They Love God by Covering Their Heads

I just recently read "A Generous Orthodoxy" by Brian McLaren, one of the key leaders of the emerging church movement, and found that I absolutely loved the book. It was interesting listening to some of the comments my classmates made about it, and it seemed like most of those who spoke did not have a very high regard for McLaren or his views, they felt like he was fairly uneducated (it's true, he hasn't been to seminary, but I wouldn't say that makes someone uneducated), and that he had weak church history and systematic theology knoweldge (ok he pretty much has no regard for systematic theology). I probably would offer the same critiques if I thought I was reading this book to gain a solid grasp of church history or systematics--this isn't the point of his book though! What I loved about McLaren's perspective is how gracious and honoring he is of so many different denominations and traditions. We live in a world where mud-slinging between various faiths, and even between various Christian churches is almost the norm, not the exception, and this has always frustrated me to no end. I am tired of hearing friends talk about how there is no value in liturgy, the Catholic church, and mainline Protestant denominations are dead, people who pray pre-written prayers have no authentic faith, traditions and celebrating the liturgical calendar is wrong...and on and on it goes.....what infuriates me the most is not these particular opinions--if someone wants to argue that liturgy isn't helpful in bringing someone into the presence of God, or if someone wants to claim that "spontaneous" prayers feel more authentic to them than a prayer written by someone a thousand years ago, I am ok with that. But what drives me nuts is that often these comments are made by individuals who have never taken the time to try and understand these ways of worship, they perhaps have memories of being bored during Christmas Eve mass at grandma's church and therefore have completely written off anything having to do with a liturgical form of worship without even trying to understand the beauty, depth, richness and history behind these things.

McLaren approaches this book with the idea that every tradition and denomination from the Roman Catholics to the Orthodox to the Methodists and the Calvinists have something to contribute to worship, to spirituality, and by ignoring all these other ways of doing things that may differ from our own, we are vastly limiting our view of God, the ways people connect with Him, and the ways He works in the world through worship. He argues (ok I'm putting this in my words, he doesn't really say this) but when we stop the mud-slinging and start listening to and learning from one another, and treating one another with honor, respect and dignity, we will be enriching our own lives and understanding of Who God is and who His people are. I'll stop "preaching" but I wanted to share with you my favorite story from his book, it's a story he tells towards the end about a friend of his and how she taught her daughter to respect the Muslims and their tradition of covering their heads. This story made me start to weep--which was slightly embarassing since I was in a crowded coffee shop at the time--but I realized these were tears of hope, I caught a glimpse of hope that if Christians really took this idea of loving and respecting our neighbors, this world would be a vastly different place. We could spend hours arguing over whether Allah is the same God as Yahweh, and at some point in the discussion this probably has a place, but when we start there, in a spirit of argumentation and determination to "convert" them to our "side", we miss the opportunity to extend the mercy of Christ to our brothers and sisters--to individuals that He created and loves just as much as He loves you and I. May this story bring you hope as well...hope that things can be different.



From A Generous Orthodoxy:


"My friend Diana Butler Bass tells this story in her book Broken We Kneel. Diana lives near the DC area—rich in cultural diversity, tense after the 9/11 attacks, and the context for this story:

One day [my daughter] Emma saw a woman walking towards us covered in a veil and asked the inevitable, “what’s that mommy?”

“Emma,” I answered, “that lady is a Muslim from a faraway place. And she dresses like that and covers her head with a veil because she loves God. That is how her people show they love God.”

My daughter considered these words. She stared at the woman who passed us. She pointed at the woman, then pointed at my hair, and further quizzed, “mommy, do you love God?”

“Yes honey.” I laughed. “I do. You and I are Christians. Christian ladies show love for God by going to church, eating the bread and wine, serving the poor, and giving to those in need. We don’t wear veils, but we do love God.”

After this, Emma took every opportunity to point to Muslim women during our shopping trips and tell me “mommy! Look! She loves God!” One day, we were getting out of our car at our driveway at the same time as our Pakistani neighbors. Emma saw the mother, beautifully veiled, and, pointing at her shouted “look mommy! She loves God!”

My neighbor was surprised. I told her what I had taught Emma about Muslim ladies loving God. While she held back tears, this near stranger hugged me saying, “I wish all Americans would teach their children so. The world would be better. The world would be better.”

Happy Love Your Friends Day!

For Valentines Day this year, all 4 of us were single and 3 of the 4 of us had class that night (and the other one has mono...). Soooo, we decided that this year we wanted to celebrate and do something fun in honor of our friendship. Several weeks ago we drew names for our secret Valentine, set a price limit and started making plans. We had decided that we would each exchange a small gift on Valentines day, but we still had to keep the identity of our secret valentine, well, a secret. That meant we had to enlist the help of others to do our delivering...my gift (from Sophie I later found out) came during my small group meeting from Christina via Alan (since Sophie couldn't leave the house she had to have a few folks help her...). I had Sophie's name and left her gifts outside her apartment door, and then set up an email account for Kernie, her stuffed monkey & had Kernie email her to tell her to look outside. Becca and Jenn had each other--Becca found 2 bags of flaming hot cheetos (yes, I think they are gross, Becca loves them...) outside her apartment door that morning and Jenn found a gift sitting on her desk in the class the 3 of us have together Wednesday nights. Then we decided to dress up and go to dinner and a comedy show on Saturday evening, and exchange the rest of our gifts....here are photos from last night's outing:

Poor Sophie, she insisted on coming with us, but she was SO tired...here is her all dressed and ready to go, waiting for Becca to arrive.

For her main gift, Becca, our resident artist, had hand painted John 3:16 in Greek, English, and Latin on a canvas for Jenn's wall--it was beautifully done!
For one of her gifts, Jenn had framed 2 photos from Becca's time as an intern at San Marino Community Church. One is of Becca with the sign out front on a day she was preaching and the other photo is of the youth group kids on a servant day.
Reading my card from Sophie that says that friendship is what it's all about, not the hokey pokey...if you've been to Cursillo, it'll make you laugh too....
In the car on the way over we were discussing the finer points of Thursday's Grey's Anatomy episode, and I was once again lamenting my addiction to a TV show. I had commented that I've decided my gift to myself at the end of this quarter (coming up here in about 3 weeks) is to buy season 1 on DVD so I can take it to Hawaii with me over Spring Break to watch on the plane. So I was VERY excited when I opened my gift from Sophie to find she knows me too well and had gotten it for me...and then promptly took it back and told me I can have it after finals...yeah she knows me a bit too well....those papers and sermons just won't be written if I have that in the apartment!
I had gotten Sophie a collection of random gifts, one being a copy of the The Trumpet of the Swan, which was her favorite book as a kid...she was very excited, she said her other copy had been dropped in the bathtub one day....

The beginning of our modeling careers

Sophie has had this random idea for months now to do a photo shoot of the four of us, so today she finally decided she had the energy and we all had the afternoon free, so we went for it. I think we decided that this was our favorite picture--I think the goal was to go for an urban chic look....I'm thinking only Becca's personality truly fits that theme, but the rest of us tried!

Here are the rest of our favorite photos from the day for your enjoyment...

And we decided to do the individual shots....

Miss Becca

SarahMiss Jenniferand Miss Sophie

Winter Retreat!

This past weekend 25 of us Presbys headed up the mountain to Big Bear to spend 2 days relaxing, worshiping, playing, eating, not sleeping, and hearing from our wonderful speaker, Neal Nybo. It was a wonderful weekend, with our theme being "Encountering Joy" and our speaker having experienced Cursillo and having caught the vision of instilling joy and renewal into pastors and seminarians, so it had a little bit of a Cursillo feeling (not anywhere near a real Cursillo weekend, but it was still fun to see some masks come off people and see people start to encounter joy for themselves.) Here are some photos from the weekend...I didn't take that many, but here are the ones I do have!

Steve and Mary doing their assigned kitchen duty on Saturday morning

Becca, looking like a "real" musician, getting warmed up to lead us in worship Saturday morning

Chris, Lisa and Christina

Becca and Stacey leading us in worship on Saturday morning

Stacey, Christina, Dave, Dave, BeccaBaking desserts Saturday night--Denise, Sandra, and Ryanand Dave "helping" by doing some of the "clean up"Neal, our speaker, demonstrating that he is a man of many talents--here he is showing us his wood chopping abilitiesNeal had brought with him our official Southern California Presbyterian Cursillo "banner"--our surfboard with the butterfly, both to show us and to send it home with Becca to have her paint a better butterfly on it...here we are with Neal and Peter, another Cursillo-ite from Houston who goes to Neal's church in San Diego and came to join us for the weekend. and of course, our true California girl, Becca, decided to actually ride the surfboard--on the snow...I convinced her to get off the surf board long enough to take a picture with me...Jenni and Denise

It's Official....

....I am officially addicted...to a TV show....that's right, ME, the girl who rarely turns the TV on is officially addicted to Grey's Anatomy (thank you ever so much Heather, Darbee and Missy!). It is a fabulous show...and it takes place in my home city, Seattle, which makes watching it all the more fun because I know all the buildings they show. That's all, just announcing to the world that I am a pathetic television addict now. Ok not really a television addict, but definitely am from 9-10 on Thursday nights....

New Adventures in Ministry

So this weekend I was exposed to a new aspect of pastoral ministry--visitations. On Friday, Ross took me with him to visit Belmont Village, a retirement community in Burbank where several of our members live, and it was such a wonderful time visiting each of them breifly in their homes (apartments) to talk with them for a few moments and then to pray for them. I am amazed at the stories that these folks have to tell--Irene, one woman we visited, used to work for NBC doing costume design for over 30 years, and used to do outfits for Dean Martin and Liberachi (yeah I probably didn't spell that right...). Another woman told me all about how her daughter lives in Seattle & she hates visiting her because it rains all the time, but her daughter doesn't like coming down here because it is too warm--Ross laughed and told the woman that I was probably going to sympathize with her daughter as far as weather goes! Then, Sunday evening, I got to join him at Windsor Mannor, another retirement community, where he led a short vespers service, and then the two of us joined the residents for dinner in their dining room. We had a delightful time hearing some of their stories, one woman, Mary, is 101 years old, and was one of the first secretaries at our church back in 1925! It was such a gift to be able to slow down for awhile, to listen to their stories, to not be in such a hurry to communicate twice as much information in half the time, but to take time to let the stories develop slowly. Everything is done at about half the speed as I am sure these individuals used to move, yet there is something so wonderful, and so foreign about that to the rest of us. In a world where I feel like I am constantly getting praised for being constantly productive, and for moving at a rapid pace no matter what I am doing, it was so refreshing to have a few hours to not be in a rush, to not be looking at my watch, but to simply sit and listen.

I am also falling in love with the concept of preaching, with the theology of homiletics (a fancy word for the proclamation or preaching of the Gospel). Looking at the theology behind why we preach and how we are to deliver the message and what the significance of preaching is or should be in our times of worship has been fascinating to me. Coming from the Lutheran and Presbyterian background, the proclamation of the Word, or the sermon, is THE central point of the worship service. Everything in the liturgy points us to the proclaiming of God's word and everything after the sermon points the hearers to taking that word out into the world--or the "sending" of the people to be ministers in their particular parts of society. So, studying what we mean by preaching, how to preach, who should preach, various ways to communicate, and how to take a text and move from that to the sermon has been amazing. I'm all of a sudden fascinated by word selection--how do you tell a story or communicate your careful research and exegetical work without sounding like you are simply giving a lecture? How do you paint a picture for your congregation using words? What makes an effective sermon illustration? I all of a sudden am finding myself completely enamored with preachers--with studying their styles, with reflecting on how they did something in their sermons. I have to say probably my new favorite is Barbara Brown Taylor--an Episcopal priest in the south who is a master communicator and preacher. (You can see one of her quotes above my picture on this page.)We're reading some of her sermons and she is incredible at painting pictures with words--I find myself reading her sermons asking out loud "wow, how did she do that?!" If one isn't looking for it, or paying attention, one won't even realize that the literary skills she displays are superb, but the gift she has at selecting words, at communicating the Gospel message is unbelievable to me. I've always enjoyed words--writing, speaking, various forms of communication--and now I am beginning to see another thing that one can do with a love and passion for words--preach the Gospel--communicate the grace that God has for his children--I am not sure that I can think of anything else I would rather be doing!

Random updates....

I am not sure that I have anything completely thrilling to share with y'll this week, but I have a little time to kill before heading to dinner with the girls, so I figured I could ramble for awhile...besides, looking ahead to the next few weeks, I'm not so sure that anything blog-worthy is going to be happening, it looks to be a fairly ordinary month...

For those I haven't talked to in awhile, I LOVE all 3 of my classes this quarter, which always makes studying so much more fun--and I have read a LOT this past weekend, so thankfully I've been enjoying each book. I'm taking homiletics (which is learning the theology and art of preaching, so we're divided into preaching groups with TA's and will each be preaching 2 sermons this quarter, so I'm really excited about getting some feedback & getting some more practice.) I am also taking Presbyterian History, which sounds really dull, and I'll admit, the reading is fairly--unexciting--but the class is actually really good so far! We're looking at case studies and our professor has us pretending we are the General Assembly trying to rule on these actual cases, and then eventually he tells us what the GA really did rule--this week we are looking at one on slavery & how the Presbyterian church responded to the issue, and I appreciate this type of experiential learning--it beats listening to lecture for 3 straight hours! My third class is Youth Outreach and Evangelism which is amazing--inspite of the fact that I would never have considered myself a "youth" person. I usually assume that someone else can go after the teenagers, I'll do the little ones and the adults, but someone else can have the teens. Well, Chap has been definitely challenging me on that. We're talking a lot about incarnational evangelism, the idea that in order to help people learn to love God, we have to be Jesus in their context. He's stressing the idea that Jesus came and lived among us, He walked around here in the midst of our messy-ness and brokenness and we need to do the same if we are to be incarnational witnesses. It has definitely been a challenge to me mentally & spiritually as I have looked at what does it mean to be incarnational ministers, and whose responsibility is it to go after the lost sheep of this world. Stay tuned, I am sure I'll have plenty more thoughts on that as the quarter goes on!

We've also all been incredibly busy planning various events for the Presbyterian students on campus--our big retreat is coming up in Feb. so Sophie and I, along with three others, are in charge of pulling that off--should be a great weekend! Neal Nybo is coming to share with us, which Sophie and I are especially very excited about since he is a Cursillo-guy and "gets" the concept of renewal and joy--which is the theme we chose for our weekend for him to share about.

I'm not sure anything else super-exciting has happened in my life these past few weeks---oh! Megan and Nathan (my sister and brother in law) get Taylor back! Taylor is a Golden Retriever who they raised this whole past year for guide dogs for America. Back in August Taylor was finished with his first year of socialization and obedience training and was ready to go on with the next phase of his training to become a service dog. But, they just got a call last week saying that for health reasons they are going to drop him from the program, and as Taylor's original trainers, they got first dibs on getting him back. Of course they jumped at the chance, this dog is truly amazing--and I don't even like dogs, so Taylor will rejoin our family this weekend & all of us are quite excited (except he will be in Rhode Island with Megs and Nathan, so who knows when I'll actually get to see him again...) (and here is the happy family last April....)

Ok I'm done making all of you read my ramblings....I think I'm just tired and need more sleep--the creativity is absolutely gone! I think it must be a mid-winter thing...I realized I was getting kind of burned out when one of my best friends was diagnosed with mono the other day and when I went to go hang out with her, I found myself wishing I had mono and could spend the next month on the couch....