she is not participating in the conversation…..in her own cat way.

Then of course there are the childlings, most of whom can outtalk me, but still the oft chatter of the young ones does fill the space around us pleasantly.

I think the real problem is I’m always talking. Its just sometimes I talking in my head, sometimes I’m talking to the text I am reading, and sometimes I’m talking out loud! But I’m always talking.

Towards the end of the day I find a brook, which, although it doesn’t talk, does burble loudly, with pink bubbles mysteriously rising out of the depths of the places where its almost still. This confuses me as I meditate on it, wouldn’t magic work like ripples or splashes off the stream? Conversely, does the very running of the water serve to break apart the magic…making it more likely to need a release in its more still areas.

Liking my completely unschooled opinion, I decide this must be it. I am nothing if not confident, true I didn’t have magical training, but I figure that common sense and the willingness to do hard work will serve in almost any situation, so I don’t tend to dither or worry the way other girls might. (Although, sometimes I wonder if the dithering is because a lot of girls can use it as an excuse to get a male opinion on something. How boring would that be to always have your opinion told to you!).

Moonrise comes (so to speak, as I said before the moon is no longer visible, but it doesn’t change the time of day it is, so we in my village at least, continue to call it moonrise). I decide that I have spent too many nights awake, and that I probably wouldn’t be able to sleep if stop anyway. So on I go.

Alone.

Fools

“Christianity is, by its core nature, more akin to folly than it is to the Pope’s massive corporation. The central dictate of Christian doctrine is humility, in imitation of Christ’s ultimate self-humbling. Christians are mocked, persecuted and small: the powerful so-called Christian empires are the real perversion of the Gospel, not the Holy Fool.” p. 127 to Play the Fool by Laurie R. King

Millennials and Achievement

This is a great video about the overemphasis on quantity over quality in education…but it also points to, what I think is a CRUX of the cultural issue of Millennials

Are we lazy?
Is it the economy?
Do millennials have too high expectations?
Who raised these millennials to think this way?
Did we give too many trophies?
Why do millennials have to show off everything via social media anyway, isn’t that just being self-centered?

I think the millennials are an achievement based generation. One in which achievement is the highest value. And that culturally, we have hit a time where unacknowledged achievement feels worthless.

Boomers (mostly) valued themselves on their own achievements and so they encourage millennials to be high-achieving.
High Expectations: because (we) are encouraged to achieve..although mine are fairly reasonable due current conditions https://katyandtheword.wordpress.com/2013/09/14/one-millennials-expectations/
Social Media; To acknowledge achievement…I have a joke that big events (babies, marriages, etc) aren’t real until they are noted on facebook, I don’t think its just self-centered, I think its culturally about achieving the next goal
Trophies: Those were merely acknowledgments of our achievements, to me (and most people I know) the achievement was reward enough, but the acknowledgement was part of the “reality” that the world recognition makes it more real…
Laziness; I am still not convinced that laziness exists, most people I know who don’t reach their “achievements” are clinically depressed, or have ADHD or have severe home issues that get in their way of getting things done. What most people mean when they say “I was too lazy and didn’t do the laundry” is that emotionally they didn’t have the oomph/gumption to get behind doing that work that day, because life was just too overwhelming….which can be easily confused with laziness but shouldn’t be….

I have a friend who told me “your fairly ambitious….which I gggguessss is a good thing” It brought me up short. How can being ambitious be a bad thing? I mean I know I’m ambitious in what I consider a GOOD way, I don’t value money really (all I want is to be able to afford food and rent for me and mine)…I don’t want public recognition, but I do want to be effective, to be useful, to make a difference in the world…..

Successful church’s are helping people to belong and do hands on work, my generation is one of the greatest for volunteering, creativity is being valued over money and small/creative/homemade items are being more and more valued as real achievements…
because the achievements we hoped for: steady jobs, families, to buy a house, are so often out of reach.

But sharing your couch (couch surfers), opensourcing (Firefox/linux), carsharing (relayrides), farming (CSA, community gardening) and personalized crafts (Etsy) can be https://katyandtheword.wordpress.com/2013/05/10/open-sourcing-and-laziness-2/

I am fairly ambitious
I am achievement oriented
These can be good or bad things

But no matter what, they are definitely DEFINING for me and my generation

Narrative Lectionary: Saints, Prophets and Love!

Let it be known that I am pairing this week’s scripture (of which I am using 1 Kings 19: 9-15, John 12:27-28)

with 1 Corinthians 13:1-3….

Saints, Prophets and Love, oh my!

1 corinthians 13

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Something about the sound of Love, and Silent presence, Silent Love are among my musings…I feel like this ties it all together…

So I am doing THREE readings for Sunday (how unpresbyterian of me boowahahahahahah)

Something to consider as you sermonize!

PS Hallows not Horcruxes might make its way in there too!

Root Beer & M&Ms

To me, church tastes like root beer and M&M’s, thanks to First Pres in Malvern Arkansas that had old school GLASS bottled root beer. My parents office had an M&M machine.

Being a pastor’s kid, I’ve probably put in more hours at church than most people, I’ve also probably done a lot more at church, so I feel comfortable.

To me, church feels like home.

Which is awesome, because it doesn’t matter where I am (or even what type of religious house I’m in), to me its a place to call home!

Church is a place for God to dwell. Its a place for us to enact the body of Christ. Sure we aren’t perfect, but in church we are more reflective, we think more carefully about our interactions. (the faults tend to sting more but, more importantly) the good actions are even more meaningful. These moments are what make church important, and for each of us, we start to accumulate these sacred moments, we start to build sacred relationships and the more we build, the more we are able to carry them onto our lives.

That is what is meaningful to me about sacred spaces and sacred relationships in a time where being spiritual-but-not-religious is another way to go.

For me, root beer and M&Ms will alway taste and feel sacred–like church….and certain interactions and reactions will alway put me in mind of God, and they are my church, my carrying of Christ’s Body into the everyday world!

Why do we have these buildings for God?

Solomon built a temple, because he knew he couldn’t contain God.

Ironic as it is….

The Temple is empty, except for the 10 commandments, so that all the priest, and elders and leaders and everyone important can come into the temple for its dedication.

And the moment they call on God (we would call this the Prayer of Illumination) God’s Cloud fills the entire temple

And when the priests came out of the Holy Place,a cloud filled the house of the Lord, 11 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord. 1 Kings 8:10-11

God is all that is in the temple! The temple wasn’t big enough to hold God, yet God filled it! That’s why it wasn’t about limiting God, but noticing how infinite God is.

This is (one) story of how God came to dwell on Earth.

Another is Jesus

Another is Communion

Another is baptism

Another is us–the people, the body of Christ, Christ’s promise that whenever we gather in his name, he’ll be present.

With Christ, God was invited to be present in church, but not just in the building but in our very relationships.

Faith

Faith is work, its communal, its varied, it contains all our varied beliefs and doubts.

Belief is us reaching towards God

Faith is God reaching towards us

In order to have faith, you must have community. Its different than asceticism or belief, it is more than the individual spirituality.

Spirituality is how we practice our beliefs.

Faith is RELATIONAL, its about our relationship with God and therefore is about our relationship with each other.

Our relationships with one another help us to understand God- hence God gives us Faith.

 

Have Faith!