Monthly Archives: August 2011

a new reality

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It has been just about two weeks since my last entry and to say that things have changed in my life would be a gross understatement. I find it funny how things work themselves out often without the use of my hand. For example, two weeks ago I didn’t have an internship site, now I do. Two weeks ago I would have been ashamed to claim a Lutheran identity as my own, now I’m not running away from it. Two weeks ago I didn’t feel like I had a place where I belonged, now I know I do.

I have never been one to fit the mold. Whether it was the fact I was the poor fat kid growing up or the theological misfit causing trouble in college for often no good reason, I have never felt as though I was what everyone else thought I should be. Often I have felt misunderstood, ignored, denigrated, and sneered at. I feel like people have always resented my place among them because of my tendency to question the established thoughts and practices.

What some may or may not know is why I have such a distrust for those in authority, especially those affiliated with the church. While there have surely been those people in my life whom I know I can trust both within my family and within the church I have had my share of those who have done nothing but foster an attitude of distrust within me.

Growing up, my parents were divorced. While my older sister and brother might remember a time when my parents were together, I cannot. My earliest memories of my parents in the same room involve shouts and harsh language designed only to break the other down. As kids were always told they didn’t want to put us in the middle, but that is exactly where we always ended up. Choosing one over the other. Being forced to see one as right and the other as mental.

I wish I could say that when my parents remarried trust was rebuilt with those in authority but it wasn’t. My mother remarried two other times and both of those men treated her and us abusively. Physical, mental, verbal, and sexual abuse were all things I had experienced by the time I was a sophomore in high school. I cannot begin to tell you how fast I felt I had to grow up. Whether it was because my dad and I had a blowout and didn’t talk for near a decade, the fact that we were poor, or because I had to defend my mom from a drunk, I felt that I was more mature than those who should have been parenting me.

There was one place though where I thought those in authority actually did care for me and that was my home church. But year after year disunion, disloyalty, and disingenuous behavior forced more people out than I can count. Anonymous letters, unloving ultimatums, and harsh confrontations were the backdrop of that one place that had been the only place of stability in my life. For whatever reason, this misuse and abuse of authority did more to cause my distrust than what I experienced at home.

In college and at my first seminary my distrust only grew. In private a professor defended me and in class he hung me out to dry. Time and again I felt they were hiding behind their theology as a convenient excuse to espouse a disinterested view in the world around us. I have spoken before about what sem had done to me and how it broke me in ways I never thought I could be broken. How people in that role of ecclesiastical authority over me did little to protect me and more to protect their own collective interests. All of these experiences have contributed to a great distrust for authority, especially ecclesiastical authority, and have without a doubt caused me to be ashamed of a theological heritage and perspective that defines who I am.

But now I sit in a very precarious position because once again I am in a position of having someone in a role of authority over me and at first I was nervous. Coming back to seminary this is what I had feared the most. That I had to subject myself to yet another person who in the end wouldn’t really care about me and wouldn’t see me for the person I am. Yet somehow I found my way to a church and to a pastor and now I stand in that very position that two weeks ago I feared wouldn’t even be a possibility.

It amazes me how things can change, how perspectives can change. My wife and I just spent a weekend in a church we never set foot in before, with a people we didn’t know, and for the first time in I don’t know how long I feel like I am right where I belong. Like I am in a place that is going to be for me something I have been missing. A place of love. A place of hope. A place where I don’t have to be ashamed. A place where I don’t have to be afraid. A place where I am cared for as a person, regardless of my past.

And as I sit here tonight, reveling in the place I have found I know that there are so many people who might never know what I feel. What it feels like to be loved. To belong. To be secure in yourself and your heritage. To be proud and honest. To be true to oneself.  And for those people my heart truly breaks. Nobody should ever feel as though they don’t belong. Nobody should ever feel insecure about who they are and where they came from. Nobody should ever have to hide behind a veneer of falsity. Nobody should ever have to deny the person that they are.

This is where things need to change. This is where we need to find a better way. Not just we as in the church but we as in the world. August 28th marked the 48th anniversary of the Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous I Have a Dream speech. What has always stood out to me about King is his concern not only for those held down because of their race, but his concern for any injustice anywhere. When King died he was in Memphis because of a garbage strike. When he said, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” he meant it. He lived it. In that shadow we too need to live.

Where King had a dream, we have the chance, the opportunity and the ability to create a new reality. A reality where we turn to one another and embrace one another not as enemies but as brothers and sisters. A reality where we realize that all of our lives are dependent upon and inextricably related to each other. A reality where we care for one another as each of us has need. A reality where we without reservation show one another the love and acceptance every single human being deserves. A reality formed and defined by love.

 

I’d still do it…

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This past weekend the band indeed got back together. The band to which I am referring is the Muff Divers, a fictional band created by me and a few friends during college when we spent more time playing rock band than pursuing academics. It was a much needed respite from what has become my life the past few weeks. For the first time in a while I felt like how I had back then, full of ideals and passion, surrounded by people whom I love and trust completely. Although the time was short, I can’t imagine something I needed more than to spend time with those folks because recently I have begun to slip back into the self-depricating cynical attitude that nearly destroyed me last year.

Its hard to explain just what it felt like to be in St. Louis and the effect it really had on me. Yeah, I brought it on myself. I was a young idealistic kid who thought I could be some sort of prophetic voice in the wilderness. I wanted to bring the good out and burn away that which did not matter. I wanted to change things. But that didn’t happen. I was the one who changed. I entered in an empowered idealist and left a fractured and broken cynic. A shell of my former self, completely destroyed mentally, spiritually, and emotionally.

Back in college people would ask me why I wanted to be a pastor in my denomination if I had so many problems with it. If there was one question that pissed me off the most it was that one. It was as if by questioning the established standards I was in effect turning over my membership card because dissension somehow meant I was no longer part of that group. Yet in my mind it was the opposite. The more I cared about that system the more I wanted to do what I could to change that which was a detriment to it so that others, the outsiders and marginalized, could see it and experience it for its best qualities rather than for its worst. Whether or not I was ever able to communicate that love for the system in which I grew up I will never know. I’m not sure if the LCMS will ever know how much I loved it, and I don’t know if it would care or make a difference if it did.

Recently I have been listening to a lot of music via Spotify. During one of the song breaks I heard that song by Bruno Mars which my wife hates and I have to admit annoys me as well, Grenade. However, as I listened to the lyrics I felt like that has become my song to describe my relationship with the tradition that gave me birth. There was a time in my life when I would have done anything for it, just so that people could know all the good I knew. Sure there was always bad and there always would be but I felt like there was a place where I could make a difference so that we could move beyond being the “frozen chosen” and start embracing an identity which forces us to engage with all facets of society and all types of people.

Right now in my life it seems like that dream is long gone. Like I will never be able to go back. Too much has happened. Today I am part of a community that has done nothing but seek to help restore me and revive a passion within me. Its a place that does not seek to force me into a mold but rather allows me to form myself into that for which I am meant. And as I go through this process I am realizing just how much I have gained from growing up in the LCMS. Being in a place which isn’t Lutheran has showed me just how Lutheran I really am. But I do not hold that identity in such a way as to disallow the viability of another tradition. For me, doctrine will never matter as much as people. Not just the people in the pews but those in the streets. Those who have and those who have not. Those who belong, and those who have no place to call home.

And so as I sit here and think about everything I have been through I still want to believe there is a way or a chance to change everything in a much more fundamental way. Maybe it won’t be what I had imagined but that doesn’t mean I have to give up the hope that I hold. The hope that people know they are loved and valued regards of their past. The hope that brings meaning and purpose to those who feel they have none. The hope that teaches us that we are all in this together. The hope that one day I might actually get the chance to go home.

and when necessary

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All I can seem to think right now is WTF. Last week brought into my life a perspective that had been missing for so long and tonight, one that has plagued me is back in full force. I really don’t know where to begin or if you even care to hear the tale, but tonight I feel like I did in seventh grade, only this time it matters.

Way back then I was in one of those grade school relationships that never go anywhere but you think are everything. Well I can’t remember how short it lasted but I do remember how it ended, with a phone call, from her friend. Thats right, the girl never called me to tell me it was over, she had her friend do it. Tonight I got a different phone call, not from the person who should have done it, but from someone else with the answer I didn’t want to hear.

As part of my master’s program I have to participate in two ten week long internships. These internships require me to be involved with some sort of ministry and spend time, at least an hour a week, with an advisor. You don’t have to have a fancy title or get paid, you just need to be a part of something bigger than yourself for 15 hours a week.  I wanted my internship to be at the church I grew up in. The last couple of months have been sort of a healing process for me. Over a year ago I walked away from my church’s seminary never wanting to engage with that group of people ever again. I was hurt and felt betrayed. The two quarters I have spent back in a different seminary environment have allowed me to reassess where I am and who I am and were truly instrumental in rebuilding the fractured person I had become. In the last couple of months I finally worked up the courage to go back to my home church, something I feared because I didn’t know how they would react to finding out I left the sem. It was good, I was hopeful, and thought there was no better place to do that internship than the place I grew up in, too bad they felt differently.

Like I said, tonight I got a phone call, but instead of hearing news that the board of elders approved my internship, they simply felt it was too much for the church to take on as it is in a period of transition. Rather than go into the gory details I’ll simply say that it has been in this period of transition for over two years. In fact, there is a long line of broken and hurting people who would say its been going on a lot longer than that. Tonight my name was etched onto that list. I feel betrayed, like someone else was chosen over me. Instead of working toward a both/and (as all I was really asking for was the chance to help out, without monetary compensation, and take up only an hour of someones time for 2 separate ten week periods) the either/or decision was made and I get the raw end of the deal.

Last week, when I was processing all that transpired I wondered if I had made the right decision to leave the sem.  There was still a part of me that wanted to believe that place, not only the sem but the denomination, really cared. That I mattered to them. What better place to go to find that assurance than the place I grew up? But all I found was another taste of the drink that makes me bitter. The drink that reminds me why I left. The drink that shows me the either/or means more to them than the both/and. I don’t know if I will ever understand that. How can we choose one over the other? Why do we say there can be only one?

I know that I am hurting right now. That I am bruised. That I feel betrayed. That I am probably being naive and idealistic in thinking that if they really cared about me they, or someone, would have found or fought for a way to make it work. Frankly though, I hope I never lose that idealism. I believe in a better way. A way that fights for people and does all it can to help those who need it. A way that doesn’t choose between an either/or but accomplishes the both/and. A way that doesn’t care about the past but seeks always to move forward. A way where we all, regardless of the identities we hold,  walk alongside one another, and when necessary, carry those who do not have the strength to walk.