Ponderings

One of the friends that used to hang around when our kids were small warned about the dangers of stepping on a mother’s last nerve. I laughed whenever he said it and it became a household phrase. “I’m on my last nerve,” was all I need say and behaviors would change. I suppose every mother has a different tipping point, and a different reaction when tipped, but all of us have the vulnerability of the last nerve, the thin veil that stands between us and chaos.

I’ve been pondering the presence (and absence) of the last nerve. If indeed we could identify the source to replenish a mother’s nerves, Hallmark would be rendered useless as children instead gathered coins for nerve replenishment. Although motherhood may be a particularly poignant vantage point to watch the last nerve phenomenon, I suspect its really quite universal. The causes are equally diffuse. Long associated with the female reproductive cycle, men are no stranger to the phenomenon, the phrase ‘grumpy old men’ didn’t originate in Hollywood. Neither are children immune to the ebb and flow of nerve supply.

One of the benefits of aging is perspective, and with growing perspective I realize the fine line between righteous indignation and my last nerve. I’ve come to understand that not every bit of fiery advice that emerges from my mouth can be understood as kingdom building, in fact sometimes quite the opposite. If understanding translated easily into impulse control, we would be wise to put our elders in charge. Unfortunately, as wisdom dawns, impulse control is often fading.

Unlike the overburdened camel, the power of the last nerve metaphor is the acknowledgement of need and interdependence. Simply put, when someone you care about is on their last nerve, you have a choice. You can either offer to them a hand, an additional nerve if you will. Though there is no short cut for nerve replenishment, I do believe that the spirit abiding in relationship refuels our frayed souls. The other option when approaching someone with minimal nerve reserves is to play the foolish child, jumping on what remains and living within the chaos.

With the heat index down and the air quality meters again green, refueling is the order of the day. Still, I am humbled by the realities of my own reserves and grateful for community with which to refuel.

You know you are beyond youthful indignation when you see the cover of the New Yorker and, ignoring the jeers and the cheers, all you can think is, ‘gosh, that Michelle is a great looking militant.’ I wish I could look that good with boots and an AK-47!

To be sure, I can see the offense. Whether the offense is given, taken, or both, though, is less clear to me these days. Frankly, I find a militant Michelle to be rather sexy and Obama in a turban isn’t bad either.

I admit to being more than a little confused about the flag thing. I know that the anti-Obama fringe (there are not many of them, but they are inordinately noisy!) likes to say that Obama somehow missed the patriotism boat. I can only conclude that is ageist. No one in our post-baby boomer pre-gen-x set can say the pledge of allegiance without some mental gymnastics, remembering our parents injunction that good Americans stand to say it with their hands over their hearts while our hippy public school teachers taught us to sit down and sing “Where Have all the Flowers Gone”. Obama is too old to buy into the post-911 blind patriotism and too young to remember the Civil Defence programs infamous “duck-and-cover” drills. I confess that I am a Pledge of Allegiance avoider, pledged to God and unwilling to pledge to nation-state, so admittedly I am not a good judge of patriotism. Personally, I found the obligatory flag pin debacle to be un-American.

As for the Obama-Osama thing, I confess to be being a bit cavalier. I spend a lot of my day with words and the deep layers of meaning to which they can allude. In a Jane Doe world, the words Obama and Osama are an irresistible invitation to word play. No good satirist can be forgiven for not having at least a wee bit of fun celebrating the leading presidential candidate with the arch nemesis of the outgoing one. The two O leaders could not be disparate. The O guy running for president has a lot in common with Oprah, a hard luck story turned around with grit and compassion who has spent his life nurturing hope. The O guy that we are taught to fear was born into luxury and has spent his life nurturing hate. Aside from the fact that their first names elude pronunciation by Midwestern middle class (read: white) folk, these two men have nothing in common. If our collective intelligence has degraded to a place where find an attempt to link these two to be anything but humorous, we have bigger problems than the election can address.

Barry Blitt, the artist who proffered the infamous piece, entitled his picture, “Politics of Fear”. Clearly, his intent was to satirize the ridiculousness of the fear baiting. Unfortunately, humor is dependent on our ability to parse fact and fiction and that ability is woefully missing in our current discourse. Not only have we devolved to electing presidents based on sound bytes, we have become so dull that we cannot be trusted with intelligent humor.

My faith says that humans are endowed with gifts, gifts that we are expected to use for the common good. One of these gifts is intelligence, another compassion, still another empathy. None of these is touted much in mainstream discourse, but together they would change our read on pieces like Barry Blitt’s. Although I want to believe that Blitt is right, that we as Americans can handle, enjoy and indeed learn from good satire, I fear that the naysayers might be right. Satire received at face value will fuel the very thing it aims to upend, and we can no longer trust Americans to engage in the depth that satire invites. Such a conclusion renders the piece offensive, but the greater offense is the loss of a thinking electorate.

Recently I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with my two older brothers. My role is the be the family bleeding heart socialist, my next older brother is a fiscal conservative that would like you to he is Mr. Potter (It’s a Wonderful Life), though in fact while he abhors spending money he is very generous. My oldest brother is himself pretty tight with the checkbook but has the most moderate views of my siblings. We’re all grown up now but still play pretty much the same roles we’ve always played.

Truth be told, we’re all pretty lucky financially. We’re all three employed with jobs we love (at least I love mine and they enjoy theirs!), jobs that provide financial stability for our families. Jeff has the most money in the bank, Norm lives the most frugally, and I have the most fun. Jeff is concerned about the financial markets collapsing, Norm is focused on getting his daughter through college, I tend to look at today’s balance sheet and proclaim it enough. The conversation was fun and, with spouses and parents not buffering the exchange, what emerged was an interesting display of our personality types.

Talking about money is rarely so much fun. There is no faster way to raise the temperature in our family room than to tell Gary about another pending expense. Quite frankly, American families are in trouble with money:
* About 43% of American families spend more than they earn each year.
* Average households carry some $8,000 in credit card debt.
* Personal bankruptcies have doubled in the past decade.
These grim statistics don’t even address the mortgage disaster or the looming and lasting effects of our national indebtedness. The market is down and energy prices are up, the tension is certain only to rise.

When the subject of money comes at in our church community, the movement is backward. Fear becomes the backdrop of the conversation. Anonymity, a nameless, faceless somebody, anybody but me, is pointed to as the great hope. Nowhere is a theology of scarcity more palpable than in our discussions about money. Undoubtedly our uncertainty with regards to financial security in our homes leaves us feeling at best timid, sometimes even catatonic, when the subject of money emerges in a wider community to which we belong.

James Caroll is a professor at Texas Tech that examined the effects of financial concerns on marital relationships. What he discovered was a surprise even to him.

“We need to rethink the idea that financial problems are always money problems,” said Carroll. Carroll said the conclusion that materialism can put a strain on a marriage is “common sense,” but said the truly interesting finding was that materialism could decrease marriage satisfaction even in higher-income couples. “Financial problems are as much a result of how we think about money as how we spend it,” Carroll said.
http://lists101.his.com/pipermail/smartmarriages/2007-March/003325.html

If financial problems are rooted not only in our bank accounts, but also in our hearts and our heads, money is a topic that we need to broach in our places of worship. Not simply, not even primarily, because the church needs money, though it does; but more because our spiritual and mental health is inextricably connected with our attitudes about money. The shame that shrouds the financial quandaries of our lives is a spiritual matter and is exacerbated when we, in the church, continue to talk about everything but money.

With gas prices over $4 a gallon and the electric bill up 40%, it’s time to make safe space to name our hopes and also our fears. I’m grateful for a safe space with my brothers. Safe space meant permission to name the fear and to own our own perspectives, to be heard with question but without shame. Safe space meant receiving the perspective of the other with good humor but without judgment. I look forward to more safe space in our community.

Don Imus is at it again, speaking the unspeakable. When hearing the crime tangled story of a prominent athlete, Imus asked, “What color is he?”

Like the rest of America, I found his question viscerally offensive and quickly typed the opening line of a ponderings. That was on Monday. On Thursday, I return to find the page still empty. On Friday, I’m still wondering. What, specifically, was the offense?

Given that Imus’ interview was about an NFL player, odds are that the player is black. In fact 65% of the NFL lineup is black. A case could be made that Imus’ question signifies a new level of openness on his part, his not assuming the blackness of the athlete in question.

Perhaps the offense is the implied correlation between race and crime. Truth be told 69% of us Americans claim to be “white”, and 71% of all Americans arrested are “white”. Our prisons tell a different story though of race. In both federal and state prisons, 44% of inmates are “black” and just 35% are “white”. If we are talking about an NFL athlete imprisoned, a statistician would have to assume that the racial identity was black. If, however, the athlete in question had just been arrested, the odds are more even.

But what is blackness?

Turns out that race in America is a legal construct and an immigration tool at that. There are a couple of fascinating Supreme Court cases from 1922 and 1923 which defined “white” for the 20th century. In both of these cases (Ozawa v. United States and United States v. Thind), the issue was the degree of ‘whiteness’ necessary to become a citizen of the United States. Is an upper caste Indian “white” enough for citizenship? Or an immigrant from Japan? The answer was a resounding “no”. To be sure, by the close of the last century, the courts had made a dramatic 3600 turn and embraced a preference for a utopic colorblindness.

My neighbor and I were sitting on the front porch last Sunday night talking about Obama and race in America. We figure we’re entitled to have the conversation because we’re both outsiders in our neighborhood, visitors in a storied past that is not our own. Washington Heights is the name of our little corner of the world, a name not mentioned in either of the city halls to which we pay tax. Our neighborhood was once a self-contained bedroom community that boasted the only accredited high school for Blacks in St. Louis county. My neighbor and I love our neighborhood, its rich history and unnamed elephants, but we respect that it is not ours. She is a Black woman from the city, I a white woman from out of state.

We mused together about the younger generations who seem to be free of the hatefulness of Jim Crow, to which our neighborhood bears witness. Too they seem free of the colorblindness now in vogue that refuses to see the richness of our neighborhood history. Obama-mania seems to represent a generation that is fully free to celebrate the wonder of diversity with skin tones and ethnicities without the confining little boxes that fit no one.

As I indulge in the audacity of hope, I realize that it is not a color blind Don Imus for which I yearn, nor can I abide one predisposed to either elevate or demote based upon skin tones. I yearn for public icons that aren’t afraid of the race card, that are able and willing to celebrate Black and White and Pacific Islander and Mayan and every other wonder of humanity. In the naming can come the claiming, and therein lies our hope.

My first adult church was an enchanted place with historic architecture (the rounded Akron Plan), stained glass windows, and a pipe organ that sang. The First Congregational UCC in Menomonie, Wisconsin came complete with bats in the belfry and in every other dark corner.

In rich wooden pews, scratched with years of stories, I learned hymnody from the Pilgrim Hymnal. Having grown up in Sunday School and church camps, coming of age in praise chorus style worship, the richness of European style hymnody was an acquired taste to which I’d not yet become accustomed. The entry point was a response that we sang each week with the same words, same tune, and same placement in worship. The repetition seared the simple classic lines in my soul and whetted my appetite for the then foreign style of hymnody.

The Gloria Patri was the response that opened a window in my soul. The Gloria Patri was steady even as I entered the turbulent theological and spiritual waters of seminary. My dear friend Julie cross-stitched these words for me and they buoyed my timid feet.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. Amen, amen.”

After four years of grounding, 3 of which were spent in the choir pews where the sounds of the organ danced throughout my body, our pastor left and we entered the strange odyssey of the interim land. Our interim was fresh out of seminary but with an uncanny amount of wisdom. In several important ways she quietly laid groundwork for the congregation to celebrate its past while moving boldly into the future. I had and have immense appreciation for her ministry and thoroughly enjoyed watching it unfold.

Until she changed the Gloria Patri.

One week the music changed so we were expected to sing the familiar lines to unfamiliar sounds. The next week the music reverted to our comfort zones but the words were jolting, “Glory to the Creator, and to the Christ, and to the Spirit, One!” My head was with the new words; inclusive language was in vogue and I a seminarian ready to lead the charge. But my heart longed for the comfort of the Holy Ghost. Not that I believed in ghosts, holy or otherwise, but I longed for the comfort of the syllables that my mouth could make without thought.

My head was no match for my heart in those days and the experience made me downright crabby. “She took my Gloria Patri!” was my loud and public lament.

All these years later, now with teenage children who don’t even know the Gloria Patri, I still can feel my visceral reaction to change. My worship habits are more subtle now, but every bit as entrenched. I cannot start Advent without “Jesus, Jesus” and Lent begins with “Be Still and Know” and ends with the promise of Easter’s “Halle, Halle”. None of these responses may be noteworthy in their own right, but their consistent ebb and flow throughout the past decade has woven them deep into my being.

As we act our way into being, moving pews in the sanctuary and trying new things in worship, I remember the interim that took my Gloria Patri. Each new position of a chair, each new shape of a bulletin, each new sound in worship, represents both gain and loss. Perhaps not with the timelessness tone of the Gloria Patri, but certainly with a promise more lyrical, Carrie Newcomer offers wisdom for times of transition with her song, “Leaves Don’t Drop”:

Leaves don’t drop they just let go,
And make a place for seeds to grow.
Every season brings a change,
A seed is what a tree contains,
To die and live is life’s refrain.
… And this I know is true.