GFest - gayWise LGBT Art Festival - in London - Nov 2008 - We are now accepting submissions online on the GFest website (link above & below).
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Look forward to seeing you at GFest 08 & Many thanks.
Wise Thoughts . gayWise Team
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Patrons: Baroness Prashar CBE, Lord Dholakia OBE, Lord Patel, Baroness Massey, Jon Snow, Baroness Flather, Stephen Twigg
We are continuing our reading and examination of Ecclesiastes that we started last week. The first chapter and a half led me to talk about Feeling Before Healing – that it is important for us to stand in the pain of whatever, face it, and take care of it. We need to embrace our pain and love it because it is part of who we are. All of that is still what I believe.
This week, in the reading, there is still pain and frustration evident in the words of the character of Solomon. He has come to a new place – a new decision about how to deal with it all. He says that the best thing to do, and what God has given us to do, is to eat, drink, and enjoy your work. Some translations say, “Eat, drink, and be merry.” We are to nourish ourselves, and enjoy our toil. That’s what I want to talk about first. Second, I want to talk briefly about the poem at the beginning of chapter 3 … For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven. Third, I want to talk about this being June – Pride month.
It is important to me that we not diminish this teaching of “eat, drink, and be merry,” by creating an either/or scenario – EITHER we feel our pain OR we eat, drink, and be merry. Instead I believe this is a both/and teaching. We need to feel our pain while we nourish ourselves and enjoy what it is we have to do in this life. That’s the challenge – feeling the pain, acknowledging the frustration and anger, nourishing ourselves, and enjoying life. When Philippians 4 teaches us to, “Rejoice in the Lord always,” I believe it is repeating this lesson. Can it be done?
Can we get to that place of overarching joy or happiness or satisfaction or whatever it may be, while we are suffering some kind of pain, sorrow, frustration, or anger? Can we totally live in the moment? What does it take to do this? Isn’t this what almost every self-help book claims to have the secret to? I am not making that kind of claim. I am saying that I believe it is possible to live such a life. I think that Jesus is one of the known teachers who accomplished this kind of life. And I believe that the character of Solomon is striving for this kind of balance, wisdom, and harmony. I am also saying that I am willing to struggle with you through this book to see if we can find points of balance, wisdom, and harmony for ourselves – both individually and as a community.
So, what might it take to live integrated without our joy and our pain – with being contented and yet being frustrated? Usually we put these emotions at opposite ends of each other. We chart or rate how we feel on a scale of happy to sad or content with discontent. How does what Ecclesiastes is suggesting change that paradigm? How does it shift our expectations?
Maybe there are multiple scales. There might be an overarching scale or a foundation and then offshoot scales like job, relationship, nuclear family, alone time … stuff like that. Is one overlaid on top of another and which ever feels strongest is how we end up feeling? Or maybe we have a default scale that overrides the others unless one of the others breaks or is extremely intense. Are these linear scales or are the cyclical?
I don’t know. There are lots of theories out there. Tons of theories. I favor cyclical theories over linear ones, but I don’t know. I think we can examine these things and expound on them for as long as we have breath and while there may be some benefit to be had from such exercises, I think mostly they are just exercises. Ecclesiastes is saying, “Things are not right! There are a lot of things that I can’t control and it ticks me off! The best that I can do is to find work that I enjoy and do it, eat, and drink.”
I want you all to know that I have found work that I enjoy. Being your interim pastor fills my heart with good things. I want to walk this journey of discernment with you. Not all of us are fortunate to have work that we like. Sometimes we have to make the best of a situation and find something fulfilling – some work that maybe our capitalist society would call a hobby – and enjoy ourselves there. I don’t believe we can count on the analysis or the understanding of how it works or why it is thus and such. We need to simply live it and feel it and breathe it.
It is difficult to hold on to your pain and hold on to your joy at the same time. We tend to feel guilty if we experience joy while we are in a painful situation. The truth is, I think, that we need to breathe, and joy and happiness give us breathing room. There are people who live their lives bitter and angry. Some of them don’t even know that at their core they have a pain that has festered into bitterness. These things come out in all sorts of ways, but if they don’t come out intentionally then they are just festering. The character of Solomon, through holy Wisdom, is intentionally speaking out what is causing him pain and working on how to live in a way that is pleasing to God. Verses 24 and 25 say, “There is nothing better for mortals than to eat, drink, and find enjoyment in their toil. This, also, I saw, is from the hand of God; for apart from God who can eat or who can have enjoyment?”
Here is a poem that has meant a lot to me over the years. It was written by a woman named Oriah.
“The Invitation.”
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your hearts’ longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
I doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see beauty, even when it’s not pretty, every day, and if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes!”
It doesn’t interest me where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you, from the inside, when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
I’m going to let that stand on its own and move on to the last two things I want to touch on briefly – “For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven,” and Pride month.
For years I held this poetic section of Ecclesiastes about there being a time for everything close to my heart. It was the way that I made sense of life. If there was one thing in the Bible that I could count on, it was this poem. Then one day I was talking to a friend about this and she kind of burst my bubble. She said something like, “I don’t think there is ever a time for a woman or a child to be raped, or for people to starve. I think there are lots of things there isn’t a time for.” Well crud, I thought. She’s right. I wanted some kind of formula, and I wasn’t going to have one. That was about three years ago, and I still don’t have a formula. I’m ok with that now. This poem does offer a lot of latitude in the way we can perceive things though. It isn’t the formula that I once thought it to be, but it is a good way to frame many many ways of being and thinking. It’s a beautiful poem that gives us permission to be fully ourselves – to dance and to mourn; to keep and to throw away; to speak and to be silent; to love and to hate – and the list goes on.
There is another way to consider this poem. What if this poem isn’t about saying that to everything there is a “right time” … but instead maybe it is acknowledging that all these things do exist and have their time, even if they take it by force. We have to divorce ourselves from the popular song, Turn, Turn, Turn to see it this way. The emphasis in the Pete Seger song is for world peace; for an end to war. But right in the poem there says that there is a time for war. What if this poem is only pointing out that all these things co-exist, and no value is being placed on any of these things? While it is true that verse 11 says, “God has made everything suitable for its time,” I have to wonder if that is truly the value the author believes or if it is a way to try to make sense of his world. In other worlds, the author, like myself a few years ago, wanted something to hang on to … a formula. The idea that God made everything suitable is quickly followed by more talk of justice and wickedness not being in their proper or expected places, and that we mortals should just try to find some enjoyment in our lives.
Finally, it is Pride Month here in Chicagoland. What is it to be proud? What is it to be queer? We each have our definitions. Mostly I want to encourage everyone to think about what makes you proud and what makes you queer; whoever you are, even if you are in the majority regarding your sexual orientation or gender identity.
Regarding Ecclesiastes and queerness I want to say this – what the author of this book does is turn the conventional wisdom of his time on its head. The author is constantly saying that what they thought they knew no longer makes sense. As queer people of faith – and I count heterosexual gender normative allies in the queer mix – we turn the conventional wisdom of our time on its head too. There are many who say that we can’t possible be children of The Holy, and yet we can testify how The Holy is living and breathing in wonderful positive ways through us. Even if the only testimony that we can muster right now is that we still have our community of Grace Baptist Church that, I believe, is a powerful testimony.
There are other ways that Ecclesiastes speaks to queerness, and over the next few weeks they will come up. But for this week let us remember that it isn’t the analysis alone that helps us become integrated. This week let’s live intentionally at the intersections of our lives. Let’s try to eat, drink, and enjoy what we do. Let’s be proud of who we are and above all let’s remember that we, like the character of Solomon, turn conventional wisdom on its head. We embody the truth of The Holy.
This is the sermon from May 25, 2008. The text is Ecclesiastes 1:12 – 2:17.
We’re going to be picking away at Ecclesiastes for the next few weeks. It will be interesting to see where this takes us during Pride month. Ecclesiastes has been an important book for me during transitions in my life, and since we are in an interim phase I thought I’d pull it out again.
There are many things that I like about this book. It addresses confusion and injustice without being overly concerned about being politically correct; it contradicts itself with a self-awareness you don’t see in many other biblical writings; and it isn’t afraid of being sad and staying sad. I know that may not sound encouraging to some people, but when you’re sad – which everyone is sometimes – we don’t always want someone trying to cheer us up. Romans 12:15 teaches us to “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep.” So often we hear the sound of crying and immediately respond out of a desire to fix things. It’s also true though that Proverbs 17:22 says, “A merry heart does good like a medicine,” but I think that sometimes we go too quickly into dispensing the medicine. First we need a little storytelling, a little commiserating, a little solidarity in the struggle. We get some of this in our own meeting here during our prayer covenant time. It’s a powerful thing to share our struggles and our woes as well as our joys. It’s powerful to contradict ourselves in a self-aware kind of way. This is how we figure things out. This is how we come to wholeness.
The book before Ecclesiastes is the book of Proverbs. Proverbs is very invested in teaching how to be good, wise, and industrious so that you please God and have a long life. Evil, foolish, and lazy people, while they may experience some gain or joy here on earth, are promised to be scorned by God and die young. It has been purported that Solomon wrote both of these books; although now scholars are saying that he probably didn’t really write either of them. But looking at these writings side by side, imagining them being written as if by Solomon, we see a possible progression of thought. First Solomon as a young man – or maybe a middle age man – and he’s got it all figured out. He has the answers and gives instructions on how to live a good and upright life. If you follow these rules you’ll be golden. Then Solomon gets a bit older. He takes a look at life and notices that it isn’t always as easy as his instructions claim it is. He reflects on his life and comes up with different conclusions. Not only are his answers not cut and dried, but his questions aren’t even that clear. No longer are there judgments against “foolishness” or praise for “wisdom.” Instead we are told that neither foolishness nor wisdom make any difference at all. And why is that? Because “the same fate befalls all of them.” And that fate that he sees at this point is death.
It’s tempting for me to rush forward and talk about the hope that I find in this book. There are themes that are only hinted at in this beginning section. I am no different from anyone else, wanting to rush in and heal the pain or fix the problem when I should be listening to the story, feeling the pain, and learning about the problem. I will refrain from jumping ahead and I’ll attempt to let the book unfold for us … to speak for itself as much as possible.
And what it’s speaking about right now is how this person conducted research into what it means to be alive and found pointlessness and death to be its sum total. It say that he conducted research because he claims that everything he did, he did intentionally – he did keeping his wisdom – even when he was being foolish. (I make that claim too sometimes.) But let’s believe that this person actually kept their wits about them while they were taking pleasure in all that they did; amassed great wealth and freedom; oppressed those more unfortunate than himself; and ended up hating life. It’s hard to feel sorry for him when it’s put that way, isn’t it? He sounds a little spoiled. But keeping in mind that this is an experiment to learn something about the core value of living – what did he end up with? Sorrow, hopelessness, and bitterness. Can we sit with him in this? Can we learn from his experiment?
It would be an easy answer, especially for me as a preacher, to say that the reason he ended up sorrowful, hopeless, and bitter is because he had neglected God. He went off to explore wisdom and foolishness on his own, neglected his spiritual life, and only received superficial gains that did not feed his soul. While that sounds nice and religious, I think it is way too simple. After all, he did give himself to Wisdom. What is Wisdom? First, Wisdom is personified in Proverbs as a woman. Second, Wisdom is not defined as being merely smart and savvy. Proverbs says this in chapter 8:22 – 36. I’m keeping the masculine language intact bearing in mind that the voice who is speaking is the voice of the woman Wisdom.
"The Lord brought me forth as the first of his works, before his deeds of old; I was appointed from eternity, from the beginning, before the world began. When there were no oceans, I was given birth, when there were no springs abounding with water; before the mountains were settled in place, before the hills, I was given birth, before he made the earth or its fields or any of the dust of the world. I was there when he set the heavens in place, when he marked out the horizon on the face of the deep, when he established the clouds above and fixed securely the fountains of the deep, when he gave the sea its boundary so the waters would not overstep his command, and when he marked out the foundations of the earth. Then I was the craftswoman at his side. I was filled with delight day after day, rejoicing always in his presence, rejoicing in his whole world and delighting in mortals.
Now then, listen to me; blessed are those who keep my ways. Listen to my instruction and be wise; do not ignore it. Blessed are you who listen to me, watching daily at my doors, waiting at my doorway. For whoever finds me finds life and receives favor from the Lord. But whoever fails to find me harms himself; all who hate me love death."
That’s Wisdom. She is spiritual and holy. She describes herself in ways that are amazingly similar to the ways that Jesus describes himself, and is described by others. That the writer of Ecclesiastes says he was functioning in wisdom, and given that we are going along with the premise that the writers of these books are intended to be understood as being Solomon, tells me that we should understand who Wisdom is according to the definition of Proverbs. Solomon was not neglecting his spiritual life – he was trying to find a depth that he had lacked all his life.
His religious practice and easy answers were not enough to sustain him. He needed to find out why he was … why things were created … what was the point. What he found increased his distress. Our reading today ends with him hating life because everything is grievous and meaningless like a vapor. And that’s where we’re going to end today … feeling this loss, feeling this distress. I believe that we must feel before we can heal. We must tell our stories and face the pain. We must keep the conversation going, no matter how hard and uncomfortable it gets. That doesn’t mean we become contentious with each other trying to start fights. It means that we go deep and find the truth of who we are in this moment.
I also want to share that the book of Ecclesiastes doesn’t end here. Our reading for today ends here, but the book goes on for awhile. I am not suggesting a life of wallowing in pain, but if we don’t first deal with the reality of the moment we will not end up whole in the future. I think that’s true regarding the way our country deals with racism, classism, and heterosexism, the way our families and our faith community deal with conflict, and the way we deal with our own personal disappointments.
Grab a hold of Wisdom this week. She may not look like what you think she will, but when you find her, take hold with both hands. Then look at everything, feel everything, try everything. What happens? Okay, so maybe you can’t do all that in one week… but you can start. Mindfully move through your week and let yourself look, feel, and try. Don’t fix anything – just observe and feel. Remember that it doesn’t end here; it’s where we begin.
Alexandra and Honey 
For Immediate Release, Please Forward Widely!
Contact: incite_national@yahoo.com, 484-932-3166
May 14, 2008
INCITE! LAUNCHES BEAUTIFUL NEW WEBSITE!
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence announces the exciting launch of our newly re-created website. Check it out:
http://incite-national.org/
Beautifully designed and engineered by Tumis (http://tumis.com/), a fantastic bilingual design studio dedicated to global social justice that is woman-owned and run by people of color, the new website features an overview of INCITE!'s history, analysis, news, and projects. The site also includes organizing resources, more detailed information about INCITE! chapters and affiliates, and ways to get involved in radical women of color organizing.
Additionally, an Organizing Toolkit To Stop Law Enforcement Violence Against Women of Color & Trans People of Color has been integrated into the new site. This toolkit provides critical organizing resources to address police brutality, immigration police violence, and militarism targeting women and trans people of color. Check it out here:
http://incite-national.org
In the coming months, we will develop additional elements in the site including:
* a blog to spark critical dialogue among women of color and our communities about news, events, and ideas
* more developed resources such as a bibliography of books, articles, and films, and a list of weblinks to fantastic organizations and centers of information
* more accessible organizing tools to support grassroots mobilization
Be sure to visit our site map to help navigate through the newly organized site:
http://incite-national.org
Thank you to the amazing INCITE! community and supporters, including the Funding Exchange Media Justice Fund, for providing the resources and support needed to create the new site. We still have more work to do to make the site truly dynamic and interactive and your financial support is vital for that project. Please visit our donation page to help sustain this work!
http://incite-national.org
To send feedback or questions about the site, please e-mail us at incite_national@yahoo.com.
THANK YOU!
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence
PO Box 226
Redmond, WA 98073
phone: 484-932-3166
incite_national@yahoo.com
www.incite-national.org
INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national activist organization of radical feminists of color advancing a movement to end violence against women of color and their communities through direct action, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing.
John 10 & John 17:11 – 26
Friends, each of us are here for different reasons. Most of us have been raised in one of the Christian traditions and consider Jesus to be the touchstone of our faith. I don’t think any of us attend these gatherings mindlessly. I have a sense that each of us here has examined ourselves in a way that possibly most people don’t. We’ve asked ourselves questions like; Who am I? What do I believe? Why Jesus? Why Christianity? This kind of intentionality around our faith is what I believe Jesus wanted to instill in his followers. There’s a level of commitment that Jesus had and that he wanted his followers to have that I would say your average Christian doesn’t have time for. Maybe I’m too cynical or critical, but that’s what I think.
The level of commitment that Jesus is assuming here is awfully intense. It is a full commitment of the way they live their lives in relationship to their core beliefs about The Holy and about the leadership of Jesus. But he doesn’t expect commitment from his followers without setting himself up as an example.
In John 10, Jesus tries to explain to the crowd his commitment to his followers. He is the shepherd and he is the gate. He will protect them at all costs. He is also asserting that he is not a victim, even if he dies for his commitment. In verse 18 he says, “No one takes my life from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this from my Father.” Jesus has the power and he gets this power through the authority of the one he calls Father. A little later he makes the proclamation that he gives his followers, his sheep, eternal life and that they will never perish. This too he bases on the authority of his Father. Then he makes a claim that is radical enough to those who are listening that they want to kill him. Jesus says, “The Father and I are one.” According to Bible commentators this word “one” does not mean Jesus is saying he and the Father are one person, but rather that he and the Father are united in their vision, purpose, ideals, and commitment. Even so, the crowd takes offense and wants to kill him for blasphemy. According to the text, they believed Jesus was calling himself God.
He couldn’t talk his way out of this one – he had to escape. Jesus’ self-proclaimed one-ness with The Holy, regardless of whether he was claiming Godhood for himself or just that he was intrinsically committed to God’s purpose, required him to escape. It seems like they weren’t buying his explanation. Earlier, remember, Jesus said that he lays down his life – it doesn’t get taken from him. This escape of his seems to bear that out.
In chapter 17 Jesus speaks of one-ness again. This time he is talking about the one-ness that he has with the Father; the one-ness of the followers with each other; the one-ness of the future believers (that’s us) with his current followers; and the one-ness of all these followers of his with him and the Father. Verse 21 says, “As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us.” And in Verse 22, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one as we are one.”
These are extraordinary prayers, hopes, and claims! This is the kind of talk that almost got him stoned to death just a few chapters back. Now, here he is, wanting us to make the same commitment to the Father and to the work that he himself has made. This prayer that he is praying is right before he gets he gets nabbed by the soldiers, police, and the religious authorities, at the betrayal of Judas. There is no question in my mind that the writer of this gospel is challenging her readers to this kind of full commitment to the one called Father, to Jesus, and to the community of believers.
What is this one-ness? “I in you and you in me, that they may become completely one,” it says. To what purpose? “So that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.” This is the one-ness the crowd freaked out about. This is the one-ness that the religious authorities raged against. This is the one-ness that folks interpret to mean, “you are making yourself equal to God” – this one-ness Jesus prays for on our behalf.
In chapter 10 verses 35 and 36 the writer of this gospel tries to explain what this one-ness means, using the words of Jesus. “If those to whom the word of God came were called ‘gods’ – and the scripture cannot be annulled – can you say that the one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world is blaspheming because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’?” Jesus then points to the work he is doing and says if it isn’t the work of the Father, then don’t believe him. But they don’t care about his work – they care about his words which they think indicate his attitude. They can’t stand that Jesus is claiming solidarity with the one he calls Father. Then in chapter 17 we see that Jesus is praying for that very same solidarity for his followers.
I can only tell you what I believe this all means. I’ve already stated, I think, that this means a full commitment on our part as followers of Jesus the Christ – a full commitment to his ideals and his work. But what I want to name goes beyond that. I believe Jesus is praying for us to experience and become what he himself experienced and became. I believe Jesus is praying for us to be christs. In chapter 17 verse 22 Jesus says, “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one.” We are given glory. We are called to one-ness. This one-ness is centered around love. That’s critical! Otherwise I think we’re talking about simple arrogance. The ideals and works of The Holy and of Jesus must be based in love. Verse 26 says, “I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” The love with which Jesus has loved us will be in us and so then Jesus will be in us.
It is the love which compels us to solidarity. It is the love that fosters our commitment. It is the love that is so intimidating to those in the crowd that they will do anything, including murder, to exterminate it. We are called to be christs – to be unwavering in our commitment to the ideals and work of Jesus. We are to be unwavering in our solidarity to The Holy, to Jesus, and to each other.
To what purpose? What are the ideals and works of Jesus? Who or what are we christs to or for? These are the questions that I want to leave us with. I will say that the event that took place immediately preceding Jesus claiming one-ness with the Father was his healing of man born blind and the offense that the religious leaders took at this healing. But this healing is just one of many actions that Jesus took in solidarity with the one he calls Father.
I’ve been using this word solidarity – and I’ve been using it in relationship to our commitment to The Holy. That may seem odd. Why would our Divine Beloved need our solidarity? There are millions of people with whom we need to be in solidarity. I believe that our Divine Beloved is in solidarity with them. If we give ourselves fully to being the christs Jesus prayed for us to be, then I believe we will enter into the solidarity that our Divine Beloved has for these millions of humans who are suffering. Jon Sobrino, in his book Where is God? defines solidarity this way, “ Solidarity means not only giving but self-giving; this is not only or mainly an ascetic or romantically voluntaristic approach, but rather presupposes a fundamental anthropology. Solidarity means letting oneself be affected by the suffering of other human beings, sharing their pain and tragedy.” Sobrino emphasizes the words, “letting oneself be affected by.” It’s not just “helping.” It’s being in relationship. It’s loving. It’s being committed.
My questions remain … To what purpose are we called to be Christs? What are the ideals and works of Jesus? Who or what are we Christs to or for? Let’s think about these questions as we consider who are as a community and how we want to live our faith out in public.
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